The Grand Old Tea Party

Here is Grover Norquist speaking in a Los Angeles Times article about the Tea Party:

Once there were Republicans who voted for tax increases, but they aren’t here any more.… The Republican Party has largely absorbed the message of the Tea Party movement. 

So, essentially the same folks who once railed against the government and the establishment in 2008 in Washington are the establishment in Washington.

GOP puts its tea party ‘civil war’ behind it.

Albert Camus re-examined

If readers need a new translation of “The Stranger” to understand that Mersault was not a “monster” but “painfully without pretense,” they have not understood “The Stranger.”

Also, Andrew Sullivan, quoting Claire Messud writes:

Claire Messud picks up on another aspect of Camus’s thought – his complicated relationship to Christianity. She praises Sandra Smith’s recent translation of The Stranger for realizing the subtly religious aspects of his prose:

Camus, of course, was more complex in his atheism than we might commonly expect: he was an atheist in reaction to, and in the shadow of, a Catholicism osmotically imbued in the culture (of the French certainly, but of the pieds noirs in particular). The inescapable result is that his atheism is in constant dialogue with religion; in L’Étranger no less than in, say, La Peste.

Sandra Smith has, in her admirable translation, plucked carefully upon this thread in the novel, so that Anglophone readers might better grasp Camus’s allusions. Here is but one key example: the novel’s last line, in French, begins “Pour que tout soit consommé,…” which [Matthew] Ward translates, literally, as “For everything to be consummated.” But as Smith points out, the French carries “an echo of the last words of Jesus on the Cross: ‘Tout est consommé.’” Her chosen rendition, then, is “So that it might be finished,” a formulation that echoes Christ’s last words in the King James translation of the Bible.

Sullivan seems to imply here that just by referencing the Bible, Camus’ writing has some “religious aspects” or theological meaning beyond the reference itself. Sullivan was just vague and succinct enough to leave this open to interpretation, but as a Catholic, Sullivan seems to be implying — as the Christian narrative goes — that even atheists must necessarily infuse their writing with theology, however veiled, since all humans are God’s creation and thus endowed by the Holy Spirit with spirituality, regardless of whether one chooses to acknowledge it. Why else would Sullivan pick out this passage as one of two to highlight from this long essay on the new Camus translation.

Sterling takes delusion to a whole new level

Although Donald Sterling actually said the words that he was “so sorry” and “so apologetic” for offending millions of black people, including those on his own team, the rest of Anderson Cooper’s interview with the former Clippers owner sounded as bad or worse than the initial tape. Notice that he said he was “sorry that so many people are hurt,” not that he was sorry for making the remarks. He continued to slam Magic Johnson’s character, wrongly saying that he’s got AIDS, and adding that the former basketball star is not a good role model, although the Magic Johnson Foundation reaches thousands of people in the inner cities each year. He also called Anderson Cooper a racist and blamed the media for blowing the tapes out of proportion. Perhaps even most egregious was his apparent comparison to how Jewish communities help people in need versus black communities. Just stunning.

In God we don’t trust

Funny how “small government” conservatives want to have their cake and eat it too by using the engines of government only when it serves their purposes, say, when local officials want to put “In God we trust” on public property:

‘In God We Trust’ signs in Roane sent to committee.

I think it violates the Constitution for the slogan to be national motto at all and for it to be printed on our currency, and indeed, before 1956, “e pluribus unum,” or “out of many, one” was unofficially the national motto. I think President Roosevelt posed a salient objection from a religious standpoint, noting that printing God’s name on money was sacrilegious. Likewise, from the Christian worldview, wouldn’t the act of plastering God’s name all over carnal places of businesses, schools and courthouses in some way diminish his holiness?

The debate about “In God we trust,” of course, ignores the rather obvious point: We don’t actually trust God as a nation and never have. If we did, we would leave all the heavy lifting to him, entrusting God to sort out financial crises, intervene in global affairs, fight terrorism and bring international criminals to justice. But no. The federal government handles all of these because we know — even if only a few of us will admit it — that if we had sat around trusting God to get stuff done and move history forward, the world would have imploded long ago.

Two amazing, amazingly pointless inventions

I’m not sure what practical purpose this invention serves, other than wowing us with science, but it does provide a stunning visual:

Here’s another one (embed disabled) in which people can walk through falling water and not get wet. It apparently works by creating a field around the person through some type of 3D sensor. I imagine this invention would have a market among the super rich; they could build a special “rain room” in their homes and amaze guests over cocktails.

Argument from disproof

Silly as it may seem, this is actually a popular argument apologists try to make when all of their other stock arguments have been exhausted. Here is the argument from disproof in all its glory, Via Reddit user Shankhillbutcher:

You can’t prove Akatosh isn’t real. You can’t prove that any of the Aedra or Deadra aren’t real. This being are GODS. They are not bound by physics or nature. How do you know Akatosh isn’t directing the flow of time? How do you know Alduin didn’t eat the world and the world we live in now is the next cycle of time? How can you know that we are not living in post dragon break Tamriel? Big Bang? Cosmic radiation? Atom Decay? So What? Akatosh is the GOD OF ALL TIME AND SPACE! He exists in all times and places at once. His power is beyond comprehension. Akatosh could have easily began our universe much the same way he began Mundus. You atheists have no mind for the infinite or the surreal and that is why you cannot understand the Aedra or the Dedra. You’ve been tricked by the lords of Oblivion into seeing the greatest illusion, the “real” world. I don’t hate you, I just feel sorry for you. I feel sorry that you will spend eternity as a slave in Coldharbour or as Prey in The Wild Hunt. I’m begging you for your own sake to accept to love of Akatosh and Talos the lord of all mankind.

Funny, how it works no matter if you plug in Jesus, God the Father or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.