WILL UNREST IN MIDEAST BRING ABOUT DESIRED REFORMS?

The latest news is that Quadafi is talking about being martyred on Egyptian soil and not leaving. This indicates that he expects eventually to fail in his quest to hold on to power and that the many forces arrayed against him will do him in shortly. How he's seeking help from the leader of Italy to hire mercenaries. People in western Libya are fleeing to Tunesia. Apparently eastern Libya is held by the rebels. All the world community seems intent on doing is issuing trade sanctions, which could take forever, and we all agree that sanctions were of no use in hastening Saddam Hussein's fall from power in 2003. Obviously Quadafy is becoming mentally unhinged, and for this reason his own officers will likely end up doing him in. Many people have defected from his cabinet and air force pilots have defected and refused to fire on their own people. George Washington's blog maintains that this whole protest wave sweeping the mideast is a game changing world event herolding Democracy and all that. I wish I could be that sure. I think a lot of us are still expecting some cinnister force to come out of nowhere and take over. It it isn't the Moslem Brotherhood, it will be somebody else. Obviously these mideast countries, even in Iran, have a lot of westernized, educated upper middle class people. We would all like to think the technological age of cell phones and face book will win the day. But I can't help but think that these mideastern people have a slave mentality going back thousands of years. They see submission to authority as a sign of piety and perhaps even a guarentor of a good after-life. I know that many conservatives, even when when elections were taking place in Iraq in 2005 were saying "these Arab peoples aren't ready for democracy". Neo cons appear to care a lot less about things like liberty and freedom for everyone, and a lot more about preserving their corporate power structure and control of commerce and money, and restricting the availability of inexpensive energy. They may say they don't want gasoline at five dollars a gallon, but they don't want to explore alternative energy sources either. And besides the way they figure it, if we have a resurgence of inflation, they'll just blame President Obama for the whole thing. I would say the same thing to Thom Hartman, who has expressed sentaments five dollar a gallon gasoline would not be a bad thing. Yes it would. It would be disasterous. Also any new energy taxes would be a disaster. Give this economy time to climb out of the grave it has dug for itself.

Cold weather sure is in the news a lot more than it used to be. I think a lot of the increased coverage is the desire to put on info-tainment and give the people exciting video to look at. Now they are talking about wide spread freakish winds over a line of a thousand or more miles. You heard about the "White House Christmas tree" coming down. In the west they are talking about snow in San Francisco and even snow around the Hollywood sign. They say the snow level will drop to five hundred feet in the LA area. It hasn't happened yet. Last night they were talking about a huge new storm swooping in from the Gulf of Alaska making its way down the central California coast. But today so far seems dry and sunny and a little warmer. But all in all it does seem as if the US has been getting colder winters the past few years.

Apparently the Republicans will win the day merely by failing to fund needed bills such as the Health Care bill. Now they are saying law enforcement of and prosecution for security's fraud will languish, as the guilty get off Scott free. We need massive prosecutions of higher ups in the financial community. Personally I think impeachment charges should be brought against Justice Thomas, and perhaps Roberts and a couple of others. It says in the constitution that they shall remain in power for life but only "during good behavior". I think it can be argued that in the case of Thomas and others they have hopelessly conflicted interests, being associated with activist conservative organizations. The last two Justices were given thumbs up by congress because they promised to respect "settled law" and merely were in the business of "calling balls and strikes". Clearly we need a Presidential candidate next year that will stand up to the increasingly powerful forces of the Right, which Obama refuses too. The President will not even make a trip to Wisconsin to lend the protesters there a little moral support, because he doesn't want to be seen as "too political" and lose this elusive "independent voter" support.

I would like to comment just a little more about this whole God and deism thing. You know that Walter Martin talks about "anthropomorphisms" of God. For instance scripture speaks of the eyes of God and the mouth of God and the hands and arms of God. But also scripture attributes to God the saying that "God repented that he had ever made man". Also at one point scripture says that "the anger of the Lord was kindled against the People and he said to Moses, "step aside while I wipe out this rebellious people, and of you I will build a great nation". Obviously this is something God decided not to do. Does God change his mind. In Genisis it says that God had a discussion with himself, "Let us go down to Sodom and Gamorah and see whether it be as depraved as the reports that have come to me, and if not, I will know it". Also in 2nd. Peter it ways that "God is not slow to keep his promises, but God is long suffering not willing that any should perish but that all come to be saved". If there is one thing that has been established, from a personal letter from a prominent church pastor to me is that "Nothing happens unless God wills it, and if God wills it, it will happen". So as you can see the Bible apparently anthropomorphizes a lot of emotions of God. Does it anthropomorphize the emotion of Love? Scripture says "When thy own father and mother abandon thee I will take up your cause". But James Dobson says that the love of God is merely some projection of the love we get from other places like our parents and our families, and that if this is lacking, then God can't help. The asshole from El Paso has intoned similar sentaments. Also hasn't it ever intrigued you that on all these soap operas when the young woman goes to a priest and says "I know God is punishing me for having that abortion five years ago, and now I can't get pregnent", and the priest invariably responds, "God doesn't deal with people that way". Again, what if the Priest is speaking the truth about God, but perhaps not quite how he meant it. Many holy rollers hate the concept of "earning your way to heaven through good works". They will say "There is nothing you can do to improve your holy standing with God". If they really believed this then they would not be constantly pointing the finger of shame against the unholy and unchurched among us. Or in the words of Bob Dylan in the song "Ramona" it goes "I've heard you say many times that you're better than no one and no one is better than you. If you really believe that then you know you have nothing to win and nothing to lose". Just think about that one a while. What if this whole idea of trying to "win God's favor" is silly because he doesn't even interact with human beings in a way we humans can identify with? Suppose God has his own pre-set agenda that might by all rights be considered quite A-moral by "normal" human standards?