A Trip Down Memory Lane

I am watching the PBS documentary Frontline about the Lockerbie terrorist bombing of Pam Am Flight No. 103 in 1988 over Scotland. It is looked at, in part, through the eyes of one of the brothers who was killed on that terrorist-struck plane.

I also took a trip down memory lane as I came across my high school year book from the Class of 1966. I read the principal's message and the message of the president of my class. Both messages were full of optimism and hope that our class would make a difference in the world for the better.

Everyone who was in the class with the exception of, perhaps, three were white. One of those three was an intellect and received no recognition for her brilliance. She ran for Secretary of the class and told me she would never make it because she was a Negro (the nice word in that era for persons of color.) I could not believe it then.

I looked at my own picture, of course, which described me as "openhearted and friendly. She will surely reach her goals." Well the openhearted and friendly part, perhaps, they got right.

Then I thought of our nation and how low it has sunk, how divided it is and how US foreign policy was Machiavellian in which political expediency is placed above morality more than it was humane and selfless as we, in our naiveté, were told it was. But I did not know all of those things then nor did I know anything about the Islamic world (or Moslem, the appellation of the time for Muslim) nor did I know anything about terrorism and how the two are so inextricably intertwined. I did not know those things then.

I wonder if the Holocaust had never happened and Palestine was shared or if the Jewish people did not create the Israeli state as a refuge for the millennia of anti-Semitism suffered by them that led to the murder of at least 6 million Jews, if the US had not financed a coup in Iran in 1953 deposing a beloved leader, Mosadeq, and put in his place, the brutal Shah with his murderous secret police, Savak, had not taken place, if we did not have to greet every single opposing nation with force, if Vietnam did not happen, if the burning of the Vietnamese country side with cancer-causing Agent Orange did not happen, if My Lai did not happen what would our nation – no what would the world look like now?

Are Muslims by nature simply beasts (see link below) no matter what another nation did to them? I wonder about all these things as I look at that brutal link entitled “The Islamic State (ISIS) Is Raping 8-Year-Olds. And the World Is Doing Nothing.”

Who would do such a thing to an 8 year old? Then again who would do such a thing as to bomb and kill doctors of neutral political stripe who save lives and risk their own in a war zone? Who would kill innocent patients bombed and burned in their beds? Who would do such a thing as to invade a nation like Iraq that did nothing to it and kill god only knows how many innocents? Who would do such things?

Those are the questions I ask. Could it all have been so different; so much better than the political decay we see before our eyes in our time?

Maybe if I write about this and send it to a newspaper it will give me another Warholian 15 minutes of fame. What if that, in the long run, will mean nothing and the world will keep on going on as it has for thousands of years and my principal’s and the class president’s messages were wrong? What if it all ends in a flash?

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/vian-dakhil-yazidis-islamic-state-213226

Kevin McCarthy's Exit Came After Personal Threat Over Affair Allegations

Well I'll be damned! NOTHING surprises me coming from these utter hypocrites and utterly mean sicking Tea Baggies. AWFUL human beings. I am NO fan of Kevin McCarthy that is for sure but to hold an affair over his head by the extremist rightwingnuts of this putrid Republicon Party is DESPICABLE. But what can one expect of the Party of hypocrites and noxious anti-humans!  Only the fate of our nation they put at risk. Now the Party of many sins is floating Newt Gingrich to come in as speaker but Newt has had relationship problems of his own.  Hey, I know.  How about asking the Pope!

"Why not resign like Bob Livingston?”

Michael Calderone Senior Media Reporter, The Huffington Post

• 
  

Posted: 10/08/2015 07:15 PM EDT | Edited: 5 minutes ago

ASSOCIATED PRESS

In the hours before House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) abruptly withdrew his candidacy to be the next speaker of the House, he was sent an email from a conservative activist threatening to expose an alleged affair with a colleague. The subject line: “Kevin, why not resign like Bob Livingston?”

