"Sixty million people died. . . .So, you've got to pay attention. And vote." former President Barak H. Obama.
Germans voted Mr. Nobel President. They voted for a dopey clown with powerful grassroots organization and a tightly controlled narrative dangled to a supine press.
The United States however did not lose a world war, nor did it undergo foreign occupation of its industrial heartland, nor look longingly for a return to the monarchy.
America only endured your Comedy Central Presidency.
That was more than enough to make Donald J. Trump preferable to you and Hilary Clinton.
Oh, and there is more.
Barak Obama spoke to the Economic Club of Chicago with Mrs. Star War Museum Melody Hobson-Lucas and compared Trump to Hitler, his Presidency to the Weimar Republic and praised America's bandwidth*:
American democracy is fragile, and unless care is taken it could follow the path of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Mixed in with many softer comments, that was the somewhat jaw-dropping bottom line of Barack Obama last night as, in a Q&A session before the Economic Club of Chicago, the Chicagoan who used to be president dropped a bit of red meat to a hometown crowd that likely is a lot closer to him than the man whose name never was mentioned: President Donald Trump. Obama's comments came after a series of playful questions from moderator and Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson—in the great Batman vs. Superman debate, for instance, we learned Obama sides with Batman—before she eventually asked him what he's learned as a world citizen of sorts. One thing he's learned is that "things don't happen internationally if we don't put our shoulder to the wheel," Obama said, speaking of the U.S. "No other country has the experience and bandwidth and ideals. . . .If the U.S. doesn't do it, it's not going to happen."
OooooRah Yankee Bandwidth!!!!! That should lock up more Tech Geek bucks.
Now, go louse up Jackson Park the outer drive and other peoples' days
And you voted for this dope?
* In computing, bandwidth is the bit-rate of available or consumed information capacity expressed typically in metric multiples of bits per second. Variously, bandwidth may be characterized as network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth.
Hollywood *created our President through American Mission drift.
I spent twenty-five years of my forty year career in Catholic education as a fund-raiser - Director of Development is usual term, or more the MBA school of B.S. nomenclature Director of Institutional Advancement. Either term means 'the person who makes calls on people to make donations.'
Calls mean pitches to potential donors that involve matching Mission to Operations.
You state -"Here is what we stand for" and through a series of infinitives:
To expand its ability
To provide a quality Catholic education
To instill the virtues of
To prepare students
attempt to match mission to peration . . . and all that jazz. This is followed by a representation of programs and activities, budget, financials and needs assessment and the ask. The ask is usually in keeping with the need, but it was my happy experience that the give often exceeded the ask.
The Mission; the Operation/Needs and the Ask - that is the job - it ain't brain surgery. Tell that to an Institutional Advancement Suit. I lived by the dictum of the late Father Ken Yarno, C.S.V. - " Be Brief and Be Gone!" Donors don't want pals, or neat guys for lunch dates. They want to help a school, a program, or a cause with a minimum of BS.
It was my experience that 80 % of the money came from 20% of our donors. That is a very healthy match of mission to operation.
One of my tasks was to make sure that the 20% included new donors and gift grants from foundations.
I found that in my last years, foundations drifted from their stated missions. Likewise, big individual donors wanted to make more impact on the broader society. Foundations that had been family faith spirited became more social justice locked-up and giving templates became 'systemic' gives to hot-button causes like immigration reform, public education reform, public health reform, law reform and out-reach programs.
Foundations were driven by big donors and big causes by big agendas.
Today in 2016, Americans gave over 300 Billion dollars to charity. However, the donations are being driven by fewer people. It is now something like a 90/10.
One of the most useful works for fund-raisers in Catholic education was Peter Greer's 2014 Mission Drift:The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities and Churches. Greer argues that, faith-based organizations drift from their found missions "Slowly, silently, and with little fanfare, organizations routinely drift from their purpose, and many never return to their original intent. Harvard and the YMCA are among those that no longer embrace the Christian principles on which they were founded. But they didn't drift off course overnight. Drift often happens in small and subtle ways. Left unchecked, it eventually becomes significant. "
Let's say, one day that Bubs Murtaugh, a wildly wealthy alumnus of St. Regular Guy's Catholic Prep, is harpied by his third trophy wife to get more Catholic kids educated to the benefits of Planned Parenthood, the Revolutionary Communist Party USA and NAMBLA. To that end, Bubs writes check in the amount of $ 6,095, 285, 000,000 to St. Regular Guy. That would be some Board to tear up that check.
No one would give that much?
Could happen. I had a guy write a $500,000 check without an ask.
My guy said put it to good use - scholarships. A crowd of Alums owe their sheepskins to this guy, but he is no Bubs Murtaugh.
I know schools that have 'go be along with the Big Bangers,' some to a great end and others not so much. Mission drift.
America, like world of philanthropy, had undergone a massive mission drift at the very same time. Money drives political parties and political parties drive people who are not paying attention.
Catholics who find abortion to be a necessary 'distraction' from the really wonderful things that Planned Parenthood does for women's health did not arrive at that goofy premise over-night. Slowly, in 'in small subtle ways' crazy notions that roll over eternal truths become the intellectual currency of people who do not pay attention.
Dick Durbin did not happen over night. He needed time and a lack of attention.
My Democratic Party, the one that beat fascism, fought back Communism, created the American Middle Class and our once great standard of living suffered mission drift from 1972 DNC in Miami to the present.
Gradually, an entire nation that honored valor, worth, integrity, competence and fierce of love of country found Barack Obama to be its Chief Executive. Hollywood, GM, GE, Goldman Sachs, Sierra Club, George Soros, Henry Van Amerigen, Fred Eychaner, SEIU, ALF-CIO were driving the mission of the Democratic Party which had shed Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan for the likes of Anthony Weiner, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Nancy Pelosi as its face and voice.
Why not an untested bi-racial back bencher as Chief Executive? People no longer pay attention.
Occupy Wall Street and Move-on.org blew up more of America than Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dorhn and Weathermen ever dreamed of bombing. God bless them, as Speaker Pelosi cooed.
Mission drift happened. It happened in philanthropy and it happened in government.
November 8th was a push back at mission drift. And all that jazz - America Great Again, Mad Dog Mathis, Carrier.
Hey, that's super. However foundations are rooted in their agendas - looking downstream, Polk Brothers, Woods Fund MacArthur Foundation, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, Hearst and all the rest are still driven to the rive gauche.
Hillary don't Te Rogamus. She is the Hors d'oeuvre
Hate to kick a man who's down, but I do not mind it at all that Hillary Clinton is getting heaping helping cosmic Karma. Dharma has that task handled and I am sure the litany of saints are gearing up for some old timey Te Rogamus!
