Chris Christie's hypothetical presidential run

The worst smell I have ever smelled was my dog right after being sprayed by a skunk. I was delivering papers at the and had to just keep going despite the terrible smell of my companion. I distinctly remember at one point my dog crapped on the lawn of one of houses I was delivering to, and as I bent over to clean it up, I actually found the aroma pleasant. The smell of the skunk spray was so bad and so overwhelming that even the smell of dog shit was pleasant by contrast.

This is why Chris Christie looks good.

He looks really good when he is going toe to toe with public employees who's sense of entitlement is running rampant. He shows a willingness to fight hard battles that most politicians lack. Unfortunately that's the end of the positives. Take for example here where he is responding to questions about his appointment of a Muslim judge. When asked about the issue of Sharia law he goes on to say that its crazy because the guy is an American citizen and has sworn to uphold the law. This of course completely ignores the fact that we have had rulings in the US that were based on Sharia law. Were the judges in those cases not American citizens? Did they somehow avoid taking the oath to uphold the law before being sworn into office?

Then there is the issue of immigration. You remember how Rick Perry was blasted for supporting in state tuition for illegal aliens? Christie passed the same bill in his state.

Then there's climate change. He has bought it hook line and sinker. Even after the East Anglia email scandal where the whole world was able to see confessions of falsifying data in order to reach predetermined conclusions. And yet ol Christie somehow missed it. And he missed resignation of Dr. Ivar Giaever. And Hal Lewis. And Chris Landsea. And Paul Reiter. And this petition of 31,000 scientists from. And the admission that there has been no warming since 1998.

And any politician who still supports global warming initiatives is either stupid or receiving kick backs from the green machine.

So the point is that Chris Christie might be trying to make the state of New Jersey smell like dog shit, but for a state that currently smells like skunk spray it's progress. As a nation, we need to do better.

A Game Resource

A while back I made a couple of posts that were intended to give a compact overview of what game is coming from the perspective of someone who has never heard of it before.  Well heartiste has put out a great post on that topic.  It's different in that it is not what game is, but rather what game is not.  So here you go, compact list of anti-game written far better than I ever could have.

http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/what-is-anti-game/

Jesus and Game Part 2

I put this post together mostly from skimming the book of Matthew. And from it I've found texts that demonstrate the alphaness of Jesus.

Jesus is a leader of men. When he wants someone to do something he does not ask. He tells them.

Matthew 4:18-20

And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.

Here we see that Jesus just went up to a group of strange men and told them “Follow me”. And they did it. He didn't ask “Would you like to follow me?” or “If its not too much trouble, could you join with me?”.

Matthew 10:5

“These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not”.

He does not say: “Okay guys, I want you to go into the city. Can you do that?”

Jesus has a massive frame. Often the Pharisees would come up to him with some sort of verbal trap designed to make him back off, apologize, or incriminate himself. These are huge shit tests. And Jesus passes every one by bringing people into his frame instead. Never once does he qualify, apologize or back off. And he always does things in such a way so that after his response, he is innocent and the Pharisees are guilty and sputtering with rage.

Matthew 9:10-12

Jesus eats with sinners and is accused.

“And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.

And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?

But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.”

This might look like beta justification, but it's critically different in that there is no I language, and it also is a reframe. By making his analogy he casts the Pharisees as being out of line. Now instead of him cavorting with sinners, the Pharisees are framed as being heartless.

Matthew 12:1-4

“At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungred, and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat.

But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day.

But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with him;

How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?”

Instead replying to their accusations Jesus reframes the issue. Now instead of looking like a law breaker, he made the Pharisees look like ignorant hypocrites.

Matthew 15:1-11

Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying,

Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.
But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?
For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.
But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me;
And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.
Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,
This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
And he called the multitude, and said unto them, Hear, and understand:
Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.

Jesus is caught breaking the law as it is understood, but instead of apologizing or qualifying, he turns it around on the Pharisees. After explaining how their (seemingly unrelated) teachings go against the law, he nails them with the line “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.”

