Hilarity from Turtle Bay

Iran has apparently been named to the United Nations commission for womens' rights, apparently because the Taliban were no longer available to take the seat, or something like that. These clowns would give a seat on an anti-semitism commission to Hitler, I think.

With insane idiocy like this, can we get out of the United Nations now? Please?

In honor of the newest member of the commission for womens' rights, here you go.

And some more hilarity: Iranian police are apparently vowing to arrest and prosecute any woman who has a suntan. Now given that women in Iran are required pretty much to wear a Persian version of the burqa when they're in public, exactly how police would tell is beyond me, but even so, they're threatening. And how exactly would one differentiate the generally darker complexion of any Persian from one who had gotten some sun?

How not to show you care for mother earth....

....buy a nine million dollar home with nine bathrooms in LA, like Al Gore apparently just did. (h/t Michelle Malkin)

Shoot, I recommend cutting down a tree and buying an F250, and Gore makes me look like I just refurbished a bicycle and started riding it. With a carbon footprint like his, they ought to name the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico after him.

Follow-up thought: I've noticed that once a home gets beyond about 4000 square feet or so, the # of bathrooms is almost always double or triple the # of bedrooms. Does being rich cause incontinence or something? (and no, I'm not talking about of the mouth, which Gore obviously has as well)

Can we ditch Keynes now? Please?

John Lott demonstrates that the nations which pulled out of the global economic crisis most quickly are those.....which didn't enact massive bailouts into law. As one would guess from reading Bastiat, there appears to be tremendous fallout from "that which is not seen," specifically that it's a bad idea to take resources from productive people and put them into enterprises without regard to return on investment.

Systematic Conformity, 1960s version

While cleaning our (small) church last night, my wife picked up a book from Zondervan from the early 1960s, supposedly about Biblical womanhood. She was surprised to find that a book from the 1960s about "Biblical" womanhood more or less parroted the cultural line of "get out of the house and get some good psychiatric counseling." Funny, that's not how I read Proverbs 31...

So no, the habit of rebadging secularism with a cross isn't anything new. Be careful what's on your bookshelves, dear brothers and sisters.

And these people are running DC. Sigh.

I read this morning in the paper that a poll found that 79% of Democrats support allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, but only 43% of Democrats support allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military.

Looks like some on the left are desperately in need of a dictionary, or perhaps a basic reading class. In similar news, North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad is trying to argue that allowing tax cuts to expire does not amount to a tax hike.

With thinking like this running the country, our nation's current state should not surprise us.

Systematic conformity....

As a follow on to the "world's shortest systematic theology" post (which was of course stolen/adapted in part from Charles Spurgeon and others), here's a little bit from les freres Bayly about how much of the greatest recent work, theologically speaking, has been self-published.

And so it's very interesting; many volumes of garbage which (at least in my house) found their proper place in the circular file had no trouble getting published at major publishers. The treasures? Not so much.

It suggests a question; are the major publishers simply printing what itching ears want to hear? At the risk of following a theologically simplistic prooftexting argument, I'd suggest the Word has something to say to many mainstream publishers of theological works.

This obviously isn't happening.

I never thought I'd be accusing Fox News of falling for a practical joke, but I must today. You see, they're claiming that Illinois (Land of Capone) lawmakers are pleading that the National Guard be deployed to help the crime rate in Chicago.

This obviously can't be true, as Chicago has banned private ownership of handguns since 1976. There are obviously no handguns there to fuel gang violence, so obviously reports of hundreds of gang related handgun murders there must be false, just like in DC.

Just ask Kal Penn. Nobody is victimized by criminals with handguns in gun free zones. Right? Right?

Oh.

Systematic theology 101

One of the most precious things a previous pastor of my family's did for us was to educate us on the key issues of theology; specifically, that practical, applied theology ought to be built upon a foundation of exegesis, hermeneutics, Old Testament and New Testament theology, Biblical theology, and finally systematic theology. In a very strict sense, the person wishing to build a Biblical position on issue X needs to first learn to understand the text as it presents itself, how that text relates to other Biblical texts, how larger portions of the Bible interact with and define each other, and finally how the Bible as a whole relates to God and man.

In contrast, most of today's "Biblical" teaching more or less mixes a few proof-texts with a heavy dose of the wisdom of our own culture, generating ton after ton of slender paperback books over which well-meaning but theologically immature people can debate ad infinitum. With theological training like this, is it any wonder that many churches split like amoebae?

And so I humbly offer an extremely truncated systematic theology; if whatever exegesis, hermeneutic, Biblical theology, systematic theology, or practical theology does not point to Christ and His Gospel of forgiveness of sin through His work on the Cross, it needs some work.

