Friday, February 11, 2011

Recent Events

remind me of this prophecy given in 1831:
To prepare the weak for those things which are coming on the earth, and for the Lord’s errand in the day when the weak shall confound the wise, and the little one become a strong nation, and two shall put their tens of thousands to flight.

And by the weak things of the earth the Lord shall thresh the nations by the power of his Spirit.
Another instance was the fall of the Iron Curtain 20 years ago. Before that, there were the two World Wars and the Russian and Chinese Revolutions and the break up of the Ottoman Empire, and probably other upheavals that I'm forgetting or don't know about. America has been the agent of much of that change, but events in Iraq and Afghanistan and the current fiscal crisis should show us that our vaunted military and economic power are not what they appeared to be.

Now, events in Tunisia and Egypt recall that phrase again, "the Lord shall thresh the nations." Read Isaiah 21.

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Common Cause demonstrates civility:
The New York Times editorial page, a division of the New York Times Co., on Saturday endorsed Common Cause's personal attack on Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. As we explained Friday, Common Cause, a Washington-based corporation, is complaining about Scalia and Thomas's having joined Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, the 2010 decision that overturned a law criminalizing certain political speech by corporations.
Common Cause couches its argument in Constitutional terms, but they have worked consistently to deny corporations freedom of speech, reduce the influence of money in politics, but they've never attacked Democrats the way they do corporations that support conservative and Republican. This is another well-intentioned movement that has lost its way. President Obama plans to raise and spend $1 billion in 2012. Why isn't Common Cause wishing for his death, filing suits and so on?

Monday, February 07, 2011

I started to watch Zardoz

It's Sean Connery's version of Conan the Barbarian but much worse.

Hold on Playa!

Sunday, February 06, 2011

Vince Lombardi Trophy goes home to Title Town. For a while it looked like Pittsburgh would roar back and win like they did over Phoenix a few years ago. They're still in the top few teams of the league. Sometimes the teams are so good that it comes down to how the oblate spheroid bounces. Neither team dominated the other. GB had too many dropped passes and lost two key players injured during the game. Pittsburgh had too many turnovers.

Next year, who knows? Steelers, Packers, Colts, Jets, Patriots, Falcons, Ravens, Chargers or somebody who wasn't in the running this year, no offense to the Bears.

I liked Bret Favre, but he got to be a tiresome drama queen. Let's just forget his last season. Aaron Rodgers is the new star.

Now, please reach a contract.

The team behind South Park are producing a Broadway musical called "The Book of Mormon." My prediction is that the LDS church will ignore it and continue it's progress. The audience for such a project will include a lot of the news media and commentariat, not the people who would seriously read the Book of Mormon or look for God and truth. One of the things the Jesus taught his Apostles was not to return evil for evil. They bore testimony but didn't engage in the rhetoric for which the Sophists were famous. They knew that the power of the Holy Ghost was what converts people to Christ, not arguments and scripture bashing.