Recently in Signs of the Times Category

My life is blessed with some very wonderful, bright people of substance.  One of those is GG.  She recently shared one of her own quotations with me.  It is spot on!

"You believe of others what you know of your own heart."

Warning! Most Christians in the United States, and probably all conservative ones, will be deeply offended by this sign. I personally find it shocking. The thought that it was displayed by a Christian church astounds me.

Do not click the image to the right, which will open a picture of the sign that is large enough to see and read, if you are easily offended by those who may have different religious views from your own and express them in ways you may find incredibly offensive.

A church, St. Matthew's Church in Auckland, New Zealand, put this sign up "intended to challenge stereotypes about the conception of Jesus." It has sparked enormous levels of anger and outrage on both sides of the controversy.

"We would see a billboard like that being used by an anti-Christian group to actually poke fun at the divinity of Christ," Freer told National Radio.

Christ's conception was a profound theological question and the billboard would not "give rise to any intelligent discussion on the birth of Jesus," she said.

Many messages on the church Web site attacked the image, while others defended it.

"This billboard and your 'sermon' is a sacrilege," one visitor, identified as Karen, posted.

Another, identified as Andrew M, wrote: "I for one think this is an excellent billboard. Challenging and thought-provoking. Just what it was intended to be."

Via: NPR -- Billboard Depicting Joseph, Mary In Bed Sparks Row

This bumper sticker was seen by Sandi Patty, who then tweeted it.

Today religious mania has infected the political bloodstream and America has become corrosively isolationist, he says. "Ask an American what they know about Sweden and they'd say 'They live well but they're all alcoholics'. In fact a Scandinavian system could have benefited us many times over." Instead, America has "no intellectual class" and is "rotting away at a funereal pace. We'll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn't realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is. Benjamin Franklin said that the system would fail because of the corruption of the people and that happened under Bush."

Source: Gore Vidal predicts US Military Dictatorship // Current

As far as I am concerned, the governor of Texas should be tried as a terrorist. His irresponsible statements during the Republican sponsored so-called "Tea Parties" that the state of Texas should secede from the union are more than irresponsible, they are creating a threat to the sovereignty of the nation, an issue that was settle in the 19th century.

Yesterday I saw a pickup truck with Texas plates that had a bumper sticker with the Texas star and a single word on it:

Secede

I also saw a tag on a car with Louisiana plates that said:

Make Levees
Not War

I saw two bumper stickers over the past two days in New Orleans that I found interesting. Well, one of them was disturbing. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the governor of the state of Texas should be considered a terrorist.
He is the one who is publicly fanning this terrorist threat to the sovereignty of the United States. This issue was settled in the 19th century. The idiot governor or Texas needs to remember we are now in the 21st century.
The bumper sticker, on a pickup truck with a Texas license plate, that brings this issue forward simply had the Texas lone star and said:
Secede
The other bumper sticker of note was on a car with a Louisiana tag and said:
Make LeveesNot War

When you get emails like this, you know very strange people!

The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

I've often marveled at the juxtaposition or right and wrong. For example: we would put a person (who is poor and has few resources) in prison for stealing a loaf of bread at the super market, yet we seem to let business executives (with wealth, privilege, and political influence) steal vast sums of money from people's retirement plans and the like without giving it much of a thought. Or, try stealing a gallon of grotesquely over-priced gas from the gas pump. In our society we often ignore the question: "Who's stealing from whom?" We replace that question with, "What will the market bear?" Just how far can we go in our quest for greed?

This political cartoon, by Mike Luckovich, posted at AZspot, brilliantly asks another really pointed question.

…the events of the last few months should have etched indelibly on the national psyche the conclusion that laissez faire, robber-baron capitalism—the Great Idea of the conservative movement—has proven a dreadful failure.

... George W. Bush and the Republican Congress did not abandon the legacy of Ronald Reagan. They fulfilled it.

Reagan branded in the popular imagination the notion that “government is the problem, not the solution.”

Bush and his ideological counterparts in Congress took that philosophy to its logical conclusion, dismantling as many of the safeguards and safety nets put in place since the New Deal as they had time to dismantle.

They preached the gospel of unregulated greed, arguing that what’s good for unscrupulous lenders and multinationals en route to Dubai is good for America, and we all paid the price.

That should be the Great Lesson of the first Great Depression of the 21st Century.

