Saturday, August 30, 2014

The Outrageous Ongoing Maintenance Costs of the Faux European Style Cathedral of Saint Patrick’s in NYC


Saint Patrick's Cathedral Under Repair Again


I have mentioned this here and there and in bits and pieces.

One, they are spending officially something like $180 million dollars to patch up and paint the poorly built to begin with Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.  That to be quite honest, it would be cheaper to tear down the building and build a brand new one.  To build it right the second time without politics, corruption, graft and inferior materials.

But with the RC Neanderthal concept of Sacred Tradition, the old church, built piecemeal over the decades, over the past century and a half, built with cheap inferior dirty white limestone from Westchester County for the exterior and some of the interior bits that are not wood, chicken wire and stucco imitating real stone and a faux vault interior ceiling, the list goes on and on, maybe throwing good money after bad is not the best investment.  This considering that in 15 years, the next half a billion dollar repair job makes me suggest that repair at gold and diamond prices is perhaps only a scam for some sort of money laundering for some and or all of the billionaire contributors, donors, putting Saint Patrick’s through this unnecessary patching up of scabs and bits that in all honesty from the beginning has been an oversized parish church with Hollywood Stage Set hints of European Gothic style and faux European workmanship. 

And with a final cost figure around 1900 hovering at $4 million dollars, one has to wonder how many Tammany Hall kickbacks and how much job featherbedding went on to build the original Saint Patrick’s before it came to anything like a finished stage.

Cardinal Spellman put in a stained glass Rose Window and the “Famed” Spellman Bronze Doors on the Western Entrance in 1949 to finally respond to the 1879 Atlantic Monthly critique of the parish barn doors at the entrance to this pretense European style “Cathedral”.  Kind of like a metaphoric Council of Trent response to Luther's 95 suggested points for reform.

I should note that Frannie Spellman’s dressing up the entrance on Fifth Avenue, with the rose window and Bronze Doors with his Motto emblazoned on them at the back of the doors  “Follow the Money God” in Latin of course - Doors, designed by church architect Charles Maginnis, and British born sculpture John Angel, to give pizazz to the church across Fifth Avenue from the Art-Deco masterpiece of Rockefeller Center or should a dare say it – to give this Catholic mid-town parish church of the local Bishop a bit of sheer fabulous gay-ness.  The doors are stiff in human and divine postures, boring and in need of constant maintenance too. 

"Spellman" Bronze Doors - Saint Patrick's Cathedral - 1949
(Image - Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/highsm.13054/)

The doors were restored recently for half a million dollars to remove half a dozen layers of paint. Hey, you don’t paint bronze btw unless it is faux bronze and faux like the rest of the structure. I think that the bronze doors on the Pantheon in Rome, an official Catholic structure, has not had to remove or paint its bronze doors for something like 1900 years. Like what’s going on here in the maintenance and or out to lunch cathedral management department? Duh!


Below some excerpts from two original Critiques of St. Patrick’s from its official opening in 1879, one from the critic Clarence Cook of the Atlantic Monthly (February 1879) and the other from The American Architect and Building News (May 1879).

"Finished" Saint Patrick's Cathedral 1879 - Without Buttresses or Spires


Of course, it was a subject of no little wonder where the money was to come from, not only to build the church itself, but to buy the land, which under ordinary circumstances would have cost no small part of the whole sum. How this latter feat was accomplished we all know now, and New Yorkers are disposed to say as little about it as possible. The city was jockeyed out of the finest site on the island by a crafty and unscrupulous priest playing upon the political hopes and fears of as base a lot of men as ever got the government of a great city into their power. 

For the consideration of one dollar the Archbishop of New York became possessor of the deed for the whole square bounded-west and east by Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, and south and north by Fiftieth Street and Fifty- First Street, a plot of ground four hundred and twenty feet on the cross streets, and two hundred feet on the avenues, situated in the heart of the most fashionable part of the city, and on one of the highest points of the whole island....


