. . . bit at time is advice well taken
In so many instances
Such as food, strong spirits and love . . .
(from https://aeon.co/ideas/moderation-may-be-the-most-challenging-and-rewarding-virtue)
". . . Our political scene offers a clear sign of the little faith we seem to have in this virtue (moderation) without which, as John Adams memorably put it in 1776, ‘every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey’. . ."
(https://www.axios.com/10-quotes-from-trumps-speech-to-muslim-world-2416540167.html)
1. "We are adopting a principled realism ... Our friends will never question our support, and our enemies will never doubt our determination. ... [W]herever possible, we will seek gradual reforms – not sudden intervention."
2. "Our goal is a coalition of nations who share the aim of stamping out extremism and providing our children a hopeful future that does honor to God."
3. "We are not here to lecture — we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship. Instead, we are here to offer partnership."
4. "Every time a terrorist murders an innocent person, and falsely invokes the name of God, it should be an insult to every person of faith."
5. "But we can only overcome this evil if the forces of good are united and strong — and if everyone in this room does their fair share and fulfills their part of the burden."
6. "Terrorism has spread across the world. But the path to peace begins right here, on this ancient soil, in this sacred land."
7. "America is prepared to stand with you ... But the nations of the Middle East cannot wait for American power to crush this enemy for them."
8. "This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations. This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it.This is a battle between good and evil."
9. "That means honestly confronting the crisis of Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires. And it means standing together against the murder of innocent Muslims, the oppression of women, the persecution of Jews, and the slaughter of Christians."
10. "Religious leaders must make this absolutely clear: Barbarism will deliver you no glory — piety to evil will bring you no dignity. If you choose the path of terror, your life will be empty, your life will be brief, and your soul will be condemned."
I rarely read the www.cbsnews.com or other pop-ups that says things like "Top ten celebrities who take amazing brain pills" or other such nonsense, but, I did click on the link that was accompanied by a shot from the old 'Happy Days' television show that claims to list 24 'celebrities' (sic) who endorse the last-standing Republican nominee for President. Needless to say it produced nothing significant in surprise or knowledge. As a matter of fact, it only reinforced my opinion on the matter. I must say the list did include the name of one personality in whose integrity I had formerly held some faith and am now therefore . . . a little disappointed. That name, I'm sad to say, was Loretta Lynn. . .
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(from Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, translation by John E. Woods)
". . . We are lost. Which is to say: The war is lost, and that means more than a lost campaign, it means that we in fact are lost - lost, our cause and soul, our faith and our history. Germany is done for, or will be done for. AN unutterable collapse - economic, political, moral and spiritual -- in shor, an all-embracing collapse looms ahead. Not that I would have wished for what threatens us, for it is despair, it is madness. Not that I would have wished it, because my pity, my forlorn compassion, is far too deep for this unhappy nation; and when I think back ten years to its awakening and blind fervor, to the uprising that broke forth to break open and break down, to the new beginning that was to purify everything, to our popular and national rebirth, to that specious holy ecstasy, in which, to be sure, were mixed, as warning signed of its treachery, so much savage brutality and hulking vulgarity, so much obscene lust to violate, torture, humiliate, and which, as every sensible person knew, already bore war, this entire war within it . . . "
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(http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/jeb-bush-a-tolerant-country-should-allow-discrimination-based-upon-religious-beliefs/)
". . . In a sit-down interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network on Saturday, potential GOP presidential nominee Jeb Bush explained that a “tolerant country” should make room for “people of faith” to discriminate against others.
Speaking with host David Brody, the former Florida governor said, “It’s not just that people of faith can have their views, it’s that they need the space to act on their conscience. That is what faith is about.”
Saying the best of all religious beliefs is when people of faith act on their values to help others, Bush nonetheless defended the rights of those same people to deny “services” to people whose lifestyles they oppose.
Using the Washington florist who was sanctioned for refusing services to a gay customer as an example, Bush explained, “A big country, a tolerant country ought to be able to figure out the difference between discriminating against someone because of their sexual orientation, and not forcing someone to participate in a wedding that they find goes against their moral beliefs.” . . ."
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My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
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(from http://factcheck.org/2013/06/jeb-bush-gets-f-on-school-spending/)
Jeb Bush has repeatedly — and falsely — claimed that the United States spends “more per student than any country in the world.” Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland all spend more than the U.S. on elementary and secondary education.
