Yup, he can multi-task with the best of ‘em. Let’s see:
April 12, 2009: Against my better judgment what with me being a secret Muslim ’n trying to install a Muslim Caliphate in America 'n all, still went ahead ‘n ordered Capt. Richard Phillips’ freed from those infernal Somali Pirates toolin’ around in that dinghy thingy (Allahu Akbar for sure, but He ain't gonna be pleased), while them Pirates vowed: "From now on, if we capture foreign ships and their respective countries try to attack us, we will kill them…(U.S. forces have) become our No. 1 enemy." Got-it...check!
May 2, 2011: Against my better judgment, what with me being a secret Muslim 'n trying to install a Muslim Caliphate in America 'n all, ordered a special “Hi There” bullet gently placed into Osama bin Laden's left eyeball (Allahu Akbar indeed, but this time, man He's really gonna be pissed). Nailed it. ü
December 18, 2011: End War in Iraq.Made it happen. ü
Meanwhile: Bunch of folks yammering away about how I'm a godless, Muslim (have you heard, trying to install a Muslim Caliphate in America?), but at least not their kind of Christian, Kenyan, fake birth certificate, racist, hates blacks—no, hates whites, no—oh crap, hates everyone ‘cause he just doesn’t look like us, ‘sept a-course them illegals, Commie, Nazi, Socialist, Fascist, wannabe King, Fuhrer, Dictator, illegitimate, useless, gay lover-even though a number of the gays were pretty ticked that it took him so long to end DADT, lover of abortions—one in every pot don’t ya’know, gun taker-away’er (even ‘tho never introduced any gun legislation), stooge of Wall Street (even ‘tho they’re giving mightily to that other guy), at the very least, a Welfare—no Food Stamp King, dangerous to America—caused the recession…well, maybe didn’t cause it, but…yeah, at least made it worse before it got better, Bank bailout—well, maybe not the banks but those freakin' god-damned auto workers, terror President and all kind's-a nasty, groovy stuff…yeah, that's the ticket!Yup got that stuff too.ü
Jan 16, 2012: Receive daily briefing advising that one of the hostage's health is rapidly deteriorating—order rescue plan.Needed to. ü
Jan 21: Briefing on plan.Done. ü
Jan 23: Against my better judgment what with me being a secret Muslim 'n trying to install a Muslim Caliphate in America 'n all, authorize rescue.Yup. ü
Jan 24: Monitor execution (of the plan, everything else is well, you know).Sure. ü
Jan 24: Receive word of successful rescue (9 kidnappers killed, certainly ain't building up no points for that whole 72 virgins thing). ü
Jan 24: State of the Union (don't forget to give Gabby Giffords a big bear hug—she’s such a sweetie and do not forget to thank Panetta 'n his boys).Absolutely. ü
Jan 24: Call hostage's father.Best part of the job. ü
Jan 24: What else? Oh, that's right—listen to right-wrongers, loonie lefty's, 'n others tell me how I'm proof positive evidence that I'm destroying the country, ruining democracy, and making the world less safe of America. Check—hell, double check!
In the event some may have missed this brief yet enjoyable Fareed Zakaria interview with Alan Simpson, the former Senator from Wyoming notorious for his, what used to be, conservative bent.Now he’s aparently too mainstream for his party:
ZAKARIA: Joining me now, the Republican Party's eldest statesman from Wyoming, Alan Simpson. Senator, pleasure to have you on.
ALAN SIMPSON, FORMER REPUBLICAN SENATOR FROM WYOMING: It's a great treat to - to be here. I'm very pleased.
ZAKARIA: Do you think that Mitt Romney has now wrapped up the nomination, for all intents and purposes?
SIMPSON: I think that's very possible because they've washed all the laundry of his that they could ever find. Now they're going to start washing the laundry of Rick Santorum, who has not had his laundry washed yet.
