Gary Will's 'What Paul Meant'

This book will not inform you that the Mayan word for 'day' was 'kin' or explain Hubble's Law, what it will do is bring the reader to a vista of a worldview occluded for many today, and of a man who met the resurrected Christ -a view across the greatly interesting expanse of the life of the Apostle of Jesus Christ. This perspective is one we may lack even with decades of reading the New Testament casually, and even with faith.

Gary Wills published this book in 2006. Paul's confirmed letters-seven of the thirteen in the New Testament, were sent to the ekklesia (churches) within 20 years of the crucifixion of The Lord Jesus Christ. They are the first published works of the New Testament preceding even the books of the gospel by decades. Gary Will's book illuminates ideas about the circumstances in which the letters were written, and necessarily of the life of Paul. That is an excellent investment of time and thought for the faithful and even for those cultured despisers of belief.

If the New Testament was written by men, and if the books are what remain of fragments of more works, of historical captures of the oral history nature of the culture, Biblical scholarship investigating the order, manner and composition of that writing-not simply considerations and comparisons of books selected for inclusion in the new Testament and those left out, we may find the knowledge increases our faith in the grace of God allowing mortal man to experience some of the light of the revelation of God as Jesus Christ-the Messiah and convey it to future generations through the experience and writing of mortal man.

Paul encountered Jesus Christ personally-perhaps several times, in his resurrected, glorified body. His own descriptions differ from those recorded in the Book of the Acts. The Book of Acts was written perhaps quite a bit after Paul's letters and may be a historical capture of knowledge of events 'as told by' for posterity.

This book of discovery of 'What Paul Meant' brings the reader to experience the live context of what Paul meant in writing letters to several groups of believers that met in home churches as equals without rank more or less as part of working life mission as an Apostle of Jesus Christ.

Waveform Politics; Newscorp's Troubles

Rupert Murdoch's vast center-right wing media organization is one of a few that dominate the U.S. broadcast media wavelengths. Of course they are not limited to broadcast media but own cable and print outlets as well. Newcorp personnel in Britain caught with their fingers in cell phone data mining cookie jars scotched Newscorps takeover of B Sky B.

Fox televion and radio news is quite influential in contemporary U.S politics. Newscorp and the Tea Party may be losers in the approaching Federal budget default crisis receiving a significant portion of the blame.

Nationalism is frowned upon in national economics by globally owned media. Since U.S. media became owned by global corporations such as Disney and Newscorp the Congress and FCC quit upgrading the broadcast frequencies for the use of citizen journalists via Internet podcast rebroadcasts as technology would allow. Instead the wavelengths are dominated by global concentrations of wealth propagandizing Americans to give up their independence.

Levi Aron & The Bloody Crime in N.Y.'s Jewish Community

One would not want to think that the average New Yorker has such a social conditioning toward homicide that someone asking for directions at random might become a victim of a killer. That is one of the reasons why this very unusual (I hope) crime by Levi Aron-a Jew with an obviously symbolicly important name requires some thought.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/13/levi-aron-arrested-lieby-kletzky_n_897184.html

Of course the persecution of European Jews by government authorities rumor mongering sensational and untrue stories about Jewish practices including sacrifice of European children that were goyim (gentiles) was a recurrent feature from imperial Russia to Germany. That a 35 year old New Yorker might have sacrificed a kid as a spur of the moment thing-or perhaps the lost kid asking for directions was a fullfillment of a repressed desire of killer to sacrifice a victim in some way to recognize N.Y.'s new homosexual marriage law?, is a sign of the times perhaps. It is possible to imagine such crimes in humanities past though, as a darker trait.

New York City as a kind of epiphenomenal accretion of human civilization-over populated, dense urbanization, unsustainable food production or energy basis, is a kind of prediction of the future of the human race if they do not develop a steady state economy with full employment and a healthy biosphere. Religious freedom is a fundamental right and so too is the right of life. Often when human society becomes out of balance it has wars to change the situation without micro-reasoning subtlety. Then all of society become murders with approriate honors and sanctification for those that perish and those that work it with most valour.

Maybe Mr. Aron was just socially obsessve though-he does had that Loughner sort of look to him.

An Alaska Republican Government Against Free Enterpise?

Alaska's Republican dominated state legislature has a Republican Governor now to match up with control over state politics. On moral issues the state Republicans may be more conservative than democrats, yet on free enterprise they seem to be less innovative than Vladimir Lenin.

The state Republican government over the long run has created a reliance upon major international oil and gas producers for funding the state government. Funding the state government and sharing some of those oil and gas royalties with municipal governments often times seems to be the Republican idea of free enterprise in the state.

The present gas pipeline through Canada from Alaska's North Slope is the present golden idol goal for funding the stae Republican dominated government. They seek to have an Exxon partnered firm construct a pipeline to help get rid of the state's valuable fossil fuel remnants at low cost to global corporations; that is the Republican concept of free enterprise in Alaska-and the best use of public natural resources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_gas_pipeline

The idea of conserving those oil and gas fields on state lands for use in the state of Alaska the next 300 years doesn't appear on the Republican radar screen at all. If a gas field developer were hired to drill and build a pipeline to Anchorage and create retail natural gas sales stations along the way perhaps for 30% of the value of the profit the people of Alaska would have very low energy prices and have a better free enterprise prospect than states or many nations with higher energy prices.

It is o.k. for the state to sell it public natural resources directly to the public. An Exxon or BP is no more a private interest ort entitled to cheap energy than the Alaska citizen that wants cheap propane to heat coffee to sell at his coffee drive thru. Cheap energy prices in one area can attract businesses that can pay tax revenues if needed to fund state government services that actually are needed.

