Five Jonathan and Jesus Thoughts Under the Fedora: Realty and Success, Previews of Coming attractions, Never Heard of Them, The Great Convention, and the Gilded Cage were celebs die

Posted: January 9, 2024 by datechguy in catholic, entertainment
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Via Wikipedia commons

Yesterday I talked about the mini-series Jonathan and Jesus today I watched it. Several takeaways from Part 1.

I mentioned in yesterday’s piece that Roumie has credits dating back with 2003. He commented that Harold Ramis told him it takes 20 years to be an overnight sensation and at the time he said that wasn’t going to be him. Reality just is.

I was not familiar with Dallas Jenkins previous short from 2013 Once we were slaves (retitled the two thieves) about St. Dismas on the Cross. Jonathan played Jesus in that short and Jenkins thought it be best film portrayal of Christ in film.

And this was five years before the Chosen.

That’s mysterious ways all over.

One of the things that happens in the 1st episode is that Roumie gets to meet the head of one of his favorite bands: “The Killers’ who are apparently one of the biggest rock bands of the 21st century and have been around for 20 years.

I had never heard of them until that moment.

Boy I’m old.

While in Italy they walk along actual Roman Roads dating back to the time of Christ and before.

Those Roman Roads were the internet of their times. They connected people throughout the empire in a way that was not possible previously because it made travel, trade and communication easier.

Those Roman Roads are one of the greatest single inventions in the history of mankind and it was across those roads that Christianity marched through the empire, at a time of general peace which made it possible.

Just a coincidence I’m sure.

If I had to choose the best moment of part one it was the visit with Alice Cooper who while I heard had converted to Christianity didn’t know that his family had been very Christian and that he came back to the faith late in life. He also talked about how he was told that putting his Christianity into his work would end his career, but of course it did not.

His description of what the price of incredible fame is the single best I’ve ever heard:

Fame is really dangerous, I mean, look what it did to Elvis. Here is a good example. If you take anybody and put him in the biggest mansion on the planet and say: ”You can have anything you want, you can have all the woman, you can have all the drugs, you can have food, you can have anything you want, but you can’t leave the mansion.” that person will find a way to kill themselves because they’ve lost the basic freedom be just to live.  Elvis couldn’t go to the movies. Elvis couldn’t play pool, Elvis couldn’t go out for a drive. He was a prisoner of his own fame. He was that big. Michael Jackson. Everybody that achieved that type of fame died early, because it’s so unnatural.

Of course the most important and true thing he said was: ”It’s your relationship with Christ that is the most important thing no matter what situation you’re in.”

He gets it.

COVID:  Déjà vu all over again

Posted: January 9, 2024 by chrisharper in Uncategorized

By Christopher Harper

As the 2024 election campaign begins in earnest this month, I am troubled that the rustlings of another COVID coup may be starting.

Just up the road from my home in Muncy, the vast University of Pittsburgh Medical Center recently required that masks be worn in all of its facilities throughout the state. UPMC employs 92,000 people and operates 40 hospitals with more than 8,000 licensed beds and 800 clinical locations, including outpatient sites and doctors’ offices.

At the same time, the media have picked up their reporting on COVID-19 and other winter diseases, leaving me with the uneasy feeling that various forces will turn the 2024 election by mail into a reality.

Remember all the changes in election laws in 2020 to make voting easier by mail, including extended voting periods and ballot collections by friends and family?

Most of those “democratic” laws remain in effect, making it much easier for Democrats to win. In 2020, 43% of all voters did so by mail versus 23% in 2016.

The laws also allowed for what has become known as “ballot harvesting,” or allowing someone other than the actual voter to submit ballots.
As America First notes in an analysis of current election laws, “Ballot harvesting is a ripe opportunity for individuals and organizations to cheat in elections. Allowing ballot harvesting is a mistake. States should prioritize transparency and accountability by banning the practice.”
Here are a few of the alarming facts uncovered in the America First analysis:
· Nine states allow a family member to submit a ballot instead of a voter, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
· Thirty-one states allow the voter to choose someone to submit the ballot in his or her place, although some states have set limits on who can collect the ballots or how many they are allowed to collect.
· Thirteen states say nothing about ballot collection, which allows unfettered ballot harvesting.

