Bitchy leftists

As a number of my posts attest, I am not a big supporter of Sarah Palin. It is not because I disagree with her on the issues, to the contrary, I believe her small government and pro-life beliefs are not only right but in congruence with the Founders and my faith. But just because I believe in the same things it doesn't automatically correlate that I think she should be President. Her experience is thin and resigning from her job as Governor of Alaska doesn't help her resume on that count. But, she will be a candidate for President and if she gets the nomination I would vote for her rather than vote for a leftist socialist like President Obama.

This attitude, which I believe a majority of Americans will sharing in 2012, scares the living daylights out of the Left. They are hoping that the brain dead GOP will nominate another dull, mid-Western Governor who will get trounced by the charismatic Obama. But, a charismatic Republican like Palin could pose a big problem because then Obama would be forced to defend his record of socializing America in his first term. A charismatic candidate from the right promising to undo the collectivization of America might change the political paradigm and the upward and leftward direction of America. Thus, she must be politically assassinated by the media before she ever get traction.

Meet Maureen Dowd.....a bitch, spinster and bitter middle aged woman....never married....and if you ever heard her being interviewed you would even wonder why some men lower themselves to indulge in a one night stand with her. She hates Sarah Palin...read a few of her recent columns here and here.

Go ahead Maureen...make fun of her you old crow.......but it will backfire on you and your pro-abortion and anti-life compatriots. Like it or not, Mrs. Palin is more like the average American woman than you - living in glassy isolation in your apartment overlooking Central Park. Palin, to you, represents fly-over country between NYC and Los Angeles and lives in a state that a civilized person would never reside. You look down on her type of God fearing, church going, Mongoloid raising, one marriage and faithful mothers. She deals with unwed daughter having a child out of wedlock, a good ol boy husband and an average family situation which to the outside world looks chaotic and at times untidy. Her family is fair game to the press unlike any other figure on the left.

You don't have to worry about such problems when you are living by yourself in Manhattan, trying to get a date with a rich and famous man who would rather date a Russian model, dining with your type of people at trendy restaurants eating only a salad but being seen and being lauded as a Pulitzer prize winner. Ms. Dowd reminds me of those many fallen away Catholics trying to be accepted throughout the whole life by the elites by running away from her roots as fast as she can. Her behavior concerning Ms. Palin reminds of grammar school girls who are jealous and envious of the pretty girl in the class getting all of the attention. Behind the girl's back, they are vicious.

Yes, Maureen you have everything........ except a Life and a Soul. But think of the good side of this potential scenario, you will have a President that you can hate again and be able to write two bitchy columns a week for the old gray lady.

I feel about Sarah Palin the way I feel about friends or family. We are related .....politically, ideologically and religiously. I may not think that my own sister is qualified to be in a certain position but don't mess with her with ad hominem attacks because she is family of sorts.

This is a good article about Palin written on the Lew Rockwell website.

Slow lapping of cynicism

I was reading a book about the comeback story of Lance Armstrong from a fatherless childhood primarily raised by his mother, cancer and remission and then to an epic seven wins in the Tour d France - one of the most grueling and demanding sport events in the world. Then today, on the Tour's third day, he finished overall third with a chance to take over the race lead tomorrow during the team trials. If he wins the Tour, probably unlikely given that there is 2 1/2 weeks left but he will be among the final leaders, it may go down as his greatest triumph of his career. I have told many people that I think he is the greatest athlete of my life time which spans the eras of Mickey Mantle, Wayne Gretzky and any number of NFL greats.

Lance is an agnostic but not the preaching type. He has residual respect for religion but unfortunately his early life experiences did not include God or instruction in any religion. As parents we know how difficult it is for children to retain faith even after years of religious instruction and the example of good and God fearing parents. Lance does have faith but it is in the human spirit. In many ways Lance is a typical American - individualist, ambitious, respectful and last but not least a true free spirit. Now divorced with a romance with a Hollywood celebrity behind him, he is fiercely dedicated to excellence once again in his sport. By all accounts, he remains a devoted father to his children living only a short distance away.

I don't judge people or even the fate of their souls. That is something for God and the individual person to determine at the time of death. I don't believe the evangelical creed about getting 'saved' by uttering a few words and walking up to the altar. Some of these folks are in for a big surprise for their spirit of presumption in God's mercy. One of the most saintly people I have ever known was my maternal grandmother who never went to church nor ever uttered a religious sentiment in the 21 years I was with her before she passed away. In my heart and spirit, I know that God will take into account her good life and legacy of goodness and love. At least I Hope so..........As Jesus says, "I know mine and mine know Me."

After my 200th post, I reviewed some of my writings and have detected what Lance in his book describes as the 'slow lapping of cynicism'. If you met me in person it would be hard to detect this characteristic but it does come through in my writing. There are a few reasons for this. I don't believe in a better future for my country but I desperately want to see it happen. This disturbs me greatly since I have children and their children to worry about in the future. I once lived in a country that was described by almost everyone on earth as the greatest country in the world with the highest standard of living.....the home of the free and the brave. I long for that past legacy but realize that its re-attainment may be only a dream. I also see a world slipping back into neo-paganism and forsaking a glorious culture that produced a DaVinci, St. Francis, Mozart, Jefferson, Sir Thomas More, Pope John Paul II and an Einstein. Rather than emulating the example of Mother Teresa, we exalt the celebrities of pop culture who like the Pied Pipers are leading generations to perdition and unhappiness.

