Octopus Overlords

In the letter, signed by 177 evangelicals leaders including Liberty University's Jerry Falwell Jr., First Baptist Dallas' Pastor Robert Jeffress and Samaritans Purse' Cissie Graham Lynch, the collective expressed their "dissatisfaction" with the op-ed, accused CT's editor-in-chief, Mark Galli, of dismissing their "point of view," and said he inaccurately characterized them as "far right evangelicals."
...
Lynch is also the granddaughter of famed evangelist Billy Graham, who founded CT. Her father, Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, has also condemned the editorial.
...
Rev. Rick Amato, one of the signatories, from Dream Believe Institute in Wellington, Florida, confirmed to Newsweek that the letter was sent to CT on Sunday morning. Speaking about the publication's op-ed, Amato asserted that it inaccurately led the public to believe that all evangelicals held the same beliefs critical of Trump and that it breached the religion's teachings of forgiveness.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2019 3:21 pm Signatories listed at Christian Post.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2019 3:19 pm Newsweek

In the letter, signed by 177 evangelicals leaders including Liberty University's Jerry Falwell Jr., First Baptist Dallas' Pastor Robert Jeffress and Samaritans Purse' Cissie Graham Lynch, the collective expressed their "dissatisfaction" with the op-ed, accused CT's editor-in-chief, Mark Galli, of dismissing their "point of view," and said he inaccurately characterized them as "far right evangelicals."
...
Lynch is also the granddaughter of famed evangelist Billy Graham, who founded CT. Her father, Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, has also condemned the editorial.
...
Rev. Rick Amato, one of the signatories, from Dream Believe Institute in Wellington, Florida, confirmed to Newsweek that the letter was sent to CT on Sunday morning. Speaking about the publication's op-ed, Amato asserted that it inaccurately led the public to believe that all evangelicals held the same beliefs critical of Trump and that it breached the religion's teachings of forgiveness.

A Roman Catholic church in rural Louisiana hoping to maximize its blessings has come up with a way to do it: filling up a crop-duster plane with holy water and letting the sanctified liquid mist an entire community.

"We can bless more area in a shorter amount of time," Rev. Matthew Barzare of St. Anne Church in Cow Island, La., told NPR.

Following this past Saturday's mass, parishioners from the church in southwestern Louisiana headed to an airstrip about five minutes away from the church.

Churchgoers brought with them 100 gallons of water, which was loaded into the crop duster.

"I blessed it there, and we waited for the pilot to take off," Barzare said, noting that it was the largest amount of water he had ever turned holy.

In 2013, residents of Cow Island, located in the southwestern Louisiana parish of Vermilion, successfully sued a pharmaceutical company to pay $5 million for cleanup of arsenic-contaminated soil and water.

The suit, which stemmed from a local priest’s battle with cancer, claimed that the arsenic came from insecticides in cattle dip tanks, which were used for much of the 20th century to eradicate a deadly cattle disease known as Texas tick fever.

But a new Tulane University study, published in the geochemistry journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, raises serious doubts as to whether the arsenic can in fact be traced to the tanks.

The study by a team of geochemists and hydrogeologists led by Karen Johannesson, the Cochran Family Professor in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Tulane, says elevated concentrations of arsenic in groundwater from the upper Chicot aquifer in Cow Island is “almost certainly geogenic.”
...
Johannesson said she has been told that most residents of Cow Island now receive their drinking water from the city, which uses water pumped from elsewhere, rather than from local wells.
...
In the study, groundwater samples were collected from the upper Chicot aquifer in southern Louisiana, the most heavily pumped aquifer in the state with much of the pumped water being used for rice cultivation and drinking water in southern Evangeline, eastern Calcasieu, Jefferson Davis, Acadia and western Lafayette parishes.

Researchers found the presence of arsenic in the Chicot to be at least 10 times higher than EPA standards, and perhaps more importantly, the bulk of the arsenic occurs in the Chicot aquifer groundwater as the most toxic form of inorganic arsenic known as arsenite.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue Dec 24, 2019 11:45 am I’m sure the people at the department of health,

Dr. Ray Stantz:
You have been a participant in the biggest interdimensional cross rip since the Tunguska blast of 1909!

