Sunday Sermon: Hype, Heresy, and the Osteens

For La Parisienne and Dr. Doolittle, as we have long been saying exactly this.  Oh, sure, I'm a mean, nasty person for calling out such an inoffensive, smiling nice guy as Joel Osteen, right?  Whatever.  He and his Prosperity Gospel bandwagon are factually wrong in terms of orthodox doctrine, and no number of toothy grins and amazing hairdos is going to turn his pulpit-based motivational speaking into the actual gospel.  

It's marketing genius that tells a bunch of people exactly what they want to hear, but its popularity doesn't mean that it's not a pile of unbiblical hooey. You don't have to be a Christian to see that.  You don't have to adhere to any religion at all. You only have to be a person with neurons and a basic ability to compare one set of statements with another and see that the two don't match.

On a related note: It doesn't matter if Osteen's shallow, happy-slappy, brain-dead, self-centered, "God is my cheerleader" pablum makes you feel good.  "Feeling good about yourself" and "getting stuff" and refusing to talk honestly about sin and human failing are not the point of Christianity.  There, I said it.  

The Very Definition of "Backfire"

Recently taxi drivers in Europe went on strike to oppose new rideshare services like Uber.  To nobody's surprise but the strikers', this move infuriated customers and only made them more aware of Uber and other competitors of traditional cabs.  In London alone signups for Uber skyrocketed 850%.

How Not To Behave at Japan's Best Sushi Restaurant

Embarrassing.

Nerd News: Rutgers Beclowns Itself

So Condoleezza Rice won't be the Commencement speaker at Rutgers after all because too many people there don't want to hear her.  You know, it's embarrassing that an institution of higher education that supposedly prides itself on the free and open discourse and debate of ideas can do this to the country's first black female Secretary of State and still pat itself on the back for being oh-so-enlightened and progressive.  Rice was the most powerful woman in the US during her time in office.  If she hadn't been in a Republican administration, colleges and universities across the country would have canonized her by now.

Nerd Notes: 3 Thoughts About Education

Take a look:

1. The high school achievements arms race
2. Kindergarten done horribly wrong
3. "My students don't know how to have a conversation."

Quote of the Day: The Wreck of Venezuela

And why has it come to this?  

The reason? A brain-dead rejection of basic economics, and a hardline, anti-market approach of the worst possible kind. There are maximum prices, other price controls, profit controls, capital controls, nationalisations, expropriations and every other statist, atavistic policy you can think of. An extreme left wing government has waged war on capitalism and won; and as ever, ordinary people are paying the price.

Razing Arizona

The completely unnecessary mess in Arizona was an embarrassment to everyone.  This is as good an analysis as any:

In a doomed effort on a superfluous bill, Arizona legislators created a political disaster for themselves, short-term damage to the business community, massive fundraising and PR victories for the Left, and a national black eye for social conservatives. Not to mention a lovely media distraction from Obamacare. 

In fact, the whole thing was so awful that I'm tempted to hatch a conspiracy theory that those Arizona legislators were Democratic infiltrators and agents provocateurs.

No Potemkin Hotels at Sochi Games

Journalists are live-tweeting their nasty experiences.  EW.

Pajama Boy: What The Hell Is THIS?

The people entrusted with Obamacare publicity actually think this is a good idea?  Even left-wing shill MSNBC can't stop guffawing.  Rich Lowry calls this smug little hipster fool in a plaid onesie (a onesie!) "an insufferable man-child," and I can't agree more.  I finally survive finals and emerge into the land of the living and ... run smack into this insultingly infantilizing mess.  Hell, I think I would rather be drowning in my exam-week books and papers, where for two weeks I was too busy to notice the government's ongoing descent into oblivious self-parody.  

While we're on the topic, let me just say that nothing is a bigger turn-off than smug urban-cool hipster guys who think they're smarter and cuter than they really are.  Ugh.  If this is what "enlightened" guys are supposed to be like these days, give me a rugged, unreconstructed, unapologetic cowboy any day of the week.  You know, someone who actually has a confident definition for "self-reliance" and "masculinity." 

Tweet of the Day: Idiocy On Display

Remember how I've been slamming the Obama Administration for being deeply, disturbingly, delusionally unserious about foreign policy?  That meant for a little while I wasn't looking very hard at domestic policy.  Well, guess what, I'm finding equally epic unseriousness there too.  This is an actual tweet from the official White House Twitter account. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FREAKING KIDDING ME.  

Obama and company are trying to peddle Obamacare to an increasingly skeptical nation, its initial boosters are now jumping ship, the government's having to delay piece after piece of this craptastic law's implementation, and the best you can do is caption a gorram mouse on a swing?!   And, NO, rising insurance premiums are NOT ADORABLE.  I want to slam my head against the wall.  I wish we could call for a big fat vote of no confidence.

