Author: VD

A few of you have asked about where you can find out how The Passion of the Christ is doing at the box office. The answer is mind-bogglingly well. $64 million in three days, with a per-screen average almost seven times that of this week’s second most succesful movie. To put that $64 million in perspective, The Return of the King has done less than six times the business, $362 million, in 73 days.

Not bad for two movies in which Hollywood had little interest. I imagine the Narnia movies will be the next big “surprise”.

The Washington Times reports: Until last week, Mr. [Pat] Conroy was an assistant principal and the dean of students at Michigan’s South Haven High School. On the same day that he permanently left his office, he was called into another one — the courtroom of the district courthouse — where he pled not guilty to a charge of marijuana possession. Mr. Conroy claimed that he had a perfectly reasonable reason for having the substance on his person. He had tried to use it to get a student expelled. Specifically, Mr. Conroy said that he had planted the marijuana in the locker of a student he strongly suspected of being a drug dealer, hoping that a police dog would sniff out the drugs during a search of the school. However, the stuffy-nosed hound failed to find the materials.

Meanwhile, police had a nose for Mr. Conroy. When officers raided his office earlier this month, they found ten plastic bags of marijuana and several assorted pills. If convicted, Mr. Conroy will be faced with a $2,000 fine and a year of detention.

The War on Drugs is not the greatest federal abomination, but barring the full flowering of the Patriot Act, it is certainly one of the federal government’s favorite means of systematically depriving American citizens of their birthright. If a school officer is capable of behaving in this manner, can there be any doubt that there are police officers who do the same?

Ezra comments: I fear this movie will simply give a huge amount of guilt to those unbelievers who watch it, feeling this remorse for “doing that terrible thing to Christ” and cause them to therefore think they can and should take some sort of action to make reparations to God. That would miss the point entirely that Christ died (and RESURRECTED) because the hope of reparations is futile!

No guilt, no repentance. No repentance, no salvation. There is a specific action that an unbeliever needs to take. I have no idea if anyone will be led to do so after seeing the movie, but of one thing I am absolutely sure. God speaks to the heart in a myriad of ways.

I attended a Billy Graham crusade once out of curiousity after I had already become a Christian. His speaking was uninspired, his message was an uninteresting take on the one that I had heard many, many times before. I thought, well, it’s too bad that he’s gotten so old and has lost his fastball – in a mostly full football stadium, I would have been surprised to see more than ten or twenty people go forward. I was quite startled when at least 10,000 people responded to the altar call. Were they all genuine? I have no idea, not being gifted with the ability to read hearts or minds.

But then I remembered a preacher who once said that he is nothing more than a conduit. Tens of thousands of people pray before he preaches anywhere. Hearts and spirits are prepared, and his simple words are simply the catalyst, a match thrown into the waiting gasoline vapors.

The Washington Times reports: Eighty-one percent of sex crimes committed against children by Roman Catholic priests during the past 52 years were homosexual men preying on boys, according to a comprehensive study released yesterday on the church’s sex abuse crisis.

I always enjoyed the official lavender line that homosexual priests raping boys was an indication of pedophilia, not homosexuality. As if the two were mutually exclusive. And, of course, this bizarre distinction would mean that Greek homosexuality – such as it was – wasn’t homosexuality either. Not that I expect a great deal of intellectual consistency from the lavender left, but this was particularly egregious.

The number is particularly impressive considering that homosexuals make up a very small percentage of the greater population, and presumably a small minority of the priesthood as well. As much as we appreciate the Queer Party Friends – and we do – they are not a sizeable percentage of this blog’s readership. There’s no question that the homosexual cult of the beautiful youth causes leads many homosexuals into an inordinate interest in teens and children; it should surprise no one that they are inordinately likely to be abusers of children as well. And if one’s entire self-identification is constructed on a violation of a societal more, it is entirely predictable that one will be less inclined to respect other societal mores as well. More creep not inevitable, of course, but it is common. The analogy is not precise, but I expect that most murderers don’t get too worked up about breaking the speed limit either.

Matthew Gallagher, executive director for Dignity, a Catholic homosexual caucus, called the findings “discrimination in the name of God.” “Bishops are scapegoating gay priests and this is just a way for bishops to deflect tension from their inability to protect children in their care,” he said. “Bishops are not using modern thinking when they say a gay man is more prone to having sex than a straight man.”

Apparently modern thinking is as deviant as Mr. Gallagher, in this case deviating from what was previously known as basic reading comprehension and math. The bishops are actually saying that a gay man who enters the priesthood is more likely to sexually abuse children than a straight man. Based on the statistics I’ve read, about 14 times more likely. But if the percentage of gay priests is equal to the percentage of gay men in the broader population, this extensive survey suggests that they are approximately 198 times more likely to abuse children then a straight man.