There are many more examples than these, and I purposely left out many that involve miracles, even though they are valid. But a man coming of as alpha by preforming a miracle is too easy. Much like it is not so impressive to see a rock star being alpha.

Our economic system and freedom

Both in main stream and alternative politics (by alternative I mean groups that do not find themselves at home in either the Democratic or Republican parties), there are some odd views held on who the greatest economic criminals are. On the one more leftist side you have the opinion that anyone who is fantastically wealthy, such as Warren Buffet, is evil. On the right side you have the view that it is the tax and spend liberals who are stealing and destroying wealth, and the private sector is championed.

What I find odd about this is that both sides very obviously have a point. The lefties who say that it is private sector financial institutions have been gaming the system and destroying wealth while lining their pockets, are absolutely right. Where they go wrong is to lay the blame at the feet of the free market. Don't believe me? Just think about it. Were in the world and at what point in history has there been a society where the strong did not reap where the weak sowed?  The free market is not the problem, human nature is the problem, and no economic system is going to fix it.  Instead the best economic system is the one that down plays that part of human nature as much as possible, which for my money is the free market, or something very close to it.

The righties on the other hand go on about crony capitalism and how we just need to fix the system so there is no socialism and then everything will be great. I do tend to agree with that. The idea that we currently have a free market is absurd. Every economic move I make the government is watching over my shoulder making sure that I follow regulations and have all the appropriate permits and paper work in place. Then to top it off, they'll subsidize competitor companies allowing them to operate at a loss until there is no competition. But where the righties go wrong is by putting all of the blame for this completely at the feet of politicians. Don't get me wrong, someone like Rick Perry, who made a deal with Merck to force teenage girls to get Merck's HPV vaccination, is complete scum. But no one on the right seems to really be going after Merck. What about their attempt to bilk tax payers out of however many millions of dollars would have been spent buying their product.

In almost any case of either the government or the private sector stealing from regular guys, there are going to be two guilty parties. One in the government who will receive some sort of kick back, and one in the private sector who will reap profits from unfair regulations or subsidies or both. And for the most part, neither sees any real consequences, and as Max Keiser said both of them need to hang.

Gender studies

Women good, men bad.  This is what beta male Jonathan Dean very much believes gender studies are not about.  I don't think that I need to actually point out the women's studies classes are linked to the feminist movement non that the feminist movement is hostile towards men in general, as that is painfully obvious.

For those Christians out there that actually have bought into this stuff, all you need to know about the difference between genders is in Genesis 3.

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

This is part of life and will be until the next life.  God designed women to be ruled over by men that they desire.  And this president was set not in a positive light but as a curse.  Same as God's curse of men in the next three verses.

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. 

The curse for men is that we have to work till we die in order to not die sooner.  For women it is that they are ruled over by men.  These both can be circumvented in the short term, but only at a terrible cost.  So for women the option is submit yourselves to a man, find a man who will submit to you and you will despise, or accept spinsterhood and study up on cat husbandry.

**Update**
It was not my intention to say that this is the only difference between men and women worth knowing, which I think is made obvious by my previous posts.  I mearly was stating what I believe to be the most relevant fact in the subject of gender inequality as related to what would be studied in a university.

Christians, Liberals, and the war on reality

I like my church. The reason that I like it is because engrained in my church is the expectation of God showing up and being real, an expectation that is often met.

That said, the 9/11 sermon delivered by our pastor was a bit off. Our pastor generally made some points about fear and people being people no matter what the color of their skin that are certainly true in the broadest since. But to get there he made some statements about the moral equivalence of Christianity and Islam that are just wrong, and gave off the vibe of the whole diversity nonsense that is being pushed so absurdly in public schools and in public service announcements.

The way that our pastor drew up moral equivalence between Christianity and Islam was to talk about the terrorist attack in Norway that was committed by a christian. He admitted that he didn't know the details of that attack, so as someone who does, let me fill you in. The attack had two parts, a car bombing and a shooting.

