tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9356414.post8711596673709399283..comments2024-03-09T03:15:55.350-05:00Comments on jazzoLOG: Is Faith Another Word For Brainwash?jazzologhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16647170784964378640noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9356414.post-6992072425736847882010-04-08T05:26:47.575-04:002010-04-08T05:26:47.575-04:00[url=http://lecturer.elektrounesa.org/?u=videoseal...[url=http://lecturer.elektrounesa.org/?u=videoseallegra7]Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum 5.0.32.0418[/url] [url=http://community.freeskier.com/profiles/profile.php?user_id=27539]RAR Movie Player 8.09 (2008)[/url] <br /><a href="http://blog.bakililar.az/videosealban0/" rel="nofollow">AVI DVD Burner 2.26</a> <a href="http://www.drawingboard.org/blogs/?u=videosealeta2" rel="nofollow">No1 DVD Ripper 7.2</a> <br />http://www.blogportalen.no/blog/?u=videosealysa2 IPT iPod Video Converter <br />[url=http://www.pinskerdream.com/bloghoster/?u=videosealf7]BSPlayer Pro 2.24.954[/url] [url=http://lecturer.elektrounesa.org/?u=videoseangus5]Corel Unlead Video 11[/url] <br /><a href="http://www.pinskerdream.com/bloghoster/?u=videoseamethyst7" rel="nofollow">Roxio DVDit Pro HD 6.3</a> <a href="http://www.drawingboard.org/blogs/?u=videoseamity5" rel="nofollow">DVD Cloner 4.20</a> <br />http://www.drawingboard.org/blogs/?u=videoseamice5 VisionLab Studio <br />iWellsoft Video to Zune Converter <br />my icq:858499940385Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9356414.post-18087690597842703672008-10-22T06:20:00.000-04:002008-10-22T06:20:00.000-04:00By now we all know Joe the Plumber...and maybe eve...By now we all know Joe the Plumber...and maybe even Jerry the Plumber, Wendy the Plumber's Daughter, Sandra the Homeschool Mom, and others that make up "Sarah's Army" http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/22/MNI013LIU2.DTL , this congregation of regular joes who switched to Republican with Reagan (Onward, Christian soldiers!). And have you heard yet of Adam the Messianic Student? Not to be made light of, if anyone gets credit for giving birth to Palin's V-P candidacy, it's this rather brilliant kid. Is he ready for primetime?<BR/><BR/>A year ago February, Adam Brickley, aged 20 and a junior at U of Colorado, posted the first entry at his new blog~~~<BR/><BR/> Why Sarah Palin?<BR/> <BR/>This blog is the result of about a month worth of research on potential Republican Vice-Presidential candidates for the 2008 election. I had been considerably less than thrilled with all of the early speculation, mostly swirling around second-tier presidential candidates, so I decided to see if there was anyone better suited for the job that I hadn't been hearing about. So, I developed the following profile for the perfect VP candidate (using Rudy Giuliani as my presumptive presidential candidate):<BR/><BR/>1) A energetic, young, fresh face who will energize the electorate<BR/>2) Not connected to the current administration<BR/>3) Pro-Life<BR/>4) Pro-Gun<BR/>5) A woman or minority to counter Hillary or Obama and put to rest the idea that America only elects white males<BR/><BR/>One of the first names I found that fit these qualifications was that of Sarah Palin, the recently elected Governor of Alaska. I knew that I had stumbled upon a fantastic candidate for national office, but I kept looking in the hope that I could find other potentially viable choices. However, after looking at every GOP governor, senator, and congressperson, I found that Palin had only become more appealing.<BR/><BR/>She was certainly energetic and young, having become governor at only 42 years of age. Watching her speches and campaign ads, I discovered that she was definitely a new kid of leader, coming off more as a spunky soccer-mom than a stuffy career politician. As for abortion, she was staunchly pro-life; and as a lifetime NRA member she was the most pro-gun candidate in the country. Furthermore, her experiences in rural Alaska provided a perfect complement to the big-city credentials of candidates like Giuliani. Her moderately libertarian positions on most other issues also match up perfectly to Giuliani.