…today and they couldn’t find another one for me until tomorrow.

So I’m just kicking it.  I think I’m going to go for a swim…

…for my flight tomorrow into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

I’ll be away from Los Angeles for 2 weeks, which is always a good thing to do every now and then…

…on the financial collapse is what I’ve just read.  It’s by Steve Horwitz of St. Lawrence University and is called ‘The Microeconomic Foundations of Macroeconomic Disorder: An Austrian Perspective on the Great Recession of 2008′ and be found HERE.  If you want to understand why we’re in the incredible financial mess that we’re in and the best approach to get out of it, I highly recommend reading the paper.  Here’s an excerpt:

In current recession, a series of such factors diverted the excess supply of loanable funds into the housing market, creating an asset bubble there that served as the basis for a set of illconceived financial instruments, all of which are now collapsing in the wake of the bursting of the housing bubble. The “Great Recession” is not a product of the greed of laissez-faire capitalism, rather, it is the unintended consequence of a pair of very significant interventions into the operation of the market process: the Fed’s expansionary monetary policy and a set of policies that artificially reduced the costs and risks of homeownership, enabling the creation of highly risky loans which themselves then led to even riskier innovations in the financial industry.

I just got done watching ‘Religulous,’ which is Maher’s attempt at following the Moore path to wealth – make a controversial documentary, connecting dots that aren’t there, for the extreme left-wing of the world.  It didn’t quite work as well for Maher, as the film grossed $13M world-wide which surely didn’t cover marketing and distribution costs.

The crux of Maher’s argument is the same as that of ‘Zeitgeist, the Movie’ (a low rent conspiracy documentary) – that the Gospels were stolen from the history of the Egyptian God Horus, who is claimed to have essentially the same story of Jesus.

The genesis of this misinformation is from a book called ‘The Pagan Christ’ by Tom Harpur.  In this book, Harpur doesn’t use any current or accepted sources to draw his conclusions.  Instead he uses a few relatively unknown sources from hundreds of years ago, from which he cherry-picks in an attempt to disprove Jesus Christ.

He did this for the same reason that Michael Moore or Bill Maher do their things – to be controversial and to make money.

But it’s amazing how this misinformation has spread throughout the internet, largely because of ‘Zeitgeist,’ and has been believed by people who haven’t looked up the source information.

For instance, a good summary of these beliefs can be found HERE.  It’s a paper written to essentially prove that the story of Christ was plagiarized from the story of Horus.  It actually sounds pretty convincing.  But when you look at the source references, they’re almost all from Harpur’s book which doesn’t use credible source material itself.

But in a way it doesn’t matter, because their target audience is the left-wing who tend to ‘feel’ over ‘think’ and tend to be too young and inexperienced in life to consider the sources.

This is the type of irrational argument Maher makes: only two of the gospels talk about the virgin birth, so how could it be true?  If it was true, wouldn’t all four would talk about it?

That’s like saying ‘I read four books about the space shuttle, and only two stated that it can carry satellites into space.  So why should I believe that it can carry satellites into space?’

Maher, like many leftists, is incapable of considering the aggregate effect of anything -  only  the negative effects.  So when talking about Christianity, they bring up the Crusades.  Or they interview some overbearing nut.  They never mention the good that Christians have been doing for the world for centuries.  They never interview the pastor who doesn’t come across as somewhat nutty.

The best way to keep a young audience when talking about something controversial or political is with snarky humor.  This is why comedians have such a prominent role in left-wing media.  If you’re playing to young people’s emotions, you need to attack them viscerally.  Using structured logic doesn’t work.

But as you get older you see the world in a different light.  You feel sorry for people like Bill Maher, who have to cover their emptiness with drugs and promiscuity.   You see the bitterness that consumes their life.  You feel for them, because at a certain point, they just stopped maturing.

‘Religulous’ is yet another attempt at making money by targeting the extreme left (and at least Maher admits that only about 16% of people share his view).  We’ll see another one in a few months when Michael Moore releases his new documentary which will bash the rich.  At least it will bash all those who are rich besides himself…

The Michael Jackson death is a crazy one to wrap one’s head around.  The problem is that we just don’t know what he did with all those children.

He was found ‘not guilty.’  But there was a lot of testimony from kids that he gave them ‘Jesus juice.’  I have little doubt that the mother that brought the lawsuit against him was an extortionist.  But that doesn’t tell us a lot.  He openly said that he slept in beds with children.

Jackson obviously had a horrible childhood.  His father inflicted an unmentionable amount of damage onto him.  Covering the pain up with drugs was probably the only way he knew how to deal with it.

Due to his incredible talent as an entertainer, he was probably one of the most famous people on the planet.  Celebrities hold a lot of power, and few people tell them ‘no.’  Even when they’re killing themselves.  Now Jackson is added to the list of those celebrities that spun out of control and ended up dead in their bed.

It just goes to show that money cannot buy happiness.  Freedom perhaps.  Fulfillment, no.

Whatever Mr. Jackson did or did not do, it’s not up to us to judge.  I’m sure he’s getting plenty of judgment where he’s at as it is…