Saturday Ramblings: October 31, 2015 — Scariest Creatures Alive Edition

1959 Rambler Ambassador Custom Cross Country
1959 Rambler Ambassador Custom Cross Country

Need a classy vehicle in which to take the little ones Trick-or-Treating tonight? Ditch that SUV and pile them into this sweet ’59 Ambassador Cross Country so they can fill it and themselves with candy and laughter.

It’s Halloween. Let’s Ramble!

Ramblers-Logo36First, this public service announcement for Daylight Savings Time (thanks, Clark Bunch!):

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Ramblers-Logo36Second, because this is not only Reformation Day, but also Halloween, throughout today’s Ramblings we will feature the most frightening creatures on God’s earth:

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Ramblers-Logo36Jim Bakker gets at least some of his messages from his underwear. Yeah, he said that. The televangelist/doomsday prepper recently “shared” that God speaks to him through his skivvies.

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During a broadcast of his TV program, Bakker explained that God sent him a prophetic message by choosing the color of his underwear.

“I went to get dressed, and I pray about what I wear — I really do,” Bakker said. “I know I look stupid sometimes, but the last time God told me to wear a color was red, and what happened that day? The stock market crashed.”

“Today, God said, ‘I want you to wear all black,’” Bakker continued. “Even my shoes are black. My underwear is black. My socks are black.”

I’m sure there are days none of us wants to know about.

Ramblers-Logo36The biggest roar in politics heard this week involved the collective complaining of the GOP candidates who felt they were treated unfairly during this week’s debate.

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The Huffington Post reports:

Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus sent a letter to NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack on Friday, informing him that the party was suspending its partnership with the network after candidates complained they were treated unfairly during this week’s CNBC debate.

“We are suspending the partnership with NBC News for the Republican primary debate at the University of Houston on February 26, 2016,” Priebus wrote in the letter. “The RNC’s sole role in the primary debate process is to ensure that our candidates are given a full and fair opportunity to lay out their vision for America’s future. We simply cannot continue with NBC without full consultation with our campaigns.”

. . . In his letter, Priebus said the network didn’t keep its promises to monitor the candidates’ speaking time and let them answer an opening question about the economy. He also accused the debate moderators of asking unfair questions.

Anyone watch? Care to comment?

Ramblers-Logo36A penny saved . . . Otha Anders, a 73-year-old from Ruston, Louisiana, has been collecting pennies for more than 45 years.

The other day, he decided to cash them in. After five hours of hacking open five gallon containers filled with Lincolns and the tedious counting, Mr. Anders left the bank with $5,136!

Good for him. Not a bad savings plan and a cool tortoise and hare kind of story.

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Anders’ coin collecting habit started when he found a penny on the street decades ago. It escalated from there. “I would never spend a penny,” he told his local paper. “I would break a dollar before giving up a penny.”

Collecting pennies came to have a special meaning for him.“I became convinced that spotting a lost or dropped penny was an additional God-given incentive reminding me to always be thankful,” Anders said.

I couldn’t find any reports about whether or not he tithed on his pennies, or sowed a seed to make his harvest grow.

But I doubt it. After all, he came out of this with his own money in his hands.

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Ramblers-Logo36Speaking of profits . . . Looking forward to the holiday shopping season, outdoor gear and sporting goods retailer REI has decided to stay closed on Black Friday, the most important shopping day of the year for many stores.

USA Today reports:

rei_logo_detailIn an unprecedented move for the modern-day holiday shopping season, REI’s 143 stores will be closed the day after Thanksgiving. The co-op business plans to launch a campaign Tuesday encouraging people to forgo shopping to spend time outside instead. With the hashtag #OptOutside, REI will ask people to share what they’re doing on Black Friday on social media.

REI is taking direct aim at the frenzied consumerism that dominates the holidays with a message to do the exact opposite of what Black Friday demands.

