The Thomas Chronicles

Chorus:

“What’s the Buzz, Tell me what’s a-happening?”
“What’s the Buzz, Tell me what’s a-happening?”
“When do we arrive in Jerusalem?”

Jesus:

Why should you want to know? Why are you obsessed with fighting times and fates you can’t defy? If you knew the path we’re riding you’d understand it less than I.

Today’s modern political landscape can be summarized in this one song from Jesus Christ Superstar. In the musical, everyone dances around Jesus demanding to know what is to happen next. If He is the promised Messiah, when will He drive the Romans from Israel? From top to bottom, everyone from Caiaphas of the Pharisees to the Apostles to Pontius Pilate to Judas thought Jesus was sent for political gain…

And therein lies the tragedy… then as now.

In our tumultuous times, with the madness of the world spreading to almost every possible avenue of human interaction— one cannot even have a politically neutral conversation anymore. The recent spat over the movie 300 is just another example how politically charged everything has become.

The movie, in of itself, is not partisan toward anything, but was a celebration of valor. Deride that how you will, but it is, essentially, politically neutral. The movie, however, is not spiritually neutral. Anyone with a lick of understanding of Biblical prophecies of the End Times would recognize Xerxes as the anti-Christ, who demands above all things to be worshiped as a god-king to the destruction of souls…

All the political bickering here in the states can make one very cynical and very fast. But we are to hope and hope unto the very end… until His return. In my opinion, this could be fifty to a hundred years off… maybe within my lifetime should I live so long.

The fact that I love my country and would love for it stand resolute in the end does not mean I would have it survive at any cost. For me, there is a point I will not cross, even for my love of America.

My answer would be the answer of Spencer Tracy’s Judge Dan Haywood in Judgment at Nuremberg:

There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the “protection” of the country. Of “survival”. The answer to that is: survival as what? A country isn’t a rock. And it isn’t an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the world - let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we stand for: justice, truth… and the value of a single human being!

I’m taking a brief break. I’ve just got my wisdom teeth yanked from me, so I’m not quite all here, y’know?

Here’s an interesting “What if” scenario. What would happen if Obama and Hillary cancel each other out?

Hillary has enough baggage chained to her that just by the mere act of dragging it would create an arroyo. And Obama. Well, what about Obama? He doesn’t stand for anything. He isn’t for anything except cutting and running from Iraq. Oh, and he’s also for hope.

Obama with all his smoothness has always enjoyed the comfort of being the “anointed one”. He says nothing, poses for all the cameras, and occasionally declares himself for optimism and hope. The media has always treated him with kid-gloves. If anyone questioned him, he would fire back, as he did with Hillary Clinton, that the question was racially motivated; thereby, silencing all debate.

Obama’s just a great unknown, and he certainly hasn’t been scrutinized by the American people to any degree that would make him plausible as President; i.e. the most powerful man in the world. Who knows what’s going to be dragged out from the past?

Both these candidates are time-bombs waiting to go off.

On the GOP side, we have Guiliani and McCain. More and more, McCain doesn’t look like his heart is in the race. He’s getting up there in age, and, God bless him, it almost seems as though he’s running for President more out of a sense of duty than anything. I don’t see him as a serious candidate at all.

Guiliani, on the other hand, is a serious candidate, but can he overcome all his previous inclination toward a liberal philosophy of government? Guiliani is liberal on gay rights, liberal on the border and liberal many social services. He’s hardly the typical laissez-faire politician from the GOP.

The question is, can he overcome all these things to take the Republican nomination?

Also, Guiliani has had a checkered past that could come back to haunt him. I mean, him caught dressing in drag on YouTube doesn’t quite endear him to the homophobic Right-Wing elements of the Republican Party.

But what if all this doesn’t matter?

What if Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama rip each other apart, as Dick Morris predicts, and in the process damage each other so thoroughly as to void them from being serious contenders for the Presidency? Who would step into the power vacuum then?

Edwards? Are you kidding?

I can only think of one person then who would be able to. That’s Al “Eco-savior” Gore. He’s already ahead of the polls on the Leftist side, Hollywood adores him and he certainly has name recognition. The only problem at this point is he’s not running… yet.

Believe it or not, Eco-Gore, that master of hubris and condescension has a very real chance at winning the Democratic nomination if he chooses to run.

Also, what if Guiliani becomes pegged as too liberal for the Republican ticket, and McCain drops out due to lack of support? Who would step into vacuum there?

Mitt Romney? Not bloody likely. His numbers are too low and his record is like an albatross around his neck. Although people deny it, being a Mormon hurts his candidacy more than anything. (I mean, really, a religion that declares humans to be potential gods is well… disturbing. Even more disturbing is the Mormon claim that our God is just a former human and is one of many gods. Like or not, I don’t think a man professing ardent belief in this faith should be in the White House— a human “god” in control of thousands of hydrogen bombs? That’s not Politically Correct, but as Christian this does not sit well with me.)

