Bible Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

July rambling: Kalshification of news

How Kalshi infects the news (Kalshification)

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of centrists who bemoan “political polarization” and call for a politics that abandons the “tribalism of left and right.”

Incarcerated People Lose Treasured Media When Prisons Change Tablet Contracts

Why most Black Americans say they never fly the American flag, according to a new AP-NORC poll.

Charlie Chaplin – Final Speech from The Great Dictator

Capitalism vs. Socialism? Get Serious.

Texas Public School Students Will Be Required to Read the Bible. The state passed what may be the first state-mandated book list for public school students. It focuses on classic literature and includes Bible excerpts.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has called for a ban on data centers in rural areas.

Might as well

A list of resources for people and organizations involved in, or interested in, one or more operations for the 2030 Census.

May as Well Get COVID and Flu Shots on the Same Day, Study Says — Coadministration was not associated with an increased risk of side effects

The A.I.-Design Aesthetic That’s Taking Over the Internet. How Anthropic’s new tool, Claude Design, is creating overnight web-design clichés.

Street photographer Ray Di Pietro focuses his work sharply on his adopted hometown of Nashville. With little fanfare, he has attracted tens of thousands of devotees. His images are artfully composed, spontaneous, honest, and, well, kind.

George E. Johnson, Who Built a Black Hair-Care Empire, Dies at 99

What I Learned About Masculinity at Thai Kickboxing School

‘Navigating the unknown together’: me and my idiot AI boyfriend

‘Separate in name and power’: How America reinvented English

Every John Oliver Scene on General Hospital and his debut

The Empire State Plaza Fireworks show for 2026

David Brickman’s show of color photographs at McGreevy ProLab and ProPress

Witch Way to Victory? and The 18 Month Soccer Bet and Baseball’s Brady Bunch

The return of King George III

Forget Project 2025 — he is following the royal’s playbook

Declaring War on The Declaration

Justice Department subpoenas New York Times reporters over Air Force One reporting

From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday and Fireworks Fiasco Descends Into Chaos

Arsonist in chief

Plans for racist renovations to the Smithsonian

Propaganda history trucks may soon visit your neighborhood

“Islamic Republic of Japan”?

DJT airport could spell doom for Palm Beach. Via Heather Delaney Reese: The agreement gives the Trump Organization control over which vendors can manufacture and sell merchandise at the airport. It gives Trump veto power over any biographical material displayed inside the building. A non-disparagement clause bars the airport from publishing anything that could tarnish his reputation. His own staff writes the version of his story that travelers see. And the trademark applications cover watches, jewelry, collectible coins, cufflinks, purses, backpacks, suitcases, umbrellas, tote bags, clothing, robes, neckties, belts, and plastic slippers designed for use at security checkpoints. They trademarked slippers at a public airport.

Air Force officer arrested at Capitol after calling for FOTUS impeachment, a civil-disobedience story

He Bought Hundreds of Stocks the Day Before He Paused Tariffs and Sparked a Historic Rally

His Dubious Promise to End Birthright Citizenship

Caught by gangland-style squeeze play/ Damned if they do, damned if they betray. (poem)

JD Vance appears most agitated because he believes America is engaged in a civilizational struggle — and it is losing.

MUSIC

The Washington National Cathedral marked the 250th anniversary of the United States with an interfaith service on July 3. Lifting themes of pluralism and the common good, We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident celebrates the nation’s ideals alongside an honest reckoning of its history and unfinished work.

250

Total Eclipse of the Heart (Turn Around) – Bonnie Tyler, described as a “husky-voiced powerhouse vocalist” who died this month.

Ballad of Orin score by Toru Takemitsu

Favorite Songs By Favorite Artists (Series Four) #8: Eric Dolphy

Overture to Pique Dame by Franz von Suppé

The New Christy Minstrels: The folk group that lasted for centuries

Coverville 1584: The Tears For Fears Cover Story III

My Life -Billy Joel (From the 100th — Live at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY-March 28, 2024)

Burn The Other End – Billy Strings

Feller From Fortune, set for chorus by Harry Somers

A sizzling mix for summer listening

August rambling: America’s wombmate

NEW Rebecca Jade!

