The Evangelical Universalist Forum

How To Live Under An Unqualified President by John Piper

shocked face

Bob, you’re right, and I was wrong.

And this gives me a chance to show a picture of William Shatner, a great actor, and perhaps the greatest song stylist of this, or any, age.

I dedicate the following song to Holy-Fool-P-Zombie, since he’s the resident joker:

And Norm, “the good old days” didn’t always include the best art and entertainment, am I right?

(Sorry, I’m just feeling a little punchy before Christmas.)

PS Upon request, I will send a link for online coupons to anyone who makes it through the whole song.

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Perhaps?? He’s hands-down the best!! In this or any possible world!

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I will give you (very) limited agreement with “not always” but that’s as far as I will go, even if it is the Christmas season.

Maybe my generous concession above will calm you down a bit. Failing that, I recommend you quaff, not mere punch, but an even more generous dose of Drambuie. I’m sure a respectable high-class liquor store near you will stock it.

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Norm, you should give thanks to God I don’t drink. Imagine if I did, and felt uninhibited to started posting more of my favorite musical talent! :jack_o_lantern::zombie:, I mean :santa:

Just as long as noone posts ‘Macarthur Park’. Someone left a cake out in the rain? Who cares?

Let’s see what’s in the Patheos’ Evangelical newsletter! :crazy_face:

Let me quote the last paragraph

Finally, I worry that many non-Christians may well be thinking: if this is what an ‘instrument of God’ looks like, then I don’t want that God.

Let’s see what’s in the Patheos’ Catholic newsletter! :crazy_face:

Any comments from the audience? :wink:

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I always ask: Who is doing the statistics and what is their methodology?

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Man, if you’d turn that steel-trap mind on what the Dems did in the impeachment, you’d have been on the ‘right’ side lol. But I do notice you demand more from pro-Trump statistics than others. 99.99% of the time.

[quote=“qaz, post:3924, topic:6062, full:true”]

“I’m shocked. If the government decides to invade a country, there’s no problem if it does so regardless of what the intelligence says.”

Response: Dude, we need our own presidential thread :wink: But goodness, I’m the one who argued against you that correct intelligence about “consequences” was often vital to policy decisions. But to deduce from arguing that the gov’t shouldn’t always prohibit every irrational view or personal practice, that military intelligence before an invasion is irrelevant, seems like a weird non-sequitur to me.

“You’re changing your argument. If precedent is irrelevant, why bring up past nonsense gov’t did?”

Response: Where did I suggest that the past argues gov’t should affirm nonsense?? I cited past taxes for objectionable wars to counter your argument that we are never required to support something with which we disagree. But I’m lost on your logic here.

Response: I’m lost on why you insist allowing transgenders some freedoms of choice such as our repeated example of clothing means “forcing belief” in their “metaphysical claims” on everyone. That’s empirically false. I think their beliefs are bonkers, yet still feel no deep need to outlaw all of their beliefs/practices. Why would I feel the need to “believe” in all that gov’t allows individuals to think or do?

Probably because of more folks here, presenting “pro-Trump” stats. I said I would vote for Trump in 2020, provided:

  • The Senate doesn’t find him guilty.

  • Milke Bloomberg doesn’t become the Democratic nominee or a viable, Independent candidate.

  • Or the BBC doesn’t announce, the end of the world…due to Z-Hell (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) commencing.

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A good read - Rex Murphy, National Post, December 21

Moose, huge lumbering creatures with the bulk of mid-sized elephants, can prance and scamper though thick woods and alder-matted terrain as if they were fields of willows and dandelions. God designs the creature for the task, I suppose.

But I wonder if the Creator gave thought to the birth of any creature who could, even at a mild pace, wander through the contradictious, tangled and weed-choked path to the Democratic leadership’s grand impeachment theatrics of this week? The denouement of this grand assault on the American polity (which is how I view it) is strange on the way to being full on crazy. If there are threads of logic to the entire three-year carnival, keener eyes than mine must find them; and if anyone, anywhere can make sense of Nancy Pelosi’s final and ultimate manoeuvre, reach the Nobel Prize Committee — have them melt all their medals, for all their awards, and fashion one huge medallion, and give it to that person.

If there are threads of logic to the entire three-year carnival, keener eyes than mine must find them.

You cannot move from an accusation that the president of the United States sought and obtained the co-operation of the Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin as the predicate of your attempt to remove him from office, carry that for three years as an absolute ground for getting rid of him, and then turn on a dime and downshift to vague and trivial charges of abuse of power and obstruction of a Democratic Congress. And do so without some full and honest account of why you abandoned allegations of Russian collusion — a treasonous and unprecedented perfidy — so abruptly, as if the two and a half years of obstruction and investigation, once it fell utterly apart, simply didn’t matter anymore.

