FLP Collection.
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Showing posts with label Philadelphia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philadelphia. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Thursday, March 12, 2020
Pro Spanish Influenza Liberty Loan Parade and Rally in Philly - October 18, 1919 - Public Ledger 19 Oct 1918
Click on Photo to see Full Image.
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Sunday, February 9, 2020
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Winter Circus Building - NE Broad and Cherry Streets - 1891
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Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Who Truly Won in the Papal Elections of 1978 - the CIA or the KGB?
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| Downtown Philadelphia Street Corner Billboards 1971 * |
Putting aside some truly false and or misleading family oral history about a very distant cousin and the Archbishopric chair in Philadelphia, I have to reconsider making some real and or (my?) imaginary cross referencing of facts "sacred" and or profane "secular".
Two glaring facts stick out in my mind in the last two years, with consideration of the long term plannings of the RC church and the Czar's Private Secret Police, the KGB. Isn't it a marvel how institutional or ganizations like the RC church and or the Czar's gatekeeping Bodyguards go on and on like a law of physics, once set in motion.
And since all politics and religion are LOCAL, let me mention two things.
The official PR line of a snake like Donald Trump that he took a million dollar loan from daddy and starting flipping trash properties in Philly while a student at Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania is total bullshit.
The extra truth that many liars throw into the story, any story, is that Donald's name is not on any Philly deeds or records is because he did not want to make the prices go up. A real flipper would want the name thing to go around, to start a trend, and then have other real estate investors get on a gentrification Ponzi scheme of sorts and the first in to cash out as the later investors come along pay much more.
Like I say, I lay claim to it, that Trump paid back daddy with profits from money laundering probably first with the Philly mob, the Angelo Bruno crowd, and very familiar with the then Police Chief and later Mayor Frank Rizzo back then in 1967. And then when Donald got in over his head, like he does on every thing he does, he found a friendly front for the KGB and or they found him is more accurate and the M.O. of Trump INC was established with the brilliant Wharton Student Trump and the gentlemenly "Cs" (never really earned in any way shape or form) of an I-V school @Penn, and an "ivy league school" being in folk or origin myth being one of seven or eight American college institutions in existence before the American Revolution and or break with British Rule.
So getting back to Vatican murder and backstabbing and the usual shit thereabouts in Rome, I always wondered why one of my distant cousins, as a popular Irish American auxiliary bishop of Philadelphia did not succeed Cardinal O'Hara upon his death. ???
And then all of a sudden, the Polish Catholic minority in Philly, and not the Irish majority of RCs takes front stage with an auxiliary bishop from Cleveland (Cleveland !?) taking over the archbishop's chair in Philly.
Joe McShea did not have to bear any or much embarrassment as a very popular auxiliary bishop in Philly, who delivered the eulogy at (Saint) Mother Katherine Drexel's funeral, and serve the new Pollack archbishop by getting an almost instant consolation prize of five northern counties (mostly coal country) of the Philly archdiocese in "upstate" Pennsylvania, by being named First bishop of the newly created Diocese of Allentown Pennsylvania. Or the grand duchy of Allentown as a reward to Joe from his once time boss, Papal Nuncio to the United States for 25 years, 1933-1959.
Amleto Giovanni Cicognani (24 February 1883 – 17 December 1973)
And also a good friend of Amleto's older brother Gaetano to whom Joe McShea as a seminarian in Rome would nightly read in private to the poorly sighted Gaetano in his papal apartments, or so the might be faulty family oral history goes. (in that family history, the older brother was much older, not two years older, and almost legally blind and could no longer read lengthy dogmatic documents without assistance etc.)
Gaetano Cicognani (26 November 1881 – 5 February 1962)
No problem for Secretary of State Amleto Cicognani of the Vatican to carve out a new diocese in Pennsylvania and move a few chess pieces around the American political landscape like auxiliary bishop John Krol into Archbishop John Krol of Philadelphia.
All well and good, and I have written about John Krol being one of the foremost starters of the American Culture War about Birth Control and Abortion after Humanae Vitae, RC encyclical regarding Command State Economy control over the reproductive product of the female part of the male / female unit of the species aka Man.