Big Brother Moves to Become America’s Wombmate -government access to medical data threatens patient rights.

Here’s a Map of What FOTUS-GOP Destruction of US Hospitals Looks Like

America First is America alone. Power-crazed he may be, but he fails to grasp soft power.

This is what extreme heat is doing to us: Policies to Make the Planet Hotter

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon Burned: The NPS Burns Too

The Founders of This New Arkansas Development Say You Must Be White to Live There

How Ireland’s ‘Mediocre’ Milk Powder Made it Big in West Africa

U.S. Drinking Drops to New Low, Poll Finds

How to champion libraries in Congress: a free virtual event on Tuesday, September 9 at 5 PM ET / 4 PM CT / 2 PM PT, where ALA policy experts and special guests will share updates, inspiring stories, and how you can pitch in at the start of this school year.

Mike Lindell & MyStore: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Kelly’s 2X4

Matt Damon & Ken Jennings on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

Marvel v. DC: The 25-Cent War from Tales From My Spinner Rack! by Gary Sassaman

Now I Know: The Dancing Plague and The Baseball Player With The Special ID, and He Bought His Freedom With Fake Money, and Why Some Movies Can’t Give it a Rest, and His Hometown Went to Pot? and Excel Has Bad Genes

ICE Raids and DC Occupation

Make democracy work part of ordinary life, not an add-on (ht/Paul Tonko). Lauren DesRosiers quoted Audre Lorde: “Every day of your lives is practice in becoming the person you want to be. No instantaneous miracle is suddenly going to occur and make you brave and courageous and true. And every day that you sit back silent, refusing to use your power, terrible things are being done in our name.”

DHS is using the Bible to promote ICE, claiming ‘righteous’ fight against immigrants. The agency refers to Scripture, including Micah 6:8, as it seeks to recruit agents.

New York State has seen a surge in ICE arrests, with totals four times the number seen during the same June-July period last year.

Don’t Let ICE’s Legal Abuses Stop You From Asserting Your Rights

‘Go Home, Fascists’: Protesters Jeer Federal Agents in Streets of DC

Federal agents face protests after Trump orders unprecedented takeover of DC police

Five Ways to Fight FOTUS Fascism by Robert Reich

Tonko and Fahy

My Congressperson, US Rep. Paul Tonko: “I traveled to the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia… This visit was even more urgent given the results of a report from ICE’s Office of the Inspector General from an unannounced facility inspection earlier this summer. The report found the facility and ICE staff were not in compliance with federal law and used excessive, inappropriate force, including striking detainees and spraying them with pepper spray.

“Despite the pressing need for oversight and in violation of federal law that grants me and all Members of Congress access to these facilities, I was denied at the gate. The facility guards blocking my entry went so far as to confirm that they knew they were in violation of the law. If they are fine ignoring the legal rights of a Member of Congress, what does that mean for our own communities and individuals who are detained?”

You may or may not be able to read my state senator, Pat Fahy’s, newest op-ed in the Times Union, “about the paramilitary-type tactics taking over our streets.

“No visible identification, no judicial warrants, no due process – these are setting a dangerous precedent for Americans and normalizing paramilitary secret police style tactics on our streets. That’s why I introduced legislation to prohibit ICE agents from wearing masks or face coverings during civil immigration enforcement in New York.

“Security and humanity can both exist, and instilling fear will not create the immigration reforms we need to enrich America and honor its legacy.”

Kudos to them both.

MUSIC

Not Me No Way – Rebecca Jade ℗ 2025 Ultimate Vibe Recordings, Released on: 2025-08-18

Join Ice – Jesse Welles

He Just Can’t Wait To Be King! – Randy Rainbow Song Parody

Coverville 1545: Cover Stories for Steve Martin and Modest Mouse and 1546: The Mamas & The Papas Cover Story

The Mamas & The Papas cover Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart songs: My Heart Stood Still (from One Dam’ Thing after Another, 1927); Glad To Be Unhappy (from On Your Toes, 1936); Sing For Your Supper (from The Boys from Syracuse, 1938). They sang those three songs and Here In My Heart (from Dearest Enemy, 1925) for Rodgers and Hart Today, a salute to the composers, which aired March 2, 1967, on ABC TV, then reworked it as No Salt On Her Tail.

