another late night rant about another "powerful catholic leader" I can't stinking stand.

this is really unbelievable. I mean seriously. If I remember correctly, 52% of Catholics voted for Obama; that's what REALLY has these extreme christians going. From HuffPo, last Friday, w/ my first thoughts in italic...sj

WASHINGTON — A powerful Catholic leader on Friday accused President Barack Obama of pushing an anti-life, anti-family agenda and called Notre Dame's invitation for him to speak scandalous.

Sad but true. He is powerful. His ilk, although fading fast from mattering, and dying off slowly but surely, are nothing if they're not powerful. These "powerful catholic leaders" influence a lot of people. By and large, they're not all that compassionate; they're not terribly bright either. But they are powerful. And they make things happen. Many, many, many people out there listen to "powerful catholic leaders," such as this guy (and the pope), and follow them. And when the pope says on a trip to Africa (a country that is imploding w/ more death than you can imagine, w/ AIDS and lack of education being a major culprit), that "condoms won't stop the spread of AIDS, and may actually help spread it," it doesn't matter that it's a 100%, absolute, proven, factual lie. What matters is these people listen to him. They can't help it. They're BELIEVE in him. How could the Pope be steering them wrong?! So they stop using condoms, and more people die, who otherwise, would not (with proper education, based on facts and science). Thanks, Pope! Now If that's not anti-life, I don't know what is!

Archbishop Raymond Burke, the first American to lead the Vatican supreme court, said Catholic universities should not give a platform, let alone honor, "those who teach and act publicly against the moral law."

Moral law? What a euphemism that is. I think it breaks down to what "one ought or ought not do." Look, no one who thinks we were all born sinners, and that some of us will live forever in heaven after we die, and the rest of us are going to hell when we die, is gonna dictate to me ANYTHING. Please. There is no moral law in the real world. And extreme christians wonder why the rest of us get so offended that they're church is polluting our state? Didn't we break away from England for this nonsense?

Notre Dame has asked Obama to deliver the commencement address on May 17, an invitation that has drawn criticism from a number of Catholics. The university has said the president will be honored as an inspiring leader who broke a historic racial barrier.

"The proposed granting of an honorary doctorate at Notre Dame University to our president, who is so aggressively advancing an anti-life and anti-family agenda is rightly the source of the greatest scandal," Burke said to applause from the crowd at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

I love those in charge at Notre Dame University. Love them. It's too bad they have to put up w/ this religious leader who is just flat out lying (too bad for all of us), when he says that Obama is "aggressively advancing an anti-life and anti-family agenda." That's is an outright lie. No, he is not.

Obama supports abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research. He also repealed a policy that denied federal dollars to international relief organizations that provide abortions or abortion-related information. And he backs legislation that would prohibit state and local governments from interfering with a woman's right to obtain an abortion.

Beautiful; you go dog! That's why we hired you! But seriously, supporting women's rights, and funding research that SAVES lives, is good, right?

Burke called the confirmation of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic who supports abortion rights, "the source of deepest embarrassment for Catholics."

Christ. The deepest? Is it really deeper than the "embarrassment" that Catholics feel when their church leaders, priests, cardinals and bishops coerce little boys into all forms of sex, and/or rape them outright; by the HUNDREDS, perhaps thousands? Cracka, please!!

Burke, who formerly led the Archdiocese of St. Louis before leaving for the Vatican, has made headlines in the past. In 2004, he said he would deny Communion to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a Catholic who supports abortion rights as part of public policy.

Man, he's a real charmer. Yes, public policy is what matters in this country, and it's how we govern. We don't govern with religion! Again, isn't this why we left England?

In 2007, Burke indicated he would do the same to then-Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. He also protested singer Sheryl Crow's appearance at a benefit for a Catholic children's hospital over her support for embryonic stem cell research. In January 2008, Burke called on Saint Louis University, a Jesuit school, to discipline college basketball coach Rick Majerus for publicly supporting abortion rights.

What does the Vatican want this guy for; their entertainment coordinator? Doesn't he have real work to do?

Burke said if Catholics are not willing to stand up for the church's teachings, "we are not worthy of the name Catholic."

Whatever, dude. Bottom line is, more and more Catholics are not willing (that's why the church's numbers are fading); in fact, they're deeming the Church's teachings (and leadership) not worthy. Why? Because they're seeing things more clearly these days; things that actually matter in their everyday lives, are trumping things that may or may not happen in their "after-lives."

I wish I could be there this Sunday to join the fight against this "powerful catholic leader" (a fight, HE started). But I'll have to settle for C-Span.

Required reading/viewing, #27. Frank Schaeffer's got GOP and religious cred; and he's using it to expose the republican party for what it's become.

