Maybe this belongs in the 'life' section, but not everything analytical should be political.

Ezekiel 3:18-21

18 When I say to a wicked man, 'You will surely die,' and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. 19 But if you do warn the wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin; but you will have saved yourself.
20 "Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before him, he will die. Since you did not warn him, he will die for his sin. The righteous things he did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. 21 But if you do warn the righteous man not to sin and he does not sin, he will surely live because he took warning, and you will have saved yourself."

A few points:

First, we are clearly intended to be messengers of God's truth to the world. That's really an assumed role of the Christian today - even now. The trouble is that the debate has changed over what it means to be that messenger. Here, God makes it quite clear. One of our absolute duties is to specifically warn people against their sinful actions. In this day and age, that means it isn't ok to say, "I'm a Christian, and I believe in the Bible, but I don't think it's right to go around telling people they're wrong." We don't have the luxury of that opinion if we are Christians, because God is saying he will actually hold us accountable for the blood of the unrighteous and the righteous who die in sin.

There are so many things that Christians want to interpret away - out of their beliefs system - if they are inconvenient. But so many things in God's word are clear and demand that if you claim to believe the Bible, you must act differently.

Second, this is really quite a statement about how God designed humans to work together. God is God - so he certainly didn't have to design a world and a spiritual system in which one man is held to account for the blood of another, purely because he didn't warn the other not to sin. That's hardly necessary - people aren't supposed to sin - period. He could have just said, "If you die in sin - it's your fault - period." "And you over there - if you sin, you die, and it's your fault - period." But instead he got it into his head to blame me if I didn't go around telling you you shouldn't be affronting God.

God designed things so that we are supposed to be in relationship with each other. He defined it so strictly that even if we don't think we're in a relationship with someone, God will hold us partly accountable for what they do, and what happens to them.

So we must always keep in mind that everything we do and do not do is, by design, part of what happens to everyone else.

Third, and this is more theological than the other two, note that God is defining who these people are before he states what they do. This is actually an illuminating look at God's mindset toward us as individuals.

God doesn't say, "The man who is warned and still does wrong," or, "The man who is warned and does not do wrong." He says, "The wicked man who is warned and still does wrong," and, "The righteous man who is warned and does not do wrong."

This is rather a matter of linguistics. God identifies first that the man is wicked or righteous, and then what he does given the situation. The reverse would be to say that a man is given a choice, and then he chooses one or the other, defining him as wicked or righteous. The suggestion here is that we are what we are in our hearts, and then our actions come out from that, and not that we make choices, that then make us wicked or righteous in his site.

This mostly just goes along with the theme that we are, in fact, saved by faith, not by our actions, as Paul repeatedly intones. But it also begs the question about our destiny - or that wonderfully mysterious and scholarly predestination. At what point does that decision get made about whether we are wicked or righteous, why, if a man is stated to be wicked, does it still matter that I admonish him to do right, and can a man change who he is - wicked or righteous - once that label has been affixed?

Interesting thoughts that I am not up to investigating further at this moment...

HELL YES!!

Yahoo! News - US economy grows 2.4 percent in second quarter: "WASHINGTON (AFP) - US economic growth shot to an annual pace of 2.4 percent in the second quarter, shattering sluggish expectations."

basically, it works like this. When the Democrats can unreservedly celebrate success in our economy like we can - and do - they will find themselves winning an election or two again.

when they find they can celebrate the victory of America's military over brutality and hate (not, mind you the 'hate' of t-shirts, but the actual hate of killing people wantonly for one's own sick cravings) - THEN the Democrats will find themselves winning an election or two again.

but not when they sit around hoping for Republicans' downfall and grasping at every negative straw they can find. People just get sick of believing the worst about their nation and its people all the time.

Visit Everything Once

Everything Once:"Idiocy Rises 11% Worldwide"

The purveyor of the one and only 'Not My Desk' is still awesome.

if it doesn't make sense, it's probably a Liberal

The null device blogs about the creation of 'straight pride wear' in this way:
"Straight Pride Wear; where you can express your intolerance for alternative lifestyles...".

Conservatives love to complain that although liberals claim they want unity among people, they are constantly dividing those same people into opposing groups. Examples are all sorts of minority self-interest groups, homosexual groups, women's groups, old people's groups, etc. And we're always insisting that if some corresponding 'white male' group formed, it would be immediately be assailed as a vile, intolerant, destructive, hateful group, regardless of whether its forming or structure was the same as corresponding 'minority' groups. Try to imagine an after school 'white people's study group' or a 'white congressional caucus' or 'white history' curriculum at universities.