Symphony No. 1 in F minor by Dmitri Shostakovich

Gospel Plough – Robert Plant and Saving Grace

Lida Rose/Will I Ever Tell You from the movie The Music Man

You’ll Be Back – Primer

On The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe from the movie The Harvey Girls (1946), with Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, and many others

Theme to the movie Emma by Rachel Portman

The Cast of Oliver with Davy Jones perform I’d Do Anything on The Ed Sullivan Show, Feb 9, 1964

Peter Sprague Plays Waters of March featuring Allison Adams Tucker

Run On -Elvis Presley

I Love You Period – Dan Baird

Bernstein – Academic Festival Overture (Brahms)

Go Away, Little Girl – Donny Osmond

Beethoven “Moonlight Sonata” for Mongkol, the Old Bull Elephant (ht/aal)

The hairpin: The Most Misunderstood Symbol in Music (ft. Seymour Bernstein) by Ben Lade

The best Good Samaritan sermon

I’ve listened to a LOT of sermons on the topic.

My church is participating in a Lenten series, “Everything In Between,” which “invites us to navigate the polarities in our lives with more faith, intention, and openness to be transformed… Each weekly sub-theme explores two supposed binaries, like ‘faith & works’ or ‘rest & growth,’ or ‘grief & hope.’ We often consider these ideas to be opposing. However, as we explore these concepts within the scriptures, we find nuance and complexity… these dichotomies are false. We might begin to see a full spectrum instead of black and white. We might find that God is present in between.”

The first sermon on finding God was about ‘stranger’ and ‘neighbor.’ The text was the hyper-familiar Good Samaritan parable.

First, the pastor painted the enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans. Here’s a useful comparable narrative I found. “Imagine the hatred between Serbs and Muslims in modern Bosnia, the enmity between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, or the feuding between street gangs in Los Angeles or New York, and you have some idea of the feeling and its causes between Jews and Samaritans in the time of Jesus. Both politics and religion were involved.”

The hymn afterward, I Saw a Stranger, Words: Anna Strickland (2024), to the tune KINGSFOLD (I Heard The Voice Of Jesus Say or Oh Sing A Song Of Bethlehem) amplified the sermon:

NEIGHBOR:
“I saw a stranger on the road in need of help and care
No clues to their identity, just human flesh laid bare
A thought had fluttered through my mind: ‘Is this one of my own?’
My tribal mind made me forget that they’re bone of my bone

What if you’re in the neighborhood and see someone who is an “other” in need? Do you aid them or fear that those in your tribe will chastise you?

From the other side

STRANGER:
“I laid there desperate by the road in need of help and care
As one by one they passed me by, too busy or too scared
Then one approached and my first thought was ‘Do they mean me harm?’
To my surprise, they met my eyes and held me in their arms”

If you are the injured party, you may wonder: Is that “other” person really going to help me?

BOTH parties are afraid. In Luke’s story, the injured person and the Samaritan are actually terrified. See how much they are alike! It was the best Good Samaritan sermon I ever heard, and I’ve listened to a LOT of sermons on the topic.

So when so-called evangelicals call Jesus “Liberal” and “Weak,” I disagree wholly. Jesus is radical.

The Weekly Sift explains:

“Maybe you were horrified by Musk’s statement [in a Joe Rogan interview] about empathy.

The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said. “There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.

(I’ve seen this in other administration officials, who bloviate, “You’ll just have to get used to it.” These are mean, schmucky people.)

Let’s keep that empathy in check!

“Well, you should know that seeing empathy as an exploitable weakness isn’t just a psychological quirk Musk has because he’s on the spectrum. It’s become a thing on the Right. A conservative Christian author has a book out called Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.

We are told that empathy is the highest virtue—the key to being a good person. Is that true? Or has “empathy,” like so many other words of our day—“tolerance,” “justice,” “acceptance”—been hijacked by bad actors who exploit compassion for their own political ends?

So, compassion is a…sin? Weekly Sift hears them saying, “Yep. If you find yourself feeling sorry for bombed-out communities in Gaza, hungry children in Africa, or working-class families losing their health insurance in the US, it’s a trap. Jesus wouldn’t want you to fall for it. ‘Love your neighbor’ now means something else entirely.”