Peccatores, (sinners)
te rogamus, audi nos. Beseach thee, Hear us
Ut nobis parcas,
te rogamus, audi nos.
Ut nobis indulgeas, ( Pardon us)
te rogamus, audi nos.
With the Hors d'oeuvre offered and eaten up, Let's get to the soup!
The real noodles in the pot have yet to boil. By real noodles I mean every head that nodded and went along with the stout marrow bones of political players from the Oval Office to the DOJ.
It is and has been my simple belief that nothing and I mean nothing has happened since January 2009 without the implied, or explicit direction of Valerie Jarrett. We shall see, more of Valerie Jarrett's control over President Obama and his White House over the next score of months.
The surprise disclosure that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are taking a new look at Hillary Clinton’s email use lays bare, just days before the election, tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.
Investigators found 650,000 emails on a laptop that they believe was used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, and underlying metadata suggests thousands of those messages could have been sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. . . .
Now here is where it gets really soupy
At a meeting early last week of senior Justice Department and FBI officials, a member of the department’s senior national-security staff asked for an update on the Weiner laptop, the people familiar with the matter said. At that point, officials realized that no one had acted to obtain a warrant, these people said.
Mr. McCabe then instructed the email investigators to talk to the Weiner investigators and see whether the laptop’s contents could be relevant to the Clinton email probe, these people said. After the investigators spoke, the agents agreed it was potentially relevant.
Mr. Comey was given an update, decided to go forward with the case and notified Congress on Friday, with explosive results. Senior Justice Department officials had warned the FBI that telling Congress would violate policies against overt actions that could affect an election, and some within the FBI have been unhappy at Mr. Comey’s repeated public statements on the probe, going back to his press conference on the subject in July.
The back-and-forth reflects how the bureau is probing several matters related, directly or indirectly, to Mrs. Clinton and her inner circle. . . .Even as the probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email use wound down in July, internal disagreements within the bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.
This sleazy saga began when the Oval Office, State Department, Justice Department and the compliant media tossed out the straw man story of a video offensive to Islam and the massacre in Benghazi. Wasted tax dollars on endless hearings, stalled, ridiculed and contaminated by hacks and the media.
Sad to say, that Rep. Elijah Cummings wasted gallons of fatty outrage, when all it took was a pervert Democrat Congressman and his ex-wife's own Valerie Jarrett side-show on the Clinton Campaign to shed real light on the cockroaches racing from icebox to stove in Washington D.C..
The Justice Department and State Department players are in the soup.
The fish will be Loretta Lynch and maybe others from DOJ past and present
The Entree The Clinton Foundation, The Saudi Royals, George Soros and the Bush Family
The Removes President Obama, Susan Rice and Long John Kerry
The Desert -Valerie Jarrett
“I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” David Brooks of National Public Television, Radio and Sartorial Club
President Barack Obama (1.) do have sharp Hart Schaffner and Marx britches, Dave, and (2.)they are and have been ablaze for some time. That must be a rule with the 'Right Side of History' crowd - the Howard Zinn addicts who despise anything and everything about being an American -Sharp pants creases and and an inability to recognize the truth, even it falls like an Acme safe on one. David Brooks appreciates those things. He and George Clooney are Dope!
Me ? I don't think that the tailor makes the man, nor do I believe fabricating slick sentences makes good government. President Obama certainly does, as do far too many people, because he is living the life mapped out in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus - the tailor, re-tailored, a goofy tale of fact and fiction tripping over themselves. Inconvenient truths need not apply.
President Obama is the guy who was transformational - he is - Charlotte, Raton Rouge, Tulsa, Chicago, Brooklyn, owe so much to the man who burned racial bridges in America from Henry Louis Gates to Charlotte, North Carolina.
Obama said that he only knew about the Hilary Clinton e-mail kerfuffle from watching the evening news. Really? None of the Big Three networks covered that at all. Well now it turns out that the cool kid from Hawaii and leader of the Choom Gang had some fire to his smoke screen:
President Barack Obama used a pseudonym in email communications with Hillary Clinton and others, according to FBI records made public Friday. The disclosure came as the FBI released its second batch of documents from its investigation into Clinton’s private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.
The 189 pages the bureau released includes interviews with some of Clinton’s closest aides, such as Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills; senior State Department officials; and even Marcel Lazar, better known as the Romanian hacker “Guccifer.”
In an April 5, 2016 interview with the FBI, Abedin was shown an email exchange between Clinton and Obama, but the longtime Clinton aide did not recognize the name of the sender.
"Once informed that the sender's name is believed to be pseudonym used by the president, Abedin exclaimed: 'How is this not classified?'" the report says. "Abedin then expressed her amazement at the president's use of a pseudonym and asked if she could have a copy of the email."
Huma said, 'What?" Huma said, 'How is this not classified?'
If that is not a 'smoking gun,' it most certainly is a pair of snappy worsted wool's a'creased and a smoking!
It has been this south side Chicago Irish Catholic (end abortion) Democrat's opinion since meeting Barack Obama in 1996, that the man is not terribly bright - glib, self-important and corporately polished like many middle management suck-ups, sneaks and sycophants, but not all that smart.
Not very smart people do very well in our secular political society - we stopped being a culture in 1973 - by sticking to the script and doing and saying exactly what the public relations cats instruct.
Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk are two examples. President Obama is the top of this pyramid.
The smoking strides of our President will not matter much. It will be a wedge for some and an annoyance to most.
I will say this -President Obama has never let me down. He has lived up to and exceeded my expectations.
Mopetown* was an old Chicago neighborhood wedged between Bridgeport and McKinley Park - north of Archer and caressing Ashland Avenue. There was great old saloon that gave me shelter from Chicago weather, when rode the bus to work, or from Loyola back in the late 1960's and early '70's. The saloon was called McGloins, and now it is the Archer Foot Care: Total Foot and Fungus Treatment Center.
I read where President Obama renamed Mount McKinley. "Today we’re returning Mount McKinley to its native name - Denali, a step to reflect the heritage of Alaska Natives." He is a Mope!
We? He's Alexander Sixtus Borgia Hawaiian!
Our preening Progressive Pope will do anything to piss off a large number of people and get away with it for no other reason than . . . well, he can. I'm surprised he didn't give the whole dman Sarah Palin State back to the Russians, after all they had the initial naming rights to Mount McKinley when Seward cheated the Tzar out of one sweet land scam and he gives Putin anything. The Russkies called Mount McKinley Bolshaya Gora , which translates to Climate Change Big Lie. Now it is the biggest mountain in America is called Denali in Eskimo and translates to Man it's Cold Up Here!!!!!!!!!
