Birther Fraud Lady – Who is this undocumented Person?

Well I see this thing on MSNBC. MSNBC shows the one reeler and passes it off as journalism without the who, what, where, when, why of the old classic journalism.



Joe the Plumber’s Mom gets up at a town hall meeting of Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware and waives her invalid hospital issued birth certificate and then begins to rant about how Barack Obama is not a citizen of the USA but rather Kenya – (the GOP and the new racism).

MSNBC shows this amusing little tidbit and is starting to practice third rate journalism on the way to the fourth and fifth levels of Murdockian half truths and lies like on Fox News and the fat drug addict on radio.

I too was undocumented some few years back when I tried to exchange my Pennsylvania license for a New York State license having moving back here. In order to register my car, I needed a valid driver’s license. In order to have a valid driver’s license I needed a state issued, embossed with a raised seal, birth certificate.

I have had a New York State driver’s license on and off for thirty years depending on when I was a resident there. My old driver’s license and its same driver license number for thirty years could not be reissued without a valid state issued birth certificate to prove my place and date of birth and my citizenship.

My hospital issued birth certificate was now considered invalid. It had been valid forty years ago to get my original passport. But then and there and with all the bullshit Homeland Security rules and regulations – I was undocumented in my native land - temporarily a man without a country.

I had let my passport lapse for too many years. It was no longer valid as ID or proof of American citizenship. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and a deadline to register my car before I would break the law on that count for not having a valid car registration.

Finally and reluctantly I went on line and ordered a Pennsylvania issued certificate to save some time. It still took a couple of weeks to get it. LOL

So when I see Joe the Plumber’s Mom on You Tube shouting about the undocumented state of Obama’s black butt, I know that this broad has never left this country or the house she has lived in for decades. One day she will try to get a passport or move in with the kids across the stateline and not be able to transfer her driver’s license – BECAUSE she is an undocumented person, with a phony hospital issued birth certificate, living in our great and safe and no longer totally free land.

While we are at - have any of you “Birthers” seen Jesus’s birth certificate lately?

"In Doug Coe We Trust" - ???

A lot of things I want to comment on. I do not believe in the big conspiracy theories. I do believe that JFK was killed as a result of private money financing several covert operatives, one two or three of which pulled their trigger on November 22, 1963 in Dallas Texas. That being said I do not believe that 911 was an inside job, though like the JFK thing, some retired government employees may have sold knowledge to the enemy. Free agents, traitors, lobbyists – whatever. It still was a mess to clean up. The one thing I have noticed, having worked for a brief time for the Federal government is that it takes intelligence to do the conspiracy thing. Most Government employees could not survive in private sector jobs given their entitled attitude and their listening to Rush Limbaugh on their iPods while at their desks and pretending to work etc. Pay Rush a forty million dollar a year pension to retire and you will get at least a 40 billion dollar rise in government productivity overnight.

Over the weekend I noticed a dead file weekend story about atheists wanting to prevent the carving of “In God we Trust” in stone at the US Capitol visitors center. The visitor’s center is $400 million dollars over budget and four or five years behind schedule. Having worked for a construction company I understand how changes in a skyscraper from one purpose to another and by different divisions of a company – costs and reality get thrown to the wayside especially if you can write off the costs as a business expense. The three things that have brought my cloth coated America to its knees in recent decades has been big government, big corporations and big religion - the new "three estates" of the modern age. Where are people like you or me in that equation? No conspiracies there - just convenient and profitable intercourse and commerce. Where are people like me, a fool, a taxpayer, in this Ménage à trois thing?

Getting back to the new church vestibule of the $600 million dollar Capitol visitors center, I am willing to bet that the cost overruns had to do with building bunkers under the visitor’s centers for members of Congress in case of another 911 type attack. A necessary evil if that is the case.

Other than that I went back and forth with these two similar McClatchy news paper articles. The second one is from late 2008 about members of congress, some of the “C” Street Persuasion wanting or insisting that “In God We Trust” is the national motto and not “E Pluribus Unum” that I remember being taught in grade school civics class. I don’t know what they call civics class these days but I am willing to bet the “Civics” book weighs eleven pounds and costs $100 from the publisher. I got a better education from used text books, paperback civics texts and verbally from a teacher who was worth her shit in teaching than the whole modern fraud of education as a for profit business and not as a minimum cost community enterprise.

Atheists sue to keep 'In God We Trust' off Capitol Visitor Center

I do not agree with the Atheist argument that “In God We Trust” should be taken off the dollar bill or that the Pledge of Allegiance should drop the phrase “under God”. I believe that all that is grandfathered into the fabric of our past. I have to say that I cannot see spending another $150,000 to carve “In God We Trust” in stone in what would look like a government endorsement of theism and or religion.

But because the “C” Street Persuasion wants the phrase, I know in my heart of hearts it is not in reverence to the God that I believe in but in the god that they believe in – which represents greed, power and moral corruption for the elite. The Elite is in many cases represented by white racist coded words that represent denial of the loss of the Civil War and the loss of a way of life that crumbled with civil rights. These South Carolinians in particular and their confederate flag on the state house are the ones that dissed John McCain in 2000 and paved the way for their inbred white elite political messiah George W. Bush.

Conservative lawmakers bring God to Capitol Visitor Center

What is it like to live in a world of code words? Code Words for life, Code Words for God and or Jesus? Conspiracy? Part of the reason for the decline in attendance in church in the USA these past decades is the fact that Church now is a code word for political auxiliaries that many times reinforce denial about the basics such as life, liberty, privacy, sexuality in our modern world.

I know what “In God We Trust” is code for - for some so adamant to get their secular political quasi religious cult to make letters in stone in the US Capitol Building. Is it code for “In Doug Coe We Trust” which is probably already painted in gold in one of the private bunkers below ground reserved exclusively for this coven of white men pretending to be Christian?

God (the real One) protect us from all tax free religious fanatics and secular cultural PC lunatics!

Faithful of Allentown – Why don’t they like us anymore?

"Well we are living here in Allentown
And they're closing all the factories down…" Billy Joel

(Or more appropriately these days – They’re closing all the churches down...)

The opening title is I think from the POV of Parishioners of 47 Allentown Diocese churches closed in the past year. In typical arrogant RC archaic hierarchical, myopic management style, the outgoing Bishop Cullen cleaned all the shit off his desk – 47 Parishes in time for his mandatory retirement at age 75. The new guy will only have to worry about disposal of real estate assets and sending the cash to Rome - cushy job assignment. I hear he is a scholar like the pope.

Allentown Diocese Church Closings – Photo Gallery

An article today from Allentown about how some are getting along in the new compressed, condensed parish compactor solution – squeezing two or three parishes together with a part time priest to say one or two masses a week on an itinerate schedule commuting from parish to parish to say those masses – “modern RC management styles 101” to the layman.

Appeals and a prayer

I can see where a lot of ethnic RC churches should be closed as church attendance dwindles among the young. A lot of these old ethnic enclaves are sometimes situated within a block or two of each other. I see that demographic aspect of it from my own youth in Philly. The rest of it is management from the top, from the local bishop, from the local Cardinal, from the cleric in Rome deciding the fate of parishes in upstate Pennsylvania over his cappuccino at a sidewalk café in Rome.

My cynicism, my empathy for the little people dispatched from life long places of worship does not change anything. As sometimes happens lately, I was reading a different religious story when someone sent the article today from Allentown.

My concept, my feel for religion, comfortable feel for faith is for local control. In that sense I took part of my opening title from an article from a Baptist Pastor with his small congregation in Virginia.

Sermon Criticism- Why don’t they like us anymore?

