Good morning.

1. So, Mr Obama has some magical mythical pathway to a nuclear weapon free world, … how’s this fit in?
2. Cantor ism?.
3. It is very likely, alas, that the criteria used by liberals which judge most of the GOP as racist, tar your hero such as well.
4. Epistemic closure and some symptoms.
5. A reminder for the POTUS state-of-the-onion speech.
6. When a thing which isn’t happening is discussed over whether that’s a problem.
7. Ya think?
8. A drone discussion.
9. Drones here too.
10. Why? What is simpler than cui bono?
11. Jackboots next?

Western and Eastern Easter/Pascha calendars are very far off this year (Eastern Lent begins at sunset on March 10) … I wish the best for everyone who begins their Lenten fast tomorrow, may your journey be fruitful.

It’s one thing to criticize decisions. It’s another to realize you have to make the same ones you criticized. But Barack Obama has been continuing the same war policies from the Bush administration that he ran against. It’s amazing what getting the job has on your view of the job

If President Obama tuned in to the past week’s bracing debate on Capitol Hill about terrorism, executive power, secrecy and due process, he might have recognized the arguments his critics were making: He once made some of them himself.

Four years into his tenure, the onetime critic of President George W. Bush finds himself cast as a present-day Mr. Bush, justifying the muscular application of force in the defense of the nation while detractors complain that he has sacrificed the country’s core values in the name of security.

(Oh, and the NY Times is just now realizing this?)

Good morning

1. A conspiracy theory considered.
2. Yah, and what will we find out in the coming months and years. Betya waterboarding will come back … this time liberals will be defending it.
3. Of life and freedoms.
4. Another reason for the dismal label, a thing is and it isn’t.
5. I suspect the real reason for the contraception kerfuffle is to act as distraction from other follies.
6. Death, space, and an argument recalled.
7. SSM and an argument against it outside of religious reasonings.
8. Anti-drug adverts done right.
9. High capacity mags.
10. Microsoft suckage.
11. A plane (not plain) contest.
12. Border incursions.

Well, last weekend we saw “Parker” … and subsequently I’ve downloaded and read two (and am reading a third) Westlake/Stark/Parker books. Daughter #2 wants to see “Warm Bodies” which may be in the offing. On to links

1. Fancy words don’t make it right.
2. Need’n a little nuclear power, eh?
3. Back up a minute, I know you “can’t joke about” that there, but why? And if you figure it’s an infringement, how to stop it?
4. One of Mr Obama’s most effusive fans realizes he’s been mislead. For the one-liner retort.
5. Talking drones.
6. Although I’m more in agreement with this.
7. Yikes.
8. Now that’s dumb. Penises, not men, rape women (and criminal insanity, social rage and all that have nothing to bear on that). Cars, not drunk drives kill (social irresponsibility has no bearing). Geesh.
9. ‘Cause graft is the Chicago Way, duh.
10. Well, for anyone who doesn’t think there’s an education bubble … think again.
11. I for one, always hated riding a ITT in a crosswind.
12. Remember Ms Clinton’s 3am advert?
13. 3 for Obamacare, here, here, and here.

Well, we made it to Thursday without too too much of the embarrassing theatrics, eh?

1. Now that is quite striking.
2. Ooooh, let’s try to open old wounds.
3. Theology, anthropology and political science all rolled in together. Whaddya get out? The Constitution.
4. Obamacare estimates.
5. If that is not satire, then there’s another reason to call it the dismal science.
6. Never happen. As soon as the Democrats cotton that legalizing polygamy will end the inheritance tax … they’ll be dead set against it.
7. Not an AR. This.
8. Inconsistency.
9. Remembering Plato apparently fondly.
10. Gosh, remember just earlier this week … I linked charts indicating corporate “sitting on cash” is a myth, makes the title tag-line ironic, eh?

Good morning.

1. I’m seeing a lot of dog (not) barking with regards to the left’s defense (or more to the point their lack of same) of Mr Hagel.
2. A quiet retraction.
3. Kinda obvious, eh?
4. That worked out real well.
5. My first thought was taxes … not investors.
6. Maybe it’s this?
7. Interesting hermeneutical divination on the word imminent. More here.
8. Anthro-warming skeptics note warming.
9. Woops.
10. Obamacare and contracteption … following the money trail.
11. A smaller nation doesn’t shy from calling a spade a spade.
12. Now there’s a really dumb excuse. (do you think there would be applause if a Congress-critter said “I coudn’t print it … so I’m passing out pdfs on USB sticks).
13. Cinema.
14. Green and anti-warming hype is more about indulgences than actually changing the world.

Good morning to y’all!

1. Newsflash, some fired employees are disgruntled.
2. Duh.
3. Having taught two daughters to drive stick … it’s really not that hard. I suspect fictional exaggeration.
4. Same sex marriage.
5. Hmm. Not impressed with US foreign policy I suspect.
6. Pretty pistol … one slipped past quality checks however.
7. Chronology of drone strike procedures, aka how we changed in our ways of committing undeclared acts of war.
8. There’s a slang term for that, “short eyes” … the answer isn’t covering the girls … its jailing the pervs in a dark place.
9. So, now everyone knows about Richard III. Here’s an excellent book on his life by one of the best writers of English historical fiction in the stacks.
10. Hence …. dismal science.
11. Heh … and we have found the heel to fill it.
12. Uh. Riiiight. 😉
13. Don’t worry, the liberal elite think SSM is more important (even though the numbers affected are basically on par).