In the spirit of America's worst President next to old Gay As Christmas Buck Buchanan, I , meaning we, give McKinley Park back to the The Scolios, the Forrers, the Walshes, the VerdonsThe Gerrings, the Atkinses, the Starrs and the Polyaks - the indigenous people who were forced to leave their homes by the State of Illinois, Cook County and City of Chicago so the slowest Expressway in North America could be built and screw up traffic three times a day. *The great Anne Keegan wrote about vanishing Mopetown in 1987 and the last house in Mopetown in 1990.
“I love coming to Asheville,” Obama said at a Linamar factory plant, where he stumped today on his post-State of the Union tour. He told the crowd that “after this whole presidency thing,” he and Michelle Obama will be “looking for a little spot, you know, to come on down, play a little golf, do a little hiking, fishing, eat barbecue.” February 2013
The Oval Office: Sometime in not all-to-distant future, or about all the future that will be left . . . "Well I'm gonna to go then! And I don't need any of this. I don't need this stuff, and I don't need *you*. I don't need anything. Except this.
[picks up an ashtray]
And that's the only thing I need is *this*. I don't need this or this. Just this ashtray... And this paddle game. - The ashtray and the paddle game and that's all I need... And this remote control. - The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that's all I need... And these matches. - The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control, and the paddle ball... And this lamp. - The ashtray, this paddle game, and the remote control, and the lamp, and that's all *I* need. And that's *all* I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one... I need this. - The paddle game and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches for sure. Well what are you looking at? What do you think I'm some kind of a jerk or something! - And this. That's all I need.
[walking outside]The ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, and this magazine, and the chair.
[outside now] And I don't need one other thing, except my dog.. . . I don't need my dog."
One day President Barack H. Obama will depart the White House, but there is so much to occupy Americans like myself.
Zimmerman? Meh. My old ear drums are still bleeding from our National Discussion on Race, when old Henry Lou Gates lost his keys and President Sparklefahrts dipped his toes in the quiet waters of Cambridge Police 911 call. Stupid! A few beers later and all was forgotten . . .by this Nation of Cowards.
Snowden? I hope the poor SOB can get some Mitchum in that Moscow Airport. Man, he's gotta be ripe. Well, it is Russia and Old Shirtless in Saint Petersburg don't seem to mind.
Rolling Stone? A great cop took care of that one.
Metra Illinois? Already in the Illinois memory hole.
Motown? President Al Green has left the building.
Cairo? In the national memory hole
Benghazi? Getting warmed up.
IRS? Boiling like a pot of Englewood napalm and set to burn some scamps. R. Emmett Tyrell writes about the last six months of scandals oozing out of the pores of Brand Obama
Congress also ought to be looking into the Obama Administration’s subpoenaing of journalists’ records and the allegations of a State Department cover-up of irregularities by our ambassador to Belgium. Then there is the NSA disaster. It now appears that the dimwit Edward Snowden walked off with a vast horde of intelligence. We are even hearing that he has in the cozy confines of the Moscow airport the manuals for keying into NSA intelligence gathering projects. How did he get them? Who is responsible?
All of this incompetence took place under President Obama’s watch. Now comes word that the president is popping off about Trayvon Martin again. Initially he blustered, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” With the acquittal of George Zimmerman he is saying we can “honor Trayvon” by putting an end to “gun violence.” Still worse is his outburst this past May on sexual assault cases in the military. Commenting on them he — the president of the United States and commander in chief of the military — pronounced that the accused should be “prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged…” You can be sure that his outburst put in jeopardy sexual assault cases all over the country. Thomas J. Roming, a former judge advocate general of the Army, told the New York Times, “His remarks were more specific than I’ve ever heard a commander in chief get…. Every military defense counsel will make a motion about this.”
Yeah, but didn't Motown Barry look just smashing back in Denver, betwixt those swell Attic columns, though? He did. Wasn't that a time?
For NPR and Bill Moyers, I am sure, but have never cottoned to national figure who demands that goons like Dr. Kermit Baron Gosnell ( Dr. Talented 10%) be allowed to spin the spinal cords of living children in defense of women.
Of all of the indications of the hapless misanthropy that is Brand Obama, nothing takes the cheese like IRS scandal. Any self-respecting meth-head with a rudimentary understanding of English and a GED, like Eddie Snowden, knows that IRS was unleashed upon the Tea Party, Pro Israel, Anti-abortion, or America-Ain't- Bad 501 (c) 3 applicants to show Americans the might of the Brand and the lash waiting all dissenters. That means, Valerie Jarrett, Chicago Slum Queen, Obama Minister Without Portfolio Bully-Broad.
President Obama doesn't waffle-up in the AM without Valerie Jarrett's say-so. Why Ms. Jarrett has become such a powerful force in American public life is easy to explain - politicians need access to money. She is a crazy aunt with oodles of boodle that a daffy family will allow to not only pick out the curtains, but schools for the kids, cable shows, menus and toilet paper. Valerie Jarrett operates off-camera, but pushes Commie Sit-com stars of the future into the full focus - Anita Dunn,Van Jones, Kevin Jennings, EPA Mini-Czar Salazar and IRS general counsel and White House go-to-guy William Wilkins. No less a past-Obama fan than Peggy Noonan writes:
The IRS chief counsel is named William Wilkins. And again, he is one of only two Obama political appointees in the IRS.
What was the chief counsel's office looking for? The letter to Mr. Werfel says Mr. Hull's supervisor, Ronald Shoemaker, provided insight: The counsel's office wanted, in the words of the congressional committees, "information about the applicants' political activities leading up to the 2010 election." Mr. Shoemaker told investigators he didn't find that kind of question unreasonable, but he found the counsel's office to be "not very forthcoming": "We discussed it to some extent and they indicated that they wanted more development of possible political activity or political intervention right before the election period."
It's almost as if—my words—the conservative organizations in question were, during two major election cycles, deliberately held in a holding pattern.
So: What the IRS originally claimed was a rogue operation now reaches up not only to the Washington office, but into the office of the IRS chief counsel himself.
At the generally lacking House Oversight Committee Hearings on Thursday, some big things still got said.
Ms. Hofacre of the Cincinnati office testified that when she was given tea-party applications, she had to kick them upstairs. When she was given non-tea-party applications, they were sent on for normal treatment. Was she told to send liberal or progressive groups for special scrutiny? No, she did not scrutinize the applications of liberal or progressive groups. "I would send those to general inventory." Who got extra scrutiny? "They were all tea-party and patriot cases." She became "very frustrated" by the "micromanagement" from Washington. "It was like working in lost luggage." She applied to be transferred.
