Remember when...

conservatives were saying that it would be better to have Obama win the nomination because he would be easier to beat than Hillary? He was such a lightweight, such an unknown... he could never win.

Ha ha. Looks like the joke's on us.

"Surveying the Abyss"

The seminarian sent this to me with the question "feeling like this?" I read it over a few times and yes, this pretty well articulates how I've been feeling lately:

But I must confess of late to a recurring sense of foreboding, about a great many things. Now, prognosticating about the future is a fool’s game, to be sure; a review of most any futurist’s predictions invariable shows a predictive rate substantially less than could be had by tossing a coin.

....

In a world which incessantly rips its cultural chords at rock-concert levels, it is no small feat to listen to the still, small voice — and harder yet to distinguish it from the countless seductive whispers and wishes of life long lived in self-gratification and indulgence. Yet that voice ever quiet is nevertheless persistent — and it seems to be speaking with an urgency and clarity which is hard to dispel.

We are standing, I sense, at the edge of an abyss — and the earth beneath our feet is shifting and unstable.

Now I am not a Left-Behind reading kind of person. I don't have an "in case of rapture..." bumper sticker on my car. I know a couple of you might be thinking that... But, yes, this is about how I feel right now.

So it behooves us to stand back; to turn off the TV, shut down the browser, put down the paper, turn off talk radio, and truly listen — not to the screeching banshees with their banal hysteria, but rather to that inner source, be it spirit, or soul, or mind, or the wisdom acquired by life’s experiences.

Take a moment, if you will, for a brief look around, surveying our 21st-century world. Let yourself absorb the panoramic view, all 360 degrees, not averting your eyes at things which are unsettling or fear-provoking.

...

For years we have tolerated incompetence, corruption, dishonesty — and yes, greed — in government while looking the other way. On those rare occasions when politicians have made principled stands, we have rewarded them with a firestorm of political assault, full-throated media ridicule and criticism, and enormous financial pressure from lobbyists pouring money into the pockets of those who purport to represent the people. We have elected a government of the people, in the most literal and disgraceful sense: we have elected, and kept in office, those who share our desire for self-gratification and materialistic acquisition at the expense of character, moral integrity, honesty, and prudence. The cesspool which is our current Congress is what we have reaped by our own actions — or perhaps more accurately, by our inaction. We have elected those politicians who are like us in every way — and we hate them for it. They are, after all, created in our own image.

A young person dear to my heart recently told me that this is the most important election of his life. I've got news for him: every election from here on out will be the most important. Unless and until we somehow elect someone who can truly unite us, each election to come will have more anger, more corruption, more uncertainty, till this country is torn apart.

If you are a person of faith, it is time to dig in, hard, and quit playing games — your life may depend on it. If you are skeptical of such matters, consider: upon what will you lean when your world collapses? Will your considered indifference and intellectual smugness about us fools of faith save you? What will you do when all that matters to you is taken, and you are left, finally, profoundly alone with naught but that frightened face in the mirror?

If you are a person of faith, you might be nodding your head right now. If you are not, you probably think the writer and I are both crazy. But go read it all anyway. Think it over. Maybe you'll still decide I'm crazy. Or maybe not.

Despair and back again

So I went to church this morning full of despair (my favorite word now, apparently) and then found this in the order of worship:

But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
"Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
3 For I am the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Cush and Seba in exchange for you.
4 Because you are precious in my eyes,
and honored, and I love you,
I give men in return for you,
peoples in exchange for your life.
5 Fear not, for I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you.
6 I will say to the north, Give up,
and to the south, Do not withhold;
bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the end of the earth,
7 everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made." Isaiah 43:1-7 (ESV)

I don't know if that passage was chosen because of the election, financial crisis or other current events. Anyway, a good thing to hear and read.

But then I came home and saw this:



As the Gateway Pundit says:
Could you even imagine if a conservative group were to run dead Obama ad?

Of course not. And why are the pulling up that old rape kit story?

But then, when reading in Robinson Crusoe to my kids tonight, I came across this:

... how frequently, in the course of our lives, the evil which in itself we seek most to shun, and which, when we are fallen into it, is the most dreadful to us, is often-times the very means or door of our deliverance, by which alone we can be raised again from the affliction we are fallen into.

So, as of 9:14 pm EDT, I am in the not despairing part of the cycle. I'm also not reading any more news or blogs for the rest of the night. Well... maybe.

Despair

Hunting Mr. Good Will

WHO is "Will, Good"?

Mr. Good Will - who lists his employer as "Loving" and his profession as "You" - has contributed 1,000 times to the Barack Obama campaign.

All the contributions have been in amounts of $25 or less. But they add up to $17,375 - far more than the legal limit of $4,600. That's $2,300 each for the primary and general election campaigns.
...
If there are more suspicious donors to the Obama campaign, we won't know until long after the election as long as their aggregate contributions are below the legal limit. Mr. Timmerman was particularly curious about 11,500 contributions from overseas totalling $33.8 million.
...
CNN recently sent a reporter to Little Diomede Island, the westernmost part of Alaska (2.4 miles from Russia) to determine whether Sarah Palin had ever been there to see Russia with her own eyes. But CNN - and the rest of the media - have been incurious about the Obama campaign's fund-raising.

via Instapundit

And this video report on registering voters in Ohio.

OK, you might say, Republicans play dirty tricks too. Send me the links.