The email, sent just after 8 a.m. on Thursday, came from Steve Baer, a Chicago-based GOP donor known for mass-emailing conservative figures and Republican lawmakers. It was addressed to McCarthy and numerous others, including the personal account of Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.), who conservative media sites have suggested is tied romantically to McCarthy.

McCarthy has brushed off the affair allegation. After announcing that he would not seek the speaker's post on Thursday, he was asked about Wednesday's cryptic letter from Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), which asked that "any candidate for speaker of the House, majority leader, and majority whip withdraw himself from the leadership election if there are any misdeeds he has committed since joining Congress that will embarrass himself, the Republican conference, and the House of Representatives if they become public."

"No. No. Come on," said McCarthy. His decision to withdraw, he said, was to ensure that fellow GOP members didn't have a tough vote. "For us to unite, we probably need a fresh face," he said.

But the existence of the Baer email, passed to The Huffington Post by a source, shows that there were personal threats being made prior to McCarthy's abrupt announcement.

In the email, Baer linked to a Washington Examiner story published earlier Thursday with the headline: “Specter of sex scandal injected into GOP leadership race.” The article referenced Jones’ letter in the context of Speaker-elect Bob Livingston abruptly resigning in 1998 following a sex scandal.

Baer urged McCarthy to spare his family and congressional colleagues the ordeal of the allegations being raised, and suggested that concealing an affair would be a national security risk because of the possibility of extortion.

Few news organizations have touched the affair allegations, beyond the Drudge Report and conservative media. Charles Johnson, the conservative provocateur behind GotNews.com, reported them back in January. (Johnson, who is currently banned from Twitter, took a victory lap Thursday on Facebook.)

The rumors gained more traction in the last week in conservative circles, perhaps partly due to Baer’s multiple emails over that time, sent to a string of high-powered Republicans.

RedState editor-in-chief and radio host Erick Erickson wrote Thursday that someone sent links to blog posts about the alleged affair a few days ago to 91 people, including members of Congress and “highly influential conservatives outside Congress.” Erickson added that “there’s no evidence of the rumor being true.”

Erickson didn’t name the email sender, but The Huffington Post has confirmed it was Baer.

In Thursday’s post, Erickson wrote that a comment by Ellmers in The Hill, in the context of the rumors, further hyped the rumor mill:

Even some natural leadership allies such as Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) expressed doubts about promoting McCarthy to Speaker, a job second in line to the presidency.

“He has not spoken to me personally for my vote, and Jason Chaffetz has, so that’s where I am right now. At this point I will be casting a vote for Jason Chaffetz,” said Ellmers, who is facing a GOP primary challenger. “I can’t vote for someone who doesn’t ask for my vote.

“I’m apparently not high on his priority list,” she added.

 

 Major media outlets often are reluctant to amplify such claims and famously ignored rumors of John Edwards’ infidelity during the 2008 election. While cable news was all over McCarthy's decision to withdraw from the speaker's race on Thursday afternoon, no hosts or guests on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News explicitly referenced the rumors.

Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin seemed to allude to them during an MSNBC  appearance, noting “there’s a lot of speculation” that McCarthy’s decision had “more to do with things outside of his professional life.”

A couple hours later, Halperin cryptically tweeted: 

A Clarificaiton

Mary Beth Sheetz in the Metrowest Daily News commentary section further clarified my opinion appearing in the News and the confusion surrounding the alleged papal meeting with Kim Davis, the Kentucky head clerk, who went against a SCOTUS mandate allowing gays to marry.  It is worth noting what Ms. Sheetz said:

The NYTimes is reporting in more detail how a county clerk came to be in a receiving line at the Nunciature. The Pope was set-up by the conservative Bishop Vigano,he had exiled from Rome for mis-conduct. The attorneys representing the clerk have been associated by the Southern Poverty Law centers' list of hate groups. The US press is now full of reports the Bishop, scheduled to retire in January, will be gone from the Nunciature sooner rather than later.

I further responded to her:

Thank you, Mary Beith, for the further clarification. It is amazing the lengths some in hate groups will go to bamboozle others to get their message of hate delivered this time to the most prominent, influential and highest leader of the Vatican, the Pope himself.