For his part, Mr. Hull backed up what he'd told House investigators. He described what was, essentially, a big, lengthy runaround in the Washington office in which no one was clear as to their reasons but everything was delayed. The multitiered scrutiny of the targeted groups was, he said, "unusual."
What happens in the White House does not stay in the White House. Detroit Happens. Syria Happens. ObamaCare should not happen. Things happen because almost twenty years ago, Barack H. Obama, community activist, Woods Fund Executive Director, and neighborhood guy of Bill Ayers attached himself to Valerie Jarrett,Real Estate player and Slum Queen. She's the crazy aunt who makes uncle Jeremiah Wright seem like Justice Clarence Thomas, in my humble opinion.
The IRS Scandal was far less bloody and foolish than Benghazi fiasco of 9/11/2011, but will prove mortal to Obama's last place finish in History's list of American Presidencies. It is not Obama's fault, nothing is. We voters drank the Cool Aid, Smoked the Hopium and felt the tingle up our thighs. We may soon realize the poor guys was just a Jerk with a sharp crease in his britches.
Benghazi, seems like only yesterday. Jay Carney said that I am very much mistaken, because it happened so long ago and that an American Ambassador and three security heroes were slaughtered in Libya, while the White House remained on Deaf Com 6 - Got an Election, Folks! Distraction.
Samantha Power, Susan Rice and President Lame Duck #44 will be the Fall Person's tossed to history's dentures by Hillary Clinton: When the smoke clears Hillary Clinton the #45 Wannabee will put the jacket on Mrs. Cass Sunstein, (Samantha Powers), The proud black woman named Rice who is not named Condalisa, ( Susan Rice) and the Al Green in Chief President Barack H. Obama. The bus is rolling.
From Stephen Hayes for the Weekly Standard, The Nation with a moral core:
After the internal distribution, CIA officials amended that draft to include more information about the jihadist threat in both Egypt and Libya. “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the [Cairo] Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy,” the agency had added by late afternoon. And: “The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al Qaeda in Benghazi and Libya.” But elsewhere, CIA officials pulled back. The reference to “Islamic extremists” no longer specified “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda,” and the initial reference to “attacks” in Benghazi was changed to “demonstrations.”
The talking points were first distributed to officials in the interagency vetting process at 6:52 p.m. on Friday. Less than an hour later, at 7:39 p.m., an individual identified in the House report only as a “senior State Department official” responded to raise “serious concerns” about the draft. That official, whom The Weekly Standard has confirmed was State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, worried that members of Congress would use the talking points to criticize the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.”
In an attempt to address those concerns, CIA officials cut all references to Ansar al Sharia and made minor tweaks. But in a follow-up email at 9:24 p.m., Nuland wrote that the problem remained and that her superiors—she did not say which ones—were unhappy. The changes, she wrote, did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership,” and State Department leadership was contacting National Security Council officials directly. Moments later, according to the House report, “White House officials responded by stating that the State Department’s concerns would have to be taken into account.” One official—Ben Rhodes, The Weekly Standard is told, a top adviser to President Obama on national security and foreign policy—further advised the group that the issues would be resolved in a meeting of top administration officials the following morning at the White House.
There is little information about what happened at that meeting of the Deputies Committee. But according to two officials with knowledge of the process, Mike Morrell, deputy director of the CIA, made broad changes to the draft afterwards. Morrell cut all or parts of four paragraphs of the six-paragraph talking points—148 of its 248 words (see Version 2 above). Gone were the reference to “Islamic extremists,” the reminders of agency warnings about al Qaeda in Libya, the reference to “jihadists” in Cairo, the mention of possible surveillance of the facility in Benghazi, and the report of five previous attacks on foreign interests.
I see the penmanship of Samantha Power, the Foreign Policy Czar of the Obama White House, the Irish-born OxFam activist/journalist who remains in the shadows but crafts the daffy Obama Middle East balls-up universal, all over the talking points read by Susan Rice. Reuters reported that Samantha Power is about to be 'disappeared' to a State Department post.
Samantha Power is like cashiered Green Czar Van Jones, one of the power persons who appear out of left-field and manage to craft bad policy while avoiding the blame. Unlike Jones, Power keeps her ego in her purse. When it got the better of her ambitions, got her knocked off Obama 2008 Campaign for nasty comments on the future Secretary of State. Van Jones took his ego to TV.
Hillary will bounce Power quicker than Bill Clinton's next exploitable chick comes along.
When the dust settles on the Benghazi Disaster Sept. 11, 2012, so long, long, long ago in the words of White House Press Flak Jay Carney, Hillary Clinton will be required to get from under her fish-monger roar of 'What difference does it make?"
PeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeLenty!
Samantha Power is ready for tenure at Columbia.
The President already purged the military in this matter, Rice resigned quicker than the time it takes to have a new talking point, but Hillary Clinton thinks she will walk into the White House in 2016.
I was watching the news last night and caught President Obama's assessment of the previous night's debate.
President Obama told a crowd in Denver on Thursday that he barely recognized the “spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney” at the debate the night before.
“It could not have been Mitt Romney because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy,” Obama said. “The fellow on stage last night said he didn’t know anything about that.”
He continued with the riff:
I can well understand the President's frustration. Much like a child who has come to understand that a corpulent and hoary whiskered denizen of the Arctic Circle, given to festive red and smartly furred habiliments, does not, in fact, jet the stratosphere in a 19th century winter-conveyance, fueled by an octet of Rangifer tarandii each winter's Yuletide in order to deposit youthful plunder for Good Boys and Girls, President Obama really believes in the Willard Mitt Romney created by Marilyn Katz, the Daves (Axelrod & Plouffe) Planned Parenthood, SEIU, Sandy Fluke and offered wholesale on MSNBC.
Yes, Mr. President, there is a Mitt Romney, but he is a product of minds like the one's owned by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Big Ed Schultz. The Mitt Romney on stage is the Mitt Romney that they never told you about and he is the one who made you very, very sad the other night. I imagine your confusion, young fella - "Coal???? Nobody said anything about coal? This guy loves coal, too. Isn't that a stocking stuffer for evil rich dudes and racist hillbillies and Catholics? You people told me Mormons had Harems!~!"
There, there.
The President Obama that I know is the disappointed little chap who walked away from the podium wondering just what the Hell had happened.
Must have been one tough ride home in the Presidential Limo!
