Pastor Peters On Harry Potter

Pastor Peter shares words of wisdom and compassion in this essay about Harry Potter, as the final movie arrives to the screen.

We need to listen to him, and a crucial point he has to make about our culture:

It is not the Harry Potter story I want to talk about but how different this story is from so much that children have around them. Their hunger for the books and the movies only shows what kind of things they lack and their hunger for them.

They live in a world filled with temptation and evil, with short cuts and easy paths. They live in a world filled with disappointments and are easily disillusioned by the failures of those whom they depend upon. They live in a world filled with loneliness and emptiness and their lives are solitary even with all the techno toys that would appear to keep them connected. They live in a world filled with the moment and they feel acutely the pressure to fill that moment, to be doing something all the time, to do several things at the same time, lest the moment pass and they have not used it to the fullest. They live in a world of facts, not fantasy, of play that mirrors real life in often brutal ways (video games). They live in a world of adults and this adulthood is thrust upon them before they have even learned to be a child, to play as a child, to live carefree as a child. They live in a world in which families are broken and wounded and these hurts are passed on to the children and multiplied as families divide.

Is it no wonder they might be captivated by a story of selflessness and sacrifice, of love that is truly willing to bear with and bear for the other?

This is a wonderful essay. Grandparents, pass this to your kids. Parents, pass it along to your fellow parents.

The House Republicans Finally Decide To Play Offense

From Politico:

House GOP leaders will allow a vote on a popular conservative plan to cut spending, balance the budget and put a cap on overall federal spending, the latest Republican attempt to lay down their marker in the debt ceiling debate.

The Friday morning announcement, which was made in a meeting open to only Republican lawmakers, won praise from rank and file conservatives, but it’s not the breakthrough deal that will solve the debt ceiling crisis. The proposal has little chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate.

President Teleprompter continues to BS-BS-BS/Blame-Blame-Blame, anything but actually lead...

Finally, the House GOP might be finding its spine...or not.

Sign Of The Time: Britney Spears Nashville Appearance Tickets On Groupon Discount

OS is enjoying a brief gloat over this one...

Here's hoping for a unbroken string of appearances that don't recoup, and a looong, peaceful and sober retirement for Miss Spears. There are, after all, a couple of kids to raise.

If You Put A Narcissistic Child In Charge, You Get...

...King Obama, throwing a hissy-fit when confronted with reality.

From Politico:

President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of a stormy debt-limit meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday, a dramatic setback to the already shaky negotiations.

“He shoved back and said ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ and walked out,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters in the Capitol after the meeting.

President Teleprompter got hiz pantiez-in-a-wad when Rep. Cantor interrupted his long BS discourses, and aides asserted Mr. Cantor had not been sufficiently...deferential.

Who knew Cantor was expected to kiss the presidential ring in order to enter the Presence of Himself?

Adult conversation, anyone?

The Last Ditch Shares The Funny Of The Day

Link is here, a short, wry comment on the degradation of language that has led us to this present impasse.

OS, meanwhile, will turn his attentions to The Open Championship.

Live feed is on that site, as well as PGA.com and Facebook. Satellite TV feed features four channels. OS is watching the UK feed, since the ESPN staff feels compelled to chatter and gossip endlessly. They think the event is about them, poor boys.

Unintended Consequences: The Sister Wives Challenge Bigamy Laws

It had to happen, ya'll, sooner or later. It actually happened a bit sooner than OS expected.

The latest episode in Sister Wives is playing out in the courtroom, not on cable. On Wednesday, the Brown family — the husband, four wives, and 16 children who star in the reality TV show — plans to file a lawsuit in federal court in Utah. The family members say the state's anti-bigamy law is unconstitutional and that Supreme Court precedent backs them up.

Kody Brown and his family made their television debut on Sept. 26, 2010. "I'm a polygamist," said Brown. "But we're not the polygamists you think you know."

Brown and his four wives knew they were taking a risk when they signed the deal with the network TLC. But Robyn Brown, wife No. 4, told viewers they wanted to make a point.

"It's OK for us to live this way, honestly," she said. "I'm sorry — but this is a nation of freedom of choice. We should have this choice, and I want my kids to know that."

Where have we heard Wife Number Four's assertion before? Most recently, in the push for the legalization of marriage between persons of the same gender, if memory serves.

There were those who raised the question: If we legalize same-gender marriage, yea-verily give it societal blessing, what prevents the bigamist from making the same argument, and demanding legalization of multiple-wife marriages? Hmmm...

What if, for instance, a pimp with ordination papers is able to marry multiple wives, employing them as he sees fit in a culture that decriminalizes prostitution?

