Stranded In Reality

Jesus isn't your homey

Gary Wills' op-ed "Christ Among the Partisans" is a couple of years old, but is worth re-reading in this election year, says Hume's Ghost

Both Barack and McCain are keen to claim Jesus is on their side.

This is a truth that needs emphasis at a time when some Democrats, fearing that the Republicans have advanced over them by the use of religion, want to respond with a claim that Jesus is really on their side. He is not. He avoided those who would trap him into taking sides for or against the Roman occupation of Judea. He paid his taxes to the occupying power but said only, "Let Caesar have what belongs to him, and God have what belongs to him" (Matthew 22:21). He was the original proponent of a separation of church and state.

It's an interesting article, especially for religious readers.

Link: Christ Among the Partisans, NY Times

Good news

Three things worth celebrating:

Recent political poll results. Looks like everyone has gotten the hang of MMP. With any conceivable luck we will get rid of NZ First, ACT and the Greens. I note ACT are still on about voters being lazy, insecure and generally smelly. Take a bow Lindsay Mitchell - and keep up the good work. **

National's Party List. A great list - a real cross-section of New Zealand. Anyone with the stench of ACT shunted way down the batting order, just in case they haven't got the message yet. More superb strategy from Key.

Tony Veitch arrested. High noon for this loathsome man and his equally loathsome supporters. As my cyber-friend says (quoting another):

"There are many prepared to kick a man while he is down."
But how many are prepared to kick a woman while she's down?

It's good to know there are still many fine men around.

I am owed 2 bottles of Moet  so I must chase that up...

** As I said previously, they couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat.

 

Confession

I haven't watched any of the Olympics out of complete disinterest.

In years gone by I used to enjoy track and field, and the swimming...but NZ's moronic obsession with all things rugby destroyed my interest in sport a long time ago.

Cartoon of the day

Time for a new Libertarianish Party

One is not superior merely because one sees the world in an odious light. FRANCOIS RENE, VICOMTE De CHATEAUBRIAND (1768-1848)

It must be awful to hate one's political opponents so much that you wish them dead. That's kinda fascist, you know. Not PC wishes Helen Clark had been killed in this mountain tragedy during her tramping holiday...

I'm sure I wasn't the only one hoping for good news.  After all, there were cabinet ministers on this trip too.

Sadly, it turns out the thunderbolt missed all those who deserved to get it, and took out what must have been the only decent person in the party -- which is a tragedy twice over, really.

I'm sure it's supposed to be a little 'joke' - have you no sense of humour bitchez? It's a pretty lame dog-whistle anyway. Not worth getting upset about.

Anyway, I've had a thought about starting a new political party here in NZ for some time, and this comment just adds fuel to the fire.  I am thinking along the lines of "Positive Liberty". A party that embraces egalitarianism, multi-culturalism, non-initiation of force, immigration, freedom of choice in education and so on. And a party with a 'Sense of Life'.

I'm sure a lot of readers will be having a blar har har moment, but I'm serious. And I know more than a few voters are unhappy with some of the high profile Libertarianz and some of their views. I know a few Libertarianz  themselves are, too.

The Libertarianz experiment was good at the beginning, but the real heirs to Ayn Rand's spirit are long gone. You have allowed the worst among you to betray the best. And you are about to reap the whirlwind of the evil you let them sow at the ballot box.

It's OK to be a lazy bum

All this talk about the "need" for one to be productive and so on is nonsense. Maori Party MP Pita Sharples quite rightly rejects the philosophy that says people must  get out to work instead of raising their kids or doing the gardening or whatever they would prefer to do. A praiseworthy sentiment indeed.

The Liberal Right were all agog and comparing John Key to Hitler for suggesting it is good for kids to play sport ~the horror~. Now these same people want all of us out in the workforce - cogs in the government machine. Tax and "proof of income" is the ultimate achievement and will set you free.

This breath-taking assertion does not convince. 

In a Libertarian society one is free to be 'productive' - a subjective term if ever there was one - or not just as one pleases. As long as one is not on welfare and does not initiate force against another.

You have to wonder just who doesn't support big government these days. The list is mighty small.

Quote of the day

To wear the mantle of Galileo, it is not enough to be persecuted: you must also be right. ~ Robert Park

Grace Jones

It's hard to believe Grace Jones is 60! I've  admired her since I was a teenager -- I always thought she was such an iconoclast. And wonderfully and unapologetically weird.

My favourites would probably have to be Nightclubbing and My Jamaican Guy. Both are so unique even to this day.

Anyway she has a new album coming out in October called Hurricane. This is the first single, Corporate Cannibal, along with an appropriately weird video. She'd give little kids nightmares...

Quote of the day

Since John Edwards committed adultery I would encourage both Democrats and Republicans to refrain from voting  for him for president. Additionally this should  also apply to John McCain who fooled around on his wife after she was crippled in an accident and then married a beer heiress who could finance his political future. And since Bob Barr also had an affair, that means that we're left  with that black guy. ~ TBogg

And there was a damned good comment on this thread by someone called Ruthie:

I’m still trying to decide which is worse: The fact that people are actually interested in the sex lives of people whose job description essentially requires a moral deficit for success, or the fact that so many women seem to be attracted to guys who aren’t very attractive, aren’t very bright, and who aren’t exactly the poster boys for Darwinian “survival of the fittest.” Could this be the Intelligent Design of which the wingnuts speak?

Oh yeah.

The one where I copy Rachel Glucina

To copy gossip columnist Rachel Glucina -- which prominent, much loved  Libertarianz member (the one who wrote the racist Maori badges and speaks of the inferiority of the negro, the 'lower' classes, those who reside in South Auckland, and so on) is gradually being exposed as a fraud to all but his most deluded surrogates?

After all he has been spinning as fast as he can for the last 12 months.

The truth takes a while to filter through some adamantine skulls, but reality eventually has its day.