So, I apologize to my readers for becoming cynical at times. But I have to admit that in commenting on the times we live, that avoiding cynicism is very difficult when good is considered bad and vice versa. The problem with the human race is amnesia of the spirit. A few examples..........War solves nothing and produces dead and mangled bodies of boys who only a few years before were being scolded by their parents for staying out late. The generals and politicians brag about their battles but ignore the price paid by the young. Young woman...girls for Pete's sake......are encouraged to have promiscuous sex and then wonder why men do not want to marry and have children. As my Mom said, "Why buy the cow, when the milk is for free?" Common sense lessons of generations just thrown overboard because we live in the new and exciting present where the past is irrelevant.

If I was blogging on sports perhaps I would be less cynical. Ah, but my team is the San Diego Padres.......and then I would be instantly cynical again writing about them!

Banksters Have No Shame

Get ready for not next bubble and scam. Engineered by dissolute politicians and greedy banksters from Wall Street, the cap and trade scam is now in full gear. As Wall Street has set up funds in the last decade to buy 'green' companies; ideologue scientists assembled the skewed models and graphs to support the hypothesis; and greedy and corrupt politicians wrote the legislation (with the language and programs supplied by the lobbyists), the small businessmen and taxpayers are about to be raped and in all likelihood ensure that the US economy does not recover for decades.

But in the meantime, Wall Street will be making billions on trading a substance that you can't see, taste and weigh and government will be taxing everyone for emitting the same substance, CO2, even though the science is far from clear. In the meantime, the emerging countries such as India and China will be exempt from the global restrictions on carbon emissions.

Cap and Trade....the next big scam....an enormous bubble in the making.........remember the tulip mania.........

How much more lies and deceit can the American people be forced to endure before the whole once noble experiment collapses upon itself? We have citizens sleeping under highway overpasses, high unemployment rates, small businesses being forced to close by cash strapped banks, foreclosures still rising and we are still fighting wars that a majority of Americans see as unrelated to our national security spending trillions and thousands of casualties, greedy and corrupt oil companies and their client countries raise prices at will while taking in obscene profits; and a corrupt media that hides the truth while peddling pornography and lies. With all of this going on, Washington still pines for another war with Iran.

If you want some insight into the latest conspiracy between Wall Street and Washington to deceive the people, please read the following two articles.

Bound To Burn

Banksters love Cap and Trade


Is there only one honest politician in Washington - Ron Paul?

The Meaning of July 4th

While the banners fly and the fireworks are lit, the real meaning of the 4th of July is lost to the public. Last night we went to a get together and I asked a few people in their thirties what this holiday meant to them personally. Here are a few answers I heard....'A day off man'......'party at the beach'......'fireworks and beer'.......So much for the patriotic celebration that it pretends to be, the the 4th of July has turned into just another mid-summer weekend holiday and an excuse to let loose.

During my late mother's childhood, she remembered 4th of July parades with the old veterans of the Civil War marching along side of her father's WWI comrades. When I was a little boy, the old man across the street from our home flew the largest American flag from his rooftop. He was a veteran of the 1898 Spanish American War. Personally, the 4th of July bring back memories of the greatest battle of the War between the States - Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in early July in 1863. Both sides of were fighting for ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence but each took a different view of the document and the Constitution that was adopted after the Revolution. In those generations of citizens, ideas and principles meant something unlike the hedonistic attitudes of today's Americans.

Perhaps we have become decadent, insensitive or ignorant as a people. I believe that the public school system has performed a horrible job of educating the last three generations of Americans. Too bad because the oligarchies and political criminal class have turned this country into something much different than the America of my parents and grandparents to say nothing of the 18th and 19th century Americans who made great sacrifices for the concepts of liberty and freedom that we take for granted today

The following is taken from an excellent analysis of the current state of the country.

"To argue that the United States of America is a failed state is not difficult. A nation that has the highest documented prison population in the world can hardly be described as domestically tranquil. A nation whose top one percent of the people have 46 percent of the wealth cannot by any stretch of the imagination be said to be enjoying general welfare (“generally true” means true for the most part with a few exceptions). A nation that spends as much on defense as the rest of the world combined and cannot control its borders, could not avert the attack on the World Trade Center, and can not win its recent major wars can not be described as providing for its common defense. How perfect the union is or whether justice usually prevails are matters of debate, and what blessings of liberty Americans enjoy that peoples in other advanced countries are denied is never stated. A nation that cannot fulfill its Constitution’s stated goals surely is a failed one. How else could failure be defined? By allowing people with no fastidious loyalty to the nation or its people to control it, by allowing them to disregard entirely the Constitution’s preamble, the nation could not avoid this failure. The prevailing economic system requires it."

The Humane Holocaust

Every once in a while you read an essay that is written so clearly and with such wisdom, that you lay your head back and say that was not only illuminating but enjoyable. Written back in 1980 by Malcolm Muggeridge , very close to the start of legalized abortion in the West, the essay is a clear exposition of the philosophy and people behind legalized abortion and euthanasia.

