The Barack who cried "wolf"

One of the most important aspects of leadership is to maintain your head while all about you are losing theirs.  When chaos rules the day, people depend upon their leader to maintain his cool and lead them through troubled waters.

The steady hand calms the troubled hearts.

If everything faced by a people gets elevated to crisis level, they rally to their leader's side during the first, second, and perhaps third sudden catastrophe.  Soon, they become wearied and ache for a return to normalcy.

That's assuming a real catastrophe even existed.  In the event that the people rally only to find phantoms and cardboard cut-outs, they'll weary far sooner.  Disillusionment will set in and it won't take long until the people ignore their leader when he impassions that wolves have entered the fold.

These thoughts ran through my mind as I noted this headline in the Sunday paper (why do I keep finding such stomach turning fare in the Sunday paper of all places?):

Obama declares H1N1 crisis

We're at war with the runs?!?

President Bush started this habit of calling us to arms against windmills in the bank fiasco of a year ago.  President Obama didn't miss a beat when he started the new year bygoing to war again to save our failing auto industry.  And then he took our angst on the road in a world-apology tour.  Then came health care.  Billions and billions dying on the streets of Des Moines!  In recent days, a more demonic percolated to the surface.  The White House sought to neutralize the threat to our nation caused by Fox News.

"This is not time for talk.  We must act now."  Against what?  Most the folks on Main Street look at one another and shrug their shoulders.  Ma and Pa Kettle will take up pitchforks against the hooligans behind the razing of buildings in New York City.  They don't take kindly to being asked to fork over their hard earned cash to give to fat-cats who couldn't keep their books balanced.  Nor do they get giddy over a national battle against network they watch if they want something in the ballpark of objectivity.

And now it's body ache and fever.  Might I recommend a low-cost hand-washing and cup of chicken soup?  Perhaps a few days rest and a close-at-hand supply of toilet paper.

Armchair quarterbacking, how about we resolve Afghanistan?  All in or all out.  What about the cancer which manifested itself on 9-11?  Let's take care of those bananas.  They are nowhere near close to unleashing their anti-American, anti-Semitic malignancy.  How might we defend against that?  A constitutional perspective would lead one to believe that the chief tasking of our government  is to protect the people.  The military oath includes protecting against all enemies foreign and domestic.

At the very least, it would be refreshing to see an issue come to the fore in the next week or two that doesn't immediately go to the head of the national crisis class.  Maybe he would consider waiting until after the World Series is over.  I'm not going to bet my Cracker Jacks on that.

QotD: A brave "new" world?

This from Aldous Huxley's forward to his combined Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited, written a score and half-dozen years after the former.

As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.

Time warped

Thursday morning I had the honor to wake my son. His football team was having a team breakfast (game day, you know) and he wanted to go. Dutiful dad rises at 6:30, not too bad, chomps a little breakfast and waits. And waits. Planning to head out the door at 7:10, I expected to see my son by 7:00. Nope. When I peaked in his room, he was deep in a REM sprawl.

After a loving kiss on the forehead and a gentle nudge to the shoulder, we still made it out the door by 7:11 (remember the Slurpy Rock Cups? You don't? Oh, well). The conversation enroute to the jackal feed went something like this:

"Did you forget to set your alarm?"

"No. It went off, but it didn't go off the second time."

The second time? Ah, he's a Snoozer. I could feel my eyes roll back into my head as my molars pressed together with a force that would have turned a charcoal brickette into a five karat diamond.

Other mornings I'll be eating breakfast and hear the heart-stopping "EENH-EENH-EENH-EENH!" of another's son's alarm clock, but then nothing else. Then as sure as my tax load will increase every year for the next seven years, "EENH-EENH-EENH-EENH!" his clock resounds seven minutes later. Every now and then, this cycle will repeat itself to the third and fourth iteration. That son, too, is a Snoozer.

I - do - not - understand - the Snoozer! In my literalist brain, the purpose of an alarm clock is to wake you to start your day. Explain to me why anyone would want someone to enter their bedroom, rudely clang a wooden spoon around the soup kettle only to whisper in their ear, "You have seven more minutes of sleep after which time I'll come clanging again." Most would deny that they want someone to do that, but then they'll set their alarm to do that very thing!

I don't get it. Maybe there's some psychology that I'm missing, but -- me?-- give me as much sleep as I can squeeze out of the night. If it takes me 32.97 minutes to get from pillow to the door, I'll set my alarm 33 minutes before my departure time only because I can't figure out how to program hundreths of seconds into the stupid thing.

