More Old Gross Guy Perversity

What is it about old men that makes them snap and think that younger women desire their sagging skin and balding heads?  The only reason, and let me say this clearly for all the aging males out there, the only reason a younger woman would be interested in you is if 1) she wants your money or 2) you are in a position of power and she wants that.  That’s it.  There is no other potential reason.

face it old guy, you're disgusting and leering

And when you’re an old pervert making advances on hotel staff you’ve jumped right over the edge into insanity.  Just like the head of the IMF!

Dominique Strauss-Kahn was taken off the Air France flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport by officers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and turned over to police Saturday afternoon, said Paul J. Browne, New York Police Department spokesman.

He was being questioned by the NYPD special victims office. Strauss-Kahn had retained an attorney and was not making statements to police, Browne said. No charges have yet been filed.

The 32-year-old woman told authorities that she entered Strauss-Kahn’s room at the luxury Sofitel hotel not far from Manhattan’s Times Square at about 1 p.m. Saturday and he emerged from the bedroom naked, threw her down and attacked her, Browne said.

She told authorities that he tried to force her to perform oral sex on him. She somehow broke free and escaped the room and told hotel staff what had happened, authorities said. They called police.

Gross.  And Depraved.

Because She Has Breast Cancer…

A judge has ordered a mom to turn her children over to her ex-husband.

A mother of two children has been told by a judge that she must give custody to her ex-husband partly because she has breast cancer.

Absurd. And just more of the judicial evils perpetrated by perverse judges who think they’re gods.

Life was already tough for Alaina Giordano as the mother of two young children struggled with stage IV breast cancer and an acrimonious divorce from her husband. But nothing prepared her for the devastating recent ruling by a judge who gave custody of her son and daughter to their father 850 miles away partly because of her terminal medical condition. Miss Giordano, 37, from Durham, North Carolina, was told to hand over Sofia, 11, and Bud, five, to her ex-husband Kane Snyder, who moved to Chicago for work last August. “This is outrageous,” she said last week. “I think it’s a dangerous ruling for me and my children and now it will impact us, but also for people all over the world who have cancer. This is a bad precedent to set.”

Jerk justice. No one knows how long anyone is going to live. What if the kids move to Chicago and dad is killed by some thug or of a heart attack or some such thing? What an idiotic judge following the logic of a moron.

… in a ruling that has ignited a furious controversy, Judge Nancy Gordon ruled in Mr Snyder’s favour – although she said that Miss Giordano could share custody if she moved to Chicago.

If she moves to Chicago… I wonder how much hubby paid the judge for her ruling.

Miss Giordano insists that she cannot move to Chicago as her cancer is being held in check thanks to her team of medical experts at Duke University, near her home. In reaching her decision, the judge cited doubts about how long Miss Giordano had to live and evidence from psychologists that children do better when they spend more time with a healthy parent. “Children want a normal childhood and it is not normal with an ill parent,” testified one expert.

That’s the STUPIDEST reason ever given. Following that logic every parent who divorces should be refused custody and the children given to persons who won’t divorce.  With judges like this sitting on the bench there’s no end to the injustice being meted out.

Change You (have to be deluded to) Believe In

Unless it’s the sort of change where Democrats cave in to every Republican wish.  That you surely can believe in.

With both gas prises and anger on the rise, President Obama has decided to allow new drilling in Alaska’s national petroleum reserve. Lease sales in the 23.5 million-acre reserve—which serves as home to millions of migratory birds, two caribou herds, gray wolves, and other wildlife—have been held just six times between 1999 and 2010; they’ll now be held annually. A senior official said the new lease sales would not touch environmentally sensitive areas, reports the Los Angeles Times. It’s just one component of an oil-production plan that touches many corners of the US, announced in Obama’s weekly radio address today.

Will that help prices now?  No.  Will it enrich big oil.  Yes.  Is it what Republicans like Sarah Palin have hoped for and dreamed of?  Yes.  Will it solve our long term problems?  No.  We need an energy policy that eventually rids itself completely of oil.  Oil is running out.  If we continue to build our economy around it then we deserve all the horror to come.

Obama has once more shown himself to be willing to do the biddings of the Republicans.  They can’t hate him because he disagrees with their policy.  They hate him only because he’s black.