"Those doctors ... saw human beings as bodies merely, and so capable of constant improvement, until at last perfection was achieved. No more sick or misshapen bodies, no more disturbed or twisted minds, no more hereditary idiots or mongoloid children. Babies not up to scratch would be destroyed, before or after birth, as would also the old beyond repair. With the developing skills of modern medicine, the human race could be pruned and carefully tended until only the perfect blooms - the beauty queens, the mensas I.Q.’s, the athletes - remained. Then at last, with rigid population control to prevent the good work being ruined by excessive numbers, affliction would be ended, and maybe death itself abolished, and men become, not just like gods, but in their perfect mortality, very God."

The past thirty years of legalized killing has dulled the ordinary citizen's horror at the millions of babies murdered each year in the United States to say nothing of the millions of others around the world. Abortion is now a birth control method and a pill is dispensed without a prescription described as a 'morning after pill', that can be bought by a minor. Imagine..... the freedom to kill potential life in your body but you need a parents' note for many other reasons. This reproductive freedom is brainwashed into young people from the time they start schooling. After 9 or 10 years of programming they are well prepared to abort at a moments notice without the slightest pang of conscious of doing something terribly wrong.

Malcolm Muggeridge was a very good writer and communicator. I especially enjoyed him being interviewed or as a commentator for a documentary. His memory lives on as well as his wisdom.

Miracles

Here is a story for Dawkins, Hitchens and the other atheists who claim that there is no such thing as the miraculous. Unfortunately, it is the real inconvenient truth.

"There is no room for self-delusion. Any one of you who thinks he is wise by worldly standards must learn to be a fool in order to be really wise." 1 Corinthians:3:18

Last Things First

With all the hoopla over the death of celebrities, which is puerile and just an excuse for the media to sell newspapers or increase ratings, there is the little gem of redemption and hope in this mad age in that one of these dying celebrities received the Last Rights of the Catholic Church. An article in the Daily Mail, spoke of the late actress as a devout Catholic. I think her last months were a great testimony to a noble effort in confronting death. I really feel sorry for her because my mother died a few years ago of the same disease. May Farah rest in peace.

Farah Fawcett, Ed McMahon and Michael Jackson aside, celebrity lives and deaths are basically meaningless to the ordinary person. In the scope of history who remembers the actors and actresses of centuries gone past unless one of them murders a president like John Wilkes Booth. With the passing of one or two generations, their memory dims to the point that no one in the present even knows their names. Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were the most famous people in the world in the 1920's. Unless confronted with a Hollywood remembrance show, these celebrities names do not appear in print anywhere and their graves are for the most part unknown except for the ghoulish tour buses pointing out graves or tombstones to pimply faced kids visiting from Kansas who don't know the person whom the guide is even referring.

So too, will the famous celebrities of today be only lost memories and legacies in the not too distant future. Michael Jackson? He'll be known for a famous video or two that will be viewed with laughing curiosity in 2050 and people will wonder what was the big deal. Elvis? His star is already dimming as his original fan base collects social security. Farah's poster will be viewed in Hollywood archives but no one will be able to remember why she was famous three quarters of a century earlier. Many of these celebrities sell their soul to the devil, figuratively and in some cases literally, for what? Fleeting fame and fortune in exchange for an eternity without God? The Faustian bargain is not a new phenomena but it will continue to attract many souls year by year in their search to be famous and ultimately lost.

Unfortunately, the really notable people: educators who touched the lives of thousands of students and inspired many to achieve the impossible are consigned a few lines in the local paper; the heroic mother who raises five children on her own and all graduate university with honors is barely noted in passing; and the fireman who dies of burns trying to save the nameless is given a paragraph or two. But, their reward will be great and their memories will be passed down through the generations as being among the noblest human beings.........and God knows.......

The Insanity of Liberalism

I live in the Golden State - California - which to some is still the best place on earth in many ways. Mountains, beaches and deserts all within an hour's drive; world class wineries from Napa Valley to Temecula; the center for the past 50 years of high technology; and a climate that is truly temperate all four seasons. Millions moved here over the past century but now millions are moving out. Pat Buchanan has written a great article about the current status of a once great state that is a harbinger of the near future of the United States.





California, Here We Come!

by Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author)

Posted 06/26/2009 ET
Updated 06/26/2009 ET

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. -- In just a few weeks time, California hits the wall.

And Americans should take a good, long look at the fiscal and social wreck of the Golden Land, because California is at a place to which all of America is heading.

In May, when five fund-raising proposals were put on the ballot, Gov. Schwarzenegger pleaded with the overtaxed Californians not to make their state "the poster child for dysfunction."

As The Economist writes, "On May 18th, they did exactly that."

Arnold went to the White House for U.S. loan guarantees for new state bonds. But with the president's approval rating wilting because of a belief he is spending too much, the Obama-ites slammed the door.

In Sacramento, a Republican blocking force is resisting any new tax revenue. And with the state under a constitutional mandate to balance its budget, yet facing a $24 billion deficit this July, a chainsaw is about to be taken to state government.

Some 38,000 of 168,000 state prisoners may be released. As Barack Obama is pushing universal health insurance, California will cut Medi-Cal for the poor. Education will be slashed, resulting in a shortened school year, thousands of laid-off teachers, school closings and an end to summer programs in a system that has plummeted from the nation's best to one of its worst, as measured by dropout rates and academic achievement.