--Drew Westen

[Source: AZspot]

I'm just now slogging through email and discovered this holiday YouTube sent to from my cousin. Somehow it ended it getting caught by my spam filter. I watched it. Even though Christmas has passed, this is way too good to pass up!!! Thanks, Cuz!

This quotation from a man still in his 40's:

"You know you're getting old when you get Christmas cards from your friends telling about their recent hip replacement. "

At breakfast, the lady at the table next to me wore a sweatshirt with this message embroidered on it:

War is not pro-life.

... Tim-style!

Manhattan Beach must have more children per capita than any other city in the USA! I'm completely serious! I've never seen a place with more children--really young children. Thursday and Friday nights I ate dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and Chili's respectively. Both evenings the number of loud and generally badly behaved children was unbelievably high.

As incredulous as it may sound, on the half of the restaurant I was in, on Thursday I counted 37 children under the age of about 5! What if they all spontaneously decided to take over the restaurant? I swear there were not enough adults to have prevented it! Screaming, crying, doing what less-than-1-year-olds do, the place was out of control. The dining experience was completely unpleasant. I couldn't wait to get out of there. Chili's the next night was little better.

By California standards, these are inexpensive places to eat. So I guess the moms and dads take the family out to eat here. I actually asked the waiter at California Pizza Kitchen if Thursday nights was kids night. (I was going to avoid it in the future.) He rolled his eyes and said with a bit of disgust in his voice, as some toddler let out a particularly shrill screech: No, believe it or not, it's like this every night.

So when the girl that cuts my hair told me about the ArcLight Theater at the Cinema Dome in Hollywood, describing it as kids-free and very well done, I immediately wanted to go there. The tickets are pricy: $15--hence no children: indeed, a small price to pay. A large, very nice theater (with reserved seating) on Sunset Blvd., I had a fantastic time enjoying a dinner and movie: Mamma Mia!

The movie's setting in the Greek Isles was spectacular. The music is, well... you know. I bought the soundtrack. Meryl Streep was a sensation. She can sing, too!! Is there anything she can't do on stage?! Pierce Brosnan?? Was the casting director snorting cocaine, or what?! The man can not sing. At least the audio mixer amped up everything else to drown him out.

This was a great feel good movie, and the only thing loud and out of control was the awesome music. I highly recommend it.

Somehow I've ended up on an email distribution list from a group in the UK that apparently collaborates on independent global television projects around the world. So I get copied in on all of their email exchanges. (How my email address, under another person's name, got associated with the group, I'll probably never understand––a virus perhaps?) It's really rather entertaining to see what these guys are up to––some utterly fascinating projects. Several of them are associated directly with the BBC.

At any rate, an email from one of them, copied to the group, was just sent that contained this text. All you need to do is add the soundtrack.

President Bush is rehearsing his speech for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

He begins his remarks with "Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!"

Immediately his speech writer rushes over and whispers in the President's ear: "Mr. President, those are the Olympic rings. Your speech is on the teleprompter underneath.

The UK seems to think of him as an idiot, too!

"People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them."

- Dave Barry, author and humorist

[Source: Neatorama » Blog Archive » Quote: Dave Barry on Religion]

I saw this t-shirt on the Manhattan Beach pier this morning while walking:

Hmm... I guess this means do away with Microsoft?

“If you think half of America votes badly because they are stupid or religious, you are trapped in a matrix ... Take the red pill, learn some moral psychology and step outside the moral matrix.” - Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis

“If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between ‘for’ and ‘against’ is the mind’s worst disease.” - Jonathan Haidt, quoting Sent-ts’an, from 700CE China

“It's important to eave the security of who we are, and go to the place of who we are becoming. I encourage you to let yourself out of any prison you might find yourself in. Because we have to do something now. We have to change now.” - Environmental advocate John Francis, who went 17 years without speaking

"The job of the C is to make the B sad." - Boston Philharmonic Conductor Ben Zander, deconstructing a piece by Chopin

“How do we give credible hope to the billion poorest people in the world? It requires compassion to get ourselves started, and enlightened self-interest to get serious... If economic divergence continues, combined with global integration, it will build a nightmare for our children.” - Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion

“How dare we be pessimistic? Maybe the future is better than it used to be.” - Peter Schwartz, co-founder of the Global Business Network

[From TED2008: Days 3 and 4 in Quotes]

These bumper stickers were all seen along the Pacific Coast, where hybrid vehicles abound:

No Wonder I like this state!

*The actual word was printed on the bumper sticker, but you can figure it out.

War is terrorism
with a big budget