Your further explanation just serves to reinforce my first notion of this Pope as good as if not better than even Pope John XXIII decades before him who initiated Vatican II and began the necessary changes in Church centuries-long doctrine among them indicting the Jews for perfidy. That noxious doctrine had profound implications for the hitherto weak opposition even silent resignation of Pius XII to Hitler's Europe and the Holocaust. Pope Francis continues what John XXIII began. Why does this Jew even care? I care because there are 1.2 billion Catholics in the world that make every word the Pope says important especially to the oppressed.

Moreover, admittedly, I am in search of a leader to love who, indeed, promotes love, forgiveness and not hate. Though change often comes from the bottom up we still need leaders who advocate for humane change from the top down.

The violent, mean and often ruthless forces that occupy this beautiful planet must be stopped and we desperately need a strong leader to help us stop it.

TO DO THIS WE MUST ELECT A DEMOCRAT AS PRESIDENT AND WHILE WE ARE AT IT TURN THE SENATE DEMOCRAT BLUE!

Strike on Doctors Without Borders

The American media, it seems, when reporting on this American strike upon a Doctors Without Borders hospital make it seem it is in the hip pocket of the military behemoths and the corporations that make billions off eternal war. This was an ugly attack in Afghanistan on the Doctors Without Borders medical facility. In the many wars the US has fought so called “collateral damage” has happened many times but this was a Doctors without Borders facility which is recognized by the international laws of war as OFF LIMITS. Doctors Without Borders sent their coordinates to the Afghan and US forces allegedly many times. When the US bombing ensued burning human beings in their beds loud and desperate calls were made to the American military from Doctors Without Borders, a neutral party, to stop bombing their hospital. It went unheeded.

Doctors Without Borders treats EVERYONE – Taliban and Afghan forces alike – who may be in need of medical treatment. The wounded and the dying can get treatment from them. They make NO distinction between an enemy and others.

The policy of Doctors Without Borders treating everyone I have read was an irritant to the Afghan government who did NOT want them to treat the Taliban enemy at all and hence the bombing of them ensued by the US.

This strike, if it occurred by our military forces, on a Doctors Without Borders hospital killing many of the brave and humane doctors as well as their suffering patients is one of the most egregious war crimes committed by our military in a sea of war crimes in that theater of war.

I knew the questioning of Gen. Campbell by the committee set up to “investigate" this egregious action today would be questioning light and it was. The senators sitting on that committee should be pounding their fists asking WHY if the coordinates were given many times by Doctors Without Borders to the Afghan and American military, a request by Doctors Without Borders for a cease and desist order of the bombing of that hospital went unheeded.

If true, this is a huge black eye on the American prosecution of this never ending eternal war. It helps no one. War crimes should be levied against those most responsible for this utterly egregious act. Its action goes against the laws of war, is a crime against humanity and against the laws of human dignity that the Nuremberg trials against the war criminals of Germany mandated should be bestowed on everyone. When crimes like this go unpunished the words “Never again” is just a platitudinous phrase and means nothing.

Hillary in New Hampshire

Hillary this a.m. spent over an hour with voters in New Hampshire answering tough questions from Savannah Guthrie. One of the questioners asked her what her favorite book was. Answer: "The Brothers Karamazov" by Dostoevsky. Not only did she answer it she discussed it showing her gargantuan intellect. She was brilliant and some were asked later if they thought so. A resounding yes was heard even from those who were undecided or who were voting for a challenger. They changed their mind.

Now I ask you to compare and contrast that to ANY candidates in the Republican arena. Most especially compare it to the thank-God-she-did-not-win, Sarah Palin who could have been a heart beat away from an old man in the presidency. She could not even answer the question except she said "All of them" Yeah, right. Case closed!  Democrats are infinitely smarter.

The Republicans still have nothing. Out of 17 candidates none of them has the depth and gravitas no matter how many billionaires there are among them that Hillary Clinton has.

There is no question who is the most electable, has the most experience and is the smartest. I won't tell. You figure it out.

