Category: Uncategorized

Green Day Gets ‘Best Band on Planet’ Award – Yahoo! News
yadi yadi yadi I’m showing Mike the blogger button on the Google toolbar.
It’s neato. Just push the blogger button and POP goes the window so you can write a blog about whatever page you’re viewing.

Pat Robertson: An embarrassment to the church
by Jim Wallis – Sojourners
Pat Robertson is an embarrassment to the church and a danger to American politics.
Robertson is known for his completely irresponsible statements – that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were due to American feminists and liberals, that true Christians could vote only for George W. Bush, that the federal judiciary is a greater threat to America than those who flew the planes into the World Trade Center Towers, and the list goes on. Robertson even took credit once for diverting a hurricane. But his latest outburst may take the cake.
On Monday, Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Robertson is worried about Chavez’s critiques of American power and behavior in the world, especially because Venezuela is sitting on all that oil. We simply can’t have an anti-American political leader who could raise the price of gas. So let’s just kill him, the famous television preacher seriously suggested. After all, having some of our “covert operatives” take out the troublesome Venezuelan leader would be cheaper than another $200 billion war, he said.
It’s clear Robertson must not have first asked himself “What would Jesus do?” But the teachings of Jesus have never been very popular with Robertson. He gets his religion elsewhere, from the twisted ideologies of an American brand of right-wing fundamentalism that has always been more nationalist than Christian. Apparently, Robertson didn’t even remember what the Ten Commandments say, though he has championed their display on the walls of every American courthouse. That irritating one about “Thou shalt not kill” seems to rule out the killing of foreign leaders. But this week, simply putting biblical ethics aside, Robertson virtually issued an American religious fatwah for the murder of a foreign leader – on national television no less. That may be a first.
Yesterday Robertson “apologized.” First he denied saying what he had said, but it was on the videotape (it’s tough when they record you breaking the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus). Then he said that “taking out” Chavez might not require killing him, and perhaps kidnapping a duly elected leader would do. But Robertson does now say that using the word “assassination” was wrong and that he had been frustrated by Chavez – the old “my frustration made me say that somebody should be killed” argument. But the worst thing about Robertson’s apology was that he compared himself to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German church leader and martyr who ultimately joined in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler.
Robertson’s political and theological reasoning is simply unbelievable. Chavez, a democratically elected leader in no less than three internationally certified votes, has been an irritant to the Bush administration, but has yet to commit any holocausts. Nor does his human rights record even approach that of the Latin American dictators who have been responsible for massive violations of human rights and the deaths of tens of thousands of people (think of the military regimes of Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, and Guatemala). Robertson never criticized them, perhaps because many of them were supported by U.S. military aid and training.
This incident reveals that Robertson does not believe in democracy; he believes in theocracy. And he would like governments, including our own, to implement his theological agenda, perhaps legislate Leviticus, and “take out” those who disagree.
Robertson’s American fundamentalist ideology gives a lot of good people a bad name. World evangelical leaders have already responded with alarm and disbelief. Robertson’s words will taint and smear other evangelical Christians and put some in actual jeopardy, such as Venezuelan evangelicals. Most conservative evangelical Christians are appalled by Robertson’s hateful and literally murderous words, and it’s time for them to say so. To their credit, the World Evangelical Alliance and the National Association of Evangelicals have already denounced Robertson’s words. When will we hear from some of the groups from the “Religious Right,” such as the Family Research Council, Southern Baptists, and other leaders like James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and Chuck Colson?
Robertson’s words fuel both anti-Christian and anti-American sentiments around the world. It’s difficult for an American government that has historically plotted against leaders in Cuba, Chile, the Congo, South Vietnam, and elsewhere to be easily believed when it disavows Robertson’s call to assassinate Chavez. But George Bush must do so anyway, in the strongest terms possible.
It’s time to name Robertson for what he is: an American fundamentalist whose theocratic views are not much different from the “Muslim extremists” he continually assails. It’s time for conservative evangelical Christians in America, who are not like Islamic fundamentalists or Robertson, to distance themselves from his embarrassing and dangerous religion.
And it’s time for Christian leaders of all stripes to call on Robertson not just to apologize, but to retire.