The hills are alive.....

....with the sound of ....

.....haggis? Sadly, Julie Andrews' voice is still not back, so we won't be able to look forward to a highlands version of her famous alpine movie. Oh well.

On the serious side, if in fact many Britons do not know what this delicacy might be, it speaks volumes about the government education system over there. Unprintable volumes, of course.

Why the Blago scandal broke when it did?

According to an unredacted document released mistakenly, the Blagojevich defense team claims credible evidence to indicate exactly where the investigation was going. Again, it's dangerous to take the claims of attorneys in general, and especially defense attorneys, at face value, but if this is indicative, there may have been much bigger fish to fry in the investigation than a governor with a 15% approval rating.

Hopefully some inquiring minds take a very close look....it's a good thing to be curious, you know.

The importance of curiousity

Looking at this account of a man who is currently imprisoned for his role in a crash of a 1996 Toyota, it appears that the defense has uncovered a sticky throttle in the vehicle, as well as evidence that the filaments on the brake lights were hot when the car crashed--one may actually be able to determine this from their condition when broken.

This uncovers a bunch of questions. First of all, given that the clear testimony of the man and his whole family was that he was trying to stop, it seems odd that there was no investigation at the time as to whether the throttle was stuck. If the defense lawyer is telling the truth (we can't assume that, of course), there are some very real issues of "withholding of evidence" in play here--which should get the man immediately released with compensation, and the prosecutor needs to be fired and disbarred. This is, after all, a pretty basic Constitutional issue.

More ominously, if indeed an obvious sign that someone needed to look at the gas pedal was missed at this time, it's entirely possible that about thirty people have died needlessly because an over-aggressive prosecutor didn't follow obvious signs that something was very wrong with the car involved.

Brilliant picture of the environmental left

....is right here. With about $32 million in government funding, Smith Electric Vehicles is building a mighty....

....100 vehicles per year, a subsidy currently of about $32000 per vehicle. This is not that far from the ordinary cost of a new diesel delivery truck, and it has the additional benefits of a useful range of less than 50 miles, and a top speed of 50mph. With the acceleration promised by that top speed, that ought to go over REAL well in most cities...."need a push out of that loading area, bub?"

Lenin's Birthday update; lunch at a drive-in.

How to observe Earth Day

Today is Lenin's Birthday--I mean Earth Day--and I figure I ought to share some tips about how well meaning people really ought to help preserve our planet for the future.

Tip 1; instead of taking transit, drive a 3/4 ton diesel pickup or Suburban to work. It's actually a more efficient way to get to work than taking the bus or train.

Tip 2: eat a nice big portion of grass fed beef--or perhaps a critter you shot--for dinner. Grasslands need to be grazed to be healthy, environmentally speaking, and the balance between grasslands and herbivores can be maintained by shooting a portion of the herbivores.

Tip 3: Cut down a tree or two. There is no sweeter song on Lenin's Birthday ("oops," Earth Day) than the buzz of a chainsaw. Plus, some trees need to be burned to be replanted, and it's a great way to cook your dinner.

Tip 4: Buy your wife a fur coat, sparing the environment from wastes from producing polyester and other synthetics.

Tip 5: Whatever you do, don't buy a hybrid or electric car, a windmill, a photovoltaic system, or other boondoggles loved by the environmental left. You can reduce your impact on the environment far more and spend far less money.

Tip 6: make sure your representatives get a note asking them to stop federal funding for a number of environmental boondoggles like ethanol, hybrids, transit, windmills, and so on.

Tip 7: if there is a statue of Lenin in the neighborhood, defile it in some way.

Again, if you want to do something for the environment, just do the OPPOSITE of what the environmental left suggests, and you won't be too far off.

Consequences of immodesty

Apparently, curators and "models" at New York's Museum of Modern Art have discovered that when an exhibit removes his clothes, visitors suddenly feel free to touch the exhibit. This illustrates one of the wonderful functions of clothing, that of a barrier to prying eyes and fingers.

Yes, it's not anyone's "right" to do this kind of thing, but it illustrates what your grandma (or maybe your momma) would have told you. Dressing, or not dressing, in certain ways is simply asking for trouble.

It could be....it could be....it is!

Thomas Sowell knocks yet another one out of the park by comparing slavery and big government. When we depend on achieving goals by legislative degree and use of government force, we forget what slaveowners learned all the way back in Rome; if you want something done that requires a degree of thinking, you don't do so by shaking a whip or pointing a gun at the person you want to do it. You do it with positive incentives.

Hopefully our nation remembers this before it is too late.