Everyone that rose to the top here suddenly created a great deal of investigation and examination, and - and Rick Santorum has never had that. And, when they got it, the others, who've fallen, all capable people, when they - when they got it, they all dropped.
So Romney's had his thoroughly strung on the line, and - and has survived, and now they're going to start dragging the laundry out on Santorum and stringing it up on the line. And there would be some tough stuff in there, controversial stuff. You know, abortion, homosexuality, those flash words and earmarks and all that stuff - bam, bam. Here we go.
ZAKARIA: What do you think it says, though, about the party, that it seems to have been - tried desperately to fall in love with everyone but Mitt Romney?
SIMPSON: I don't know. It's a strange thing. I think that he is a very effective man, and I think the reason they keep coming back to him regardless of the, quote, "flaws" they attribute to him is that he's the only guy that ever met a payroll. He's the only guy that ever took over a failed organization, filled with corruption and - and disunity and dysfunctional, like the Congress, and - and put it back together, and then taken businesses which were on the ropes.
Somebody said, yes, but he - he killed - he got rid of all these people. I said, well, you've got two choices when you take over a failed business - let it fail and everybody's out of work, or take it over and hire half of them back, start paying the shareholders and get cracking. That's what he did.
ZAKARIA: So you endorse him?
SIMPSON: I haven't done that yet because I feel that I've irritated everyone in the United States. They wouldn't want the curse visited upon them, you know, because with the - what Erskine and I have done in 67 pages effectively has POed everyone in America. Especially the powerful Halloween (ph) groups, like the AARP and Grover Norquist, and - oh, name them, you know. Man, oh, man.
It's been fun, though. I love it.
ZAKARIA: One more question on the - on the politics before we get to the debt issue. When - what does it say about the Tea Party, though? This was the great vaunted new element in the - in the Republican Party, and, at the end of the day, it seems like the Republican Party is - as it always does - is nominating the frontrunner, the guy who's waited in line, the guy who's run before. And, you know, that fairly traditional, hierarchical dynamic is at work. The Tea Party wasn't able to change it at all.
SIMPSON: Well, Republicans give each other the saliva test of purity. They like to give the saliva test of purity, and then they lose and then they just bitch for four years. It's an amazing party, and I've watched it with some trepidation.
But, honestly, if that's what they're going to do again, this guy is not pure enough, not conservative enough, he's too liberal, well then, Obama's a walk-in, and they know it. They're having a lot of fun watching this orgy (ph).
ZAKARIA: So, you know, one of the central moments in - in the Republican debates, the candidates were asked, if you get $10 of spending cuts for $1 of tax increases, would you take it? And not one of them took it.
I take it your view is that this is fantasy, that there is simply no way to deal with the - the budget without raising taxes.
SIMPSON: It's dream world, and I couldn't believe it when I watched that. When they asked that question, nine hands, you shot up like robots and I thought, how can you get there?
Now, you don't have to raise taxes, which, of course, makes Grover froth at the mouth and all his minions. You just go into the tax code and you say let's get rid of these tax expenditures. They are $1.1 trillion a year. Home mortgage interest deduction, $1 million? Second homes? No.
We said, get it down to $500,000, then give it 12.5 percent nonrefundable tax credit. That helps the little guy everybody talks about.
Charitable deduction, give a 12.5 percent nonrefundable tax credit. And then go in and look at the rest of the stuff. You won't believe what's in there - parking for employees, Blue Cross insurance, oil and gas.
You know, I've trampled on my own sacred cows to - to do that pitch. But you have to - it has to be self-sacrifice and know that this country is going broke.
ZAKARIA: Are you resigned to the fact that nothing is likely to happen on your proposal and the ideas around it until the election, or do you think that there's still a possibility in the next year something can happen?
SIMPSON: We'll see what happens. But - but every day that goes by, this is like a stink bomb in a garden party, and as they're eating their tea cookies and saying nothing's going to happen in America, this odor is coming out from under the table because you can't get there by doing waste, fraud and abuse, foreign aid, earmarks, Nancy Pelosi's airplane, Air Force One, all Congressional pensions - give it up. That's about four or five percent of what we're in.