That made me think of the Snoozer's daffier cousin, the Time Padder. This is the guy who sets all of his clocks fifteen minutes ahead of time to give themselves an extra fifteen minutes so that they'll not be late...and yet they are ALWAYS late! Usually by well over fifteen minutes. They look at their watch, see 9:15 and gasp! "No, wait. Wait a minute. I've set my watch fifteen minutes ahead of time. It's only 9:00. I'm not nearly as late as I thought I was."

The part of Time Padder's brain that easily tells time seems completely dissociated from the part of their brain that works logic. "Ssshhh...be vewy, vewy quiet. I'm going to set all my clocks fifteen minutes ahead of the time that it is right now to trick myself into believing that it's really that time. Then--voila!--I'll suddenly become a responsible, on-time individual."

Methinks not.

Pad away. Snooze away. But please be ready to walk out the door at 7:10.

Signed,

The Type-A, sets his every time piece by the US Naval Observatory Master Clock, blog venter

Global warming: Indicting God

Not a week goes by that I don't see on Drudge some world leader or Al Gore clone suggesting that if we don't do something about global warming by tomorrow lunch, we can expect the earth will look like burnt toast by dinner.

What I find particularly disconcerting is when our own government officials go batty and legislate some ridiculous restrictions upon manufacturing or big screen TVs (yes, in--you guessed it--California). Now more boa constricting daffiness from Sens. Barbie Boxer and John Kerry in the form of greenhouse legislation (read about it here).

Here's something to consider, though, especially among those of us who call ourselves Christian (which, believe it or not, comprises most of the Senate):

“While the earth remains,
Seedtime and harvest,
Cold and heat,
Winter and summer,
And day and night
Shall not cease.”

That's God's promise (Genesis 8:22). Did you catch what He said? As long as the earth is, there will be planting and reaping. It's going to be cold and it's going to be hot. We will have winter (snowing lots in October this year...October!) and we will have summer. These will not end. This cycle will not stop. His promise.

So if the emissions of my two suburbans would thwart that, if everyone in California having a wall-sized big screen TV would counter that, or if felling the entirety of the rain forest would terminate winter anywhere on the planet, then God knows not of which He speaks.

So there's the dilemma: Do we put our lives in the hands Al Gore's science and Kerry's and Boxer's legislation, or do take the God, the God we say we believe and trust, at His word?

Revising revisionism

Have you heard the one about those horrid Puritans, the ones who initiated the witch trials The Crucible made famous? Yes, I know you have. Thank you, Arthur Miller. But did you know that the government sentenced the women and that the preachers of the day, led prominently by Cotton Mather, ended the lunacy? No, I didn't think so. We prefer a playwright's history.

And the Crusades. You have heard how those horrid Christians (a theme?) attempted to drive the peace-loving Arabs from their homeland, haven't you? Let's put a bit of focus on this most recently blurred of historic events.

Many thanks to my good friend, Jeff, for passing this on to me. Dr. Peter Hammond, the article's authoer, has spent 26 years as a Christian missionary among the Arab peoples of Africa and especially the Sudan. He has also researched, far more than I have, the Crusades.

Anyway, here's the article (here, really) titled "Jihad and Crusades." It's a lengthy read, but it's stuff that was common knowledge a few centuries ago. Thanks to the post-modern slop taught in 97% institutes of any learning, most of us don't get such information.

Let it ricochet around in your mind for a few days, then turn on the tube and see what Iran's up to in the eradication-of-Israel department.

------------------------------------------
For further review on this topic, I've linked another article, "What were the Crusades all about?" here.

Citizenship 101

A friend of mine picked up my son and two other boys from football practice today. On their way home, my friend was accelerating along the frontage road (three lanes wide and one way) to enter the highway when in the far right lane a pickup truck zorched past them at a guesstimated 20 mph faster than my friend. Problem is, a woman had pulled out of a side street well before said pickup truck and was just getting herself to the speed limit.

The yahoo in the pickup continued accelerating toward her and then quick-stopped in an intimidating fashion, but he didn't quick stop soon enough and struck her bumper.

My friend, my son, and the two other boys witnessed this as they accelerated onto the highway.

As they merged with the traffic, my friend continued to look over his shoulder at the mishap. The woman's car had stopped and the pickup turned onto a side street. Dilemma. The boys were all eager to get home, my son wanting to attend the junior high school football game tonight. My friend wrestled with what he should do. They'll probably take care of it themselves. Right? You know, maybe he didn't hit her. Right?

