The Four Horsemen

Hmmmm...nothing says hubris like a dogmatic atheist (you know, the kind who want to take my kids away cause they think I'm abusing them by telling them about God). Does this sound like this:

Revelation 6:1 Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, "Come!" 2 And I looked, and behold, a white horse! And its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering, and to conquer. 3 When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, "Come!" 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword. 5 When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come!" And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. 6 And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!" 7 When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come!" 8 And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.

No, they're not the conquerors, they're more like those who see others beset by great disasters and yet they still refuse to acknowledge God.

Rev 9:20 The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk

And those who ignore the warning in their own life when disasters come:

Rev 16:8 The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire. 9 They were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory. 10 The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. People gnawed their tongues in anguish 11 and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores. They did not repent of their deeds.

Now, I have to decide if I want to sit through 2 hours of obsessive, bitter, Christian bashing and arrogant elitism. I'll let you know if I decide to waste my time.

(via)

Update: Sorry to those atheists who have a live and let live attitude, I should have qualified the hubris comment and made sure that you know I didn't have you in mind. Whenever I mention atheists on this blog, you should realize that I'm generally not talking about you.

Lott's Retirement

Good riddance!

Actually, federal legislators know how to build tidy nest eggs without spending one day in the private sector — none of them much better than Trent Lott. Except for one year as a practicing attorney fresh out of law school, Lott has spent his career on the public payroll — four years as a congressional staffer, 16 years in the House and 19 in the Senate. Nevertheless, the Center for Responsive Politics in 2005 calculated his net worth at between $1.4 million and $2 million, or 42nd among 100 senators. It put his annual income from the Senate and private sources at $289,710, in the top 1.5 percent of American income earners.

A Speechless Sean Penn!

Here is a WGA produced Internet video to advertise their side in the writers' strike but it really is good propaganda for the other side. Who doesn't want to see a silent Sean Penn? :-) Maybe we can stand to have this strike go on for a little bit longer if it means that Sean Penn shuts up.

Reid to the troops: Make due with what you got until February

The troops are doing their job, they're putting their lives on the line and what does Reid do in return? Refuse to fund them and their efforts to fight our enemy. If anyone thought that the Democrats supported the troops, this should end that fantasy. The Democrats just told the military to get lost: "We are going home for a nice Thanksgiving dinner but you won't get your funding because we have to please our base, not do our duty. You'll just have to make due with the money you have until February when the risk of a primary challenger is less and then we'll fund the troops. Maybe, we'll have to see if we feel like it then"

Frustrated by Republican roadblocks, Democrats now plan to sit on President Bush's $196 billion request for war spending until next year—pushing the Pentagon toward an accounting nightmare and deepening their conflict with the White House on the war.

"We're going to continue to do the right thing for the American people by having limited accountability for the president and not a blank check," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a $50 billion bill by Democrats that would have paid for several months of combat but also would have ordered troop withdrawals from Iraq to begin within 30 days. The measure, narrowly passed this week by the House, also would have set a goal of ending combat in December 2008.

[...]

The Pentagon confirms the military will not run out of money until mid February, after which all Army bases would cease operations.

But Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this week that without the money now, drastic steps would have to be taken in anticipation of the shutdown, including plans to freeze contracts and to furlough about 100,000 government employees.

Notices to some union employees would start going out in mid-December, he said.

I hope these union members remember who lost them their job around Christmas time. While the elite enjoy Christmas at home, these workers and the troops will not.

As I wrote this I kept thinking of the line: "Let them eat cake." Same arrogance, same level of compassion, same understanding of the responsibility to those they govern.

Updated: Yeah, I know it should be "do" instead of "due" but someone linked to it and I hate to break the link.

Nevada, if you re-elect this man, you are doing a terrible service to your country.

Reid vows not to fund the war

Well, he might as well have vowed it because this comes close to doing it:

A budget dispute erupted into a full-scale battle Tuesday as President Bush vetoed the Democrats' top-priority domestic spending bill and the party's Senate leader threatened to withhold war funding if the president does not agree to pull out of Iraq.

