WAITING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

Nothing outside the Olympics is really going on right now. Presumably all of us are so transfixed with the events in Vancouver that we aren't supposed to be paying attention to all of the things the Republicans in congress have been saying. They were showing an all Republican gathering in Congress on C-Span the other day and the spokespeople were all bloviating about how this little "Summit" tomorrow will accomplish nothing. In the year 1954 the 25th of February was also on a Thursday and there is a record in my baby book that I no longer have that I celebrated my birthday on the 25th of February rather than December 31st. Of course people can't decide whether George Harrison was born February 24th or 25th. These republicans in congress are in love with the sound of their own voice. You listen to these C-Pac speakers and realize the reality factor of what they are saying is near zero. They referred to negotiating with a loaded gun to their heads. The loaded gun being the "reconciliation option". Of course the Republicans have passed so many of their legislative achievements through the years by this means. Now suddenly it's wrong. But the thing is if you're going to negotiate successfully you have to have an "or else" or your actions are meaningless. The President has given the Republicans every chance to come to the table and present their ideas. But even when democrats incorporate Republican ideas, the Republicans balk and refuse to vote for their own ideas. They released some figures that said that Republicans in congress have been voting "republican" one hundred percent of the time lately. This was before the vote of the other day on the jobs bill where a few Republicans broke ranks and broke a filibuster to get a jobs bill passed. I tire of hearing what a brilliant stratigist the President is for arranging this summit. All he's ever done since the day he took office is back down from principles enunciated in the campaign. And he gets no recognition for this but is only accused of being a socialist or a closet Moslem by the Republicans.

A couple days ago people around here were discussing ways in which the world could come to an end. There is an amazingly high number of Bible prophecy junkies around here, who believe that if God says it, than man's attempts to alter the future that is set, is useless. The world could come to an end if Russia and China encourage Iran in their pursuit of a nuclear weapon. I said "we need to get Russia and China to isolate Iran" but these people say, "That's just not going to happen". Of course we could undergo a cyber attack where someone sabotages our whole computer system where our military secrets are stored. And of course they all say that espionage has never been higher. You frequently hear stories on Sixty minutes how this or that secret is in jeopardy or how many times our security has been breeched. It doesn't matter to fundamentalists that they have a track record going back a century of being wrong at every turn, they are still going at it with their predictions. Meanwhile there is always the asteroid from outer space that could do us in. They are pretty sure a giant asteroid struck North America somewhere in Arizona about twelve thousand and nine hundred years ago. This would make it just a bit after 11,000 BC. They say there is a lot of irridium, a relative of platinum, chemically, that occurs very rarely in normal rock but is much more plentiful in extra terrestrial minerals. But they can't find any large crater from said asteroid attack. They theorize that perhaps the asteroid broke up just before striking earth but after it turned white hot and polluted the atnosphere and set off a chain reaction of global cooling and "the nuclear winter" and all that stuff. That still raises the mystery of just how advanced was civilization in twelve or thirteen thousand BC otherwise known as "The Age of Leo". I bet they had more advanced weapons than arrow heads to hunt with. They don't believe over-hunting killed off all the big mammals that used to roam the land. But the thing is they say asteroid collisions of this magnitude are so mathematically rare that statisticly they don't see how one could have struck earth "only" thirteen thousand years ago. I'm not sure I can go along with that logic. I told this group that "we don't need a fatalist in the white house" but once again these people seem to want the worst for America. They yearn for the era of hyper inflation they have been predicting so resolutely for. We all know they are in love with the whole idea of being in a perpetual state of War and paranoia and fear. But the thing is they had their chance. They had eight uncontested years to try and screw up America and damn near did so. They wish oh so furvently that the next Presidential election were tomorrow rather than nearly three years in the future. They hate hearing good economic news. Their position can only weaken with each passing month.

Toyota has now done what they had refused to do before and that is admit that it is a software problem that caused their cars to race out of control and kill people. They just wanted to talk about loose floor mats. Of course if you're a Christian and you're in a Toyota and your car spins out of control on a six lane highway and kills a half a dozen people but you survive without a scratch, you're likely to say that an angel was protecting you. But that raises the question of why an angel would allow a half a dozen people to die because of your defective car. Of course we hear a lot about "tort reform", which is the elimination of the average person's right to sue a corporation in court. Some people say "we only want to cap big pay-outs" but ignore the reality that many attorneys won't even take a case if they don't personally believe there is a chance of winning a big pay-out. With the choice of attorneys thus severely reduced, many poor people will decide to settle for peanuts out of court and eliminate the problem that way, which is what these corporatists have wanted all along.

The "neo con" movement has affected the Christian community. If you go down the list of things they believe in now it will be things like "taxes are inherently evil" despite the fact that Jesus said for the Jews to pay their taxes to Rome. But there is one question right now I would like to ask Jesus of KFI. As you know that it has long been said that "No trial from Satan ever betides a saint without that permission first going past God's desk and he approves it. And thus the trial is meant to make you a better person and give you something you can learn from. But Jesus of KFI has axioms like "people don't change" and also that people who espouse atheism are those who are "not normal" but have somehow been "damaged" or "traumatized" by an event somewhere in their childhood or something. Hence Jesus is disposed to give Satan a free pass in his assirtion that "certain people just aren't worth trying to reach" and he throws in stuff like "they will only try and manipulate you anyhow so stay away from them". Jesus says this but he also says that if your "decision for Jesus" is powerful enough - - if you just exercise enough human will and resolve- - you can overcome anything. You don't need the prompting of the Spirit or any of that other stuff about "being led by God" in the Bible. Hence my biggest problem with Christianity, as this moment, is not contemplating my own failings to a perfect religious system, but rather the truth that in order to conform to a morally compromised Christian system as Jesus teaches, I will have to compromise my own values and end up being a poorer man for the experiance than I would have had I never touched Christianity. How can these people demand that I be true to "The Faith" when the faith is not true to itself? Or to quote Stevie Winwood in reference to Jesus of KFI, "even you don't quite believe you". (Selah)