Dan Kimball’s book, They Like Jesus But Not The Church, is a case-study of several young adults Kimball interviewed. Basically, they consider themselves to be spiritual, but not religious — just like our famous book from the 1970s. But here’s what they don’t like about the church. These are the actual chapter titles in Kimball’s book –

• The church is an organized religion with a political agenda.
• The church is judgmental and negative.
• The church is dominated by males and oppresses females.
• The church is homophobic (meaning, the church fears and/or hates homosexuals)
• The church arrogantly claims all other religions are wrong.
• The church is full of fundamentalists who take the whole Bible literally.

Apparently the Baptists have some of the same problems in attracting youth, among others to gather in church on Sunday, same as the Catholics.

Perhaps ”we need fresh moral guidelines to address the structural and systemic sinfulness of our time”. *

That being said Pastor Chuck Warnock of Chatham Baptist Church in Chatham, VA also has a bit of a visionary thing that might be applied to keeping some church complexes in Allentown open – to raise cash to pay electricity etc. Pastor Warnock looks to the past of self sufficiency – local control – as was the case in Celtic monasteries of the past.

The Abbey Church

It is not necessarily a solution but I think of old rectories, convents, school halls and say why can’t they be used to make a few bucks as youth hostels, stopping off places for traveling the road in an increasingly budget conscience America.

Churches used to be the center of real neighborhoods and real communities - not virtual. In the past half century of Wharton Spreadsheet Mythology, they, along with people, have merely become penciled in figures in some distant, hands off, no accountability, front office chancellery.

As the human culture becomes more global in orientation, the more local traditions need to be retained, maintained and reframed to offset the new global madness.


* John Mark Ministries - Book Review

Holy Vagina - the Feminine Side of God

I started writing this article last week but stopped. I had to do some follow up research. It is best to feel comfortable with what you are quoting. It started with a quote from Father Kennedy’s Pentecost homily. Father Kennedy was talking about the Gnostic thing again. The Gnostic movement in ancient times seems to have written a large portion of the Jesus story from a philosophical point of view. Writings and large parts of those concepts were suppressed for over fifteen hundred years only to be rediscovered or at least partially documented in the finding of the Nag Hammadi scrolls in Egypt in the late forties.

There is a quote from the Father Kennedy’s Pentacost homily that quotes a radical theologian Diarmuid O'Murchu who kind of dumbfounded me when he referred to the Holy Spirit as “she”.

Peter Kennedy's Homily May 30-31 Pentecost Sunday 2009

O'Murchu in his book

Catching up with Jesus

speaks of the Holy Spirit as an awakening presence that breathes where she wills, ever generating new breath thoroughly in human and planetary consciousness. Literalist Christianity created by Constantine gave source to the Holy Roman Empire, a totalitarian regime that would rule Europe with an iron-fist for over a thousand years. In the Western world the institutional authority of the church became the principal means whereby the state created political and social order. Gnostic spirituality throughout history has ceaselessly exposed literalist religion as a pernicious source of ignorance and division.

The Second Vatican Council, the vision of John XXIII which he referred to as a new Pentacost has yet to become a reality. It is time to awaken to the original message of the early Christians to the truth of Ultimate Reality, that is, the Oneness of Creation infused by the presences of Love itself, that is, there is only God.

I looked up this O’Murchu guy and he is quite off the wall and or futuristic in some of his theories. He is not afraid to engage in the modern world – this twenty first century world – not unlike the Episcopalians in Anaheim these past few days.

Is the Holy Spirit Female? Is my opening title word vagina offensive, strange, to you? For thousands of years before Christ, the power and ancient wisdom of God before Christianity was embodied and universally recognized in the earth goddess figure both as an idol and as a mental concept. Little wonder the sacred wisdom, Hagia Sofia, went underground for close to seventeen hundred years after Constantine and his Army Bull Cult took over the reins of the Christian religion to advance his personal glory and empire.

No doubt many of the bishops, imprisoned in the Emperor’s summer palace at the Council of Nicea, had to send us a message here in the future to say that yes, God has a feminine side and it is the Holy Spirit. It makes sense. It has balance. It is needed to counterbalance the present male godless capitalist system that would enslave us forever as it marches forth at present to destroy all our humanity.

The American Episcopal church seems to be dealing with reality, first with women ordinations and women as bishops and now extending that openness to the gay community. The American Episcopal church has its feet firmly planted in the twenty-first century of the common era of mankind. The Holy Spirit I think was in California this week. The rest of the established Christian order of things, especially the RC church, seems permanently stuck in the dark ages – time to follow a beacon of light from California.

I have to agree with the twenty-second century thinker and theologian Diarmuid O'Murchu that the Hold Spirit is a “she”. She is very much the feminine side of the Patriarchal God of the past four thousand years. She has been in her prison. She is a prisoner no more.

A new age of the Holy Spirit of God is upon us. Wake up and smell the roses!

God be praised!

Episcopal Leap of Faith

The Episcopal Church in America has decided that gay people are suitable to be ordained in their church. This is of course in direct conflict with the established order, CoE, Church of England, old order of things.

Episcopal vote on gay clergy widens Anglican split

There are a lot of patriarchal CoE types on the planet who still believe that women are only good for making babies or serving as doormats. Gays are not even part of that abuse filled talking point. Their Old Testament belief system is in direct conflict with the living real Jesus who if in human form would toss these haters of portions of humanity, these tossers into hell so to speak. Whatever.

The CoE with its Queen or is it the Welsh guy as Archbishop of Canterbury is going to have to organize the established church to face reality – It might be a good management model for the tossers who run the RC church to observe. I predict boutique divisions being formed and sanctioned under the dusty crown of the CoE head office brand to suit the out of daters, mad haters, of the old male "straight" order of things.

The American branch in its two hundred year experiment of independence, freedom and recognition of human rights has stated as of yesterday that Gays can be ordained. It does not sanction Gay Marriage. In fact I think the Secular World in America will sanction that decades before the religious types do.

In any case the bottom line is that Americans, religious or not, will not tolerate discrimination.

God bless our Republic!

Jan Brewer - Current Cracker Governor - Arizona

Arizona is prone to lunatics. Given the heat and the weird mix of civilization in the sprawling so called valley of the sun in Phoenix, its been a while. Arizona is due for another cracker and or crack pot governor. Last one was Evan Mecham and they had to impeach him, he was that bad. Among many other things, he dissed and cancelled the new federal Martin Luther King Jr. birthday holiday. Phoenix lost the Superbowl with the crazy governor MLK thing because the rest of the country was like in realityville man.

The current Governor succeeded Gov. Napolitano, a human being, who got moved up to Secretary of Homeland Security because of the need for talent in Washington D.C.. No Lieutenant Govs in AZ. Brewer was Secretary of State (?) and legal successor.

This new gov, just passed, signed off on a many barriers to women and their wombs abortion bill that Janet had vetoed several times.

Arizona governor approves abortion constraints

Considering that the state legislators get $24,000 per year, in terms of legislation you get what you pay for.

Having lived and worked under slave like conditions in Arizona, a fascist “right to work” state, where human rights let alone women’s rights are still a distant dream in the future, the politicians there only serve their rich contributors. Senator Kyl was the best lawyer money could buy when he was a lawyer. He is now the best Senator money can buy. John McCain, who has never had a private sector job, and part of the barbecue ribs and champagne ruling class, had never met a common ordinary citizen before he met Sarah Palin.

While Sarah is in hip waders and waiting for the straight jacket to be properly fitted at Saks, the boys down at the “C” Street "Church" (and occasional brothel) should be checking out the presidential timber potential of Jan Brewer, current cracker republican governor of Arizona.

