Trump Brand Vs. American Brand – Fight for Civilization - Greed and Hate Vs. Freedom and Brotherhood

Trump Brand Vs. American Brand – Fight for Civilization - Greed and Hate Vs. Freedom and Brotherhood


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Is Santa Claus a Christian Symbol or a Secular Symbol?

Megyn Kelly gives the go ahead to a white Santa and whatever it is he does with kids at this “Holiday” Time of year.

It is Retail Greed Season. That is somehow tied to the mythical Jesus’ birthday and birthday gifts and well I just don’t understand why Fox News wants to keep Chri$T in Chi$tmas and keep it as a for “whites only” to understand and enjoy the holiday thing. Big Mixed Message there.

The original Saint Nicolas gave a dowry of a gold coin for about a half a dozen ugly maidens/virgins in fourth century Turkey. They always say Asia Minor, like the Turkish conquest of Constantinople never happened in 1453 C. E. etc.

Anyway, Saint Nicolas is a bishop, he has cash to waste on charity and stuff and maybe a half dozen unmarried women in the local village will destabilize the region etc.

Give each girl/woman a gold coin as dowry and the local shepherd or goatherd sees another two dozen animals added to his flock. A fair trade. An ugly wife for two dozen goats?

Anyway. Fox News wants to define marriage but does not want anybody to get minimum wage and that destabilizes communities more so than any marriage arrangements. Whatever.

Santa Claus as Cola Cola Marketing Iconography sells coke. Santa sells Christmas. Santa sells greed. Santa sells the Chri$tmas season.

Santa however does not have a pastoral cross around his neck as he asks children to sit on his lap and ask for goodies from a white sugar daddy/bishop symbol type.

So when Fox News Wants to Put Chri$t back in the secular season, do they want Santa or is he just collateral propaganda on the whole convoluted season of artificial gift giving bought on credit and plastic?

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Jesus Died on the Cross to Make Black Friday Possible - Amen - I Am The Way The Truth and The Reduced Item Sale on Aisle 4 !

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The Pope Versus Paul Ryan

How dare the pope question a rich white American man, like Paul Ryan, about his religion of greed and fear and hatred of the poor.

http://news.yahoo.com/pope-francis-adds-tyranny-markets-burn-book-180100822.html

The Pope gets pretty specific about which sorts of ideas he's standing against, too. This bit could be a bit awkward for Paul Ryan, a Catholic and Ayn Rand devotee, going forward:

Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.

Only 4 Shopping Days Left Until Black Friday

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What Religion is Art Pope in North Carolina – the First American Christian Sharia State?

North Carolina’s New Sharia Pope – Art Pope – is dismantling a diverse democratic state. 

It was bound to happen sooner or later – the race to establish an official state religion first in North Carolina and then later, throughout the old incestuous inbred Old Confederacy with this mental disease and lastly to take down the U.S. Constitution. 

The Second Amendment murdering the First Amendment. Cain Kills Abel so to speak.

Like many of these nebbish mystery think tank billionaires trying to reestablish human slavery in America for the corporations, I cannot find a religion listed anywhere for “Pope” Art Pope, the new Boss Tweed of Religious politics in North Carolina.  

Art like the Koch Brothers is not an atheist? His "god" is probably just money and power.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/04/08/1832201/meet-the-north-carolina-legislature-the-new-ground-zero-for-tea-party-craziness/

Eleven Republicans, including the state’s House Majority Leader (Edgar V. Starnes), backed a resolution proclaiming that the Constitution “does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional,” and then decreeing that North Carolina could establish its own state religion. On the bright side, state house Speaker Thom Tillis announced that he would not advance this resolution after it was widely panned.

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Greedy Queen Elizabeth Employs Slave Labor Tactics to Save a Few Million on The Buckingham Palace Summer Zoo Crew – Zero Hours Contracts – No Benefits – No Guarantee of Minimum Hours

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2381787/Buckingham-Palace-uses-controversial-zero-hours-contracts-summer-staff-employment-costs-down.html

The contracts have proved popular with employers as they do not set a minimum number of hours that have to be worked, allowing firms to draft in extra staff at short notice during busy periods.

But trade unions have warned that some employers have used them to deny basic rights to workers.

Those employed under the contracts say they do not know if or when they will be working from one week to the next, making family and childcare commitments impossible.