‘Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS’ by Joby Warrick

Getty images/globe staff photo illustration

As its name makes clear, the Islamic State is after something far more permanent than its nihilistic, destructive methods might suggest. Over the past few years the movement has come terrifyingly close, confidently deploying modern tools of warfare and propaganda to establish a blood-soaked caliphate whose barbarity feels prehistoric. In his new book “Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS,” Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick sets out to explain how a motley group of criminals considered too unruly by Al Qaeda transformed into the world’s most successful and savage jihadi group.


Warrick’s account centers as much on American missteps as it does on the jihadi long game to build capacity. He telegraphs his disgust with ISIS without turning his book into a two-dimensional jeremiad and takes pains to include accounts of the group’s thinking, evolution, and internal political disputes.

The Islamic State, better known here by the acronym, ISIS, swept into American consciousness about a year ago when it conquered northern Iraq and almost toppled the US-backed government in Baghdad. But ISIS didn’t come out of nowhere. Inhabitants of the Arab heartland had followed the steady entrenchment of jihadi groups in the region.

Since Sept. 11, America’s counter-terror establishment has been obsessed with kill lists, personalizing Al Qaeda and its offshoots as the fiefdoms of a few easily demonized leaders.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, Syria, and on computer screens around the world, a vast, well-funded network recruited legions of talented and capable individuals, learned from its setbacks, innovated, and built effective institutions to buttress a durable reign of horror.

“Black Flags” tries hard to explain how ISIS came of age and why so many supposedly moderate or conservative forces in the Arab world have been willing to stand with extremists.
Most bracing of all is Warrick’s historically-grounded corrective, which blames the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 as the single most pivotal factor in the organization’s creation.

Warrick spends plenty of time on a riveting and detailed biographical account of the man who founded the group that became ISIS, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian thug whose commitment to violent religious extremism was forged in jail. Blithe prison officials allowed jihadis free reign and then carelessly released them to curry political favor for the new king.

The US government made Zarqawi famous by naming him as the link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, part of the spurious grounds to justify the Iraqi invasion. America’s mistakes were a bonanza for Zarqawi, who hired from the ranks of newly jobless soldiers and intelligence officials and capitalized on the disenfranchisement of Sunni tribes suddenly in need of a new protector.

Zarqawi reengineered the parameters of violence — no small feat in a neighborhood where despots like Saddam Hussein and the Assad dynasty in Syria already had spawned a vast torture complex. He personally beheaded civilians on video; directed suicide bombs at targets that other jihadis considered off limits like the UN, NGOs, and Arab embassies; and struck Shia religious targets with the ultimately successfully goal of provoking a destabilizing Sunni-Shia civil war. Even Al Qaeda thought he was going too far, Warrick notes, but Zarqawi’s methods proved to have enduring traction long after his death in 2006.

His successors built ISIS into an organization determined to go much further than Al Qaeda and implement a brutal caliphate immediately. Today ISIS runs oil fields, banks, and a formidable military. The group’s executions grab our attention, but ISIS applies equal zeal to tax collection, education, and indoctrination — all good reasons to suspect that it may remain part of the scene for years to come.

There are a few missing pieces in this otherwise fine book. Warrick neglects the rich context of torture, abuse, and extremism fed by Arab governments and international patrons, including the United States, in the decades before Al Qaeda and then ISIS came to maturity. He mentions but does not delve deeply into the widespread sympathy for hardline Islamist ideas among the Arabian peninsula monarchies and many supposedly mainstream Sunnis.

Also some big questions remain at the end of “Black Flags,’’ including the mystery of the group’s technical achievements. How did ISIS refine its training, military tactics, and administrative abilities so thoroughly that it could control a nation-sized swath of Syria and Iraq? Warrick’s account fills in important conceptual blanks, but doesn’t explain why this time around the same old cocktail of takfiri jihad, Gulf money, and impressionable testosterone-filled volunteers yielded an army and government-in-waiting more effective than any of its regional peers.

Overall, however, Warrick’s book might be the most thorough and nuanced account of the birth and growth of ISIS published so far. “Black Flags’’ is full of personalities, but it keeps its gaze carefully focused on the wider arc of history.