I can only imagine what draconian legislation is now being drawn up to restrict the gay community in Arizona. If Arizona starts a trade mission with Borneo to import exotic hardwoods, one guess is that the wood will not be used for any ordinary barbecues. What's the fuss and sweat guys? It's only dry heat!

The Politics of Reality

There seemed to be a great energy in the meeting of Barack Hussein Obama and Benedict XVI in the Vatican yesterday. The “superstar” handle that John McCain’s campaign so cynically labeled him is true to some degree both home and abroad. You heard about him. Now you get a chance to see him in person.

There is a certain magic when virtual images on the TV come into reality focus and in person. Of course the real of “reality” is sometimes totally different from what you expected to see as compared with the “virtual”. How tall is he? His face and body are three dimensional. There is a handshake and there is a real person on the other end of your hand.

This is not meant to be a PR handout for the White House. It is meant to illustrate that what you see is sometimes not what you get. I read an interesting article from Time magazine again this morning that I read last night. Some of the parts that I skimmed over last night stuck out in a more pronounced way in the light of day.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s article accenting the Presidential visit with the Pope, was a thought or a frame of reference that I have not seen before from her angle on the RC church and its forty year campaign in America to uphold authoritarian rule and its mixing politics with religion. Ms. Townsend states that Barack Obama is more in line with the thoughts of the average American Catholic than the Pope is.

Without a Doubt

In truth, though, Obama's pragmatic approach to divisive policy (his notion that we should acknowledge the good faith underlying opposing viewpoints) and his social-justice agenda reflect the views of American Catholic laity much more closely than those vocal bishops and pro-life activists…

Upon rereading I decided that parts I skimmed over were possibly more important than I originally had thought. In particular:

But there they part ways. Politics requires the ability to listen to different points of view, to step into others' shoes. Obama might call it empathy. While the pope preaches love, listening to the other has been a particular stumbling block for the Catholic hierarchy (as it is for many in power). The hierarchy ignores women's equality and gays' cry for justice because to heed them would require that it admit error and acknowledge that the self-satisfied edifice constructed around sex and gender has been grievously wrong. Before he became John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla had a telling all-or-nothing formulation:

"If it should be decided that contraception is not an evil in itself then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit is on the side of the Protestant Churches."

Archbishop Wojtvla’s remark if quoted correctly says two disturbing things to me:

The idea that “we” are right and the Protestants are wrong. Acting on an informed conscience in general is against the authority of the hierarchy of the Church.

Two, that compromise, that SOME contraception is evil and that separating the pill, condoms etc. from the many tentacled abortion issue was unthinkable and undoable – that compromise was not possible in the black and white mind of the Polish Archbishop.

That attitude has resulted in some heinous decisions. Most famously, in the lead up to the encyclical "Humane Vitae" in 1968, an advisory body of theologians and laity empaneled by the pope advised that the church should reverse its position on birth control and concede that the issue should be a question for morality and for science. But authority—not truth, not love—prevailed: Pope Paul VI, listening to the advice of Wojtyla, disagreed with the majority of these advisers, who had voted 69 to 10 for change, fretting that to change this position would weaken his authority.

One of the ten, Wojtvla, had pushed his ideas over the majority view and onto the pope with a mail order priest’s diploma to decide the next forty years of debate on issues that I believe Ms. Townsend has stated elsewhere on things not mentioned in the bible.

One thing I want to note upon hearing of this quote for the first time – from its sinking in. When looking at the future John Paul II as advisor to Paul VI, I feel I must say that his statement above about the Holy Spirit is a disappointment. That the Polish Archbishop’s siege mentality probably contributed to the thing that “Humanae Vitae” has in common with other religions in time of seize and fear and in the mind of the Archbishop from behind the then “Iron Curtain”.

Unrestricted conception as described and protected by the ideologues of the RC church to this day reminds me of the polygamy sanctioned in Islam and Mormonism in times of siege and fear of war in the past. Both Islam and Mormons are stuck with the embarrassment of the wrong decision being made in the past.

Historically speaking, “Humanae Vitae” is a similar embarrassment to Roman Catholics. The need to produce more sons and future armies as in John Paul II’s case was no doubt to accommodate his private and nationalist dreams of future war on the Polish Communist state.

John Paul II was almost right. The Holy Spirit does favor individual informed conscience in the Secular but not necessarily Protestant state.

"C" Street Prayer House - Wash. D.C.

Amidst the current Republican sex scandals in both Washington and South Carolina there seems to be a cult like secret Christian prayer group located in a house on “C” Street in Washington D.C.. It, a former convent and still having a tax free religious status, is home to some of the most conservative fundamentalists in Congress.

In all fairness I have seen on TV how Senator Chuck Schumer shares a townhouse with three other Senators and commutes home on weekends. I don’t know about the prayer breakfast thing with liberal Chuck and company.

The house on “C” Street acts as a dormitory of sorts for Senators and Congressmen who cannot afford on their stingy little salaries to maintain a family home in Washington and their distant home voting base.

I have heard the cable talk show host Joe Scarborough mention that he had to quit his house seat in order to attend to family personal matters related to his being away from home 200 nights a year. I have done some long distance commuting and I feel for people who have to make that part of a work/home/family situation.

It has been noted in some places that Washington and its politics were a lot nicer in the forties, fifties and sixties. Politicians were not so nasty or so divisive as when their families went to the same church or their children went to the same school or they belonged to the same D.C. country club as their opponents in the other party. I think that had to do with economics. Washington is such an expensive place to live now.

All this being said in the interest of fairness, there seems to be something a little crazy the way some of the guys in the “C” Street Prayer House are acting.

Senator John Ensign of Nevada is a current resident of the “C” Street Prayer House. He recently admitted to adultery and has not resigned. There seems to be a lot of weird side effects of his adultery. There would seem to be bribe and or hush money being paid out by Ensign’s parents to his former piece on the side. Well, it just gets more thick with layer upon payer with deceit and corruptness of moral character.

Governor Mark Sanford had mentioned the “C” Street association in his recent confession of sin and adultery. Apparently he got Christian counseling to help him stop his sin in Argentina. Sanford had been a resident of the dorm when he was a House Rep before becoming Governor.

Presiding over this “Prayer House” is Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma with the title of deacon. To his credit Doctor Coburn (He is a medical doctor) used to practice medicine on weekends in Oklahoma when he flew back from Washington as a Congressman when he was a member of the lower house.

The deacon we know gave counseling to Governor Sanford and now there is a question if Coburn helped Ensign write a letter to his mistress trying to break off the affair. Senator Coburn – ever hear the line about jack of many trades = master on none?

The liberal press is trying to make the prayer house out to be some sort of secret fundie cult prayer cell but I take the whole thing on face value. Sometimes a bunch of fundie nuts living together is just that – a bunch of fundie nuts (with an occasional fruit mixed in). Whatever.

I am enjoying seeing the holier that thou fundamentalist right wing melt down now that the GOP is in exile. What new, perhaps Green party, will replace the GOP in the future elections?

I am not pleased with the present administration or his party and its unlimited bailout to the rich and their failed banking system that helped destroy the present world economy.

I miss the cloth coated republican days of Gerald Ford and Bob Dole.

Boy, what a mess many of us have in our economics, politics, religions and personal lives these days. Perhaps it is a good time for real prayer.

Gay Miracle by Jesus - Luke 7:2 - ?

And a certain centurion's servant, who was dear unto him, was sick, and ready to die. Luke 7:2

And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. Matthew 8:6

There are of course differences in translations of the synoptic gospels, Matt, Mark, Luke and I almost always go back to the King James Version of the gospels believing that in the manner they were assembled and translated from the ancient languages to have been a fair distribution of meaning of these considered to be sacred Christian texts.

Some things over the years I remember and reassemble in my mind to clarify later.