The former Florida governor most recently made this claim at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority Conference, held on June 14 in Washington, D.C. At the conference, Bush spoke about the need to create sustainable economic growth and cited education (at the 15:23 mark) as the “greatest challenge our country faces.”
Bush, June 14: To me the greatest challenge our country faces is that 40 percent of our kids — truly, truly, honestly — 40 percent of our kids are college or career ready. And we spend more per student than any country in the world. That is not acceptable. Too many young people now have shattered dreams because they don’t have the skills to be successful.
Bush made a similar claim in an earlier interview with Newsmax TV (about 19 minutes into the video):
Bush, March 31: We have a third of our kids that don’t make it through the system, even though we spend more per student than any country in the world. And a lot of students could be doing college-level work by the time they’ve graduated from high school but in effect they’re held back because we have this adult-centered homogenized learning model.
We asked Bush spokeswoman Jaryn Emhof for information that would support the governor’s claim that the U.S. has the highest per-student expenditure rate. But the information she provided contradicted his claim.
(more from Christopher Hitchens circa 1998 http://www.american-buddha.com/material.high.htm)
". . .The Dalai Lama has come out in support of the thermonuclear tests recently conducted by the Indian state, and has done so in the very language of the chauvinist parties who now control that state's affairs. The "developed" countries, he says, must realize that India is a major contender and should not concern themselves with its internal affairs. This is a perfectly realpolitik statement, so crass and banal and opportunist that it would not deserve any comment if it came from another source.
"Think different," says the ungrammatical Apple Computer advertisement that features the serene visage of His Holiness. Among the untested assumptions of this billboard campaign is the widely and lazily held belief that "Oriental" religion is different from other faiths: less dogmatic, more contemplative, more ... transcendental. This blissful, thoughtless exceptionalism has been conveyed to the West through a succession of mediums and narratives, ranging from the pulp novel "Lost Horizon," by James Hilton (creator of Mr. Chips as well as Shangri-La), to the memoir "Seven Years in Tibet," by SS veteran Heinrich Harrer, prettified for the screen by Brad Pitt. China's foul conduct in an occupied land, combined with a Hollywood cult that almost exceeds the power of Scientology, has fused with weightless Maharishi and Bhagwan-type babble to create an image of an idealized Tibet and of a saintly god-king. So perhaps the Apple injunction to think differently is worth heeding.
The greatest triumph that modern PR can offer is the transcendent success of having your words and actions judged by your reputation, rather than the other way about. The "spiritual leader" of Tibet has enjoyed this unassailable status for some time now, becoming a byword and synonym for saintly and ethereal values. Why this doesn't put people on their guard I'll never know. But here are some other facts about the serene leader that, dwarfed as they are by his endorsement of nuclear weapons, are still worth knowing and still generally unknown.
Shoko Asahara, leader of the Supreme Truth cult in Japan and spreader of sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway, donated 45 million rupees, or about 170 million yen (about $1.2 million), to the Dalai Lama and was rewarded for his efforts by several high-level meetings with the divine one.
Steven Seagal, the robotic and moronic "actor" who gave us "Hard to Kill" and "Under Siege," has been proclaimed a reincarnated lama and a sacred vessel or "tulku" of Tibetan Buddhism. This decision, ratified by Penor Rinpoche, supreme head of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, was initially received with incredulity by Richard Gere, who had hitherto believed himself to be the superstar most favored. "If someone's a tulku, that's great," he was quoted as saying. "But no one knows if that's true." How insightful, if only accidentally. At a subsequent Los Angeles appearance by the Dalai Lama, Seagal was seated in the front row and Gere two rows back, thus giving the latter's humility and submissiveness a day at the races. Suggestions that Seagal's fortune helped elevate him to the Himalayan status of tulku are not completely discounted even by some adepts and initiates.
Supporters of the Dorge Shugden deity -- a "Dharma protector" and an ancient object of worship and propitiation in Tibet -- have been threatened with violence and ostracism and even death following the Dalai Lama's abrupt prohibition of this once-venerated godhead. A Swiss television documentary graphically intercuts footage of His Holiness, denying all knowledge of menace and intimidation, with scenes of his followers' enthusiastically promulgating "Wanted" posters and other paraphernalia of excommunication and persecution.