So along comes 'gay pride' for the last ten years or so. Gay pride parades feature mock sexual activity between homosexuals, display sexually gratuitous clothing, but can't be called 'intolerant' or offensive, because they are the paradigm of understanding and tolerance. There are gay pride stickers meant to tell drivers that the occupants of nearby vehicles want to have sex with people of their own gender. There are gay pride t-shirts, gay pride web sites, and gay pride blogrings.

None of this is supposedly offensive, intolerant, exclusionary, or hateful.

However, if heterosexuals come up with t-shirts that merely say 'straight pride', liberals presume that they are expressing 'intolerance for alternative lifestyles'. So are gay parades and t-shirts and bumper stickers actually expressions of intolerance for heterosexuality?

Null device goes even further

And it's not just about shaming the sodomites back into their closet, it's also about being a good all-American patriot, as the stars and stripes will attest. And the links to religious-right groups and the "pro-life-punk" movement pretty much confirm one's suspicions. (via MeFi)

I wonder when the Ku Klux Klan will follow the lead and bring out a line of "White Pride" streetwear for Aryan mooks.

So all of that can be intuited from four t-shirts? Interesting.

It seems like the purveyor of null device must have seen something else to make him compare straight pride to the Ku Klux Klan. Let's see... well, there's the 'about us' page:

This page is dedicated to those who want to know a little more about what we are and where we are going with things.

Beware: we are not a politically correct organization...cause "Life isn't, so why should we?"

To start things off, we (heterosexuals) are living out a "lifestyle" like billions of others who believe that family /morals /pro-creation are the backbone of our well being. Many groups of people who don't believe in our way of life enjoy twisting/confusing our ways with being "hateful" to create propaganda. When really, we are just "happy to be straight". And this leads us to one of our more popular questions "Why can't we (heterosexuals) be proud of being straight"? I guess, to answer the question, we are subjected to a one-sided society who wants everything their way at any cost. This is a chance for the silent majority to make a statement...I am okay with who I am and I don't need you to push your views laws onto me.

I'm not homophobic that word doesn't exist and has no place in my eyes. This is how we were brought up and this is how we intend on living our lives till the day we perish from this planet. So get used to it...that's why we live in America. Freedom of Speech is more than a figure of speech. You don't like our views, turn your cheeck.

Straight Pride.

I'm sorry, but it seems to me that the intolerance is not in straight pride. It is in presuming that someone is a bigot just because they take essentially the same attitude (pride in self) as those they are supposedly bigoted against. What seems even more ironic is how 'straight pride's' attitudes seem parallel to null device when you consider the merchandise he tries to market. The message of Null Device t-shirts? "Life's tough - get over it". Seems like wisdom he should be taking.

But his attitude vindicates AGAIN the belief that these days open-mindedness is okay and wonderful so long as it doesn't include being proud of traditional values.

Nonsensical decrees

sacbee.com -- Recall -- Federal judge strikes down portion of state's recall law

...voters will be allowed to cast a ballot for a potential successor to Gov. Gray Davis even if they don't vote on whether he should be recalled.

Now really, doesn't it just fit into the current atmosphere to send the message "If you aren't willing to make tough political decisions, you can still &*)# with those who are."

We don't trust nobody

NY Daily News - front - Hil keys up reelection Web site

"In the clearest sign that she will not run for President next year, Sen. Hillary Clinton launched a Web site yesterday for a 2006 reelection campaign."

Yeah, right. More like, "In the clearest sign that she needs to pretend she hasn't been jumping through the bare minimum number of hoops in order to seek the presidency as soon as possible, Hillary is, in fact seeking a return to the senate in 2006." Of course, this still means nothing, since we know that as long as she believes there is no chance for a democrat president in '05, she will wait until '08. But if that seems to change, the '06 website will merely be a vehicle for bigger things.

And..

Our distrust of stated intentions is not limited to the enemy camp. Arney says he may run, but We know better since "Shriver Said to Have a Big Say in Schwarzenegger Decision".

I have to admit I believe the latter about Arney, like most, since he is pussycatting the situation.

Yes - depressing... If I thought there was great hope of a fairly charismatic, yet significantly more conservative candidate winning the governorship, it would be good, not bad.

But then, I don't think that's likely.

More evidence ignored

TIME.com: TIME Magazine -- The Sleepy Superpower Awakes

"We are living a revolution, and hardly anyone has noticed. In just the three months since the end of the Iraq war, the Pentagon has announced the essential evacuation of the U.S. military from its air bases in Saudi Arabia, from the Demilitarized Zone in Korea and from the vast Incirlik air base in Turkey — in addition to a radical drawdown of U.S. military personnel in Germany, the mainstay of the Great American Wall since 1945."

The phrase 'imperialistic presidency' and the term 'cowboy' are just too juicy to be inhibited by facts - aren't they?