Financial Transaction Tax in France to Pay National Debt - Way to Go

The 0.1% levy will be introduced in August regardless of whether other European countries follow suit. 

The tax is part of a package of measures set out by the president to promote growth and create jobs. 

Mr Sarkozy faces a presidential election in April, but is currently trailing in the opinion polls behind his Socialist rival, Francois Hollande. 

In an interview with French television, Mr Sarkozy said he hoped the tax would push other countries to take action. 

"What we want to do is create a shockwave and set an example that there is absolutely no reason why those who helped bring about the crisis shouldn't pay to restore the finances," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16783520

World Trade Center - Tower One - Progress

http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3672&page=777&p=386959#post386959


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Adultery is Between A Man And A Woman - Defense of Marriage Act

Republican Family Values?  Ask Newt! 


Marriage is Sacred - For other People - the little people - not me.


It is despicable to ask me about my marriages.  I would lie anyway. Like I lied to them.  


Defense of Marriage Act? Adultery is between a man and many women.




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Was Callista Gingrich once a man?

Was Callista once a man?


I am sorry but she does not do anything for me in a missionary fantasy or on her knees kind of way.


Sarah Palin, in spite of her GOP illogic and evangelistic dumbness, I could do.


In the spirit of the 1990s GOP civility standards set by Newt himself and judging if first ladies are murderers or not etc., was Callista ever a man? Inquiring minds want to know.


Where is his/her birth certificate?


So what does Newt see in his third wife?  GOP Family Values are like so really phony, plastic and or closeted if you know what I mean.


I was surprised doing research on the Tiffany line of credit to see that it is also accepted by plastic surgeons in that they also accept gold, diamonds and platinum as payment. 


Plastic surgery is a given.  Massive amounts.  Just look at her. 


But what I found interesting is that sex changes are not only considered optional and not paid for by health insurance but they are also considered as cosmetic surgery.  Is that a correct humanistic perception of the trans gender situation in life?


Since Plastic Newt has a Plastic Wife, does he also have the one and only Man-Man same sex marriage officially sanctioned by the RCC? Secular law recognizes gender change. The Church?
  
Did you check under the hood Cardinal Wuerl before you signed off on that marriage? 


LOL




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Catholic Conscience Speaks Re: Catholics Gingrich Santorum’s Ugly Race and Poverty Hate Rhetoric

An Open Letter to Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum

As Catholic leaders who recognize that the moral scandals of racism and poverty remain a blemish on the American soul, we challenge our fellow Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail. Mr. Gingrich has frequently attacked President Obama as a “food stamp president” and claimed that African Americans are content to collect welfare benefits rather than pursue employment. Campaigning in Iowa, Mr. Santorum remarked: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” Labeling our nation’s first African-American president with a title that evokes the past myth of “welfare queens” and inflaming other racist caricatures is irresponsible, immoral and unworthy of political leaders.

Some presidential candidates now courting “values voters” seem to have forgotten that defending human life and dignity does not stop with protecting the unborn. We remind Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum that Catholic bishops describe racism as an “intrinsic evil” and consistently defend vital government programs such as food stamps and unemployment benefits that help struggling Americans. At a time when nearly 1 in 6 Americans live in poverty, charities and the free market alone can’t address the urgent needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. And while jobseekers outnumber job openings 4-to-1, suggesting that the unemployed would rather collect benefits than work is misleading and insulting.

As the South Carolina primary approaches, we urge Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Santorum and all presidential candidates to reject the politics of racial division, refrain from offensive rhetoric and unite behind an agenda that promotes racial and economic justice.

