I am a mad-man. I am posting my true thoughts.

I didn’t believe in God. I used to label myself, in my Leftist pre- and-college days, at best an Agnostic. Many days an out-and-out Atheist. I couldn’t believe that any true greater being would allow wars and death and utter annihilations of entire civilizations. A flood. The existence of Hell.

I can remember penning a short story in the early 70s for a university writing class where the ruling religious government, oppressive of course, walled people off in clustered high-rises, squashing them together, and forcing them to attend religious functions. The protagonist found a way out of the city and discovered miles and miles and miles of endless beautiful forests and mountains and valleys that only the ruling members of the religion ever experienced. I don’t suppose you’d be surprised if I told you I received an A for my grade. In retrospect the premise sounds more Left than Right and applicable, these days specifically, to the Religious Left. How odd.

Twenty years passed. Thirty years passed. And more.

I didn’t give God much thought. Truly if at all. Until people started dying around me. My grandparents died. Reagan died. A friend died, shot at an ATM in a robbery. Warren Zevon died. My mother died. And finally my father died.

Bad things happened, more than I care to regale here. They clumped up. In 2009 following my father’s death, my behavior became this: I would drive around in the middle of the night, for hours. I couldn’t sit or lay still. One late night, last year, I was driving and started talking to God as if He weren’t listening. I rambled on. I just kept talking and talking. I had made major mistakes in my Life and laid it all out. I was, for a change, more honest than I’d been in forty years. Or more. I ended up, oblivious, more than two hundred miles from my house in the darkness.

God replied to me in a sentence: “I’m glad to hear you.”

It was in my brain. I hadn’t expected any kind of response. I remember those five words. I was more than shocked. I was fully awake.

Since then, the Lord speaks to me at night, mostly, when I am alone and distraught and in dire straights and in need.

So clearly, I am a raving nutter.

I can, in the middle of my darkest nights, strike up a conversation with Him and He replies?

Am I insane?

Or is He really there?

He has already shown me my Grandmother, and then my Mother, in dreams.

He has answered some convoluted questions — but many more exist.

He tells me the things I don’t want to hear, but I know I must. I am either addled or blessed. I speak to Him at night at the drop of a hat. How is this even remotely possible?

No matter what way, I am starting to settle and realize my blessings. Perhaps this is the foundation of Faith. This either happens or it doesn’t. I either believe it or I don’t.

My soul, I think, has quieted a bit. And yet I find this, at once, both comforting and disturbing. But I either believe it or I don’t.

I choose to believe.

BZ

Egypt is in chaos. Cairo is burning and citizens are rioting.

Mubarak has been in power for roughly thirty years. The government is mostly secular. And perhaps therein lies the essential problem. The US has consistently supported Mubarak because he is not an Islamist. Now, the UK Telegraph says the US is “behind” Egyptian protests — including, of course, a “secret document.” All good conspiracies require a secret document.

On Friday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak asked his cabinet to step down. He himself, of course, is not doing so. Mr Obama likewise made a miniscule speech (with perhaps less pancake makeup) which, in a nutshell, indicated he was “concerned” and “monitoring.” Mr Obama “monitors” with “concern” when he doesn’t know what to do with regard to international situations. His speech on Friday proffered naught but multisyllabic political phlegmic drivel.

Yoni the Blogger indicates there is unrest in Jordan, unrest in Yemen, all over the Middle East. I’ll take the liberty of reproducing his complete blogthoughts on Egypt here:

The Game Is Over

Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan,Albania, Lebanon,Yemen.

Something is happening and it has the possibility of being a game changer.

Too long America has backed evil tyrants in exchange for cheap oil, that may be coming to an end. The people rise up and the tyrant is gone, more than likely they will meet an end similar to the Romanov’s .

But then what?

Do the people of Egypt, Tunisia,Jordan,Lebanon and Yemen take to the streets to demand Jeffersonian democracy or do they just want to get rid of the tyrants.

It is clear to me they just want to get rid of the tyrants . If these countries rid themselves of their tyrants look for the Saudi’s and oil emirates to also go.

In Egypt the military may take over running the government, only because the Muslim Brotherhood may feel they are better off in some sort of power sharing with the army.

But make no mistake in all of these governments in the end these countries will be ruled by Islamic fundamentalist allies of Iran.

This would be a huge game changer for both the USA and Israel.

