Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The Conservatives' Clinton

Democrats still capable of experiencing shame... And they are becoming fewer in number every day... Didn't like the way Bill Clinton behaved around women.  But they loved the way he could stick it to the Republicans.

Conservatives are torn right down the middle concerning Newt Gingrich.  Some simply can't live with his past indiscretions, but they all love the way he verbally skewers the people and policies that are disfiguring this once beautiful nation.

Democrats are apoplectic in their hatred for Gingrich because he is so good at denuding their icons.  They say they hate him because he is a womanizing scoundrel.

But I figure it this way... If clean cut, family man, and Boy Scout Mitt Romney were laying the same blows to The Left, The Dems would hate him just as much.

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Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Tebow

Got this from my half-brother John.

Tim Tebow Foundation Tim Tebow with Jacob Rainey, one of the many people dealing with health problems Tebow hosted at Broncos games this season.

I've come to believe in Tim Tebow, but not for what he does on a football field, which is still three parts Dr. Jekyll and two parts Mr. Hyde.
No, I've come to believe in Tim Tebow for what he does off a football field, which is represent the best parts of us, the parts I want to be and so rarely am.
Who among us is this selfless?
Every week, Tebow picks out someone who is suffering, or who is dying, or who is injured. He flies these people and their families to the Broncos game, rents them a car, puts them up in a nice hotel, buys them dinner (usually at a Dave & Buster's), gets them and their families pregame passes, visits with them just before kickoff (!), gets them 30-yard-line tickets down low, visits with them after the game (sometimes for an hour), has them walk him to his car, and sends them off with a basket of gifts.
Home or road, win or lose, hero or goat.
Remember last week, when the world was pulling its hair out in the hour after Tebow had stunned the Pittsburgh Steelers with an 80-yard OT touchdown pass to Demaryius Thomas in the playoffs? And Twitter was exploding with 9,420 tweets about Tebow per second? When an ESPN poll was naming him the most popular athlete in America?
Tebow was spending that hour talking to 16-year-old Bailey Knaub about her 73 surgeries so far and what TV shows she likes.

"Here he'd just played the game of his life," recalls Bailey's mother, Kathy, of Loveland, Colo., "and the first thing he does after his press conference is come find Bailey and ask, 'Did you get anything to eat?' He acted like what he'd just done wasn't anything, like it was all about Bailey."
More than that, Tebow kept corralling people into the room for Bailey to meet. Hey, Demaryius, come in here a minute. Hey, Mr. Elway. Hey, Coach Fox.
Even though sometimes-fatal Wegener's granulomatosis has left Bailey with only one lung, the attention took her breath away.
"It was the best day of my life," she emailed. "It was a bright star among very gloomy and difficult days. Tim Tebow gave me the greatest gift I could ever imagine. He gave me the strength for the future. I know now that I can face any obstacle placed in front of me. Tim taught me to never give up because at the end of the day, today might seem bleak but it can't rain forever and tomorrow is a new day, with new promises."
I read that email to Tebow, and he was honestly floored.

 

"Why me? Why should I inspire her?" he said. "I just don't feel, I don't know, adequate. Really, hearing her story inspires me."

It's not just NFL defenses that get Tebowed. It's high school girls who don't know whether they'll ever go to a prom. It's adults who can hardly stand. It's kids who will die soon.
For the game at Buffalo, it was Charlottesville, Va., blue-chip high school QB Jacob Rainey, who lost his leg after a freak tackle in a scrimmage. Tebow threw three interceptions in that Buffalo game and the Broncos were crushed 40-14.
"He walked in and took a big sigh and said, 'Well, that didn't go as planned,'" Rainey remembers. "Where I'm from, people wonder how sincere and genuine he is. But I think he's the most genuine person I've ever met."
There's not an ounce of artifice or phoniness or Hollywood in this kid Tebow, and I've looked everywhere for it.
Take 9-year-old Zac Taylor, a child who lives in constant pain. Immediately after Tebow shocked the Chicago Bears with a 13-10 comeback win, Tebow spent an hour with Zac and his family. At one point, Zac, who has 10 doctors, asked Tebow whether he has a secret prayer for hospital visits. Tebow whispered it in his ear. And because Tebow still needed to be checked out by the Broncos' team doctor, he took Zac in with him, but only after they had whispered it together.
And it's not always kids. Tom Driscoll, a 55-year-old who is dying of brain cancer at a hospice in Denver, was Tebow's guest for the Cincinnati game. "The doctors took some of my brain," Driscoll says, "so my short-term memory is kind of shot. But that day I'll never forget. Tim is such a good man."
This whole thing makes no football sense, of course. Most NFL players hardly talk to teammates before a game, much less visit with the sick and dying.
Isn't that a huge distraction?
Tim Tebow with Zac
Stephanie Taylor Not everything Tim Tebow does on one knee is controversial. Ask Zac Taylor.
"Just the opposite," Tebow says. "It's by far the best thing I do to get myself ready. Here you are, about to play a game that the world says is the most important thing in the world. Win and they praise you. Lose and they crush you. And here I have a chance to talk to the coolest, most courageous people. It puts it all into perspective. The game doesn't really matter. I mean, I'll give 100 percent of my heart to win it, but in the end, the thing I most want to do is not win championships or make a lot of money, it's to invest in people's lives, to make a difference."
So that's it. I've given up giving up on him. I'm a 100 percent believer. Not in his arm. Not in his skills. I believe in his heart, his there-will-definitely-be-a-pony-under-the-tree optimism, the way his love pours into people, right up to their eyeballs, until they believe they can master the hopeless comeback, too.
Remember the QB who lost his leg, Jacob Rainey? He got his prosthetic leg a few weeks ago, and he wants to play high school football next season. Yes, tackle football. He'd be the first to do that on an above-the-knee amputation.
Hmmm. Wonder where he got that crazy idea?
"Tim told me to keep fighting, no matter what," Rainey says. "I am.

