Know Thy Enemy

From CNN's continued gloating about their homosexuality poll:

For the Rev. Mel White, the founder and president of faith-based gay rights group Soulforce, the poll results were a "tremendous relief."

"The poll is such good news," White said Thursday. "Over half of America thinks we don't have to be healed from a sickness; suddenly we are OK as we are."

White, once a ghostwriter for the Revs. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Billy Graham before coming out in a public sermon in 1993, said the church was the barrier to nationwide acceptance of gays and lesbians.

"Until the church changes, this debate will go on and on and on," he said. "Once the church changes, it'll be over."

Good to know that there's still tension between the World and the Church, and the World knows that it cannot win the argument unless the Church cedes her authority. It's also good to know the stakes that the other side is playing for.

Still Krasny After All These Years

From CNN, a story about Russian nukes. The flag may look different, but that beast is still a Bear:

Moscow could aim nuclear weapons at targets in Europe as part of "retaliatory steps" if Washington proceeds with building a missile defense system on the continent, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday.

Why is the self-esteem of the Russian people so bound up in claiming authority through the threat of force? Times are tough in Russia, Putin's been shoring up power and eliminating his critics. By stoking the anti-USA embers, he's hoping to distract russians from the congealing totalitarian regime in Moscow.

Putin also suggested that in the absence of a real threat from Iranian and North Korean missiles, the U.S. plan could be an attempt to spoil Russia's relations with Europe.

Well, if Russia's relations with Europe are based on the threat of force, then maybe Europe wouldn't mind some spoilage.

Keel-Haul the Scurvy Lot

Pirates are a hot topic these days, and folks are trying to cash in on a salvaged pirate ship display in Tampa, Florida. Oh, but here cometh the baggage:

But before pirates hijacked the Whydah, which sank in 1717, it had been a slave ship, and when leaders of Tampa's black community learned of the vessel's full history late last year, they were outraged.

Ahh yes, it had to be something like that, didn't it?

Many black ministers, lawyers, businessmen and academics here argue that the city's eagerness to embrace the Whydah pirate complex without asking blacks for advice was insulting.

You just cannot avoid insulting someone who is ever seeking insult. And after the outrage is leveraged by the media coverage, the claim of insult pays off:

From a strictly economic point of view, the Whydah could help "create a critical mass of tourism and convention destinations that would be a real magnet," Mr. Schmitt said. Equally important, it would create some 350 permanent jobs as well as hundreds of construction jobs, some of which backers of the project have said they will guarantee go to blacks.

Talk about piracy, eh? Well it's following the tradition of the ship in question:

On its maiden voyage, the Whydah carried slaves from West Africa to Jamaica, then was hijacked by Samuel Bellamy, the pirate known as Black Sam.

Dr. Christopher E. Hamilton, the salvage project's principal archeologist, said research by his team indicated the pirates were an international, multiracial crew who voted on major decisions and shared loot fairly equally...

Mr. Bernstein, however, remains undeterred. "It is a remarkable and compelling irony that blacks and whites lived together as equals on board this pirate ship," he said.

So let me get this straight. African slaves were freed, who then went straight to the vocation of piracy, with the attendant activities of murder and robbery. That doesn't sound like something the black community should be celebrating... oh, wait:



h/t NPR & NYT

Wormwood coming? Don't tell Hal Lindsey.

Odd tidbit from CNN.com:

In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples -- water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis's home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001 -- contain microbes from outer space.

Blood colored rain? Uh-Oh..

Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India.

A large rock from space, you say?

Revelation 8
8 The second angel sounded, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood,

9 and a third of the creatures which were in the sea and had life, died; and a third of the ships were destroyed.

10 The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters.

11 The name of the star is called Wormwood; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the waters, because they were made bitter.

I can't wait to see if anyone jumps on this one as a 'sign' of the impending apokalypse.

Working as intended.

To Margaret Sanger's posthumous satisfaction, Abortion is having it's intended effects:

Blacks comprise about 12 percent of the US population, yet Black woman are sold roughly 25 percent of abortions. (Strange, since Black women are more opposed to abortion than are their white sisters.) But most disturbing is this fact: Black women account for at least 50 percent of known abortion deaths. (Of abortion deaths identified by Life Dynamics, Black women accounted for 50 percent of deaths in which the race was known; a CDC study found the death rate among Black women to be even higher.)