I was reading and missed the debate. Before leaving Leo High School for Bronzeville and Canaryville this AM, I heard WLS host Dan Proft remark, " Well, to quote Cousin Eddie( Randy Quaid) from Vegas Vacation - 'I haven't seen a beating like that since some guy stuck a banana down my pants let loose a monkey.'
"Scio opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum" "I know your works ... that you have but little power, and yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name." (Apocalypse 3.8)
Got us a debate to night.Pass.
Made my mind up in 2007 and I am voting for the guy with the funny name.
I'm gonna read me some Tacitus (translated by Michael Grant) - Tiberius's trap of Sejanus seem fit.
Juvenal, Satire X
Sermones XAnd now the flames are hissing, and amid the roar of furnace and of bellows the head of the mighty Sejanus, the darling of the mob, is burning and crackling, and from that face, which was but lately second in the entire world, are being fashioned pipelines, basins, frying-pans and slip-pails! Up with the laurel-wreaths over your doors! Lead forth a grand chalked bull to the Capitol! Sejanus is being dragged along by a hook, as a show and joy to all! "What a lip the fellow had! What a face!" - "Believe me, I never liked the man!" - " but on what charge was he condemned? Who informed against him? What was the evidence, who the witnesses, who made good the case?" - "Nothing of the sort; a great and wordy letter came from Capri." - "Good; I ask no more." And what does the mob of Remus say? It follows fortune, as it always does, and rails against the condemned. That same rabble, if Nortia had smiled upon the Etruscan, if the aged Emperor had been struck down unaware, would in that very hour have conferred upon Sejanus the title of Augustus. Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two thing - Bread and Games! "I hear that many are to perish." - "No doubt of it; there is a big furnace ready." - "My friend Brutidius looked a trifle pale when I met him at the Altar of Mars. I tremble lest the defeated Ajax should take vengeance for having been so ill defenced."- "Let us rush headlong and trample on Caesar's enemy, while he lies upon the bank!" - "Ay, and let our slaves see that none bear witness against us, and drag their trembling master into court with a halter round his neck." Such was the talk at the moment about Sejanus; such were the mutterings of the crowd.
I reported on then Senator Barack Obama's Hampton Univeristy speech of June 2007, when he had entered the race for President. Thus 'quiet riot' The transcript of Senator Obama's remarks were redacted, rather laundered, by the media at that time. I linked that in a March 2008 post yet again when Senator Obama lectured America on Race in his Teaching Moment that tossed United Church of Christ Black Liberation scholar/preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the path of the bus that would soon bump over the man and his works. Here is what ABC news provided from the Hampton University Speech which I labeled as the 'Quiet Riot' speech: http://hickeysite.blogspot.com/2007/06/quiet-riot-obamas-malaise.html
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Tuesday that the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse a "quiet riot" among blacks that threatens to erupt just as riots in Los Angeles did 15 years ago.
The first-term Illinois senator said that with black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, frustration and resentments are building explosively as they did before the 1992 riots.
"This administration was colorblind in its incompetence," Obama said at a conference of black clergy, "but the poverty and the hopelessness was there long before the hurricane.
"All the hurricane did was to pull the curtain back for all the world to see," he said.
Obama's criticism of Bush prompted ovation after ovation from the nearly 8,000 people gathered in Hampton University's Convocation Center, particularly when he denounced the Iraq war and noted that he had opposed it from the outset.
Repeatedly, he referred to the riots that erupted in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted four police officers of assault charges in the 1991 beating of Rodney King, a black motorist, after a high speed chase. Fifty-five people died and 2,000 were injured in several days of riots in the city's black neighborhoods.
"Those 'quiet riots' that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths," Obama said. "They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better."
He argued that once a hurricane hits or a jury renders a not guilty verdict, "the frustration is there for all to see."
Yesterday, a video of Candidate Obama's complete and unexpurgated teaching moment became public through Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller:
This is Barack Obama - community activist, autobiographer and President of the United States. He is the same man today, as he was in 2007, 2004 and 1995. His world-view fully formed by Planned Parenthood, Frank Marshall Davis , Andy Stern, Derrick Bell , James Cone, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and prepared for public consumption by Marilyn Katz. Nothing Shocking, here, as the White House explained to the release of the newly discovered video..
Our media, so wanted an icon of diverse blood and skin tone, who could race bait with the same silky ease as Henry Louis Gates and demand a beer summit teaching moment whenever things went south.
America made Barack Obama President of the United States. He has not changed a bit, nor will he. His cover is blown a bit, but certainly no where near enough. The media that did not create Brand Obama certainly buys it and sells it.
This video will not matter much, as the Hampton University speech in 2007 had no effect at all in the 2008 election. If it racist to present the speech in full, that is what Barack Obama, community activist, lawyer, Illinois back-bencher, US Senator, candidate for and President of the United States has demanded that it always be so. Barack Obama has gotten everything he has demanded up to this election. It will be interesting to see if things continue for him no matter how it affects America.
US President Barack Obama says Israel’s call for drawing red line over Iran’s nuclear energy program is just “noise” he tries to ignore -“When it comes to our national security decisions, any pressure that I feel is simply to do what’s right for the American people. And I am going to block out any noise that’s out there,” & here's Iran's Merle Haggard - AHMADINEJAD: “I have spoken about this topic at length, previously. We generally speaking do not take very seriously the issue of the Zionists and the possible dangers emanating from them.Of course they would love to find a way for their own salvation by making a lot of noise and to raise stakes in order to save themselves. But I do not believe they will succeed. Iran is also a very well recognized country and her defensive powers are very clear.” Same speech writers? President Obama and the United Nations are pretty much on the same page. . .and that ain't good.
The nasty and evil but clownish Ahadinijad posing as a world leader demands, "Who is it who determines what the U.S. government must do? Is it the Zionists...? The U.S. government must make such vital decisions under the influence of Zionists?" Netanyahu's insistence, he said, "should be seen as a great insult and taken as such by the people of the United States. Who are these Zionists to dictate to the U.S.?"