I do remember as I have mentioned earlier that some gospels passages have stuck in my mind over the years from my youth and having been read in church. And in those fairly ancient days of the fifth and sixth decade of the twentieth century, I remember a phrase that struck a note back then and now I feel in my heart the time to speak.

The passage in Luke 7 was about a Roman Centurion who asks Jesus for a healing of his servant “who was dear unto him”. Of course the gospels and all ancient histories lack a great deal of detail that we in the modern age demand and expect from writing. But that phrase has stuck in my ears and memory until yesterday when a thought gelled in my psyche.

Matthew has the same story line in its eighth chapter but the Roman’s slave and or servant is said to have “palsy” and was greatly tormented. No mention of a bond of affection and or respect for the life of the servant/slave. Of course some of these translations are many times trying to empathize with the culture of the times.

Luke I have been taught was a Greek. As such his Greek outlook and Greek culture seem to not be ashamed to add a note of affection between master and slave. Perhaps the dying slave had been a tutor, a second father, or he, and I presume he here, might have been his lover. We will never know.

If you believe in the basic message of Jesus, then Apostles or later disciples who wrote down the early oral traditions of the early Christian cult aimed for accuracy and perhaps on occasion feelings. Greco-Roman culture did not draw lines so tightly and meanly between sexual practices as we now do in very recent history.

The use of the story of a Roman Centurion could have been a later add-on to make the gospels more user friendly to Greeks and Romans after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.. I think rather than being an add on, it seems the real thing because it speaks of faith and a hierarchy of principles and commands and blind discipline that held the Roman Empire together for so long. I think it possible and probable that Judaism for a Roman army officer was a local religion and a local “god” that demanded attention and respect. After all, it says the Centurion built a synagogue. Not perhaps kosher on his part so much as trying to win the hearts and minds of a captive people.

Jesus in his ever widening circle of the people, real people, outside the sham world of the Temple crowd in Jerusalem appealed to all levels of humanity and to their individual needs and cultures.

I believe that this curing of a “servant dear unto him” may have been an unbiased act of love by Jesus, by God to a gay couple. It was perhaps a gay miracle by Jesus.

I say all this because an energy hit me yesterday. Someone kindly forwarded an article in USA today about some conservative bishop in the Church of England ranting his hate directly at gays and indirectly at women ordinations etc. It is a wonder how these conservatives in the COE/Episcopal Church can eliminate 50% of humanity in the form of women and say another 5% in Gays. Rip the church apart and live in the mistaken belief that 45%, a trimmed budget of Jesus’ Church, is a queer fulfillment of Jesus’ command to preach to all nations. I do not believe Jesus left a list of the select few in those nations that should listen and or be saved.

So, the article in USA Today was negative energy created in the universe by a very smug blind cleric. Well the negative energy hit me and it knocked me in the head and I remembered the thing about the Centurian and his “gay” servant that I had filed away for some time. The world and or universe may be on its way back to balance now that the Centurion and his servant are now out of the closet so to speak. Thank you Bishop for the kick in the ass.

Jesus loves us all, every one of us.


.

Communion with People

I was moved by what I read in the following homily by Father Kennedy of St. Mary’s community in Brisbane. His words begin to trace a human experience and are about a former parishioner that chose to not follow him down the street away from the old church. The parishioner has cerebral palsy and lives in an assisted care center.

Peter Kennedy - Homily - Sunday 14th June

Now the people at Lotus House have experienced physical, psychological and sexual abuse in church and government run institutions - abuse they have never been able to fully escape. I think that one of my reasons for being apprehensive about going into Lotus House was that I, an official religious person, might not be all that acceptable to the victims of such systematic abuse and yet the opposite happened - people smiling a welcome, putting out their hand to touch mine…

Again there was no meal but there was for myself as I walked away a sense of Eucharist/communion that left me promising myself that I must return to Lotus House - not for their sake but for mine…

During my conversation with Michael whenever I mentioned God he fell about crying, tears welling up in his eyes and I knew I was communing with mystery.

This community was accused of "not having any faith over there" and our celebration of the sacraments and the Eucharist were suspect, because institutional Catholicism demands that we can only come to the truth through the

divinely appointed brokers, totally submissive to their doctrines and correct formulas - the opposite of course is more likely to be the truth.

For it is clear from the gospel that the poor, the disadvantaged, the victims of injustice, the differently abled, all those excluded on the grounds of gender/sexual preference are the very ones that the historical Jesus welcomed to his table time and time again.

To paraphrase Dominic Crossan, "The last supper never happened but it is always happening".

So on Tuesday I understood what Crossan meant and that I didn‟t have to explain my Theological difference to Michael or to anyone about the Eucharist as given to us by the divinely appointed brokers, with their demand for validity, that we use the right formula for Baptism or only the ordained Priest has the power to make Jesus present in the Eucharist.

I don‟t have to fall into that trap anymore because I now know where to find a truly valid experience of Eucharist/communion…

In some cosmic sense, I believe that a true early Christian sense of fellowship, love and social earnestness are expressed above in what I feel might be called a living gospel – good news – by and for the people of God in a small distant community.

It is stories like the above that sparked the early Christian movement hearing stories from a distance that they believed, absorbed into their lives and began to commune with the energy of Jesus, a gift of God, of himself, to humanity.

Christianity needs a rebirth of spirit and outlook and focus.

Twenty first century western culture is corrupt - is as bankrupt of values and love as any of the grand totalitarian regimes, new man made religions, that failed in the recent history of the last century.

The words of Jesus did not destroy the Roman Empire. When the dust settles on fallen empires, the words of Jesus persist in the hearts of the faithful and the Word lives on.

Real Saints of Australia

Soon to be excommunicated Father Peter Kennedy of St. Mary’s in Exile in Brisbane gets my vote for future sainthood and in his own church. God Bless him!

In any case he would not be the first religious excommunicated by a cracker bishop intent on upholding strict discipline in the ranks. One pending RC saint managed to get herself excommunicated over miscommunication with her bishop in her time.

The above photo of Blessed Mary MacKillop, soon to be the first native born Australian saint, is waiting for her third miracle.

Bathersby, the archbishop, is merely cleaning off his desk before retirement in two years time of old paperwork. Efforts to defrock ahead of the curve Father Kennedy have been going on for over twenty years. Previous bishops have not tried so hard to please the Vatican.

But then this is an old case file on the desk of Cardinal Ratszinger, then John Paul IIs hatchet man in the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Lots of files left on Joe’s desk from the past and into the present. Makes you wonder why they elect somebody so old or was it fear that he knew where too many skeletons are buried or in the closet in the Vatican? Oh well.

Besides Blessed Mary MacKillop, let us not forget Joan of Arc who was excommunicated by the English bishops only to have the black mark taken off her record a few decades later in spiritual or was it political regret? In any case it would have saved a lot of fire wood. It only takes one bishop to excommunicate and, as in Joan of Arc’s case, another bishop not unlike a mere bishop of Rome to rescind an order of excommunication.

The church doesn’t always know the real thing when they see it. I think Peter Kennedy is the real thing. Like the historic model with Joan of Arc, Bathersby and his crowd (including Joe) don’t seem to know Christmas from Bourke Street as they say in parts of Oz.

Mary MacKillop’s nineteenth century RC bishop backed off and rescinded his excommunication. Father Kennedy officially or unofficially in his church will continue his work, his labor, his sheparding in the truest sense of the Message of Jesus and the Christian faith to the members of his congregation.

There is something so stubborn and frontier like in the nature of some Australians to blaze a true path to settlement or to the future that I greatly admire.

Maybe Mary MacKillop’s third miracle to achieve sainthood will have to do with the softening of the stone hearts of the RC hierarchy intent on destroying true good works.