The potential for abuse grows alarmingly, does it not?

What if one of those wives, with a child or two, decides that hooking for hubby is a really bad life? What does the divorce look like, and property and custody arrangements flowing therefrom? What if the pimp decides he wishes to wed both men and women? What if hubby, or one of the other spouses, engages in criminal behavior? How does marital privilege apply?

What if all this is OK in New York, but not recognized in Oklahoma, and one of the escapee wives decides to escape with the kids back home to Lawton? Do the marshals come to arrest her, and take the kids back to the pimp-husband?

Think about the culture in which we now live, and ask if these scenarios are far-fetched.

On and on it goes. OS fears we have truly opened Pandora's Box. Bigamy laws serve to protect women and children from predatory men, and to clarify distribution of assets in the event of death or divorce. They create a bit of order in a disorderly world.

One man, married to one woman at a time. Period. A clear, easily-verified, unequivocal definition of marriage.

There is a true leap between the passive acceptance of 'ways of life other than our own', and active endorsement of them in the law. Having made that leap, we are about to discover what life looks like in this new world.

OS is not certain we will be happy with it.

One Way Or Another, The Free Money Is Going Away

Even the Yew Nork Times, who never saw a wealth 'redistribution' it didn't approve of, is admitting it:

Close to $2 of every $10 that went into Americans’ wallets last year were payments like jobless benefits, food stamps, Social Security and disability, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. In states hit hard by the downturn, like Arizona, Florida, Michigan and Ohio, residents derived even more of their income from the government.

By the end of this year, however, many of those dollars are going to disappear, with the expiration of extended benefits intended to help people cope with the lingering effects of the recession. Moody’s Analytics estimates $37 billion will be drained from the nation’s pocketbooks this year.

Allllll that economic growth we were promised by The Stimulus, The Bailouts, The Deficits, and both Summers Of Recovery....well, somehow it didn't arrive on time.

Some other states will also feel a disproportionate loss of income unless hiring revives. In Florida, where nearly 476,000 people are collecting unemployment benefits, employers have added only 11,200 jobs in the last year. In Michigan, employers have added about 40,000 jobs since May 2010, but about 267,000 people are claiming jobless benefits.

Greg Mankiw Calls It a 'Disappointing Recovery'

Really, that's what he said. He has the economics degrees and teaches at Harvard, so he knows some things, and this is not an effort to ridicule the gentleman.

But, then again, OS looks at the chart Dr. Mankiw published, shared below, and asks:

What recovery? What would a non-recovery look like on the chart? This looks like the behavior of a semi-deflated basketball, dropped on the gym floor from the balcony.

At what point do even the folks who live in the Harvard bubble look at reality and decide they've had enough of Obama, Pelosi and Reid? What level of suffering, in what proximity to Cambridge, Massachusetts will be required? What will the tipping point be?
(And, for all you tin-foil-hat types out there, just to be certain, this is not OS's oblique call for some nutter to do violent things to Harvard. No, no, no, no, no.)

Quote Of The Day: Thousands Line Up For A Shot A Job With Ford In Louisville

They line up in the rain, to fill out an application, which might be chosen in a lottery, which will lead to an initial screening for one of 1800 jobs Ford will add in Louisville, that is, 1800 less the ones they fill with UAW members already waiting in the wings.

And that quote:

“How can the wealthiest country in the world have people that are so desperate?” said Gary Wise, the employment office’s operations administrator, as he watched people fill out paperwork in the rain.

Thank you Mr. Obama, for the Hope 'n Change.

This is your economy, not George Bush's.

It's Open Week, And Life Is Good

OS firmly contends that the best sport ever granted to mankind by a loving Providence is golf, for a looong list of reasons, the first of which is that civility is the first rule of conduct. No trash-talking on the tees, no A-Rod pretending to apply a tag and suckering an umpire. Players call penalties on themselves. No elbows to the face, no fistfights clearing the benches. Everybody (except maybe the senior players) keeps their teeth. Clowns like John Daley find themselves uninvited. Idiots like Tiger Woods have to behave if they ever intend to continue.

Very few injuries on the order of blown knees, concussions, broken limbs. No bleeding to staunch, and golf can be played well into old age. OS played one of the best rounds of his life in a party with a 80+ year-old retired PGA player. The old guy was spry and limber, and played bogey golf on a tough course off the blue tees.

If our culture reflected more of those values, we might just be better off.

The Open Week is the best week of the sport every year.

Here's the link to the tournament site.

Here's the link to the Royal and Ancient, who sponsor the tournament. If anybody is looking for a great cause to participate in, the R & A is a great place to begin.