The United Nations is nothing more than a forum for Anti-Semitic clowns and tin-pot dictators, it seems to me. The United States of America took oppression and hate by the scruff of the neck in two world wars, only to have American naivete and idealism made a mockery by the people on the edges of humanity. The League of Nations was a land grab scam that gave birth to the Bavarian paper hanger and Viennese pan-handler with penchant for spewing hate and the United Nations evolved into a haven for criminals and genocidal maniacs thanks to likes of timid and self-conscious Americans who were embarrassed by truth telling heroes like Daniel Parick Moynihan, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and John Bolton. Every year, America gets its pants pulled down by the very thugs and louses that two world wars, a Korean "police action." many Mid-East crises and a Cuban Missile Crisis could not quiet, let alone reform. Fidel Castro, the Jung Ils, Nasser, Yasser Arafat, Hugo Chavez, Robert Mugabe and the prize thug Ahmadinejad enjoy the Big Apple and micturate on their hosts. In 2008, Columbia University laid out the red carpet for this Jew-hating creep. He was given another forum from which to spew his venom all the while our home -grown ninnies, nodders and hand-wringers preached about our traditions of fair play. Shortly, after this very same scruffy mope who can't seem to make razors work properly, nor fully understand the intricacies of knotting a tie, opened fire on his own people and slaughtered dissent, while our newly minted Nobel Prize President voted present. Israel is Old Testament rooted and blossomed in the sand and rock equivalent of America's Appalachia after millions of Jews were slaughtered by the Ahmadinejad's Teutonic spiritual pappy. The Jews turned land called Palestine by the British into a green and lush land of productive and happy God fearing people. The long time occupants, like the most aboriginal Scots-Irish mountain-holler dweller maintained feuds, wallowed in filth and never gave progress a second thought. Instead, the Lost Children of Hamas, blanketed themselves in Wahabist Marxism victimhood. When everyone says you are oppressed, you are, by God, oppressed and ready for a feudin'! Clever chaps got Fulbright free education and learned to activist from the likes of Edward Said, a brilliantly evil literary sorcerer. Israelis, he argued, were no different than Nazis. Really. Huge difference, there, Eddie. Edward Said makes sense to minds already convinced that science demands t.he deaths of unwanted children, the elderly, the challenged and the undesirable. . The same mind-set that equates Israel to the Third Reich is convinced that abortion is health care. It is only a short cha-cha to dance from parsing one's reasons for murdering an unborn a child to wholesale genocide. Hitler loved Margaret Sanger and danced a hearty jig to her tune. Jews survived the anti-Semitic slaughter only to be tormented by the Clement Attlee -Harold Macmillan British interested only in preserving the Suez and British Petroleum, who trained the Jordanians and Palestinians of Arab Legion to kill Jews, when necessary. The United Nations, before it was hijacked by its current lunatics, recognized Israel and the Arab World again tried to kill the Jooooos. - 1948 every nation but the Arab States (39-13) voted to recognize Israel. Israel fought the Arab world for its very existence (that means avoid complete annihilation at the hands of these deeply religious folks) and again in 1956, 1966, 1972 wars as well as endless terror strikes, hijackings murders and bombardments - all with the aid of fashionable Marxist International Solidarity. Today, I do not expect President Obama to take the thugs to task, nor do I expect him mention the world-wide idiots who deny the Holocaust, preach the destruction of Israel, pray to some god for the extermination of the Jews and expect to be petted and feted. No, President Obama did not earn his Nobel Prize by being like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Roosevelt( Teddy & Franklin), Truman, JFK, nor in any way shape or form like Moynihan or Bolton. President Obama will be exactly like his model Woodrow Wilson and come away from the UN speech and history with gallons of pee in his Florsheim's. http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/09/23/both-president-obama-and-ahmadinejad-liken-israeli-concerns-over-nuclear-iran-to-noise/ http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/24/breakfast_with_ahmadinejad
Here's how to reply to Media repitilia - Arch-nebbish Jonathan Alter with Big Ed e.g.
Jonathan Alter - Newsweek Nebbish and Obama Spokes-Pal. . on MSNBC's Big EdGöring Show Canard DuJour: Jonathan Alter -'No, we're not calling Mitt Romney a murderer, what we are saying is that if he's elected president, a lot of people will die.' Proper Response Me, for example- Name 'em.
Mitt Romney belongs to the category of GOP politicians that I call 'tasseled loafer' Republicans. They tend to be nice enough people, as far as I can tell. I don't run into many, if the truth be told. They are folks like Speaker John Boehner, or closer to home here in Chicago, DuPage County Republican types, of the failed gubernatorial candidates Bill Brady, Jim Oberweiss and that other guy . . . what's his name? Most of these folks have the personality of dial tones and excite the imaginations of of people like the fabled offer of an ALL YOU CAN EAT Melba Toast Buffet.
That said, I find these folks far less repellent than the successfully artful Progressive ophidians who dominate the Democratic Party Nationally, Statewide and locally. Watch here as David Axelrod gives a tutorial on how exactly Obama will be re-elected in a land-slide:
Make sense to you? Of course not and it is not supposed to . . .Dave Axelrod tosses word salads and even Fox eats it up, without question. Death by a Thousand UnAnswered Cuts- that is David Axelrod's modusoperandi. Mitt Romeny, like every tasseled -loafer GOP hopeful requires the help of an urban ethnic Democrat Ward healing cut-throat adviser - A Tammany baptized, unfiltered voice of practical political wit and wisdom to slap the back of his head everytime he tries to take the high-road to low-road set-ups by media or political surrogates
Mitt, go for her nuts, when asked a question about Mrs. Romney's equestrian back therapy by Rachel Maddow - "Well, you want your wife to be healthy would you not spare no expense, Rachel?"
Mitt, go Harry Reid, when asked about coughing up tax returns - " You know, I was talking to a top White House source only yesterday, and he told me that Eric Holder had set up a string of used gun shops from Brownsville, Texas to Baja, CA . . . Hey, I'm just sayin' "
Mitt, go Desiree Rogers, when asked about Valerie Jarrett running the Obama White House - " You know, one day your BFF gets her Knockers in a Knot and the next it is some other babe's bazongas . . .that's brand Obama. Hey, did Desiree crash that wedding afterall, Hey, I'm just sayin'"
Such counsel might make Mitt more palatable to folks who read only the New York Times, religiously, and watch only the PBS Nightly News with Judy Woodruff and Gwen Eyeful, as well as the guys who put busted-up chairs out in their freshly shoveled parking places and women who shop at Save Lots. I expect that Mitt Romney will pick a VP cut exactly to specifications of the Obama Campaign 2012 - a Tim Pawlenty ( Mn), or Rob Portman (OH). He should pick someone like Governor Bobby Jindal, or Gov. Chris Christies, or Col. Allen West. I don't see it. Mitt will get my vote, because the alternative is repellent to me anyway. I doubt if that will be anywhere near enough. Mitt Romney will be willing victim until his concession speech early on the night of November 6th, 2012; after that . . .hold the phone, citizens!
Ronald Reagan was a good-looking guy with lots of dough who rode horses and never wore tasseled loafers. Reagan was a Democrat, understood Democrats, and could never get trapped into skipping down a rhetorical blind alley by punks from Evanston, Winnetka, or Hollywood.