Pax.

British Embassy - Hostages - Iran

I had a momentary flashback to 1979 and the seizing of three hundred American hostages in the American Embassy in Tehran.

The photo above is a documented picture of an American hostage from those days and the guy in the circle is allegedly Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his salad days of local Iranian politics.

The headline and words in the CNN piece below did not immediately clarify the situation to me.


Britain blasts arrest of embassy staffers in Iran

The arrest of local staff members at the British Embassy in Iran is "harassment and intimidation of a kind which is quite unacceptable," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Sunday.

"About nine" staffers have been affected, he said, adding that some had already been released.

"We have protested in strong terms directly to the Iranian authorities about the arrests that took place yesterday," but there has been no response, Miliband said.

Iran's government-backed Press TV said earlier on Sunday that eight local British embassy staffers had been seized for their role in the unrest following the disputed presidential elections on June 12.

My main complaint about this piece of “Journalism” above is that it does not fully follow the old rules of newspaper journalism and answer the basics of who, what, how, where and why and being addressed in the first paragraph of the news story.

“Local staff members” does not say if the local staffers are British Citizens or not.

As I usually do, I turned to a British news source to get a fuller, tighter, more professional body of the story and situation.


Iran arrests UK embassy staff

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has angrily refuted allegations that Iranian employees of the British embassy in Tehran played a role in the post-election protests of the past two weeks.

In the latest in a series of spats between the two countries, Iran detained eight or nine local embassy staff for playing a "significant role" in the unrest, which has seen serious clashes between demonstrators and security forces.

Miliband, speaking from a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Corfu, said the government was "deeply concerned" at the arrests. "This is harassment and intimidation of a kind that is quite unacceptable," he said. "We want to see them released unharmed."

The other side, the Iranians, who are not unlike the Chinese in 1971 before Nixon’s visit in 1972 – their dictionaries and handbooks on western protocol are decades out of date.

Words are important. Not everybody on the planet talks urban street. An old fuddy duddy such as myself sent an E-mail to CNN or one of the mainstream media because they had called the actress Loretta Young an actor in her obit when she passed in 2000.

Other people may have decided that actor is good word, not actress, for a female. I do not agree. I thought it disrespectful and or inept on the part of the MSM. Lorette Young lived and displayed her talents in another age in which she was called an actress. Modern day PC words did not fit her obituary. Just because I had not gotten with the new asexual word of “actor”, does not mean that I liked or understood it as part of the obit.

We should do not presume that headlines in an American News Source are correct, or interpreted correctly and or reliable especially when the other side, or its leadership is still in a permanent unmovable 1979 AD western moment frame of mind (like Iran).

I doubt that we can be drawn into another Iranian Hostage situation even though it would suit the Supreme Thug (wearing a so-called mantle of God) and his cronies especially his grape peeling sycophant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I doubt that the “bunker busters” are at this moment on Air Force transports to Israel.

I am mildly concerned that a major story on a major American News source in its opening vagueness might escalate a propaganda war on both sides of this potentially hostile global conflict.

Obama is a lawyer and I expect him to put negotiations first or foremost. If that does not work – well – let’s not go there.

Death of a Legend in La La Land - Michael Jackson

Great artists are allowed their eccentricities.

Without a doubt Michael Jackson was a stellar example of talent and worthy of icon mania. His visuals in music videos, an art form perfected at the height of his career, may be played for a thousand years. I can picture the “Thiller” video being played in space in 3009 AD or on a solar colony near Saturn.

The visual arts in video are sort of like the Greek statues of their day and they stayed around and were imitated and found a place in many a villa in the Roman Empire for centuries after their creation. Man, in his spirit, in his soul, recognizes artistic high watermarks on the common civilization brand. Michael was without a doubt one of those high watermarks of the present western and worldwide culture.

The human race turns on a dime and forgives the eccentricities of great artists. His eccentricities were many to say the least.

I was never fully evolved to accept Michael as the “It” of his generation. My generation was a little bit before in the fifties. I burned out on Rock and Roll in the late fifties as a child of five. I sort of yawned when the Beatles came along and ignored them until I discovered them as Muzak in an elevator in the late seventies. Etc.

Nobody, not even myself, could ignore the energy and creativity and breath of life that MJ’s talent exhibited.

I am somewhat taken aback by the power of the media or music or concerts to transmit that something and indiscernible quality of life of this age, these many short ages overlapping, of rock, pop, punk, metal and so on and so forth. The quality of this age I am not certain of. Only history will tell.

Of men and or women who makes hundreds of millions of dollars and can live in a luxurious bubble world and believe anything they want to and do anything they want to – one thing is certain – they can only believe or do anything for a short time and then there is - Death.

As for Michael, I find it ironic that his last days of life ended in La La Land, Los Angeles, known for its eccentricities and a place with the movie and music industry, a place not totally fixed in everyday reality. His preparations for the “next tour” seemed to be an appropriate, if untimely, place to exit life.

Michael Jackson, The King of Pop, has left the building.

I have to wonder if in the days and weeks and months to follow how many new urban legends and sightings, like that of Elvis, of the elusive, eccentric and talented Mr. Jackson will be created and transmitted by word of mouth and media to accent his recent passing.

RIP

Gov. Mark Sanford - That Jimmy Swaggert Moment

My karma in life, if there is such a thing, is to not to judge others too hastily. God knows I am not perfect and that by creative (?) design. The variable at work in our evolution to perhaps keep improving the model line generation to generation is I think part of the grand plan of things.

With twelve years of black and white catholic education under my belt, it is difficult for me sometimes to break away from the mold and not be judgmental. Look at this fool Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina who has to go all the way to Argentina to schtupp a piece of ass on the side of his ( at this point ?) marriage.

I believe in karma within your own lifetime. What goes around comes around. Sanford was one of the choir of Pubs calling for Clinton to resign when he got caught in his marriage infidelity with a White House intern back when in the late nineties.

Had it not been for his , Sanford’s, holier than thou, family value attitude toward Clinton back when, I might feel for this fool right now.

The tears and please have pity on me show displayed at a poorly run news conference yesterday I think were staged to give time for the Governor to backtrack on whose credit card (his or the State of S.C.) paid for an expensive last minute excursion to his love shack in Buenos Aires. And if the ticket was booked way in advance for a discount, all the more proof of another lie. But don’t go there.

I am reminded of the TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggert who got caught with a prostitute way back when and I remember his crocodile tears about sinning but it was more about being caught than sinning. Anyway, that slag heap is still in the tax free God business these days but on a lower tier than he occupied in his prime.

Good, bad or indifferent I am not going to ask Sanford to resign. He should not for his lust but for his Republican Idol rhetoric about free markets and balanced budgets etc. There are a awful lot of South Carolinians out of work and in need of Unemployment Benefits that he, the Governor in his Republican Idol rhetoric, would keep from getting those federally funded extra benefits to survive. Mark Sanford’s privileged view of himself and his ruling white class bubble world is something separate and not equal with the dirty unwashed masses.

There I did it. I judged him at some level. Not very Christian of me. But then, I try to follow the ten commandments like the one about adultery. For me the ten commandments are a real living breathing thing and a challenge at times to uphold. For people like Sanford and Swaggert the Ten Commandments should be carved in stone and collect dust as decoration in some statehouse hallway.

Enough said.

Age of Chronic Luxury

The visuals. The visuals.
They all come quick.
A life of Visuals,
quick, quick, quick.
Incomplete as memory fades.
Always the taste and
the draw for more.

I suppose the
Chev-Ro-Lay
in Black and White,
a commercial
and Dina Saur - we
called her that - tee hee hee,
framed a magic moment,
boomer kids seemed to have
all the rag tag makings,
potential glory of a new
rich golden age.