“Any retailer that hears this will be startled by the idea,” says REI President and CEO Jerry Stritzke, who admits he was apprehensive about closing at first. “As a co-op … we define success a little differently. It’s much broader than just money. How effectively do we get people outside?”

Even though Black Friday is one their own top 10 sales days of the year, REI will have no Black Friday promotions and won’t process online orders until Saturday. A small handful of its approximately 12,000 employees will be on call, while the rest will get a paid day off.

The Denver Post doubts that many will follow their lead in years to come, and REI executives admit that even for them this might be a one-time experiment. Still, from where I sit, REI’s move is a breath of fresh air.

Now, if only more churches would open on Christmas Day . . .

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Ramblers-Logo36One group has renamed Halloween. Now, it’s “JesusWeen.” 

No, really. JesusWeen.

JesusWeen (Oct 31st) is expected to become the most effective Christian outreach day ever and that’s why we also call it “World Evangelism Day.”

It’s a day to give out Christian gifts, just as God gave us Jesus.

You know, I’m all for people sharing their faith. And this site seems so earnest and well-intentioned.

But, come on.

It’s okay to be human. It’s okay to share in your culture’s celebrations and doing so does not have to compromise your beliefs in any way, shape or form. It might even help you to get to know your neighbors and for them to know that you are somewhat normal and accessible as a fellow homo sapiens. 

I know there are a lot of wacky, immoral, and even wicked things that take place under the name Halloween, but please, please . . .

Anyone who feels it necessary to name the day “JesusWeen” and make it a time to “come out from among them and be separate,” I hereby consign you to reading one of Michael Spencer’s Halloween posts each day until the silliness demons depart.

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ELCA Bishop Elizabeth A. Eaton and Denis J. Madden, auxiliary Bishop, Archdiocese of Baltimore

Ramblers-Logo36Now, on a more serious (and hopeful) note, I am marking this Reformation Day with a commitment to read a new ecumenical text that draws on 50 years of Lutheran-Catholic dialogue in preparation for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. You’ll be hearing more about it in the days ahead.

The document is called “Declaration on the Way,” and it:

  • draws together a litany of 32 consensus statements, where Catholics and Lutherans already have said there are not church-dividing differences between them, and
  • identifies some “remaining differences” and suggests some ways forward toward more unity between the church traditions.

You can read the background of this document and download it in complete form and as an executive summary at the link.

Look forward to more discussion about this.

 

Ramblers-Logo36Finally, how about some scary good music for this Halloween?

On this week in 1971, the world lost one of rock, blues and soul’s great guitarists when 24 year-old Duane Allman died in a Macon, Georgia motorcycle accident.

Earlier in 1971, the band had recorded what many critics consider (and I agree) to be the greatest live rock album of all time: At Fillmore East. A double LP with seven unforgettable jams, it was the band’s breakthrough moment. But only a few months later, their gifted guitarist, after having also worked that year with Eric Clapton and contributed his talents to Layla and other sessions with Derek and the Dominoes, met his untimely fate.

Here is a live rendition of “Whipping Post” from the Fillmore East, recorded in 1970.

102 thoughts on “Saturday Ramblings: October 31, 2015 — Scariest Creatures Alive Edition

  1. If the consciousness of the human race, or of individuals, has been raised, it’s not the result a process on the spiritual plane that’s similar to biological evolution (which after all does not prefer the “higher” above the “lower”; survival is the only value in biological evolution, if it makes sense to talk about evaluation at all). Whatever movement upward consciousness has undergone is the result of choices; not infrequently, the choices of some, choices that others become accountable to. There are no long wolves in the matter of positive development of human consciousness; its a communal undertaking, even if some lead the way.

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  2. I also miss Jim Croce, who was killed in a plane crash two years later. In fact, a lot of good musicians died young in that era, whether from drug overdoses or accidents.