Take it from this guy: Insurance companies can no longer put lifetime limits on your coverage (h/t @AdorableCareAct) pic.twitter.com/ToSlV7fz0l
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 26, 2013

Best Comment Yet on Assad-Obama-Putin

Short and sweet:

"If your foreign policy has to be rescued by a dictator, you are doing it wrong." 

The first runner-up is pretty good too:  "The Obama administration will do everything in its power to do nothing at all."

Besides, if you seriously think that Putin's plan to disarm Assad in the middle of a friggin' civil war can ever work, and I do mean ever, (and/or isn't a big scam), then I have some oceanfront property in Arizona to sell you.

Headline of the Day: Japan's Foreign Policy

"Japan’s Aggressive Diplomacy Alienates Rivals & Friends Alike."

OK, but if your "diplomacy" is "alienating" just about everybody, then you're probably doing it wrong.  Diplomacy?

Nerd News: Indian University Bars American Academic

Blurb:

An American academic, who argues for gender equality in Islam, was prevented from addressing students at a university in India after an intervention by police, according to the organizer of the event.  

Chennai police asked the University of Madras in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu to cancel the talk by Amina Wadud on feminist reforms in Islam and refused to provide security for the event, said P. K. Abdul Rahiman, assistant professor at the department for Islamic Studies at the university. 

*Sigh*

Chinese Nerd News: Exams, Cheating, and Riots, Oh My!

*facepalm*

"Too Little Too Late. Or, Worse, Too Much Too Late": Thoughts on Syria

The writer then says, with quintessential British understatement, that Obama's foreign policy (such as it is) is "unhelpful."  Turns out that being reactive and incoherent is generally bad.  Gee, y'think? 

Quote of the Day: Government PR

Here's a thought: 

It is a great irony, and history will marvel at it, that the president most committed to expanding the centrality, power, prerogatives and controls of the federal government is also the president who, through lack of care, arrogance, and an absence of any sense of prudential political boundaries, has done the most in our time to damage trust in government.

Well, it's definitely change.  

Massive Tantrum Interrupts Kindergarten Graduation

What makes this news is the fact that it was a temper tantrum thrown by parents.  8 adults were arrested and charged with inciting a riot.  Bonus stupidity: the altercation apparently began over some spilled punch.  Way to set an example for the little ones, you idiots!

Quote of the Day: Eric Holder's "Off the Record" Meeting

Here's an understatement:

"There is an uncomfortable irony in the fact that an attorney general investigating his policy for spying on the media is asking the media to keep his words secret."

Y'THINK?  Besides, when you find that media outlets from the New York Times to Fox News are refusing to go to your meeting, you're doing it wrong.  As for the few outlets who are going to the Holder meeting, they should probably leak everything immediately.  

Ask Not For Whom the IRS Trolls. It Trolls For Thee.

While everybody in a justified uproar about the IRS scandal (and the hearings this week only made its wretched "leadership" look worse), there's a new response/"defense" making the rounds on social media, and I just have to shake my head.  Some lefty people are actually defending the IRS.  They do this despite the fact that the IRS confessed to purposefully going after particular organizations based specifically on their political (and now apparently even religious) convictions.  And you don't think this sort of behavior is wrong?  Really?  Really?

Apparently these folks are fine with the capricious abuse of power as long as it's their team doing the abusing.  The overarching principle that "abuse of power is bad" seems to go right past them.  Partisan ideology makes people blind, blind, blind.  Guys, the government beast that today bites the neighbor whom you hate can tomorrow just as easily bite you.

I've give you this as the quote of the day:

The IRS targeting citizens for political reasons is not simply another Washington scandal. At issue is something that strikes at the very heart of who we are as a people, what we believe as Americans and what this country has always stood for. 

The First Amendment was written to protect many different types of expression. But the Founding Fathers' primary concern -- and a first principle for every generation of Americans that followed -- was the protection of political speech. Apparently, the IRS was even targeting people who criticized how the country was being run. 

Protecting citizens' right to speak out against their government has always been an integral part of what separates us from tyrannical regimes. What the IRS did is how the KGB used to target dissidents. It is how they deal with troublemakers in China. 

It is not how we treat American citizens. Our Constitution guarantees it. 

... This is not about Republican vs. Democrat or conservative vs. liberal. It is about arrogant and unrestrained government vs. the rule of law. 

Preach!

The Department of Education Fails Voltaire 101

Geez, I hate the DOE.  How many times do I have to say it?  YOU DON'T GIVE UP YOUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS WHEN YOU STEP ONTO CAMPUS.  Campus speech codes are evil, and this latest version even more evil than before.  Let the lawsuits begin!