Displaying 841 To 870 Of 3,237 Comments God, Mother Nature, Or The Higher Power. A Jesuit Priest no less! » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 26, 2014 @ 6:45 pm I would love to see this, but I could not open the link. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 26, 2014 @ 1:49 pm I very much agree. I hope we see a lot more of this kind of reflection. Things political fascinate me but they also grind me down. This arrived at just the right time after a morning of bad SCOTUS news. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 26, 2014 @ 1:45 pm I think that you and I are a bit pantheistic in all of this….I operate from a position as a Christian Humanist….for you it is more eclectic but still inspirational I think. We look at nature and say…..”Ah! And there it is.” » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 26, 2014 @ 1:44 pm AND…all that I said is that this is one of the inside pages which is true….and that I believe we would be seeing more of these kind of features in the future. Which is good. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 26, 2014 @ 1:39 pm I do not agree. This page is hard to find. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 26, 2014 @ 1:38 pm Hey Nirek….do more stuff like this. Very good. You are being featured on one of the Planet’s inside pages. I suspect we will see more of that in the future. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 26, 2014 @ 9:37 am How Great Thou Art O mighty God, when I behold the wonder With rapture filled, my soul thy name would laud, When I behold the heavens in their vastness, With rapture filled, my soul thy name would laud, When crushed by guilt of sin before thee kneeling, With rapture filled, my soul thy name would laud, And when at last the mists of time have vanished With rapture filled, my soul thy name would laud,
» Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 26, 2014 @ 9:33 am Texas GOP Say “NO” To Reinstating Sodomy Law Without Changing Their Minds Born that way, and called upon by God to resist the sinful nature that God placed within them….WHAT THE FRICKFRACK! I have had this discussion with ministers here…they fall back on God’s way being mysterious OR they backtrack entirely claiming that being homosexual really is a choice after all…and to hell with folks like Perry. The glasses are from “nerds are us” – what patent pandering. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 1:05 pm Science? You really want them to reply to your inquiry using experimentation, evidence, empirical observation when they have the WORD OF GOD as their foundation and their fortress…..Heathen! You get my point…and I think it is yours as well. It is not as if I believe the GOP leadership is full of fundamentalists but I do think they use the belief of the simple minded in this regard. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 1:01 pm Prize Winning Paragraph: It is not the GOP that needs to change, it is the blue collar, low info white male voter who needs to wake up and realize he is voting for his own economic demise when he supports the GOP. I am with you. The GOP will not change. It must be changed and that will only occur if it is robbed of it $$$$ advantage, and its blind-eyed base. The blue collar low and no info voter is at the center of that blind based. Now the GOP in the House is going to sue the President for being President. No depths to which they will not dive. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 12:57 pm I do not see them retreating or giving in….so as they approach the falls, they are going to paddle very hard against the stream. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 12:54 pm I would like to think so but I worry about how deeply the GOP has dug in and the lengths to which they are willing to go to stop progress or even to drag the country backwards. In any case, if they are dying, they are not going quietly. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 12:52 pm At every turn the forces of reactionary thinking reply their tired memes in all of these areas. Nothing is ever really settled until they say it is. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 12:39 pm Teddy Roosevelt and Ike were progressive as well. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 12:38 pm Oh, if only more conservatives could draw the distinctions you have here….!!!!! bravo. You have hit the nail on the head. When people live in a formal, defined, contracted relationship….i.e. marriage they stand a much better chance of maintaining their commitments to each other, and to children in the environment. Let me ask you- I live in Missouri and I think there are many here who in their heart of hearts, standing on the Bible, foresquare with the Good Word regard homosexual life as the Sin of Cain, of Sodom, of Gomorrah….They are torn to pieces when “one of their own” is revealed to be “broken.” Is this not your experience as well? Still, many seem to adapt and become accepting…at least of the person in their family. The GOP, as organization, appears to regard gay-bashing less as belief, and more as tactic appealing to those in its base who do believe as a matter of principal. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 12:37 pm The relationship between religion and political identity is crucial. You name it very well. The impact of religious association on the making of law is long established and, in the case of our own political union much discussed from its earliest times. We have long identified ourselves as a Judaeo-Christian culture but again, from the first, the Framers understood the freedom of religion also meant from from religion. The struggle to apply that in matters like this one goes on. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 12:31 pm Iraq And The Ghosts Of South Vietnam At that point Cheney was working for George HW Bush and he was mouthing the perspective of that admin (which had largely cut him out of a lot of decision making because of his defense of a far more aggressive position than the administration was embracing). I regard statements like this as just another sign of the duplicity that is at the core of most of what Cheney says in public. