President Bush vs. Words

Just a quick post today … sorry, it’s been one of those days.

I was listening to President Bush carefully referring to the economic “slowdown” as he denied that there’s any chance that this is a recession, and I was thinking … he likes to parse things, doesn’t he? Mostly, he likes to deny the applicability of bad-sounding words.

For example, he prefers to call waterboarding, which is clearly torture and for which we prosecuted Japanese troops after the Second World War, and “aggressive interrogation technique.”

When different factions are fighting for control of Iraq, he was very insistent that it wasn’t a civil war, though what the difference would be was pretty unclear.

Worship

An interesting thing is happening in my church, and I have to say that I’m very excited about it. Right now, we’re taking a real, serious look at the nature of worship and the Holy Spirit — and how they relate.

I’m a part of a group from our worship team, which is also meeting with the elders to discuss such matters. It’s very interesting and exciting watching how all of this is playing out. To be perfectly honest, what’s really exciting might be how it’s NOT playing out.

A Consistent Life Ethic: Comments on Joe Schriner

I promised to comment on the Joe Schriner answers, and was hoping to put a few more posts between the original and this, but life is getting very busy, and I’m having a harder time getting things posted than I’d hoped. So, here we go.

The first thing I want to say is that I love his strong belief in a “Consistent Life Ethic.” Relatively early in my interest in politics, I came across certain articles that strongly affected me. One of them was an article in “Christianity Today” talking about the damage done by the “death movement” in the US, and cited the three main parts of that movement as abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment. I spent a lot of time rethinking that. Being at the time a good Republican, I was all for condemning abortion and euthanasia, but I found it difficult to condemn capital punishment. I still, actually, struggle with that one.

What it did, though, is get me thinking about what it means to be “pro-life.” It’s a nice catchy label used by the anti-abortion movement, but how many of us are really pro-life? I’ve talked about the difference between pro-life and anti-abortion stances in a few different posts, and won’t recap that here. I think it’s obvious.

Tancredo and Dobbs vs. Pope Benedict

In case you don’t know, I am not Catholic. I am, in fact, a Baptist. My church belongs to the Conservative Baptist Convention, which is more or less to say that we’re independent of any other congregation. The reason I’m saying this up front is because I want to drive home my point about what the Pope says, and make it clear that I’m not just backing the Pope because he’s the Pope. Depending on whose Christian history you believe, you might well find that Baptists have been defying Papal authority since well before the Reformation.

But that’s a different story for a different day.

Two anti-immigration stalwarts have decided to take on the Pope himself, and have made themselves look like complete fools in so doing.

Interview With Joe Schriner

Before I go too far, I need to apologize. I actually got this via e-mail two days ago, planned to hold off until Thursday to post it, and then had computer problems and am just now posting it.

I have written before, very briefly, about “Average Joe” Schriner, now on his third Presidential run as an independent. If you’ve seen my comments on other people’s blogs, then you might have seen his name come up as someone that I’m considering supporting actively.

What I hadn’t told a lot of people was that I e-mailed Mr. Schriner and asked him if I could interview him by e-mail. He agreed. While he’s not yet had time to answer every question that I asked, he did give some great answers to the most important ones. I’m about to post those, without comment.

Before this, though, he asked me to add a note … he is looking for a running mate. He said that at this point, the running mate doesn’t have to do too much, but he’s looking for someone who fits the legal requirements (35 or older, born US citizen, etc.), who isn’t from Ohio (Mr. Schriner’s home state), and who shares with Mr. Schriner a Consistent Life Ethic. That will be defined pretty well through his answers, I believe.

I will comment on these answers some other time … for now, I want to present what he had to say in his own words.

Christian Carnical CCXX

The 220th Christian Carnival went up yesterday at Imago Dei, and looks great. I probably won’t get to perusing it fully until tomorrow night, but I’m excited by what I see there and hope you all check it out!

Huck PAC Has Arrived!

I know that I should have posted this yesterday … frankly, my life is going through a lot of changes now that I’m back in the workforce. I’ll bore you with those details some other time.

Rather, here’s the exciting thing — Mike Huckabee’s new political action committee!

This is the mission statement listed on the website:

Tony Perkins vs. Compassion

I have been receiving the notices from the Family Resource Council for some time, and I’ve generally enjoyed the information and had mixed feelings about the opinions.

The other day I received one, though, that bothered me tremendously. To be fair, I have not yet watched the forum about which he’s complaining. It’s possible that the thing is terrible. However, his complaint certainly doesn’t convince me, and it does show me something that deeply troubles me.

Chinese legislature — Grow up!

I’m following up on comments from my previous Chinese Olympics post, and I need to thank In2theFray for making reference to “sitting at the big kids’ table.” I’d read this article earlier, and it didn’t really fit with my previous post. However, I think it might well deserve its own.

China’s top legislature condemns European Parliament for Tibet resolution

I’m not going to copy the whole article here, although I thought about it. There are some great quotes in it:

It urged the EP to respect the truth on the Tibet riots and never again do things that will hurt the emotions of the Chinese people and go against the spirit of the Olympics.

What Are Olympic Values, Anyway?

In case you haven’t noticed, this year’s running of the Olympic torch around the world has been somewhat problematic. By the way, if you haven’t noticed, you might want to get out from under that rock every now and then.

For my own part, I’m fine with seeing the torch hounded and the Chinese secret police escort hassled. There have been complaints and outcry from various groups complaining about not honoring “Olympic values” and the principles behind the Olympics.

So, I’d like to know — What are these supposed values?