Good morning.

1. Blaster?
2. Well, in the Super-Bowl I liked two ads, this one and this one.
3. What is being taught here?
4. Meta links via Brandon.
5. “No doubt” indeed. There are two ways to tackle runaway deficits, cut spending or raise more in taxes. Alas, studies show only the former works to actually cut deficits.
6. How not to make an argument … present Stalin as a positive example for your side.
7. Someone is unaware that fiscal libertarians can be as reflective as the next guy.
8. A questionable vehicle.
9. I too was confused on why he pretends that’s hard (and btw java’s “jar” command has pretty much the same options).
10. Not for whittling.
11. Praise for Mr Boehner.
12. Trading and causality.

In arguing for the deity of Jesus Christ (i.e., that he is, in fact, God), many Christians will point to places in the Gospel accounts where Jesus is referred to as the Son of God. For example,

And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

– Matthew 14:28-33 ESV

or, more specific to the point,

Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.” The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.”

– John 19:4-7 ESV

Yet, when presenting these apologetic arguments, many times Christians will face the response that Jesus never claimed to be God but merely ‘the son of God’.

This, I think, is an unfortunate consequence of our current culture’s thinking (and, perhaps, most of Western culture). The mindset we are facing, and most times have ourselves, tends to see individuals rather than groups. When we meet someone who is introduced as so-and-so’s son we think along the lines of, “Oh, your name is Frank, and you’re John’s son.” Is it any surprise, then, that we have instances of surnames such as “Johnson”?

We do this all the time. “Hello Mary. Yes, I know your mother Kate, and don’t you have a daughter named Rebecca?” In such a dialogue, despite understanding the familial relationship between the mother – daughter – granddaughter, we assign (inadvertently, perhaps) more importance to the individuality of each person. Hence, the argument that if Jesus is the Son of God, then he is God, carries little weight with us.

However, this does not seem to be the case with the culture with which Jesus interacted. Consider this excerpt from the book of John,

The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.

– John 10:31-39 ESV

Here we see that the Jews were ready to stone Jesus because, as they stated, “you, being a man, make yourself God.” In his response Jesus actually takes their charge and clarifies it so as to make it clear that, yes, he is in fact making himself out to be God. Note his reference back to his saying, “I am the Son of God”.

So, how does this all tie in with CS Lewis, Narnia, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?

At the beginning of chapter 2, just after the Faun (Mr. Tumnus) spots Lucy, we have the following,

“Good evening,” said Lucy. But the Faun was so busy picking up its parcels that at first it did not reply. When it had finished it made her a little bow.

“Good evening, good evening,” said the Faun. “Excuse me – I don’t want to be inquisitive – should I be right in thinking that you are a Daughter of Eve?”

“My name’s Lucy,” said she, not quite understanding him.

“But you are – forgive me – you are what they call a girl?” asked the Faun.

“Of course I’m a girl,” said Lucy.

“You are in fact Human?”

In these few short lines of text Lewis wonderfully parlays the aspects of cross-cultural issues in how we understand textual meaning. Notice how when the Faun asked “Are you a daughter of Eve?” he was asking if Lucy was “in fact Human”. Lucy, “not quite understanding him” (in true Western form), immediately looked to the individuality aspect of her status as the daughter of her mother – that they were two distinct, and therefore separate, persons. Luckily, the Faun understood this confusion on Lucy’s part and stepped her through the process, first by asking if she was “a girl”, and then asking his initial question in a point blank fashion: “You are in fact Human?”

The point here is that the title Daughter of Eve had nothing to do with the individuality of Lucy but everything to do with her being of the same species as Eve: Human. In like manner, when Jesus was referred to or claimed to be the Son of God it had everything to do with him being of the same “species” as his Father: God.

Good morning. It’s zero out here in the Chicago south suburbs … bracing is what that is.

1. The first sentence seems to be the hypothesis for what follows … do you think it’s true (in both respects … that is, it it true and does Mr Obama believe it to be true)?
2. A short film.
3. The patron saint of … what?
4. Gun run.
5. Doncha hate when that happens.
6. Better bike news.
7. So … when you consider that the left wants to put stiff restrictions on what is allowed in the Constitution … well, that doesn’t happen with other stuff like religion, the press, and speech (remember the Volokh series on speech on college campuses) Right? Oh, never mind.
   
8. More on the press here.
9. Profiling and the assault ban.
10. Apparently my notions of what is tactically suggested is outdated, but I’ll bet Mr Biden didn’t know that either. And I still contend a semi-auto shotgun in Sandy Hook wouldn’t have had a better outcome.
11. Corporate cash holding growth explained.
12. No. Duh. And the guy who ruled yes must be an idiot.
13. Remember the claims that Obama has reduced the deficit? … Not so you’d notice.
14. No names and why.
15. Why we don’t want Uncle Sam minding more of the store.
16. For the super bowl .. I really like Mr Arkush when he’s on the radio … he write pretty well too.
17. Snerk. (So … am I a terrible person ’cause I found that amusing)?
18. Chick-Fil-A and football.
19. From a communist on guns. And the left (TPM?) has been touting the “armed citizens” can’t stand up to modern trained soldiers. Right. That’s a straw man. But a politician has to go out in and face his public.