The 10 campuses of the University of California face cuts that may result in 50,000 fewer students and 5,000 fewer teachers.

What makes her fiscal crisis relevant to us all is not only that California is our most populous state, with one in eight Americans living there, but California has a gross domestic product larger than Canada's.

Moreover, the demography of California today is the demography of America tomorrow, just as the social and fiscal policies of California in the last decade mirror those of the U.S. government today.

One-third of all U.S. wage-earners today have been amnestied from paying U.S. income taxes, as the top 1 percent haul fully 40 percent of that huge load. So, too, in California, the well-to-do and the wealthy are hammered, which is why many have quietly closed their businesses, packed and gone back over the mountains whence their fathers came.

Under George W. Bush and Obama, the U.S. government has undertaken huge new responsibilities: No Child Left Behind, Medicare prescription drug benefits, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the takeovers of banks and auto companies, bailouts without end and national health insurance.

California, too, spent lavishly in the fat years and issued bonds when state revenues did not cover the costs, bringing its once-sterling credit rating down to the nation's lowest. So, too, U.S. Treasury bonds, T-bills and the American dollar are now increasingly suspect.

Demographically, California is where America will be in 2040.

White folks, who are leaving California as they did in the millions in the 1990s, are below half the population. Hispanics, their numbers surging due to legal and illegal immigration, are well over a third of the population. The African-American share of California's population is also falling, as the Asian share is rising, again from immigration.

Los Angeles, which is what most large American cities will look like, is the most diverse city on earth. Has diversity been a strength?

In the prisons and jails, and among the scores of thousands in street gangs and the underclass, a black-brown civil war is underway.

In October 2006, the Financial Times reported the findings of the famed author of "Bowling Alone" on what diversity has wrought:

"A bleak picture of the corrosive effects of ethnic diversity has been revealed in research by Harvard University's Robert Putnam, one of the world's most influential political scientists. His research shows that the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone -- from their next-door neighbor to the mayor."

"In the presence of diversity, we hunker down," said Putnam. "We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who do look like us."

"Professor Putnam," said the Financial Times, "found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, 'the most diverse human habitation in human history.'"

Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan carried California nine times. But the state is now a fiefdom of liberalism. John McCain's share of the vote was smaller than Barry Goldwater's. California today believes in Big Government, open borders, diversity, multiculturalism and the politics of compassion. But what liberalism has wrought in California, its native-born are fleeing.

Still, where California is at, America is headed.

Californians who are running away from the communities and towns in which they were raised have Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, Utah and Nevada to head to. But when all of America arrives at where California is at today, where do the Americans run to?

Politically Incorrect Politics

Political correctness is a mental illness as I have written many times since it disregards basic logic and rational thought. I was reading an article about a priest who runs a radio station in Poland who is being accused of being anti-Semitic because he opposes reparations to Jews from the Polish government. I believe it is a stretch to accuse a person of being anti-Semitic because he opposes reparations but the same happens in the USA if one opposes the actions of the state of Israel or one of its lobbies in the United States. But at the same time, the Guardian is discussing an alliance between the Tories and 'right wing' parties in Poland and eastern Europe can get away saying the following:

"Paranoia towards the outside world, ingrained prejudice and discrimination towards homosexuals, fundamentalist Roman Catholicism, climate change denial and hostility towards Germany are some of the views espoused by the Kaczy´nskis' party, which is out of sync with a dynamic, modernising Poland where 80% of people like the EU"

In the Guardian's eyes being a fundamentalist Roman Catholic (an oxymoron if there ever was one) is a disqualification to be considered decent and accepted, as are the positions probably of opposing gay marriage and denying anthropocentric causes to global warming. The demonization of conservative issues is no different than Nazi tactics to shut up opponents. However, positions such as giving out condoms to decrease the spread of AIDS are shunned and not considered debatable when the evidence is overwhelming by experts that abstinence according to the Catholic Church is a much more effective method of decreasing the incidence of the disease.

In the politically correct world there are certain truths and facts that when it conflict with 'accepted wisdom' are to be denied and are considered ripe for ad hominem attacks:

1. Chasity is a bad lifestyle choice
2. Diversity is a virtue
3. White people are evil and the cause of the world's suffering
4. Homosexuality is not a choice
5. Fathers are not a requirement
6. Competition is bad
7. Roman Catholicism is sexist and backward
8. Atheism is the proper choice for the educated
9. All business is evil
10. Government is good
11. The summer has been cold - caused by global warming
12. The summer has been hot - caised by global warming
13. Jews are the cause of all the Middle East problems

I could list a hundred but I would only be preaching to the choir..............

Different Americas

When you travel outside the United States as an American tourist or businessman, you immediately become aware of the stereotypes others have of us as citizens of this once great country. To some we are a bunch of Jerry Springer types who are half civilized and ghastly. True in many cases, except Jerry Springer's world is not real. In Las Vegas a few years back I stumbled onto a Jerry Springer set with people shouting and grappling each other on stage. The Director then set "Cut", and they all left arm and arm to go outside to have a smoke. These people are all actors and not real life people. So much, for puncturing a national stereotype. Parodies to be sure but they represent a certain type of people that can be found in Sussex, Bavaria or Sicily.