I say all this to condense with what I have stated many times and in many ways over the years here on my blogs, about how Archbishop John Krol wanted to be the first American pope and how he relentlessly campaigned years after year and took trips to third world countries where First Pennsylvania Bank and the infamous John Bunting was loaning money to the third world for fees and bonuses and no longer making little mortgages and little to moderate to large size business loans in Philadelphia. The money was in the fees and bonuses and the State Department implied no doubt in private off the book meetings with Bunting that the U.S. Government would never let John or First Pennsylvania go under giving loans that would never, could never be repaid from countries the U.S. Government had once looked kindly upon in the hopes of thwarting the spread of godless and capitalist-less belief systems.
Problem with Bunting was that he was not I-V league. A graduate of local Temple. He actually had commuted to college. No network of I-V buddies at State or Treasury to help a guy out when the real bills came due at his Philly bank, one of the oldest in the country btw.
And I have written how Archbishop Krol was bankrolled on his trips to Asia, and Africa, and making substantial in those days contributions of like 50k to start RC hospitals and RC colleges and RC seminaries in these very poor, poor nations. And in the hopes of swaying some local Asian and or African Cardinal to vote for him as pope once Paul VI died. etc.
That Krol was bankrolled by a Polish American Multimillionaire and businessman John Piszek, originally from Chicago and later Philadelphia who was a founder of Mrs. Paul's Frozen Seafood, a business started btw while on strike to make some off the books cash selling crab cakes at local bars in Philly on weekends. And the business took off but they named the business after his partner Mr. Paul because it was an Anglo sounding name and not Polish which was thought not to be a good PR name to sell frozen seafood with. Piszek with the millions rolling in starting in the 1950s after he bought out Mr. Paul, his partner, was forever bitter that his name, an immigrant name, was not good enough to make it big in American business. He compensated and began to give money away to all causes Polish, locally and abroad. Archbishop Krol and getting him as the first Polish American Pope to be elected and which is why I speculate that the Papal Nuncio saw some merit in giving Krol the first Archbishop's seat that became available and that usually got a red hat with it eventually, was a logical thing, and after much cash no doubt got funneled into Polish RC church projects and charities in Poland behind the Iron Curtain. etc.
And then with all the cash rolling into the Vatican for projects in Poland, they gave Amleto Cicognani a dispensation to become Cardinal, it not being allowed under the rules that sent the RC into a tailspin in the Reformation, because his brother was already a Cardinal. Brother, Nephew, what was the difference in giving power to your crony relatives. And Amleto becomes Secretary of State of the Vatican in 1961.
I have often wondered considering the almost miraculous, with no mortal help, in the rise of auxiliary Bishop John Krol to become a contender in the 1978 papal elections, if he had the dream on his own or if somebody had whispered in his ear the dream that he could one day become the first Polish American Pope with a little help from his friends like John Piszek and Amleto Cicognani. Wink. Nod.
Which makesme wonder, with cash coming into Poland from the west via the Vatican etc. how Karol Wojtyla also may have gotten the idea that he too could become the first Polish Polish Pope with a little help from his friends. While the Vatican made its members pray every Sunday after mass for the conversion of Russia to Christianity, the real big chuck of RC R/E the Vatican would like to start with in that conversion to the Russians from Communism back into Orthodox back into Roman Christians, that the Catholic prize of Poland was possible but maybe the money of Mrs. Paul's fish sticks was not enough and maybe other sources of funds would have to be found to create networks to revive and or sustain unions that would likely first be the force to make any real changes in a Worker's State like Poland.
And I have to wonder if the former Papal Nuncio to the United States 1933-1959 had made any worthwhile secular contacts in Washington DC over the years like at the State Department and or the dare I say it - the CIA.
That between the puppet master Amleto Cicognani in the west and the east whispering temptation into the ears of gullible Polish clerics, that maybe the long term planning of the CIA was becoming a match for the old long term planning of the Czar's secret police aka the KGB.
Wojtyla was already a player with the KGB, he could play ball and not threaten the state and the state let him play dressed up cleric for some of the masses and proclaim a free state for all the workers and their perhaps private beliefs. Whatever.