Buckingham Palace uses the contracts for temporary staff working in its shop and the State Rooms during the summer.

A spokesman for the Royal Collection Trust, which employs the temporary workforce, denied that the deal equated to a zero-hour contract.

She conceded that employees were not guaranteed work but said rotas were issued around a month in advance, meaning workers could plan around their hours.

A copy of a staff contract from 2009 stated: ‘Your hours of work will be advised by the visitor manager and will be dependent upon the requirements for retail assistants at Buckingham Palace as and when required.’

Somewhere on the timeline of trying to return the middle class to slaves to serve inbred idiots like the “Royal” Windsor Parasites is Zero Hours Contracting for Temps.

While it might be a good thing to share some summer chump change with high school students who want to work at the palace and put it on the resume.  

This whole intern, slave labor, on-call 24/7, show up or die kind of lazy, lazy, evil management with no benefits employment is something that is not down the road in America but just around the corner at Wal-Mart?

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Finally – Pope Francis Speaks with the Authority of True Morality and the Love Taught by Jesus – Against the new Global Cult of Money destroying the Fabric of our Civilization

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/05/201351616303447140.html

  Pope Francis has called on world leaders to put an end to the "cult of money" and to do more to help the poor, warning that insecurity was rising in many regions of the world and the "joy of life" was diminishing in developed countries.

 "The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly human goal," Francis said in an address to ambassadors to the Vatican on Thursday.

 Francis said that radical free-market ideologies had created "a new, invisible, and at times virtual, tyranny" and human beings "considered as consumer goods" and called for global financial reform that would benefit everyone.

 "Solidarity, which is the treasure of the poor, is often considered counterproductive, opposed to the logic of finance and the economy. While the income of a majority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling," he said.

 "I encourage the financial exports and the political leaders of your countries to consider the words of St John Chrysostom "Not to share one's goods with the poor is to rob them", he said.

 The Argentine pope, formerly the archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio, became a powerful voice on the side of the poor during his homeland's devastating economic crisis.

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What Religion is the Koch Brothers?

Is it any of my business? Well they sort of with their billions are poking their noses into my private world one way or another.  Their paid for political whores like Scot Walker or Paul Ryan do their bidding in their new property or toy called Wisconsin.

I believe the skinny on them is that they are lazy greedy business men who can bribe with political contributions to do dirty industry at a profit and leave the land behind scarred and unusable for dozens of generations.  Screw the planet!

I want to know what god besides money they worship. What went wrong with their potty training in whatever Sunday school that they were probably chained to as children.

Their father was a founder of the John Birch Society which is some far right white nativist group as if Europeans were the first natives in America.

The thing is this. I am curious and nowhere anywhere is a reference to their presumed basic belief systems for me to get an angle of understanding into my neighbors’ point of view and try to talk to them across an imagined old fashioned town square. Are they atheists?

I see their name on the PBS TV show NOVA which turned me off to watching their science sponsored show.  They do the opera thing in NY where I presume they have penthouses far from the reality of the average American on the average American Street.

I have to wonder who John Birch is. Is he another Joseph Smith type con artist/prophet kind of thing.

I see that one of the infamous Koch Brothers paid $2.3 million in 2011 for the only known early photo or “daguerreotype” of the hired for money gun killer Billy the Kid.  

A lot of money to me. Chump change to him. Still a lot of cash for a piece of what looks like a piece of junk that most people throw out everyday into the trash. Whatever

Still don’t know what religion the Kochs are unless Greed these days in the new global economy is a god and or religion – the only real god and or religion?

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Comcast to Outsource Jay Leno - to be replaced by Max Headroom ?

The Tonight Show with Max Headroom

Of course anybody can replace Jay Leno, at least that is what the greedy execs as Comcast probably plan on doing.  Outsourcing is standard operating procedure in current American business.

If you can't outsource a TV personality's job to India or China, you can replace him with a video game image talking head and save the estimated 25-30 million dollar salary wasted on just one person.


Layoffs at the Tonight Show are only the beginning.

http://www.eonline.com/news/339116/the-tonight-show-lays-off-employees-jay-leno-takes-a-pay-cut

As a part of a major budget-restructuring plan, at least 20 employees were laid off from the NBC late-night show Friday, an NBC rep confirmed to E! News, and the Tonight Show host reportedly offered to take a pay cut to save jobs, according to the LA Times. 

