No Apology Necessary

When it comes to wise souls doing folk the favor of keeping them away from the poison called wikipedia, not apology is necessary.  Would someone apologize for pushing someone off a traintrack when freight train was bearing down on them?  Would someone apologize for snatching a baby from a burning building?  Heaven forfend.

So there’s no need for Lutz Heilmann to apologize either:

A member of parliament who got a court order blocking online encyclopedia Wikipedia in Germany for two days because of entries linking him to communist-era security police apologized on Tuesday for overreacting.  Lutz Heilmann, a little-known MP of the Left party, made headlines across Germany and stirred complaints about censorship for winning the court injunction temporarily blocking the popular reference data base.  Heilmann told Tageszeitung newspaper he took the step because the entry about him in Wikipedia included false information, suggesting he worked for former communist East Germany’s Stasi. He said he realized he had made a mistake.

Wikipedia shouldn’t just be blocked in Germany; it should be banned worldwide.  That would keep seekers safe from the acidic bile it doth spew.

Sickened

Various news outlets are now reporting that auto execs made their way to DC in private jets.  Outrageous.  If they can afford $20k for a flight they can do without taxpayer money.   I’d rather see them all sink then know that taxpayers have loaned them a single penny which, if they received, they would blow on more extravagant nonsense.  These greedy corporate Cretans are sickening.

The CEO’s of GM, Ford, and Chrysler, ABC news is reporting, flew to Washington in luxurious private jets. The jet GM CEO Rick Wagoner flew in on reportedly cost $36 million. (One of eight luxury jets, according to ABC, in financially strapped GM’s fleet.) Times are tough right now not only for the big three auto makers, but for ordinary Americans across the country. If the CEOs want hardworking taxpayers to bail them out, they should leave the gold-plated transportation at home and fly the way their would-be benefactors do (if they fly at all): on ordinary commercial flights.

GM should sell all their jets and they would have plenty to float their payroll. Thieves.

Another Aussie Biblioblogger

Did you know Martin Shields of Australia, lecturer in Old Testament, had a blog and has done since September?  Me neither!  Till today.  Here’s the link.  Aside from biblical stuff he’s also into photography and Star Trek (which is way superior to Star Wars!)  I’ll momentarily add a link to biblioblogs as well.  Welcome (belatedly) Martin!

Antiquities Thieves Arrested

News 24 reports

Palestinian authorities have seized hundreds of antiquities as they smashed a major smuggling ring in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, police said on Wednesday. Valuable objects from the Canaanite, Roman, Byzantine, Greek and Islamic periods were seized by police in a Bethlehem house on Tuesday night, said Colonel Hassan Abu Namus, who heads the Palestinian antiquities police. The antiquities were to be sent to Israel with the help of Israeli smugglers, he said at a news conference, surrounded by seized items that included coins, oil lamps and statuettes. Seven Palestinians were arrested in the bust, which Namus described as the most important since the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. But the main suspect managed to flee, heading towards nearby Jerusalem, the official said.

Good. The more arrests the better.

Christmas is for Christians

Every year pagans parade into stores and malls pushing and shoving and grabbing and gouging, all in an effort to horn in on our holiday.  This year, we’re putting a stop to it.  You pagans, unbelievers, atheists, adherents of Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and the kajillion other religions out there are forbidden to participate in Christmas.

You’re prohibited from taking the day off.  You get your bod out of bed and get to work where you belong on December 25th.  We don’t want you shopping for gifts of uttering Christmas greetings or sending or receiving any sort of presents.  This is our holiday and we’re tired of you decorating your homes to beat the band while ignoring the reason the holiday exists in the first place.

We also forbid you to say anything remotely related to ‘Happy Holidays’ or ‘Seasons Greetings’.  We all know whose holiday it is and you aren’t fooling anyone with those lame Wal-Mart inspired politically correct so as not to offend any of these other religions nonsense sayings.

We don’t horn in on your Channukah or your Fall Equinox or  your Yom Kippur or any of the other dozens of holidays on the calendar throughout the year and if I might be so blunt, we’re sick and tired of you acting like ours belong to you too.

Get on board with Christianity or leave our celebrations completely alone, you hypocrites.  And that goes for Easter too.  Paws off, pagans.

That ‘Made in America’ Car? Is it Really? Or, More Reasons Not to Worry About US Automakers

I noticed the last time I bought a new car (which was a few years back) the sticker said ‘Assembled in Canada’.  I learned then first hand that ‘made in America’ didn’t mean anything to America’s automakers.  Indeed, Volkswagen will soon begin production 2 hours south of here in Chattanooga and over in the middle of the State sits a huge Nissan plant, meaning, of course, that those ‘foreign’ cars are at least as American as the ‘American’ cars are.

