The Petra Zone

By the way, since exe's quote of my post contains an extra paragraph, I'll mention here I chose to delete it, partly because after thinking about it more, it was a little off-topic and more of a tangent than I felt necessary, and also because exe messaged me to say he found the description of the av...

I've twice now posted at length about how the anecdotal evidence of abuses does not reflect the very real good such programs do for needy people. If you are unwilling or unable to read and retain that info, I'm not interested in rehashing it a third time. I recommend going back and reading them in t...

The United States is a larger, more complex economy than most others in the world, with more people and more complex problems, yet we raise less money in taxes than those countries as a percentage of our economy. This strikes me as foolish. Now perhaps there should be further cuts in spending, but I...

It's interesting to me that the first few responses to my snarky little comment were, "We don't need more revenue. We need more cuts!" This was followed by a series of posts all talking about how little everyone actually pays in taxes. Which would seem to actually support the notion that perhaps the...

I think politics is a messy means that can be used for positive ends. As long as we can stay civil about it (haven't read any of the posts on the trillions thread ... yet), there's no reason we can't talk about how best to form our society into something that better reflects the kingdom of God. I kn...

Sounds like we need more revenue.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/ I guess the folks over at the library of congress must be confused as well, but they sure do seem to have a lot of documents to back up their positions... Hum... Looking at the section referring to the federal government, which is the only one relevant to this ...

"Divine providence." What does that really mean? That's a deist phrase that basically means "good luck." Deists believed in God, and they used language we recognize as referring to God ("endowed by their Creator," for example), but it didn't mean to them what we think it means today. And what does "...

Well, looks like money's not going to work out for the Dallas show for me. With gas and food, it would be a pretty tough haul, even with a cheap ticket. Bummer. But at least I got to see them in Nashville...

As a user, I love Spotify. Especially since I signed up for the free premium trial version (ad free and can use it on my iPhone), and they seem to have forgotten that I still have it four months later! 8) I love being able to merge my own mp3s with stuff I've always wanted to buy but didn't have the...

Brent sure knows how to scuttle his credibility on a topic – and drag down the credibility of everyone who agrees with him, to boot. I'll give him that. I've never seen an argument go up in flames so fast.

Well, you know, both Jesus and Paul did some name calling when the name in question was an accurate representation of the facts. Now, you are obviously a big Obama fan with a very biased view of all these issues, so I wouldn't expect you to be able to see clearly , but Obama basically tried to twis...

I should say that while I agree with the substance of Obama's argument – that the current Supreme Court, should it strike down the ACA, would be engaging in nearly unprecedented judicial activism that would overturn 75 years of judicial precedent regarding the Commerce and Necessary and Proper claus...

I still hear people say that the don't like Romney, and they would rather have four more years of President Obama with enough conservatives elected to congress to create a log jam. The problem with that, as evidenced by his recent swipe at the Supreme Court, is that the president doesn't care about...

I'm going to go ahead and say calling anyone "FREAKIN STUPID" is not something we should be doing as followers of Christ, much less calling duly elected leaders such terms, which would seem to be in opposition to Romans 13. And, yes, that goes for previous left-wing criticism of George W. Bush. Pass...