But no, it does not. Matthew 22, Mark 12, and Luke 10 record Jesus’s two greatest commandments: “Love God and love other people.” A theology that preaches that empathy is in short supply is simply an abomination.

MLK: “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore”

Two years after Brown v. Board of Education

Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the sermon “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore” on May 17, 1956, to 12,000 people. The venue was the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, the headquarters of the Episcopal Diocese of New York State.

The occasion was an ecumenical program commemorating the second anniversary of the Supreme Court school desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education. As the Montgomery bus boycott was still going on, this was early in this phase of the civil rights movement.

King had preached this sermon at least twice in the past, based on the biblical story of the exodus from Egypt, comparing the Israelites’ captivity with the plight of African Americans. The scripture text was: “And Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore.”-Exodus 14: 30

I try to find sermons by MLK for the holiday that are both well-regarded yet largely unfamiliar.

Evil

There is hardly anything more obvious than the fact that evil is present in the universe. It projects its nagging, prehensile tentacles into every level of human existence. We may debate over the origin of evil, but only the person victimized with a superficial optimism will debate over its reality. Evil is with us as a stark, grim, and colossal reality…

But we need not stop with the glaring examples of the Bible to establish the reality of evil; we need only to look out into the wide arena of everyday life. We have seen evil in tragic lust and inordinate selfishness. We have seen it in high places where men are willing to sacrifice truth on the altars of their self-interest. We have seen it in imperialistic nations trampling over other nations with the iron feet of oppression. We have seen it clothed in the garments of calamitous wars which left battlefields painted with blood, filled nations with widows and orphans, and sent men home physically handicapped and psychologically wrecked. We have seen evil in all of its tragic dimensions…

[The telling of the Red Sea story in Exodus]

This story symbolizes something basic about the universe. It symbolizes something much deeper than the drowning of a few men, for no one can rejoice at the death or the defeat of a human person. This story… symbolizes the death of evil. It was the death of inhuman oppression and ungodly exploitation.

Colonialism

Notice how we have seen the truth of this text revealed in the contemporary struggle between good, in the form of freedom and justice, and evil, in the form of oppression and colonialism. Gradually we have seen the forces of freedom and justice emerge victoriously out of some Red Sea, only to look back and see the forces of oppression and colonialism dead upon the seashore.

[Statistical analysis of colonialism and how it was slowly breaking down.]

What we are seeing now in this struggle is the gradual victory of the forces of freedom and justice. The Red Sea has opened, and today most of these exploited masses have won their freedom from the Egypt of colonialism and are now free to move toward the promised land of economic security and cultural development. As they look back, they clearly see the evils of colonialism and imperialism dead upon the seashore.

The struggle in the United States

In our own struggle for freedom and justice in this country, we have gradually seen the death of evil. Many years ago, the Negro was thrown into the Egypt of segregation, and his great struggle has been to free himself from the crippling restrictions and paralyzing effects of this vicious system. For years it looked like he would never get out of this Egypt. The closed Red Sea always stood before him with discouraging dimensions. There were always those Pharaohs with hardened hearts who, despite the cries of many a Moses, refused to let these people go.

But one day, through a world-shaking decree by the nine justices of the Supreme Court of America and an awakened moral conscience of many White persons of goodwill, backed up by the Providence of God, the Red Sea was opened, and the forces of justice marched through to the other side. As we look back, we see segregation caught in the rushing waters of historical necessity. Evil in the form of injustice and exploitation cannot survive. There is a Red Sea in history that ultimately comes to carry the forces of goodness to victory, and that same Red Sea closes in to bring doom and destruction to the forces of evil.

Hope

This is our hope. This is the hope and conviction that all men of goodwill live by. It is… the conviction that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that the whole cosmic universe has spiritual control. It is, therefore, fitting and proper that we assemble here, just two years after the Supreme Court’s momentous decision on desegregation, and praise God for His power and the greatness of His purpose, and pray that we gain the vision and the will to be His co-workers in this struggle.

Let us not despair. Let us not lose faith in man and certainly not in God. We
must believe that a prejudiced mind can be changed and that man, by the grace of God, can be lifted from the valley of hate to the high mountain of love.