I have often wondered about Wojtyla's resume about being associated with the resistance during WWII and in occupied slave state Poland and his survival as a worker in a stone quarry etc. Anybody can put anything on a resume. Like flipping houses in Philly on the QT and anonymously is just as good as "Freedom Fighter" on the PR releases after the Polish American Cardinal relinquished his block of Pope Votes to the Polish Polish Cardinal in 1978 after the mysterious death of the last Italian Italian pope. And anybody can flip themselves while being played as a pawn in Global Political Chess - flip as in double agents and or triple agents of the KGB etc. - comrades and brothers in Christ?
And the collateral damage, messes to be cleaned up by the masses caused from players, past their prime and also dead, still hanging around from those 1960s - 1970s games of chess here forty and fifty years later.
Whatever.
Shrug.
* Culture War Billboard Philadelphia
Thursday, June 28, 2018
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
Cowardly Racists Emerge From The Shadows of America -- Santorum: Obama exacerbated racism -- Officials to investigate alleged racial discrimination at pool of Philadelphia swim club
I quit FB because I had no real friends there, save for one or two. I no longer talk to the victimizing older brother who still has my mother's ashes in a closet there in Phoenix years after I offered to pay half of the cost of shipping her body to be in a grave with our father in Bucks County Pa - he my "brother" among former online "friends".
The thing about FB is that I joined a few groups related to Philly centered on neighborhoods. One was of the greater area of Kensington and one on the narrower neighborhood of Harrowgate, an invented Railroad Burb of the 1880s within Philadelphia County which eventually became the factory town that I grew up in. I quit the Kensington FB forum after someone made a nice comment on the poet Maya Angelou after her death, a poet of which I had no particular fondness in her writings, but the anonymous - they did have their full names on FB - but I did not know them except as "friend" of a "friend" response or hatred of a black female poet. (and I only recently bothered to read a Wikipedia bio of Maya to realize what a monumental life she had led even if I was not previously aware of it etc.) Well I shy away from conflict. That and later in life realizing that I have had a touch or more of A.D.D. all my life which in retrospect explains why I have not been more successful in my life of trial and error false start runs for the money. That many times for me and my memory, a word like "spatialize" would send me to a dictionary in fear of my unknown ADD to be discovered or looked down upon in comments by Ph'ds or worse I-V league trained lawyers in forums that I did not really belong in. Should know my place in life this late in life for "my kind".
Well I shied away from Kensington FB after the white jackals got their jollies off chewing up the bones of the person who thought it appropriate to say a simple RIP to a black poet on FB. I quit that "Forum". That over time, the FB crowd talk a lot of code and the "they ruined the old neighborhood" talk told me that a lot of people I grew up with and did not grow or accept others in their own right and or light of the divine within that the Quakers rhetoric be prone to in the Quaker subculture context of Philly.
PC Curtain in the Temple now Torn in half in America with the LEADER now in the WH.
Recently this Jerk Off Opus Dei Catholic X-senator Santorum of Pennsylvania shows up on the Jerk Off Fox Network wanting to show and share his dirty tighty whitey racists tracks, share them with his friends, like papal royalty like Countess Annie Leary like Newt Gingrich where it can be purchased as in bought and sold ambassadorships and hang out in the white teenage country club locker room to share w/ brotherhood members of the Dick memories of their conquests over c**ts and n****** and democrats - context...
Rick Santorum did not live in Pennsylvania when he was senator from that Alabama North turf. He lived in Virginia where his children could attend daily mass at his Opus Dei suburb of purity.
Of course my relatives went to Montgomery county in 1964, after the local Philly riots and I have not seen or spoken to them since, me be poor and not therefore not white enough for them I think. The incident mentioned below in Huntington Valley Pa., right over the Philly city line, where they live, happened before with the mixup on scheduling and the black kids upsetting the delusion of safety in the burbs in the 90s or the 00s - even pools needs cash flow even if it from the city budget of that distant place where inferior people live etc.