"Boys, I'm going to turn around and see what happened," he declared, and the boys all seemed cool with the decision. Three minutes later, they were back on the scene.

The scrawny gent from the pickup was pretty much in the woman's face, threatening her because it was her fault that he hit her from behind. She was sure to be ticketed, he intimidated. "Um, that's not what happened or will happen," said my friend. "Have you called the police yet?"

"That won't be necessary," suggested the scrawny man.

"Yes, it will," countered my friend as he punched 9-1-1 into his cell phone. "You always need to contact the police when there is an accident."

"Well, she stopped right in front of me!" scrawny blustered.

"No, sir," my friend once again countered, "You flew past me doing well beyond the speed limit and rear ended that lady."

The scrawny man went to an adjacent house where his friend who had been in the truck lived.

"Thank you for stopping," said the woman trembling. "I've never been hit before and I didn't know what to do. He started threatening me and telling me it was all my fault. He said I'd have to pay and would likely have to go to jail."

What a smudge, thought my friend about Mr. Scrawny.

Soon the police arrived and took my friend's information and statement and sent them on their way. The whole thing took ten to fifteen minutes.

If you ask me, my son and those boys could not have gotten a better civics lesson.

1. When you see an accident, stop to a) render assistance, and b) offer yourself as a witness.
2. When you see an accident, notify the police. You never know when the innocent will be turned on by the guilty.
   

That poor woman could have been intimidated into paying for her own fender, and another smudge would have won the day. Let's hear it for a little exercised citizenship!

Why have I not heard this???

Yesterday, I nearly up-chucked when I read that headline about "unsafe abortions" (blogged here). Let's start your week with a glorious dose of sunshine.

This little piece buried in the current issue of World Magazine, caused me to bruise my jaw on the coffee table over the exceptional character of Carolyn Savage.

A woman implanted with the wrong frozen embryo gave birth to a baby boy on Sept. 24 and returned the boy to his biological parents, Paul and Shannon Morell. They called Carolyn Savage a "guardian angel," saying they were at first afraid that Savage would abort the baby or sue for custody when the fertility clinic discovered the mistake. Savage said she never considered it: "This was someone else's child. . . . We didn't know if they didn't have children or if this was their last chance for a child."

QotD: Revolting misdirection

This from my local Sunday newspaper (yes, I still get one of those):

Report: Unsafe abortions kill 70,000 every year

Yeah, but how many do safe abortions kill every year? I have an idea. What if we stop trying to terminate the life of the unborn, then we'll save those millions of lives plus the 70,000 women who die from complications.

It reminds me of the Vaudevillian joke, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this..."

The intolerance of God

Tom Krattenmaker of USA Today has a cross-shaped burr under his saddle about Christians in prominent athletics. Oh, like most folks, he doesn't mind thanking God here or a little prayer there. No, what has chafed his posterior is that their convictions have gone public. These men and women have the audacity to encourage their teammates, their fans, their coaches to have a relationship with--is anyone looking?--shhh--Jesus Christ.

Krattenmaker sees a conspiracy (ital - mine):

"Far less visible, but worth knowing about, are the infrastructure and strategy of the sports-world evangelicalism that powers these pious displays. Athletes' expressions of Christian faith reflect decades of hard work by evangelical ministries to convert players and "coach" them to use their stature to promote a particular version of conservative Christianity."

Ptooey on that particular version. I guess he prefers a Burger King, have-it-your-way, Christianity. But then, so do many Americans. Not a week goes by when I don't hear someone suggest that the Christian walk depends upon your interpretation as though the Bible were some kind of tabula rasa that you color to your liking.

So distasteful does Mr. Krattenmaker find this, note the language he uses:

"They are also leveraging sports' popularity to promote a message and doctrine that are out of sync with the diverse communities that support franchises, and with the unifying civic role that we expect of our teams."

He's obviously not writing about Nobel Prize winners. So what's he driving at?

"...should we be pleased that the civic resource known as "our team" — a resource supported by the diverse whole through our ticket-buying, game-watching and tax-paying — is being leveraged by a one-truth evangelical campaign that has little appreciation for the beliefs of the rest of us?"

Mr. Krattenmaker's underlying assertion: Christianity that declares damnation for those who reject God's provision has no place within the public sphere. He takes aim at a prominent Heisman Trophy winner and national championship quarterback.

