Suspension of Disbelief

“Than Expected” — Before

What you may expect for tomorrow:

  1. US national unemployment rate: 7.9%
  2. A peace treaty between Israel and Iran
  3. Price of crude oil per barrel: $45
  4. Average global temperature: 30 degrees Fahrenheit
  5. US national murder rate for the day: 5
  6. New H1N1 infections in the US: 6
  7. US consumer confidence: up 14%
  8. US Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade
  9. War on Terror: Osama bin Laden surrenders
  10. Your net worth: up 7%

Ten things suffice for that list.

Ten things you may expect for tomorrow. If you wish.

Now to eagerly await the arrival of the foreseeable future….

Military Internment Camps

In the USA???

American concentration camps…for American citizens???

In his piece More On Internment Camps, Chuck Baldwin (whoever he is), quotes some other guy:

“When I first heard the FEMA Prison Camp conspiracy story, it seemed ridiculous and paranoid at face value. But when I finally dug in to research it, I started by searching for the origins of the rumors, and found to my surprise that nearly all of the legal foundation and precedent for such a plan does in fact exist.”

That other guy (as I recall) had this to say at the end of his own piece on the subject of FEMA concentration camps:

FEMA Prison Camps

We choose to elect politicians who don’t want us to bring water bottles onto planes, because (for better or for worse) that’s what’s important to our society right now. I don’t remember anyone electing a politician who wants to throw millions of Americans into prison camps. To make effective electoral decisions, you need to maintain a healthy skepticism, and not go off the deep end and suppose that every Halliburton contract is a slippery slope leading to Americans being gassed in military concentration camps. If you see barbed wire around a train yard, consider the possibility of other explanations (like the train company doesn’t need stuff being stolen) before you conclude that the Illuminati are out to kill you.

So what’s the truth?

How should I know?!

But, if nothing else, it’s an interesting story that includes a conspiracy theory, American concentration camps, and the Illuminati.

We report; you deride. 😆

July 1969

That was forty years ago this month!

I recall only July 20 event, but more on that later.

July 1, 1969 — Charles Philip Arthur George (21), the son of Queen Elizabeth II, becomes Prince of Wales. “A Popular Young Lad,” somebody or other called him back then.

July 5, 1969 — The UN Security Council unanimously — that means the US was included, eh? — censures Israel for all measures taken to change the status of Arab East Jerusalem.

July 7, 1969 — Canada’s House of Commons approves equality of French and English (at least as the two official languages of Canada).

July 15, 1969 — The Wallkill Zoning Board of Appeals bans the Woodstock Festival on the basis that the planned portable toilets would not meet town code.

July 16, 1969 — Men blast off for the moon.

July 17, 1969 — The New York Times publishes a correction of an editorial in one of their 1920 editions in which they had scathingly taken the rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard to task for asserting that rockets could function in a vacuum and might even make it to the moon. “He only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools,” the editorial said of Goddard.

July 18, 1969 — Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne go on a midnight drive on Chappaquiddick Island. He returns alive; she doesn’t.

July 20, 1969 — With the Apollo 11 mission, the United States succeeds in putting man on the moon for the first time (as far as we know).

July 24, 1969 — The three Apollo 11 astronauts land in the ocean, safely back from their historic moon mission.

Yeah, July 1969 was quite the month. In my research of it, I came across this New York Times piece: A Year to Remember 40 Years Ago. Interestingly, the sad event of July 18 didn’t get included. It seems they chose to ignore Mary Jo Kopechne.

Mary Jo Kopechne, 'friend' to Senator Ted Kennedy

Time magazine -- July 11, 1969I also came across an article by Billy Graham in the July 11, 1969, issue of Time magazine: The Sickness of Sodom. It was already bad back then! Question now is, would they publish another article like it today?

OK, I said I only remember the July 20 event. I was two months shy of my tenth birthday. My folks were missionaries in Cd. Obregón, Sonora, Mexico. So were Maynard and Helen Headings and their family. My recollection is of Dad and me going over to the Headings’ and then going with Maynard and the boys over to one of their neighbors’ to watch the grand event unfold on a small black-and-white TV set. I remember seeing this happen “live” (or was it in some Hollywood studio? :mrgreen: ):

Apollo 11 -- astronaut stepping on the moon

Now Don’t Go Making Congress Mad!

And a government cover-up is better? 😐

And…the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress.

Help me out — why would that make Congress mad?

“We’re looking at a problem that could be as bad as drunk driving, and the government has covered it up,” said Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety.

Here we go again. Somebody is going to tell me I can’t carry on a conversation while I’m driving. Come to think of it, I don’t talk much while I’m driving. I don’t drink much either.

The highway safety researchers estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents over all in 2002.

That is astounding, but how do they go about estimating such things?

The research mirrors other studies about the dangers of multitasking behind the wheel. Research shows that motorists talking on a phone are four times as likely to crash as other drivers, and are as likely to cause an accident as someone with a .08 blood alcohol content.

😯

So, just add a new dimension to DUI. Maybe something along the lines of Driving Under the Influence of Conversation.

Wait a minute — why am I wasting my time here again????!!!! 🙁

One more thing: Will the time come when we attach drunk driving stigma to distracted driving?

Read the rest of the New York Times story here: In 2003, U.S. Withheld Data Showing Cellphone Driving Risks.

Jesus’ Family in Mexico?

So…they…

purport to be devout Evangelical Christians. All members are disciplined to abstain from narcotics themselves and care for their homes and children, La Familia says. They are also made to study a special Bible….

Then there’s this a little farther down in the Time story:

The sect also uses the Internet to spread its gospel. On one on-line forum, hundreds of supporters sing the praises of Christ and La Familia. “Victory to La Familia Michoacana, gloryfying Jesus by helping others,” writes one aficionado calling himself Fran. “Evil will only reign until Jesus stops it,” writes another calling himself the Messenger. “Nobody is saved from divine justice and they cannot imagine the pain and suffering they will go through.”

Time calls them a sect? Maybe that’s what they are, but, somehow, that seems to me to dangerously tarnish real Evangelicals.

La Familia Michoacana just is not your conventional religious group:

Their use of extreme violence against rivals and police has given La Familia a brutal reputation across Mexico. They first burst to fame in 2006 when gangsters severed the heads of five rival traffickers and rolled them onto a disco dance floor.

😯

They don’t sound like your conventional Mexican drug cartel either

HT: Amsalazar

Private
Above all, love God!