How about Newt Gingrich? Nyet. He also has too much baggage. The recent flare about his adultery while Speaker of the House, which occurred simultaneously with his impeachment hearings of Bill Clinton for doing the same thing, also does not endear him to the American people.

The only person I can think of that can mount a credible run for President if Guiliani and McCain fall by the wayside is Fred Thompson. He has a solid conservative voting record. He’s articulate, has name recognition and he obviously knows how to work the camera… the only thing is, not much is known nationally about him; only that he’s on Law and Order.

It’s way too early to tell where the cat’s gonna jump. For the moment, I’m for Guiliani. He’s a straight-shooter and I think I can trust him to make the right decisions because of his character.

Senator Barack Obama’s campaign just hit a speed bump yesterday in the form of an anonymously created YouTube video. The video showed mindless people with shaved heads staring with glazed-eyed worship at an enormous video screen. On the screen, was a large, disembodied head of Hillary Clinton spouting her platitudes.

Here’s an example from the video:

“I’ve been really impressed by how serious people are because we all need to be part of the discussion if we’re all going to be part of the solution. I don’t want people who already agree with me. I want honest, serious hardworking, patriotic people who want to be part of a team. The American Team.”

This says precisely nothing except that she wants your votes…

Watch out for Big MOMMA!

For about two weeks, folks of the Leftward persuasion tried to spin this video by tagging it as part of Hillary Clinton’s recently resurrected “vast right-wing conspiracy”. Almost everybody knows this entire idea is a joke. SWAG is what it is: Simple Wild-Ass Guessing. But that doesn’t stop some folks from believing the worse possible interpretation of their conservative counterparts.

ABC’s Claire Shipman said this on Tuesday’s edition of Good Morning America: “Robin, the ultimate conspiracy theory, some Democrats think a Republican operative could be responsible because it not only makes Hillary Clinton look bad but Barack Obama look bad, since it’s an attack ad.”

Robin Roberts glibly responded with this nudge, nudge, wink, wink to the viewer: “Something to think about.”

Then AP revealed yesterday who was the culprit, the creator this attack ad: Philip de Vellis, “who previously worked at a company with connections to Sen. Barack Obama.” Obama, however, has denied having anything at all to do with this ad. (de Vellis’s

Yesterday, Obama’s campaign released this statement:

“The Obama campaign and its employees had no knowledge and had nothing to do with the creation of the ad. We were notified this evening by a vendor of ours, Blue State Digital, that an employee of the company had been involved in the making of this ad. Blue State Digital has separated ties with this individual and we have been assured he did no work on our campaign’s account.”

Let me get this straight. Blue State Digital who employed de Vellis is on Obama’s payroll. One of Blue State Digital’s founders, Joe Rospars, now work for Obama’s campaign as director of new media. And the “lone gunman” theory is now being pressed; that is, de Vellis said he worked alone from his home computer and uploaded it onto YouTube.

If there was no wrong doing, and this fella did this attack ad on his own time, why should he be fired? Actually, we don’t know whether or not he was fired. One report said “he had been “terminated” pursuant to company policy.” de Vellis himself said he “resigned”.

However, the idea that de Vellis did this from his home computer, which suggested a low tech production with the limited resources of just one individual, is contradicted by Mr. Barack Obama himself.

He told Larry King Monday, “Frankly, given what it looks like, we don’t have the technical capacity to create something like this, … It’s pretty extraordinary.”

You smell somethin’ fishy? I do. The truth probably lies somewhere in this morass of muddled contradictions. I’m just not sure I want to find out what it is.

So much for a positive campaign…

Related Posts:

Michelle Malkin: Anti-Hillary YouTuber confesses
Say Anything: Check out the Anti Hillary Ad
The Hotline: What de Vellis? Obama Consulting Firm Employee Made The Act
TruthDig: Clinton ‘1984’ Ad Creator (Loosely) Linked to Obama
Mary Katharine Ham: The Greatest Mystery of Our Time is Solved

The Justice Department Pseudo-Controversy

Are the Democrats ready to have a full-on Constitutional battle over the firing of 8 District Attorneys? More and more, they’re using the thin pretext of this concocted scandal to commit a frontal assault on the Office of the Presidency. Apparently, they were dismayed attacking the President through the War Powers Act. Instead the Democrat controlled Congress is trying to emasculate the Presidency by limiting the Executive authority to hire and fire people; thereby, eroding the power of the Executive Branch.

There is no getting around the fact that the President needs people he can trust around him to execute his policies. Is he supposed to have people undermine him all the time? How can anyone govern effectively like that?

Perhaps I’m over reacting. For the moment we’re only talking about District Attorneys, but the Democrats are blowing this up to a full-blown scandal when there has been no wrongdoing. So a few folks got the can. Big freakin’ deal. I see it all the time in the corporate world.

I don’t know much about the nuances of the law here. Perhaps on a technicality, maybe Gonzales acted inappropriately. But for the House to use its power of subpoena dig up some dirt on the President through his proxies… this just reeks of a glutton’s thirst for power.