"Certainly, Tim Tebow must be applauded for the good he does working on his father's missions, but he should be seen, too, as one who promotes a form of belief that makes unwelcome judgments about everyone else's religion."

The weighty theological research done by Mr Krattenmaker? Public opinion polls. Seems most folks don't favor the flavor of Jesus-only salvation. When last I looked, God wasn't running for election. He doesn't genuflect to Gallup Polls, Pew Research, or Nobel Selection Committees.

Krattenmaker's problem, and the problem of thousands of liberal theologues who declare many avenues to God, is not with Tebow. They have a fundamental issue with God Himself. You see, it's not Tebow pushing a "Jesus-or-else" message. Jesus is pushing the Jesus-or-else message because that's the way it is. Here's a sampling Christ's "intolerance:"

• I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)
• Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. (Matthew 7:13)
• The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me. (Luke 10:16)
• Everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but the oen who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God. (Luke 12:8-9)

You get the idea.

Now here's the deal. This is not something Tim Tebow or Colt McCoy or Sam Bradford concocted. Man rebelled against God. Only the Creator could fix the broken creation, and He did so by becoming the recipient Himself of the deserved condemnation. Paul tells the Roman church that God did this that He might be both just and the justifier to bring about the reconciliation of man to God (Romans 3:26). He offers us the free gift of restored life with Him...if we are willing to receive it.

This is not some whacked out sect of Christianity. This isn't the NCAA's crazed, Kool-Aid drinking quarterback club. This is just what the Bible says. As God's primary communication to us, His letter tells of the disaster that looms ahead for all mankind, but it also tells of the Life Preserver that God has provided in the bloody sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ.

The travesty is not that athletes are trying to get folks to wake up to that reality, but that so many like Mr. Krattenmaker and milquetoast ministers have diluted the plain message of redemption and so deluded the masses into believing that God's merely the voice in the drive-thru at Burger King.

We can't have it our way.
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You can read the entire USA TODAY article here.

Just another day: Dumpsters

• THE BIG CHILL. With the tidal wave of evidence that the earth's climate is a cyclical and inconsistent beast, can we finally relegate Al Gore and his barometric paranoia to the trash can of single-issue screes inhabited by Al Sharpton (I have nothing against the name "Al") and Jesse (see?) Jackson? I'm putting on a sweater!


• AMBASSADORS. Two thumbs down to the moron missionary who, mid-flight, wouldn't let a lady take a leak because he was sharing the Gospel with her (here). So foul was this gentleman that they had to divert the plane from its cross-country flight. Sad when Balaam's donkey shows a greater command of the language and the moment than one created in the image of God. Tough to show the love of Christ and the redemptive power of His sacrifice when you're holding someone at gunpoint. Don't think that's what Jesus meant in the Great Commission.


• LOVERS. Vladdy Putin continues to show his affection for his scruffy puppy to the south, blustering that none shall stand against the bark of his yapping mutt. Yes, Russia's defending Iran's nuke acquisition process (here). His tone and tenor are not showing any of those aww-just-kidding signs either. Believing that sanctions against his rabid ally are "a bit premature," the Russian neo-tsar suggested, "We need to look for a compromise. If a compromise is not found, and the discussions end in a fiasco, then we will see." Could he define fiasco, please? Is that Russian for "eradicating Israel?"


• HOW LOW CAN WE GO? This might be it. A memoir from a woman who aborted 15 children in 17 years. Chronicled in a book?!? I'll not even link it. My heart grieves for this lass and it grieves for her lost children. Makes my head swim.


• ON A HIGH NOTE. Let's go out on a much better note. Granted, at this point, clanging a trash can lid would be a better note. A friend shared with me today about a friend of his who came to realize that God could in fact handle the depth of her sin. She trusted the redemptive work of Jesus Christ on the cross and has been adopted by God into His family (Galatians 4:5, Ephesians 1:5). The cool thing about adoption? Parents don't unadopt their kids and kids can't unadopt themselves. She is now the daughter of the King! That makes her a princess. Sweet!
  

Marsh-wigglian philosophy

(or "You can learn a lot about the world around you from a fictional character")

In the climax of C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair, Jill Pole, Eustace Scrubb, and their Marsh-wiggle guide, Puddleglum had just released Prince Rilian from his decade-long enchantment, when the witch, the Lady of the Green Kirtle, returned to her underworld castle. Despite the ruse of the quartet that Rilian remained under her spell, the witch assessee otherwise and begian to beguile the lot of them.