Francis X. Doyle
Associate General Secretary
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (retired)

Sisters of Mercy of the Americas Institute Leadership Team:
Sisters Patricia McDermott, RSM (President) Eileen Campbell, RSM Anne Curtis, RSM Mary Pat Gavin, RSM Deborah Troillett, RSM

Sister Pat Farrell, OSF
President
Leadership Conference of Women Religious

Rev. Bryan N. Massingale
Associate Professor of Theology
Marquette University

Rev. Clete Kiley
Director for Immigration Policy
UNITE HERE

Rev. Anthony J. Pogorelc, M.Div., Ph.D.
The Catholic University of America
Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies

Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J.
University Chair in Human Rights and International Justice
Boston College

Sr. Patricia J. Chappell, SNDdeN
Executive Director, Pax Christi USA

Marie Dennis
Co-President, Pax Christi International

Rev. John F. Kavanaugh S.J.
Professor of Philosophy
St. Louis University

Rev. Jim Keenan, S.J.
Founders Professor in Theology
Boston College

Rev. Thomas J. Reese, S.J.
Senior Fellow
Woodstock Theological Center
Georgetown University

Sister Mary Ellen Howard
Executive Director
Cabrini Clinic, Detroit

Rev. James E. Hug, S.J.
President
Center of Concern

Sister Simone Campbell
Executive Director
NETWORK, A Catholic Social Justice Lobby

Steven Schneck
Director
Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies
The Catholic University of America

Sister Karen M. Donahue, RSM
Justice Team
Sisters of Mercy West Midwest Community

Sister Mary Ann Hinsdale
Assoc. Prof. of Theology
Boston College

Tom Allio
Cleveland Diocesan Social Action Director (retired)

M. Shawn Copeland
Associate Professor of Theology
Boston College

Sister Maria Riley, OP
Senior Advisor
Center of Concern

Todd Whitmore
Associate Professor
Department of Theology
University of Notre Dame

Terrence W. Tilley
Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Professor of Catholic Theology
Chair
Theology Department
Fordham University, Bronx, NY

Michael E. Lee
Associate Professor
Theology Department
Fordham University, Bronx, NY

Paul Lakeland
Aloysius P. Kelley S.J. Professor of Catholic Studies
Director, Center for Catholic Studies Fairfield University

Lisa Sowle Cahill
Monan Professor of Theology
Boston College

Eric LeCompte
Board Member
Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good

Tobias Winright
Associate Professor of Theological Ethics
Saint Louis University

Christopher Pramuk
Assistant Professor of Theology
Xavier University, Cincinnati

John Sniegocki
Associate Professor of Christian Ethics
Xavier University, Cincinnati

Kathleen Maas Weigert
Carolyn Farrell, BVM Professor of Women and Leadership
Loyola University, Chicago

Daniel K. Finn
Professor of Theology and Economics
St. John’s University, Minnesota

Gerald J. Beyer
Associate Professor of Christian Social Ethics
Department of Theology and Religious Studies
Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia

Jeannine Hill Fletcher
Associate Professor of Theology
Faculty Director
Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice
Fordham University, Bronx, NY

Sister Mary Ann Hinsdale
Assoc. Prof. of Theology
Boston College

John Inglis
Professor and Chair
Department of Philosophy
University of Dayton

Anthony B. Smith
Associate Professor
Department of Religious Studies
University of Dayton

David O’Brien
University Professor of Faith and Culture
University of Dayton

William L. Portier
Mary Ann Spearin Chair of Catholic Theology
University of Dayton

Alex Mikulich
Research Fellow
Jesuit Social Research Institute
Loyola University, New Orleans

Susan M. Weishar
Migration Specialist
Jesuit Social Research Institute
Loyola University

Kristin Heyer
Associate Professor
Religious Studies
Santa Clara University

James Salt
Executive Director
Catholics United

Vincent Miller
Professor of Religious Studies
University of Dayton

Nancy Dallavalle
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Religious Studies
Fairfield University

http://www.faithinpu...ce-and-poverty/

Schlichter Jute and Rope, Harrowgate, Philadelphia

circa 1900

1930

http://fieldnotesphilly.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/schlichter/


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Despicable Newt - GOP's Perfect Angry White Male

I really don't care if Newt Gingrich is a male slut and a serial adulterer, born again Catholic etc.


All I know is that he, more than any other living American, had more to do, in the nineties, with debasing the level of civility in the American Town Square.  And all that loss of civility marked up as the cost of power, to make him Speaker of the House.