The other American image is the national security state. This is the America that that people around the world see and hear on the news. It really does not make a difference who the President is....he is just a figurehead.......Bush or Obama.......it is a good gig and you are very well rewarded afterward by the plutocracy...witness the wealth of Clinton and Bush the Elder. The national security apparatus in conjunction with the plutocracy executed a coup d' etat in the early sixties that overturned the remains of the American Republic - the Kennedy's being conveniently removed - and its has been global hegemony and war ever since. This tendency in the USA towards domination and expansion has been part of the national makeup going back to the pre-revolutionary days with serious flareups in the nineteenth century with the Mexican American War of 1847 and the Spanish American War of 1898. Although some Americans are brainwashed by the need to always have an enemy and to have a 'strong' military, in reality we create the bogeymen either through our actions - causing counter-reactions - or through false propaganda. The reason why Obama was so hesitant to publicly condemn the recent and ongoing Iranian crackdown on protesters is that a new and peaceful peaceful Iran doesn't fit the "plan" to use a belligerent Iran as an excuse for another war. Bad nations need to stay bad until they are 'liberated' by the US military.

A third America is the one Hollywood presents to the world - see the attached picture. Auto chases, guns, murders, degeneracy, sex and evilness all around are all part of the image of America presented in movie theaters and DVD's. Everyone owns a gun and is ready to shoot their neighbor and every woman has the potentiality of a porn star. Evil businessmen are everywhere and looking to take advantage of the good people - you know - government bureaucrats, teachers, social workers and gays and minorities. If I were to sit in a movie theater in New Dehli or Sydney week after week watching Hollywood offerings, I would hate Americans and their stinking system of greed, lust and murder. Sorry folks...this America doesn't exist and more reflects the lifestyles and thoughts of the degenerates who make the movies than the fictional events that are portrayed on screen.

The average American is not much different than the average person in any western country. Like many others, Americans are undereducated and under cultured and made to remain so by the government and media. A dumbing down process has been underway for at least the past 50 years and where scientists,astronauts and engineers were once role models, now you have rappers, rock stars and degenerates in their place. Superficiality in IN and Substance is OUT. We have been deluded to think that we are free ctizens and can vote our choices into government but we are only given two false choices whose differences are minor and cosmetic.

Real Americans are a dying breed and in their place, generation by generation, the new world citizen is emerging - dependent upon government, vacuous, self centered and pleasure seeking. Can this process be reversed? I agree with the sages of the past......it can only happen through conversion of the people to Christ and his laws. After all this is the basis of western civilization and a post-Christian world is an abnegation of Christian principles. I am looking forward, definitely not in my life time for a post-post Christian world that rejects modernism as much as our world rejects its Christian heritage.

Aging, powerful and decadent sex fiends

The British newspapers are all over the latest scandal from Italy involving the old crooner, Silvio Berlesconi, the crooked 72 year old Prime Minister of Italy. When I first read the story I found it more of the same old story about the rich and famous. This decadent man who obviously leads a life that many in the secular West would envy - parties and days filled with topless girls at his villa in Sardinia and orgy filled nights in Rome with very young and beautiful escorts. Old Silvio is a throwback to another era of politico that reigned supreme back in the post World War II days where wine, women and song were all part of the politician lifestyle. Besides his political personna he is also part of the plutocratic elite that rule the world in one form or the other. Silvio is probably most powerful man in Italy since Mussolini except for all the Popes. The orange pancake makeup, the high class call girls and the flowing chanpagne are just the froth of corruption both personal and social that is represented by this reprobate who will be sooner rather than later meeting his his all-just Maker.

On the other side of the Atlantic is another type of sexual monster. While old Silvio is a decadent, corrupt and aging billionare, Joseph Brooks, also in his early seventies, is emblematic of the dark side Hollywood being charged with the rape of 11 women who were lured to his apartment in Manhattan and placed on the casting couch and violently raped. While it appears old Silvio is not dabbling with innocents, Brooks preyed upon the unsuspecting and hopeful using his presige and power to take what he wanted. He belongs in the same cell with Bernie Madoff for the rest of his days each trying to rip off the other. Two wannabe's who had it all but decided that the dark side was just too tempting to resist.

Then there is the murderer Phil Spector, almost 70, bereft of wig and lifts in his shoes and claiming that all he wants now is his IPOD.....not a Bible.......is evil personified doing everything that Berlesconni and Brooks have done but topping it off with a cowardly murder. Short and balding ugliness obliterating a tall blond beauty in a megalomaniac rage filled with drugs and alcohol. Nothing much to be said about this piece of garbage except that the criminal justice system should have put him away years ago before he killed an innocent woman who was lured by his fame and ability to help her in her career.

Folks, these are the types of men who control pop culture and influence Culture in general. Media barons, record impressarios and film directors determine what you and your children see and hear. They allow their values to become society values. These are the people proclaiming in their products that pleasure is the highest principle, that God is for fairy tales and that 'me first' is the rule of life.

And you wonder why the world is in such a mess morally? Unfortunately, the Silvio's, Phil's and Joseph's of the world effect more people's thinking on a daily basis than all the preachers in the world since the dawn of Christianity...........sad but true...........

" You are from your father, the devil, and you prefer to do what your father wants. He was a murderer from the start; he was never grounded in the truth............St. John 8:44

Spirituality in a time of deep recession

Sorry for the delay in posting but I have been traveling internationally and free time has been at a premium. I came across an interview on-line over at the National Catholic Reporter. I have written a past blog entry on this excellent book. I think that Fr. Kavanaugh has some wise words about the current recession and a Catholic's response to it.

