Saturday, May 08, 2021

Don’t apologize when you haven’t done anything wrong.

  Mainline Florida: Link to Mainline Florida

I am making more use of links: music and visual. Click on them and then you might have a second link to search. Some locations, such as YouTube generate revenue for your "free" viewing by running ads, so be patient. On occasion there is a "skip ad" button. Sometimes it will load and start when you go there, sometimes you need to click on the white arrow in the red box. Moreover, when I can, I attribute sources for photos; unfortunately, some have been passed along several times and I have no idea of the source.

I closed my Instagram page due to the political climate and to protest their political attacks on conservative voices...that’s about all I can do. 

An important note: I work on this blog for one person - ME; I love sharing it with about 60 friends, relatives, and acquaintances in the States and in Europe. 

With this in mind, I hope you enjoy the updates to my art and life as presented in this blog. IF you don't like the political stuff and don't want to receive future blogs just say so, no hard feelings. So far, only  five have taken me up on the offer. With that in mind, remember: Below the Fold below is where lies controversial stuff, if you don't want to go there, stay above.

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, I present:


Art:

Other obligations...but starting up, I promise.

Other Art (and a lot better):

The Virgin Mary in Prayer

Albrecht Durer

Location: Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Germany           

Just be still and watch for a minute, you will learn to appreciate at what you see in front of you.

Listening:

Remember Vangelis? He had to start somewhere...I actually have this “album”

The Four Horsemen from Aphrodite's Child's 666 LP. 666 was recorded during 1970 / 71, and released in 1972. Video footage of Demis Roussos, lead singer and bass guitarist with Aphrodite's Child, taken in 1971. 

Link to YouTube video of the song and original performers

In my opinion, 1963 was the break point in pop music. There were the “old” pop singers like Bobby Darin, And Williams (HE did not need studio enhancements - what a natural voice); the surf and guitar songs; the pre-Mowtown Black/Soul music that was now entrenched in American youth culture; Folk music arrived; but most importantly, an astounding new tsunami of British music was heading our way, obviously lead by The Beatles and Stones.

For me, 1963 was, if I remember correctly, the year I was able to first listen to pop music. I was given or purchased a crystal transistor radio build-it with a mono ear piece that would let me listen to KXOK or some other station in STL at night (only). Next was a small portable aqua blue transistor radio that ran through batteries faster than I could buy them, HOWEVER, I could now pick up Cardinal games...hated West Coast games that didn’t start till 10PM. Those were the days my friend, thought they would never end...but new chapters opened, right. Had no idea what what was coming. 

Link to top hits of 1963

And by this time i was All In - and still am.

Link to 1967 songs


Reading:

New:






Finished:


  



And so much more from the this STL writer

Lead into a good article by Edward Short...

Strange Companions: Jews, Christians, and Jacques Maritain

In combatting anti-Semitism, Jews and Christians need to remember that they are both sworn to acknowledge what Maritain calls “the fundamental and primordial ethical value of brotherly love.”

French philosopher and writer Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) in a 1930 photo (Wikipedia)

“Catholic thought must be raised up with Jesus between heaven and earth and it has been asked to work at the reconciliation of the world to the truth by living out the painful paradox of an absolute fidelity to the eternal joined to the most diligent understanding of the anguishes of time.” — Jacques Maritain, “Religion and Culture”, April 23, 1930

The other day I was sent a piece that caught my attention, written by the journalist Bari Weiss. In the piece entitled “Why France Refuses to Prosecute an Anti-Semitic Murderer” (4/15/21), Ms. Weiss writes:

Sarah Halimi was a retired French physician and schoolteacher. She was also an Orthodox Jew. On April 4, 2017, Halimi was in her Paris apartment where she lived alone. In the middle of the night, a 27-year-old Muslim man of Malian origin named Kobili Traoré, who lived in the building, broke into her apartment. Traoré tortured Ms. Halimi, who was in her 60s, beating her and kicking her. According to neighbors, who called the police after hearing Halimi’s cries, Traoré called her a “shaitan” (satan) and a dirty Jew. Ultimately, he threw Ms. Halimi’s battered body out of her third-story apartment window shouting “Allahu akbar.”