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  3. A good insight regarding the evolution of individual consciousness; however, I think you are missing a dimension in your comparison. First graders do not have the power of grown adults in a fundamentalist tradition. An assessment of maturity or even morality is incomplete without an assessment of power.

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  4. Fiercely loyal and dedicated, focussed, absolutely sincere, low level hypocrisy and guile, unquestioning adherence to authority, willing to fight and die for stated beliefs, much like what Yahweh demanded of His people thru Moses and later prophets. Shall we throw the Wahhabi into the mix? To speak of them as “worst” would be like speaking of first graders as worst of all students.

    There is a gradation of spiritual evolution and consciousness. You start wherever you are. To expect everyone to be advanced would be like expecting everyone to be above average in intelligence, or like teaching calculus in first grade. To consider intellectual discernment as the epitome of human understanding would be a grave error.

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  5. Such comparison is totally senseless: how can you compare individuals to organizations? Each one of those hucksters is an individual, who through mighty lies and through their audiences’ gullibility have amassed tons of cash and manage somehow to convince public opinion they are “Christians”. On the other hand you have large organizations that have been around for a long time. It’s the same as if you compared Bill Gates wealth to that of the United States, absolutely no sense.

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  6. The week after the beheadings, I attended a local Coptic Church service here in Atlanta as a show of solidarity with these ancient believers. The beheadings certainly figured into the (amazingly long!) usual Sunday liturgy. But what struck was what the wizened old Coptic priest had to say about it during his Gospel homily: “These things have happened before. Why should we be surprised? That’s what it is to be the church.”

    Talk about NOT having a persecution complex — even when you have every right!

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  7. I’m sorry, Mule; your neat pigeon-holing of my perspective just doesn’t work. I challenge you to find my anti-Hillary position anywhere in the “mainstream narrative”.

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  8. Yeah. Jupiter must have aligned with Mars, and it must be the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Don’t expect such a rare cosmic event to occur again for at least several thousand years.

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  9. Are they getting paid for the day off? You can never tell; if not, it’s just a mandatory day off, without pay.

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  10. Independent Fundamental Baptist is the worst kind of Baptist. If they were Jews, they’d be Haredi / ultra-Orthodox.

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  11. Copeland would be scum either way–it’s just this way would explain why he’s a billionaire, while other TV evangelists are only low multi-millionaires.

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  12. No, I think it’s the same website as before–just made less obviously satirical, in hopes of ensnaring some of the normals. If you try to donate, you get the same error messages as the Landover site.

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  13. Republicans in congress are handing out plenty of money themselves to their friends, the top 1%, and corporations. Conservatives have been duped and should be ashamed.

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  14. My MY! To get both StuartB AND ATW to agree with me is a special occurrence. I’d better run out and buy a Super Lotto Ticket! WOOHOO!!

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  15. Yeah, evangelical free has had a miserable reputation for a while now, among those who have actually heard of them.

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  16. a lot of what the Catholic Church has is ‘priceless’ . . . works of art and original letters and documents that extend way back into history, so the Church acts more like ‘care-taker’ for irreplaceable world treasures than ‘owner’ . . . and now comes Francis and all I can do is smile
    . . . the Church says that at the enclave when the pope is chosen by the cardinals that the Holy Spirit is at work in the decision . . . well, this time there is evidence of it when the goings-ons at the Vatican involve homeless refugees and street people seeking shelter and food and showers and Francis opens the gates and lets them in

    He says he won’t be pope for long, but even for a while, there is such a flow of fresh air through those gates that even the angels must rejoice 🙂

    as far as this blog tending to be ‘Protestant’ ordered, I have always seen it as Michael Spencer’s way of opening the gates of division in the Body of Christ and inviting people to come in and talk to one another . . . and yes, this blog is such a breath of fresh air that even the occasional Catholic, and an Orthodox, or maybe even a Trolle or two may wander in for a visit . . . . and it’s okay

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  17. Stuart,
    I’m trying to figure your response out. What exactly are you responding to? I pointed to Fox news because pretty much everyone on here would agree it is biased towards the Republican party. The thing is ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN are all equally as biased towards the Democrat party. If you can’t see that then you need to take a closer look. For Republicans to do debates for those networks (which they almost have to do considering options for being in front of the nation) is about the same as the Democrats going on Fox news, something I would be surprised to see them do.