You have to go deal with Medicare, Medicaid, the solvency of social security and defense. And if you can't raise the retirement age to 68 by the year 2050 without the AARP losing their marbles and Grover slavering at the mouth on every kind of thing you talk about, calling it a tax increase, we won't make it.
That's the kind of power that's out there, and - and making a dysfunctional government. Why, pull up your shorts and start running for the exit.
ZAKARIA: Senator, when I was growing up and coming of age, I remember you were thought of as a pretty conservative guy. I mean, you were representing Wyoming, after all. And to listen to you now, you sound - you sound like a moderate.
Is - have you changed, or has the Republican Party changed?
SIMPSON: Well, I think the Republican Party changed, but where - where - what happened with me is I always felt that abortion is a hideous and terrible thing. Let's all admit that. But it's a deeply intimate and personal decision. It's a -
Here's a party that believes in government out of your lives, the precious right of privacy, and the right to be left alone. Well, then, what are you doing in this issue? Partial birth abortion is not an emotional issue, it's a medical issue. It's to free the birth canal for hopefully a later child. I mean, it's madness.
Gay/lesbian issues, we all have someone we know or love who's gay or lesbian. What the hell is this all about? Madness.
And if we're going to get trapped in that, we're headed for some more strife.
ZAKARIA: Senator, real pleasure to have you on. I hope we can have you on again.
SIMPSON: Well, I hope you'll stick around, because you speak with clarity, and you - and you ask great questions and you don't get caught up in all the garbage on the extreme Right and the extreme Left. People -- Erskine and I go around the country and we can speak to any group, Right or Left.
Give us an hour, let them ask questions, we'll get a standing ovation because people are thirsting for somebody to give them something other than B.S. or mush. And both parties are giving - giving the American people B.S. and mush, and they're sick of it.
And something's going to happen. I don't know what it is, but people - people are smarter than their politicians. They always have been. And we'll see what happens.
ZAKARIA: On that note, legendary note of frankness, Senator Alan Simpson.
Here’s a wonderful documentary from the BBC titled “The Lost Gospels” by the Anglican priest Pete Owen Jones.Jones discusses the history of not just the Four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but at least 20 gospels, 15 apocalypses, and more than 50 other texts about Jesus; most written during the first several centuries of Christianity including the discovery of the Gospel of Peter (St. Peter) discovered in 1885, to the Gospel of Mary Magdalene discovered in 1896, and the Nag Hammadi scrolls (the Gnostic Gospels) found by Bedouin farmersin December 1945.
Jones discusses Bishop Athanasiusof Alexandria who, in 367 C.E., condemned what he considered heretical writings including the Gospels of Mary, Philip, Peter, and Thomas as well as Paul’s third letter to the Corinthians.The film includes a historical discussion with Prof. Bart Erhman, shows the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Christian catacombs in Rome. It also provides an interesting discussion about Mary Magdalene (and how Mary may have been much more prominent, influential, and perhaps even held a dominant role—perhaps even Jesus’ closest disciple and how she should have been the first Pope) as well as discussions about Thomas (Doubting Thomas), and Marcion who in his canons concluded that there were two Gods, the vengeful God of the Old Testament and “God the Stranger;” the God of Jesus who came into the world to save the world from the vengeful deity.Jones discusses how The Gospel of Peter indicated Jesus was not human, did not suffer or feel pain during crucifixion and therefore did not die, as well as the Gospel of the Ebionites and others that did not make it into today’s Christian Bible like this little gem from Peter:
114 Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life.”Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the domain of Heaven.”
Not really sure what to make of that whole "females don't deserve life,” as well as Jesus' response that he He "...will guide her to make her male" thing.