There are other gruesome details, but that is the basic story. It’s hard to imagine a set of facts more damning and more clear.

So in December 2019, when I read that French prosecutors had decided to drop murder charges against Traoré, a man with nearly two dozen prior conviction on the grounds that he had smoked pot, I felt sick.

This reminded me of another anti-Semitic outrage in the City of Lights. On January 21, 2006, a band of North African anti-Semites calling themselves “the Barbarians” abducted a young telephone salesman named Ilan Halimi and tortured him for three weeks before leaving him naked, handcuffed and bleeding beside a railway line at Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois, fifteen kilometers from Bagneux, one of the Muslim no-go zones surrounding Paris. When police found him they reported that 80 percent of his body had been mutilated. He died of his wounds on the way to the hospital. When one of his Muslim captors was caught and questioned by police, he explained that he put cigarettes out on Halimi’s face “because he didn’t like Jews.”

Maritain’s experience of anti-Semitism

Had Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) been around to witness these atrocities, it is doubtful he would have found it surprising. Speaking of the roots of European anti-Semitism, he pointed out that it took “the whole of the miseries of the High Middle Ages…and the furious need of a scapegoat to give birth, by means of the rhetoric of the lower clergy, to a sordid religious hate in a Christian people composed henceforth almost entirely of the descendants of baptized pagans still half barbarian.” (Maritain singled out the “lower clergy” to make the necessary point that the popes had no hand in fomenting anti-Semitism.) The murder of Halimi shows what we can expect from Muslim barbarians, whose history has likewise steeped them in misery, not to mention the rhetoric of hate-mad mullahs and “the furious need of a scapegoat.”

And...



One challenge when reading the Old Testament is dealing with the amount of material contained within it. As a person reads along, he encounters narrative or story-like books or portions of books. The reader also encounters non-narrative passages, like poetry in the Psalms, genealogies, laws and regulations, and prophetic discourses. How do all these fit together? How can one stay oriented while reading through the Old Testament?

One helpful approach is to keep in mind the divisions of the Old Testament. Of course, the Old Testament is already divided into books, but those books are grouped together into four major sections in the Christian tradition and three distinct sections in the Hebrew tradition.

The four sections of the Christian bible are the Pentateuch, the Historical Books, the Prophetic Books, and the Wisdom literature. The Hebrew Bible used in the Jewish religious tradition has a different breakdown: the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. The Hebrew category of “Prophets” is then subdivided into the Former Prophets and the Latter Prophets. The Former Prophets include what the Christian tradition refers to as the Historical Books. The use of the category of “Prophets” for both historical and prophetic writing is fitting...

In the Christian Bible, the Old Testament’s first section is usually called the Pentateuch, which means “five volumes” or “five scrolls.” Torah, the Hebrew word for these first five books, means “law,” an apt name for this section because these books include the law that God established to govern Israel, including their worship and rituals. This section begins with creation and includes the stories of Abraham, Jacob and his sons, the Exodus of the people of Israel out of Egypt, and the Covenant made between God and His people at Mount Sinai. It concludes with the final speech of God’s servant Moses in the book of Deuteronomy.

The second section is the Historical books. These books trace the entry of the Hebrew people into the land of Canaan, the land promised to Abraham and his descendants by God. They tell the story of the conquest of the land, the establishment of the monarchy and the lives of Saul, David and Solomon. These books also recount the division of the Davidic Kingdom into Israel (North) and Judah (South) after the death of Solomon. From that point on, the two kingdoms were frequently entangled in wars and disputes with each other and foreign nations. Eventually, both kingdoms were conquered: Israel by the Assyrian empire in 722/721 B.C. and Judah by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.

The Prophetic books run chronologically parallel to the Historical books during the time of the divided kingdom. For example, the book of the prophet Amos is considered the earliest book, and he is dated to the middle of the 8th century B.C., before the fall of the northern kingdom. The prophets give some historical references in their writings, but the focus of the prophetic message is theological. The prophets speak for God and give explanations, exhortations, and sometimes harsh invectives against God’s people because of their infidelity to Him.