Tim Tebow is a piece of work... I think I know Who did that work.

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Tuesday, January 10, 2012



Heard this at Peter Heck's site and had to put it on my blog.

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Saturday, January 07, 2012

Faith and Time

One of the most interesting and universal characteristics of mankind is that it struggles to explain its existence.  Atheistic science has come up with The Big Bang Theory which suggests that the components of the universe were once concentrated in an inconceivably dense glob of matter which subsequently exploded.  Then on earth, the first living cell somehow came together and produced an ever evolving carbon based life.

But I've yet to hear an explanation of why there is a three dimensional universe composed of space, matter, and energy.  It's a universe governed by the laws of cause and effect and yet what could be the cause of such a universe?  Why does it exist?  Where did the matter come from?  We see its effects, but what caused it to be? 

So much of what we see is in our universe is explained away by leaning upon time.  The evolution of life took time.  The light that reveals the existence and movement of galaxies took time to reach our eyes.  But time does not create space or matter.  Time does not create energy.  Time causes us to look back at a cause and effect universe only to find that there is no explainable cause for what we see.

Time is the problem.  It points forever backwards and begs for a beginning... And then asks, "What happened before that?" 

I believe that when God created the universe, He created time... And that He exists independent of His time creation and physical laws.  It's impossible for me to understand, but it's also impossible for me to imagine anything else.

And it's no accident of evolution that every culture on every part of the planet shares the need to explain its existence.   We were created to worship and to glorify the Creator. 

So I have Faith... because I know that I, and what I see are not independently possible... And all the time in the world can't alter that fact.

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Friday, January 06, 2012

Is Jerry Sandusky Gay?

As you probably know, former Penn State Defensive Coordinator Jerry Sandusky is rumored to have showered with, and forced himself sexually upon, young boys. 

Does that mean he is gay? 

I attended a Christian College, and when we studied Ancient Greece, Mary Renault's The Mask of Appolo was required reading.  There was a fair number of homosexual relationships in the book, (they were handled tastefully)  and the general rule was that the relationships consisted of an older man and a youth, or young boy. 

I just think it's odd that no form of the word homosexual has ever been used in describing the activities of Jerry Sandusky when in fact it is homosexuality in the historical and classic sense.  The ancient world was rampant with this kind of activity.  And, it's what The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) is all about.

Now granted, the word heterosexuality would not be used in describing an older man molesting a young girl, but that is different.  I know it's different because there is no North American Man/Girl Love Association, or NAMGLA.

You think maybe it's politically incorrect to associate Sandusky's activity with homosexuality?

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Monday, January 02, 2012

Doomsday 2012

The 2012 phenomenon comprises a range of eschatological beliefs according to which cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21, 2012.  This date is regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae have been proposed as pertaining to this date, though none have been accepted by mainstream scholarship.  (Harvard hasn't picked up on this?)

Professional Mayanist scholars state that predictions of impending doom are not found in any of the extant classic Maya accounts (But what do they know!), and that the idea that the Long Count calendar "ends" in 2012 misrepresents Maya history and culture.

As a life-long Mesoamerican, I am predicting that December 21st will be a happenin' Day!  ...Eschatologically speaking... as I often do.

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