Category Archives: News

“Life’s not fair” is too diffuse a lesson to learn from this

Listen to what the parents told their abused daughter to deal with it.  “Life’s not fair?”  No.  The state is not fair.  Professional bureaucrats are sociopaths. Politicians are insane and dangerous. Those are the lessons of this story.

But nooooo; this is all just a great exception.  Normally, the state and federal employees who we want to invade other countries, build our cars, control our economy, and play doctor with us are all brilliant, eternally beneficient angels, with only a few weird exceptions.

Did the parents even consider teaching their daughter another lesson by pulling her out of that prison? (I have no idea what their circumstances are which is why I’m only asking if they considered it)

Covering for the damage you do

“We were naïve,” Mrs. Finnegan said. “We quickly discovered that many of these priests were playboys. They weren’t looking for any discernment, they were simply staying and playing. It was the women who needed the support. Unfortunately, many women accept the kind of abuse from a priest that they would never accept if they were dating another man.”

via A Mother, a Sick Son and His Father, the Priest – NYTimes.com.

This is a pretty clear instance of where institutional self-righteousness leads.

The self-righteousness is that priestly celibacy must be a good thing even though everyone knows that not all priests are celibate.  The self-righteousness is believing you are doing God holy service while pretending not to know if a child is your son so that you can throw up obstacles, even though you have already acknowledged him as your son.

For those who are really celibate, I can see great advantage to singleness in pastoral ministry.  But the problem is not all priests have that gift and the Roman Catholic Church, having made an issue of priestly celibacy, would rather leave a trail of wreckage than admit it made a mistake.

Their relationship, she said, made her feel happier than she ever had in her life. She would watch him work, and feel proud that he was a comfort to so many people. As a Catholic, she said she knew their relationship was wrong, but she was also swept up in the feeling that there was something spiritual and even exalted about it.

“Here I am this small-town girl, and at the time I didn’t feel that I was very attractive,” she said, “and yet he’s putting his vows on the side and he wants to be with me, in the most intimate, loving way. It was quite an honor.”

“It’s such a powerful thing because you think — and this is the illness of it, too — you are led to believe and you let yourself believe, that you are a chosen one. That you are so special,” she said, adding of the priest, “It’s not that they’re putting God aside, it’s that they’re bringing you up to their level.”

Dare we hope that the future of Jesus is getting through?

As a 6-year-old growing up at a time when Hal Lindsey’s “Late Great Planet Earth” was holding sway in Southern Baptist churches, Jerry Johnson was fascinated by the talk of end times.

He later earned three theological degrees that prepared him for service at Boyce College, Criswell College and his current role as academic dean at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, but Johnson still points to that early interest in eschatology as sparking his own desire to profess faith in Christ two years later at age 8.

A few decades later co-authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins provided their interpretation of end times through the popular “Left Behind” novels.

Today, younger generations are exchanging the doctrine of last things as viewed by novelists and their fundamentalist forbearers for what some of them prefer to describe as Kingdom-oriented living. Are they reacting against popular depictions of end times and what some described as the pessimism of dispensationalism or developing a more biblical interpretation of what the Kingdom entails?

Unlike their parents, many evangelicals in Generations X and Y (born between 1965-1976 and 1977-2002, respectively) are throwing their energies into community projects and Kingdom causes without explicitly connecting them to the eschaton.

But there is disagreement among those the Southern Baptist TEXAN interviewed about whether this represents a lack of interest in last things among the young or simply a rejection of “pop eschatology.”

Read the rest at: Baptist Press – END TIMES: Is there a generational gap? – News with a Christian Perspective.

Voting for candidates and being their cheerleaders

It has occurred to me that this post is not as clear as it could be.

By “support” I’m referring to cheerful promotion, to advocating a candidate as on “our side” etc.