The Wisdom literature, or the Writings, is a diverse collection of books. Perhaps the greatest of these books is the Psalms, which functioned like a prayer hymnal for the people of Israel and, now, also for the Church. Other types of Wisdom literature include proverbs and instructions on how to live righteously in the world according to God’s design for human persons. The book of Job, also in this category and written mostly in poetry, is a lengthy exploration of human suffering and its meaning. This group of books is not tied historically to any one person or period of time, but contains the long tradition of wisdom earned by the covenant people through their experiences of suffering, repentance and prayer.

The conclusion of the Old Testament looks toward the fulfillment of God’s promises to His people, especially in the form of the Messiah (Hebrew for “anointed one”) of God. His coming would mark a definitive step for God’s revelation to His people and the salvation of all mankind.


Finally finished: Again, the battles in The First Congress are almost identical to today’s, the vicious partisanship the same (if you believe strongly in something you have to stand up for it, and real truth is non-negotiable such as enslaving human beings, killing babies in the womb, etc).



Having said that, If You Believe In Miracles, or if you believe God had a hand in the formation of this country, and remember that these were not a bunch of old white guys, many were in their 20’s, they attended and took on an “impossible” job at their own expense, reputation, family life issues, health, etc. to get this done...they created something for the whole world to aspire. 

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Humor:

Tom Hanks on Black Jeopardy

The link will take you to YouTube. i am not a Tom Hanks fan, other than Castaway, however, he did a great job in a really funny piece.

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WSJ McGurn (sad Humor, maybe)

This year’s Oscar show had all the glamour and appeal of a public-television fund- raiser. It’s not that this year’s Oscars were too political. It’s that they were too boring.
Bill Maher called it. Two weeks before the Oscars aired, the HBO host of “Real Time with Bill Maher” said that af- ter a year of Covid-19, he had hoped for a little Hollywood escapism. But “judging by this year’s best-picture nominees,” he said, “you couldn’t have a worse time at the movies if there was an active shooter in the theater.”
Here’s his summary of the contenders, starting with “No- madland,” which took home the award for best picture:
“That’s the one about the woman who winds up living in her van after her husband dies of cancer. In ‘Judas and the Black Messiah,’ the FBI kills the leader of the Black Panthers, and in ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ the FBI kills the leader of the Black Panthers again. ‘Promising Young Woman’ has Carey Mulligan avenging a murderous rapist, butthenhekillshertoo.... ‘The Sound Of Metal’ is about a musician going deaf. ‘The Fa- ther’ is about an octogenarian descending into dementia. And ‘Minari’ is the story of dirt- poor Korean immigrants in Ar- kansas who put all their food in a barn, but then grandma has a stroke and burns it down. Now enjoy the show!”
Say what you will about Mr. Maher—and many dismiss him as an old white guy complain- ing that Hollywood doesn’t make movies he likes—his seven-minute rant was more entertaining than anything in the 31⁄2 hours of Sunday’s Os- car broadcast. The overnight ratings confirm Mr. Maher speaks for more than himself: Variety reports only 9.85 mil- lion viewers for this year’s cer- emony, down from its previous record low of 26.5 million in 2018.

“Academy nominations used to say, ‘Look what great movies we make,’ ” says Mr. Maher. “Now they say, ‘Look what great people we are.’ ”

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BREAKING NEWS

USPS Finally Delivers Paul’s Third Epistle To The Thessalonians


At publishing time, postal workers were hard at work trying to figure out what to do with the numerous bins full of delayed Trump ballots.


ANOTHER link to Babylon Bee parody site:white-liberals-watch-in-stunned-amazement-as-black-man-acquires-id

Timely SNL call out...😜

SNL Writers Denigrate Successful African-American Businessman

"I despise Elon Musk," said comedienne Aidy Bryant while working on her next inspirational abortion story for her show Shrill. "I heard he's 'based,' which is the same thing as being a Nazi." 

"I heard he tweeted something questioning the coronavirus panic," said writer Bowen Yang as he adjusted his two masks and face shield. "How can we have him on our show? What kind of example are we setting?" 

