PETE STARK - HOW DOES HE DO IT?

They discussed Atheism on the Mc Laughlin Group tonight.  Pete Stark is the only professing atheist “out of the closet” out of 435 members of the US congress.  He has been serving the same safe district in Alameda County up north for forty years or twenty terms and averages a reelection figure of seventy percent.  That’s pretty good.  A lot of people think that President Obama is a Moslem even now.  The poll numbers are shocking.  Gen Collin Powell says "So what if he was?  What's wrong with that?"  They asked the pannel when the United States would ever have an atheist President and Eleanor Clift, the most optimistic one said "Not before 2050"  The host himself it wouldn't be till the turn of the 22nd century.  My only response to that is perhaps Christians should fear less just WHEN it happens to occur, but the Finality of it, when it does occur.  Think about that one.  Just think how utterly DEAD Christianity will be then.  Some have spoken of Christianity making the "mistake" of "accomidating to the culture" and point to Europe.  Well - - the last I checked the Vatican was in Europe and the Pope just reaffirmed his stand against married priests, and also more Americans favor married priests than they do in the rest of the world.  But in the meanwhile we could well have a woman president, or a gay president or even a Moslem president before we ever have an Atheist president.  That's an eye opener.  Many make noises about having a "moral base" and "cultural drift" or whatever.  I am far from convinced the Clergy who framed the Nicene Creed in the fourth century were pillars of moral perfection.  Rick Warren said, "I'm not getting into heaven because of my integretry or goodness, but because of Divine Grace".  If Pastor Rick so strongly believes in "Grace" then why doesn't he show more of it?

Rev Rick Warren was on “This Week”.  Let me just summarize it to say that there was a whole lot LESS there than met the eye.  They had promoted it as his talking about “the coarsening of the language in our society” and I was interested on what RW thought.  However he said very little about it.  He said nothing about the overall climate of hate speech and the new wave of sexual as well as racial bigotry.  However whenever he had the choice, Warren came down against President Obama and for the tea party position.  He was honest though to say the problem with the Mormons was with the doctrine of the Trinity, a fourth century doctrine that’s kind of an offshoot of the fact that most Priests at the time were just coming off the Sol Vivictus religion.  It reminded me when he spoke about the moral superiority of “Churchianity” rather than just being s spiritual follower of Christ is that he said “These magazines boost their ratings with seasonal religious articles on Faith but never talk about all the good the church has done”.  These magazines are always covering some Papal visit to the poor neighborhoods and blessing them and the people cheering for him.  So I don’t know what Rick is talking about.  And this whole idea of using the “he sounds like - - - “ line is that maybe a reason why Mormons “sound” so close to God is because they ARE closer to God, at least than Rick is.  Rick never thought of that.  But it’s almost like the Nestle company owning a milk formula copyright that has taken over the world and it’s been a century since anyone actually saw an actual cow, so that when they actually came across a real cow - - all they could say is “Well this product seems wholesome enough but it isn’t the Nestle formula”.  I don’t know.  Do you think God relishes the idea of being reduced to a formula by theologians?  After this it was the ABC roundtable.  George Will and others are continuing to call President Obama a “bully” because he reminded the Supreme Court that “what they are completing doing is highly unprecedented”.  This is true because the last time such a Congressional bill such as this was overturned was 1936, and I don’t fancy turning the clock back 76 years.  However Pat Buchannon doesn’t mind viewing the world from a hundred years ago.  He went off last night about “The British Empire is shrinking as are all the White European Empires” as though we were facing some disaster now, and of course the President is responsible for it all.  As to the whole “bully” thing – perhaps we should define our words more carefully.  A “bully” is the strong intimidating and oppressing the weak.  President Obama knows he has absolutely no power over this court.  And that’s what’s got him scared.  They are like nine Gods up there in black robes, the last Royalty we actually have now.

Saturday morning I got up at about ten after six and turned on KNX 1070.  The Oklahoma lady chose a negative tack at 8:05 talking about energy and how “Obama isn’t really for energy because all of the increased energy production has been on private land and not government land, which is down”.  She also aledged that the visit to the state was a fraud and that “Obama knew he couldn’t block the Southern portion of the Canadian pipeline.  My understanding is different.  Obama said he was FOR the entire pipeline eventfully but since Nebraska, with the legal issue is in the northern part of the pipeline- - there was no issue with the southern portion.  President Obama at 7:06 chose to be more upbeat talking about the spirit of Easter and beliefs all we Americans have in common.  I hope no republicans choked. 

This is Easter April 8, 2012 and Sean Lennon’s 49^th birthday so they played “Valotte” in his honor today on Breakfast with the Beatles.  They had Easter songs and also today is “Draw your own bird” day so they played “bird” songs.  There was some George Harrison song about the Vatican I’d never heard before from “Brainwashed”.  I should buy that album.  They also played a Mc Cartney and Elvis Costello collaboration, and I suspected E C even before they said it.  “Suspicion” by Terry Stafford was number six today in 1964.  It wasn’t “Dawn” by the Four Seasons, which I figured it would be.  The Chicago Bulls were being beaten bad by the New York Knicks today on ABC.  I went down for lunch and they weren’t ready so I came back and listened to Leo Le Port for a few minutes.  They said they were having tuna but it was chicken salad sandwich, which was better.  We had Fritos and tomato soup with a banana for desert.  The Oriental lady gave me some of her coffee this time but it was really sweet even though it was mixed with mine.  Now I have Leo on.  I’ve heard people say “Flash” is becoming obsolete and that “Java” is even becoming obsolete.  I wonder what’s replacing them.  This is a week for we Windows users to gloat because now the Mackintish has a major virus that has knocked out a lot of their computers.  They were hoisted on their own pittard since Apple was so arrogant against Sun, the original owners of Java, and so only we Windows users got the “patched” version.

Mike Wallace, long time host of Sixty Minutes died at age 93 today.  This is a great loss to the journalism world and I imagine we'll hear a lot more about it on the program tonight, and in the coming days.  He's the last of a dying generation when the Truth actually meant something.  Not only is there a coarsening of sexual speech, pioneered in 1991 by Howard Stern - - and I don't need to List all the ways in which he is NOT a liberal, do I?  Now this had spread everywhere and become part of the general coonversation.  But there is also an intellectual "coarsening" of society.  It's darn near impossible to carry on an intelligent philosophical or political conversation with anybody.  Nobody has the mental discipline for it.  And it's my experiance that right wing pastors are in particular notibly lacking on shall we say "intellectual self control" or the lack of either.  I don't know where people under forty for example get their ideas about - - the fifties or the sixties either one, because they didn't live through either, yet they one and all fancy themselves as somehow culturally "qualified" to "Bring America back to its traditional values our parents grew up with" or something - - whatever that means.