It reminds me of the Judge Kavanaugh circus. There were accusations of “train rape,” literally charges that the young Brett Kavanaugh supervised and participated in gang rapes of young women. Next to being a serial killer, could any charge be more grave? The accusations came by way of malicious hustler/lawyer Michael Avenatti (currently himself facing charges of fraud and theft). When the vicious absurdity was exposed and dismissed, the press and the politicians almost on the very next day walked away from it as if it never, ever happened. You accuse a nominee to the Supreme Court of your country of being a gang rapist and “snap” within 24 hours it disappears from public comment and official memory.

For three years, three years of talking points, endless TV shows and panels, a blizzard of investigations, newspaper articles and editorials, there was nothing else to say about Donald Trump — from those seeking his impeachment — other than that he was Benedict Arnold redux, a tool of Vladimir Putin, the Manchurian candidate in real life. And then Robert Mueller, the big dog of all the investigations, reports — nah, nothing here. No collusion, no one in the Trump campaign, not Trump — zilch.

The sun rises on a new day and suddenly it’s bribery, or Ukraine, or a telephone call. The impeachment train carries on. Everyone who wanted him gone, who salivated at the very thought, was wrong, wrong on the massive allegation that a U.S. president was under the thumb of a Russian autocrat.

Newspaper front pages are on display at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 19, 2019, the day after President Donald Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

No mind. We have other stuff. Nothing quite so juicy as a quisling in the White House mind you. How so serious a matter as impeachment could jump from a three-year narrative of darkest intrigue to a whole new framing in mere days remains unexplained. It is a dark tangle.

And now this week, when Madam Pelosi and her comrades stagger into the actual impeachment vote — with no Russia, no Ukraine — and having a majority in the House finally get their long-wished for, “historic” articles of impeachment passed, what happens? The eyes of the world are upon her. She carries the vote. Stage one of impeachment has been completed. Well, Speaker Pelosi at the very summit of her triumph then inexplicably, staggeringly, incredibly announces she is not going to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate!

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House, on Dec. 19, 2019, the day after he was impeached by the House of Representatives. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The latter part of this process was all done in hurry and haste because to delay impeachment, to leave Trump in office, was a threat to “national security;” it was a nation-saving emergency to proceed with all possible efficiency. The country was facing “existential” concerns. She wins Impeachmas. And then, bizarrely, without missing a beat, she announces she’s not going to send them to the Senate just now. She’s going to stall the proceedings. There is the Christmas break. Perhaps in January — perhaps, as she responded to one question on Thursday — perhaps not at all. She obstructs the procedures, laid out in the revered Constitution, for this highest of actions, and effectively nullifies all the assertions of urgency and national peril that underwrote the whole impeachment drive. What is this?

Has anyone checked Mount Rushmore lately? Are those stone guardian faces of heroic presidents past turned inward in shame? Are their hands covering their eyes in disgust? Check out the Memorial? Is Lincoln still sitting, Moses-like, in his great marble chair, or has be left the building in hopelessness and disdain over how the great offices of government have become so tawdry?

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That imo is the story in a nutshell, Norm. Thanks.

Amen, our prayer should be that we can find a leader who embodies the honest presidential character that we had in Lincoln.

Bob, your anti-Trump prejudice simply has to distort Rex Murphy’s excellent article about the debacle in the House into an attack on the President. Rex may have intended to include him as one holding one of the “great offices of government” but he didn’t. His article specifically addressed the actions of the Democrat Representatives without any mention of Trump’s actions.

And I half-promised myself to lay off Bob during the Christmas season! :innocent:

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Of course, he thinks the president doesn’t occupy “one of the great offices of gov’t.” Sorry my salute to Lincoln and implication that the presidency is one of the great offices irritated you.

Don’t be coy, Bob. You know perfectly well what irritated me.

How quickly things change. This cartoon is from Sept 5th, just over 3 months ago! Before Nancy got railroaded by the likes of Tlaib. Gads.

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Let’s have some holiday impeachment cartoons! But first, a pressing story from the BBC! :crazy_face:



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And even some holiday music - to boot! Where they sample some, of the Holiday putting - mentioned in the BBC story. :crazy_face:

I would rather have a poor character guy as President who is anti-abortion myself, then an honest left wing President who celebrates abortion.