I honestly don\u2019t understand George W. Bush.<\/p>\n
According to the Drudge Report, he\u2019s about to make a proposal that the U.S. will \u201chalt greenhouse gas rise by 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since he\u2019s a lame duck and what he\u2019s proposing is nigh unto impossible, I doubt he will be successful. And since the people who buy into this crap \u2013 the Philips of the world \u2013 are going to continue to hate him regardless of what he does, I don\u2019t understand why he\u2019s doing it. If he truly believes in it, then where was he seven years ago when he \u2013 wisely, in my opinion \u2013 yanked the US out of the Kyoto Treaty? Does he believe it or doesn\u2019t he? He loses either way.<\/p>\n
I get the impression from this kind of nonsense that Bush occasionally chooses to do things in order to deliberately offend people. This has been the most successful aspect of his second term. Unfortunately, he\u2019s running out of people to offend.<\/p>\n
_______________<\/p>\n
Bill Maher is saying nasty things about the Pope and the Catholic Church, comparing Catholicism to the FLDS folks and essentially labeling both organizations as “cults.”<\/p>\n
I learned long ago that the word \u201ccult\u201d is entirely useless, because, in practice, it now has no objective definition. It used to have reference to any religion and was essentially a measure of size \u2013 i.e. a cult is \u201ca small group of religious followers.\u201d In today\u2019s vernacular, though, the word \u201ccult\u201d is reserved for spurious or unorthodox religions that deserve scorn and ridicule. Bill Maher ironically hearkens back to the traditional sociological definition when he uses the term, since, to him, the only difference between run-of-the-mill cults and the Catholic Church is one of size. \u201cIf you have a few hundred followers, and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you have a billion, they call you ‘Pope.’ \u201c<\/p>\n
I can think of a number of things I\u2019d like to call Bill Maher, and, like the word \u201ccult,\u201d none of them are very nice. Except namecalling reveals nothing about your target and reveals everything about you. People who throw the word \u201ccult\u201d around with regularity and think they\u2019re saying something factual are simply telling you which religions they don\u2019t like.<\/p>\n
The best and most useful definition of \u201ccult\u201d came from my brilliant high school government teacher, Lee Shagin, who put it thusly:<\/p>\n
\u201cA cult is someone else\u2019s religion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Walter Martin, arguably the most influentially vitriolic critic of the LDS Church in the 20th Century, wrote a book titled \u201cThe Kingdom of the Cults\u201d in which he derided several different groups that went afoul of his thinking of what Christianity ought to be. However, in order to begin mudslinging at all the cults he despised, he had to have an ironclad definition of same to anchor the discussion.<\/p>\n
The problem was that every part of Martin\u2019s definition could also be applied to early Christianity. All cults, according to Martin, follow a charismatic leader and insist that they\u2019re the only way to heaven. They require sacrifices; they have their own vocabulary. Sounds like he\u2019s describing all those folks following Jesus of Nazareth circa 33 AD. Martin spewed an awful lot of words in an attempt to clarify what a cult is, but ultimately, Lee Shagin\u2019s definition is the better one.<\/p>\n
But back to Bill Maher. He thinks Catholicism is a cult. Since Maher has no religion, it\u2019s not surprising that he thinks so little of someone else\u2019s. Whereas I think, personally, that Bill Maher is a jerk. Nyah nya ne nyah nyah.<\/p>\n
Glad we had this useless little exchange.<\/p>\n
_______________<\/p>\n
What was interesting about Mariah Carey as the mentor on last night\u2019s American Idol<\/span> was that Carey is one of the few mentors who could actually win American Idol<\/span>. Dolly Parton, mentor from a couple weeks back, wouldn\u2019t make it past the audition round.<\/p>\n Carey is doubtless a fantastic singer, but as a songwriter, there\u2019s just not much there. The reason the boys did so much better than the girls was that they did weird things to forgettable songs \u2013 except frontrunner David Archuleta, whose straightforward rendition of \u201cWhen You Believe\u201d was technically proficient but kind of boring, really. Jason Castro \u2013 who looks EXACTLY like John Travolta \u2013 was much more fun, and, while I also enjoyed David Cook\u2019s moody, emo version of \u201cAlways Be My Baby,\u201d I\u2019m continually amazed that the judges applaud him for taking risks while never noticing that he keeps taking the SAME risk \u2013 his emo \u201cABMB\u201d from last night is interchangeable with his emo \u201cBillie Jean\u201d and his emo \u201cEleanor Rigby\u201d and his emo \u201cHello.\u201d When he takes a different risk, like he did with last week\u2019s \u201cGive Back\u201d hand thing, he looks silly. And could he take a risk and comb his stinkin\u2019 hair?<\/p>\n The girls were all pretty lousy, but I was very glad that Carly covered up her grotesque tattoos. Brooke\u2019s unplugged \u201cHero\u201d was probably the worst of the lot, but I\u2019ll bet Syesha gets sent home tonight.<\/p>\n In the end, it\u2019s all moot. If David Archuleta doesn\u2019t win it all, I\u2019ll eat my hat. I don\u2019t have a hat, but that\u2019s beside the point, as I won\u2019t be called upon to eat it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ihonestly don\u2019t understand George W. Bush. According to the Drudge Report, he\u2019s about to make a proposal that the U.S. will \u201chalt greenhouse gas rise by 2025.\u201d Since he\u2019s a lame duck and what he\u2019s proposing is nigh unto impossible, I doubt he will be successful. And since the people who buy into this crap ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4890,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/4890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}