The potency of her magic? Her incense and the steady, monotonous strumming on her mandolin got them all fuzzy-headed, but her lies began to bind them under her spell. "Do you really know what you know?" Soon she had them doubting the beauty and reality of Rilian's Narnian homeland, convincing them that all that there was was this dark, cavernous underland.

"There is no place called Naria."

"Yes there is though, Ma'am," said Puddleglum. "You see, I happen to have lived there all my life."

"Indeed," said the Witch. "Tell me, I pray you, where that country is?"

"Up there," said Puddleglum, stoutly, pointing overhead. "I -- I don't know exactly where."

"How?" said the Queen, with a kind, soft, musical laugh, "Is there a country up among the stones and mortar of the roof?"

"No," said Puddleglum, struggling a little to get his breath. "It's in Overworld."

"And what, or where, pray is this...how do you call it Overworld?"

On went the thrumming on the mandolin, on continued the deceptions, until Rilian, Jill, and Eustace had succumbed to an entranced sleep. At that point, Puddleglum summoned the last vestige of his sanity and plunged his foot into the fireplace. Not only did this heroic act raise such a stench as to counter the incense and roust the sleepers, but it brought lightning sobriety to Puddleglum's mind.

At this point, C.S. Lewis focused the laser beam of his scholarly mind, a mind that had been transformed by his relationship with Jesus Christ, upon the retort of the humble Marsh-wiggle.

"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

Folks continue to posit a world and universe that have come about through machinistic means. Pah. I'm sticking with the Marsh-wiggle and clinging to the Lion and the true Word he has given us.

Passing 10,000 feet

The morning sky hung leadened and somber over our heads but the bracing fall breeze helped shake the remaining cobwebs of the five a.m. wakeup as we got our jets ready for engine start. We did not mind launching into the clouds. The weather guessers said they would not be that thick and that the working areas above should be in the clear.

Flying in close proximity to another aircraft might seem certifiable but it’s really not that bad. Imagine if you had a parking lot of extraordinary size where you get in your car and I get in mine. All you have to do is keep yourself positioned about a lane’s width from my back tire while I drive around. As I steer away from you, the distance between us opens and you steer toward me to return that gap to a lane’s width. If I steer toward you the distance begins to close and you steer away from me to open it back up. If I accelerate, you fall aft and recognizing it, you accelerate to return yourself to the correct position. You don’t have to worry about trees because you trust me completely not to run us into one. That’s the job of the flight lead. He hits no trees and takes the formation where it needs to go. The wingman? His job is to just “be there.”

The runway lights still twinkled along the runway edges because the dawn wrestled with the overcast to brighten the earth. Even with earplugs, even with padded helmets, the engines roar as they're coaxed from idle to maximum power. It still makes me giggle like a little kid.

The takeoff was uneventful and we soon approached the clouded canopy. Imagine being on a lift heading for the ceiling. That's the sensation.

You never know what you’ll get upon cloud entry. Sometimes you can see your flight lead just as well as you could out of the cloud; you just can no longer visually discern up and down. You trust your lead and hang on to his bumper. Sometimes the clouds are so thick you can no longer see the fuselage or body of his plane but can only make out the wing tip. That’s white-knuckling. Sometimes there's turbulence. Sometimes it's as smooth as a lake on a summer morning. These were average clouds, and my student in the front seat did a fine job hanging onto his lead’s wing.

The brightening clouds indicated we were nearing their tops. And then we broke out.

The beauty of the skyscape caught my breath. We emerged in a clouded valley with towering cliffs of billowy white on either side and a sky overhead so blue as to startle the eyes. The dark blue hues faded higher up the cottoned hillsides until at their crest the orange of the sunrise warmed the tops of the western ridge of piled cumulus.

Up we rose out of the valley into the blazing purity of the morning sun. The flight lead signaled to loosen the formation and so my student slid out to a couple hundred feet. The brightness of the sun cast a crystalline halo around the edges of lead’s jet and around the clouds that piled still higher to our east. My kingdom for a movie camera.

Cliffs and crags, mythical mountains and gentle hills, seemingly tangible but nothing more than vapor, all painted with colors no palette on the earth far below has equaled. It was a panorama I’d seen many times before, but as my final days in this violator of gravity drew near, it struck me how blessed I have been to see such things for so very many years. Vaulting out of that valley of wonder, my heart ached that no matter how carefully I crafted my words, I could not replicate what I had seen to my family.