WND reports: A lawmaker has introduced a bill that would require the government to use controversial satellite-tracking technology to monitor livestock from birth to slaughter. U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., wants the U.S. Department of Agriculture to immediately establish a nationwide livestock identification system. The company she has in mind for the project is Digital Angel Corporation, originally formed to produce implantable tracking systems for humans. “The safety of our food supply is critical to our families,” said McCollum, who introduced the legislation Wednesday. “This technology will allow the Department of Agriculture to track an incidence of ‘mad cow’ or other diseases in livestock like chronic wasting disease discovered in the United States within 48 hours. We are fortunate to have a pioneer in this important technology right in my home town of South Saint Paul, Minnesota.”

And, of course, how can the UN force everyone to get digitially implanted if the company that produces the technology goes under? Kind of ironic that it’s headquartered right in my hometown – I knew about Digitial Angel and had even read their prospectus, but somehow its location had escaped me.

This is one of the few times that I sincerely hope it’s just the usual attempt at a local pork deal.

From WND: When Saudi Arabia announced a new policy to allow tourists, it brought attention to the official Supreme Commission for Tourism’s website, which explicitly stated Jews were barred from applying for visas. But since WorldNetDaily published a story early this morning about the site’s contents, the reference to Jews has been eliminated, and the Saudi Embassy in Washington insists the Islamic kingdom does not bar anyone on the basis of religion or ethnicity.

Nail al-Jubier, chief information officer for the embassy, told WorldNetDaily he was “stunned” when he saw the Saudi tourism Web page listing “Jewish People” among those not permitted to enter the country.

Strange how Mr. al-Jubier seems to have experienced the same hallucination I did. Since the Internet is a static medium, something that is not there at one moment in time could not possibly have been there previously.

Now, it’s true that Saudi Arabia is technically at war with Israel, as is most of the Arab world. So, Saudi Arabia is quite justified in forbidding Israelis from entering or trading with the kingdom. Of course, by the same token, they don’t have much grounds for complaint should Israel decide to glaze the desert sands either. I don’t hate the Saudis, but I will confess to be mystified by a government that simultaneously lacks both nuclear weapons as well as the wisdom to find a way to make peace with an enemy that has them.

John McCaslin reports: All white men look alike, Rep. Corrine Brown, Florida Democrat, said Wednesday at a meeting where she called President Bush’s policy toward Haiti “racist.” Mrs. Brown’s outburst came during a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill between administration officials and members of Congress, the Associated Press reports.

She became angry and began yelling at Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, the State Department’s top official for Latin America. The black congresswoman slammed as “racist” Mr. Bush’s approach to the crisis in Haiti — where rebels are on the verge of ousting socialist President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was installed in 1993 by the Clinton administration. She then denounced the Bush administration for sending “a bunch of white men” as representatives to the meeting — to the shock of Mr. Noriega, a man of Mexican ancestry. “As a Mexican-American, I deeply resent being called a racist and branded a white man,” Mr. Noriega responded, sources told AP.

To which Mrs. Brown replied: “You all look alike to me.”

I’m not sure which amuses me more, the fact that she actually said it, or the fact that the media and the general public has such a low opinion of Mrs. Brown and her ilk that she’ll get away with saying it. Then again, it’s entirely possible that she’s right – I have no idea what the president’s Haiti policy is, much less whether it is racist or not. In fact, I don’t even know what a reasonable Haiti policy would be.

Si blathers: The point is, people who readily believe calumnious stories with no evidence, simply because the stories fit their racial biases, are as racist as the anti-Semites they decry.

First, there was evidence of the media coverage, on WND and elsewhere. That’s not definitive proof, but a reasonable point with which to make commentary. If I were to fact-check everything on which I opine, I’d write one column a week, not make numerous daily blog posts. Second, it didn’t fit my racial bias – Saudi is not a race – but it certainly did fit what I know of the kingdom based on past information from a friend who has had extensive dealings with it.

Si then reveals his etymological ignorance: Perhaps his own brand of anti-semitism (since Arabs are, after all, Semites). Anti-semitism has nothing to do with the Semitic racial group per se. It is a word concocted by German Jew haters who were looking for a kinder, gentler expression more acceptable to the general German public than the traditional judenhassen.

You don’t have to hate Arabs to loathe the despicable governments that have ruled over them since the colonial era. Plenty of Arabs hate them too, especially since most of the modern Arab countries are colonial legacies that have little to no relationship with the tribal boundaries delineated over many centuries.

Clay Whittaker writes: Making good christian and conservative movies will do more than constantly railing against the many things we disagree with. Although I don’t completely agree with this: I agree we are not doing enough to support our own and possibly a wee bit too much tearing down of that which we disagree, but I believe their is a time and a place for both. In any case, sign me up as a mostly-hearted supporter of the Vox Day Theory.

I guess I’d like to think that whatever theory eventually gets named after me is a little more, shall we say, intellectually sophisticated. And it hardly orginated with me. But I appreciate the kind thought.

Here’s a non-WorldNetDaily link discussing the No Jews Allowed policy of my previous post. The Saudi explanation of a mistake is not credible, considering what I’ve heard of their policies requiring companies dealing with them to guarantee that none of their products contain any Israeli parts.