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 26, 2014 @ 3:56 am I agree with much of what you are saying- in fact most. I add that geo-political concerns are real. Look at U.S. action in Afghanistan in the first 18 months of the war- an intervention to get Al Qaeda with the Northern Alliance as our principal allies and a large cadre of other allies. Limited, precise goals, largely achieved in the first phase of the war but there was no plan for disengagement (ala the first Persian Gulf War). Instead mission creep eventually created an expectation that U.S. interests in Afghanistan could be made permanent and a combination of a Bush desire to secure a foothold in E. Asia and access to its considerable mineral wealth- classic neo con thinking- let the mess and the muddle that marks our involvement for most of the time we have been there. Iraq, of course, was never plottable in this fashion as our incursion there was not justifiable from day one. Here we have neo-con goals: establish geographical extensions of one’s nation power that appear to emulate your nation’s socio-political structure, provide a platform for your arms to influence regional behavior and give privileged access to natural resources and/or trading and commerce centers. Putin is a neo con. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 26, 2014 @ 3:52 am All true. Vietnam came about in a slow process of further and further involvement which began with strategic assistance and advisers and quickly escalated into hundreds of thousands of troops all over the domino theory, or the jinga theory….where one goes all go. I think that our involvement in the Balkans, in the Gulf War and in the first phase of the Afghanistan War were all “successful” in that they were focused on very specific goals with very limited and short term involvement. Iraq broke all the rules developed in the Post Vietnam World- rules that Reagan and his people understood in Lebanon for ex. How did the U.S. react to the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon? We withdrew. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 26, 2014 @ 3:40 am Thanks. I have long said that for McCain and other real war hawks the War in Vietnam remains a blotch on American character which still needs to be expunged.For McCain personally his performance in that war is a bad, sad memory and when he engages in these debates he is once again in the cockpit of his bomber in the skies over N. Vietnam. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 26, 2014 @ 3:25 am You say it very clearly. Any attempt to impose our order on another nation is fraught with danger and unlikely to succeed. You use up your resources in the search for other resources. A dog chasing its tail. In Iraq we witness that the transition that was indeed the pause between wars. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 26, 2014 @ 3:21 am Imperalism, whether Roman or our own efforts, tends to be self defeating since it tends to over extend the resources of the core empire in search of more resources and thus weakens the empire. Self defeating by its nature. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 9:51 pm my key paragraph from the post in regard to your points: “1) While it can be well argued that the War in Iraq was a trumped up neo-con conspiracy to create a Islamic Client State in Mideast sitting on an ocean of oil, the fact is that this hardly matters in the face of current events. Just as it hardly mattered that Vietnam was based on the flawed domino theory and the concept of the client state.If Iraq falls it will be seen worldwide as a U.S. defeat, despite the absence of American forces and despite the diplomatic logjams that caused the United States to withdraw fully by 2011.” I think we are generally in agreement » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 9:46 pm How kind…such kudos are to be cherished. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 9:41 pm In the Balkans wars, deeply felt hurts that were as alive today as the day they were inflicted went back 500 years and resulted in extreme contemporary violence. In this case, the case of the artificial state of Iraq, they go back 1000 years. These are tribal, sectarian and ethnic all in one package. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 9:41 pm There are a series of letters between Mark Twain and Kipling and Twain and Kipling even participated in a mutual interview of each other. Reading through it is clear that each although labeled as either the imperialist or anti-imperialist has rather nuanced views on the matter. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 9:37 pm The GOP has proven to be the greased pig in the American political barnyard. The metaphor fits in more ways than one. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 9:25 pm KT- I have now read your story in three or four parts. How about putting it all together into a single post so it is in our archive as a complete narrative. I think it speaks many truths. » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 9:23 pm Just re-read this and I want to once more say- you are one terrific writer- poetic, powerful, prophetic! » Posted By MurphTheSurf3 On June 25, 2014 @ 9:21 pmComments Posted By MurphTheSurf3
Of nature’s beauty, wrought by words of thine,
And how thou leadest all from realms up yonder,
Sustaining earthly life with love benign,
O mighty God! O mighty God!
Where golden ships in azure issue forth,
Where sun and moon keep watch upon the fastness
Of changing seasons and of time on earth.
O mighty God! O mighty God!
I plead for mercy and for grace and peace,
I feel thy balm and, all my bruises healing,
My soul is filled, my heart is set at ease.
O mighty God! O mighty God!
And I in truth my faith confirmed shall see,
Upon the shores where earthly ills are banished
I’ll enter Lord, to dwell in peace with thee.
O mighty God! O mighty God!
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