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Archives for July 2017

Little Big Man

July 28, 2017 by Pops Leave a Comment

“Front Stabber” Anthony Scaramucci

There are few people more obnoxious than the little man with the big mouth. You know who I mean – that short guy who always acted tough, threw his chest out and threatened to fight everybody for no other reason than to overcompensate for his own perceived physical inadequacy. Every high school graduating class had a least one, and every office, sports team, or wedding reception includes a loud little guy who manages to offend everyone else.
Yeah, there are few people more obnoxious.

Unless it is a guy with a little man complex who happens to be from blue collar New York, that is. With a double dose of “in yer face” and “you tawkin’ to me?” a little man from New York is always unavoidably crude, loud, and offensive. Instead of using punctuation or adjectives or verbs, every other word is a variation on the “f-bomb.” That’s even worse than a plain old “little man,” for sure.  But not the worst.

Even worse is a New Yorker with a little man complex who is also Italian. Oh yeah, that little man with the inferiority complex from New York who acts like he’s a “made man” and can intimidate anybody with threats and squinty eyes while he pokes his finger in your chest and says “badda boom” and things like that. There can’t be anyone more distasteful, you would think. You would be wrong.

The pinnacle of scary social belligerence is an Italian guy, from blue collar New York, with a little man complex, who has actually earned some street cred and finds himself in a position of formidable power. Like Charles “Lucky” Luciano, or Joe “Bananas” Bonanno, or Vittorio “Little Vic” Amuso. These were all bad guys who had both the inclination and the ability to do serious harm to those who crossed them.

Enter the new proposed White House Communications Director: Anthony “Mooch” Scaramucci.

This little Italian guy from New York is so full of himself that the word “braggadocio” isn’t quite sufficient to describe him. He is a crude, offensive, and tasteless miniature Rottweiler of a human being. In less than a week, he has actually done more damage to the administration than Trump’s tweets have done in six months. This guy is the attack dog that was invited into the Oval Office and the first thing he did was eat the couch.

President Trump may be frustrated, and he may be angry, and he may even be desperate to get control of his people, but he doesn’t need a gangster with a baseball bat to walk around in the conference room and smash the skulls of anyone who falls from favor.

The Mooch needs to go. Now.

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Filed Under: USA Politics

Did Jesus Have a Choice?

July 19, 2017 by Pops 3,300 Comments

The Christian bible is quite clear that Jesus Christ suffered and died on the cross. And Christians universally accept that their Savior willingly gave his life for them to assume the burden of human sin upon himself, freeing humanity from their sin in order to accept God’s love and eternal salvation.

But there is some conflict in the scriptures as to whether or not Jesus actually had any choice about God’s plan for him.

The Jewish Scriptures (the Old Testament) predict the coming of the Messiah in multiple books, and are quite detailed as to where he would be born, the circumstances of his birth, and his familial bloodline. Details of Jesus’ betrayal and crucifixion, his death and burial, and his resurrection were arguably predicted in the books of Isaiah, Zachariah, and the Psalms, hundreds of years before the birth of the Son of God in Bethlehem.

And Christ himself foretold of his impending arrest, trial, and death in discussions with his disciples. The Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke each have quotes of what they were told by Jesus in anticipation of his death and resurrection.

The scriptures not only foretold the circumstances of the coming of the Christ, but Christ himself knew that he was destined to suffer terribly and die at the hands of men. Christ apparently had little say in the matter. It was the will of God that his Son should die for the sins of man.

However, 1 John 3:16 reads “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” John 10:17-18 reads “The Father loves me because I give my life. I give my life so that I can get it back again. No person takes my life away from me. I give my own life freely. I have the right to give my life. And I have the right to get it back again. This is what the Father told me.”

But then again, while suffering on the cross, Jesus states “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:45-50). Contrarily, approaching death, Jesus says “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:44-49).

The unavoidability of fulfilling God’s will, and the idea that Jesus had any choice to reject his fate, create a conflict that cannot be reconciled. If God’s will must be done, could Jesus have changed God’s plan? Had Jesus opted not to go to Jerusalem, or had he avoided the garden at Gethsemane, or had he excluded Judas Iscariot from ever entering his group of disciples, would the will of God been thereby thwarted?  A good question, it seems, but if it is true that “God’s will be done,” the answer is “no.”

Perhaps the best interpretation of the scriptures on this issue is to conclude that while Jesus did not have any ability to change the plan that God had for him, he nevertheless willingly accepted his fate as his earthly obligation was to become the Savior of mankind. He embraced the fact that he would be rejected and scorned by both his people and his closest friends, suffer greatly, and then die a slow and excruciating death on the cross.  And as the result of his gracious acceptance of this unavoidable sacrifice, lives were changed throughout the world for the next two thousand years.


(As bad as it was going to be, Jesus knew he could handle it.  After all, he was only going to be dead for a few days, anyway.)

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Rorschach Media

July 11, 2017 by Pops Leave a Comment

pelvic girdle or angry cartoon face?

The Rorschach Inkblot Test is a projective psychological test consisting of 10 inkblots printed on cards (five in black and white, five in color) created in 1921 with the publication of Psychodiagnostik by Hermann Rorschach.

Over the decades, the validity of using the test for the measurement of emotional functioning and thought disorders has been criticized, but the premise of the test remains undisputed: Even when looking at the same identical thing, different people have remarkedly different interpretations.

Remember those summer days lying in the yard with your friends and looking up at the clouds? Where one person sees a ship, one may see an animal, another one sees a castle. Each mind constructs the same image differently, and each observer sees what the mind tells it to see.

The same thing happens in the media. Where one observer sees a meeting, another sees a conspiracy plot. One may see an endorsement of western civilization, another sees a validation of white supremacy. A single word can mean many things to different people, and a person’s interpretation is largely affected by their predisposition to see what they expect to see.

And this is the crux of the problem in the media these days. Rather than have someone show us the ink blot, and let us figure out what it represents to ourselves, the media is telling us what the ink blot represents to them. It is a battle between fact and bias, and unfortunately the media consistently presents us with much more bias than fact.

The publication of Donald Trump Jr.’s email exchange concerning the meeting with a lawyer from Russia is a great example of the media’s Rorschach treatment of fact. While the plain text of the emails is there for all to see, some pundits see treasonous collusion, others can’t see any “there” there.

It would be refreshing if the media would just show us something, and stop telling us what we are seeing. Let us believe our own “lying eyes” rather than what you think it is.


As an aside, does anyone really think that the U.S. government never had a preference for a particular candidate in a foreign election?

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Filed Under: USA Politics

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