I don't care about the Christian myth of sin and forgiveness.  If he is a new man, wonderful.


Newt's blowjobs in adultery in the past apparently are now  less despicable than Clinton's blowjobs in adultery.


Typical mean spirited GOP Family Values.


And for the GOP audience to stand in applause at the perfect angry man.  What you see is what you get.



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Fake Mustard Seed Parable -- Greco-Roman Urban Legend?

I happen to like mustard as a condiment.  Researching it, I see its history as both a condiment and a medicinal herb going back to ancient Rome and Egypt.

Problem with that is that it had always been a rich man’s condiment in ancient days and all the way up until Columbus.  Indeed the whole Columbus thing of going out of the superstitious Christian European box was a marketing strategy to obtain greater market share and greater market profits out of the spice trade that had been disrupted by the collapse of the Center of the Christian World in Constantinople in 1453. Center of the European distribution network too regarding the spice trade from the far east.

Greed was the motivating factor in Columbus’ zeal to find a shorter trade route to India.

When I read the parable of the Mustard Seed in the synoptic Gospels I wonder why a simple man of the people, a day laborer, a migrant homeless man in the form of Jesus, why he would preach to the simple masses, mostly farmers and goatherds etc. about the very complex and exotic spice trade item from India such as mustard and or the mustard seed.

I understand the power of metaphor, the power to illustrate a small lurching into the big, to illustrate some other point.

Indeed, I feel certain that the Jesus-y feel of the mustard seed parable has an overlaying stink of an urban scholar that knows all the aspects of primitive botany from books and also commodity profits of an earthy sounding farm product that Jesus must have had knowledge of, but probably did not.

In fact, in one of the synoptic passages, the mustard seed parable is preceded by a parable of weeds among wheat.  While an urban dweller who wrote this mustard seed parable might stick his nose up at weeds, many weeds are indeed edible and the poor, the starving unentitled poor, Jesus’ poor, would have gathered up many of those weeds separated eventually from the wheat and ate them.  Survival makes more sense than urban vested scholarship in the early church’s reconstruction of a holy man who few if any recorded any details about.

Not only eat the weeds, but dry the ones that were not edible and use them as fuel, not burn them up foolishly like waste in an urban middle class garden.

Mustard, where it can grow, not the Holy Land, is also considered a weed.

A middle class Greco-Roman urban garden view of the natural world?

Confused mixed message from early paid for Jesus scholars? Greco-Roman urban myths? Faulty creationist type middle class science? If it sounds good in an abstract middle class context, it must be true.


Problem with scholars, urban middle class scholars, like the ones involved with the Jesus  Seminar, who have signed off on makes sense, sounds like middle class, myths like the Mustard Seed parable, is that they are middle class and see the whole world with their born to, ingrained way of looking at the world. 

This middle class urban way of looking at Jesus, invention then and still now, is an interesting illustration of the human condition but it is not the true Jesus. 

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Opus Dei vs. Opus Meum – Rick “Fecal Matter” and GOP go off a Cliff

The Opus Dei candidate for President, Rick “Fecal Matter”, is doing remarkably well on a spike from a weekend endorsement from lunatic fundies on a Texas ranch.

Below is an attack ad probably paid for with freshly laundered Opus Dei funds.  While I agree that both political parties in America are going off the cliff, Rick Santorum is no messiah and or Jack Kennedy.

I don’t care if Rick privately tortures himself to get mythical grace for his many, many sins, most of which are based on basic human ignorance and an allergy to empathy and or compassion.

On the matter of a dying Christian church putting up Rick to push what is left of the human race off a cliff, perhaps the solutions all along to humanity’s problems lie with Humanity and Secularism – OPUS MEUM – Work of Humanity, me and mine.

Have a full rich wonderful secular day. 

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Roman Empire Was Not Green

Don’t mistake later memes on the timeline.  Don’t insult Jews or early Christians with the lording over the animals in a wrong way now, as opposed to original context in Genesis.