Crazy Anglicans

is it Halloween?  (via)

Another Quote of the Day

Die Offenbarung Gottes in Jesus Christus ist Gottes Selbstmitteilung an die Menschheit. — Emil Brunner

Preaching at the Fraumunster

Nakba: The 63rd Anniversary

You can follow events on the ground there via twitter by SJ Action Alerts.  And you can read about the reason for Nakba in a fine report by Al Jazeera.  You’ll discover from the chap on twitter that, for instance,

Every house in #Silwan has at least 1 family member in jail. youth we use 2 c a couple of month ago r now in Israeli prisons.

Events in Palestine deserve as much attention as events in Syria and Egypt and Tunisia and Bahrain.  That they aren’t is more than a little telling.

Disney’s Hubris: Trademarking ‘Seal Team Six’

Disney’s always exhibited more than its fair share of hubris.  For example, foisting off on the world the wretched Mouse Club kids who inevitably (with very few exceptions) become tramps and thieves; manufacturing bad singers just to appeal sexually to the 12 year old set; and buying up ABC so that they could turn it into their personal 24 hour commercial for Disney products.

But now they’ve gone too far and snatched from the public what belongs to the public– a group of national heroes.

FishbowlNY uncovered three trademark applications that Disney made in early May to claim the rights to the phrase “SEAL Team 6.”  The applications cover “entertainment and education services,” “toys, games and playthings” and “clothing, footwear and headwear. It remains to be seen what products will come of these trademarks, but the bin Laden raid video game and pajama set has to be just around the corner.

Shame on you Disney- you’re disgusting.  I’ll be sure to avoid your parks and your holdings and your sponsors just so as to avoid having any part whatsoever in your perversity and hubris.

Conference Announcement: Biblical Literacy and the Curriculum

A conference for educators, lecturers and researchers. The world’s best-selling book, the Bible has had a huge impact on fields as diverse as history, politics, philosophy, and art. Novels, poetry, and music have all been inspired by, and drawn on, the rich legacy of the Bible. 400 years on from the King James Bible, this conference aims to address a particular and timely question: “What is the role of the Bible in today’s classroom?”

All the details are here, including a very specific and downloadable program booklet.

Radicals Supporting Radicals

Two South Florida imams and a third family member were arrested Saturday on charges of providing support to the Pakistani Taliban, the Justice Department said.  In addition, three others in Pakistan were also indicted on the same charges.  FBI agents arrested Hafiz Khan and his son Izhar Khan in South Florida, the department said. They are expected to make their initial court appearance in federal court on Monday.  Another of Hafiz Khan’s sons, Irfan Khan, was arrested in Los Angeles and will appear in court there.  Also charged are three Pakistani residents: Ali Rehman, Alam Zeb, and Amina Khan. Amina Khan is Hafiz Khan’s daughter, and Zeb is his grandson.

The funny thing to me is, Iraq was never home to terrorism yet the Bush’s wanted to undo Saddam so badly that they convinced us all that it was.  So instead of watching the real source of those radicals who would like to undo us- the Saudis, the Afghanis, and the Pakistanis, we waged war on one of the only stable countries in the region.

Not smart.  Not smart either to keep pouring money into the very two countries that now seem to harbor most of our enemies: Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The lunatics really are in charge of the Washington asylum, and the ‘change’ Obama promised three years ago has become a continuation of the same failed and short sighted Bush-ian policies.

So while radicals in the US support radicals in Pakistan, so do the rest of us- through our tax dollars.

America’s Health Care System is A Mess

A greed driven, horrific mess.  Besides having to pay too much for insurance and medicine and everything else related to the industry (and it is an industry), we Americans also have the worst waiting times for the halfhearted money incentivized care we do get (if we can afford it).

Any discussion of waiting times must begin with the observation that France, Germany, Switzerland and many other developed nations manage to combine universal access to care with rapid access to care. It’s an unfortunate quirk of international health-care policy that Canada and England, the two countries that do struggle with waiting times, happen to be the two nearby, English-speaking countries in the sample, and so our impressions of government-run health-care systems are disproportionately influenced by their experiences.