Hi Folks. So I've known about Frank Schaeffer for a little while now, but didn't know how fed up he actually was over Bush, Rush, the GOP, and the religious right (the latter two, which he once belonged to, the religious right, he and his parents were "co-founders" of, if you will). Unlike Michael Steele (RNC leader) and other GOPers who have apologized to Rush Limbaugh for telling the truth, you won't see that happening with Frank. And he does bring the hammer. Watch this video when you have 8 minutes (an interview he did w/ D.L. Hughley on CNN), and read his "Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (from a former republican)" below. It's an extremely well-written piece and really drives home many points. Perhaps the republicans who visit here (there are lots of you, I know!) can take a little something away from his observations. Original piece here. sj


You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired -- President Obama -- to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.

I used to be one of you. As recently as 2000 I worked to get Senator McCain elected in that year's primary. (McCain and Gen. Tommy Franks wrote glowing endorsements regarding my book about military service, AWOL.). I have a file of handwritten thank you notes from Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush I and II. In the 1970s and early 80s I hung out with Jack Kemp and bought into his "supply side" myth and even wrote a book he endorsed pushing his ideas.) There's more, but take it from me; my parents (evangelical leaders Francis and Edith Schaeffer) and I were about as tight with -- and useful to -- the Republican Party as anyone. We played a big part creating the Religious Right.

In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are, (the theme I explore in my book Crazy For God). They wanted America to fail in order to prove they were right about America's "moral decline." Soon after McCain lost in 2000 I re-registered as an independent in disgust with W. Bush. But I still respected many Republicans. Not today.

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!

With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party -- you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal.

President Obama has been in office barely 45 days and the Republican Party has the nerve to blame him for the economic and military cataclysm he inherited. I say economic and military cataclysm because without the needless war in Iraq you all backed we would not be in the economic mess we're in today. If that money had been spent here at home on renovating our infrastructure, taking us toward a green economy, putting our health-care system in order we'd be a very different situation.

As the father of a Marine who served in George W. Bush's misbegotten wars let me say this: if President Obama's strategy to repair our economy, infrastructure and healthcare fails that will put our troops at far greater risk because the world will become a far more dangerous place. So for all you flag-waving Republicans who are trying to undermine the President at home -- if you succeed more of our troops will be killed abroad.

When your new leader Rush Limbaugh calls for President Obama to fail he's calling for more flag-draped coffins. Limbaugh is the new "Hanoi Jane."

For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks... to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.

Just imagine where America would be today if the 14 to 20 million voters -- "the rube base" who slavishly follow the likes of Limbaugh -- had not voted as a block year after year thus empowering the Republican fiasco. We would have a regulated banking industry and would have avoided our current financial crisis; some 4000 of our killed military men and women would be alive; over to 35,000 wounded Americans would be whole; we would have been leaders in the environmental movement; we would be in the middle of a green technology boom fueling a huge expansion of our economy and stopping our dependence on foreign oil, and our health-care system would be reformed.

After Obama was elected, you Republican leaders had a unique last chance to send a patriotic message of unity to the world -- and to all Americans. You could have backed our president's economic recovery plan. Since we all know that half of our problem is one of lost confidence and perception, nothing would have done more to calm the markets and project resolve and confidence than if you had been big enough to take Obama's offered hand and had work with him -- even if you disagreed ideologically. You had the chance to put our country first. You utterly failed to rise to the occasion.

The worsening economic situation is your fault and your fault alone. The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves. You deserve the banishment to the political wilderness that awaits all traitors.

color me confused...

Below is an article from Salon on Obama's extremely surprising move. VERY rare are the times I can't get my head around something. Now is one of those times.



How the hell did Rick Warren get inauguration tickets?

Barack Obama knows liberals are upset he picked the conservative evangelical preacher to pray at the inauguration. And he doesn't care.
By Mike Madden

Dec. 19, 2008 |

For more than two years, cozying up to Rick Warren has been one of Barack Obama's favorite ways of showing evangelical Christians that he might not be so scary, after all -- and for just as long, palling around with Obama every once in a while has been Warren's way of trying to show more secular-minded people that he's not so bad, either.

So about the only thing less surprising than the outrage that news of Warren's selection to give the invocation at Obama's inauguration is prompting among gay activists, liberals and Obama supporters generally is probably Warren's appearance on the program in the first place. Obama and Warren have often used each other to demonstrate that they'll be willing to listen to people they disagree with -- and yes, also to let everyone know that they'll be willing to anger their friends. This isn't one of those political controversies that pop up out of nowhere without warning; whether they want to admit it or not, it seems Obama's advisors brought on this fight with his own supporters knowing full well what was coming.