The long-anticipated clash came to a head as Bush rejected a $606 billion bill to fund education, health and labor programs, complaining that it is too expensive and is larded with pork. Within hours, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) declared that Bush will not get more money to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year unless he accepts a plan to complete troop withdrawals by the end of next year.

(via)

Our troops are not a political football that our politicians use to get their pork. It is all kinds of wrong that he would use them in this way. I hope his phone is wringing off the hook. And our candidates better be quick to jump on this arrogant overreach and denounce it.

Obnoxious Tween TV AD

This is the ad that I mentioned here. I think it's the most obnoxious ad I've seen in a while and if I really cared about getting a hybrid (I couldn't afford one because I'm not rich like the environmentalists) I wouldn't buy this one just because of it's ad.

Hybrid SUV Commercial
Uploaded by maxsilvestri

(via)

History teacher asks parents to sign letter renouncing their citizenship

A Junior High School teacher told his students that their parents had to sign a letter renouncing their citizenship as part of a lesson on the Declaration of Independence. And there were actually some parents who did it:

Bidwell Junior High School administrators said a letter sent home with students in an eighth-grade class Tuesday was a good idea for a history lesson, with bad execution.

The letter, which appeared to ask parents to renounce their U.S. citizenship, prompted phone calls to the school from several irate recipients.

[...]

He concluded the letter with "After careful consideration of the facts of our current situation, I have decided to announce to everyone that I am no longer a citizen of the United States, but a free and independent member of the global community."

"The point was, I wanted to ask parents if they would sign such a letter if conditions that existed prior to the Revolution were happening now," he said. "I just wanted to start a discussion."

[...]

Chico resident Michael Hill said he was told by his daughter, Kaytlen Hill, 13, that the assignment was to have parents sign the letter and return it to class Wednesday.

"The lesson being taught in class was that the U.S. kidnaps innocent people and takes them to Cuba, where they are kept indefinitely and tortured," Hill said he learned through his daughter.

When Hill asked her if Brooks mentioned Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. imprisons terrorist suspects, he said his daughter replied "yes."

(via)

Hill sounds like a pretty smart guy, he did what I would have done, removed my daughter from the class. I wouldn't have allowed her to be taught by some moron who abuses his position for political purposes.

Kathy Griffin's acceptance speech

Well, she wasted her time dissing Jesus because it's being edited from the broadcast.

Comedian Kathy Griffin may have won an Emmy but we won't hear who she has to thank for it. The D list celebrity has people up in arms about her acceptance speech at the creative arts Emmys last Saturday, in which she blasted Jesus.

Griffin said, quote, "A lot of people came up here to thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. This award is my God now!" A lot of folks are angry about the red headed comic's comments, saying the speech was vulgar and some were calling it a hate speech.

I think they should air it as is. I'm glad she's being honest and telling the world how she really feels. I think it's helpful to know that she has no respect for Jesus and for those who are thankful to him. Let the world see it, it's what she deserves.

Artist morphs Osama bin Laden into Jesus

It's too bad that art has been reduced to this type of simplicity. It's a shame that artists strive to move people to shock instead of awe over their work. There is nothing awe-inspiring about this insipid work.

THE artist behind a controversial work depicting terrorism mastermind Osama bin Laden morphing into Jesus today invited those considering her work to look a little more deeply than the obvious comparison of good and evil.

Queensland artist Priscilla Bracks denied she had deliberately set out to be offensive.

"Absolutely not, no, no. I am not interested in being offensive. I am interested in having a discussion and asking questions about how we think about our world and what we accept and what we don't accept," she said.

Bracks' work and a statue of the Virgin Mary wearing an Islamic burqa by Sydney artist Luke Sullivan have been entered into Australia's top religious art competition, the Blake Prize.

[...]

Bracks told The Daily Telegraph her double portrait was not meant to compare Jesus with bin Laden, but was a commentary on the way the terror leader was treated in the media.

She was concerned bin Laden would be unintentionally glorified in years to come.