One of the themes I have come to in my research and writing is that the Roman Empire was not Green.

Rome hated nature as evidenced by its military, numbers only, Julian calendar that abandoned the moon and or feminine (balanced) concept connected to nature.

By turning sex into a body function to serve the state, Rome, like the present Roma Nova American/European empire culture and its Roman Church, has turned sex into a commodity to be monitored, censored, taxed and exploited.

If Christianity is to survive in the west, it must go to its pre-Constantine roots and adore the abundance of gifts of a loving God to her children and abandon the reptilian chaos and natural imbalance caused by the Roman military mind.

Ref: Terry Weldon on Catholic Magisterial Teaching about Human Sexuality: Animal Considerations

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Darwin's Box

I think that Darwin's box, which is a good metaphor, expanded the possibility of thoughts regarding science way out of the ball park in terms of 19th century western thought. If you stick you neck out, think outside the present box, and are proven right with your theories, then the box of reality expands for everyone. 

In fact, I think using the same metaphor, that the Creationists' box, ability to perceive or understand, is merely a pedestal that Charles Darwin is standing on in his new box IMO. 

I use the time, dating, calendar idea to expand perception, in reaction to the really dull loop arguments I read over and over again from creationists. A little bit like rants from Mao's little red book. The calendar I mention is the year 152 A.D.I. (After Darwin' Idea). The Gregorian calendar with its start date of Jesus, if he existed, being born around 4-6 B.C.E., is a built in unproven prejudice used in the arguments of the fundies, who with that calendar then do not expand thought, but collapse backwards into a six thousand year old fishbowl/universe. Duh!

The playing field, the arguments pro and con on creationism and intelligent design, the ground rules need to be expanded. Most people start and end in frustration with them because many  assume the present world is real, that Jesus is two thousand years old etc. Actually to get political here, if you try to ask for Jesus's birth certificate from them, they will hold up the book that they worship. 

In a way, in a modern scientific way, at least we know or have stronger evidence that Charles Darwin actually existed with papers, photos, portraits, biographies, written certifiable court room testimony type witnesses etc. A better starting point for a western calendar. The eastern world, philosophies, time etc. is another can of worms all together. 

Regarding the bible, during my long term search, research into faith, spirituality, I ran into a blog of a homeless man in Nashville who no doubt was running it on a computer interface at the local public library. He said, being a person who had to smile when getting handouts, food, survival, from the fundamentalists and in reaction to their preaching, evangelization, he said something to the effect that these people worship the physical book itself. Mumbling the words in it and not understanding them and repeating them over and over again is in a way not their faith but really their idol. 

And a final note on Darwin. A business psychologist in college whose insights I found interesting defined Great Men as men who made the world see itself differently. In the context of recent history, he defined people like Einstein, Gandhi and Darwin as great men because they changed the world with their POV. They in essence helped change the world's POV.

The problem I get with all fundies and the creationists in particular is that they have no respect for other people's POV. It is all a war mentality. Expand or collapse.

(What is the difference between General Moses, General Constantine and General Mohammed? None. They all founded religions of peace.) (sarcasm)






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Obama (American) Creed *

Do nothing.

Attend church and pray away the gay.

Floss and tithe.

Be prepared for The Rapture.

Clean your gun.

Always support and protect your local billionaire.

Don't use contraceptives or have an abortion.

Tell on those who do.

Keep your head down.

Don't get sick.

If you do, die quickly.

God has been outsourced

(to China)

People. What’s people?

Dumb it down.

Too big to fail.

Too big to jail. 

Too Big to Change.

Harvard diploma.

Get out of jail free card.

Size matters.

Color matters.

Money matters.

Gifts/bribes matter.

Habeus Corpus sucks.

Gitmo is eternal.

Me and Lincoln were corporate lawyers.

Death of the American Dream? 

**** you, I got mines. 

(ay-men)

*(lines 1-9 by "Spanner", Internet)






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Vatican Plot to Kill Lincoln?

