the Forty-Second Parallel

Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren't appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we'd like to think.

— Tim Keller, The Prodigal God p. 14 - 15, via Steve McCoy

What does it say about the qualifications of a programming language's maintainers when major design decisions are made after a two hour IRC session?

As far as I'm concerned, the differences are irreconcilable. ...

However this election turns out, there will be turmoil. If Obama wins, a large part of the country will feel angry and powerless against the will of the left leaning blue states, the news media, Hollywood and academia. (In fact, they already feel that way, I assure you.) They will believe that ACORN created enough false voter registrations to put Obama over the top. If McCain wins, the left will riot and claim, "The Diebold machines were hacked!" The blue states, the news media, Hollywood and academia will resent that the will of the "dumb hicks" in flyover country overruled that of their "betters". And we will hear the cries of, "Racism! Racism!" ad nauseam.

I hate to sound all doom-and-gloom, but I see absolutely no solution to this. Or at least no solution in which America stays in the same form it is now. I hope I'm wrong about that. I guess we'll see.

— Susan B. at Lilac Rose, via Instapundit

I can't say I agree with the entire sentiment expressed by Susan B. But with all the turmoil in the financial markets, I can't shake the feeling that we are standing on the precipice of some kind of monumental political change. Based on polling from recent years, roughly half the country will welcome such change and the other half will detest it.

Will those reactions lead to something like a "cold civil war"? I hope not - but the existence of such conjecture solidly within mainstream punditry certainly gives pause.