Month: July 2012

Oh go away

~ susie

Fortunately, it’s highly unlikely that the Phils will be in the playoffs that week, so there will be plenty of hotel rooms for the crazies. Lord, save me from Your followers:

Saying America is so mired in “moral depravity” that only a mass appeal to the Almighty can save it, Christian evangelical leaders from across the country are planning a giant prayer rally for Sept. 29 in Philadelphia.


The “America for Jesus” daylong gathering on Independence Mall is expected to draw at least 30,000 people who “want to turn the nation around,” said Bishop Anne Giminez, chairwoman of the event and pastor of Rock Pentecostal Church in Virginia Beach, Va.

Stand your ground

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

NBC-2.com WBBH News for Fort Myers, Cape Coral

A Florida man known as the neighborhood crazy kills a door-to-door salesman for trespassing. Isn’t it great that it’s so easy to get guns?

A man in Cape Coral, Florida on Wednesday was arrested for shooting and killing an unarmed door-to-door salesman on his property.


Kenneth Bailey Roop, 52, has been charged with second-degree murder for killing 30-year-old Nicholas Rainey.


A co-worker who witnessed the shooting said Rainey had knocked on Roop’s door, but received no answer. While Rainey was walking down the drive-way, Roop pulled up in his pickup truck and asked why Rainey was at his house. Rainey explained that he was selling steak and seafood. The witness said Roop then pulled out a black handgun and shot Rainey. As Rainey lay on the ground, Roop fired another bullet into the back of his head.


Roop later told police that he shot Rainey in the head “for effect” and that he had three no trespassing signs on his property. Roop said he feared for his life.


“I’m not going to give him the chance to do something to me,” he told police. “I was in fear.”


An off-duty Collier County sheriff’s deputy was nearby and heard the gunshots. When she arrived at Roop’s property, she found Rainey dying on the ground while Roop was in his garage reloading his handgun.


“He was telling the officer, ‘he stepped on my property, he trespassed, I’ll kill anybody that steps on my property,’ somewhere along them lines. It was just unbelievable,” one witness told the The News-Press. “She never flinched. She deserves a medal. I don’t think he was done [shooting].”


The deputy ordered Roop to drop his weapon and held him at gunpoint until police officers arrived.

By the way

~ susie ~ 6 Comments

Another fucking derecho, and this one is huge. (Although not as powerful as the last one.) It’s basically a land hurricane, and it’s the same kind of storm that knocked all the power out in several parts of the country a few weeks ago. So bring in the patio furniture and hunker down if it’s heading near you.

Oh, and if I stop blogging, my power’s out.

Tonight on Virtually Speaking

~ susie

Virtually Speaking with Jay Ackroyd – Thurs July 26 – 6pm pacific/9pm eastern
Economist and Co-Founder of The Center for Economic and Policy Research, Dean Baker talks with Jay about his book, The End of Loser Liberalism, in the context of way too much loser liberalism in our poltical discourse. Listen live and later on Blog Talk Radio

Reading the Bible

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Slacktivist’s Fred Clark talks about how some conservatives are just willfully wrong when interpreting the Bible. Sometimes I forget there are some rational, thoughtful Christians who aren’t afraid of science:

One of my pet-peeve misconceptions is the notion that an illiterately literal reading of Genesis 1-11 is somehow an expression of “conservative” theology.

It isn’t.

Of course this “literal” belief in the six-day creation of a young earth isn’t liberal theology either. It’s just bad theology. Not orthodox, not conservative or liberal, justwrong — just a weirdly misleading way to read this text.

Bad theology and wrong theology shouldn’t be blithely equated with conservative theology. Yes, Al Mohler is a young-earth creationist and he’s right-wing politically. But just because he’s a political conservative doesn’t mean that his disrespectful abuse of Genesis is also “conservative.” His disrespectful abuse of this scripture is only just that — the disrespectful abuse of scripture.

That’s partly why I like this engaging short video on “Science and Genesis” (via here)– because it refuses to play this game of calling modern, illiterate literalism “conservative.” The video features a bunch of fairly conservative Protestant theologians treating the text with respect. This ain’t liberal theology, and it’s not some kind of radical new cutting-edge approach to the text.

This is how Christians read the Bible. The actual Bible — not the make-believe one of the make-believe “conservatives.”