It’s essential to remove the changes made in 2020 to reestablish the integrity of elections.

At the state level, America First suggests that people support policies that:
· Eliminate drop boxes for mail-in ballots.
· Prohibit a person from returning more than two mail-in ballots and limit who can return a ballot to a familial relationship.
· Eliminate mass mailing of unsolicited mail-in ballots.
· Require an affidavit for mail-in ballot applications that affirms the voter cannot vote on Election Day and affirms eligibility under defined state law.
· Require a witness signature for mail-in ballots.
· Reform the mail-in ballot process by requiring the matching driver’s license number or last four digits of a social security number on absentee applications and inside the envelope of a returned ballot.

Implementing these measures is crucial to prevent another COVID coup, particularly as organizations and the media start taking control of the message.

Jonathan & Jesus Let’s Talk REAL Pressure

Posted: January 8, 2024 by datechguy in catholic, entertainment
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Abraham Lincoln: [speaking to a old freed slave who dropped to his knees before him] Don’t kneel to me, that is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will enjoy hereafter.

Richmond April 4th 1865 surrounded by a group of newly freed slaves

This trailer dropped from the folks at the Chosen:

In one respect this isn’t odd, you might recall from your movie history Cecil B DeMille’s silent movie King of Kings, the first movie adaption of the Gospels. It’s available at Youtube:

At the Turner Classic movies the lengths that DeMille took to keep things on the “right” path:

Cecil B. DeMille did not want to take any chances with the film. His two stars, ‘H. B. Warner’ and ‘Dorothy Cummings’ , were required to sign agreements which prohibited them from appearing in film roles that might compromise their “holy” screen images for a five-year period. DeMille also ordered them not to be seen doing any “un-biblical” activities during the film’s shooting. These activities included attending ball games, playing cards, frequenting night clubs, swimming, and riding in convertibles.

and Turner also reports that DeMille had some serious damage control to do:

Lead actor H.B. Warner, who played Jesus, was involved in an off-camera scandal with anonymous woman who was determined to blackmail Cecil B. DeMille by ruining the production. It is believed that DeMille paid the woman on the condition that she leave the U.S.

IMDB.com claims the woman was made to back off after being threatened with arrest. It also states that the pressure that Warner felt playing Christ was so intense that it brought back his drinking problem.

Now consider, this was one movie released in 1927 at a time when movies were not universal. Warner was already an established actor with a ton of credits behind him and decades of credits ahead of him (you might best remember him as Mr. Gower the druggist in It’s a Wonderful Life)  

The Chosen has now been around for over four years. It has been seen by hundreds of millions all over the world. It is a global phenomena. Furthermore if you look at IMDB you will find that while Jonathan Roumie has credits dating back to 2001 you will see nothing in a significant staring role that might cause him to be memorable before the Chosen. His entire fames comes from playing Jesus and there are, I suspect, many particularly in a post Christian culture that have not known the Gospel before and are rediscovering faith for the first time, for whom he is the only Jesus they have ever known in their lives.

Imagine the pressure of playing the son of God under those conditions and add to that the aditional pressure when you consider Jonathan Roumie is a devout Catholic who is very conscious of the dangers of the sin of Pride and that his performance and how he carries himself in public could have a huge oversized effect on people trying to find God. An actor might worry about the effects of his words and actions hurting a production, a devout Christian would worry about his actions and their effect on souls.

And we haven’t even touched on those who despise this message and the messengers who deliver it, both natural and supernatural. I’ve written and spoken about how the clergy and particularly the higher ups are targets for the devil, that comes with the job. Jonathan Roumie is an actor. I suspect that Satan has painted a target on his back bigger than the one on any Bishop.

That he is able to function at all, let alone as a man of faith and devotion speaks volumes and by the time the final season of the Chosen has wrapped, if he didn’t have a complete understanding of redemptive suffering he’ll know it first hand.

I admire him for this task which I would not want for all the gold in the world.

I haven’t watched this documentary yet, but you can bet I’m going to.