Jay? Is that you?

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Face of the 1% - Mitt "Gordon Gekko" Romney

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Vatican Struggle for Power Amidst Benedict’s Growing Senility

The Bogias - Pope Alexander VI, his mistresses and bastard children

Life imitates Art.  The Borgias (Alexander VI) against the Della Roveres (Julius II) are two camps fighting for power in the current Showtime Historic Drama (Soap Opera).  It is hard to identify which groups or how many exist in the present struggle vying for power and the power to sign checks as Benedict XVI’s reign wanes into extreme old age and senility. 

The microcosm of America with siblings struggling to get hold of mom or dad’s unearned equity before the parent croaks is being mirrored on the macrocosm of the world stage and the struggle for power and wealth within the present leaderless Vatican.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/28/us-vatican-butler-idUSBRE84R0B520120528

The scandal exploded last week when within a few days the pope's butler was arrested for leaking documents, the head of the Vatican's own bank was abruptly dismissed and a book was published alleging conspiracies among the cardinals or "princes of the Church".

Newspapers, quoting insiders who had themselves leaked documents, said the arrested butler was merely a scapegoat doing the bidding of more powerful figures in the scandal, which has been dubbed "Vatileaks".

Documents passed to Italian journalists accuse Vatican insiders of cronyism and corruption in contracts with Italian companies. La Stampa daily quoted one of the alleged leakers as saying the goal was to help the pope root out corruption.

On Saturday, Paolo Gabriele, 46, Pope Benedict's personal butler, was formally charged with stealing confidential papal documents. But leakers quoted by La Stampa, La Repubblica and other media said the leaking plot went much wider.

"There are leakers among the cardinals but the Secretariat of State could not say that, so they arrested the servant, Paolo, who was only delivering letters on behalf of others," La Repubblica quoted one alleged whistleblower as saying.

The Secretariat of State is run by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the pope's powerful right-hand man, and the scandal appears to involve a power struggle between his allies and enemies, reminiscent of Renaissance conspiracies in the Vatican.

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Parks Should be for People – Liberty, Zuccotti, Whatever

The leaves are turning colors.  I see the leaves are still on the trees in Zuccotti Park on TV.  It is a week before Thanksgiving.  It is time to strip the remaining leaves off those trees and wrap the bare towers of stick in crystal clear tree lights.  

It is something the tourist comes to expect in New York for Christmas – that Kodak moment at night – or when you pull out your cell phone and snap a digital image Tourists equate with Hollywood glamour, Disney Land beauty or whatever takes your visual fancy.

The Occupy Wall Street status at this park seems at present to be on temporary hiatus. The movement is only just starting.  Losing this park as a symbolic base perhaps reflects time and energy needed to reorganize, re-strategize, and rethink the moment traveling into future reality.  The future is born from a single seed. 

Liberty Plaza Park as I originally knew it has been renamed to Zuccotti Park to pay fitting tribute to the Corporation that owns its.  He actually does not own it; his company does and doesn’t own it.  It is sort of jointly owned with the city.

Zuccotti Park is sort a hybrid mutant creation – the result of blind corporate GREED from the 1920s and hate, ignorance of the environment, fighting a city fit for humans habitation concept.

It all started with 120 Broadway, the Equitable Life Building, built to its maximum ground and air space in the high flying anything goes roaring twenties. If you know anything about that building monstrosity, you cannot walk two people abreast down its side streets of Cedar and Pine.

I find it ironic that the streets in downtown Manhattan with the tree names seemed to be the most forgotten and ugly lanes.

They changed the zoning laws after that or probably more accurately they started to have zoning laws in the permanent eternal, sunshine-less, shade on the ground around 120 Broadway.

So when they built One Liberty Plaza at 165 Broadway in 1973 and they wanted to top it up at 743 ft. (226 m) they had a problem.  The zoning for a building that tall and so close to the Greedy Tower at 120 Broadway, they had to offset some ground space as a public space in order to let the sunlight in at ground levels for a few hours each day next to the corporate skyscraper. 

And the added bonus with sunlight, you might even have some trees in that public space.  Do people need sunlight? One Liberty Plaza tower is like one of the ugliest pieces of architectural shit on the downtown landscape with its Omnipresent, Monolithic, and Fascistic presence sucking all oxygen out of the room modern look.

