Matt Peterson

Freedom Fighting Guru or The Dude Abides?

[Matt Peterson @MGoVair]

@whignewtons Don’t get it. Never will. Natural is so much more pretty

[Charlie Sykes @SykesCharlie]

Making old tweets great again.

[TNT Sports U.S. @TNTSportsUS]

"This has been the best year of my life. Dusty May has really changed me for the better." 🙌

@umichbball's Yaxel Lendeborg (25 PTS) with nothing but gratitude as he spoke with @ALaForce postgame 🗣️ #MarchMadness

[Matt Peterson @MGoVair]

@Norma5387953815 7581

[Matt Peterson @MGoVair]

These 2 things go together

[Matt Peterson @MGoVair]

My go to write in candidate shows his quality irregardless of life’s circumstances. God bless you and your family sir.

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[John U. Bacon @Johnubacon]

Great game, great season.
That's about all Detroit had.
GM Scott Harris (and really owner Chris Ilitch) have to do more. For a bottom-half payroll, the players and coaches are doing all they can.

[Charles C. W. Cooke @charlescwcooke]

They can't grasp it, can they? The whole point here is that there's no such thing as "reverse discrimination." There's just discrimination. It attaches at the individual level. There's no "forward" group and "reverse" group.

[Noah Rothman @NoahCRothman]

While Moscow rains rockets, drones, and missiles down on Ukrainian population centers, Ukraine goes to extended lengths to limit its activities to legitimate military targets. Just as Israel’s pager attacks could not have been more discreet, Kyiv’s circumspection accentuates the glaring moral distinction between the aggressor in this war and the target of its aggression. https://t.co/YMZMOncPlz

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

Republicans Win Emmy For Acting Like Government Spending Makes Them Sad https://t.co/74lPyhYJJR

[Justin Amash @justinamash]

“Since it is the supreme leader who alone determines the ends, his instruments must have no moral convictions of their own. They must, above all, be unreservedly committed to the person of the leader; but next to this the most important thing is that they should be completely unprincipled and literally capable of everything. They must have no ideals of their own which they want to realise, no ideas about right or wrong which might interfere with the intentions of the leader.”
—F.A. Hayek, “Why the Worst Get on Top”

[Senator Joe Manchin @Sen_JoeManchin]

Today's news of Moody's downgrading the U.S. credit rating was predictable and preventable. It is the result of an abject failure of leadership in Congress and the executive branch that has spanned decades.

This is entirely a self-inflicted wound. Our current political atmosphere rewards short-term partisan wins over the long-term financial stability of our nation. Neither side wants to do the difficult but necessary work of addressing our national debt. Both political parties share responsibility for the lack of common sense governance that cost our nation its AAA credit rating. As a U.S. Senator, I introduced the Fiscal Stability Act, which would have made reducing our national debt a priority, but it was never brought to the floor for a vote.

The world is watching America's status as the superpower of the world, and we must never allow the U.S. dollar’s status as the reserve currency of the world to be in jeopardy. It’s time for Congress to ditch the political pacts that seem hell-bent on sending our nation into financian ruin, and start working together on the American team — pulling the rope together to restore our credit rating and get our fiscal house in order for future generations.

[Terrible Maps @TerribleMaps]

Mnemonic device to remember the Great Lakes

[Matt Peterson @MGoVair]

@jaynordlinger God bless, and go blue!

[Matt Peterson @MGoVair]

My favorite Tiger

[Detroit Tigers @tigers]

The Detroit Tigers join all of baseball in mourning the passing of Chet Lemon. While he was a World Series Champion and All-Star on the field, perhaps his biggest impact came off of it. That includes creating the Chet Lemon Foundation and dedicating much of his post-playing career to youth baseball development.

Our thoughts are with Chet’s family, friends and all those he coached, mentored and inspired.

[Jim Geraghty @jimgeraghty]

The new jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that in the month of April, 40 percent of all new job openings were filled by Marco Rubio.