Month: August 2019

• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post is not surprised at the corruption as the President of the United States becomes an in-person commercial, all but passing out leaflets begging heads of state to hold the next G7 summit at his hotel.
   
  Or is it a motel? Statesmanship is confusing these days.
   
  Of course, they agree and stuff the rental fees into his pockets. Jack has his own suggestion for the next summit.
   
• Obama did some heavy lifting to get America out of the Bush recession, keeping it from becoming a depression, all the while swimming upstream against Republican obstruction. The new upward trend continues today. Our current President tries to take credit.
   
  Jon Perr at PERRspectives watches the trend possibly coming to a Republican end. President Trump blames Obama nineteen months after the recovery architect has left office.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit is impressed that Republicans are not impressed with the illegal strings my President is pulling to get his southern wall.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors looks at the phone calls from China begging President Trump to resume negotiations. Background: Trump officials conceded calls were uh … conflated … projected … didn’t quite happen that way … uh. tengrain suggests the possibility that just maybe my President made stuff up again. You know: lying.

Continue reading “Trump G7 Hotel, Trump Economy, Trump Outlaw, Trump China Lies”

 

Responding to Prayer Doesn’t Work, But I’ll Keep Praying by North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz

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After reading Pastor Pavlovitz’s blog for some time now, it seems to me that he cares deeply about some people and wants for those people to find acceptance and contentment. This is very good; however, In my humble opinion, this post by the good pastor is very instructive regarding his misunderstanding of prayer and God. The fact that Pastor Pavlovitz once believed that enough prayer warriors could change God’s mind and thus have him bestow whatever blessing was requested shows an immature understanding of God, faith, and prayer. Indeed as Pastor Pavlovitz had come to correctly understand, God is not some benevolent Santa Claus that responds to our prayers with gifts if only we believe and pray hard enough. Unfortunately, thinking that prayer now serves no purpose other than to unite others in empathy and solidarity is also a misunderstanding of the purpose of prayer. While prayer may indeed serve in an ancillary capacity in that manner, it is certainly not the primary reason for it.
Continue reading “More on Prayer –
It Fulfills Its Sacred Purpose”

 

Responding to Prayer Doesn’t Work, But I’ll Keep Praying by North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz

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Plenty of people, many still of great conviction, pray without “unlocking” any real empathy, binding themselves to others, or being kind–and convince themselves in the process that they are actually accomplishing something worthwhile. Others pray to different gods and claim the same benefits.

And since we can express and develop concern for others in many ways that do not involve prayer, some of which have a more measurable impact on the world, it’s fair to say that these benefits, if real, are not unique to prayer.

I suspect that Mr. Pavlovitz has no need of prayer to be a kind and helpful person. What he brings to the table already is what he ends up getting out of it, just as it is for those who pray without kindness.
Continue reading “More on Prayer –
It Is Not Needed to Show Kindness”

 

From Robert A. Levine at The Moderate Voice:

Our beloved president, Donald Trump, has now started to call himself The Chosen One, intimating that he is the Messiah who has arrived to bring peace and good will to the planet, and salvation to those who believe in him, particularly those who are extremely affluent. Indeed, Evangelicals and Mormons steeped in their religions may perceive him as sort of a Messiah, placing conservative justices on the Supreme Court who may in the future overturn Roe vs Wade, and strengthening Israel to deal with its foes in the Middle East.

On the other hand, Trump’s behavior has been a bit strange for a nascent Messiah, acting more like an agent of the Devil. Perhaps Satan is actually the one who chose Trump. First of all, he has gone through three wives and has had multiple affairs, showing no respect for women though he has paid some of them off to keep them quiet. In his own words, however, he has had no qualms about grabbing women by the “pussy” if he is attracted to them sexually. He befriended a known pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, though it is unclear whether he participated in any of his pal’s orgies. He was photographed in the past with Epstein and a gaggle of young girls partying, groping some of them and commenting about their bodies.

The Chosen One was also involved in gambling, having built a number of casinos in Atlantic City that were luxurious gambling palaces. However, each of them separately went bankrupt, costing his investors plenty of money and workers their jobs. The Chosen One was not a great businessman. In all of his construction projects, he apparently stiffed many small contractors and his workers, a number of whom were illegal immigrants. His airline, named after himself (what else?) also went bankrupt, again costing people money and jobs.

One of his most evil ventures however, was Trump University where The Chosen One stole money from poor students who had to take out federal loans to pay for useless courses.

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From News Corpse:

Some of the best moments on Fox News occur when they have no idea what they are talking about. This happens with some frequency considering the low bar that Fox sets for hiring pundits and commentators. The prerequisites for a job at Fox News are primarily the willingness to lie effusively on behalf of Donald Trump and his Republican Nationalist Party, and blond hair.