Instead as it all turned out
it became a burb age,
a bubble age, a mindless
consuming age and
compared to the rest
of an unaware humanity -
we, the many, lived the good life
the high life - for a short time
in the America of
domestic tranquility.

It was a coming age, full of
promise, progress, a golden time,
an age yet to be sorted out.
Global awareness was only
in books in college bookstores.
And issues like race, sex, sexuality
had yet to struggle, come of age.
It was an age of chaos - the good
parts are yet to survive and lead us
elsewhere - but by and large and
for most of us it was an unprecedented
Age of Chronic Luxury.

Nothing in history
to compare with it - nothing
to compare it to -
the might of Detroit
and a Maytag
washing machine
and "Queen for a Day"
on the tube.
The decades on from the fifties
were sweet though in retrospect
in-complete. Those years had glamour
and simple sight - but little or
no long lasting soul.

The visuals in the beginning of
that age had a few companions,
radio, hi-fidelity, stereo
and not one but many local
daily hard copy news-papers.
When the age ended
with a crash so to speak, a muted thud,
only the noise and chatter,
cacophonic clatter dulled
virtual, not real, reality
- cable, e-pod, e-mail, mobile cell phones,
PCs, the Internet, tweeter -
as disinterested witness to it all.

A Tower of Babel reborn? Retorn with
a new dark age of chaos to follow?

The great charade of the big war,
Vietnam - some growing years,
and the estimated body counts -
we always won - we never lost a...
Mission statement to keep the anthill
threat of S.E. Asia over
there - it boosted GM stock.

"What's good for GM is (was) good
for America" then. Or at least that
is what the Wall Street mantra then spake.
A national treasury of gold, ideas, youth
- a whole generation wasted, misled,
misdirected - doped - spun - eventually
onto a pagan altar of deregulation
and temporary titanic paper profit?

(That and a moon walk to represent that
early decade or so. Anybody lately drink the
scientific wonder of that age? Tang!)

Fast forward, those other years to
the modern day - and in between (?)
Work. Work. Work.
Marriage, a mortgage, kids.
401(K) - retirement?

Where did all those golden
Boomer days go?
Who counts?
Upon reflection in a glass
or into a trash filled lake,
why does the rest of the
planet want beef
plastic credit and
power muscle cars?
Silly question silly fool.

And as the recent age of
chronic luxury collapses (here)
what is the legacy best? Left?
Shouting - argumentum
ad hominem - ad nasueum.
Hate Radio. Hate News.
Death to my domestic enemy!
My bubble world is superior
to yourrr bubble world!!!
(on a dying planet)

Whatever happened to God?
Is he retired - living in Vegas?

Where has the Republic gone?
The upper half (10%) of an
economy struggles to recover.
The bottom 90% is lost forever
in fifth world bliss
amidst empty factories and
empty office towers (for sale - cheap!).
It's the new economics -
Broken promises - unfulfilled dreams.
Plastic card idols and
the pursuit of fantasy
-the illusion or was it delusion
of a common man's world -
could not last - a temporary
half century long Camelot?

Lost. So many things amidst
the fading echo
and fading visuals - of time gone-
not properly managed
an unsustainable age
that no one questioned
this passing age
of chronic luxury.

What next?

NEDA - VOICE - IRAN

Neda! Voice!

I chose not to publish the picture of a twenty-six year old woman murdered on the streets of Tehran by the religious thug militia.

It is all over the net and YouTube. The picture of her dying, dead, and with blood pouring out of her mouth and nose onto her face, after being shot in the heart, is the face of Iranian justice today.

Her name – Neda – in the native language means Voice.

Her name is a rallying call to the protestors. We perhaps have our defining image of this historic moment, though somewhat gruesome, to match the man in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square in Peking twenty years ago.

I find it totally ironic that the religious thugs who run Iran and are forbidding foreign correspondents from covering the protests and the violence that followed a fixed election, that those western journalists would have already censored a graphic violence image and filtered it before going into the smug atmosphere of a couch potato American audience.

So it goes.

RIP – NEDA.

Secular Victory in Iran - Round One

Crackk!!!

Did you hear that sound – the crack in the wall surrounding Iran?

Ever since the thugs took over thirty years ago and put on the robes and began a reign of terror over the minds of men and women – this past week has shown that the educated middle class of merchants and students in Tehran want a modern breathing space for their humanity.

I do not know why all the repressive religions in the world take such comfort from their idol – a Mean Spirited Desert god of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed that loves tyrants and hates people. Don’t they know that God is Love?

My guess is that if a Hypocrite like Khamenei or a humongous Assh-le like Ahmadinejad can no longer talk for the Man – God/Allah – or be believed to be able to talk that talk and walk that walk of the almighty – their days are numbered like those of Danton and Robespierre from dark darks of the French Revolution.

Secular Iran won the first round of an ongoing battle to free the minds of man from the tyranny of mean spirited clerics in robes.

Was the Shah really that bad in retrospect???

Last week was one of those – God may be great but he picked an awful lot of shitheads to represent and interpret himself on this earth to the masses - yeah right - moments – happened – one of those turning points of history moments – did you take notice?

Good luck to the people of Iran to free themselves from the mental slavery of fools.

In Defense of a Dead Oblate

There is an article in the papers about how the nephew of the late Cardinal O’Connor of New York is filing a sex abuse case against a deceased priest. The article in the New York Daily News puts the victim at a totally different highschool in Philly than the one named in the lawsuit. So much for accurate reporting from the MSM.

A much more accurate accounting of details of all parties and factors concerned is found in a Philly article.

The contention is that a thirteen year old freshman at Father Judge High in Phila., was threatened with failure in his freshman religion class unless he submitted to abuse. The contention is that the nephew of a Cardinal would suffer shame if he could not get a passing grade in religion. The headlines in New York were no doubt eye catching using the name of a former famous dead cleric such as Cardinal O'Connor.

I have to disagree with the idea that a relative of an upscale cleric would automatically be a target for a jealous low level cleric. If anything, my being a cousin of a Bishop I think kept anybody away from me that might have wanted to harm me for fear of my reporting the whole thing to the front office so to speak.

The other point I do not agree with is that a sixty-six year old priest, before Viagra, could harass or rape a healthy thirteen year old boy who was not interested in any play.

The priest in question has been named in a suit earlier this year by another former student in the Delaware diocese where the priest had been teaching at the time of that alleged incident. A Delaware law extended the statute of limitations for these abuse crimes for reporting or for lawsuits for a period of twenty five years past the age of eighteen and with a two year window in which to file suits within this legal timeline.

Do two lawsuits prove guilt or does the name of a dead priest in circulation make for a convenient target for the blossoming cottage industry of abuse support/help groups and let’s not forget the lawyer industry that helped destroy affordable medicine in this country?

The deadline for filing suits at the end of this two year period is July 1, 2009. While the incident in the cardinal’s nephew lawsuit took place in Philadelphia, the teaching order, the Oblates of Saint Francis de Sales, based in Delaware and Washington D.C. are within reach of Delaware’s Abuse law regarding the alleged Philadelphia incident.

Several things I do not like here. One, the priest is dead. Two, the priest’s name is public knowledge by a previous lawsuit. The whole story sounds more like a nuisance lawsuit traveling on the coat tails of another lawsuit.

While the Church bears a hog’s share of responsibility for the shuffling around of perverts over the decades and centuries, not every allegation of abuse is necessarily true especially if money is involved in the equation.

I had disagreed on the clause in the Ryan Report regarding abuse by the clergy in Ireland – the clause that did not name parties involved. In a way the knife cuts both ways. Is it more important at this late date to document an era of abuse or try and shame aged clerics and nuns in their nursing homes to account for what in essence was a system of abuse designed and run by both the state and the church in Ireland?