While he denies being a Buddhist "Pope," the Dalai Lama is never happier than when brooding in a celibate manner on the sex lives of people he has never met. "Sexual misconduct for men and women consists of oral and anal sex," he has repeatedly said in promoting his book on these matters. "Using one's hand, that is sexual misconduct." But, as ever with religious stipulations, there is a nutty escape clause. "To have sexual relations with a prostitute paid by you and not by a third person does not constitute improper behavior." Not all of this can have been said just to placate Richard Gere, or to attract the royalties from "Pretty Woman."
I have talked to a few Dorge Shugden adherents, who seem sincere enough and who certainly seem frightened enough, but I can't go along with their insistence on the "irony" of all this. Buddhism can be as hysterical and sanguinary as any other system that relies on faith and tribe. Lon Nol's Cambodian army was Buddhist at least in name. Solomon Bandaranaike, first elected leader of independent Sri Lanka, was assassinated by a Buddhist militant. It was Buddhist-led pogroms against the Tamils that opened the long and disastrous communal war that ruins Sri Lanka to this day. The gorgeously named SLORC, the military fascism that runs Burma, does so nominally as a Buddhist junta. I have even heard it whispered that in old Tibet, that pristine and contemplative land, the lamas were the allies of feudalism and unsmilingly inflicted medieval punishments such as blinding and flogging unto death.
Yet the entire Western mass media is uncritically at the service of a mere mortal who, at the very least, proclaims the utter nonsense of reincarnation and who affirms the sinister if not indeed crazy belief that death is but a stage in a grand cycle of what appears to be futility and subjection. What need, then, to worry about nuclear weaponry, or sectarian frenzy, or the sale of indulgences to men of the stamp of Steven Seagal? "Harmony" will doubtless kick in. During his visit to Beijing, our sentimental Baptist hypocrite of a president turned to his dictator host, recommended that he meet with the Dalai Lama and assured him that the two of them would get on well. That might easily turn out to be the case. Both are very much creatures of the material world. . . "
No one could make discussion of religion as entertaining as Christopher Hitchens. . .
(from JON WIENER, TRUTHDIG, CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS at http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/1249)
". . . Wiener: Let's talk about the U.S. Polls show that 94 per cent of Americans believe in God, and 89 per cent believe in heaven; of those, three-fourths think they will go to heaven, but only 2 per cent think they will go to hell. This seems laughable, but what's the harm in people believing they will go to heaven after they die—and see their mothers there?
Hitchens: All you have to do is promise them 72 virgins, and they'll kill to get there. That's what's wrong with it, along with the fact that it's a solipsistic delusion. And the spreading of delusion in the end isn't a good thing, because credulous and deluded people are easy to exploit. People arise who are aware of that fact.
If belief in heaven was private, like the tooth fairy, I'd say fine. But tooth fairy supporters don't come around to your house and try to convert you. They don't try to teach your children stultifying pseudo-science in school. They don't try to prevent access to contraception. The religious won't leave us alone. These are not just private delusions, they're ones they want to inflict on other people.
If religion were true, there would be no need for politics; you'd only need to have faith.
Wiener: The final killer argument of your critics is that Hitler and Stalin were not religious. The worst crimes of the 20th century did not have a religious basis. They came from political ideology.
Hitchens: That's easy. Hitler never abandoned Christianity and recommends Catholicism quite highly in "Mein Kampf." Fascism, as distinct from National Socialism, was in effect a Catholic movement.
Wiener: What about Stalin? He wasn't religious.
Hitchens: Stalin—easier still. For hundreds of years, millions of Russians had been told the head of state should be a man close to God, the czar, who was head of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as absolute despot. If you're Stalin, you shouldn't be in the dictatorship business if you can't exploit the pool of servility and docility that's ready-made for you. The task of atheists is to raise people above that level of servility and credulity. No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine. . . "
(http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/columnists/joe-bennett/8324052/Meteor-message-for-unbelievers%5C) by Joe Bennett An amazing thing happened in Switzerland last weekend during the annual Peace and Light Symposium. This inter-faith conference, renowned for its catering, had attracted leaders from every major belief system. Top of this year's agenda was the Russian meteor. All the theologians except the Archimandrite of Easter Island had seen it on television and were frightfully excited.