No doubt he (James Renwick Jr.) is perfectly competent for all ordinary undertakings, no doubt he could build a cathedral if he would. But Archbishop Hughes wanted a man who would accept the situation as he found it, and would build a cathedral with a constant eye to saving and sparing, so as to produce the maximum of stage effect at the minimum of cost. Stage effect was the one thing absolutely needed…

Plain Wooden Doors of Cathedral's Original Design and Budget
(Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ggbain.00299/ St Patrick's Easter1908)

The principal door at the western end is perhaps in design the most discreditable part of the building. All the rest is clumsy repetition and copying of forms and arrangements found here, there, and everywhere in the crowd of Gothic monuments in Europe. But the great doorway came from nowhere, unless from some confectioner's shop. In place of the cavern-like entrances of some of the French cathedrals (Rheims is a notable example), richly molded, and with their thronging saints and angels, each on its pedestal and with its own deep, shadowing canopy, with its sculptured tympanum and its sweet-faced Virgin and child upon the central pillar, we have here a shallow embrasure, conveying no idea of thickness in the wall out of which it is hewn, with coarse and clumsy moldings and engaged pillars, and with a sort of trumpery frill of openwork stone, the beau-ideal of a cap-maker's apprentice, framing in the whole.... 

Rheims Cathedral Entrance - France

And not a sacred emblem, not an inch of sacred imagery, to be found; nothing but the ostentatious display of a cardinal's hat, and the equally ostentatious and equally out-of-place display of the American shield. How many little parish churches there are in England, built at a period when Catholic archbishops knew something about architecture, that have door-ways more noble, for all their smallness, than this cathedral can boast!...


 
Jesus Christ Shrine - "Bin" Niche Chapel - Side Aisle
(Lacking in Space Due to Lack of Flying Buttresses)

Little remains to be added to our indictment, except to speak of the bins which are ranged along the side of the aisles, opening by low, flat arches under the aisle-windows, and which are to be utilized as chapels. Externally they project from the sides of the building, filling up the bays between the buttresses, and give no sign from without of their existence, the roofs being hid by the solid, unpierced parapet of the wall, and no windows being necessary, as each bin is lighted by a small sky -light filled with stained-glass. The effect of this long blank wall is very bad; apart from its clumsiness, it deprives the design of the effective light and shade that should have been got from the buttresses. 




The American Architect and Building News (May 1879)


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Thursday, August 28, 2014

NRA women Susan LaPierre and Suzie Brewster – Who Tweeted About Fun and Games With Guns for Kids?



NRA Women - is that Nature or Nurture or Praise Smith and Wesson and Remington and pass the ammunition kiddies?

I also see that Lord Cooke – (@CharlesCWCooke) has been answering a steady stream of calm questions from calm NRA syncophant followers all day over there at his tweet board following his paying ? Masters at the NRA party line about nine year olds and UZIs. Calm. Stiff upper Lip. Jackpot.



And the “two NRA Susans” Suzie Brewster and Susan LaPierre are preparing for that the NRA Women’s “Leadership Conference” (Photo below.)



We're excited to announce the extraordinary line-up of confirmed keynote speakers and panelists who will be joining us over the course of the weekend, including:
·        Governor Mary Fallin of Oklahoma
·        Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee
·        Carly Fiorina, former HP CEO, politician and organizer of the conservative "War On Women" campaign
·        S.E. Cupp, columnist and co-host of CNN's Crossfire
·        Dana LoeschThe Blaze journalist and on-air host
·        Katie Pavlich, TownHall.com blogger and author
·        And many more!

AND! Christ! Wow! S.E.Cupp Too! (below) – An NRA Women Leader?