Spirituality in a time of deep recession

One of the perennial bestsellers in the field of Catholic spirituality is Jesuit Fr. John Kavanaugh’s Following Christ in a Consumer Society: The Spirituality of Cultural Resistance. Published in 1981, it’s been in print ever since, and has been revised and updated twice. Kavanaugh teaches at St. Louis University where he is director of the Ethics Across the Curriculum program. He is an award-winning columnist for America magazine.

NCR: Your book was about confronting both Christ and American culture. It appeared in 1981, early in a decade that glorified greed, then was updated in 1991 following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the first Gulf War, and then in 2006 following the events of Sept. 11. If you were to revise it one more time -- now after the onset of deep recession, as the idols of capitalism show their clay feet -- what might you say to us?

Kavanaugh: My major concerns when I wrote the book were that there were no moral constraints on capitalism and consumerism, which increasingly took over our lives and relationships. Those who thought the dynamics of capitalism were somehow balanced by the political and the cultural-moral sectors failed to understand how unconstrained capitalism held dominance over both politics and religion. Even Alan Greenspan, an advocate of Ayn Rand, professed surprise that the world of commerce and finance did not work under ethical limits.

Things are palpably not working out well in the consumer culture that you’ve described and critiqued so well. What effect will this decline have on the kind of formation of person and habit-shaping that you claim the consumer society performs on us?

While the economic decline has worked its greatest damage on the middle and lower income groups, with unemployment, displacement, the necessity for multiple jobs just to survive it, it is teaching people that we perhaps don’t need all the “essentials” we once thought imperative.

We experience ourselves as incomplete and where once we often sought completion in acquiring consumer goods, we perhaps now look to other sources.

You advocate in your book as an antidote to consumerism a return to “human personhood, relationship, to the admission of inadequacy, to love and to transcendence.” The commodity hucksters’ offer doesn’t seem as appealing as perhaps it once did. Does a movement toward spirituality take on a whole new meaning in the light of deep domestic and global recession?

Whether in good times or bad, a person who practices the disciplines of interiority, community, laboring for justice, for simplicity of life and openness to the marginalized in our society will be able to flourish as a human and as a Christian. Without these integrated disciplines, our life is deeply impoverished. Imagine the despairing worldview of the two Catholic men who committed suicide while killing wife and children because of their financial crises.

You speak of the impoverishment and domestication of the Christian faith, and of the intrinsic and necessary relationship between a living faith and an “activist” love. What does that kind of love, the call to the service of humanity and human fulfillment, have to offer us in hard times?

A living faith will necessarily lead to actions of justice and the works of love. These practices, in turn, lead us to a deeper appreciation of our interior and relational lives. Our Christian faith is communicated primarily by witness and invitation, which are encountered only through personal interaction and lived experience. Liberation, most fundamentally, is not a political, economic or sociological phenomenon. It can be found -- or accepted -- only when we are made present to ourselves and our possibilities, only when we are in touch with our deepest humanity.

Christianity, at rock bottom, you say, conflicts with American culture, even subverts it. However, as consumerism, which has been such a central part of that culture, weakens its hold on us, how does Christianity stand now in relationship to that culture? Is its voice perhaps strengthened?

Consumerism is only one aspect of the problem of idolatry, worshiping the products of one’s hands. We are still in great thrall to the idolizing of the nation, of success and of self interest.

Specifically, what might the Catholic spirituality and sacramental traditions have to offer us as we struggle to reinvent our lives and communities?

I think our greatest challenge is the contemporary tendency among many Christians and Catholics to reduce our faith to issues like abortion and homosexuality. These are important, but in the minds of many they seem more important than the fullness of faith itself.

There are seven deadly sins, not one. There are 10 commandments. There are eight beatitudes. Most important, all of these issues, as well as all the pronouncements of bishops or complaints from the Catholic left or right, are meaningless and empty if Christ has not saved us and called us to live our lives through and in him. Although the encyclicals of Pope Benedict call us to the basics of our faith, I think most Catholics in our country perceive the church as being unconcerned about the preaching of Christ crucified.

Priests and other thoughts

All our religion is but a false religion, and all our virtues are mere illusions and we ourselves are only hypocrites in the sight of God, if we have not that universal charity for everyone - for the good, and for the bad, for the poor and for the rich, and for all those who do us harm as much as those who do us good.

-- Saint John Vianney


I often think about priests today and what a difficult job it is in the modern world. I was reading about St. John Vianney and how he converted his town of Ars. He was scandalized by the times he lived in the early nineteenth century but one wonders what he would think of 21st century America with gay marriage, abortion rights, open pornography and human exploitation of all sorts accepted as normal. Although we do live in a wondrous scientific age where infants and women don't die in childbirth and diseases that once ravaged populations can be halted with antibiotics, it has come at a tremendous cost in a loss of spirituality and purpose. Once the goal of every Catholic was to reach heaven by denying self and loving others. Now it is all about self actualization with men too busy to be fathers living lives of aimless amusements and women denying the great gift that there were born - motherhood - in order to choose lifestyles that ultimately lead to dissatisfaction, disorientation and ultimately despair. The devil is a double crosser and always lies trying always to divert human beings from their true destiny. The unhappiest and most miserable women that I have met in the last twenty years are those who bought into the big lie of radical feminism in the 1970's and 1980's.

