Wonderful Matters

Tonight is the premiere of the top motion picture marketed out there for this weekend, "The Kingdom." It stars some Oscar-winning actors and it looks like it has a lot of brave-looking people firing weapons at terrorists of some stripe. I imagine the intended effect is to get all who watch it to shout with Homer Simpson, "U-S-A! U-S-A!" It has received rather tepid reviews so far. I'm paying attention to it simply because of the title of the film and the massive campaign to sell it. I've seen ads for the thing everywhere. Again, I'm just curious because certainly some are going to get some impression about what "The Kingdom" is, whether or not that is actually true. "The Kingdom" in this sense refers to the country of Saudi Arabia, which considers itself a kingdom. It has a king, princes, a royal family, all exerting great power in an oil-rich and terrorist-harboring region. It seems the movie has some intrigue and thrills, but from w...

In doing my web writing wherever that is-- webzine , blog, comments on some site somewhere about something-- I'm insanely devoted to the idea that I can get people to understand and know Christ by saying, "Hey, look at that foolish thing and see how foolish that is!" They would then see said foolish thing for being as abjectly foolish as it is, connect the dots, and find that any true fulfillment for any need or desire can only ultimately be found in Him. I even heard a radio show this morning on the Los Angeles hyper-libertarian station KPFK called "Connect the Dots." They always have someone on who rails against some Power-That-Be as oppressing the poor disadvantaged disenfranchised whatever Power-Back-To-The-People type. They seem to think that displacing the despised Power with their adored Power is going to liberate all and bring joyous utopia. "Connect the dots!" they say, but then when they profess their "final solution," I always wond...

Larry Kudlow is a top talking head, offering financial blab across the airwaves. I think he's got a show on CNBC. He was on Hugh Hewitt's drive-time radio show the other day and they were bantering about the latest economic item of interest-- the severe poking at the housing bubble. So fiercely did Kudlow make the case that the Fed lower interest rates that it amplified the truth that the Fed is quite the law enforcer. I can bet that every Federal Reserve Chairman through history (these days it is Ben Bernanke) has certainly lost count of the number of times he has had to smile nervously as he is asked to crack heads in any number of institutionalized ways to pull back on the abject misassessment of value among Catholicist Nation inhabitants. Kudlow said his recommendation about what the Fed do is the "shock and awe" approach, and he cried "Come on-- stop the deflation ." The deflation here refers to the precipitous drop in home values through the collapse o...

Virtually every news orifice out there is showcasing their polls on Iraq, this on the eve of top U.S. general-in-Iraq David Petraeus' report tomorrow-- I think it's tomorrow. What they're asking are things like "What do you think about our progress in Iraq?" and "Do you think Petraeus will give an accurate assessment of things?" Really, what should be asked is, "What do believe about what the media spews at you?" It blows my mind that so many have something to say about things they just haven't the faintest idea about. "38% say this, while 57% say that." It reminds me of an Onion piece that I just have to provide a link for here . Oh cynical me. Thing is, as I was peeking around a bit at the worship of the God David Petraeus (remember, even the most zealous detractors of everything "Bush" are themselves some of the most pious devotees), it came upon me how to precisely say what Ellen Tauscher is actually saying when she ...

U.S. Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher said this after listening to testimony about progress in Iraq. It was so notable to the Los Angeles Times that it was used as a pull quote in today's print edition. "I no longer can believe almost anything I'm told." I looked at this and first thought, wow, she's got it. She understands that anything government says cannot be trusted, for government is by function an operation that must use deception to do its job of prosecution. Maybe she'll decide she doesn't want to be a part of that body of death any more and will seek to enter the Kingdom. Nah. I read the quote a second time and it is quite symptomatic of the way World operatives themselves operate. This is beside the point that if the statement "There is falsehood here" is uttered by such an operative-- and Tauscher is such an individual-- then that itself cannot be trusted. What she says reveals something quite profound, for it is in the context of exactly...

I ran up to the corner market to get a quart of milk this morning and for some reason my radio was tuned to a country station. I don't usually listen to country, but I have a bit of admiration for it because the music can be rich in visceral expression. I also worked as a remote engineer at KSON in San Diego when going to school. Of course I'd never heard this song before, this one something about being somewhere between raisin' hell and amazin' grace, it may be wildly popular-- I just don't know. But it did make me think of the Catholicist Nation and the way people behave in it. This is it, that's for sure. Go off and "raise hell" then come back and get some grace. Over and over and over and over and over and over again . This is just not the way it was from the beginning, to loosely quote Jesus when asked about divorce. Sure people want to "raise hell" in whatever self-or-other-destructive way that is because of the abject emotional pain of...