One has to wonder who sent the tweet about seven ways kids can enjoy gun ranges in response to the 9 year old girl’s UZI lesson at a Burger and Bullets franchise firing range in Arizona that offed the instructor  - oops – by mistake – collateral damage in the Greedy GUN business – got to break a few eggs to make an omelet and how else is a little tyke going to learn to defend herself from terrorists and or the police and or the Negros in Ferguson Missouri? (NO-LOL)


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Thursday, August 21, 2014

Governor Rick Perry Addresses Heritage Foundation – Trailer Trash Vatican of the Tea Bag Party


Heritage Foundation HQ Washington DC -
Trailer Trash Vatican of the Tea Bag Party

(Image - Google Maps)


Fresh from his mugshots in Texas after his infamous misogynous attacks on a Texas Prosecutor with a Drinking Problem, Rick Perry beat it to Washington to make his case before the Texas People on how he is as innocent as Jesus and did not deserve to be indicted in this one particular specific case.

The Heritage Foundation is like the Vatican of the Trailer Trash constituency of the Tea Party that Perry needed to suck up to fast for a quick influx of cash flo from the money laundering PACs doing what the Founding Fathers did – stealing land and enslaving people - whatever.

Perry unique new Foreign Policy in a Future Perry Admin in the White House is to link dem dirty A-rabs with dem dirty immigrants swarming at Texas’ border.

Bomb. Bomb. Bomb.

Drone. Drone. Drone.

Tax Cuts for the Rich. Tax Cuts for the Rich. Tax Cuts for the Rich.


I ( Rick Perry ) is your man. Yeah right.





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Obama and the White Trash Congress - Going Forward after 2014




I hear a lot of bullshit especially from the right now creeping into the left “liberal” media that President Obama is aloof and does not know how to interface with members of Congress and including the Tweedy Bird Majority Head in the Senate.

I have to wonder after five and a half years of the white members of the Washington Power Club having to share the front door of that formerly “Whites Only” club with a man of “Color” and their snubbing and ignoring him at every twist and turn of the corridors of that club and in its gym and or locker room – Why Obama does not just quit the Club and or just say “go fuck yourself”.

That after five and half years of doing everything to bolster white male power and virtually zero anything for the common good of the Republic and or Country, why Congress even bothers to show up at its Gumba club house except to play cards and drink expresso all day and send newsletters back to their Gerrymandered constituencies in the great white gated communities of the Heartland – about how they will never share power with a “nigger”.

I welcome, after the November 2014 elections, the fact that Obama can and will probably rule by executive order in his last two years of legitimate rule in favor of America, my America, your America.

And to the Congress of the white trash Joe Wilson types in Congress – Go Fuck Yourselves!

Have a nice day.


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ISIS Performs Blood Sacrifice to Their Mean Pagan Desert gods – James Foley RIP




I do not understand why the Media repeats the Press Releases of Animals and calls this an execution which it is not – it is more than an unjust summary execution of a journalist, which we in the West consider an honorable job.

The thugs that want power at any cost in Iraq / Syria etc. call themselves Muslim, of Islam a religion of peace, that they cause genocide toward minorities, forcing conversion to thuggery - is justification for whatever.

To me, these show executions are not justice but blood sacrifice to some blood thirsty deity and personal fucked up EGO. 

Religion sucks in general. This is abysmal.

My condolences to Foley’s family, friends and co-workers. RIP James.




James Foley, a freelance war correspondent from New Hampshire, was killed at the hands of the Islamic State militant group, which distributed a video that said the apparent beheading was retaliation for recent US airstrikes in Iraq, US officials said late Tuesday.

The officials told the Associated Press that they believe it is Foley in the video, bringing to a tragic end a saga that began when Foley was kidnapped in Syria in November 2012.

Hideaway - Kiesza





"Hideaway"

Taking me higher than I've ever been before
I'm holding it back, just want to shout out, give me more

You're just a hideaway, you're just a feeling
You let my heart escape beyond the meaning
Not even I can find a way to stop the storm
Oh, baby, it's out of my control, what's going on?