[...]

Sydney artist Luke Sullivan, who created the Virgin Mary piece entitled The Fourth Secret of Fatima, said his work was not meant to be controversial but provocative.

"It poses the question of what's the future of religion," Sullivan said.

"They (religions) are hegemonic in their nature.

"They can be all-encompassing and powerful."

No one who knows Christianity and Islam could say they are "hegemonic in their nature."

PBS Democrat Debate Video: Joe Biden on AIDS Prevention

It is absolutely amazing to me that the black community isn't up in arms over Joe Biden's condescending remarks on AID prevention. How is it not insulting for him to say that there is a neglect of the "white community to educate the black community" and that he went to rallies to educate the black men that it's OK to wear a condom and telling women that it's OK to say no. How is that not insulting, condescending and patronizing? In today's society, who doesn't know that AIDS is spread through unprotected sex? Does he think these guys don't know what they're doing? I suspect that the reason kids today (all of them, not just blacks) have unprotected sex is that they don't think it will happen to them. Do they really need some old white guy telling them what they already know?

BTW, notice how he edits out Obama's comment about why he was tested. It seems like Edwards isn't the only one using creative editing.

Tags: AIDs, Biden, Obama

"Maybe they'll listen if we speak their language"

If you've given money in the past year to the RNC or your Senator, you might want to call and ask for a refund.

(via)

Just when you think it can't get any worse...

It does! Bush has sunk to a new low in my estimation. I know that the liberal reader will be thinking that he past that point years ago but since I'm a supporter of the war on terror I don't agree. When you agree with his policy his drive and determination can be viewed in a good light but when you disagree with it he can appear to be stubborn, pig-headed and arrogant. And you just want to yell at him and tell him to wake up and listen.

It was bad enough that he pushed for prescription drugs and that he failed to push for Social Security reform (which he campaigned on) but now to fight for amnesty at the expense of border security in such a way as this is just too much to take:

The so-called “clay pigeon” procedure is unusual, and I would not have considered employing it in this instance without the full support of Senator McConnell. It seems to me appropriate for the two leaders to work together to overcome the tactics of a small number of Senators in order to allow the full Senate to debate an important national issue like immigration. The White House made clear that it also favors such a procedure, since the immigration bill is one of President Bush’s top priorities.

Who said that? Reid in response to a letter sent to him by five GOP senators who requested that he not use the "clay pigeon" procedure and allow real debate on the bill. Bush wants this so bad that he will try to ram it down the throats of the GOP senators despite the clear hostility that the bill has generated among their constitutes. Many of the senators know that the bill is opposed by those on both the left and the right. They know because their phones have been ringing off the hook, their fax machines have been spitting out paper for days and they are being excoriated by Limbaugh, Hannity, Hewitt, Ingraham and many more across the radio dial and have been the subject of many posts across the blogosphere.

These senators know that if they don't stand up to this, they are going to face primary challenges in 2008 and beyond (don't think that we will forget because we won't). They know that the conservative pundits are predicating that this will tear apart the Republican base and make the turnout of 2006 look good in comparison. But Bush doesn't care about their re-election chances or the party, evidently he only cares about Mexico and what that government wants.

And what makes this all the more annoying is that if Bush had enforced the laws already on the books over the last six years he's been in office, immigration wouldn't be this out of control.

How many days until he's out of the White House?

(And you know what? The liberals might have something there about that smirk. It can be a little annoying!)

Updated to add a video: Ouch! Call these senators.



(via)

Trent Lott supported the Fairness Doctrine in the past

There has been speculation that Lott intends to do something about talk radio by reviving the Fairness Doctrine and since he was a supporter of it in the past, this fear is not groundless.