Louis:
Felt great.

Dr. Egon Spengler:
We'd like to get a sample of your brain tissue.

Louis:
Okay.

Researchers at the Institute of Hygiene and Applied Immunology at the Medical University of Vienna tested water from 21 springs in Austria and 18 fonts in Vienna and found samples contained up to 62 million bacteria per milliliter of water, none of it safe to drink.

Tests indicated 86 percent of the holy water, commonly used in baptism ceremonies and to wet congregants' lips, was infected with common bacteria found in fecal matter such as E. coli, enterococci and Campylobacter, which can lead to diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain, and fever.

Nitrates, commonly found in fertilizer from farms, were also identified in the water. If ingested, water containing nitrates over the maximum contaminant level could cause serious illness, especially in infants younger than 6 months, which could lead to death if untreated, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
...
The study, published in the Journal of Water and Health, also found that all church and hospital chapel fonts contained bacteria -- the busier the church, the higher the bacterial count.

Before taking off on its holy mission, the crop duster was cleaned out of pesticides. Barzare said he is confident the agricultural aircraft did not stir worry or confusion among any Cow Island residents.

"It is not the time to spray pesticides," he said." So the people from the community knew it was not spraying chemicals."

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Tue Dec 24, 2019 1:25 pm Also, and it seems like an obvious question now: What was in the plane's tanks last time it flew?

Before taking off on its holy mission, the crop duster was cleaned out of pesticides. Barzare said he is confident the agricultural aircraft did not stir worry or confusion among any Cow Island residents.

"The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) condemns, in as full-throated a manner as is humanly possible, the shocking and repulsive display of only the most vile, exclusivist, fundamentalist Christian supremacy," MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein wrote in a statement denouncing the Bible blessing. "The utilization of a Christian bible to 'swear in' commanders of the new Space Force or any other [Department of Defense] branch at ANY level is completely violative of the bedrock separation of church and state mandate of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."

In a tweet on Sunday, the Washington National Cathedral posted a statement describing the Bible that was blessed during a morning service as a Space Force official Bible "which will be used to swear in all commanders of America's newest military branch."

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Tue Jan 14, 2020 7:30 pm When Space Jesus finally arrives we'll see who is laughing then!

Also F these religious wack-jobs that have taken over elements of our government. Between their Bible study meetings on Capitol Hill and Space Bible, I've had just about enough.

Holman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 14, 2020 9:19 pm

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Tue Jan 14, 2020 7:30 pm When Space Jesus finally arrives we'll see who is laughing then!

Also F these religious wack-jobs that have taken over elements of our government. Between their Bible study meetings on Capitol Hill and Space Bible, I've had just about enough.

I can't cite anything on short notice, but I know I've heard that the Air Force (and particularly Air Force Academy culture) is much more riddled with Evangelical Dominionism than the other branches.

Police officers went undercover as Hasidic Jews to monitor protests against racism and police brutality in a majority-Jewish New Jersey town, Mishpacha reported.

Unfortunately for the officers, one of them appeared to be holding a cell phone - which would be forbidden to Orthodox Jews on Shabbat.

Televangelist Kenneth Copeland is getting the boot from Trinity Broadcasting Network, one of the (if not the) largest Christian television stations in the world.

While the announcement on the website is dated August 3, Copeland didn’t announce it on Facebook until yesterday:
...
It’s not the first skirmish he’s had with TBN. Last summer, the ministry announced that because of a changed time slot, “viewer response has been much lower,” so Copeland discontinued Sunday broadcasts of their show. The more recent announcement may be the end result of a long-simmering conflict.