According to tweets about the reported rumors, some of the cast of SNL are refusing to work with the successful immigrant inventor, and will instead stand in a nearby corner and sigh as loud as they can. 

Elon is not the first African-American to experience mistreatment in America, which has a long history of discrimination. According to sources, African-American actress Charlize Theron also faced discrimination when she moved to America.

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I Find This Interesting:

Fascinating discussion - 2 hrs seemed like 30 minutes

Friends,

It was my pleasure to speak once again with Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, discussing various important subjects, including science and Scripture, good and evil, reason and faith, mythology and the Resurrection, and more.

Watch our almost two-hour conversation on YouTube right here: https://www.wordonfire.org/peterson

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And,  if you are serious about your spiritual life...or not...

Bishop Barron points out:

JOHN 15:1–8

Friends, in our Gospel passage today, Jesus declares that he is the vine and we are the branches, adding that "anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither."

It’s odd that we accept this sort of language very easily when it comes to our bodily health, while we balk at it when it comes to spiritual or supernatural health. Doctors and health specialists can say, with a clarity and matter-of-factness, that certain practices and behaviors are absolutely essential if one wants to maintain physical well-being. Unless you eat a balanced, nutritious diet, you will get sick and unfit. If you smoke, drink to excess, and never exercise, your body will become unhealthy, and if these practices (or negligences) become exaggerated, you will die. It just isn’t that complicated.

Jesus is not engaging in charming poetic imagery. He is laying out the spiritual facts. The spirit is a living thing, and it derives its life from the vine. If therefore you are separated from the vine, you will die spiritually; you will stop living a supernatural life. And it’s just not that complicated.

And this: 

JOHN 6:1–15

Friends, our Gospel today focuses on St. John’s intense meditation on the meaning of the Eucharist. The tone is set with the familiar story of the feeding of the five thousand, the only miracle story mentioned in each of the four Gospels. This scene deeply affected the first Christians.

Jesus instructs his disciples to have the crowd recline on the grass. Taking the barley loaves and dried fish, Jesus makes a meal that satisfies the enormous crowd. They are hungry, tired, and worn out from their exertions, and Jesus gives them sustenance for the day.

For Thomas Aquinas, the great metaphor for the Eucharist is sustenance, food for the journey. Baptism defines us, making us sons and daughters of God; Confirmation confirms and deepens this identity; Marriage and Holy Orders seal us in our life’s vocation. These are sacraments offered once at key moments in one’s life.

Then there is the Eucharist, which is daily food, nourishment to get us through the day-to-day. How effective would we be if we never ate, or ate only on special occasions and in a festive environment? Not very. So, in the spiritual life, we must eat and drink or we will not have the strength.

*************** from WSJ

There goes Mr. Emanuel changing historical facts again. He writes, “Messrs. Biden and Obama, not to mention Mr. Clinton, each inherited a Republican recession and delivered Democratic prosperity. George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump each left office with the econ- omy in tatters.”
George H.W. Bush left office in month 22 of an economic recovery. Gross domestic product grew 3.5% in 1992. Bill Clinton took over as the economy was taking flight. What President Clinton left for George W. Bush was an economy 40 days from recession—not to mention a badly ne- glected Islamic terrorism issue.
Currently, the U.S. economy has had three quarters of good growth. Mr. Bi- den inherited an economy speeding down the runway, ready for takeoff.
TERRY FLEMING


 


ABORTION HYPOCRISY  Justice Clarence Thomas called out his liberal fellow justices on the Supreme Court Thursday, observing that they call minors accused of murder “children” but minor girls seeking abortions “women.” Justice Thomas wrote in a footnote to his concurring opinion in the case of Jones v. Mississippi: “When addressing juvenile murderers, this Court has stated that ‘children are different’ and that courts must consider ‘a child‘s lesser culpability.’” 


(CNS News) Although President Joe Biden is a Catholic -- a Catholic who rejects nearly all of the fundamental moral teachings of the church -- a recent survey shows there is "little evidence" that his faith is resulting in "high approval ratings from his fellow Catholics." In fact, his highest job approval rating, 67%, is among people who never attend church. 