Transcript -
But, first, the presidential campaign battle over how to get Americans back to work. Joining us now from Chicago, David Axelrod, senior adviser to the Obama campaign.
And, David, welcome back to "Fox News Sunday."
DAVID AXELRORD, OBAMA CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER: Thanks, Chris.
WALLACE: Let's start with the latest jobs numbers. The economy created 163,000 jobs in July but unemployment rate rose from 8.2 percent to 8.3 percent. Let's put that into some context. More than 23 million Americans are now unemployed, have given up looking for work, or are working fewer hours than they would like, and 5 million have been out of work more than six months.
Given that fixing the economy was number job one -- why does President Obama deserve reelection given that record?
AXELROD: Well, first of all, Chris, let's put this in perspective. In the six months before the president took office, we lost 4 million jobs. The economy was shrinking at 8.9 percent in the quarter before he took office. We lost 800,000 jobs the month that he took office.
The hole that was created is huge and we're going to fill it. But in last 29 months, we've had 29 straight months of private sector job growth, 4.5 million jobs created. In this last report, 173,000 private sector jobs created, led by the auto industry and manufacturing, that would be in a depression but for the president's intervention -- something Governor Romney opposed.
So, we've got a lot of work to do. The two sectors, by the way, that lagged were construction and education. The president has been urging Congress since last fall to pass his bill that would invigorate those sectors, and that would help. But we have a lot of work to do.
And the real question for voters is going to be, what is the choice on the other side? This week, we learned that Governor Mitt Romney's tax plans would raise taxes for the wealthy -- would cut taxes for the wealthy, a windfall for the wealthy and raise taxes by $2,000 on the middle class. That's not a prescription for getting our economy moving or rebuilding the middle class.
WALLACE: But, David, didn't this White House badly misjudge this recovery? I remember in 2010, two summers ago, you and Vice President Biden were running around, talking about recovery summer. That was the summer of 2010.
And the fact is that your White House said that if you got the stimulus, that $800 billion, that unemployment would stay under 8 percent. In fact with the stimulus, unemployment has stayed over 8 percent for the last 42 months, that's 3 1/2 years.
AXELROD: Chris, first of all, I wasn't running around saying anything that other than we were going to be persistent, that it took years to get into this mess, it was going to take years to get --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: You talked about recovery summer in 2010.
AXELROD: Well, you should show me the tape of me saying that. I have been very consistent about the fact we need to be persistent in our effort.
But we can't do is go back to the -- you know, Moody's analyzed Governor Mitt Romney's plan to the degree you can because there aren't enough specifics to actually score it. And what they said was his plan would actually throw us back ward and might tip us back in a recession because it would ratchet down the things we need to keep the economy growing. So, people are going to have a real choice.
WALLACE: If I may --
AXELROD: Do we think -- do we think that raising taxes is the way to get this economy moving? Do we think cutting education by 25 percent is the way to get this economy moving, research that creates innovation and technology? I don't think most Americans agree with that.
WALLACE: But, David, you talk about Romney. I am asking you about the Obama record and the fact is unemployment has been over 8 percent for 42 months, which is 3 1/2 years.
AXELROD: There's no doubt about it, Chris. There's no doubt -- we have faced an economic crisis that goes back -- you'd have to go back to the Great Depression to see a crisis like the one we walked into in 2009. And as we said then and as I say now, the hole was tremendous. We have to be persistent in moving forward. There are more things we can do. We wish Congress would act on them. There are more things we can do.
But we can't do is go back. And the reason I keep bringing up Governor Romney, Chris, is because people are faced with a choice. They need to know -- they need to make a decision as to whether going back to the last policies is going to get us to where we need to go.
WALLACE: All right.
AXELROD: I think most people don't believe that.
WALLACE: All right. Well, let's talk about the choice, because I think you would say, you would agree that the biggest policy difference right now between President Obama -- there are a bunch. But the biggest policy difference right now between President Obama and Governor Romney is on taxes. Romney wants to extend all the Bush tax cuts for everyone, the president says no, extend them only for people making less than $250,000.
But back in 2010, President Obama opposed raising taxes on the wealthy because he said the economy was too fragile. Let's take a look at what the president said back then.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Potentially, you'd see a lot of folks are losing business, more folks potentially losing jobs. That would be a mistake when the economy has not fully taken off.
Francis Cardinal George Our Great Shepherd -with Leo Board Member Tamara Holder and the Leo Guys -Bobby Sheehy, Bill Hessian
I remain a Roman Catholic in America for the exact same reasons that I wake up at 3 A.M. and look in on my kids even though two are adults and the youngest seventeen, pray the Memorare and the Novena of the Little Flower on my knees an hour and a half later, read as much as I can, write about what I have read or thought about, try to do a few laps on the Rosary looking for all the world to be playing Master's Level pocket pool while waiting at Dunkin Donuts for Miss Lou, Kim and her daughter Kameron. Lou takes Kameron to Day Care for Kim while Kim works at U of I Med Center in the cafeteria. I take Kim to the terminal at 79th & Western, as it is on my way to Leo High School.
Kim is a single mom with two daughters. The elder girl is nineteen and ebony goddess Kameron is eight years old with designs on capturing America's heart on the Disney Channel. I was easy. Kim works a brutal day preparing salads for the Medical staff at U of I ChicagoMed Center. Last year, I began driving Kim and spending real quality time with these three African American women, along with the cops, firemen, skilled tradesmen, City of Chicago white collar folks, nurses and cousins at Kareem's Dunkin Donuts.
These tasks, like my prayer ritual, are part of me. I was taught to pray and then forgot how, until times of trouble or when I had managed to piss off every carbon foot-print within my five mile radius. Prayer is not only a public ritual, but should be a reflexive action that underlies our waking hours and balms our sleep.
Being Irish, I am embarrassed to make a public display of prayer - that kiss of Peace at Mass ( 'Peace Be with You!' - Uh-huh, thanks. Back at you.) really tossed Irish Americans into a spiral. Some of the more pious took to it like duck's to Cheetos and evolved into the folks who extend arms with palms up like ad hoc Melchizedeks I belong to a subsection of Irish Catholic America that winces when publicly hugged, touched, or complimented. I like traditional prayers and go absolutely Bat Guano when Catholic educators begin every Goddam meeting with the distribution of xeroxed copies of personal prayers to be read out loud. We got plenty good prayers, but we insist on being the center of the show with a presentation of badly formed words and phrases - "Dear God, the sexually ambiguous Trinity, bless our actions this day as we bring about an end to universal poverty, racism, torture with this day's breaking into groups for discussion and sharing and all kinds of passive aggressive gamesmanship . . .!"