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  18. I wondered WHY the ‘whining’ was happening . . . it doesn’t put politically-minded evangelicals in a good light before anyone but their own base . . . the whining certainly does not evoke the great faith of the early Christians who met with real persecution, or the great faith of the Coptic martyrs recently beheaded by ISIS who went to their deaths with prayers on their lips . . .

    that ‘whining’ . . . what it does evoke is something immature, spoiled and petulant . . . not to be admired or regarded as the behavior of honorable people of faith encountering real persecution, no

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  19. Mule, for relatively comment-free news try South Africa’s News24. For in-depth stories I sometimes read the English edition of Der Spiegel.

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  20. Thank God I speak a number of languages.

    For close-to-unbiased reporting by someone with no dog in the fight I lean towards El Comerico [Peru] and O Globo [Brazil]. Their websites are very informative and I never would have known very much about the Law and Justice triumph in Poland apart from their reportage. Univision TV broadcasts are good. I like Jorge Ramos. I hope Trump doesn’t deport him.

    For propaganda, I like Al-Jazeera, RT, Daily Kos, Taki’s Mag, and The Archdruid. If you follow the Weekly Standard you can pretty much figure out who we can to expect to go to war with in the next eighteen months.

    If I want the mainstream narrative, I can come here and get scolded by RobertF and StuartB, numo on gender issues.

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  21. You know what I just realized?

    There is no difference between “independent fundamentalist baptist” and “evangelical free”. It means the same thing and is the exact same thing, but with better window dressing.

    Who needs a day to celebrate evil and horror when you grow up independent efree fundygelical. Every day is a living terror.

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  22. Yep. Maybe it’s a marketing ploy, maybe it’s legit. Whatever the case, some folks get to enjoy a day off that they normally wouldn’t. And not just any day, but a phenomenally hectic one.

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  23. –> “I have heard it suggested that…”

    Boy, if that isn’t a great way to make an accusation without any hard data…

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  24. It’s not music monday, but from last night’s Colbert, Ghost performing live on american tv for the first time! Love this band, their new album is easily Album of the Year so far for me.

    so many ironies at work here too. A swedish metal band performing theatre dressed up as the “anti-catholic church”, performing on a show hosted by a catholic sunday school teacher…it’s awesome.

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  25. Sure, but this tends to be a Protestant focused blog. The RCC sure does have a lot of money, and centuries to amass it.

    One key difference though is how it’s an organization versus a person doing the amassing. I distrust when one single person accumulates so much wealth all in their name. It’s easier I guess to tolerate if it’s an organization, especially with centuries of practice.

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  26. You mean if my ox throws a shoe, it’s the devil keeping me from attending the church gathering, and if the Roman government forces me to put a new shoe on the ox, it’s persecution for my beliefs?

    Good Lord, I’m going to have to tell everyone. Spead the word, we’re being unfairly persecuted for our beliefs! I got cold the other night too and I could have died…quick, tell the world, they are killing us here!!

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  27. I would applaud a church to have a room after the Jesus room for those of us who have been damaged and recovering from Jesus and Christianity.

    Welcome…to the room of the Nones and the Dones!!

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  28. As if Fox News is the one sole voice out there worth listening to. Or so they’ve convinced half the country to believe, if literally every other media outlet is “mainstream media” in the pocket of the DNC.

    Sola Fox News. Political inerrancy at it’s finest.

    This “shitty on a hilltop” mentality of being the sole voice in a world of evil/liberals really needs to fucking stop.