This bears repeating: A young Black woman is twice as likely to be sold an abortion as a young white woman, and once she gets on the abortion table, she is at least twice as likely to suffer fatal complications as a white woman.
[Emphasis added.]

So, I hope that this gets shouted from the rooftops, all around america, so that black women can know how loved and cared for they are by the Pro-Choice lobby.

h/t Regular Guy

Discernment in progress..

God's love..

World's love..

Any doubts ? If I may be so bold as to critique TRUE's version of love:

Yes, Love is awesome, you should read the latest papal encyclical. It may help you clear up the misconceptions you have about love.

Yes, she is awesome, but not in the manner you're suggesting. God made her, and loves her as a unique creature with talents that are ignored in your rush to market her as a commodity.

No, I doubt that clicking your link is going to help anyone find love. Prayer is the way to get that.

Your name, 'TRUE', belies your purpose. For truth in advertising, try 'ILLUSION'.

Really.

Golden Calves..

From Access Hollywood:

"It was a triumphant night for films dealing with homosexuality and transsexuality.

Along with the victories for "Brokeback Mountain," acting honors went to Felicity Huffman in a gender-bending role as a man preparing for sex-change surgery in "Transamerica" and Philip Seymour Hoffman as gay author Truman Capote in "Capote."

"I know as actors our job is usually to shed our skins, but I think as people our job is to become who we really are and so I would like to salute the men and women who brave ostracism, alienation and a life lived on the margins to become who they really are," Huffman said.

Contrast

From 'The Imitation of Christ':

My Son, pay diligent heed to the motions of Nature and of Grace, because they move in a very contrary and subtle manner, and are hardly distinguished save by a spiritual and inwardly enlightened man. All men indeed seek good, and make pretence of something good in all that they say or do; and thus under the appearance of good many are deceived.

2. "Nature is deceitful and draweth away, ensnareth, and deceiveth many, and always hath self for her end; but Grace walketh in simplicity and turneth away from every appearance of evil, maketh no false pretences, and doeth all entirely for the sake of God, in whom also she finally resteth.

3. "Nature is very unwilling to die, and to be pressed down, and to be overcome, and to be in subjection, and to bear the yoke readily; but Grace suffereth self-mortification, resisteth sensuality, seeketh to be subdued, longeth to be conquered, and willeth not to use her own liberty. She loveth to be held by discipline, and not to have authority over any, but always to live, to remain, to have her being under God, and for God's sake to be humbly subject to every ordinance of man.

5. "Nature willingly receiveth honour and reverence; but Grace faithfully ascribeth all honour and glory to God.

So..

From Access Hollywood:

"Brokeback Mountain" won the screenplay award for Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. McMurtry thanked his constant companion during the lonely process of writing.

"Most heartfelt, I thank my typewriter. My typewriter is a Hermes 3000, surely one of the noblest instruments of European genius," McMurtry said.


Jimbob says: Thanks for making my point, Larry.

Going Wild Inside

“Wouldn’t it be dreadful if some day in our own world, at home, men started going wild inside, like the animals here, and still looked like men, so that you’d never know which were which.”

"We've got enough to bother about here and now in Narnia," said the practical Susan "Without imagining things like that."

I was reading ‘Prince Caspian’, the C.S. Lewis novel, today, and read the above section. It gave me pause, as if someone described a dream to you that you had the night before. I mulled that statement for a few minutes, and then heard this news item on the radio (NPR):

Milwaukee Mob Sets Upon Driver

From the story:

"He was driving alone at about 10:30 p.m. Monday when he honked at a group of about 15 people to move so he could continue driving. "Instead of moving, they surrounded the vehicle," police spokeswoman Anne Schwartz said. Police said he was pulled from the car, and witnesses said they saw some attackers climb on cars and jump on the victim's head. Britney King said she and her two sisters saw the attackers doing flips and cartwheels from cars onto the man."


Going wild inside, and then the wild turns outward. Prophecy? Insight into the inhuman condition? I am aghast, yet it is happening more and more.

I will continue reading 'The Chronicles of Narnia", as I have been this week, in a world that seems so much different than when I first read them 23 years ago.