All of which is to say, we shouldn’t really be too worried about US carmakers.  They’ve made their bed and they, like the banks and mortgage institutions, really should be forced to lie in them.

But, for the second day in a row, Drew says what needs to be said and says it quite well in his post, More Reasons Why We Should Not Care if Domestic Automakers Tank.

The big auto companies have been up in Washington a’beggin for a piece of the bailout pie.  A pie which, it has to be said, hasn’t been very tasty and has left us all still as hungry as before.  In point of fact, the only ones to have benefited so far have been banks which now are raising interest rates on their good customers in order to shore up their bad decisions.

Let’s fact it, our government has betrayed us and if they give automakers money, even a ‘loan’, they will have betrayed us again.

The Demise of the Mega-Church Charismatics?

While I’m not a ‘Charismatic’ (but a ‘charismatic’ in the sense that all Christians are gifted for a particular function in the Church), I do have an interest in their doings.  So it is with not a little surprise that I read this post with its report on the meltdown of the Charismatic movement.

Foreclosure. Eviction. Bailouts. We’re hearing those terms a lot these days, and not just in the newspaper’s business section. In the last two weeks three charismatic churches that once enjoyed huge popularity have fallen on hard times.  In Tampa, Florida, Without Walls International Church is facing foreclosure. The megachurch, which once attracted 23,000 worshipers and was heralded as one of the nation’s fastest-growing congregations, shrunk drastically after co-pastors Randy and Paula White announced in 2007 that they were divorcing. On Nov. 4 their bank filed foreclosure proceedings and demanded immediate repayment of a $12 million loan on the property.  In Duluth, Georgia—northeast of Atlanta—sheriff’s deputies arrived at Global Destiny Ministries and ordered Bishop Thomas Weeks II to leave the property. According to documents filed in state court, Weeks—who divorced popular preacher Juanita Bynum in June—owed more than $511,000 in back rent to the building’s owners. He was escorted out of the building on Nov. 14 while a church service was in progress.   In another part of the Atlanta area, leaders of the Cathedral at Chapel Hill announced that their church is officially for sale. The massive Gothic building—which at one time housed one of the nation’s most celebrated charismatic churches, with a membership of 10,000—has slipped into disrepair after lurid sex scandals triggered a mass exodus. The church’s founder, Bishop Earl Paulk, has turned the 6,000-seat church (valued at $24.5 million) over to his son, Donnie Earl, who in recent years has abandoned orthodox Christian doctrines and embraced universalism.  In addition, the bank that called the loan on Without Walls also began foreclosure proceedings on its satellite campus in Lakeland, Florida. That massive campus with its 10,000-seat sanctuary was once known as Carpenter’s Home Church. Under the leadership of Assemblies of God pastor Karl Strader it enjoyed huge success, but its membership dwindled in the 1990s, and it was sold to the Whites in 2005.

It seems, doesn’t it, that the personality centered Charismatic movement is suffering the same decline as the Bentleyites who treasure anthropocentric theology more than Christocentric.  And that, in my estimation, has always been the problem with the Charismatic branch of Christianity: its tendency to exalt men and women and its cult of personality.  Read the whole posting- it’s quite interesting.  And its from a Charismatic insider.

The Christian Post on the ‘Bible’s Buried Secrets’

Believe me, no one was more surprised upon reading this than I.  Still, it’s an excellent essay and one of which I approve 100%.

More Discoveries at Herodium

Hebrew University reports

Analysis of newly revealed items found at the site of the mausoleum of King Herod at Herodium (Herodion in Greek) have provided Hebrew University of Jerusalem archaeological researchers with further assurances that this was indeed the site of the famed ruler’s 1st century BCE grave. …  On the basis of a study of the architectural elements uncovered at the site, the researchers have been able to determine that the mausoleum, among the remains of which Herod’s sarcophagus was found, was a lavish two-story structure with a concave-conical roof, about 25 meters high — a structure fully appropriate to Herod’s status and taste. The excavations there have also yielded many fragments of two additional sarcophagi, which the researchers estimate to have been members of Herod’s family.

The report includes a number of photos. Take a look.

Augsburg Fortress Tastes the Financial Crisis

Augsburg Fortress, the publishing arm of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is cutting back operations, closing its nine U.S. bookstores, laying off more than 50 employees and declining to publish new books in its consumer-oriented line.

So reports Ethics Daily. That’s unfortunate but not completely surprising.  This is probably just the first of a string of such reports we’ll hear.  But what we wont hear is plans or pleas for government bailouts.  Those only go to the cronies of the politicians- you know, bankers.