Prayers get answered in God's own manner and with his own brand of theological larceny - "Hickey, the door to back . . .right is open and you already signed in . . .pull a Murphy . . .let Dan know . . . there, see behind the faculty from St. Benedict's? Yes, the doors with exit sign . . . Really, how do you get a fork to your mouth without mutilating yourself? Now, you guys go . . .clear the exit to parking lot . . .wait for the signal . . . the command for heads to drop in Humble supplication . . .Go!"
I am proud on my Church and more than proud to find a pew in the back and off to side at Mass on Sunday and a few days of the week. For the last twenty or thirty years, Catholics have been goaded into becoming Unitarians - Let's call Blessed Virgin Mary Hospital - All Faiths Health Services! No, let's not. Most of the kids at Leo High School are non-Catholic, but they all take Catholic instruction and attend Catholic Mass. Leo High School prays every day, because it is Catholic.
The American Catholic Church in America and every other faith is under attack. The new Pastoral by the American Catholic Bishops clearly road-map the paths to the situation and identify assaults. In subsection of this pastoral the government handcuffs on religious liberty are here -
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty
Religious Liberty Under Attack—Concrete Examples
Is our most cherished freedom truly under threat? Sadly, it is. This is not a theological or legal dispute without real world consequences. Consider the following:
HHS mandate for contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs.The mandate of the Department of Health and Human Services has received wide attention and has been met with our vigorous and united opposition. In an unprecedented way, the federal government will both force religious institutions to facilitate and fund a product contrary to their own moral teaching and purport to define which religious institutions are "religious enough" to merit protection of their religious liberty. These features of the "preventive services" mandate amount to an unjust law. As Archbishop-designate William Lori of Baltimore, Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, testified to Congress: "This is not a matter of whether contraception may beprohibited by the government. This is not even a matter of whether contraception may be supported by the government. Instead, it is a matter of whether religious people and institutions may be forced by the government to provide coverage for contraception or sterilization, even if that violates their religious beliefs."3
State immigration laws. Several states have recently passed laws that forbid what the government deems "harboring" of undocumented immigrants—and what the Church deems Christian charity and pastoral care to those immigrants. Perhaps the most egregious of these is in Alabama, where the Catholic bishops, in cooperation with the Episcopal and Methodist bishops of Alabama, filed suit against the law:
It is with sadness that we brought this legal action but with a deep sense that we, as people of faith, have no choice but to defend the right to the free exercise of religion granted to us as citizens of Alabama. . . . The law makes illegal the exercise of our Christian religion which we, as citizens of Alabama, have a right to follow. The law prohibits almost everything which would assist an undocumented immigrant or encourage an undocumented immigrant to live in Alabama. This new Alabama law makes it illegal for a Catholic priest to baptize, hear the confession of, celebrate the anointing of the sick with, or preach the word of God to, an undocumented immigrant. Nor can we encourage them to attend Mass or give them a ride to Mass. It is illegal to allow them to attend adult scripture study groups, or attend CCD or Sunday school classes. It is illegal for the clergy to counsel them in times of difficulty or in preparation for marriage. It is illegal for them to come to Alcoholic Anonymous meetings or other recovery groups at our churches.4
Altering Church structure and governance. In 2009, the Judiciary Committee of the Connecticut Legislature proposed a bill that would have forced Catholic parishes to be restructured according to a congregational model, recalling the trusteeism controversy of the early nineteenth century, and prefiguring the federal government's attempts to redefine for the Church "religious minister" and "religious employer" in the years since.
Christian students on campus.In its over-100-year history, the University of California Hastings College of Law has denied student organization status to only one group, the Christian Legal Society, because it required its leaders to be Christian and to abstain from sexual activity outside of marriage.
Catholic foster care and adoption services. Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia, and the state of Illinois have driven local Catholic Charities out of the business of providing adoption or foster care services—by revoking their licenses, by ending their government contracts, or both—because those Charities refused to place children with same-sex couples or unmarried opposite-sex couples who cohabit.
Discrimination against small church congregations. New York City enacted a rule that barred the Bronx Household of Faith and sixty other churches from renting public schools on weekends for worship services even though non-religious groups could rent the same schools for scores of other uses. While this would not frequently affect Catholic parishes, which generally own their own buildings, it would be devastating to many smaller congregations. It is a simple case of discrimination against religious believers.
Discrimination against Catholic humanitarian services. Notwithstanding years of excellent performance by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Migration and Refugee Services in administering contract services for victims of human trafficking, the federal government changed its contract specifications to require us to provide or refer for contraceptive and abortion services in violation of Catholic teaching. Religious institutions should not be disqualified from a government contract based on religious belief, and they do not somehow lose their religious identity or liberty upon entering such contracts. And yet a federal court in Massachusetts, turning religious liberty on its head, has since declared that such a disqualification is required by the First Amendment—that the government somehow violates religious liberty by allowing Catholic organizations to participate in contracts in a manner consistent with their beliefs on contraception and abortion.
Here in Chicago, the two daily newspapers fully ignored Francis Cardinal George's statement on Rahm's Chicago Values. It is not about the chicken sandwiches at all. The media wants the Catholic Church in Chicago to obey the meme text maxim -STFU -What about the pedophile scandal? What about it? What has not been said, or done about it? The media washed the homosexuality of the scandal right out of the issue and turned its guns on administration. The pedophile priests weren't looking for Bachelor and the Bobby-Sox-er dates. It was and remains overwhelmingly Man on Boy predation.
Our politicians have all been bought by Planned Parenthood and "baptized Catholic altar boys" like Alderman Proco Joe Moreno do its bidding. Gay Marriage is an adjunct of the abortion industry. The media, never friends of Catholics, cares more about an interview with Governor Pat Quinn than with the leader of one of the largest Catholic populations in America. Chicago's President announced no compromise on contraception and abortion mandates - how about that Pat Quinn, Dick Durbin and the balance of the Illinois Personal PAC elected serfs?
I am a Catholic and I pray everyday -thoughts, words and, I hope, deeds.
Dad always said that I couldn't find my butt with both hands. I can. Allow me to add this imperative -“Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you." - Pope Francis to celebrate Pro-life Mass, Vatican
"You stand up for what you believe in, even if it gets in the way of what other people think. You are proud of yourself and your accomplishments and you enjoy letting people know that."
A peach of a guy with all the sweetness one could expect from a life well-spent and in good company: short on brains but a terrific dancer!
Author:
Every Heart and Hand: A Leo High School Story
The Chorito Hog Leg, Book One: A Novel of Guam in Time of War
Hollywood *created our President through American Mission drift.