Alaska's Government could set the retail price of natural gas sold at its partnered sales outlets. Natural gas sold at 50 cents per gallon with a stable supply would let Alaskans convert their gas guzzlers to burn 50 cents a gallon propane if they wanted too. They can also use propane in fuel cells (I believe) and have cheap heating energy for homes, businesses and greenhouses.

Obviously global warming and decay of the ecosphere are vitally important issues to consider in government today. A stable energy supply for even one state would allow government to address better ecological zoning laws development and policies that would encourage high insulation efficeincy in houses, prevention of leakage of heat outdoors, and a balanced state budget with liberty, justice and free enterprise jobs for all.

President Obama Line Item Veto Showdown on Federal Budget Debt Limit

With the approaching federal spending debt limit the President might start to develop alternate plans A through D on what to cut from the federal budget . Now is the time to round up his herd for the showdown at the o.k. veto-cuttin corral.

For a Ronald Reagan kind of guy with fast draw tendencies on line item veto'ing these are some of the things that might drop at high noon August 2nd, 2011; reduce military wages 50% (there is a year waiting list for enlistment and a 9.2% unemployment rate), to limit social security payments at total income for any individual of less than $18,000 annually from all sources, to withdraw all except 35,000 troops from Afghanistan-squaring aware the northern alliance and other persecuted non-Sunni citizens in defensible areas and letting the fledgling Afghan government fly free, cutting the Marines down to 50,000 and creating a new SF BOP force of 50,000 special forces rapid deployment specialists...the opportunities for specialized line item quality budget cutting and restructuring by a bold creative President is approaching August 2nd.

I am not certain if President Obama has the legal power to fund portions of programs and to redesign others. Getting more bang for the buck out of the present federal budget should be easy enough. The President must have good ideas and be chomping at the bit to get started on cutting and slashing federal spending his political opponents prefer and that are dumb so long as he increases employment and national security.

Perhaps the Congress can pass a resolution of support for the Presidential right of line item spending vetoes of unfunded federal programs and debt obligations to make his own budget duties balance.

An Imperial Presidency to Solve the Spending Limit Federal Budget Impasse?

Senator McConnell's strange idea that the President should set the federal debt limit can have some unintended consequences. The idea seems to have some support though.

It is a strange idea; if the President is given that degree of federal spending control it seems a move toward oligarchy or an imperial Presidency.

Federal spending is supposed to be the role of the Congress. It votes to give the President a certain amount of money for particular works and that all he gets. Sen. McConnel would change that.

With the new Imperial Presidency a future President could decide to spend whatever he likes so long as his party in Congress comprises at last a third of the members in order to prevent a veto.

Some M.B.A. papered President might decide to send a trillion dollars to a numbered Cayman Islands account and then resign to make way for new people and change while he goes into retirement in the Cayman Islands. A President might wage a war through foreign mercenaries or support for proxie militaries and fund it without concern of Congressionally rude war funding disruption.

A future Imperial President could set the debt limit 50% lower than the amount of the spending that congress voted to support and tell them to bite it when they ask for more asphalt for highway construction.

The Imperial President could expand his executive branch agency budgets and do without further Congressional legislating of bills.

On the Extracosmic Void

Reading a book on the void of space and the topic of nothing brings me to consider the topic that Aristotle amongst other considered so long ago. Not that I will do so as well or completely-just a few ideas to write down.

Is it an extracosmic void with neutral pressure rather than a negative vacuum pressure that serves to let the positive pressure of the matter of the Universe expand at increasing pace? Does the extracosmic void beyond the edge of the universe (or an infinite garden of universes connected in some way) continue on without boundaries forever? That idea of pure nothingness is one of the most challenging ideas of all to ponder.

I think it a better idea to consider God as creating matter, energy and nothing as well within his own field of being. It seems more reasonable for me to think that God actually occupies all space infinitely and creates the space-time and voids for universes as willed rather than to believe that God exists separately from an independent primordial nothingness into which he ordered a Universe to exist.

In the beginning the deep was without form and void-yet it was God's form and void existing like a blank canvas on which to fill in the 4 dimensional art of The Creation.

Albert Camus expressed one perspective of the existential paradox in his book 'The Stranger'. At one point in the story the stranger was on a beach alone and philosophically experienced nausea that anything existed at all-it is a difficult thing to think about deeply.

Sartre may have taken that literary experience as the title of his first philosophical fiction book 'Nausea'. As an associate professor of philosophy in La Havre before the 2nd world war he had some time to write. He did not write about God in generally as a theological concept of everything existing-possibly a more difficult realization even than Camus', instead he wrote about subjective experience of being in particular; a common philosophical approach instead of a theoretical speculation with an Aquinian or metaphysical style. We too may leave off from the difficult, even mystical contemplation of God as the sole existing reality transcendently and consider the more local subject of this particular universe, potential infinite universes and any causality we might think of regarding physics and empty space.

If there is an infinite number of Universes it isn't impossible that they all comprise some kind of a structure. As quarks, sub-atomic particles, atoms, elements, dust, planets, stars and galaxies exist, and as the observable universe exists, the entire universe may exist as a part of a larger structure. It may function like a cell in a body of a far more complex being...or not. Even so it is not necessary that an infinite number of universes existing in a disordered matrix of accidental and phenomenal causality. There may be quite a number of physical channels of communication structured meta-universally. The neutral void may continually affect the actualizing history of those compositions of mass.