The car bombing did cause some damage killing 8 people, but it was the shooting that really was a disaster killing 69 people. The shooting was carried out at a political camp for youths active in the Labour party. The motivation for the terrorist was to effect political change by killing off as much of the future party leaders from the Labour party as possible. He's specific reason for hating the party was for their immigration policy. He believed that Muslims were invading his country through immigration with the goal of taking over the country. He was identified in the media as a Christian, but in his manifesto stated that he was a cultural Christian which he differentiated from religious Christians in that the latter have a relationship with Jesus Christ, something that he did not have. He goes on to say that he is not excessively religious.

So was he a christian terrorist? I would not call him a christian, as having a relationship with Jesus Christ is one of the most central things to being a christian. That and acknowledging Jesus' godhood and accepting him as lord. Those three things define what a christian is. Anyone else who calls themselves a christian is just identifying with their parents beliefs without actually following them, or is just plain crazy.

Its important to know what kind of Christian the Norwegian terrorist was because of how our pastor drew the moral equivalence. For Islam he showed a slide on the projector that had a line between secularists and jihadists with marks like moderate in between. The point from this being that there is diversity in beliefs among those who call themselves Muslims, just as there is diversity in belief among Christians. The interesting thing about this graph is that it is the people who are most into Islam that plot and execute acts of terrorism. But for the lone example of a christian terrorist, it is the opposite. It is a guy who is mostly not religious.

The truth is that serious Muslims would not accept secular Muslims as one of their own, just as I don't think of people who say that Jesus was just a great teacher as being Christian regardless of how they self identify. So after getting the facts that our pastor readily admitted that he didn't have, its pretty clear that there is no moral equivalence between Christianity and Islam. In Christianity it is the real Christians disavowing the actions of a fake Christian, in Islam it is the fake Muslims disavowing the real Muslims. Any drawing of equivalence here is absurd. As a Christian I make no apologies or excuses for the fact that my religion is superior to others, to would be cowardly and wrong.

The second point that ruffled me was made about diversity. Now he didn't come out any say anything directly, it was more aesthetic things like a montage of smiling faces of people from all different cultures backed by music that make any healthy adult want to throw up.

Now for full disclosure, I'm fairly sensitive about these things after hearing so many radio ads that go something like: “This is the sound of one voice singing. This is the sound of many voices in harmony. Yay diversity, now go move into a black neighborhood. (This message was paid for with your tax dollars)”. But with that in mind, I still think that a message on 9/11 about how prejudice is evil and people everywhere are people is at best pretty weak.

Where Christians and Liberals tend to go wrong on diversity is by ignoring readily observable reality. And not only that, but also telling people who don't ignore reality and draw obvious conclusions, that doing that is wrong. This is silly. It is not in the Bible or remotely christian. The truth is that Judaism was all about cultural and genetic purity. With the wholesale slaughter of many neighboring nations and the forbidding of intermarrying and procreating with them, the Jews were just as opposed to some silly idea of diversity as anyone. This was at God's direction. It only changed in Acts chapter 10 when God gave Peter a vision saying “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.”which he later interpenetrates: “Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.” You can readthe whole thinghere.

The point is that it is through Christs redemption that we are able to have a healthy diverse society. Take Christ out of the mix and you have race wars. Diversity is not a virtue in and of itself. It's not even a very good idea. It is only in Christian communities that you can have large groups of people from different racial backgrounds without having race riots. And even then I doubt its any better than an equally large community of the same racial background that is all Christian.

The other silly notion is that we are all prejudiced. There is this stupid notion that making snap judgments about people based on race, sex, clothing, whatever is prejudice. Really its just common sense. You make this kinds of judgments because for the most part they are accurate. You'd be stupid or remarkably unobservant to not make these snap judgments about people. Where it gets into anything evil is when you use those snap judgments to make up you mind about someone. For example, when I go to a public basketball court and join a bunch a black people, I assume that they will have no respect for me being a white man until I score on them a few times. Even then, particularly with younger players they still might write me off based on my race. However if one of them starts passing to me right away and actually does a pick and roll play with me (almost never happens) I'll re-evaluate. If I didn't re-evaluate I'd be a bigot, as it is I'm just going off of past experience.

