God and Man at Work

Calvinism as an operating rule! In the US this is true, but most folk don't even recognize it in themselves. This article captures it:

..This myth comes out of the theology of our Puritan past, a theology which said that God's chosen will be known by their worldly success. Anyone who is less than successful is damned in God's eyes.

This is one of the factors which has made us so fascinated by wealth and celebrity, and one of the reasons that many Americans think that wealth and celebrity could be theirs with a little good luck or a break...

One of my canniest theology teachers likes to say that theology is "unvoiced operating assumptions," the things we believe about how life works which we rarely interrogate to see if it is borne out in fact. ..

Remember the rule? 'What is going on ain't what is going on'..PMSS
God and Man at Work | The Village Gate

Alice in Wonderland

The time has come, the walrus said, to speak of many things...

In short, President Bush often seems to operate like the character from "Alice in Wonderland" who declared, "Sentence first — verdict afterwards."

Instead of figuring out why and how things should be done before acting, the White House seems to act first and then create ex post facto rationalizations for that decision in lieu of serious deliberation. ...Bruce Bartlett

Road

PP Pundit Watch

Watching thePP Pundit watchers. A very quotable quote:

It's not that Sullivan isn't capable of touching on the truth; it's that his relationship to the truth is like a moth's relationship to a lightbulb. Battered and no wiser, Sullivan blogs on, growing ever more frantic. His ravings and wild oscillations are outside the realm of foreign policy discussion. They belong to the psychologist.

ROTFL.. and so it goes

G. A. Cerny