This time, it blew up almost as a flashpoint of toxic flammable hate being ignited by Obama at this pool in July 2009 which I think in some bizarre way of Catholic College Education in America these days means what Santorum sadly genuinely believes what he is saying. Anointed white penised Christian males tell no lies? Obama did indeed exacerbate racism simply by being born and being himself and of course being POTUS.
Sad how America in its best parts, the burbs do not know how to retire, leave the next generation to deal with the day to day stuff, live and let live like the rest of planet, and enjoy the multi-culturalism as it exists in big northern and west coast cities. Sad how some successful white men who are workaholics and lonely and cannot retire and relax end up like people like Anthony Bourdain who are talented with the gift of the gab and have skills and have never matured past adolescence into adulthood. Good luck with obscurity Rick. And your lonely old age when yours kids discover their freedom from your putrid chains. Whatever.
Santorum: Obama exacerbated racism
Santorum responded by saying that it was actually Obama who used the presidency to fan the flames of racism.
“Many people saw Barack Obama being just that, doing more to exacerbate racism,” Santorum said.
Asked exactly what Obama did to exacerbate racism, Santorum said that “every time someone of color was involved, he took the side, many times, against the police.”
"He did it over and over and over again,” Santorum added. “President Obama was to many people out there someone who could have come together, brought this country together.”
Santorum has often shied away from criticizing Trump and instead chosen to focus on Obama.
Last month, he brushed off questions about false claims from Trump and said that Obama told more substantial lies.
Officials to investigate alleded racial discrimination at pool of Philadelphia swin club
"A couple of the children ran down saying, 'Miss Wright, Miss Wright, they're up there saying, "What are those black kids doing here?""' she said.
The gated club is on a leafy hillside in a village that straddles two townships with overwhelmingly white populations. It says it has a diverse, multiethnic membership.
Wright said she went to talk to a group of members and heard one woman say she would see to it that the group, made of up of children in kindergarten through seventh grade, did not return.
"Some of the members began pulling their children out of the pool and were standing around with their arms folded," Wright said. "Only three members left their children in the pool with us."
Several days later, the club refunded the camp's $1,950 without explanation, said Wright, who added that some parents are "weighing their options" on legal action.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
The Pope Hangover in Philly
The Pope
Hangover in Philly
On a local
Philly forum I follow there had been a lot of anxiety of Philly in turmoil over
a once in a generation happening centered around the local Archdiocese and it
World Family Conference – selling the definition of marriage and staking out
moral authority over it in the hopes of charging eternal royalties, added to
the company coffers, not unlike the Disney people forever repackaging Mickey
Mouse to each new generation as something completely new and unique etc.
The anxiety
in many was that for all practical purposes, this private religious group, the
Roman Catholics, had declared temporary eminent domain of a large portion of
downtown Philadelphia for the purpose of a street fair and or religious ritual.
The Franklin Parkway is the one beautiful planned section of downtown leading
from the Second Empire city hall, larger than the U.S. Capitol building btw,
cut on a diagonal to the northwest to any old plateau that once served as the
city’s main reservoir and now has the ornate Greek style art museum built on
top of that old hill. The hill of course is the reason for dozens of steps in
front and immortalized in cinema by the movie Rocky.
The
archdiocese no doubt wanted the Parkway with its many museums and classical style
public buildings along its classical ala Paris style dimensions of a grand
boulevard to tart up the centuries old rituals that fit in with the modern
Vatican marketing program to present a pope in the rockstar, large ground,
grand doobie concert settings for the marketing and sale of the product.
The locals
with their houses and condos were trapped in a no drive zone that the invading
archbishop from Denver had staked out to tart up his reputation and eternal
campaign for the red hat.
Daily bulletins
from the local authorities with varying levels of local, state and federal levels
of authority made it very confusing how one would or could function in the
middle of a commandeered concert site/zone.
I have seen
literally dozens of the latest maps in recent weeks showing the latest no man’s
land without a pass land surrounding these people’s homes and private live – “Private
lives matter”. That and the threat of having your automobile temporarily confiscated
and towed if parked in the wrong zone. That and a fee for a retrieval of your
car from some improvised car impound lot anywhere in the city on the docks
being shipped to Saudi Arabia care of the local mob.
