That Baptist Ain't Right: March 2016

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Republicans Supreme Court Stalling is Not Playing Well

It would seem the delay tactic the Republicans have set forth over the replacement for Scalia is not popular even among the GO faithful.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/verdict-gop-supreme-court-plan-181740570.html

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Got =THE= Atlanta United Tickets

I got 'em. I somehow managed to snag the ultimate season tickets for the inaugural season of Atlanta United. While I don't normally pray for such temporal things and am (almost!) ashamed to admit it, I did. I prayed for these exact tickets.

Now let me explain something about soccer to the non-soccer fans out there: soccer is everything to the serious fan. There are no casual fans in soccer. There are no take it or leave it attitudes about this game. The idea that someone could purposely miss their favorite team's match ... or God forbid, a World Cup qualifying match, much less an honest-to-God World Cup match ... is anathema. Heresy! Blasphemous! Draw and quarter such!

As Liverpool FC manager Bill Shankly so famously quipped: "Football's [soccer] is not a matter of life and death ... it's more important than that."

And Shankly was spot on.

I'm a fan. Big Fan. Love MLS and in particular the Portland Timbers. I've been a Timbers fan since the 1970s when soccer was an experiment in the US. Not sure what it was but I just liked Portland Timbers. When MLS took the Timbers in 2011, I immediately adopted them as my team. I've been to Portland and Salt Lake City to watch them play. It's on my Bucket List to go to every MLS stadium. I've got two more trips this year planned: Denver and Dallas. Can't wait.

But back to Atlanta United.

2017 is when Atlanta United begins play. Since that is my hometown team, I have to support them. And since I'm such a huge soccer fan, I put my name on the Founders Club list in 2014 to get season tickets. Paid my Founding Club dues (waiting list money).

It was announced via email the club would begin calling everyone to order their tickets on February 8, 2016. I waited. I waited. And I waited. I thought for sure I would end up needing the Hubble Telescope to see any play at all. Finally I get my call a month later: 10 March, 2016. And Brock (my Atlanta United account rep) sang the sweetest words I've heard in my life: Why yes, Mr. Hale. Those seats are available. Would you like me to process that order to finalize it now?

And so I got my tickets. Two of them. Perfect tickets. As if I picked them out decades ago and Arthur Blank himself reserved them just for me.

Section 110. Row 1. Seats 9-10. That is front row. Dead center of mid-field line.

I'm on top of the world.

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Great Quote List

"The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever. ... Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians."
--- John Leland, Colonial Virginia Baptist, "A Chronicle of His Time in Virginia," as cited in Forrest Church, The Separation of Church and State, 92 (2004).

"Religious matters are to be separated from the jurisdiction of the state, not because they are beneath the interests of the state but, quite to the contrary, because they are too high and holy and thus are beyond the competence of the state."
--- Isaac Backus, New England Colonial Baptist, An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty, 1773.

" 'The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live and fear breeds repression. Too often, sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-Communism. Today, it's the cloak of anti-terrorism.' [Adlai] Stevenson also remarked, 'It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.' "
--- Adlai Stevenson as quoted by TV lawyer Alan Shore on Boston Legal in the courtroom scene "Stick It."

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. . . Our government. . . teaches the whole people by its example. . . If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."
--- Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States in the dissenting opinion, later vindicated in Katz v. United States.

"When fascism comes to America, it will be draped in the flag and carrying a bible."
--- Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here, 1935. (Common spurious attribution, but an oh-so-true statement.)

“Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.”
--- St Augustine.

"To think deeply in our culture is to grow angry and to anger others; and if you cannot tolerate this anger, you are wasting the time you spend thinking deeply. One of the rewards to deep thought is the hot glow of anger at discovering a wrong, but if anger is taboo, thought will starve to death."
---Jules Henry, Culture Against Man, 1963.

"I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."
--- George Carlin (1937-2008) .

"Honesty is not something you flirt with — you should be married to it."
--- Table Top at Joe's Crab House, Aurora, CO.

"It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't."

--- Martin Van Buren.

"The Religious Right is a reminder as to why we have the 1st Amendment --- people can't resist forcing their religious interpretations onto others if others won't willingly acquiesce."
--- TBAR, 07/04/08.

"I'd rather have an honest Atheist in power than a corrupt Christian."
--- Ed Edwards, 09/01/08

“Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear, maintain the principles that he believes, worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing, i.e., see that he meets with no personal abuse, or loss of property, for his religious opinions....”
--- John Leland, Colonial Virginia Baptist minister and religious liberty advocate, The Rights of Conscience Inalienable, 1791 pamphlet.

That Baptist Ain't Right

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Republicans Supreme Court Stalling is Not Playing Well

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Got =THE= Atlanta United Tickets

Is it just me?

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