I don’t know if my student in the front seat recognized what he’d just flown past. Perhaps he was maxed-out trying to keep his plane where his flight lead wanted him to be. Perhaps his mind was too focused on the mission he had yet to complete.

Perhaps, though, in twenty years, as he approached his final sortie, God would slow things down enough for him on some pristine morning, slow it down enough to savor the wonder of dancing through the clouds.

The Nobel sham

(...or "The deification of Barack Obama")

The cluster of Nobel Peace Prize winners from throughout most of the 1900's includes some heady company. Teddy Roosevelt and Elihu Root. George C. Marshall and Martin Luther King, Jr. Mother Teresa and Lech Walesa.

Things started getting goofy with that vaunted prize in the latter edges of the twentieth century.

• Yasser Arafat. PLO terrorist extraordinaire.


• Jimmy Carter. No, not for his work between Israel and Egypt in the 1970's, but he won it in 2002. For???


• Mohamed ElBaradei. That's the guy I wrote about recently from the Atomic International Energy Agency who sees Israel as the greatest "nuclear threat" in the Middle East.


• Al Gore. For climate change??? Did he make the climate change? Will he stop the climate from changing? That's like someone winning the prize for the sunrise.

The scales of the absurd have not only tipped, they've completely toppled with the selection of Barack Obama, President of the United States, as the 2009 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. I count two former presidents receiving this accolade for something they did while president. President Obama is the first president to win the award for something he might do.

You see, submissions for Nobel take place the February prior to the award being given. That means that President Obama held the helm of our nation for, 0h, one month when he was nominated. What had he done? Bailout I. I don't recollect if he'd genuflected to the Saudi king yet but his great international sucking-up and American apology tour was just getting under way.

Did he stabilize the Balkans? Did he calm the waters between Pakistan and India? Did he unite the factions of Afghanistan or Iraq? Did he neuter the hatred of fundamental Muslims toward Christians and Jews (i.e. the West)? Did he solve the world's economic crisis? Did he make Republicans and Democrats the best of friends? Did he make peace between Brett Favre and Green Bay?

I can't think of anything Barack Obama did worthy of a Nobel Prize. Yet.

Despite my disagreement with almost everything he's implemented as president to date, the proof is in the pudding. Well, he just put the pudding in the fridge to set up. No, worse. He just got the ingredients out onto the counter. He may yet prove a worthy recipient of that for which the Nobel Peace Prize is intended, but bestowing it on a president after one month's work is like giving Tim Tebow the NFL MVP trophy for 2010...right now.

This smacks of Hollywood's self-congratulatory lovefest we call the Academy Awards. I love you. You love me. How about we give each other a little naked trophy?

What is going on? He wins the election of the world's strongest nation economically, influentially, and militarily with paltry little experience (absentee senator? Community organizer?). He wins the Nobel Peace Prize for...for...can anyone help me with this one? An AP article yesterday quoted African bishops heaping praise upon the President as evidence of divine pleasure.

"If the election of a black as head of the United States of America was a divine sign and a sign from the Holy Spirit for the reconciliation of races and ethnic groups for peaceful relations ... this synod and the universal church would gain from not ignoring this primordial event of contemporary history which is far from being a banal game of political alliances," the archbishop of Kinshasa, Congo gushed.

I'd be really sick if I understood half of what the bishop said.

President Obama is a man, just a man, but a man who holds the reigns of our nation. What he does with them still remains to be seen. To date, he has done precious little to warrant laurels from his own country much less the international community.

Alfred Nobel must be spinning like a top in his grave.

Just another day: I'm all shook up

• RUMBLE. It made the news web-sites this morning, but you know, other things happened during the day so it's fallen off the page. What's 'it'? The earth moved. Again. And again. And still again.
  
  The earth's shaking like mad. Today alone, world-wide, the earth fidgeted at a magnitude greater than 5.0 twenty times. Two-zero. Four of those readjusts topped 6.0. Yesterday, in the South Pacific, site of last weeks major burbles, they cleared 7.o three times with a near miss at 6.7.
  
  The world's weaving more than a teen texting while driving (here). Were I merely a student of geology, I would find this unsettling, but I'm a student of theology. Jesus Christ declared with sober certainty that he would return to the earth. The intro to this event?
  

  "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs."