Many simply
wanted to escape if they could and go out of the city to avoid the tourist mess
with the Pope Show. That with a secondary thought that your home might be robbed
in your absence, that in an area protecting the Pope Show and not anybody’s
local property per say.
One comment
on the disaster of the mismanaged twisted mess of the local SouthEast
Pennsylvania Transportation Authority S.E.P.T.A. during the Pope’s visit to the
city.
According to my Septa conductor friend, he says the whole
pope weekend was horrible.
To quote him: "tons of lack-of-communication, foul-ups, and bitching over who had to do what jobs... a real nuthouse of dumb Septa officials!"
To quote him: "tons of lack-of-communication, foul-ups, and bitching over who had to do what jobs... a real nuthouse of dumb Septa officials!"
And there
was the question of who was going to pay for all the extra security associated
with a public event with an international head of state present. New York and Washington are used to these big
state events with the Federal Government in DC and the United Nations in New
York. Philly is just in so many ways since the opening of the Erie Canal – an east
coast city with no discernible mission statement or purpose.
For many
months of negotiations with the city, the corporation responsible for the World
Family conference and its bills, the figure was something like 45 million
dollars. Reading the forum over time, this figure kept floating in the air as
the event approached. One interesting thing
was that the World Family conference had a grace period of six months following
the event to reimburse the city for expenses of their temporary occupation of
downtown Philly.
The final figure the RCs jewed the city down to was $12
million dollars now that it had become an international and partially state
event and the state and federal government, via the FBI and Secret Service was
picking up a hefty piece of the real costs of having Pope Francis give his
marketing performance on the Parkway.
Nothing in the forum if the AD was going to reimburse the
state of Pennsylvania or the Feds. I somehow doubt it. And since this private
tax free religion club has no fiscal accountability I can only guess where the rest
of the 45 million after the 12 million deduction for expense went, as it was
supposedly already pledged by private and corporate donations to the event. (Let’s
close another local parish says the out of town Archbishop from Denver via one
of his infamous “blue ribbon commissions” handling this or that real estate
detail in the AD’s portfolio.)
Because of
all the shutting down of this public service train lines, bus lines, bridge
access for security reasons etc. is why the final crowd of the Pope’s public
mass was closer to half a million to six hundred thousand instead of the
original estimated one million crowd.
Of course,
it was the post 911 security blanket as to why Francis did not shine like a
saint like John Paul II and his past performance in Philly. It was not that
religion in this Millennial driven tech world is hard pressed to compete in the
entertainment and spirituality market with the young and not so gullible.
All this
haggling over money for a Pope Show goes back to 1979 when the fascist I-talian
A-merican mayor Frank Rizzo, the former racist police overseer chief, who built
a public platform over the Logan Circle Fountain on the Parkway at city expense
for JPII’s mass, and was challenged in the courts for doing so – separation of
church and state and all that – and eventually the Archdiocese was forced to reimburse
the city something like $300,000 for wood and labor.
The price of extra
security from the city, state and Feds for that 1979 SuperStar event never got
addressed etc.
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Thursday, May 14, 2015
Monday, March 24, 2014
The Human Touch and Purpose - 85 years Young and Still Going - Blasius Chocolates Harrowgate Philly
Bless the human spirit and the need to contribute to the productivity of the Community@!
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| Gloria |
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Sunday, November 17, 2013
Saint Michael as Angel of Resurrection - Penna. Railroad WWII Memorial - 30th Street Station Philadelphia
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| Angel of Resurrection - Walter Hancock - Museum of Fine Arts Boston - Sculpture Model . |
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Harrowgate Easter Basket - 1960
This started the other night when Jimmy Kimmel had built a Peeps gun
and was shooting Peeps out into his late night TV audience.
Peeps are kind of an iconic waste product that comes out in
marketing every Easter and most people I believe are not fond of them other than
for their nostalgic value from childhood. Biting into one of them is the oral equivalent I think of listening to the screeching of a piece of chalk on a chalk board.
They come in colors now. They used to be many decades ago only
yellow and decorated my Easter morning basket.