So if your in an airport and you see a guy with a turban, and he makes you more nervous than the guy next to him who seems to be dressed as a Mennonite (making you wonder why he's in the airport) your not a bigot. You just happen to have a brain. Don't apologize for it.

Wasted tweet ideas

My friend set up a twitter account in his girlfriends name in order to rib her by posting unflattering tweets posed as her.  After a few tweets he enlisted my help for tweet ideas.  I made quite a few of them which I thought were pretty funny, but after several months have passed its clear that he is not going to actually use any of them.  So rather than let them go to waste I'm posting them here.  Feel free to brazenly rip me off if you would like to pull a similar prank on you girlfriend.

My one regret is that I'll never be loved by a chubby chaser.

I'm serious, when I go to lolcats I know that there is a god.

People tell you that sharing is good, but share one needle and your a monster.

You guys seeing this hot dog? Damn thats a big hot dog!

I thank God everyday for living in an age where they could put magnets in my neck giving me the balance to walk again.

Chickens are a vital part of nature's chain. And that is why we use them to play chicken ball in the house.

They say home is where the heart is. God am I lonely.

Shit my dad says is popular for that one kid so why not me? Here it goes: 'I named you Sam because I wanted a boy.'

Stuff MY dad says: 'Sam, get out of there. We threw that food out for a reason.'

In olden times it was not uncommon for men crossing the desert to have to drink their own urine. Lucky bastards.

If we were born without tongues we'd all know sign language, but we wouldn't be very good kissers

If your so thirsty, why don't you get a drink off the hose like the dog you are?

Cats are just like dogs. Fools with no honor.

Darn it, threw up on my keyboard again. Stupid pictures of new borns

I know what your thinking from that last post, but I AM NOT BABY CRAZY.

Stuff My dad says: 'My god Sam, what did you roll in? Your going to have to wash that off before we let you in.'

Reasons Bob won't play chicken ball: 'I'm tired. Plus we only have one rooster. DERRRR'

A shoe sale at jcpennies and koles?  Things are about to get f***ing ugly.

Why do they call it a warthog?  I mean its not like they hog warts do I?

Come on people, Friday is actually a pretty catchy song.

Stuff MY dad says: 'I don't care who started it. You are not to have toilet bowl water squirt gun fights in my house.'

I saw the boy again. He was in my apartment. He said that I was beautiful. And I don't care what Bob says, he's real and his name is Sandy.

If a poofter in denial and a Wisconsinite got married would their children be cheesy poofs?

I just popped a zit on my shoulder and it went straight into my mouth. Bullseye.

They say there's more than one way to skin a cat.  Odd phrase as I've only been able to figure out one way

Life isn't fair. People who have never met you will judge you on the spot for pushing ONE guy in a wheel chair down a flight of stairs.

Well it’s an election year, so get ready for ‘I’m Bob and I’m so great because I research candidates before voting for them. Rupdy dupdy do’

You know what those dumb radio call screeners told me?  That I can't say dick on the air.  I mean, how else do I talk about Mother Teresa.

Bob always is trying to get 2 player ps3 games that I'll play with him and I keep telling him, I like watching him play while I drink scotch

Oh great, now Bob's all like 'DERRR Sam I don't like it when you drink scotch DERRR you always go driving afterwards DEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRR'

Don't you hate it when your man gets back from work and you go up to him and yell 'It's chicken ball time' only to hear him say that he's tired, and then you black out and when you come to Bob's crying in the corner?

Do those humane society commercials make you guys want chinese too?

We laugh at that cat flushing the toilet over and over and watching the water swirl, and yet we all do it.

If only I had cancer, than no one would ask me why I wear a wig.  I guess I'll go sit on the microwave somemore.

Stuff MY dad says: "You smell like a brewery, I hope you haven't been driving." (I had lol).

Some people tell me that I have a drinking problem, to which I always retort: "I hope you burn in a fiery hell".

Stuff MY dad says: "Every day you go without brushing your teeth or combing your hair, you remind me more of an unkept bear".

I like my coffee like I like my men, hot, black, and full of cream.

Sure you talk big in the internet, but if we met in person you'd cower at the very flare of my nostrils.