But you're just a chance I take to keep on dreaming
You're just another day that keeps me breathing

Baby, I love the way that there's nothing sure
Baby, don't stop me, hide away with me some more

Ooh, aah, aah, ooh, ooh, aah, aah, ooh, ooh, aah, aah, ooh, ooh, aah, aah, ooh

You send me the shiver up my spine, might overflow
You're bringing me closer to the edge of letting go

You're just a hideaway, you're just a feeling
You let my heart escape beyond the meaning
Putting my head into the clouds I'm floating home
When you get me going I can't find a way to stop

You're just a chance I take to keep on dreaming
You're just another day that keeps me breathing

Ooh, aah, aah, ooh, ooh, aah, aah, ooh

Baby, I love the way that there's nothing sure
Baby, don't stop me, hide away with me some more
Hide away with me some more

Bringing me higher than I've ever been before
I'm holding it back, just wanna shout out, "Give me more."

You're just a hideaway, you're just a feeling
You let my heart escape beyond the meaning
Not even I can find a way to stop the storm
Oh, baby, it's out of my control, what's going on

You're just a chance I take to keep on dreaming
You're just another day that keeps me breathing
You're a day that keeps me dreaming

Ooh, aah, aah, ooh, ooh, aah, aah, ooh

Baby, I love the way that there's nothing sure
Baby, don't stop me, hide away with me some more
Hide away with me some more




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Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Monday, August 18, 2014

Broken America – Ferguson Missouri - Murder by The State




America is going nowhere fast. A half a century after the basic struggles for civil rights of African Americans in federal legislation lags behind and is basically forgotten all across the old Jim Crow South with new restrictive voter right acts designed to impede voting by the young, the old and along the color line.

While I would not like to be confronted by a gorilla sized petty thug like Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri, I do not understand how in a so-called civilized country how a cop can lose an entire clip of bullets in pursuit and summary execution of a “Jaywalker” “blocking traffic” in the streets of Ferguson Missouri. 

How a cop who kills a eighteen year old kid can blow town and go to Disney World for some R & R and not face the music of his actions while the local Ferguson PD is doing everything in its power to obscure the real issue here – the murder of a Black American citizen by a cop with a license to kill - is way beyond my pay grade.

Some facts are emerging why there is a town like Ferguson with 70% black population and a 90% white police force. The cops do not have to live in Ferguson. They have no investment or interest in the community. It is just a job. The people of Ferguson obviously do not count in their Ayn Rand like equation of life.

That in a period of as little as 15-20 years, the demographics, for whatever reason, went from white to black. Which makes me think that at least half of the white policemen on Ferguson’s police force started in a white town and now are just, in this suck ass American economy, just holding on for a pension no matter what it takes in terms of keeping loyal only to the core brotherhood of cops. 

Cops who in recent years have been outfitted with Pentagon war materials and dress for occupying a foreign country to push a corporate agenda and not the human agenda. That dressed in aggressive warlike kit and gear only makes our domestic police more of an occupying force in our local communities.  It is a serious disconnect from reality but what a paradigm shift of the importance of a global corporate spreadsheet philosophy over people and or humanity – what that really means when you look at it honestly.

I do not like outside people like the Reverend Al Sharpton, a snake oil meal ticket for life preacher type showing up on the scene. If African Americans have no better leaders to look to, perhaps it is time to pack up and move back to Africa for a better deal in having someone look out for your interests in the decimated and tribe warring and corporate resource gutted continent of Africa that is presently on the world stage. 

It is the same type of corporate culture of greed and inhumanity that sent so many into slavery in the first place starting four hundred years ago. A vicious circle perhaps.

Nobody can represent your interests on an individual scale or a cultural scale other than yourself. It is time for African-Americans to gather together, to work and vote their way out of poverty and ignorance like every other slice of American culture and their ongoing struggle of such.  


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Friday, August 15, 2014

Where is M.I.A. Officer "John Doe" Ferguson Mo Police Dept.?