Further, among all weekly churchgoers, Biden's approval rating is only 45%. Trump, in his final presidential year, enjoyed a 54% approval rating among Americans who attended church weekly or nearly every week.

"Predictably, Biden does best among infrequent church attenders," reported Gallup. 

"The less religious the individual, the more Democratic," said the survey firm.  "Biden so far is proving to be no exception to this rule."

"Biden's approval rating increases significantly as church attendance decreases, as can be seen in the accompanying table [below], rising from 45% among those who attend services weekly or almost weekly to 67% among those who never attend," reported Gallup. 

"Obama in 2016 generated almost the exact same pattern," said Gallup. "Republican Trump, by contrast, received his highest approval among weekly attenders and his lowest among those who never attend."

(Gallup)












Parody From Babylon Bee...update link you might have to press twice




 https://babylonbee.com/news/evil-nazi-facility-that-murders-and-sells-baby-parts-turns-out-to-just-be-a-planned-parenthood/

Real News BABY BODY PARTS  The watchdog group Judicial Watch released a 600-page report that confirmed that the U.S. government had been buying body parts from children who were aborted. Emails obtained by Judicial Watch confirm that the Food and Drug Administration spent tens of thousands of dollars for scientific experiments from 2012 until 2018, when the Trump administration terminated the contract.  


This Was touched on in my last publication...followup

Koonin says Heat waves in the U.S. are now no more common than they were in 1900…the warmest temperatures in the U.S. have not risen in the past 50 years….Humans have had no detectible impact on hurricanes over the past century….Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago… The net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century.

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Below The Fold-------------------------------------Or, as I have learned from your input, Preaching To The Choir vs Unbelievers Enter at your own risk:

"Freedom is lost gradually from uninterested, uninformed and uninvolved people." ---  Thomas Jefferson
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https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/04/20/jihad-and-the-complexities-of-immigration/

Jihad and the complexities of immigration

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Conservatives said this would happen...   Economists had predicted that one million jobs would be added in April, but non-farm payrolls increased by just 266,000 as unemployment rose slightly to 6.1%. An analyst for Bank of America noted that 4.6 million workers left the labor force during the pandemic, but only half are expected to return by the end of the year. For workers earning less than $32,000 a year, it's often more lucrative to collect unemployment with the $300 weekly bonus than it is to return to work.

You know young, teenage girls are being raped, held for sex traffic, you KNOW it..

Biden Admin Spent $3 Billion To Hold Nearly 25,000 Separated Child Migrants.......Yet the Wall worked as did the controls put in place...And, congress has not acted in over 12 years to put in place a humane but effective policy:
CV NEWS FEED // Nearly 25,000 migrant children were being held apart from their families by the U.S. Government at the beginning of this month. The minors were housed in facilities for which the Biden administration paid private contractors $3,000,000,000, The Blaze reports.

The recent spending seems to have been done in a hurry, the Associated Press reported this week, as the administration struggles to respond to the worsening humanitarian crisis at the border.

Of particular concern to many onlookers is the plight of vulnerable children attempting the journey. The Biden administration, however, has frustrated efforts by lawyers and other advocates to access the children.

“Children told attorneys who visited some sites they had not met with case managers, who are tasked with reuniting them with family members,” the AP reported. “HHS has refused all access to news media once children are brought into facilities, citing the coronavirus pandemic and privacy restrictions.”

Some of the new facilities have a “very institutional setting feel” that is bad for children, Sarah DeYoung told the AP. DeYoung is a professor at the University of Delaware and studies evacuation shelters. “It is critical that there would still be an outside assessment … including public health experts and people who have pediatric expertise.”

U.S. officials apprehended nearly 19,000 unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border in March alone — the highest number ever recorded in a single month.

As CatholicVote reported in March, “one Texas migrant facility had reached 729% of its planned capacity as of March 2, with 1,800 staying in a facility designed for 250.”

“‘Some of the boys said that conditions were so overcrowded that they had to take turns sleeping on the floor,’ said a lawyer who advocates for migrant youth.”

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