In that post on his website, Copeland explained that his show “Believer’s Voice of Victory” had aired on TBN for four decades. But after founder Paul Crouch died in 2013, it was taken over by his son Matt and his wife Laurie, and Matt recently told Copeland (below) the show was no longer a good “fit” for the network.
...
That… would be a very weird thing for Matt Crouch to say, given that TBN’s current lineup includes no shortage of similar televangelists. As far as I can tell, none of those other shows are leaving the network.

So why Copeland’s?
TBN hasn’t said anything publicly about the decision.

I would love to say it’s because Copeland has become a national punchline for his insane interviews, non-stop greed, and ridiculous claims of curing the (still-raging) coronavirus.

But I don’t know if any of those things were the tipping point.

The question remains: How much of an embarrassment do you have to be for the owner of a Christian TV station to say he wants nothing to do with you anymore?

hepcat wrote:Oof...Falwell Jr. has admitted his wife had an affair with the pool boy. And that the pool boy is blackmailing them. I suspect the blackmail was when they paid for the pool boy's business, and that now that the story is out he's trying to make himself a victim in all this. My guess is he was involved with the pool boy beyond more than just being the unwitting cuckolded husband.

In any case, Michael Cohen's claims that he got the pool boy to destroy some photos that the Falwells didn't want getting out RIGHT before Falwell declared his support for Trump is now less happenstance and more evidential, imho.

hepcat wrote: ↑Mon Aug 24, 2020 11:08 am Oof...Falwell Jr. has admitted his wife had an affair with the pool boy. And that the pool boy is blackmailing them. I suspect the blackmail was when they paid for the pool boy's business, and that now that the story is out he's trying to make himself a victim in all this. My guess is he was involved with the pool boy beyond more than just being the unwitting cuckolded husband.

In any case, Michael Cohen's claims that he got the pool boy to destroy some photos that the Falwells didn't want getting out RIGHT before Falwell declared his support for Trump is now less happenstance and more evidential, imho.

[Falwell Jr.] and his wife met him in Miami and were so impressed with him that they invested in a gay hostel that he and [Falwell's] son ran as managers.

After that, they say he had an affair with Falwell Jr's wife, and that he's been blackmailing them since.

He claimed that the 'threatening behavior' left him with 'trauma' and had greatly affected him as he tried to run Liberty University.

Giancarlo Granda says he was 20 when he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and continuing into 2018, Granda told Reuters that the relationship involved him having sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell looked on.

...

On Sunday night, however, as Reuters was preparing to publish this article, Jerry Falwell issued a statement to the Washington Examiner in which he said that his wife had had an affair with Granda and that Granda had been trying to extort money from the couple over the matter. Granda denies any such intent, saying he was seeking to negotiate a buyout from a business arrangement he says he had with the couple.

Falwell’s statement Sunday to the Examiner said nothing about Granda’s account alleging that the evangelical leader had his own role in the affair, and Falwell didn’t address questions from Reuters about it. In the statement quoted by the Examiner, Falwell said that “Becki had an inappropriate personal relationship with this person, something in which I was not involved.”

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:44 pm

Giancarlo Granda says he was 20 when he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and continuing into 2018, Granda told Reuters that the relationship involved him having sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell looked on.

hepcat wrote:

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Aug 24, 2020 12:44 pm

Giancarlo Granda says he was 20 when he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and continuing into 2018, Granda told Reuters that the relationship involved him having sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell looked on.

THERE'S the piece I was missing that brings this all together.

Falwell's fall from grace is now in motion.

What's the over/under on when he reappears as a "changed man"?

...the disgraced Liberty University president’s recent erratic behavior — including posting to Instagram a photo of himself with his pants unzipped and his arm around his wife’s assistant — is the result of the mental trauma sustained from his wife’s “inappropriate personal relationship” with Granda.

Falwell claims he was “not involved” in the sexual affair, which caused him to lose 80 pounds and take on “pain and stress” that he’s now addressing. Quoting the Bible multiple times, Falwell writes that he has forgiven both his wife and Granda, whom he casts as someone who victimized the Falwells. “We believe that he may have targeted other successful women in similar ways,” Falwell writes.