  Is Jesus Christ's return to the earth imminent? That I can't say with certainty. I believe it to be so. What I do know for sure is that we are one day closer than when Jesus spoke to his disciples and the earth won't stop shaking.
  


• ONE IN FOUR. Another article hit the cyber-news sites this morning and disappeared shortly after lunch. Pew research indicates that over one-quarter of the world's population (1.57 b-b-b-b-billion) is now Muslim (here). This is groovy so long as those Muslims are your run-of-the-mill neighbor who doesn't mind going to the pool, bagging your pork at the grocery store, toting your St. Bernard in his cab, or leaving your head on your shoulders.
  
  Conservative estimates, though, indicate that ten percent of Muslims are of the more irritable variety, the kind whose fashion includes vests lined with C4 and a matching belt with detonator buckle. Ten percent of 1.57 b-b-b-b-billion is (math in public...carry the five...) 157 million. That's just under half the population of the United States. Hmmm...
  
  The AP article linked above makes it seem that many of these Muslims aren't just of Arab heritage. They note that more Muslims now live in Germany than in Lebanon. In itself that's an impressive stat, but paltry few of those German Muslims are named Hans or Fritz. You see, Germany has an enormous population of Muslims (as does most of Europe) because of immigration. From the Middle East. So just because the Muslims are German Muslims, they're still named Abdul and Mohammed.

Just thought you'd like to know. 'Til next time, eyes to the east.

QotD: Connect the dots...la, la-la, la-la

Thomas Sowell. Economist (PhD-type). Columnist. Two phenomenal musings that I'll let speak for themselves (you can read his whole piece here).

#1) The free market and government meddling:

"...what is called “the market” consists of human beings making their own choices at their own cost. What is called “social justice” is government imposition of the notions of third parties, who pay no price for being wrong."

#2) The company you keep:

"Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Moammar Qaddafi, and Vladimir Putin have all praised Barack Obama. When enemies of freedom and democracy praise your president, what are you to think? When you add to this Barack Obama’s many previous years of associations and alliances with people who hate America — Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfleger, and so on — at what point do you stop denying the obvious and start to connect the dots?"

I suspect we'll be obvious deniers for another seven years. Sigh.

Comedy from a man named Mohammed

It seems that the UN has as tight a hold over its classified information as does our own National Archives. Isn't that right, Mr. Berger? A recently leaked "secret" (shhh) report contained the following tidbits about Iran's recent push for nuclear energy and its ironically timed testing of medium range ballistic missiles:

The Agency assesses that the development work to design a suitable chamber inside the re-entry vehicle is intended to accommodate a new warhead payload that is quite likely to be nuclear.

That would be troublesome except for the fact that we have been assured over and over again that despite one of the largest global oil reserves sitting beneath its sun-baked crust, Iran pursues nuclear technology to bolster its meager energy supply. Breath easy, right? Mahmoud has been as true-blue as a Boy Scout, right?

The Agency is concerned that Iran may have nuclear weapon design information which could be used in a specific nuclear package which would fit within the mass and volume constraints as seen in (that re-entry vehicle).

I do like the qualitative "may" used in the previous excerpt but there's more to indicate that Iran's possession of nuclear weapons is imminent. The report does end on this oddly happy note:

Overall the Agency does not believe that Iran has yet achieved the means of integrating a nuclear payload into the Shahab 3 missile with any confidence that it would work (whew!). Nonetheless (rats, knew that was coming), with further effort it is likely that Iran will overcome problems and confidence will be built up.

Doesn't it make you feel better that Iran's confidence will be built up, like old Mahmoud's been taking it on the international chin and needs a hug?

You think that was wry, try this on.

The president of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a group with as much moral fiber as the UN but tasked with the ho-hum job of tracking the nuclear exploits of nations round the world, announced today which country he believes to be the greatest nuclear threat to the Middle East. The envelop, please...

"Israel is the number one threat to the Middle East given the nuclear arms it possesses."

No, you're not seeing things. I typed that correctly. That's what he said. To my knowledge Israel has never threatened to annihilate another nation or threatened that said nation would soon be no more, but Mssr. Ahmadinejad threatens more than that by the time he finishes his Cous-Cous Puffs.

