On Sins & Sinners
I have never understood the notion of hating the sin but not the sinner. Perhaps it’s because I’m not a Christian and therefore don’t place quite enough faith in the power of redemption.
I have never understood the notion of hating the sin but not the sinner. Perhaps it’s because I’m not a Christian and therefore don’t place quite enough faith in the power of redemption.
I simply don’t believe that a serial killer, a rapist, a child abuser or someone who mistreats a dog, has a soul that can be redeemed through good deeds or his alleged acceptance of Christ.
Granted, not all sins are of equal weight, just as all 10 Commandments aren’t. But why on earth should I separate those aforementioned reprobates from the sins they committed on innocent people or dogs? For that matter, why should I give the benefit of the doubt to Democrats who are out to destroy this nation and are willing to lie, cheat, steal and kill, in order to turn us into another Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, Cuba, China or Venezuela, and turn the rest of us into slave laborers for our Communist masters?
The original sin, after all, would have remained nothing more than an insane theory on pages scrawled by loony Karl Marx, but it was a long line of sinners stretching from Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Zhou Enlai, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Vladimir Putin, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Nicolás Maduro, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Peter Buttigieg, who took it off the page and put it into practice.
It occurs to me that Maxine Waters and the shrews who comprise the Squad are the best things that have happened to Nancy Pelosi in a very long time.
That’s because in comparison to the Squad’s Green New Deal and anti-Semitic ravings, Pelosi appears rational; and compared to Waters’ incessant calls for Trump’s impeachment and her fist-like face, Pelosi comes off as sane and even halfway decent-looking in spite of the pinball eyes and the goofy Zasu Pitts-like hand gestures.
Which reminds me, I used to hear that attractive and even moderately good-looking girls in high school would often hang around with homely girls in order to look better by comparison.
I don’t know if there’s any truth in it or that Mrs. Pelosi has introduced that sneaky behavior into the House chambers, but I suspect that if I were serving in Congress and someone wanted to take my picture, I’d try to make sure I could cajole a few of my colleagues, say Elijah Cummings, Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff, into making it a group photo.
Unlike some people, including a lot of Republicans, I like just about everything about Donald Trump. One thing he does that does annoy me, though, is insisting that Marine One, the presidential helicopter, keep its engine running when he’s taking questions from reporters before departing from the White House. It makes it much harder to hear his responses.
I believe this routine began with President Reagan. He would cock his head and lean towards the reporters, as if straining to hear their questions, pretending that the helicopter might take off without him. It’s now almost 40 years later and although Trump doesn’t go through the entire charade, it’s time to retire the shtick.
If the President doesn’t wish to take questions, he shouldn’t take questions. He doesn’t owe these swineherds anything. If he has something he wishes to say to the American people, say it and then start the rotors when he boards the helicopter and flies away. There’s no need to pretend it’s a commercial jet and that he’s just a regular person and he’ll have to wait another four or five hours before taking off for Camp David or Mar-a-Laga.
One of my most faithful correspondents made a comment about me (complimentary, it so happens) and then made a point of stating it was only her opinion. Well, I hope it wasn’t just her opinion since, as I mentioned, it was a compliment.
I let her know that all opinions are personal, which is why it always throws me for a loop when people think they’re setting me straight when, as occasionally happens, someone, by way of refuting something I’ve written, sends me a terse email, letting me know: “That’s only your opinion!”
Even if I didn’t already assume they were silly for disagreeing with me, that would cinch it. In what universe, after all, could I be expected to espouse someone else’s opinion?
Bob Hunt passed along a meme that points out that the United States ranks third highest in the world when it comes to murder.
However, if you remove Chicago, Detroit, St Louis, New Orleans and Washington, D.C. — all of them run exclusively by Democrats for decades and many of them boasting the strictest gun control laws in the nation — the U.S. drops to 189th place out of a possible 193. And if you included Baltimore, I bet we’d be no worse than 191st.
He passed along a second item that showed Obama sitting in the Oval Office with the usual smug smirk on his face. The caption read: “He talked about hope and change for eight years. What he failed to mention was that it wouldn’t come until after he left office.”
Two questions for baseball fans:
If there are less than two outs and a runner on third base and the batter hits a flyball that’s caught for an out and the runner scores, it’s not counted as an official at-bat, which would otherwise lower his batting average. However, if in the same situation, the batter hits a groundball that scores the runner and the batter is out at first base, it does count as an official at-bat and it does lower his batting average. Where’s the logic?
The second question is why, with the count two balls and two strikes on a batter, they say the count is even? How can that be when a third strike means he’s out, but a third ball doesn’t get him a free pass to first base? That requires four balls, not three. In reality, the count is only really even when it’s three balls and two strikes.
A reader wondered why it was that so many Hollywood types, pinheads like Robert DeNiro, Meryl Streep, Rob Reiner and Ashley Judd, regard themselves as the founts of political wisdom.
I ventured it was because they’re always giving each other awards, other people pay them millions of dollars to make faces for the camera, they’re generally pandered to and people all over the world idolize them. That inevitably leads to swelled heads and humongous egos.
When you get right down to it, they have far more reason to believe they’re politically knowledgeable than the morons who are keeping seats warm in the House and Senate.
Steve Stockton, who serves as my eyes and ears, not to mention my nose and throat, in Australia, sent along the following:
“Our wedding was so beautiful, even the cake was in tiers.”
“What lies at the bottom of the ocean? A nervous wreck.”
“I wouldn’t buy anything with Velcro. It’s a total rip-off.”
“What do you call cheese that isn’t yours? Nacho cheese.”
“Did you hear about the restaurant on the moon? Great food, no atmosphere.”
“Want to hear a joke about paper? Never mind, it’s tearable.”
“Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field.”
“What’s brown and sticky? A stick.”
“Did you hear about the kidnapping at school? It’s fine, he woke up.”
Which reminds me that when Angel takes me for a walk (you don’t think strolling around the block in 102-degree weather is my idea, do you?), I notice she stops and sniffs every tree, every post, every bush and every fire hydrant, collecting her daily messages.
It occurs to me that long before we humans came up with email, our four-legged friends had invented pmail.