Where is John Galt?
Where is the Tea Party?
Where is M.I.A.
(trigger happy?)
Officer “John Doe”
Ferguson Mo Police Dept.?
Where is Justice?
Just asking.
Please don’t shoot me!

“Concerned Citizen”


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Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Boots on the Ground in Jim Crow Ferguson MO




Your anti-terrorism tax dollars being put to good use???

That is all you real people that pay taxes and none of you libertarian phony cheapskates. 


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Monday, August 11, 2014

The Great American White Male Christian Hate Machine – War on Women, Gays and People of Color Continues




The Great American White Male Christian Hate Machine:

Rafael Cruz, Pat Robertson, Rick Warren, Thomas Monson, Salvatore Cordileone, ETC. …


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The Fifteen States Where Women Are Not Considered Equal




The Fifteen States Where Women Are Not Considered Equal:

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.

They never ratified the ERA Equal Rights Amendment and a ratify by a certain date had never been imposed before on any constitutional amendment, thus paving the way for a non-neanderthal, non-majority-catholic U.S. Supreme Court to knock down the artificial barrier to its passage.

Illinois is working on being the 36th state to ratify. 


That leaves two states needed for passage in the primordial redneck soup in the deep South of America aside from the Mormon western states.

Stranger things have happened.





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Saturday, August 9, 2014

The Homeless Churchless Pastor Rafael Cruz Gems of Wisdom 9 AUG 2014











"Every church in the nation should have a voter registration table in its lobby."


"Let's stop being politically correct, and let's become biblically correct!"


"...social justice is collectivism. It comes directly out of Karl Marx"


",,the Bible helps tell Americans who to vote for."


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Tea Party Texas Rump Parliament at times aka Texas Conservative Coalition Accused of Breaking Elections Laws



A complaint has been filed with the Texas Ethics Commissioner against the Texas Conservative Tea Party Coalition because of its failure to file a required eight-day campaign-filing report before the May 27 Republican primary runoff elections.

The complaint was filed July 2 by Bill O’Sullivan, treasurer for The Woodlands-based Texas Patriots PAC. In O’Sullivan’s complaint, he alleges that some of the donors to the coalition might be companies or firms that do business with the county.

“I personally believe that this was a willful violation to conceal donors as I expect county vendors will be involved …,” O’Sullivan stated in the complaint.

But Duane Ham, chairman of the coalition, said while he doesn’t think his group violated the law, at end of the day, he protected donors from potential harassment from the PAC and not because of any connection with the county.

“If they had the eight-day report, they would have attacked those people at the polls,” Ham said. “Protecting the people who get involved with politics without being drug through the mud, I’m OK with that.

“They want to know who the donors are so they can tear the good people down.”

Not filing the eight-day report is a violation of Texas Elections Code 254.041 according the TEC website.


Donors for the Texas Conservative Tea Party Coalition

John Causey – $500
Michael Stoecker – $25,000 Loan
Halff Associates State PAC – $250
Ranney McDonough – $1,000
Cameron Maxedon – $250
Kim Cook – $400
Jeff Cannon – $545
Will Metcalf – $1,750
Bryan Yeates – $500
Wade Nelson – $545
Randy Roan – $1,500
Dennis Byrd – $125
Howard Riney – $125
Ray Milne – $125
Nick Allenby – $125
Craig Doyal – $1,500
Wayne Stroman – $1,200
Cecil Bell – $3,100
Rachel & John Anderson – $500
J.R. Harris – $550
Troy & Linda Stuckey – $1,170
Vince Ross – $70
Linda Mock – $160
Kristi Leggett – $75
Mark Holt – $100
Michon Kingsley – $170
Debbie Glenn – $55
Duke Coon – $1,000
Timothy & Marlene Weems – $1,000
Omero L Del PAPA, III – $1,000
Henry Brooks – $1,000