Ta-Dah! Liberty Plaza Park is born around 135 Broadway bordered by Liberty Street and Cedar Street.

This is the first park I knew when I first came to New York in the late seventies.  It wasn’t even finished.  There was one holdout building, Chock Full of Nuts coffee shop, that held out until its lease was up.  Can’t get away with that anymore.  With corporations having the right of eminent domain, Liberty Plaza Park would have been built up at one time instead of the piecemeal way it evolved.

That park had some I believe twenty four trees in it, some metal, painted black benches and Seward Johnson’s sculpture of the Business Dude in his corporate monkey suit reviewing paperwork in his Attaché Case.  Business Dude’s case is open and the 1980’s style Texas Instrument calculator in it is the size of a cigar box.  So much for old technology.

After 911 they cut down the trees in Liberty Plaza Park, all 24 of them, to make way for emergency parking at the World Trade Center site diagonally across the street at Liberty and Church Streets. 

Somewhere along the timeline, they restored Liberty Plaza Park, they I think meaning the taxpayers, and renamed it in favor of a man who owns One Liberty Plaza. That kinda reminds me of all these stadiums where taxpayers pay 99% of the cost of the stadiums with municipal bonds and some corporation kicks in 1% and gets its name, free advertising, put onto the structure.  I think the same situation applies at Zuccotti.

Well anyway.  We should be grateful that that put back the trees and call it a park though I think they call it urban sculptural landscaping or such these days. Needs to look like a Hollywood set.  Does not have to be comfortable and it is called a park.

It is also a good thing that they don’t charge us to look at the trees in a city where everything is fees, tolls and fines for the rabble walking or driving around the streets.

Parks should be for people.

Peace. Pax. Joy. Love. Tree.

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Money Hungry Fascists are Dead Inside - (Zombies?)

A bit of street theatre Monday as Wall Street protesters dressed as Corporate Zombies.

Wall Street demonstrators dressed as 'corporate zombies' lurch past stock exchange as protests spread beyond America

The Daily Mail is normally a suck ass establishment organ of propaganda in Britain.  Their article above does have an interesting array of photos not available in the censored free American Press and airwaves.

I took the title above off a hand painted cardboard sign.  That image in the Daily Mail article seems to express so much truth reflecting the anger we Americans have these days regarding immoral acts of business and government and the resulting collateral damage to us, the people.

I did the corporate grind so to speak for many decades.  It was necessary to support myself and my family and was part of the American Dream that I was building for myself and as a legacy to those that come after.

I never sold my soul to make my daily bread.  Nobody should have to.

I do wonder why millionaires are not satisfied. They used to only dream of but not need billions to be happy.  Now they are aiming at trillions and at the very expense and fabric of humanity.

Worth repeating.

Money Hungry Fascists are Dead Inside.  Zombies?

(trick of treat anyone?)

John Corapi - Judas Priest?

Innocent or guilty, I have formed an opinion of this matter burning up keyboards on the Catholic blogosphere.

Father Corapi, until recently a living saint, has apparently taken the money and run so to speak.

There were allegations of sexual amusement (with women) and drug addiction.

FYI The Ongoing Story 

I saw him a few times on EWTN, haven’t watched it in years, with his aggressive defense of the RC catechism and all things RC. I was not impressed.

His speech seemed to be impeded by badly fitting dentures as he seemed to spit a lot when making a point. 

Quite popular with devout middle aged catholic babes.  There is a great wailing and gnashing of teeth since his departure from the official catholic airwaves on the very huge rosary, middle aged catholic babe blog circuit. 

In a sense, he has gone over to the other side.  His Santa Cruz Media seems to be in his for-profit name and not in name of his religious order or any greedy diocese.   Get the deed.  Keep the deed.  Screw everybody else. Catholic rock stars don’t need a conscience.

Screw the ecclesiastic courts set up to investigate abuse.  Set up shop in God’s country, Montana, praise the lord and pass the ammunition – and keep the profits on DVDs, pamphlets, inspirational books etc.  And let’s not forget the lecture circuit.  Great deal.

And now a second planned career to out church corruption.  Caiaphas lives!

The Catholic church has gone to hell – surely and truly gone to hell.

Jimmy Swaggert move over. 

HDGF – How does God feel? – Climate Change - Cancun

Adam and Ever were the first humans with God given souls or so I was taught in a relaxed modern RC way of looking at ancient history, literature and dogma.