Thanassis Cambanis writes The Internationalist column for Globe Ideas and is a fellow at The Century Foundation in New York. His most recent book is “Once Upon a Revolution: An Egyptian Story.’’

The Hidden Holocaust -- Sixty Minutes segment

This is one of the most excellent pieces of investigative journalism I have seen. It involves the most moral and righteous among nations, a Catholic priest Father Patrick Desbois, who made it his life's work to uncover Jewish dead about whom the Nazis wanted no one to know.

I knew that my grandparents who came here at the turn of the 20th century could not have known what would happen to their friends, family and neighbors who were fellow Jews in Shepatovka, Ukraine and they could never have known that had they not left they would have been among those killed and buried in mass unmarked graves courtesy of the Einsatzgruppen, German death squads dispatched to Eastern Europe to kill Jews -- all of them.

I knew in 1941 that most of them were shot and fell into the killing fields of Eastern Europe while many who were not Jewish stood by and watched. I urge you to watch it and the extra segments including the one on ISIS and NEVER forget!

Linked below.

The Hidden Holocaust

A priest is determined to find forgotten victims of the Holocaust whose bodies lie in unmarked mass graves in the former USSR

cbsnews.com

Kee Slapping Funny -- Hillary on Saturday Night Live

Hillary Clinton Saturday Night Live.  Val the bartender!

She was HILARIOUS! 

I still do not think Bernie can win.  So I say Hillary 2016!!!

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live

Pope Francis expected to fire the Archbishop who tricked him into meeting Kim Davis

By Bill Palmer | October 2, 2015 | 13

After Pope Francis wrapped up a successful goodwill tour of the United States, he saw his that goodwill largely undermined when it leaked out that he had met with Kentucky marriage license clerk Kim Davis, who is considered by many Americans to be enemy number one when it comes to gay rights. This prompted the Pope to put out a statement clarifying that while the meeting took place, he in no way endorsed her agenda. And now he’s expected to go a step further, removing the Archbishop who set up the meeting.

Francis and the Vatican also made clear that while he was in Washington DC, the only official one-on-one meeting he had was with a former student of his, Yayo Grassi, who is gay. Instead they maintain that the meeting with Davis was part of a receiving line and that she was essentially slipped in by Washington Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. The New York Times says that he is now “likely to be removed at the first respectable opportunity.”

It’s not immediately clear how far such a move will go toward repairing the sudden damage done to the Pope’s otherwise largely stellar reputation. Some may skeptically view the Archbishop as a designated fall guy amid unexpected public relations fallout. But the Vatican is stressing that no one within its Rome organization was involved in setting up the meeting in any way, and that it was orchestrated solely by Viganò, who was presumably carrying out his own agenda.

What may be most remarkable is that Pope Francis, who technically answers to no one in his religious role, is going to such great lengths to explain himself and try to atone for the meeting. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that he’s not a supporter of Kim Davis’ agenda in any way, shape or form. Read more here.

Before Meeting Kim Davis, Pope Met With His Gay Friend In Washington

"I don’t think he was trying to say anything in particular... He was just meeting with his ex-student and a very close friend of his."

Jaweed Kaleem Senior Religion Reporter, The Huffington Post

Posted: 10/02/2015 02:05 PM EDT | Edited: 2 minutes ago

Marisa Marchitelli In this still from a video taken by Marisa Marchitelli, Yayo Grassi, left, and his partner Iwan Bagus, center, can be seen greeting Pope Francis, right, at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C.

 

Pope Francis privately met with a gay couple last week while visiting Washington, D.C., according to several news reports Friday.

Yayo Grassi, an openly gay Argentine-American caterer who lives in the Washington area and is a former student of the pope’s, met with Francis at the Apostolic Nunciature one day before the pope met Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who has been at the center of a national controversy over her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Joining Grassi was his boyfriend of 19 years, Iwan Bagus.
The news was first reported Friday by CNN, which published an interview with Grassi and described a video of him embracing the pope. A partial video of Grassi's encounter with Francis can be seen below. The Associated Press reported Friday that the Vatican confirmed Francis had met with a "gay former student and his partner."