Richard Sheldon – $3,000


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Friday, August 8, 2014

Richie Havens - 1941/2013 - Follow





Let the river rock you like a cradle
Climb to the treetops, child, if you're able
Let your hands tie a knot across the table
Come and touch the things you cannot feel

And close your fingertips and fly where I can't hold you
Let the sun rain fall and let the dewy clouds enfold you
And maybe you can sing to me the words I just told you
If all the things you feel ain't what they seem
Then don't mind me 'cause I ain't nothin' but a dream

The mockin' bird sings each different song
Each song has wings, they won't stay long
Do those who hear think he's doing wrong?
While the church bell tolls its one note song
And the school bell is tinkling to the throng
Come here where your ears cannot hear

And close your eyes, child, and listen to what I'll tell you
Follow in the darkest night the sounds that may impel you
And the song that I am singing may disturb or serve to quell you
If all the sounds you hear ain't what they seem
Then don't mind me 'cause I ain't nothin' but a dream

The rising smell of fresh cut grass
Smothered cities choke and yell with fuming gas
I hold some grapes up to the sun
And their flavor breaks upon my tongue
With eager tongues we taste our strife
And fill our lungs with seas of life
Come taste and smell the waters of our time

And close your lips, child, so softly I might kiss you
Let your flower perfume out and let the winds caress you
As I walk on through the garden, I am hoping I don't miss you
If all the things you taste ain't what they seem
Then don't mind me 'cause I ain't nothin' but a dream

The sun and moon both arise
And we'll see them soon through days and nights
But now silver leaves are mirrors, bring delights
And the colors of your eyes are fiery bright
While darkness blinds the skies with all its light
Come see where your eyes cannot see

And close your eyes, child and look at what I'll show you
Let your mind go reeling out and let the breezes blow you
And maybe when we meet then suddenly I will know you
If all the things you see ain't quite what they seem
Then don't mind me 'cause I ain't nothin' but a dream

And you can follow and you can follow; follow


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Thursday, August 7, 2014

Rep. Jodie Laubenberg Texas - Yelling Personal Preferences for Privacy Over National Security W/ Texas DL Fingerprinting Law


Too bad Texas only has a part time legislature, meets every two years for six or seven months and then shuts down.  Next official session, the 84th Legislature meets in January 2015. Texas to an outsider like me it operates on 19th century Territorial Time and or not real modern Statehood Time IMHO.

Rep. Jodie Laubenberg, the rep who thinks that rape kits cause Abortion, taking away a raped women’s right to the miracle of conception in conjunction with the Rape Daddy’s magic holy spermy thingies (taking sperm out of the Rape Victim’s womb), thinks that fingerprinting people in the Driver’s License bureau is an invasion of privacy.

Ironically, since illegals can’t get a DL to get car insurance because they are (Catch 22) illegal, it is only the God Fearing (?)(cannot find Jodie’s religion affiliation anywhere btw) people of Texas who have to get fingerprinted. God Bless Big Brother Texas. LOL

This in a state that elects a Canadian to the Senate without asking for a valid American Birth Certificate ( half-assed backward ) etc.



Rep. Jodie Laubenberg, R-Parker, says her antenna lifted when her 76-year-old mom visited the Plano driver’s license office recently and was fingerprinted.

“They do not have the legislative authority to do this,” Laubenberg says. “I was there in 2005” when the bill the DPS says gives them permission was enacted. “I guarantee this would have blown up if that was part of the bill.”

The 2005 law said the DPS could collect “an applicant’s thumbprint or fingerprints.” Two sponsors of the original bill have said it wasn’t meant to let the agency collect all 10 prints; only if a thumb wasn’t available, fingers could be used. That was, they say, their intent.

The decision to fingerprint all Texas drivers was handled by DPS through rule-making, not law, Laubenberg said, and that’s not good enough.


“I’m all for supporting DPS, but this one is a privacy issue. And this is one that we need to debate publicly. … I want them to cease taking fingerprints.”


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