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  29. “No taxation without representation”.

    Which is rapidly being shortened to just those first two words, isn’t it?

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  30. I’m already getting sick of that meme going around facebook of “feel the bern” with some guy’s hand in my pocket pulling out money.

    Disgusting, dishonest lies.

    Oh, in other news, I may have burned some bridges this past week by going on a rant in a group text about how Trump is a clown and I’m supporting Planned Parenthood until people come up with a valid alternative and not just be rabid “abortion is bad mm’kay let’s defund PP” voters.

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  31. Sure. But like any ultimately meaningless gift, let’s let the employees and everyone enjoy the day off.

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  32. Isn’t it a little odd they call it the “Devil’s Holiday”, ie, the Devil’s Holy Day?

    Shouldn’t it be unholy day? or something?

    Because “for everything good there is an opposite evil”, or whatever that quote from The Omen is that is now FACT FACT FACT.

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  33. Properly and gramatically, it should be Jesuse’en, since the “een” part has been handed down to us from the archaic form “e’en” for “evening” – that is, the night before whatever day you’re indicating. And do remember to put the apostrophe in the proper place.

    That is all.

    Your Grammar Geek,
    Dana

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  34. dumb ox,

    You mean you’re not in favor of a flat tax that would benefit the already extremely wealthy the most? Communist!

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  35. So “JesusWeen” started out as a joke at the Landover Baptist joke website, and this time around it caught on and Christians are taking it seriously and running with it?

    No wonder all those Televangelists got so very very rich peddling snake oil and selling Brooklyn Bridges!

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  36. “Morals are for Men, not…GODS…”
    — First Star Trek pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”

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  37. I listened to a podcast (This American Life, maybe) that featured a story of an evangelical group that ran a Christian “resurrection” house as a counter to all the haunted housed. They had rooms of fake drug addicts, women having abortions, rape rooms, and other horrible things to show people where sin can lead. The last room, as My flawed memory recalls, was the Jesus room where they would try to evangelize people.

    So they call it a “Resurrection House” this time around?

    https://internetmonk.com/archive/thoughts-on-hell-house-an-evangelicalism-eager-to-leave

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  38. But it’s a one shot deal. They won’t be able to do it next year, if their motivation was publicity. The novelty will wear off. Let’s see next year if it was from the heart, or media attention-getting.

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  39. After all, staring tomorrow (after The Devil’s Holiday(TM)) the Culture War Mobilization for The War On Christmas begins. Oceania has always been at Peace with Eurasia/Halloween, Comrades.

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  40. +1…where is the indictment? Just the mishandling of classified documents alone should bring an indictment. It has to others of lower political stature.

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  41. Perhaps this is more to your liking. A friend of my wife, Rusty Banks, who I’ve had the privilege to hear perform in person on a number of occasions.

    He also composes:

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  42. If the Roman persecutions had been systematic and prolonged, the Church would not have survived. I think it actually was the relative peace of the Empire that gave Christianity a foothold; in the beginning, Christianity was not a fighting, or fighter’s, religion, and would not have survived the kind of circumstances, say, that Islam survived at its beginning. If Christianity learned to fight later, it was in service to Empire, which it considered an expression of God’s will in the secular realm; in other words, it was in obedience and service to the purposes of secular order, rather than God’s Kingdom or rule. That the two were so often confused and mixed does not entirely erase the theological distinction that made Christianity pacific in the beginning, and then obedient to the state’s need for violence later.

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  43. The Protestant Episcopal Church? If you’re talking about the Episcopal Church USA, aka The Episcopal Church (TEC), there’s not much wealth left to talk about, and what little there is is quickly bleeding away.

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  44. Y’know the other holiday to focus on the ween of our Lord, the Feast of the Circumcision, 1 January, is already celebrated with partying and costumes and balls dropping. We don’t need to turn All Hallows Eve into a second one.