At the plenary session, held in the Davos Convention Centre, the Peace and Light Moderator told journalists that despite two days of commitment to the gravy train, the thinkers had been unable to reach a consensus on the meaning of the meteor. So the various factions would present their conclusions separately.
First to step to the microphone was a mullah, gravely wiping crumbs of strawberry gateau from his beard. "God is not mocked," he said. "And neither are his faithful followers. So when a member of the New Zealand Parliament chooses to denounce all 2 billion of us as misogynist troglodytes from Wogistan, it is hardly surprising that He should choose to express his wrath meteorically."
A journalist interrupted to ask why the meteor should have been biffed at Russia rather than New Zealand, but the mullah was not fazed. "Do you have any idea where New Zealand is?" he asked.
The journalist shook his head and conceded the point.
Next up was a cardinal from Omen Dei (De Imaginis in Pane Immolatis), the powerful Vatican committee for the interpretation of portents, cloud shapes and pieces of toast burnt with the image of the Virgin. "With all due respect to my friend the mullah," he began in Latin, "God could hardly have spoken more clearly. In the same week as the Holy Father resigns, whoompha. Coincidence? I don't think so. Our Almighty has a long history of communicating through celestial show, and this meteor is a clear warning to the Russian Orthodox church and other eastern schismatics. Now is the time for them to renounce their heresy and to return to the one true mother church. And I am assured by the Vatican Bank Enforcement Division that a suitable accommodation can be reached with regard to centuries of unpaid . . . "
"Poppycock," exclaimed a small man, leaping to his feet and shrugging off a straitjacket in what looked like a practised manoeuvre. He grabbed the cardinal by the chasubles and flung him into the wings, to applause from the Eastern Orthodox churches.
Seizing the microphone the little man glared at the gathering with eyes that swivelled independently. "As president of the Mayan Calendar Straw Clutchers I am thrilled to announce the imminent end of the world. We were right, you were wrong, so suck on that, sceptics."
"Wasn't it meant to be December?" shouted a journalist.
"What's a few months in an 18,000-year calendar cycle?" bellowed the little man with glee. "We're talking stone-age people here. They didn't have digital calculators, you know. We're all going to die."
"I refuse to share a stage with a doom-saying poltroon," exclaimed a Texan Baptist, rising to his enormous feet.
"Not so fast, big boy," exclaimed the swivel-eyed Mayan. "All of you have got a doomsday scenario, same as we have. Fire, brimstone, rapture, apocalyptic horses and so on. We're just the only ones prepared to put a date on it."
But the Texan had seized his chair and was advancing on the little man with obvious intent. Other divines rose to their feet, shouting. An ecclesiastical donnybrook seemed seconds away, with the journos cheering them on. The Archbishop of Canterbury squealed "No violence, please, I beg you," but no one paid him the least attention, which made him feel at home. But then just as the Texan raised the chair above his head there came a mighty crack and the roof of the convention centre split asunder.
The divines fell to their knees as one and gawped in awestruck silence. Above them lay the sweep of the cosmos in the form of a limitless multi-dimensional skittle alley. Meteorites by the billion criss-crossed the alley at dizzying speed.
And as their eyes grew used to the darkness of forever, the clerics made out a huge dim figure hunched in the heart of the cosmos, launching the meteorites arbitrarily into space like intergalactic bowling balls. And though the figure had neither ears to hear with, nor yet eyes to see with, whenever a meteorite struck a celestial body, wiping out a race of dinosaurs here, a whole planet there, a huge and eerie cackle rang through the reaches of eternity.
"Gosh," said the Archimandrite of Easter Island, reaching for an anchovy sandwich.
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That damned Fiscal Cliff fellow just won't go away. Who to believe? Boehner and his camp have not instilled me with great faith. I prefer the perspective of the other side, but why don't the DO SOMETHING??? Maybe it's time for something drastic???
Christmas is coming. The geese are getting fat. (At least that's how the song goes.) The sooner it arrives the sooner it will be gone. The epitome of capitalism, is it not?
Korea wants to prove how far their missiles can go. Worrisome?
Warm weather for a couple of days in the east. A tease from Mother Nature. Can't fool me though.
It's winter.
Music remains abundant soothing this savage breast and maketh all things good again. . . well. . . at least BETTER!
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