Update: Apparently it’s in four parts and available on Amazon. Watching now

Speaking of Gold in the world this is the final day of Christmas and thus the final day of our fundraiser: We remain stuck $2345 away from our goal. I suspect we won’t manage that today but I’d be really delighted if we could get that number below $2000 before I get home. If you would like to help please hit DaTipJar below or to the left:

Ouch-ouch: Failures of Latvia’s new electric trains serve as a warning for the rest of us

Posted: January 7, 2024 by John Ruberry in business, culture, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

During those rare occasions I get into a political discussion with leftists, often the back-and-forth veers into a predictable detour–whether the topic is health care, energy, or the environment–with this reply, “But in Europe they do it this way.” 

For the most part, I don’t care how things are done in Europe. 

One exception is Latvia, where Mrs. Marathon Pundit was born–and both of us visited this EU nation last summer.

What is the biggest story in Latvia in the first week of 2024?

The failure of new electric trains there, replacing old electrics. The new trains are operated by a company called Vivi. and the trains were built by Skoda Group, a Czech company.

From Public Broadcasting of Latvia last week:

On Tuesday morning, trains were delayed by up to three hours on the Rīga-Skulte line. Latvian Radio correspondent Viktors Demidovs was among those inconvenienced by the delay.

“I saw the new electric train at the station Garciems. I pushed the button to open the door but nothing happened. The conductor opened it manually. There was complete darkness in the train and climate control was not working either. [..] It turned out the train had been standing there for half an hour.”

Vivi representative Sigita Zviedre said there had been an issue with the power collector and the train’s battery had run out.

Vivi also stated that Latvia is not unique in finding deficiencies with new trains after putting them in traffic and said that Lithuania and Estonia had faced similar issues at the beginning. 

For emphasis, I’m repeating part of the last sentence of the third paragraph, “…the train’s battery had run out.”

Commuters rely on these trains, and not surprisingly, their malfunctions are a major inconvenience for many of them. Some passengers have been to forced to hail taxi or Uber rides to get them to their destination, and for now, Vivi is offering to reimburse those riders inconvenienced.

Of the 11 Vivi trains that are supposed to be operational, according to Public Broadcasting of Latvia, only six are currently running. While yes, with any new transportation product, some minor and infrequent hiccups are expected, but five of eleven trains not running is too high of a failure rate for just about everyone. Imagine if we were talking about new automobiles instead–and it’s a model that you were considering buying.

Okay, you are very likely reading this blog post from everywhere else but Latvia. What does this have to do with me?

Remember what I said that leftists are obsessed with how things are done in Europe. And they want to replicate, failures and all, the European way here. By the way, much of the funding for Vivi trains comes from the Cohesion Fund of the European Union.

Electric trains, failures and all, may be coming here.

Here’s an op-ed from Forbes, written by “climate futurist,” Michael Barnard:

North America has a railroad problem that the rest of the world doesn’t have. As a result, a lot of North Americans think it’s too expensive to electrify that mode of transportation. As we explore electrifying everything everywhere all at once as a key wedge in solving global warming it’s time to debunk that notion. 

Why am I singling out North America and North Americans? Because the Americas are singular in their lack of ability and willingness to do what the rest of the world has already mostly done.

Climate futurist? Yep. That’s a thing among those pushing the green agenda. And of course, I’ve noted before that liberals adore trains because they only go where there are rails.

In a practical way, it’s beneficial in North America to see how Latvia is enduring its electric train problems.

Meanwhile, the electric trains debacle is a Latvian cultural phenomenon.

Jānis Liepiņš adds another song to the many tunes about trains, although his mournful ballad, “Dzeltens Melns” (Yellow Black), unlike most train songs, does not celebrate riding the rails. Because of course, when you sit in a Vivi train car, the yellow and black cars often sit still as well.

Mrs. Marathon Pundit also noticed that Latvians on social media are quipping that instead of Vivi, the new electric trains should be named Vai-Vai, which translates into “Ouch-Ouch.”

UPDATE January 9:

The temperature this morning in Riga, Latvia was 32 degrees Fahrenheit (Zero Celsius). The “impact of frost” is being blamed for some Vivi electric trains not running today. Latvia is northern Europe and it borders Russia. It can get much colder than it is today there.

From Public Broadcasting of Latvia:

Due to the ‘impact of frost’ on the new electric trains as well as health issues of drivers, several trains in the directions of Sloka and Skulte have been canceled on Tuesday, January 9, passenger carrier Vivi said on Facebook.

And what are these ” health issues of drivers?”

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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