That said, it’s important to understand that America also struggles with waiting times. Someone who can’t afford to go to the doctor, or can’t afford to purchase an elective surgery, waits. In some cases, they wait forever. In some cases, they’re killed by the delay. But we don’t count them as having “waited” for care, and so they don’t show up in measures of American waits. But which would you prefer? A three-month delay for an elective surgery? Or no surgery at all?.

Read the rest- and then the next time someone tells you that in Britain or Canada people have to wait to see a doctor, remind them that we (especially our poor) have to wait even longer- and are more likely to die because of it.

Quote of the Day

Die Kirche ist zunächst nichts anderes als das Organ, der Träger der Verkündigung. — Emil Brunner (Dogmatics, Vol. 3).

Bangladesh’s Christians

Muslim villagers beat a 22-year-old Christian man last month for defending Christian girls against routine harassment and bullying, sources said.

Sipon Mondol was beaten on April 20 while returning to his native village of Nittanandapur from Gangni, Meherpur district, some 200 kilometers (120 miles) west of the capital city of Dhaka, his father said. On April 15, at a cultural event to celebrate the Bengali New Year, Poresh Mondol said his son had defended Christian girls against the slurs of a group of young Muslim men in an exchange that led to a gang fight.

“They were making some suggestive remarks to our girls at the program,” Mondol said. “Some Christian boys, including my son, protested against it. A brawl between Muslim boys and the Christian boys followed the protest. They tried to drag my son to their village by getting hold of his shirt collar.”

The Mondol family informed the young Muslim men’s parents, and village elders assured the Christians that they would resolve the long-standing problem, telling them that such harassment would not happen again, he said.

“After the complaint, though, those Muslim boys became more predatory,” he said. “They beat my son on his way home from Gangni town on the evening of April 20. He was severely beaten. He was treated in the hospital for one day and released on April 21.”

So sad and so absurd and such a contrast between Christians in Muslim lands and Muslims in Christian lands.  When Christians are put to the test, they seem to pass when they are in the minority and fail when they are in the majority.  I suppose that’s because in places where they are in the minority they have to be real Christians and not Christians in name only.

Today in Theological History

The third volume of Emil Brunner’s brilliant three volume systematic theology was published in Zurich on this day in 1960.  Brunner’s systematic is simply the best published since Calvin’s Institutes of 1541 (the 1559 edition is the one most know but the 1541 is actually the best of the family)(And yes, Brunner is also far better than Barth- who loved the sound of his own voice so much he never managed to finish what he started).

Brunner’s systematic is sweeping and informative, pastoral and intellectual.  He covers all the doctrines of the Church in a way that is still, 51 years later, relevant, readable, and useful.

Tragically too few today are cognizant of his efforts- to their own shame.

Dawkins v. Craig

The Telegraph reports that Richard Dawkins is taking a bit of heat for refusing to debate William Lane Craig when the latter visits Britain later this year.  Here’s my favorite part of the story-

[Dawkins] told The Daily Telegraph that he had recently debated Prof Craig, in a boxing ring, in Mexico, and claimed he was not impressed by his opponent. His critics say this event was a six-person discussion, not a rigorous debate, but Prof Dawkins disagrees.

“I have no intention of assisting Craig in his relentless drive for self-promotion,” he said.

Some of Prof Dawkins’s contemporaries are not impressed. Dr Daniel Came, a philosophy lecturer and fellow atheist, from Worcester College, Oxford, wrote to him urging him to reconsider his refusal to debate the existence of God with Prof Craig.

In a letter to Prof Dawkins, Dr Came said: “The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part.

“I notice that, by contrast, you are happy to discuss theological matters with television and radio presenters and other intellectual heavyweights like Pastor Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals and Pastor Keenan Roberts of the Colorado Hell House.”

Ha!  Put that in your beer and swill it, Dorkins.   Personally, I think such debates are a total waste of time- for Christians and for atheists.  Has anyone ever been persuaded to adopt their opponent’s viewpoint because of such an affair?  No.  People just leave such things convinced even more of their own position.

I’m with the Reformers on the subject.  Those who believe are the recipients of God’s grace and those who don’t have rejected it and so are rejected by Him.  Works for me.  The best the radical atheists deserve is a fine mocking with a big dose of ridicule.