One each I think we got. The whole Easter basket thing is another
thing I as a parent recreated to a younger generation without much appreciation
for the hand me tradition thing.
Stepping back a few weeks before Easter in my youth in the last
century was the nuns in the grade school issuing every child from grade 1 to 8
an Easter Egg Gambling punch card thing where for a nickel or a dime you sold a
box, a circle with a designated name.
The lucky person who had the winning name
revealed after you sold all your peeled away red dots would be revealed behind
the big red circle at the top of the gambling card.
These cards, along with Bingo were a very Catholic thing to raise
funds for the school and or parish and under no circumstances could be
confessed in the confessional as the sin of gambling. There was a special dispensation for it of
course!
The prize(?) was a coconut crème Easter egg with its dense
confection surrounded by dark milk chocolate.
The appeal of these eggs I believe was with the older generations and strangely
too with my older siblings who could not get enough of them when chopped up
with some difficulty with a big butcher knife from the kitchen.
I usually gave my coconut crème egg away in
pieces, not desperate enough personally to consume more than just the first awful
taste of it.
Luckily when I reached eight or nine, they now had hollow chocolate
bunnies in boxes which my parents let me have in lieu of the coconut crème thing. No doubt the hollow bunnies, new to the
market then, were cheaper to purchase.
The baskets with filled with the usual colored hard boiled eggs,
decorated the previous day on Saturday with a egg coloring kit, color fizzy
tablets, wax crayon and wire loop egg holder that cost a dime everywhere in the
neighborhood stores.
The real thing about chocolate that I loved in my basket was with the
Hershey Kisses which were rationed to like a half dozen. The whole product was
expensive and marketed differently back then. Quality not quantity and coming
in a small cellophane bag.
So now, we have the Peep, chocolate hollow bunny, Hershey kisses.
Of course, there were jelly beans in an improvised aluminum foil shaped cup and
the thing I loved most was the chocolate covered marshmallow eggs wrapped in
colored silver foil which my father purchased special in a store off of K &
A south in one of those stores with steps leading up into the storefront of an
old house.
I believe he may have been purchasing the foil covered chocolate
marshmallows at the same place since his youth. Of all the things in the sacred
Easter basket, this purchase and these handmade marshmallow eggs with the most preciously
thought of by all.
That into a basket with plastic colored hay. Each of us had a
reserved color and I cannot remember my specific color at the moment.
One other thing, the baskets themselves, used every year and made of
natural materials looked their age and use. My father would go to the local
Easter Flower stand selling Easter plants, the kind you gave to your
grandmother, and he would purchase the colored aluminum foil sheets used to
wrap and decorate clay pots holding the seasonal plants. This foil, again
following the color reserved theme, got wrapped onto tired old wicker Easter
baskets.
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Monday, February 18, 2013
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Philadelphia - Market Street Wharf With Ferry Boats "Baltic" And "Artic" Docked At the Pier – circa 1881
…the "America," which was built on the flats then north of Market street, midway between Front street and Delaware avenue, and launched July 11, 1868. The "America" with the "Mechanic" and "West Jersey" constituted the equipment until the advent of the newer and more pretentious boats with which we are now familiar. The "Columbia" was built in 1876, the "Arctic" in 1879, and the "Baltic" in 1881. …
The rate of fare on all the ferry boats between Camden and Philadelphia was on January 1, 1880, reduced to three cents a trip, or nine tickets for twenty five cents. On August 26 1920 the fare was raised to four cents a trip, or eight tickets for thirty cents.
Old Ferries...
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Thursday, July 5, 2012
Monday, June 4, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Sinead O’Connor twice as popular as the next pope – news at 11
Sinead has come a long way from Saturday Night Live.
Whenever there is a new RC scandal, I get lot of hits on my Who will be the Next Pope? article.
But outpacing the next old codger in drag, no matter what the latest crime in Rome, Boston, the Netherlands, Philadelphia or Kansas City, is the ever popular Sinead O’Connor – First Prophet of the New Age.
The People of God Speak! – louder than the Vaticano reparto di pubbliche relazioni (PR dept.).
amen
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