In a way the story of Adam and Eve, not appreciating what was given to them, is a story that describes mankind to this day.

God created a beautiful, intricate world and mankind is only lately content to harm and destroy it. Climate change would cost money and even beyond that make some abandon the extremes of greed, and ignorance attached to blatant greed, all over the planet.

One only has to see the pollution cloud constantly over some major cities on this planet to know that progress has its price. To step back and try to imagine as God imagined a pristine world, one knows that God, against his better judgment, created man and let him have, by default, dominion over this planet.

There is a saying these days in mod language WWJD – What would Jesus Do? Well I have been thinking too much and HDGF – How does God Feel? – about what man has done and is doing to harm the environment of this gift to the human race.

I think that God feels sad about at least part of the bargain in his creation of the human race, through evolution, within the framework of his greater creation plan for the universe and not just earth.

There is a hidden clause in the contract of this whole creation thing and man in relation to God and his planet. That clause is that you only get one planet and once you use it up – the intelligent design of the whole matter is that mankind, in spite of a kind gesture of a living creating God, becomes extinct.

Intelligent design is common sense to some and should be looked at with a lot more intricate side effects than wishful bible thumping thinking. Don’t expect miracles along with mythical raptures to clean up this dirty planet any time soon.

Some religions preach a middle way. This middle way is supposed to not reach to extremes of belief one way or another. Extremes also apply to practices.

As I observe the secular American world, I have to say that a middle way is not visible. The extremes of Secularism or throwing out the rule book by those who should have known better is what has brought our economy to great waste.

Rather than point fingers, I have to say that a godless adherence to the goodness of greed is what we in America suffer from - too much extreme secularism at the moment. Being your brother’s keeper is not considered very often on a micro or macro level these days. The secular myth destroys the sacred myth time and time again in practice.

Economic bubbles popping may slowdown the human race’s sprint to self destruction. Which bubble next to pop – Gold and precious metals once corporations start “investing”? Perhaps there is a silver lining to this present “great recession”.

What I keep coming back to is the fact that no banker or mortgage finance company higher up has ever sat through the process of making an old fashioned mortgage, its paperwork, from inception to closing. This is one of the core reasons for the present economic meltdown worldwide – a dependence on note paper that is not even kept in the original mortgage file anymore so to speak. The servicers of loans have outsourced clerical oversight overseas on this one as well and all to save human scale costs and boost bonuses – greed – greed- greed.

As a person who use to loan process and all the way to close with a title company, I cannot believe any of these turd bankers have a clue. The back office has been outsourced to Asia and the front office has nothing better to do but get drunk on greed while Rome burns.

Greed Yes. Incompetence Yes. But where does this mess finally play out. Slowly over a decade or does this thing unravel more quickly. And beyond that is the environment that cannot sustain us forever if we choose to ignore common moral sense in the management of this world.

These big bank bandaid solutions in Greece, Ireland, Portugal are only time killers and not solutions. They are only indications of a half assed approach to common sense or secularized versions of right and wrong in everyday living. A balanced budget, a middle way, should be a moral budget in the scheme of things. There is a place for sacred and or moral approaches to secular problems.

The danger of more bubbles bursting in the speculative investment world are nothing compared to the great plagues and ultimate destruction of our planet that is supposed to be prophesized here and there in sacred literature and dogmatic myth. Mankind in its enlightened position can change the equation dramatically when necessary. It is possible to change a negative future into more things positive.

We are what me make. We are what we are able to keep of the bounty of nature. Nature seems to be tired and worn out. A current climate change conference in Mexico is not likely to change any government or corporation’s mind about how we should treat the environment in order to keep it a sustainable life giving force to humanity.

One can pray and ask God to put men and women of courage into public office. Like I said miracles are not likely to happen soon in our extremes of the need for proper caretaking of this earth.

In the end of the old story, Adam and Eve are thrown out of Paradise for not thinking, for not obeying a rule book, for ignoring their situational common sense. God was perhaps not unreasonable for creating free will and testing it. From the beginning, He knew that the human experiment was just a crap shoot. He seems to be something of a gambler and the stakes are always high.

But hey, He is God and He has a plan. Hopefully the children of earth wake up soon and decide on a middle way between the extremes of Secularism and Religion and recreate the world in the image of God – betting too on what He saw as our potential and not what He undoubtedly knew were our failings.