Am I missing something here? Who knows? Maybe our honorable Congress is acting from real principles and convictions.

What do you think, dear Constant Reader?

Viruses and Life on Mars

Last night, some friends and I watched the introduction to Stephen King’s mini-series, “The Stand”. I know it probably offends an author’s vanity for someone to say that his best work occurred close to 40-odd years ago, but I don’t think much of his other works reach this level (I haven’t read them all yet).

Sorry, Mr. King, if you’re reading this (Yeah, right. Like he’d be reading my blog.), but I think you’ve hit on a concept with “The Stand” that would be really difficult to rival.

During the course of the show, we paused to discussed the fact that we don’t really know what a virus is. What? you might ask. People die of it every day, every minute across the globe.

Yep. Strange but true. These floating bundles of joy are exponentially smaller than a cell of bacteria, and they kill millions of people a year. And on occasions, their rampages across the globe make the antics of Hitler and Stalin and Mao pantywaists in comparison.

The Black Death… The Spanish Flu… Smallpox… Malaria… Chickenpox… The Marburg Virus…

All these deaths and sickness so ingrained into the human experience… and we can’t even tell if these things are alive!

We’re using science to answer a fundamentally metaphysical question: What is life?

Dovetailing into this quandary is all our excitement over the past decade over possible life on Mars. Every now and again, the History Channel has a special on possible life on Mars and lays out the “evidence”. (Yes, I said the History Channel. They couldn’t be bothered with real history, since they prefer being commercial spokesmen for tracters, toilets and beer. I mean, really, what does the history of the screwdriver have to do with anything? I get more history from the Discovery Channel. But I digress…)

The one simple question that’s never asked is: what is life? We’ve got to know what it is to identify it, right? We don’t even know what a virus is and it’s been killing us before history was written.

Curiosities and Paradoxes

Is it just me or does time seem to run a bit faster nowadays? Years feel like months. Months weeks. Weeks days. And days like hours.

On the one hand, the proliferation of all these personal powerful computing devices— PC’s, BlackBerries, Cellphones, and some MP3 players with more hard drive memory than my laptop— has made life much less labor intensive. Jobs that used to require three or four people to do would now require one person. Some jobs, most notably manufacturing jobs, now only require a few people on the assembly floor and a technician to manage all the robots. (Yes, folks. The loss of manufacturing jobs is not all outsourcing. Most of it is because of ROBOTS. You ever seen the assembly floor of a candy factory? More machine than man.)

Other the other hand, in tandem with all these new-fangled devices, people are moving increasingly faster and faster to the point of madness. The five minutes you saved by using your cellphone instead of running to the nearest pay phone you now spend rushing to your next appointment. The twenty minutes you saved by placing your presentation on your laptop rather than on a piece of cardboard now enables you to cram into your schedule two more appointments to your day.

Gee, how wonderful…

It’s like these things grease the skids into an ever manic existence.

A couple of generations ago, my friend’s grandfather stared at the ass of an ox for 16 hours a day at the end of a plow. With the time left over, he memorized the Bible, all of Shakespeare’s works, all the Federalist Papers, and the entire U.S. Constitution. He also raised his kids and read them to sleep each night; that is, after he checked their homework. All this and it was such a slower world.

The upside of this is that these trends seem to be cresting and is on the decline. I observe people starting to slow down. Perhaps sanity will follow.

Related Post:

ShrinkWrapped: Be careful what you wish for
Current World News: Virus Outbreak Sickened Over 150 Prison Guards and Inmates!
World History Blog: Planet of the Apes on the History Channel?

I ran across this Kipling poem a few years back. Then, as now, this poem has been a source of solace for me. The poignancy of this poem is augmented by the fact that Kipling was British and that he was one of the last men that championed the ethics of the British Empire of “God, King and Country”.

THE CHOICE

1917

The American Spirit speaks:

To the Judge of Right and Wrong
With Whom fulfilment lies
Our purpose and our power belong,
Our faith and sacrifice.

Let Freedom’s land rejoice!
Our ancient bonds are riven;
Once more to use the eternal choice
Of Good or Ill is given.

Not at a little cost,
Hardly by prayer or tears,
Shall we recover the road we lost
In the drugged and doubting years.

But, after the fires and the wrath,
But, after searching and pain,
His Mercy opens us a path
To live with ourselves again.

In the Gates of Death rejoice!
We see and hold the good—
Bear witness, Earth, we have made our choice
For Freedom’s brotherhood!

Then praise the Lord Most High
Whose Strength hath saved us whole,
Who bade us choose that the Flesh should die
And not the living Soul!

To the God in Man displayed—
Where’er we see that Birth,
Be love and understanding paid
As never yet on earth!

To the Spirit that moves in Man,
On Whom all worlds depend,
Be Glory since our world began
And service to the end!

It’s been an unsurprisingly busy morning. Work comes in avalanches on Wednesdays. First, a trickle. Then a stream. Then a deluge.

More posts to come in a bit…