Being a confessor must be an extremely difficult task today. The rigid morality of Catholicism as practiced in past ages is viewed as irrelevant. But if something was true for twenty centuries, why is it not true in the 21st century? I am not holding myself as an example of this traditional morality and practices although at least I admit my failures rather than glory in them. I find myself in between the traditional Catholicism of my youth and the liberal version of Catholicism as taught in many RCIA and so called Catholic universities of today. I realize the Catholicism must adapt itself to the culture of the times but not at the cost of jettisoning truth. As I get older I sometimes get very pessimistic about my chances of being saved by Christ. The standards of the past are so high and my human frailities are so great. As our forefathers once wrote to others, pray for me as you read these words that I may be found worthy in the end.

I had a discussion with my wife the other night about how you can tell a holy priest. She was a bit baffled in my comment having just watched a documentary about a Navy chaplain who died in Vietnam and is being considered for sainthood - Father Vincent Capodanno. I told her that the mark of a holy priest (for me) was the manner that he said Mass. I have served many masses over the years as an altar boy. The holy priests that I have met had one thing in common - you have the feeling that as they are saying Mass that they are not 100 % present in the church. You sense that although their body is present at the Mass, that their spirits and minds are in another place somewhere between earth and heaven. Maybe it is just me, but my inate sense tells me that this observation is true. It is the witness of these holy priests that bolster my own faith in the unseen but true.

Pray for our Catholic priests who are all missionaries in this decadent age.

"Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of realities that are unseen." Book of Hebrews, Chapter 11

Global Warming Petition Signed by 31,478 Scientists

As most readers of this blog know, I am a big supporter of Rep. Ron Paul from Texas. There appears to be a high correlation between those ideologues who desire more and more state control over the economy and the supporters of the human-caused global warming hypothesis. The goal of these Statists is CONTROL over every aspect of our lives and the destruction of our liberties as free men and women. With such divergent views in the scientific community it is a catastrophic mistake to spends trillions in a quixotic quest that could destroy economies and result in misery for many human being in the world.

For instance, in the UK the government is mandating achieving 15% renewable targets in 2020. The bureaucrats have no idea how to do it and are vastly unestimating the cost. In effect, it means that the British citizen will be taking a couple of steps back and paying much more for energy in the future. This incremental cost will come at the expense of needed services and more productive assets. The standard of living will inevitably decline but will citizens feel better knowing that if the wind mysteriously stops to blow that they will be back to candles at night? This is the reality of switching from dependable energy to a carbonless and nuclear free future. BTW, I am very involved professionally in renewable energy field so I know what I am talking about. Renewable energy sources such as wind, marine or solar at the present time need to be subsidized in order to breakeven. Who pays? The average citizen with much higher utility bills and taxation.

Contrary to popular opinion, if the USA economy goes into a protracted slump due to excessive government spending; onerous taxation including cap and trade; and continued export of manufacturing capacity, then the rest of the world will be suffering even more. When the US consumer stops buying Mercedes, BMW's, the latest electronic hardware, what will happen to not only the export economies but also the poor countries who depend upon a prosperous world for their survival.


Global Warming Petition Signed by 31,478 Scientists

Statement before the US House of Representatives, June 4, 2009

Madam Speaker, before voting on the "cap-and-trade'' legislation, my colleagues should consider the views expressed in the following petition that has been signed by 31,478 American scientists:

"We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.''

Circulated through the mail by a distinguished group of American physical scientists and supported by a definitive review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, this may be the strongest and most widely supported statement on this subject that has been made by the scientific community. A state-by-state listing of the signers, which include 9,029 men and women with PhD degrees, a listing of their academic specialties, and a peer-reviewed summary of the science on this subject are available at www.petitionproject.org.

The peer-reviewed summary, "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide'' by A. B. Robinson, N. E. Robinson, and W. Soon includes 132 references to the scientific literature and was circulated with the petition.

Signers of this petition include 3,803 with specific training in atmospheric, earth, and environmental sciences. All 31,478 of the signers have the necessary training in physics, chemistry, and mathematics to understand and evaluate the scientific data relevant to the human-caused global warming hypothesis and to the effects of human activities upon environmental quality.

In a letter circulated with this petition, Frederick Seitz – past President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, President Emeritus of Rockefeller University, and recipient of honorary doctorate degrees from 32 universities throughout the world – wrote:

"The United States is very close to adopting an international agreement that would ration the use of energy and of technologies that depend upon coal, oil, and natural gas and some other organic compounds.

This treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.

The proposed agreement we have very negative effects upon the technology of nations throughout the world; especially those that are currently attempting to lift from poverty and provide opportunities to the over 4 billion people in technologically underdeveloped countries.

It is especially important for America to hear from its citizens who have the training necessary to evaluate the relevant data and offer sound advice.

We urge you to sign and return the enclosed petition card. If you would like more cards for use by your colleagues, these will be sent.''

Madam Speaker, at a time when our nation is faced with a severe shortage of domestically produced energy and a serious economic contraction; we should be reducing the taxation and regulation that plagues our energy-producing industries.