Faisal Shahzad - Financial Analyst

I am reminded of once working for a brokerage house in the back office. I didn’t sell smoke like the front office. Back then I did not know it was smoke.

I can remember trying to train my job functions, for a few days, to a twenty something recent college graduate. He did not see the need of training to know what the back office did. It was not relevant as far as he was concerned. He was going to start a Hedge Fund by age twenty-five and retire as a billionaire at age thirty.

I see our disloyal citizen Faisal Shahzad had recently been working as a Financial Analyst for some no doubt store front brokerage firm and earning in the $50,0000 a year price range. Even with that salary he could not keep up the failed American dream – post September 15, 2008 and the meltdown. Apparently there are still jobs in the financial industry/ ponzi investment area if you are under thirty and have an M.B.A..

No doubt, Faisal saw the writing on the wall with his turning thirty and being a total business failure by Lloyd Blankfein’s impeccable standards and quit his financial job before he got the boot and they outsourced his job to India. Perhaps in the back of Shahzad’s mind he thought he might catch up to his old job when it arrived in Pakistan. Time to kill. Why not kill and maim a hundred tourists in Times Square. Haven’t you ever heard of Golf Faisal?

There are no doubt a thousand aspects as to why this young man who was plugged into the American success queue: college, graduate school, youth – what went wrong. If he were a native born American and not a naturalized one there would be a dozen standard cliché answers as to what went wrong. Loner, dissatisfied, a failure etc. and turning to mass murder which seems to be a hobby of sorts in parts of the world. Not that organized mass murder through wars and armies of established nations is that much different at times.

When was the last real necessary honest war that American was engaged in???

Woulda. Coulda. Shouda.

In my mind, I keep going back to the college kid who didn’t want to know my one critical slice of back office operations. I think of how the FED having bailed out these coke head CEOs running around pretending to create wealth for the few is somehow the new mantra – the new America Nightmare posing as the American Dream at 200 West Street NYC (Goldman Sachs Global Headquarters of the ? New World Order).

Where are we as a nation when the best of each generation now must get ground up into college trained sausages that totally believe the new religion of greed and the near sacred philosophy of Bernie Madoffism. These youths blindly follow the Goldman Sachs golden idol pathway to secular heaven and the new standards of American success that eliminates most of humanity from any possible success formula?

Doing God's Work - I Am Not a Christian

I do not know if the chairman of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, ever gets time to pray. Time is money. He and his cadre are obsessed with money. He has coined the phrase of this new age of unchecked greed and inhumanity in that he is just “doing God’s work” atop his skyscraper with his metaphorically speaking 100 million dollar salary and 100 million dollar bonus. The "Age of Chronic Luxury" lives on for some in these hard times.

So I guess that kind of “God is in Control” rhetoric that Governor Pawlenty coined at the recent Tea Bagger convention no doubt mirrors sentiments of the “God put me on this Pedestal y'all” crowd on the blinding white far right fundamentalist side of the aisle.

You know I am not a Christian. I am only a cultural Christian because I am too lazy to shop around for a new name brand. I am quite inferior to Christians like Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, a Roman Catholic who runs a charity scam selling his autographed baseballs out of the trunk of his limo.

I am quite inferior also to a Presbyterian like Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona who thinks that in the middle of a Depression with no jobs, it is somehow a sin to collect unemployment. You would think that the lousy stinking 240 dollars a week maximum the territory/state of Arizona doles out to unemployed "lazy" welfare cheats would somehow match all the tax cheats Kyl has represented as a lawyer and senator all his so called working life. You would think he would have heard about - don’t ask, don’t tell – regarding personal greed.

Thank God I am not a Christian such as they. I only believe in love for humanity, as a Humanist, like that other loser, Jesus of Nazareth. Though I am in no way in his true league of matters.

I along with millions of others look forward to Jim and Jon’s upcoming retirement from politics. Good riddens to bad Christian trash. They give the Christ thing usually attached to the Jesus brand a very bad name.

The first birds of Spring are chirping outside my window this morning and all the damned to hell Country Club Christians cannot ruin my day. God, the real God is in the air here.

I do not hate humanity and I am enjoying the sound of nature outside of my urban dwelling. I too Lloyd am just “doing God’s work” in my own humble unpaid way.

