zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — where economics meets scripture ]
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The mundane:

Pete Nischt, 32, of Akron, Ohio, didn’t like the shutdown from the start, and now his flight from New York to Cleveland was delayed for three hours. In recent days, as he saw how people who had gone without pay for a month were suffering, he came to view the failure to pay public employees as “a breach of the social contract. Trump has been lying the whole time .?.?. and now we’re paying for it.”

That’s from How the shutdown ended: Americans just had it up to here

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The spiritual:

Okay, that’s the mundane “people who had gone without pay for a month” because of the shutdown — how about the spiritual? How about they also give God, in the person of Paula White, a month’s pay?

Trump's spiritual adviser Paula White suggested people send her their January salary or face consequences from God https://t.co/0U5fHNAGz7

— Dr. Death Studies (@AndrewChesnut1) January 30, 2019

Eh?

And:

Oh yes, she’s an Apostle of the New Apostolic Reformation.

Paula White, who heads up the president’s evangelical advisory committee, suggested making a donation to her ministries to honor the religious principle of “first fruit,” which she said is the idea that all firsts belong to God, including the first harvest and, apparently, the first month of your salary.

In any case, the principle is simple enough:

“January is the beginning of a new year for us in the Western world. Let us give to God what belongs to him: the first hours of our day, the first month of the year, the first of our increase, the first in every area of our life. It’s devoted…. The principle of first fruits is that when you give God the first, he governs the rest and redeems in,” she said.

“When you honor this principle, it provides the foundation and structure for God’s blessings and promises in your life. It unlocks deep dimensions of spiritual truths that literally transform your life. When you apply this, everything comes in divine alignment for his plan and promises for you. When you don’t honor it, whether through ignorance or direct disobedience, there are consequences.”

But what if — because of the shutdown, you weren’t paid for a month? Maybe you’re an air traffic controller, and received a check for $0.00? Offer it up?

Pouf! cancels out Pouf! In other words, that won’t cost you anything — beyond the original suffering mentioned above..

Ouch!

[ by Charles Cameron — the UK looks to be teetering over the White Cliffs of Dover, with 22 miles of channel separating them from the rest of Europe — and a hard border with Éire ]
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There are few more tumultuous games on earth than the British House of Commons, with its two sides lobbying and lobbing insults at one another, while the no-side-works-for-me cross-benchers face the no-side-I’ve-retired-from-the-fray Speaker across the length of the chamber, no doubt relishing the spectacle but, in the Speaker‘s case, regulating it with roars of “Order, order!!!”

And fray it is, glorious in its freedom, so wild as to demand frequent pruning — the Speaker, in the New Yorker‘s words, “presides over whatever fare — technical, listless, boorish, crazed — is unfolding in the chamber at a given moment. The House may be full with paper-waving cries of “Foul!” “Fiend!” Recant!” or even these days, I suppose, “Repent” — we do live, after all, in a remorselessly secular age..

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But then..

Pattern recognition: there seems to be a pattern of Speakers disinviting Donald Trump.

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Sources:

NYorker, Is the Speaker of the House of Commons Trying to Stop Brexit?

WaPo, Sorry, judges, we umpires do more than call balls

WHOtv, Speaker Pelosi Tells President Trump State of the Union Won’t Happen

Dates and Times:

te [re-invited] State of the Union is scheduled for 6.00pm Pacific, Tuesday, February 5

the Superbowl is 3.30pm Eastern, Sunday, February 3rd

Brexit will occur in un-negotiated form if nothing stops it, at 11pm GMT, Friday, March 29.

One way or another, fun times ahead..

[ by Charles Cameron — all the way through to Roger Stone and a clip from Godfather II ]
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First, in the place of honor, this brilliant sign protesting the government shutdown. Ouroboric in form, simple, succinct, pithy:

That’s a protest haiku, if ever I saw one, in a detail from the original photo.

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And while we’re on the topic of haikus, chyrons — those texts at the foot of TV screens — are the haiku of news media. Here are some I’ve collected recently — I’ll add more here as we go, since adding them in the comments section requires tweeting them so as to have a URL to work with..

As I’ve said elsewhere, that Carter Page, Michael Caputo, Sam Nunberg, Jerome Corsi joint interview by Ari Melber was fantastic television.

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I generally pick chyrons to screengrab for their game or war metaphors, but pithy and witty will get me every time.

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Kelly O’Donnell (immediately above) said memorably, “It’s a sort of dueling banjos of legislation..”

Hey:

Double #FAIL

And now, the Roger Stone indictment, with its movie reference. There have been plenty of pundits an news anchors referencing the Godfather movies, and that “textbook mob tactics” reference from the new chairmen of the Oversight and Intel committees. but AFAIK this is the first such reference from the Mueller team in a court document, and notable as such.

Plus I guess I’ll need to revisit the Godfather series to keep up with current affairs..

[ by Charles Cameron — in memoriam, ad vitam ]
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… and Mike Pence on the eve of MLK Day compares President Trump to the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr!

Doofus.

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Since so many media outlets have excellent MLK photos and fine tributes today — or are talking on and on about “not building bridges, building walls” or the reverse — let me just say that the best way to honor Dr King is to possess, purchase or borrow Gene Sharp‘s definitive trilogy…

… to take the hint in Sharp‘s title, and put the ideal of nonviolence into practical, active living.

[ by Charles Cameron — Mattis and Jalaluddin Rumi ]
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Dexter Filkins in the New Yorker, James Mattis Is Out; What Comes Next?

From the beginning, Mattis and his boss, President Trump, were nearly perfect opposites. Trump, lazy and self-indulgent, appears to think, when he thinks at all, almost entirely of himself. Mattis, by contrast, is a picture of self-restraint, driven by a sense of loyalty to the country and his ideals, symbolized by his high and tight haircut and forty-four years of military service. While his boss revelled in his own hedonism, Mattis walked the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq carrying a copy of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman stoic.

Neatly done there: Mattis‘ hair is specified, Trump‘s implied..

Seriously, though, it’s both obvious and surprising that Filkins tackles Mattis, on the occasion of his retirement, in geometric or logical terms of the opposition between the man and his boss.

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In the first of his sermons in Fihi ma Fihi, Jalaluddin Rumi offers us the paradox that when a sage visits the court of a prince, it is the prince who visits the sage:

when scholars do not study to please princes, but instead pursue learning from first to last for the sake of truth — when their actions and words spring from the truth they have learned and put to use because this is their nature and they cannot live otherwise .. Should such scholars visit a prince, they are still the ones visited and the prince is the visitor, because in every case it is the prince who takes from these scholars and receives help from them. .. Their trade is giving, they do not receive. The Arabs have expressed this in a proverb: “We have learned in order to give, we have not learned in order to take.” And so in all ways they are the visited, and the prince is the visitor.

Mattis is a scholar of strategy, and Trump not much of a prince.

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The point is, there’s a downhill slope here, and the man of service holds the high ground over his sad little master.

Mattis writes in his resignation letter:

One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies. [ .. ]

Similarly, I believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours. It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions — to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.

My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.

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NYT, Jim Mattis Kept His Country From the ‘Dark Side’

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As we all now know, Mattis eventually felt the inverted slope was untenable. Hence:

Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.