Yet, we will soon be considering so-called "cap and trade'' legislation that would increase the taxation and regulation of our energy industries. "Cap-and-trade'' will do at least as much, if not more, damage to the economy as the treaty referred by Professor Seitz! This legislation is being supported by the claims of "global warming'' and "climate change'' advocates – claims that, as demonstrated by the 31,478 signatures to Professor Seitz' petition, many American scientists believe is disproved by extensive experimental and observational work.

It is time that we look beyond those few who seek increased taxation and increased regulation and control of the American people. Our energy policies must be based upon scientific truth – not fictional movies or self-interested international agendas. They should be based upon the accomplishments of technological free enterprise that have provided our modern civilization, including our energy industries. That free enterprise must not be hindered by bogus claims about imaginary disasters.

Above all, we must never forget our contract with the American people – the Constitution that provides the sole source of legitimacy of our government. That Constitution requires that we preserve the basic human rights of our people – including the right to freely manufacture, use, and sell energy produced by any means they devise – including nuclear, hydrocarbon, solar, wind, or even bicycle generators.

While it is evident that the human right to produce and use energy does not extend to activities that actually endanger the climate of the Earth upon which we all depend, bogus claims about climate dangers should not be used as a justification to further limit the American people's freedom.

In conclusion, I once again urge my colleagues to carefully consider the arguments made by the 31,478 American scientists who have signed this petition before voting on any legislation imposing new regulations or taxes on the American people in the name of halting climate change.

South of the Border

While the world continues to focus on events occurring outside the Western hemisphere, Mexico continues in meltdown mode as anarchy starts to become commonplace. In Tijuana last week it was reported in the back pages of the San Diego paper that two dead men were found in an alleyway with the heads severed. The deaths were attributable to drug violence but then what isn't drug related in Mexico these days. Pretty gruesome stuff but not as terrible as the body of a little boy who was recently kidnapped in Mexico and found in a suitcase. The two men found beheaded were probably involved in the drug trade and their deaths are becoming the ultimate fate for those dealing in narcotics but the little boy was an innocent in a society where violence is becoming the norm rather than the exception.

A little further south in the former resort city of Acapulco, now a nest of drug trafficers, the following story sounds like a war is underway (grenades!) rather than a police action:

ACAPULCO, Mexico — Gunmen launched grenades and opened fire in near-simultaneous attacks on two police stations in Acapulco yesterday, killing three officers in violence that broke out less than 48 hours after a gunbattle in the resort left 17 dead.

The bold, pre-dawn attacks yesterday also wounded one police officer in this Pacific resort city, which has long been plagued by drug violence.

Gunmen fatally shot two officers sitting in a patrol car parked outside one police station. A few minutes later, assailants attacked a second station, about two miles away, wounding two officers, according to the Guerrero state police department. One of the officers later died.

Soldiers set up roadblocks in search of the assailants, who shot up at least eight patrol cars.

A state police official, who was not authorized to give his name, said investigators are looking at whether the attacks were in retaliation for Saturday's gunbattle.

The weekend shootout between soldiers and alleged drug traffickers killed 13 suspected hit men, two soldiers and two bystanders, Daniel Velasco, a military commander in Acapulco, told reporters yesterday.

A hit man named “Commander Magana” with the Beltran Leyva cartel was among the dead, Velasco said.

Thousands of shots and 50 grenade explosions marked the battle, which erupted after soldiers received a tip that a group of armed men were gathered at a gated house less than 100 yards from the Los Flamingos Hotel, which was once a private club for such Hollywood stars as John Wayne and Johnny Weissmuller.

What is surprising is not the escalating violence due to the increasing importance of drug money in the Mexican economy but rather the nonchalant approach of the US news media in reporting it to the American people. At the same time there are advertisement on television and newspapers promoting Mexican tourism. This media behavior is a product of our politically correct culture which censors how news is reported. Hence, we never receive negative views of Israel since our official stance is reflexively pro-Israel with a significant Jewish presence and the same goes for Mexico which has a large population of Mexican Americans.

I feel bad for the Mexican people who have to endure a plutocracy raping the country of its resources and collaborating with other elites to betray a country with a 500 year old culture that is a mixture of indigenous native American cultures and Spanish conquistadors. Still a predominantly Catholic country in religion and culture, the forces of secularism, state sponsored atheism (a legacy of the early twentieth century masonic revolution), decadent pop culture, and materialistic and anti-Catholic evangelicalism are slowly siphoning away the positive aspects of Mexican Catholic culture and replacing them with an anti-life, materialistic and drug infested culture celebrating the outlaw and the hombre who beats the system.

I know and like many Mexicans so writing this brings me little pleasure. The people are warm and friendly the further south you travel from the US. Border culture is a strange mixture of drug violence, increased military presence, corruption, maquiladoras (foreign factories), transient populations and economic dependence with the US. It is a love/hate relationship in both directions. As the economic situation worsens in the US, look to more and more violence in Mexico and government instability.

I wish Obama was paying more attention to Mexico and the rest of Latin American then going around the world and apologizing for the past actions of his 43 predecessors. He especially should stop the groveling to the Muslim World for past transgressions while ignoring their own atrocities and bloody history. While he is having his dialogue with these poor 'mistreated' people, he should ask them why the Catholic Mass cannot be separated in Saudi Arabia.