Robert Redford had done a great social service in shedding some fresh light on a forgotten darkened corner of American history in directing The Conspirator.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0968264/

The movie centers around the trial for treason/murder of civilians and or spies in times of war in a military tribunal.

The movie is a bit too thoughtful for the average dumbed down American but then again I could be wrong.  The young these days of course get their history from the cinema, and not from any boring dumbed down classroom and for that I am grateful that Mr. Redford has kept an ember of our history alive in this historic period piece to all that seek it.

This is perhaps both a movie review of sorts and a social commentary on the state of America then and now.

Lincoln was the bastard that suspended Habeas Corpus in time of war, same as what Obama did a week or two ago regarding the so-called PR War on Terror.  Of course John Wilkes Booth, an actor, killed Lincoln, made him a martyr, made him a saint, and a demi-god as only republics can make gods by giving him a Zeus like temple for worship and remembrance  on the Mall in Washington D.C..

Redford, with this script, touches very briefly on the fact that one of the main conspirators in the plot to kill Lincoln, John Surratt, was given sanctuary by the RC church and whisked off to Europe to serve in the Pope's personal bodyguard in the Vatican.

The Conspirator reveals a less than glorious defense of the secular plot to assassinate Lincoln by a nest of Confederate spies at Mrs. Mary Surratt's boarding house in Washington D.C..

If it was a new line of defense to tell the story, okay.  But as a  story line to say that Mary Surratt did not deserve to be the first woman officially hanged in the United States, not okay.  And of course there were those witch hangings in Salem Massachusetts around 1690 before there was a United States as an aside.

The line is that John Surratt, son of Mary Surratt, as a Confederate courier/spy had only plotted with John Wilkes Booth to kidnap Lincoln and not kill him is weak at best.  That Booth probably did at the last minute conceive of the assassination as revenge for the surrender of General Lee to General Grant is the probable truth and he, Booth quickly gathered his former kidnap conspirators to join him in this last minute enterprise.

The story does go against possible perjured testimony that saw John Surratt outside Ford's Theater on the night of the assassination. That Surratt was out of town, and already in Montreal on his way to Rome? That his mother, playing the Catholic martyr, did not push for her son to return. That she in fact was a scapegoat in a much larger unseen international political plot involving the U.S.A., the C.S.A and the Vatican.

Kevin Kline gives a very powerful performance as micro-manager Secretary of War Stanton who held the government together at a critical moment of potential national crisis.  That Stanton orchestrated the trial of civilians in a military court is the underlying message of Redford's film. That we must give heavy thought to the consequences of signing away Habeas Corpus as two former corporate lawyers Lincoln and Obama did.  To not surrender our rights so lightly or carelessly.

That Mary Surratt was taken from her house and imprisoned and tried on the direct orders of Stanton, I do not disagree with.  That a kangeroo like military court was convened to satisfy the blood lust of a nation confused by a confusing ending to a confusing corporate war between the northern industrialists and bankers against the southern plantation owners and their European/Vatican bankers.  That in reality if Stanton had not done what he did, a mob would probably have hung Marry Surratt from her own tree or the nearest city lamppost.  Enough said.

As for the Vatican conspiracy, no doubt Pius IX was glad to see Lincoln dead.  I don't see anything more than tea, sympathy and perhaps a little enabling gold from the Vatican to the South on any real plot to kill Lincoln.

My seeing the movie and subsequent research makes me think that perhaps some historian has already noted the timeline thing with a possible Jesuit worldwide spy network telling special friend and Catholic educated Jefferson Davis of Lincoln's intention to sign the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.

That Jefferson's September 1862 Letter to Pius IX and Pius' unbelievably quick December 1862 reply to his dear friend and President of the Confederacy Davis was an attempt to offset Lincoln and his propaganda victory regarding the theoretical freeing of the slaves in the South by that executive proclamation.

Oh well.

I only recommend the movie if you are a heavy history buff.

Have a nice day.

John Surratt photo in his Vatican Uniform

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