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  45. As called out by one of the GOP candidates, they are doing their own rendition of “chicken in every pot”. What has Trump NOT promised conservatives? Or even Ben Carson for that matter. Entitlement is more than having money handed to you. Fundamentalism has transitioned from a ghetto culture to an entitled culture.

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  46. In the early centuries of our era, Christianity attracted many upper-class, well educated converts; these, when they were men, had enormous influence on their families and household servants (slaves), who would convert with them. Since none of this is any longer the case in our society, other methods are sought Many of them are questionable.

    In addition, the legend of Roman persecution is far bigger than the reality was. Persecutions tended to be local, episodic, short-lived. You could spend an entire lifetime as a Christian convert in many places in the Roman Empire without ever personally encountering persecution. The fact that so many converted in a relatively short period indicates that the culture was actually not all that hostile to Christianity, thought the authorities sometimes were, especially when members of the upper-class were going over in large numbers; Roman authorities tended not to care about the religious practices of slaves, so long as they did not interfere with the slaves’ function, and did not foment violent rebellion.

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  47. Most church programs are promoted to make the believers THINK that they are being evangelistic. In reality it is ONLY the believers who attend these things and NOT the intended target audience

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  48. I agree! It was great in its time, but Allman’s guitar work was mostly undisciplined, which was typical of that time frame. If he were still around hed either have matured or faded into irrelevance. Dying young will do that to you.

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  49. Robert F, I compliment you on your lack (almost) of partisanship. Now you know how Repubs felt with a choice between Barak Obama and John McCain. In the end it doesnt matter who runs because people usually vote (or just stay home) “party:” instaed of personality.

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  50. Those televangelists Haley Joel Osment sees have amassed a great deal of material wealth. But in fairness
    shouldn’t you also show and snarkily comment on the immense wealth of the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant Episcopal Church, etc.? All the stuff those televangelists possess, put together, are just a drop in the bucket in comparison.

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  51. It’s a sad thing that I may be forced to vote for someone whom I don’t trust, and for whom I have little respect. But what, exactly, will be my alternative? Trump? Carson? Or protest vote? It makes me sick.

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  52. I should’ve said:…the alacrity with which Hilary Clinton, and the rest of the Administration, threw the maker of that controversial film…

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  53. I don’t want to compare the debate with the investigation, but since you brought it up, I can clearly remember the alacrity with which the Administration, Hilary Clinton included, threw the maker of that controversial film (his and its name of I can’t recall [I won’t argue that it wasn’t controversial, and offensive, because it was]) to the wolves, blaming him for the incident that occurred at Benghazi. At its most innocent it would have been a shameful case of powerful people rushing to scapegoat a nobody in the cause of taking pressure off themselves; but it was actually worse than that, since Clinton, and no doubt others, knew from the get-go that the violence was not a spontaneous violent reaction to an offensive video, but a concerted, heavily armed attack. This is one of the reasons I will never trust her.

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  54. Well one thing did come from this last investigation, which is Hillary clearly lied and was not just mistaken when she told the public that the attack was a spontaneous response from a video. As for the debate and the questions, I’m all for tough questions, but questions that actually have to do with what they would try and do as president, what ideas they have for how the country should run, and specifics for how they would do it. I’m all for moderators pushing back on those ideas and bringing up potential pit falls and why some things may not work. But instead we mostly get moderators trying to pick a fight among the candidates or just make them look bad. I think it was Rubio, (but I’m not sure) that said the mainstream media is just another wing of the DNC, and he is right. People talk about Fox News like it is the only biased news organization, when NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and so on are all firmly in the democrat camp. Simply pointing out the truth of that situation is not whining, and why would you continue to do debates on networks that are determined to see you lose? Are the democrats going to have a debate hosted by Fox News?