<BR/><BR/>There was thing about Palin that initially worried me - "lack of experience". She had only been elected governor in 2006, and her only previous experience was as a two terms as a city councilwoman and two more as mayor in Wasilla, AK (population 8,471 in 2005) followed up by a failed campaign for lieutenant governor and a brief stint on Alaska's Oil and Natural Gas Conservation Commission. This didn't seem very appealing at first, but then I took the time to look closer at Palin's history. What I had failed to realize was that she had habitually knocked of powerful incumbent opponents and was a quick learner on the job. In the 2006 gubernatorial election, she rolled over scandal-prone incumbent Frank Murkowski in the GOP primary, then went on to defeat former governor Tony Knowles in the general election - pretty impressive. Further back, she had knocked off an entrenched incumbent to become mayor of Wasilla, then developed a reputation as a hard-nosed, effective mayor. Her performance in Wasilla got her elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors and earned her the nickname "Sarah Barracuda".<BR/><BR/>In the end, I decided that Sarah Palin had actually compiled a rather astounding record of achievements in her 42 years, and was more than capable of making the jump to the national level. So now I ask you who you would rather have as your Vice-President. You could accept conventional wisdom and choose from the lineup of old men currently being bantered about, or you could choose an inspiring leader like Sarah Palin. As for me, I'm going with "Sarah Barracuda", a candidate who will help us win the election and then deliver solid results. <BR/>Posted by Adam Brickley, aka "ElephantMan" at 2/26/2007 12:07:00 AM 56 comments<BR/>http://palinforvp.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2007-07-11T18%3A39%3A00-06%3A00&max-results=50<BR/><BR/>Adam was at home at the time, and it may be of some interest to note that Adam's family are Messianic Jews. He focuses on politics at the Palin For VP blog, but his attraction to Palin certainly comes partly from his evangelical base. Messianic Judaism is a rather complicated topic, but the Brickleys came to it from Pentecostal Christianity in order to get closer to Jesus in these "end days." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Jews Therefore, Palin's religious emphasis is of particular concern.<BR/><BR/>The thing about Adam Brickley is, if you browse through that first page of the blog---and maybe keep on clicking around ("Home" takes you to the most recent entry from a couple days ago)---is that he's very good at what he does, which is major in political science and put it to work for him on the Internet. Within a few weeks his blog was attracting attention, not only in the blogosphere but elsewhere among the media.<BR/><BR/>At this point in the story we need to move to an article in the current New Yorker, increasingly becoming a political magazine to keep track of. This time it's a feature by Jane Mayer, entitled simply "The Insiders: How John McCain came to pick Sarah Palin." What? You mean some rightwing, elitist insiders are herding all these mavericks? Ms. Mayer's book this summer, The Dark Side, about the Bush administration's interrogation techniques, is a finalist for a National Book Award. A graduate of Yale, she moved her investigative journalism skills from the Wall Street Journal to the New Yorker in 1995. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Mayer<BR/><BR/>In the article Ms. Mayer describes the jutted-jaw determination of Sarah Palin to get herself noticed and precisely how she did it. Maybe to entice you to buy a copy of the New Yorker or read it online, the key seems to have been a couple of invitations to lunch in the Governor's mansion for the main stars on cruise ships briefly docked in Juneau. You know those cruises (the lefties do it too) where you pay to sail around on boats that have famous people on board? One of those giant yachts carried the National Review, and the other featured William Kristol, generally honored as architect for both the Iraq War and Palin's vice presidency. Bon voyage! <BR/><BR/>http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/27/081027fa_fact_mayerjazzologhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16647170784964378640noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9356414.post-80315386668241981652008-10-07T20:22:00.000-04:002008-10-07T20:22:00.000-04:00Several of the churches Sarah Palin attended have ...Several of the churches Sarah Palin attended have been extensively involved in the Third Wave Movement (aka "the New Apostolic Reformation," "Joel's Army," and "Manifest Sons of God").<BR/><BR/>For those unfamiliar with that particular (an peculiar) brand of Christianity (and for something entirely different from the Third Wave Movement's perspective), <A HREF="http://www.directionjournal.org/article/?1055" REL="nofollow">here</A> is an interesting overview---from another Christian viewpoint (The author is a member of the Mennonite Brethen Church, part of a group of Christian <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabaptist" REL="nofollow">Anabaptist</A> denominations.)