Let us remember that as we struggle against Egypt, we must have love, compassion, and understanding goodwill for those against whom we struggle, helping them to realize that as we seek to defeat the evils of Egypt, we are not seeking to defeat them but to help them, as well as ourselves…

I prefer to live by the faith that the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever,
Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!

The full text is here.

Rote memorization

87 years ago…

I’ve been musing on rote memorization. One reason is a column in the Boston Globe, The blessing of ‘rote’ memory by Jeff Jacoby. The subtitle: “Memorization for its own sake has long been unfashionable. It shouldn’t be.”

Jacoby notes: “There was a time when memorization was a standard feature of American schooling. In 1927, New York City’s board of education directed grade school teachers to teach poetry to pupils, with particular emphasis on the use of rhythm, diction, and imagery.”

Of course, “it isn’t only literature that can be memorized. The elements of the periodic table, the names and locations of the 50 states, the 46 US presidents, the first 100 digits of pi, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, all the best picture Oscar winners — the list is literally endless…

“Everyone memorizes some things — the multiplication tables, their Social Security number, song lyrics, the Wi-Fi password, family members’ birthdays — but memorization for its own sake has long since gone out of favor.” I was not specifically aware of that trend.

Lowest form?

“Writing in The American Scholar more than 40 years ago, the late Clara Claiborne Park, a professor of English at Williams College, commented on the disdain with which professional educators dismissed learning material by heart as mere ‘rote memory.’ She quoted one college president who sneeringly called memorization ‘the lowest form of human intellectual activity.'”

Jacoby pushes back. “But there is nothing ‘low’ about mastering a block of information so effectively that you can surface it at will… You don’t have to be a ‘Jeopardy!’ contestant to relish having instant recall of thick slices of knowledge. Memorization takes work, but there is joy in the accumulation of knowledge that requires no googling.”

I’ve actually gotten pushback in this blog about this in the past. Why remember it when you can just look it up? To which I’ve indicated the joy – yes, that’s the word – of knowing stuff.

The Word

When I used to attend a Friday Night Bible Club for several years, roughly from fourth through tenth grade, Pat, the woman running it, suggested that we should try to memorize Bible verses. To this day, I still remember Psalm 119:11, in the King James Version, of course. “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.”

Memorization was also the recommendation at her church, Primitive Methodist in Johnson City, coincidentally very close to where my parents would move after I went to college. I remember one of the PM teens selected John 11:35, “Jesus wept.” It wasn’t explicitly stated, but I have long thought that this process was suggested in case the Communists took over the country and took all of our Bibles.

Music allowed me to cheat somewhat. Because I know the anthem God So Loved the World, I can cite John 3:17. “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”

A college friend of mine surprisingly got into a brief but intense Christian phase. They recommended that I memorize all of the books of the Bible, and I dutifully did so.

Now? Well, I can get through the Pentateuch, then Joshua Judges Ruth, which, not incidentally, is the title of a Lyle Lovett CD that I own. Then the twofer history books, which are in reverse alpha order: 1st and 2nd Samuel, Kings, Chronicles. The history section ends with EastNortheast; I mean Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther. Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and… a couple more. The five major prophets, then I totally fall apart over the 12 minor prophets. I’m better with the New Testament, but some of the epistles – where IS Philemon? -are a bit shaky.

Lousy memory

I did really well with math tables. I know the Social Security numbers of my wife and daughter. And I used to remember all the area codes, and the geography they represented when the codes had a zero or one in the middle. Also, I’m rather good with birthdays.

But rote memorization of words was/is tougher. I struggled with the Emancipation Proclamation, which is only two minutes long. I could never be a leading actor because I couldn’t absorb the lines. In high school, I was the Fire Chief in Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano. I couldn’t remember some soliloquy, so someone put it on a scroll, which I took out and read, then flung towards the audience.

Yet I DO know the Presidents, which helped on JEOPARDY; the order of Beatles album releases (US AND UK), and most of the MLB players who hit more than 500 home runs.

The one thing I actively tried to instill into my child’s brain was the names of the states. Not exactly in alphabetical order, but the four A states, the three C states et al.

Recently, Kelly thanked his 7th grade English teacher for forcing his class to memorize a particular poem that he learned to hate, but since…