For America it will mean the end of relatively cheap oil and this would have a negative impact on the American economy. It will also mean America will have only one ally in the Middle East, Israel.

For Israel it will mean an end of the peace game and a return to whole scale war with nation states and not fighting with the Palestinians and other terrorist.

Yoni pulls no punches as you can see.

An interesting viral YouTube video is here:

One other factor: the Copts are also shaking in their boots, as they are native Egyptian Christians and would be the first to be sacrificed or sought out in a pogrom if the Muslim Brotherhood or other aligned Islamists were to seize power.

And what few people have put into political play for consideration, not just in terms of oil: the Suez Canal. That is specifically why the stock market rumbled on Friday. Oil rocketed close to $100 per barrel just on this issue.

Check the map, and you can see why the Suez Canal is so incredibly important and relevant to the unrest in Egypt (click to expand in much greater detail):

It is said that The Muslim Brotherhood is covertly behind the unrest and stands to gain in Egypt. An excellent background article about the MB here. The Muslim Brotherhood is aligned with al Qaeda and thusly are Sunni. The Muslim Brotherhood has an English website here.

The only hope may be that the bulk of the younger people of Egypt are predominantly secular and will not hold with Muslim Brotherhood power plays just as they rejected Mubarak. Interesting post here.

I submit this: it is not an immediate “given” that Islamists will wrest control of Egypt as they may wish. Yes, they will attempt to take advantage; but there is no guarantee.

BZ

And for those who object to the cartoon:

Go find another embracing country. You parasites.

BZ

And new, younger, former Washington Bureau Chief of Time magazine Jay Carney is in.

Why might that be?

I suspect it is this: Gibbs has carried more than his fair share of water for Mr Obama. And because he still may possess a bit of his goodness extant, he concluded that he has reached so-called “threshold.” One can only tell so many lies and prevarications and stall and delay and — at the same time — realize that the official stories told do not even remotely correspond to the actual fact patterns — before some Truths actually start to emerge. And bother.

I submit that Gibbs, over time, couldn’t align these projects with reality and, resultingly, decided (wisely, I believe) to logically withdraw. He had carried all the water possible; time to install Fresh and Ignorant Meat.

Mr Gibbs, in my opinion, saw the future writing on the wall. He could only lie and stall and deflect so much. Otherwise, he would be on board for not only the entire current administration but the potential subsequent one as well. It would be politically and fiscally rewarding. If one cannot benefit, then one recedes or withdraws. If Mr Obama was in The Winning Thrust then Mr Gibbs would have stuck through thick and thin.

Yet Gibbs chose to exit. That bespeaks volumes. Mr Gibbs may have truly possessed, in concert, an actual heart and a soul.

Gibbs, at times, reminded me of Baghdad Bob. The job was that difficult.

That is, if he believed in it. And there’s The Catch.

Carney, communications director for VP Biden, had a leg up and over everyone else: the Number Two Position Recommended.

Inside Job.

“Officially:”

Full list of White House staff transitions announced today:

* Ron Bloom, Assistant to the President for Manufacturing Policy (National Economic Council)
* Jay Carney, Assistant to the President and Press Secretary
* Stephanie Cutter, Assistant to the President and Deputy Senior Advisor
* Nancy-Ann DeParle, Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy
* David Lane, Assistant to the President and Counselor to the Chief of Staff
* Alyssa Mastromonaco, Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations
* Rob Nabors, Assistant to the President and Director of Legislative Affairs
* Emmett Beliveau, Deputy Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the Chief of Staff
* Jon Carson, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Public Engagement
* Danielle Crutchfield, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Scheduling and Advance
* David Cusack, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Advance
* Mike Strautmanis, Deputy Assistant to the President and Counselor for Strategic Engagement to the Senior Advisor
* Jessica Wright, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Scheduling
* Brian Deese, Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council

BZ

This just doesn’t go away. And it would be so incredibly simple to ameliorate. Some think that those who even broach the question are Nutters. But if so “nutted,” then why is the question even in the air? Why no easily-final resolution? Please listen:

Plus:

– The largest deficit in the history of the entire planet;
– Obama’s “cuts” won’t do much at all;
– In fact, his proposal would cost more money and raise taxes;
– The housing market is getting worse, not better;
– The “stimulus” didn’t stimulate.

Other than that, I suppose things are just fine. That is, if the man the electorate installed is actually eligible.

But that would be objectively unreasonable to even hint-at, would it not?

BZ