File this under Another Problem With Democracy.  Everyone says that we’re supposed to be realistic.  We’re supposed to not be perfectionists.  Blah, blah, blah.  One might think that such exhortations mean that we are supposed to keep our heads about us and, well, be realistic and not be perfectionists.  I’m sure many do mean that.

But for some it seems to mean the opposite and worse.  It means that we should take a look at a list of realistic candidates, without demanding perfection…. and then jump head-first into the fantasy world in which this candidate, chosen so realistically, is now the perfect messiah, the Good Guy, the Champion of Right.

I have to confess that I really liked the ant-Bush attitude that in the first few years of this century because I thought it would end this sort of thing.  I thought people’s anger at the Bush regime was a cynicism and opposition to politics.  But it wasn’t.  Demonizing Bush was simply an urge to find a fresh, young, god to control The Machinery Of Heaven.  And even now, when we have even less excuse for our war than before, and even more fiscal insanity (exponentially more) than before, Obama continues to be worshiped and professing Christians decorate the bodies of their young children with his beautific face on their clothing.

Gag.

It is all pagan worship and it is all headed toward human sacrifice.  The first sacrifice is one’s own brain, and the rest follows naturally and more literally.

I never thought I would say this so soon, but Bush’s sins aren’t an excuse anymore.

Anyway, saying I can’t “support” someone doesn’t mean that he or she isn’t worth voting for.  It just means there is not much to get excited about.  Which, in our modern political context, virtually makes you part of the opposition.

Not going to support Palin anymore, but I still think she is impressive

This is all over the blogosphere already.  I didn’t bother to track down the original source.

By Dewie Whetsell, Alaskan Fisherman. (As posted in comments on Greta’s article referencing the MOVEON ad about Sarah Palin) :

The last 45 of my 66 years I’ve spent in a commercial fishing town in Alaska. I understand Alaska politics but never understood national politics well until this last year. Here’s the breaking point: Neither side of the Palin controversy gets it…It’s not about persona, style, rhetoric, it’s about doing things. Even Palin supporters never mention the things that I’m about to mention here.

1- Democrats forget when Palin was the Darling of the Democrats, because as soon as Palin took the Governor’s office away from a fellow Republican and tough SOB, Frank Murkowski, she tore into the Republican’s “Corrupt Bastards Club” (CBC) and sent them packing. Many of them are now residing in State housing and wearing orange jump suits. The Democrats reacted by skipping around the yard, throwing confetti and singing “la la la la” (well, you know how they are). Name another governor in this country that has ever done anything similar. But while you’re thinking, I’ll continue.

2- Now with the CBC gone, there were fewer Alaskan politicians to protect the huge, giant oil companies here. So, she constructed and enacted a new system of splitting the oil profits called “ACES”. Exxon (the biggest corporation in the world) protested and Sarah told them “don’t let the door hit you in the stern on your way out.” They stayed, and Alaska residents went from being merely wealthy to being filthy rich. Of course the other huge international oil companies meekly fell in line. Again, give me the name of any other governor in the country that has done anything similar.

3- The other thing she did when she walked into the governor’s office is she got the list of State requests for federal funding for projects, known as “pork”. She went through the list, took 85% of them and placed them in the “when-hell-freezes-over” stack. She let locals know that if we need something built, we’ll pay for it ourselves. Maybe she figured she could use the money she got from selling the previous governor’s jet because it was extravagant. Maybe she could use the money she saved by dismissing the governor’s cook (remarking that she could cook for her own family), giving back the State vehicle issued to her, maintaining that she already had a car, and dismissing her State provided security force (never mentioning—I imagine—that she’s packing heat herself). I’m still waiting to hear the names of those other governors.

4- Now, even with her much-ridiculed “gosh and golly” mannerism, she also managed to put together a totally new approach to getting a natural gas pipeline built which will be the biggest private construction project in the history of North America. No one else could do it although they tried. If that doesn’t impress you, then you’re trying too hard to be unimpressed while watching her do things like this while baking up a batch of brownies with her other hand.