"But Rep. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said the burden on broadcast journalists is minimal.
'We have unfairness now even with the Fairness Doctrine,' he said. 'Heaven knows what would happen without a Fairness Doctrine.' "

Associated Press, June 3, 1987
Communications Daily
October 26, 1987

Since Reagan's veto of the earlier fairness bill, Hollings and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) have vowed to see the doctrine become law by other means. And in case fairness is lifted from reconciliation in the Senate, the lawmakers are said to have a backup. Dingell, reportedly with the blessings of House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) and minority leaders, Robert Michel (R-Ill.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.), plans to fasten a fairness amendment to a catch-all spending bill (the continuing budget resolution). The current resolution, which keeps the government operating, expires on Nov. 10, and Reagan would be unlikely to veto such a measure.

Meanwhile, Trent Lott's office is downplaying the controversy over his remarks:

Lott's office is downplaying the uproar over immigration, saying the minority whip wanted to get the Senate to act, not to get talk radio out of the picture. "Sen. Lott is one of the biggest talk radio participants," said Lott spokesman Lee Youngblood. "He's not going to do anything to pull the plug on talk radio."

"He's frustrated over the fact that the Senate is stepping away from trying to do something. He wants to see the Senate produce legislation.

Kind of hypocritical, participating and benefiting from talk radio when it would have been shut down if he had his way. Why do Republicans continue to support politicians who want to shut us up?

Tags: Trent Lott

"Are we going to let the union halls and talk radio take over this debate?"

Lindsey Graham clearly has been infected with IBM (Inside the Beltway Mentality).

BTW, how do the Republicans win the next election when their base votes for a third party? How is Lindsey Graham intend to win his next election when his base won't vote for him?

Tags: Lindsey Graham

Trent Lott epitomizes what's wrong with the Republican party

Hugh Hewitt has the audio evidence against Trent Lott. Go listen because you will not believe it. It's sickening.

First he tells his constitutes to trust him because he knows what he's doing:

Now we are going to pick it to death. I just don't think this is responsible. I am getting calls, but I would say to my constituents, "Do you ahve no faith in me after 35 years? That I'm just going to buy a pig in a poke here? Or be for something that's bad?..."

Then he knocks those in the Senate who are trying to protect the party and the nation against this attack on our sovereignty and our security by the Senate:

If anybody in America likes where we are with illegal immigration and legal immigration, if they think what we've got now is good or tolerable, fair or responsible, then fine. Let's try and kill this bill. Kill it with amendments. Kill it with the debate. Vote it down. I don't think that is respobnsible.

[...]

This is time where we are going to see whether we are a United States Senate anymore. Are we men or mice? Are we going to slither away from this issue and hope for some epiphany to happen? No. Let's, let's let's legislate. Let's vote. I think the majority leader has a right to expect at some point we end it. Try and cover as many objections with as many amendments as we can. But at some point we have got to get this done..

(A rat comes to mind, Senator.)

Then he says that the majority has the right to expect a vote after he sat in the Senate for years as the Democrats blocked bill after bill and judge after judge:

This is time where we are going to see whether we are a United States Senate anymore. Are we men or mice? Are we going to slither away from this issue and hope for some epiphany to happen? No. Let's, let's let's legislate. Let's vote. I think the majority leader has a right to expect at some point we end it. Try and cover as many objections with as many amendments as we can. But at some point we have got to get this done.

And then he praises Sen. Kennedy:

Senator Kennedy, I appreciate the legislative leadership you have been providing. I know it is not easy, you know, and your own colleagues and those of us over here have been beating you up. I mean, your a nice poster child. Thank you very much for what you do. But I'll tell you one thing I have learned the hard way. When it comes to legislating, when you are dealing with Senator Kennedy, you had better bring your lunch, because you are going to get educated, you are going to learn a lot, and you are going to get a result. Hopefully it is going to be a good one. Good luck, senator from Massachusetts. I yield the floor.

And Kennedy pats Lott on the head in response:

And the senator too. I thank my friend from Mississippi, and I commend him for a constructive and a positive attitude.

The problem with the Senate? Arrogance!

The Senate Republicans are determined to kill the Republican party. They don't get it because the sound of their own voice is drowning out the cries from their base. When they start seeing one after the other of them losing their seats, maybe they'll finally realize it but by then it's too late.

Tags: Trent Lott