Month: November 2017

 
From Mark Paserwark at MadMikesAmerica:

The bells of Sutherland Springs toll for us all, each and every American. The dead at their church, on a Chicago street, in an Aurora theater, in a Columbine high school or in a Sandy Hook grade school were all Americans; some old, others so young that their instinct for self-defense was to assume the fetal position and extend their arms to break a fall, not to pull the trigger on Glock 19 Gen 5.

The rate of death by firearms in Sutherland Springs will now forever exceed that of Chicago.

Firearms, those who use them, and those who die by them cross the state and city lines of our country every hour of each day. Chicago or Sutherland Springs acting by themselves cannot assure their citizens the safety deserved by Americans.

The Good Man with a gun–sometimes there, most often not–is less needed when there are simply fewer guns.

– More –
 

 
From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

Your calling is you are on planet Earth to put a telescope to the eye of the world. That’s why you exist. By your behavior, your parenting, the way you do your job, the way you worship, and the way you handle your things in life, everyone should read off of your life, “God is great.” That’s why you exist.

— John Piper, Why Am I Here?

Evangelicals such as Calvinistic Fundamentalist John Piper have a reductionist view of the world. In their minds, the sum of everything is the Christian God. Everything traces back to God. He is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, and the beginning and the end. God is in believers, they live their lives through him, and to him go all praise, honor, and glory. This God is a jealous deity, demanding that his followers worship him alone. Worshiping other Gods or no God at all brings upon people his wrath and judgment. This God demands that believers in him devote their entire being to him. He is not only the hub around which everything turns, he is also the rim, tube, and tire. Simply put, from birth through eternity, life is all about God.

After Evangelicals have spent their entire lives worshiping God, guess what they get to do after they die? More of the same.

– More –
 

Burr is out with some minor ailment.

We suspect a head cold, although we hear of additional drama involving the back of his hand to his forehead.

The tough guy may be back in a day or two or three or God knows when.

Poor thing.

 
From PZ Myers:

I was reading this thing by Hans Fiene — you know, this Hans Fiene:

Hans Fiene is a Lutheran pastor in Illinois and the creator of Lutheran Satire, a series of comical videos intended to teach the Lutheran faith.

He’s writing about the latest mass murder in which a gunmen slaughtered people in a church. He’s explaining that this is not the time to be criticizing religion for the failure of prayer to protect them.

However, we should all recognize that pointing to a couple dozen warm corpses and saying, “Fat lot of good your Jebus-begging did you” is an act of profound ugliness.

OK, OK, I can see his point. This is a tragedy, and it’s a little unfair to chastise the dead for the failure of their faith. I could agree that maybe this is an appropriate time for empathy, rather than mockery. But wait…that isn’t his point at all.

When those saints of First Baptist Church were murdered yesterday, God wasn’t ignoring their prayers. He was answering them.

Say what?

– More –
 

 
From Jonathan Bernstein:

In early 1983, President Ronald Reagan dropped to 35 percent approval. By the end of the year, he was up nearly 20 percentage points, renominated by acclamation and won a second term with 49 states behind him. So anything’s possible for President Donald Trump, who is currently the least popular president at this point in the polling age at 38 percent. It’s very, very early, and there’s plenty of time for him to recover.

But it’s also quite likely that he will draw a fairly serious primary challenge in 2020.

– More –
 

 
From driftglass:

And here is where I get all confused.

From Newsweek, October 23, 2017:

BERNIE SANDERS WON’T BECOME A DEMOCRAT, WILL RUN AS AN INDEPENDENT IN 2018

Bernie Sanders has announced he will be running as an independent in 2018, prompting speculation over whether he will run as a Democrat presidential candidate in 2020. But the Vermont senator, who faced pressure to join the Democrats following his bid for the party’s 2016 nomination, said he had always been an independent and was not planning on making any changes in 2018.

“I am an independent and I have always run in Vermont as an independent while I caucus with the Democrats in the United States Senate. That’s what I’ve been doing for a long time, and that’s what I’ll continue to do,” Sanders said in a Sunday-night interview with Fox News.

I understand that Senator Sanders is well within his rights to break the promise he made during the 2016 presidential election about running as a Democrat from now on. After all, that promise is no longer convenient, and he didn’t swear to it under oath or anything — he merely asked us to trust him.

– More –
 

 
From The Journal of Improbable Research:

An invention gives restaurant diners a possibly elegant way to dispose of their chewed chewing gum, and gives restaurants a new means of advertising themselves or anything else. The invention was marketed under the name “Gumvelope.” A patent application tells how Gumvelope works:

– More –
 

From Korea, on surprise visit to DMZ:
Bad weather cancels President Trump’s plans.

From Virginia, on election day:
Bad weather cancels President Trump’s plans.

Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.

 
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

It’s morning here in America.

And there is mourning here in America.

It’s the beginning of a new day after yet another massacre with guns.

Today (like so many other days) will be filled with new memorial hashtags, with a parade of incendiary panels of television pundits, with a flood of flowery public offerings of “thoughts and prayers” from opportunistic politicians—and lots and lots of premature funeral plans by devastated loved ones, unnecessarily living their worst nightmares.

And not a damn thing will change after this day—just more attrition, more violation to bodies, more permanent interruption of life, more new cruel vacancies around the table.

– More –