On January 7, 1610 at around 1am, using a 20x telescope he designed and called a spyglass (although he didn't invent it), GalileoGalilei discovered three moons rotating around the planet Jupiter. Over the ensuing days, the Italian astronomer would discover a fourth moon and would name the objects “The Medicean Stars” (after Cosimo deMedici and the deMedici brothers for whom he was seeking patronage--he had originally considered calling the moons The Cosmian Stars).
Galileo's telescope
On March 12, 1610, Galileo wrote Sidereus Nuncius (“The Starry Messenger”), which opened by telling the reader that:
"...with the aid of a spyglass lately invented by him, In the surface of the Moon, in innumerable Fixed Stars, in Nebulae, and above all in Four Planets swiftly revolving about Jupiter at differing distances and periods, and known to no one before the Author recently perceived them and decided that they should be named The Medicean Stars” (emphasis mine).
The importance of Galileo’s discovery cannot be underestimated. First, Galileo demonstrated the power of the "spyglass" (the term telescope was not coined until 1611) to observe distant objects not visible to the naked eye. More importantly however, Galileo's discovery would ignite a storm that would last for centuries.
In The Starry Messenger, Galileo would write:
Sidereus Nuncius, “The Starry Messenger”
"On the seventh day of January in this present year 1610, at the first hour of night, when I was viewing the heavenly bodies with a spyglass, Jupiter presented itself to me; and because I had prepared a very excellent instrument for myself I perceived (as I had not before, on account of the weakness of my previous instrument) that beside the planet there were three starlets, small indeed, but very bright. Though I believed them to be among the host of fixed stars, they aroused my curiosity somewhat by appearing to lie in an exact straight line parallel to the ecliptic, and by their being more splendid than others of their size. Their arrangement with respect to Jupiter and each other was the following:
Galileo's sketch
that is, there were two stars on the eastern side and one to the west. The most easterly star and the western one appeared larger than the other. I paid no attention to the distances between them and Jupiter, for at the outset I thought them to be fixed stars, as I have said. But returning to the same investigation on January eighth led by what, I do not know I found a very different arrangement. The three starlets were now all to the west of Jupiter, closer together, and at equal intervals from one another..."
Galileo's sketch of his observations. It is interesting how Galileo noted that it was cloudy on January
9 and 14, 1610; and that it looks like he discovered the fourth moon on January 13, 1610.
Galileo's notes on his observations
Recall that until this time, the world adhered to the Ptolemic world view that held that the Earth is the center of the universe and that everything revolved around the Earth.
Of course this view was supported scripturally which, among other things, held that:
1. "Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth." (Heb. 1:10)
2. The sun, moon, and stars were created after the firm "foundation of the earth" was laid. (Gen. 1:9-18)
3. "He established the earth upon its foundations, so that it will not totter, forever and ever." (Ps. 104:5)
4. "And the sun rises and sets and returns to its place." (Eccl. 1:5)
5. "The world is firmly established, it will not be moved." (Ps. 93:1 & 1 Chron. 16:30)
6. "For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and he set the world on them." (I Sam. 2:8)
7. "It is I who have firmly set its pillars." (Ps. 75:3)
8. "Who stretched out the heavens...and established the world." (Jer. 10:12)
Copernicus' view of the universe
Also recall that in 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus published De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, (“The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres”) wherein he espoused the idea that it was the Sun that was the center of the Universe and that the Earth rotated around the Sun.
For what it’s worth, Copernicus was simply advancing the teachings of Aristarchos from the 3C. BCE who proposed the first heliocentric view of the universe—a position that was widely viewed until, well, you know…
Interestingly, in his introduction to De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, Copernicus would write to Pope Paul II:
Copernicus' DeRevolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, “The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres”
“Those who know that the consensus of many centuries has sanctioned the conception that the earth remains at rest in the middle of the heaven as its center would, I reflected, regard it as an insane pronouncement if I made the opposite assertion that the earth moves. Therefore I debated with myself for a long time whether to publish the volume which I wrote to prove the earth’s motion or rather to follow the example of the Pythagoreans and certain others, who used to transmit philosophy’s secrets only to kinsmen and friends, not in writing but by word of mouth…”
Anyhow, back to Galileo. Galileo was a supporter of the Copernican model of the universe and it would be his writings and defense of the heliocentric view of the universe that would see him write Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo(“Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems”), and famously find himself condemned for heresy by the Catholic Church on June 22, 1623 based on:
“…the two propositions of the stability of the Sun and the motion of the Earth were by the theological Qualifiers qualified as follows:
The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture.
