W.W.J.P.? (What would Jesus pack?)

"Welcome to New Bethel Assembly of God. Keep those hands in the air. Hallelujah!"

A pastor in the US state of Kentucky told his flock to bring handguns to church in what he said was an effort to promote safe gun ownership.

Pastor Ken Pagano told parishioners to bring their unloaded guns to New Bethel Church in Louisville for a service celebrating the right to bear arms.

He said he acted after church members voiced fears the Obama administration could tighten gun control laws.

When the service began, some 200 people were present, AP news agency said.

"We are wanting to send a message that there are legal, civil, intelligent and law-abiding citizens who also own guns," Mr Pagano told the congregation.

"If it were not for a deep-seated belief in the right to bear arms, this country would not be here today," he said.

The pastor also held a handgun raffle, as well as providing information on gun safety.

"I wish more churches did this, I wish more people did this," the Louisville Courier-Journal quoted one attendee, Doreen Rogers, as saying.

"For some reason, most people think that carrying guns is sinful. It's not. I think my life is worth protecting."

About 10 members of a private local militia also attended, the Courier-Journal said.

A coalition of religious groups and campaigners held a rival gun-free event at the same time on the other side of Louisville.

"The idea of wearing guns to churches or any sacred space I think many people find deeply troubling," organiser Terry Taylor told AP.

In the US, the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. There are thought to be more than 200 million firearms in private hands.

But some gun owners fear that the new administration in the White House could try to challenge or amend some gun ownership laws.

Critics of the laws, meanwhile, link high levels of gun crime with high levels of gun ownership.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/8122767.stm

Published: 2009/06/28 02:39:02 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Speaking as a gun owner and as a follower of Jesus Christ, this is just so wrong.

Astronomical Chart

Baptismal Fun

We had a rare adult baptism at my church yesterday. Being of anabaptist tendencies in a catholic/Lutheran setting, I often cringe at parts of the ceremony. The traditional "moistening of the forehead" leaves me unconvinced in the efficacy of the ritual.

Better would be a dunking booth (gussied up for proper decorum).

The baptismal candidate, dressed in white robes, could take their place in the booth, and there profess their belief before man and God. The attending pastor could then throw (overhand) three softballs at the target, while invoking the three-in-one names of the Trinity.

"In the name of The Father!" (whoosh!)

"...and of the Son!" (whoosh!)

"...and of the Holy Spirit!" (SPLASH!)

My next car.

Addiction

This beer is the pits...

BBQ pits, that is.

Shiner has a new beer. It's a Helles Rauchbier, (if that's possible, and I guess it is). Shiner Smokehaus.

The malt has been mesquite BBQ'd!

Really does taste and smell like I'm drinking a nice malt lager while smokin' up a slab'o ribs.

"The Perfect Sommer Bier" it says on the neck. This Sommer likes it. ;-)

Les Paul is 94 today.

...and he still plays at the Iridium Club on Times Square every Monday night (two sets).

Help me get this out of my head!

HOMAGE TO MARAT - a song from a play: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charendon Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade

Four years after the revolution and the old king's execution
Four years after, remember how, those courtiers took their final vow

"String up every aristocrat!
Out with the priests, let them live on their fat!"

Four years after we started fighting,
Marat keeps on with his writing.
Four years after the Bastille fell,
He still recalls the old battle yell

"Down with all of the ruling class!
Throw all the generals out on their arse!"

Good old Marat by your side we'll stand or fall
You're the only one that we can trust at all

Four years he fought and he fought unafraid,
Sniffing down traitors by traitors betrayed,
Marat in the courtroom, Marat underground,
Sometimes the otter and sometimes the hound,
Fighting all the gentry and fighting every priest,
Businessman the bourgeois the military beast,
Marat always ready to stifle every scheme,
of the sons of the arse licking dying regime
We've got new generals, our leaders are new,
They sit and they argue and all that they do
Is sell their own colleagues and ride upon their backs
And jail them and break them and give them all the axe
Screaming in language that no one understands
Of the rights that we grabbed with our own bleeding hands
When we wiped out the bosses and stormed through the wall
Of the prison they told us would outlast us all!

Marat we're poor,
And the poor stay poor.
Marat don't make
Us wait anymore.
We want our rights and we don't care how,
We want our revolution now.

Why do they have the gold?
Why do they have the power?
Why why why?
Do they have the friends at the top?
Why do they have the jobs at the top?

We've got nothing,
Always had nothing,
Nothing but holes and millions of them.
Living in holes dying in holes,
Holes in our bellies and holes in our clothes!

Marat we're poor,
And the poor stay poor.
Marat don't make us wait anymore.
We want our rights, and we don't care how,
We want our revolution... now.

Will the moon still hang in the sky?

For truth.

"You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it."

-- Charles Haddon Spurgeon