You might think IAEA president Mohammed ElBaradei was doing a little hashish to aver such anti-Israel propoganda (the complete article here). He does his moderate Egyptian roots no favor by not indiciting the Looney Toon, Ahmadinejad, but rather focusing his eyes upon Israel. Worse than that he makes an even greater mockery of his own IAEA, the organization that Han Blix headed when it couldn't figure out Iraq's nuclear temperature. With Iran giving the wrenches the final turn, the IAEA has its back to them, the greatest threat to actually use nuclear weapons, and is focusing on the nation with the bullseye on its chest, Israel.

Israel, the muscle of the Middle East, has shown incredible discretion over the last three decades. It could have destroyed any of its neighbors at any time. Because the neighbors understood that, they have caused no issues, but in light of Iran's idiocy, Israel may be left with little recourse but to use tactical nukes to neuter Iran's nuclear threat.

Should that Rubicon be crossed, I don't believe we have the imagination to comprehend the consequences.

To hell in the handbasket of your choice

Parade Magazine, the Sunday newspaper insert, will never be accused of heady journalism. A few recipes (all with Mr. Healthy Heart), a few puzzles, a few comic strips, and a few articles with a depth comparable to People Magazine fill its dozen-and-a-half pages. Cotton candy.

Yeah, I read it, and it usually leaves me with a gut-ache as it did today. The cover story? Spiritual America (here).

How representative is a Parade Magazine poll (from which its article was birthed) that samples 1051 folks who responded to on-line questions during five days last May? It didn't sample Wall Street Journal readers. Or New York Times readers. Come to your own conclusions.

That aside, it highlights some disturbing trends within our national fabric. Consider,

• 45% of the folks consider themselves religious


• 50% of those rarely or never attend worship services.


• Over one-quarter of respondents say they don't practice any kind of religion.


• 24% consider themselves spiritual but not religious.

These next few, all similar, are doozies:

• Only 12% believe that their religion was the only true faith.


• 59% believe that all religions are valid.


• 62% believe in an afterlife where you'll rub elbows with family and friends but only 42% believe in heaven or hell.

Things that make you say, "Hmmm..." Since the Parade writer, Christine Wicker, didn't see fit to some up the data, let me give it a whack. America's lost as a goose.

Because parents no longer feel it necessary to train up there children in the way they should go, because academicians have misapplied the scientific theory of relativity to all of life (and we bought it), because most homes in America own Bibles but few crack them, because we don't understand our Founder's original intent in establishing our nation with its form of government, and because we miscontextualize what they have said and what they have written, we have set ourselves adrift on a sea without water and without shorelines.

If it doesn't matter, why bother?!? Paul, one of the chief spokesman for the significance of Jesus Christ's death, burial, and resurrection (here), rolled his eyes and declared, "If Christ is not raised (from the dead), your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins." Paul wasn't asking folks to hope in fables. He appealed to what had taken place only a few years before.

Many declare, as the Parade poll/article suggests, that the history really doesn't matter. What matters, they puhl, is that it's good for you. Paul would have hammerd such drivilites. He had nothing for fuzzy sentimentality. He emphasized to one group, "If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied."

While we profess to understand Christianity, we are biblically illiterate. We reject historical truth and substitute the platitudes of Chopra, Albom, and Tolle. We think we know what the Bible says and findinig that unpalatable, we opt for Turkish Delight that will sour in the stomach faster than a Parade Magazine article.

Problem is, that of which we are ignorant, what the Bible declares to be true (backed by historical accuracy and correspondence to reality), declares that our eternal destiny hangs in the balance in reference to one man in history, Jesus of Nazareth, the Jewish Messiah. The Son of God. No man comes to God the Father except through Him.

And no number of on-line polls will change that.

Another shimmy in San Andreas

California, not to be out done by American Samoa (is there a Polish Samoa?) and Indonesia, fired up its plate tectonics but could only muster a measly five-point-three on Herr Richter's scale. Which got me to thinking, have the quakes been picking up steam here of late or has it "just been my imagination...runnin' away with me?"

So off to the US Geological Survey I toddle, cyberly speaking of course. Here's what I find. In the early part of this decade, the earth creaked and groaned about 22,000 times per year. Here in the latter part of the decade, it's regularly topping 30,000 quakes (here).

"Yeah, so?" you retort. Well, I went to the little link beneath the table, the one that references quake totals back in the 1990's. Here's what I find. Quake totals worldwide for the early '90's barely broke 16,000 (here). The earth today shakes its plates at a rate almost double what it did less than 20 years ago.

I wish I could have gone back further but I couldn't find the links. I'm sure they're out there somewhere. Still, a near doubling of earthquakes in less than two decades?

Hmmm...