Having Warren speak at the inauguration might make more sense for Obama, now that he's been elected, than going to Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum in August in search of evangelical votes did from a campaigning standpoint. When the ballots were counted he only did marginally better among white evangelicals than Gore and Kerry; the idea now, apparently, is to signal that Obama will be a president for all Americans, whether they voted for him on Nov. 4 or not.

Except that Warren, by this point, isn't just the purpose-driven friendly face of evangelical Christianity anymore. He took sides, very publicly, in favor of California's Proposition 8, which overturned the state's gay marriage law. "About 2 percent of Americans are homosexual, or gay and lesbian, people," Warren said in a widely circulated video (and in a virtually identical e-mail to his congregation) before the election. "We should not let 2 percent of the population determine to change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years. This is not just a Christian issue, this is a humanitarian issue." Prior to that, his late summer Civil Forum, at which he interviewed McCain and Obama, was seen by many liberals as an ambush. Instead of sticking to questions on areas where Warren truly has broken from some religious conservatives, like climate change, the importance of alleviating poverty and preventing HIV transmission, Warren drew Obama and John McCain into a discussion of old-school social conservative hot-button issues: the definition of marriage and whether life begins at conception. Days later, he turned around and blasted Obama's answers on abortion rights, comparing being pro-choice to denying the Holocaust.

But Obama was determined to defend his pick Thursday, and he set out the pro-Warren talking points himself, when a reporter brought it up at his now all-but-daily press conference in Chicago. "A couple of years ago, I was invited to Rick Warren's church to speak, despite his awareness that I held views that were entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion," he said. "Nevertheless, I had an opportunity to speak. And that dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign's been all about -- that we're not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans."

Translated out of press-conference-speak, though, that basically means: "I know you're upset. Too bad." Linda Douglass, a spokeswoman for Obama's inauguration committee and a senior advisor during the campaign, told Salon later that picking Warren "was not a political decision," which is usually the surest sign that something was exactly that. Obama aides wouldn't go into the decision-making process that led to Warren's selection, but Douglass admitted they predicted some of the fury it caused ahead of time. "People don't go into these kinds of decisions unaware that there might be some criticism, but on the other hand, the overriding goal, again, was this message of inclusivity," she said.

The problem is, many liberals, and gay activists, especially, are wondering exactly who was being included. "It's a symbolic role," said Brad Luna, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign. "[Warren's] job there is to kind of represent the spiritual totality of our nation. When that sort of person is put there, it definitely makes our community stop and think, 'Wow, are we part of the fabric of this inclusive new day, as we thought?'" The Human Rights Campaign issued an open letter criticizing Obama's choice on Wednesday. The fact that Obama, too, sees Warren's role as symbolic only made things worse. "We certainly know that Obama disagrees with Warren on gay rights issues, and we know that saying the prayer is not the same as setting policy," said Peter Montgomery, a spokesman for People for the American Way. "We certainly have great hopes for positive change in the Obama administration. The question is really elevating, to this place of singular honor, someone who has so recently trashed part of the community."

Making matters worse, the Obama team evidently decided not to alert anyone who was likely to be upset about the pick ahead of time. News of Warren's involvement in the inauguration came out of the congressional committee working on the inauguration instead of from Obama's own inaugural committee, a wholly separate entity. At least initially, aides for Obama's inaugural committee said the decision had come from Congress, not Obama. In fact, that wasn't the case at all. "That was solely the choice of the president-elect," said Gil Duran, a spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the congressional committee. Obama's staff sent explicit orders for whom to include in the inaugural ceremony up to Capitol Hill, since Congress is, technically, in charge of that part of the day. "Sen. Feinstein obviously disagrees with the views of Rev. Warren on issues that affect the gay and lesbian community," Duran said. "However, Sen. Feinstein respects the president-elect's prerogative to select a cleric to deliver the invocation." (That one doesn't need any translation -- Feinstein's office was politely, respectfully, throwing Obama under the bus.)

Warren's spokesman, A. Larry Ross, told Salon Obama had contacted Warren to invite him, not the other way around. In a statement, Warren said, "I commend President-elect Obama for his courage to willingly take enormous heat from his base by inviting someone like me, with whom he doesn’t agree on every issue, to offer the invocation at his historic inaugural ceremony." But so far, say both Obama aides and his critics, there hasn't been much of a similar attempt to reach out to key allies who are upset about the pick and patch things up.

Obama hasn't even taken office yet, and it's already clear that he doesn't hold grudges (file Warren, Rick, somewhere behind Lieberman, Joe, on the list of people Obama has refused to seek revenge against for campaign-related slights). He's also determined to carry his post-partisan rhetoric from the trail all the way into the White House, and he seems to believe he can lead the country to a new united, consensus-driven politics. But first, he may need to find a way to convince everyone else on his side that that approach is the right one.