Have a nice day.

Avatar --- Greed, Ecology and Interracial Love

Avatar, as a movie, is a story about Greed, Ecology and Interracial Love.

The greed represents the big ugly corporation, let’s say a Halliburton as example, about to plow under a whole race and culture for the sake of the quarterly bottom line.

The ecology is about living in balance with nature, respect of which is somehow pagan in the eyes of the people who brought you denial about global warming.

It is a story of Interracial Love in the retelling of the basic John Smith / Pocahontas ecounter of learning from one another on many levels - from the different angles of European versus Native cultures and on the old eternal theme of the male female level of human natures.

The movie is set in the future and on the rain forest like planet of Pandora inhabited by blue skinned beings/people – shades of Star Wars with a few more anthropological footnotes.

There is of course the high tech thing, science fiction within the movie storyline and the 3D screen effect of depth and a different movie perception.

The big style of the big Cameron movies seems to have a baroque quality matching the style though not necessarily the substance of the artist Caravaggio. In any case everybody is talking “Cameron” on this new flick the same way they used to talk “Caravaggio” when one of his new canvas’s hit town four hundred years ago.

Many religious and political nuts have come out of the woodwork to frame this artful masterpiece by Producer, Director and Writer James Cameron of Titanic and Terminator fame – frame it as some sort of Pagan Green Worship thing.

References to Americans and foreign wars in Iraq comparisons abound but I am told this old west Cowboy and Indian, recycled Pocahontas story, script, was sitting on a shelf long before the Neocon age of Bush 43. Cameron had been waiting for the technology to arrive to do what he and his artistic vision wanted to express on the screen ( thus my comparison to Caravaggio ).

And with TV documentaries, (perhaps projects of love) The Exodus Decoded (2006) and The Lost Tomb of Jesus (2007) with fellow Canadian and Orthodox Jewish “Naked Archeologist” Simcha Jacobovici - charges of Paganism, Druidism and Pantheism as labels attached to this film seem totally groundless – the grist of fool critics with alternate agendas.

Indeed, the poltical right, religious right, do not seem to know how to deal with different ideas on the stage of Hollywood success. This staking out and preparing boilerplate fodder to throw at different ideas mixed with recycled westerns, love stories and anti-war themes – with this brilliant film – is so anti-future and so anti-global. Get a life. (go visit Pandora)

OMG Are you a Wal-Mart Christian?

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OMG Are you a Christian? What kind of a Christian? How about a Wal-Mart Christian?

I mentioned earlier in one of my articles about how Christianity is assembling in a number of abandoned department store buildings in malls or in obsolete sports stadiums. Something about bigness in the American way of thinking that spells success. I don’t know how fundamentalism is spread around in other countries but I cannot but feel that the secular nature of American culture presently dictates some of its spiritual culture.

Looking at a TV evangelist in an auditorium of 15,000 souls, I am struck by the fact that Jesus in his entire lifetime probably did not preach to 15,000 souls. That Size and Success are the basic factors in the new Evangelism. Not enough to be a big church but we must build a medical center or a university in the name of our success. I mean in the name of Jesus and God. Whatever.

I listen to the telly and wait to hear the preacher’s words of wisdom since he has an audience the size of Jesus and his first century marketing capacity. I listen and all I hear is Pop Psychology. I don’t think psychology comes out of the spiritual side of any equation as much as it comes out of the secular side.

You are successful because you are successful and God would not dare to keep you from more success. Come again? Where are the thee-s and the thou-s and the Jesus part and the soul and the reward in heaven thingy?

Like I said, what passes for spirituality these days is a Sunday morning at Big-Mart, a cathedral of materialism and commerce. The old church buildings of the nineteenth century are being converting into condos and fitness spas and mini grocery marts. In the comfort of seclusion and the bubble of my home and armed with a channel changer as my only defense against evil, I listen and must turn off the preacher in wolf’s clothing.

Jesus’ message is simple and understandable and not something automatically discounted hour per hour. The secular nature of America is closer to the myth of Satan these days with it’s greed, envy, covet ness, and empty material non-spiritual success.

I sound a bit pompous but forgive me. I grew up in another age and have my own set feelings about God and spirituality. New is not better. Repackaged is not better. Big is definitely not necessarily a better thing.

Where ever two or more are gathered in my name, there I am also.
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