The proposition that the Earth is not the center of the world and immovable but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically and theologically considered at least erroneous in faith.”
Today is the anniversary of one of the great natural disasters in Irish history; the massive hurricane that swept accross the country on January 6 and 7, 1839, and earned the title, “The Night of the Big Wind” (Irish: Oídhche na Gaoithe Móire). The catastrophic storm destroyed ships, tore apart harbors, decimated crops and farmlands, killed thousands of livestock, birds and wild animals, destroyed homes, knocked down walls, collapsed thatched roofs (many catching fire), destroyed an estimated 25% of homes in Dublin, left hundreds dead, uprooted hundreds of thousands of trees, and cost millions.
“Herrings were found six-miles inland—lifted bodily out of the sea and blown through the air the whole way...”
“We would say that, for the violence of the hurricane, and deplorable effects which followed, as well as for its extensive sweep, embracing as it did the whole island in its destructive career, it remains not only without parallel, but leaves far away in the distance all that ever occurred in Ireland before” (Dublin Evening Post, January 12, 1839).
Some said the storm was God's wrath (The Twelfth Night or the Christian “Night of the Epiphany”—or is it the evening of the 5th?). Not really sure why, but you know, it’s that whole mysterious ways thing...
Others said the Feemasons brought the Devil up from Hell, and the storm ensued as the Masons were trying to drag him back to the underworld...
Some blamed the “Wee People,” (Leprechauns or Fairies) who, apparently while partying to the Nth degree during the January 5, 1939 feast of Saint Ceara (Ceara established a nunnery in Munster in the 7th century—definitely deserving of beatification anda feast), created the wind in the wake of their revelry...
Others also blame the storm on Leprechauns and Fairies, but believed after the celebration the Leprechauns and Fairies decided to leave Ireland forever and that the storm was created in the wake of their departure...
Some even went out on a limb and said it was a hurricane…
It is noted that The Big Wind was so memorable that it became a milestone in Irish history.“Can you remember the storm of 1839?” was a common question asked of pensioners missing documentation as the pension system was introduced in 1909.
May 2, 2011: Against my better judgment, what with me being a secret Muslim 'n trying to install a Muslim Caliphate in America 'n all, ordered a special “Hi There” bullet gently placed into Osama bin Laden's left eyeball (Allahu Akbar indeed, but this time, man He's really gonna be pissed). Nailed it. ü
Meanwhile: Bunch of folks yammering away about how I'm a godless, Muslim (have you heard, trying to install a Muslim Caliphate in America?), but at least not their kind of Christian, Kenyan, fake birth certificate, racist, hates blacks—no, hates whites, no—oh crap, hates everyone ‘cause he just doesn’t look like us, ‘sept a-course them illegals, Commie, Nazi, Socialist, Fascist, wannabe King, Fuhrer, Dictator, illegitimate, useless, gay lover-even though a number of the gays were pretty ticked that it took him so long to end DADT, lover of abortions—one in every pot don’t ya’know, gun taker-away’er (even ‘tho never introduced any gun legislation), stooge of Wall Street (even ‘tho they’re giving mightily to that other guy), at the very least, a Welfare—no Food Stamp King, dangerous to America—caused the recession…well, maybe didn’t cause it, but…yeah, at least made it worse before it got better, Bank bailout—well, maybe not the banks but those freakin' god-damned auto workers, terror President and all kind's-a nasty, groovy stuff…yeah, that's the ticket! Yup got that stuff too. ü