5- For 30 years, Exxon held a lease to do exploratory drilling at a place called Point Thompson. They made excuses the entire time why they couldn’t start drilling. In truth they were holding it like an investment. No governor for 30 years could make them get started. This summer, she told them she was revoking their lease and kicking them out. They protested and threatened court action. She shrugged and reminded them that she knew the way to the court house. Alaska won again.

6- President Obama wants the nation to be on 25% renewable resources for electricity by 2025. Sarah went to the legislature and submitted her plan for Alaska to be at 50% renewables by 2025. We are already at 25%. I can give you more specifics about things done, as opposed to style and persona . Everybody wants to be cool, sound cool, look cool. But that’s just a cover-up. I’m still waiting to hear from liberals the names of other governors who can match what mine has done in two and a half years. I won’t be holding my breath.

By the way, she was content to to return to AK after the national election and go to work, but the haters wouldn’t let her. Now these adolescent screechers are obviously not scuba divers. And no one ever told them what happens when you continually jab and pester a barracuda. Without warning, it will spin around and tear your face off. Shoulda known better.

I think all this is probably true and is objectively impressive.  I get tired of people not admitting what prodigies the Palins are.  That said, I’ve come to doubt how much she would do for the pro-life cause and have reached the point where I can’t hope anymore that she will outgrow her jingoistic warmongering. (Of course, rejecting the jingoism doesn’t mean a person isn’t committed to international murder; witness Obama).

Would she be the preferable option to vote for if I bother to go to the voting booth?  Sure.  But I’m tired of having to support people just because it makes sense, in an insane hostage situation, to vote for them.  I’ve outgrown my Stockholm syndrome.

Parents aren’t fools; and the Pols are only pushing harder

As the first wave of swine flu vaccine crosses the country, more than a third of parents don’t want their kids vaccinated, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll.

Some parents say they are concerned about side effects from the new vaccine — even though nothing serious has turned up in tests so far — while others say swine flu doesn’t amount to any greater health threat than seasonal flu.

Jackie Shea of Newtown, Conn., the mother of a 5-year-old boy named Emmett, says the vaccine is too new and too untested.

“I will not be first in line in October to get him vaccinated,” she said in an interview last month. “We’re talking about putting an unknown into him. I can’t do that.”

Read the rest: A third of parents oppose swine flu vaccine – Swine flu- msnbc.com.

The big delusion is that entrepreneurs want a free market.  Entrepreneurs want an exclusive opportunity.  For Big Pharma, that means getting the government to force drugs on the populace so they have mandatory customers.

Like the Nobel Peace Prize and the idea of houses as investments rather than depreciating assets, the reputation of our “Health and Welfare” corruptocrats is another bubble that may soon deflate.

Guess who is suddenly asking for a bailout because the price of milk dropped?

2004:

2007:

So sorry for the farmer, but any attempt to “prop up” milk prices is a direct robbery of the consumer who are also having to deal with the pop of the bubble.  The only way to get through this is to start acknowledging the market before it starts destroying our system of evasions.

Another manufactured accusation against Palin bites the dust

A judge ruled Wednesday that the Alaska governor’s office can use private e-mail accounts to conduct state business, as former Gov. Sarah Palin sometimes did.

Superior Court Judge Jack W. Smith said in his ruling that there is no provision in Alaska state law that prohibits the use of private e-mail accounts when conducting state business.

via The Associated Press: Judge rules in Palin e-mail case.

The next governor will know better than to become a player in the lower 48

First, expect fewer ethics complaints. Some Alaskans made a cause out of filing complaints against Gov. Palin and then trumpeting them for all who would listen — a violation of state law. Several of those complaints had merit. Most squandered time, money and trust in the public process. It’s unlikely Gov. Parnell will be the kind of lightning rod for obsessive attacks that Gov. Palin was.

via Our view: Palin out, Parnell up: ADN Editorial | adn.com.