It’s just like You to bring light into darkness
It’s just like You, Lord its just like You
It’s just like You to bring beauty to ashes
It’s just like You, Lord its just like You

I’ve been trying my whole life to be good without the cross
When all that I have gained is this emptiness and loss

It’s just like You to bring life to these dry bones
It’s just like You, Lord its just like You
It’s just like You to bring beauty to ashes
It’s just like You, Lord its just like You
It’s just like You to bring light into darkness
It’s just like You, Lord its just like You
—
I felt a bit like a goof today. I was listening to the radio and started thinking about Amy and how much I missed her and just started weaping as I drove into Harker Heights. Thank goodness for sunglasses. I was heading to the post office and had to sit and pull myself together before I walked in. Oh well. Let them see me cry — and if they laugh, I’ll punch em in the face. Ha. As of last Sunday (the 21st), it’s been five months since Amy’s homegoing. It seems a lot longer than that somedays and other days it feels like it was just yesterday we laid her to rest.
But God is good, faithful and will continue to bring light into darkness, beauty to ashes and life to dry bones.

As most of you probably know, my weekly newspaper columns come from my journal writings and blog writings, so after a bit of deliberation, here is the final column… I think all of it has shown up in a blog entry at some point this past week. This might give you the best example of how my column comes together each week.

In the third century, St. Cyprian wrote to a friend named Donatus: This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden… But if I climbed some great mountain and looked out… you know very well what I would see; brigands on the high road, pirates on the seas, in the amphitheaters men murdered to please the applauding crowds…
Yet in the midst of it, I have found a quiet and holy people… They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are Christians…
What a compliment! A quiet and holy people. Quiet. Not obnoxious. Not boastful. Not demanding. Just quiet. Holy. Set apart. Pure. Decent. Honest. Wholesome.
On Monday, Pat Robertson, 75, and president of the Christiann Broadcasting Network told a Monday broadcast of “The 700 Club” that U.S. operatives should consider killing Venezuelian President Hugo Chavez by “taking him out,” saying it would be “cheaper than starting a war, and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.’’
“We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,’’ Robertson told the broadcast.
Robertson, a one-time candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, also blasted U.S. authorities for failing to provide enough support for opposition leaders when Chavez was briefly overthrown in a failed coup in 2002.
In Caracas, Venezuelian legislator Desire Santos Amaral said Robertson’s comments outraged her, adding: “This man cannot be a true Christian.”
When did we move from our third-century mindset to our current mindset that we have to have everything the way we want it?
This may upset some people, but I wish James Dobson, Pat Robertson and others would quit using their pulpit to condemn and instead use it to show the world the love of God instead.
Maybe we could all take a lesson from third century Christians. Instead of standing up and demanding our ways be met, protesting every little thing we don’t like, maybe we should take a Christlike attitude towards politics and the like. What would that look like?
Instead of yelling at the lost, why don’t we calm down and show them how we were once lost as well and now found.

In the mid 50’s scientists looked at all the upcoming technology and did a study to see how it would impact our lives.
They predicted that by the year 2000 technology would be so great that people would be more effecient and would be working way less. By the year 2000, they predicted that the average American would only work 22 hours a week. They were so concerned that they began to wonder what in the world Americans would do with all their free time.
Boy – wish they were right. I think just the opposite has happened. More technology means we get things done more efficiently, but that just means were stuck doing more work.

Can someone tell me why I’m still here at 2:11 a.m.?
I think I’m so used to a noon deadline that I feel I have to have almost everything wrapped up before I leave Tuesday night.
When in actuality I have till 6 p.m. to get the paper to press. Geeze.
Maybe its a subconsious fear that I still have a sports tab to finish before Thursday night that is pushing me to get the paper done earlier.
Who knows. But I think I want to eat a sandwhich and then go home.