So too in America, I do not think that dead clerics being named and not being able to defend themselves is a fair balance. By all means there should be counseling, healing and compensation for real abuse. The church has got to get over this hill, learn from its mistakes, reform and move on – this in order to be a credible institution in the modern age.

There is a time and reason – a season - for everything under the sun. It is time to move on.

Father Alberto Cutie Cuts Gordian Knot of Celibacy

A lot of the non-Spanish speaking American population may or may not be familiar with Father Alberto Cutie (Coo-tee-ay). He is a well spoken, photogenic, immensely popular media presence that has been called “Father Oprah” by some in the media to describe his role in dispensing advice in the Spanish speaking media.

I had not heard of him until some weeks ago when they started to publicize some fairly innocent pictures of him on the beach in Miami with his girlfriend. Of course a Roman Catholic priest is supposed to be celibate and not supposed to have a girlfriend. I had been reluctant to say anything before now about the whole affair until it died down and played itself out.

What happened is that the pictures got published. They took Cutie off his official duties. I suppose the RC church wanted time to have yet another so-called scandal to cool off and then go back to business as usual.

Father Cutie, a mature adult of 40, apparently had some soul searching to do or had already been in that process when the public figure in a public place got put on the cover of a Mexican scandal magazine. The decision about self, love, commitment, career etc. had come to a turning point.

While Alberto was on administrative leave, he decided to walk across the street so to speak to the Episcopalian Diocese of S.E. Florida in Miami and join that particular Christian sect that allows its clergy to live in the sacrament of matrimony. Matrimony is an issue that founded the Episcopalian or its mother Church of England and centered around Henry VIII’s need for a legitimate male heir to prevent civil war upon his death.

Father Cutie got married this week in Miami in a civil ceremony and hopes to have a church wedding after he gets settled into the job of Priest after he has passed a few administrative hurdles and paperwork to make him a fully functioning Episcopalian priest.

There is some bitch-bitch talk in the Catholic blog/news world but it is really how the RC Archbishop of Miami Lavalora is pissed at Episcopalian Bishop Frade of not following unwritten protocols of informing the other bishop of conversion and not making a show of the conversion. Well, the show thing was already in the news, and Father Cutie’s resume was no doubt already in the public forum. This was no priest knocking on the door at midnight and asking to change sides.

I think Archbishop Lavalora owes Bishop Frade an apology for unfair words stated about Frade and his neatly and quickly wrapping up and taking this matter off the public forum table.

I wish Father Cutie and his bride best wishes and good luck in their marriage. I expect to hear more of Father Cutie in his Spanish speaking media role should he choose to continue in that vein of his career in serving his God and his Christian faith.

Cyber Terrorism in Iran

Cyber Terrorism on a small global scale is being tested on the guinea pigs of the Iranian people these past few days.

Some in the capital of Tehran are slightly ahead of the curve with the use of Twitter to inform the outside world of events. Cutting off cell phones and the Internet along with jamming satellite signals do not make for a credible legitimate government of Iran.

Cyber Terrorism is real whether it is practiced by governments or crooks trying to steal your identity.

In the case of a government resorting to cyber terrorism brings to mind a quote by Thomas Jefferson.

"I Have Sworn Upon the Altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Holy Nuke! - The Coming War with Iran?

First of all – hint – hint – in terms of imitating the west’s style of democratic elections.

One. You wait to count all the ballots no matter how many days that might take.

Two. If you in fact do get 62% of the vote, it is a landslide and it is evident to everyoine who has won.

Three. If you need James Baker, Anthony Scalia or the Ayatollah Khamenei to tell you who won, then maybe you as a country are in deep shit – up to your arm pits in fact.

Putting aside all the last minute enthusiasm from the young, the majority of the nation, the future of the nation, last week in a sort of velvet, texting, twitter, spring, revolution atmosphere, I would have believed a squeaker election with 51% for the predictable winner to have been more palatable to the nation and to the world. Whatever.

The real issue today is if there is going to be war or airstrikes on Iran because of the theocracy posing as a democracy and within reach of nuclear mayhem.

I think that we in the west have been patient with the rhetoric coming and going out of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A lot of this rhetoric has to do in one way with the rights of a nation to develop peaceful nuclear technology.

There is always that awkward moment when words, ideas, thoughts get lost or misunderstood in translation. Persia has a very old rich mid east culture. Iran, aside from the historic Persia, is a secular state of sorts fronting for religious fanatics.

The west, that used Iran for decades as a convenient puppet state and bulwark against Soviet hegemony, got ungraciously kicked out in 1979. Iran now is within reach of being a nuclear power, bombs and all.

At this point in time with all the rhetoric floating around and with the good intentions to negotiate a peaceful solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions – one thought comes to this crazy cultural secularist christian – would I want the pope to have a nuke?

No. No. No. NO. NO!

No matter if the Supreme Leader of Iran Khamenei has Ahmadinejad or Mousavi as a stooge for President, the point is that nobody who claims to talk for God/Allah should have nuclear weapons at their command.

Secular leadership in the arms race is bad enough. I have seen enough of anger and hate filled theocratic rhetoric from Iran, translated or mistranslated over thirty years back to the west, to say that enough is enough.

Polls in Israel are for a so-called strategic strike against Iran’s nuclear industrial network. I fear that such a strike at this point in time will set the whole world into blinding rage and uncontrollable global warfare.

The emerging modern global world is in need of global fiscal economic and democratic responsibilities. This new world order of things does not need another armed nuclear power. The world does not need another backward looking Medieval State.

Iran is entitled to live in benign isolation and religious bliss. (but without nukes for the sake of everybody else living on this planet) (it is also time to disarm everywhere else)

That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep a view
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've said too much
I hadn't said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try… (lyrics – R.E.M.)

Birthers and other Crazies! - Sede Vacante

There is one of those annoying sounds from the far right lunatic fringe group that keeps creeping into the mental state of the nation. That is the new coded racist conspiracy crackpot theory, tin foil hat idea labled as the “birther” movement.

Apparently the far right lunatics have latched onto this idea that President Obama was not born in this country. He was born in Hawaii, a member of the Union since 1959. He was born in 1961. This came up during the campaign and I do recall that John McCain, was born of American parents in Panama while his father was on duty in the Navy there. If you are going to question the Dem’s credentials then you have got to mention the Pub’s questionable claim to native American born status as a constitutional prerequisite for the highest office in the land.

Putting aside campaign rhetoric, I saw a video clip last night on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC from some recent archive in which talk show host Rush Limbaugh was making a joke about what God has in common with Barack Obama – “no birth certificate”.

The poor excuse of a human being that walked into the national Holocaust Museum the other day with a gun and hatred has been linked to a belief in this “birther” conspiracy idea. That sick old man had a whole litany of confused and hate filled ideas. Primary among was them was hatred for the Jews, anti-Semitism. This guy also was surprising anti-christian as well.

What struck me last while watching that archive footage of Rush and making a droll joke about God’s birth certificate and reinforcing the lunatic fringe’s tin foil hat ideas was that this whole idea sounds familiar. It was when Rachel spent air time to go a little in depth on the silly subject that a light bulb went off in my head. Maddow had stated something like the fact that people, because of this idea, believe that the Office of President of the United States (POTUS) is vacant. It is not vacant. It is occupied and functioning better that it has in a decade what with Bill Clinton and his BJ Impeachment and the inbred idiot ruling class’s choice of George III.

Vacant! Sede Vacante! The seat of the President is empty in the minds of people who cannot see a black man seating there.