<BR/><BR/>Anabaptists were heavily persecuted during the 16th century and into the 17th. At a time when so much is made of Religious wars, it is often forgotten that some of the bloodiest Christian wars were the result of Christians fighting other Christians---always in the name of the fight against "Evil" by those who make it their "Christian mission" to eradicate "Evil" at the point of a sword.<BR/><BR/>Jazzolog's point that "probably there is something about everyone's faith that defies reason or logical expectation," is a good one.<BR/><BR/>Pierre Gilbert's more basic premise in this essay is that <B><I>"ultimately our worldview—our basic conceptual framework—determines how we interpret the world and dictates to a great extent how we will behave."</I></B><BR/><BR/>In that regard, the Third Wave Movement's paradigm with its emphasis on being at war with Evil Spirits is particularly edifying. And so is Pierre Gilbert's closing paragraph:<BR/><BR/><I>"Why do demons seem to have so much power? My suspicion is that the power demons have is the power we attribute to them. In nearly all, if not all, of Jesus’ encounters with the demonic, the purpose of the story is to demonstrate the demons’ powerlessness. The Gospels dispel the lie communicated by the old pagan religions that human beings live in a universe filled with evil powers that they must exorcize at all costs. In the Gospel of Mark, for example, it is not demons or even Satan that constitute a real obstacle to Jesus’ authority, but human beings."</I><BR/><BR/>Nothing wrong with Faith (i.e. the belief in a transcendent reality). And by the same token, nothing wrong either - in my book - with the "old Pagan Religions" (Christianity and the "old pagan religions" have a lot more in common than is usually acknowledged <A HREF="http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa2.htm" REL="nofollow">[link]</A>.)<BR/><BR/>Reductionism, however, especially where Faith is concerned, is another matter:<BR/><BR/><B><I>Third Wave theology, like many systems of belief, is profoundly reductionistic. It is reductionistic of Scripture; it is reductionistic of human nature; and it is reductionistic of God.</I></B>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9356414.post-4615499829444482292008-10-06T06:06:00.000-04:002008-10-06T06:06:00.000-04:00Sarah Palin Is Not A Palindromeeven though she com...Sarah Palin Is Not A Palindrome<BR/>even though she comes from Idaho. A palindrome is a word or sentence that makes sense reading it frontwards or backwards. Here is a palindrome with Idaho in it: O had I nine more hero-men in Idaho! <BR/><BR/>As you can see SarahPalin spelled backwards is NilapHaras. Obviously she makes no sense. Nil means nothing or a trifle, and upharass works only as some kind of obscene pun. <BR/><BR/>Nor is she related to Monty Python comedian Michael Palin. But according to a new book, called Joined-Up Thinking: How To Connect Everything To Everything Else by Stevyn Colgan, Palin is a name that can be traced back to 11th century Normandy. They might share ancestry. "Palin" comes from the Latin, meaning, as you might guess, "backwards." So, there you go...again.<BR/><BR/>Don't miss Maureen Dowd yesterday~~~<BR/><BR/>"I had hoped I was finally done with acting as an interpreter for politicians whose relationship with the English language was tumultuous.<BR/><BR/>"There’s W.’s gummy grammar, of course, like the classic, 'Is our children learning?' And covering the first Bush White House required doing simultaneous translation for a president who never met a personal pronoun he liked or a wacky non sequitur he could resist.<BR/><BR/>"Poppy Bush drew comparisons to Warren G. Harding, whose prose reminded H. L. Mencken of 'a string of wet sponges. ... It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.' When Harding died, E. E. Cummings lamented, 'The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead.'<BR/><BR/>Being mush-mouthed helped give the patrician Bushes the common touch. As Alistair Cooke observed, 'Americans seem to be more comfortable with Republican presidents because they share the common frailty of muddled syntax and because, when they attempt eloquence, they do tend to spout a kind of Frontier Baroque.'<BR/><BR/>"Darn right. And that, doggone it, brings us to a shout-out for the latest virtuoso of Frontier Baroque, bless her heart, the governor of the Last Frontier. Her reward’s in heaven." <BR/><BR/>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05dowd.html?_r=1&em&oref=sloginjazzologhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16647170784964378640noreply@blogger.com