On Monday morning’s episode of Outnumbered there was a perfect example of this tendency that Fox has to stumble onto something truthful without ever knowing they did so. The program had a segment on the just announced candidacy of radio host and, former Tea Party Republican, Joe Walsh, for the GOP nomination for president. He’s a longshot challenger to Trump, but his conservative credentials and passionate denouncements of Trump could take a toll on the embattled and mentally infirm incumbent. While discussing Walsh’s prospects in the race, Fox host Shannon Bream sought to itemize his weaknesses by revisiting some his previous abhorrent statements (video below):

“This is what Joe Walsh said: ‘Obama’s a Muslim. He’s an enemy and a traitor.’ He said this about Kamala Harris: ‘If you’re black and a woman you say dumb things, lowered bar.’ He also got duped by Sacha Baron Cohen about arming toddlers and kindergartners with guns. […] I think critics might say it’s astonishing that he even thinks he can run right now.”

Okay, then. That’s now the Fox News criteria for establishing when someone is unfit to run for president, There were four standards laid out: Calling Obama a Muslim, calling Obama an enemy, saying black women are stupid, and getting punked by a hoaxster. Let’s see how Trump stands up.

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From nojo:

Our guest columnist is CNBC.

10 am, Friday, August 23

BREAKING: Fed chair Powell in Jackson Hole speech: No ‘rulebook’ on trade, pledges the Fed will ‘act as appropriate’ to sustain the economy

10:07 am

Stocks jump to session highs & Dow turns positive after Powell’s Jackson Hole speech

10:43 am

Dow, Nasdaq, S&P 500 now all in positive territory after Powell speech

10:45 am

BREAKING: After Fed chair’s Jackson Hole speech, Trump tweets: “Who is our bigger enemy, Jay [Powell] or Chairman Xi?”

11:04 am

BREAKING: Stocks plunge after Trump tweets that he will respond to new China tariffs today and says “American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China”

11:07 am

BREAKING: S&P 500 slides more than 1% after Trump orders U.S. companies to “start looking for an alternative to China”

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From driftglass:

As you know, the longest, slowest and most reliable road to going broke and never getting invited to all the cool parties is to have been right about the Right all along.

Conversely, the shortest, laziest and most reliable path to media fame and fortune is to have been a Republican dickbag your entire adult life — to have devoted yourself unremittingly to the creation of the GOP Monster Machine. Then, as a life-long Republican dickbag, when the prefect Apex Republican Predator finally rolled off your assembly line, you had a couple of choices: either reap the rewards of joining Trump’s Pandemonium Carnival —

— or reap the rewards from being a suddenly “woke” Republican who is shocked — shocked! — to discover that your Republican party is full of Republicans.

Didn’t matter which path you took: if you’re a Republican, there would be a pot of gold at the end of both of them.

Which brings us to Deadbeat Joe Walsh: the racist, crackpot, one-term Teabagger congressman turned fringe wingnut radio host from the suburbs of Chicago.

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From Frances Langum:

He’ll likely face a primary challenger and then lose, provided sensical Arizonans turn out to vote.

Pardoned by Trump criminal and racist Joe Arpaio, 89, is running again for Maricopa County Sheriff.

Don’t use words like “controversial” to describe him. He’s a full-on bigot birther and torturer who was convicted of criminal contempt in 2017 and pardoned by Trump in 2018 (telegraphing to everyone in the Trump-Russia universe what he COULD do for ya).

I’m with the man on the street who said: “I think it’s foolish and he’s trying to ride the last gasp of this whole Trumpism situation and it’s not going to work.”

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From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

I still ask for people to pray and I still pray, but I try to reorient my prayers these days.

I no longer believe in prayer as a cause-an-effect endeavor.
I don’t believe in a supernatural Santa Claus who dispenses life and death based on the conduct or heart of the recipients.
I don’t believe in a God who withholds miraculous healing or compassionate care—until sufficiently begged by us to do so.

I believe prayer works by unlocking our empathy for others.
I believe it binds us together in relationship.
I believe it to be a beautiful expression of love for people who are suffering.
I believe it connects us personally to God in ways that cannot be quantified.
I believe it is a sacred act of kindness.

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From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

Officially, most Evangelicals believe in the pretribulational rapture of the church. However, if you let their works testify to what they really believe, it is evident that Evangelicals no longer believe that Gabriel is fixing to blow his trumpet and Jesus is returning in the clouds to catch away his chosen ones. TV preachers such as con artist Jim Bakker continue to preach up the could-be-tomorrow rapture, but tomorrow never comes and their bank accounts continue to grow.

Evangelicals have traded a soon-coming Lord for megachurches, fancy AV systems, praise bands, relational preaching and, most importantly, political power. Evangelicals seem far more concerned with expanding their kingdoms on earth than they do evangelizing the lost and building the kingdom to come. I don’t know of one Evangelical preacher, church leader, or congregant, for that matter, who lives as if Jesus could split the eastern sky today. I told Polly last night that Evangelicals sure do talk and sing a lot about Heaven, but none of them seem to be in much hurry to get there. The vast majority of Evangelicals not only are indifferent about their own souls, but they also couldn’t care less about the souls of their unsaved, heathen neighbors. Evangelicalism has become that which it stood against decades ago — institutionalized. It has become little more than cultural religion. The only reason any of us should give a thought about Evangelicalism is that it continues to have a dangerous anti-human hold on the Republican Party.

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