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  55. Several years ago, I listened to a podcast (This American Life, maybe) that featured a story of an evangelical group that ran a Christian “resurrection” house as a counter to all the haunted housed. They had rooms of fake drug addicts, women having abortions, rape rooms, and other horrible things to show people where sin can lead. The last room, as My flawed memory recalls, was the Jesus room where they would try to evangelize people. Did it make people think? Maybe, but I’d guess it mostly made people think they’d want to stay far away from this church.

    Amazing to think the Christian church managed to gain a foothold in a culture that was against it without all these gimmicks, but just words & lives lived in accordance to those words.

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  56. What sticks out to me is that Hillary Clinton has already been grilled several times and nothing has come of it. I guess I would think it more legit if one of the GOP leaders hadn’t as much as afmitted it’s being done for show (McCarthy, I believe).

    I watched the whole debate. Some of the questions were kind of silly, although the Trump “cartoon version” question, as I recall, was framed more on the lines that some people are saying this about you so how do you respond. Being president is a tough job. Other world leaders, the press, the opposition, terrorists, and a whole lotta other people I can name won’t play nice and won’t be fair. You have to forge ahead nonetheless, not run away whining. Poverty and sickness aren’t fair, but we tell people (especially the poor) to buck up, work hard, and overcome. Shouldn’t our leaders do the same?

    Having that many people for a debate is unruly to start with, but these people are running for the highest office in the land. They should have the knowledge & maturity to moderate themselves. They didn’t.

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  57. That is like comparing apples to cucumbers. Hillary was being investigated for negligence and incompetence that resulted in the death of an ambassador and other Americans. Was it a political move? Yes. Does that mean she didn’t do anything wrong? No. You expect a person to be grilled in such a situation. The republican candidates were supposed to be in a debate, talking about policy and what they would do as president. They should have been grilled on those things. Instead of substantial questions dealing with policy and how they actually plan on putting their ideas, claims, and promises into action, they got questions like, “Are you running a cartoon version of a campaign?”

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  58. The true prophets of our age are not the media, not the talking heads, certainly not the televangelists… But the satirists.

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  59. Great Rambler and great music, too! “Sometimes I feel…like I’m tied to the whipping post! Oh Lord, I feel like I’m dying”

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  60. Thanks Duane, and Wilson, for the beautiful music:

    And thanks to God for all the Saints, who from their labors rest.

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  61. The Republicans never claimed to be impartial, now, did they? Did anyone expect anything different?

    I listened to a lot of the ”debate” and, yes, some of the questions were framed as editorials, accusations or scolds, but the content itself was valid. But remember, this whole stupid exercise is for the benefit of the Republicans, so the surly pushback from a few of them was good theater AND good for the candidates. Compared to the listless questioning on the Democratic side this was quite entertaining. Why are the Dems even putting out the effort? Everyone knows that Hillary is “The One”!

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  62. It was a great loss when Duane Allman died at such a young age. So much talent, so much artistic maturity, and still only in his early twenties! What wonders would we have heard if he’d lived into ripe old age? As a universalist, I trust that one day we will all get to hear his oeuvre flowering in eternity.

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  63. Republicans can grill Hilary for eleven hours then whine about unfair questions? Can’t they hear themselves speak in that echo chamber they live in?

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  64. REI rocks! They turned black Friday from a money-loser into a way to promote outdoor activity as well as their products! It’s breath-takingly brilliant! I’m just waiting for the Christmas nazis to turn a boycott against black Friday into yet another salvo in the war on Christmas. Oh, who cares! Way to go, REI!

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  65. I have heard it suggested that Kenneth Copeland is a drug smuggler. Certainly his private airport in Texas and murky finances would provide the ideal cover if he were.

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  66. “JesusWeen” was first proposed by Landover Baptist Church a few years ago. In fact, I think I recognize some of the illustrations from their website.

    Their Valentines Day campaign was even better. You were supposed to wear a valentine-shaped sticker inscribed with the name of Jesus. Their slogan: “I’ve got a heart on for Jesus!”

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