I have to assume corrently or incorrectly that this birther thing in the election fell onto the fertile ground of racism in America as well as tax supported Tradtionalist Catholicism where the idea of a vacancy in a seat of temporal power is a way to avoid with dealing with reality.

I believe we are seeing a secular version of the Latin Massers in the form of the Obama Birthers. Art imitating nature? Or screwed up thinking reflecting superstition and hatred both on a secular and “sacred” level. Whatever.

A film clip from the flaming liberal, lesbian news reporting goddess, Rachel Maddow from March to help you visualize and absorb this idea more fully:

Constantine Complex - a modern condition?

There is that thing about short men with an inferiority thing called a Napoleonic complex.

Looking at some present day figures does not necessarily bring to mind the Napoleon thing. If Napoleon had succeeded with his bloody military thing, the EU would have been born a century and a half sooner and WWI and WWII would have not likely happened. Theory and conjecture do not make a real history of facts.

Of course, now I see what I call the Constantine complex in this modern world. It has to do with megalomaniac egos and trying to start new world religions or belief systems. It has to do with marshalling the forces available to fuller the power of the one over the many by any means possible. It also has to do with “I am Right and you are wrong! Period!”

No doubt a light bulb or I should say a torch lit up in the great Emperor god Constantine’s mind when he sought the means to glue two halves of an empire back together again. The key word here is “one”. One Emperor, one world Empire, one world religion. The monotheistic christian religion was no doubt an ideal fit into the emperor god’s grand megalomaniac plan for his new world order in the fourth century.

One current candidate for the title or label of the Constantine complex is the movie maker and actor Mel Gibson. Of course if Gibson were alive in the time of Constantine he would have approved of laws forbidding Jews from owning christian slaves or Nuremburg type laws imposing death if a Jew dared to marry a christian. Constantine! What a guy! Founder and cosmic enabler of the present church in Rome.

Gibson’s grasp of defending the 16th century tridentine mass in Latin as the only bridge to the one absolute God that he and his cult alone can fathom and defend perhaps has its limits. While Mel is divorcing his wife of twenty eight years and he is about to have a child out of wedlock, he is a little upset with his congregation of 70 fanatics who he suddenly doesn’t feel loyalty from. He is supposed to have threatened to shut down his church tax shelter because his fellow congregants are gossiping about him. Minor stuff, the real Constantine killed one son and his second wife because of palace gossip. Thank God Mel is only a minor tin god reflection of the real standard.

Mel is so pure, he is more holy than the pope, more catholic than the pope etc. Of course Mel has a few mortal flaws but is none the less one of my candidates for the label of having a Constantine complex.

Fast forward and the current age of mass media which is not a two way media, and they got rid of the fairness doctrine, whereby a balanced point of view is supposed to go out on the airwaves. The king of this modern day Constantine complex thing – this absolute rule of “I am Right and you are wrong! Period!” - would have to be “Boss Tweed” Limbaugh spewing nonstop confusion and hate over the radio air waves both for himself and his dying political party.

Also, suddenly Pope Newt the First, newly arrived in the Constantine faith, is telling his constituency that besides being always absolutely right that we are surrounding by “paganism”. What the hell is Gingrich mumbling about? Or is this just a new label for secular humanism? We don’t need a new world religion Newt when so many of all the others don’t work that well or work at all.

The domestic culture wars I hope are over. While we are at it, isn’t it time for the Armed Forces of the USA to stand down from WWII and the Cold War. There are better uses for the money in the social and domestic needs of the American people. Constantine is dead and so too should be his idea of empire, combining church and state, that so many these days seem to want to emulate.

Confessions of a Clueless Bureaucrat

There seems to be a theme running through the ongoing sex abuse scandals of the Roman clergy. The theme is one of temporary memory or of living in a morality bubble that only considers morals and confession and the immediate needs of the soul. If private corporations ran their internal workings on the myopic short term limited concerns as in the RC church, they would be out of business - or – hint, hint – about to go out of business.

The theme I see is that the RC church gives no value to the secular soul. “Outside the Church, there is no salvation.”

The RC church, which had been both secular and sacred government for many parts of the world in the past, attacks modernism when secularism and or democracy doesn’t mix well with bubble morality – oil and vinegar. Coexistence with secularism and interfaith dialogue are to be feared as well and not reconciled at all costs.

When the RC church has to coexist with other religions in the United States as an example, it continues to express itself as both a secular and supremely sacred institution within the confines of its bubble.

With special medieval tax entitlements, it goes along on its merry, nonconforming to secularism, way and subsidized by the secular world and secular taxpayers. In fact, alliances with Satan aka fundamentalist christian types on political issues and imposing Catholic Sharia Law on the U.S. Constitution for birth control and abortion is part of the master internal plan.

Problem with the RC church might be that it gives 110% to the soul of a man in an afterlife. It perhaps gives little or nothing to the welfare of a man alive in the secular world. Of course it gives comfort for the fear it helps to create in the first place about the afterlife.

The former archbishop of Milwaukee is coming out with a book more to show case his coming out of the closet about being gay. When that book goes on sale next week, all sorts of punditry and shouting will be going about. Over and above this cleric doing public confession for his individual sexuality, he does little to shed light on the real harm done to people, children abused by the clergy. He is pulling the old “I didn’t know or didn’t understand” defense regarding his own culpability in the greater arena of this decades, centuries old sexual dysfunction of the RC Church.

Sex-abuse victims group rebuffs Weakland’s naiveté claim

Weakland makes those assertions in his forthcoming memoir, "A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church," saying at one point, "We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of its criminal nature."…

In his book, the retired archbishop says that in the 1970s, he "naively" accepted the notion that victims would either forget or "grow out of" the abuse. He blames the leniency shown by judges toward priests (and other professionals) in sex abuse cases for shaping his views on the perpetrators…

In most of the last decade of abuse scandals, the real tragedy I think is that these front office clerics honestly do not know the modern day value of a human being in the real – secular – world.

In the past few months, I have seen the dysfunctionality of the bishops expressing empathy for sex abusers as with Archbishop Nichols of Westminster in Britain over and above the victims in regards to the Ryan Report. I see the mad bishops of Brazil more concerned about excommunication and Catholic Sharia law than the rights or safety of a nine year old pregnant rape, incest victim getting a late term abortion.

I see the holocaust denying Bishop Williamson getting a promotion in the RC church strictly on “moral” theological stands, that and real estate and money. Let’s not forget Cardinal Law of Boston and his promotion to run the third oldest church/shrine in Christendom within Rome.

I see my own chiding of the ever “no appointments available” Bishop Martino of Scranton for his ignoring and not commenting on the horrendous child selling and trafficking of children to “for profit” juvenile prisons by Judges Ciavarella and Conahan within his own so-called moral jurisdiction.

You get this - I don’t give a damn about anything except my job and pleasing the idiots in charge holding onto medieval fantasy, rhetoric and rules. That, lifetime tenure and let’s not forget the gelt.

I see a Bishop of Rome who tells the poor in Africa to die not from their ignorance but from his own regarding the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV.

And while Rome burns, I see the same Bishop a year or two ago, a scholar of sorts, wanting approval from the ranks regarding his outstanding scholarship and then quotes medieval hatred as part of his scholarship and basically pisses on the entire Muslim world, past and present.

These guys in the RC hierarchy are not in touch with the same realities you and I are in touch with. Our reality, our secular reality doesn’t count to them. Children, victims of abuse, do not count. What is the whole point of your Roman Bling Church except to be a museum and charge tourists for a tour?

Luckily their hold on things, their (blindspot toward humanity) point of view loses valuable ground everyday toward the future of the human race as they remain clueless within our growing secular global interdependent interrelated existence.