Grassi did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Huffington Post.

Grassi, who studied under the pope when Francis taught at Inmaculada Concepcion high school in Flores, Argentina, in the mid-1960s, told CNN the meeting was arranged via the Apostolic Nunciature, which is the Vatican's embassy in Washington.

According to a Vatican statement on Friday, the embassy also arranged the pope’s meeting with Davis, which the Vatican said “should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects.” The Vatican said the pope only had one “real audience” while at the embassy, which was his former students.

Grossi’s description of himself as a former student would seem to match the Vatican’s.
In an interview with The New York Times, Grossi said that he did not think the pope was making a statement with the meeting, which reportedly lasted between 15 and 20 minutes.
“I don’t think he was trying to say anything in particular,” he said. “He was just meeting with his ex-student and a very close friend of his.”

According to a HuffPost translation of the above video, Grassi introduced Francis one by one to several of his friends from Argentina, Indonesia, Thailand and Bolivia.

One of the women, an Argentine friend of Grassi's, fell to tears as she exchanged greetings with Francis.
"Pray for me," the pope said, a phrase he is famous for.

"We've taken up too much of your time," Grassi said.
"No, by God, thanks for having me," Francis replied.

The pope, following Argentine custom, kissed Grassi and Bagus each on the cheek when saying goodbye.
The news that Francis met with a gay man in a long-term relationship within hours of meeting with one of the highest-profile opponents of same-sex marriage in the U.S. elicited surprise and applause from LGBT advocates, some of whom had said they were offended by the pope's meeting with Davis.

"Pope Francis never ceases to surprise us," said Christopher J. Hale, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, in a statement. "The news that Francis met with a gay couple should put to rest any notion that Pope Francis is held down by the narrow ideological divisions that plague the United States. He is first and foremost a pastor who is willing to encounter and engage anyone."

"Once again, this shows that the Pope meets with a wide variety of people on his trips," said the Rev. James Martin, editor at large of American Magazine, a Jesuit publication, in an email to HuffPost. "Of course it does not betoken any sort of papal approval of same-sex marriage. But if the story is accurate, I'm glad to hear that the Pope keeps in touch with old friends, gay or straight."

UPDATE: 2:15 p.m. -- The Rev. Thomas Rosica, a spokesman for the Vatican, issued the following statement Friday afternoon: "Mr. Yayo Grassi, a former Argentine student of Pope Francis, who had already met other times in the past with the Pope, asked to present his mother and several friends to the Pope during the Pope’s stay in Washington, DC. As noted in the past, the Pope, as pastor, has maintained many personal relationships with people in a spirit of kindness, welcome and dialogue."

President's Press Conference

He is simply a BRILLIANT man. His press conference was long, detailed and 100% on target. I wish he could be president for 8 more years. He is so far and above any of Republican so called leadership it is staggering!

Vatican Denies Kim Davis' Meeting With Pope Francis Indicates Support

At least he's trying to walk that nasty ovation to someone who in my opinion does not deserve it (link below.) What about the others she decimated with her ugly belief. Belief does not give one the right to torture others and that is just what she did.

I'm glad he clarified and I believe he should meet with gay people who have suffered immensely at the hands of those who bully them ALL the time!

NOW GO OUT AND WORK FOR DEMOCRATS EVERYWHERE. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, I BELIEVE, HAS LOST ITS MIND. OH YES, THEN GO ON TO RACHEL MADDOW'S SITE AND HEAR HER STORY ABOUT KEVIN MCCARTHY THE SOON-TO-BE-SPEAKER -- AN OXYMORON. HE MAKES GEORGE BUSH LOOK LIKE AN ELOQUENT LINGUIST.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/vatican-denies-kim-davis-meeting-pope-francis-indicates-support-n437356

Maritally Misguided

The story "Kim Davis, Clerk to Refused to Issue Marriage Licenses to Gay Couples Met the Pope" made me retract my former opinion heaping mountains of praise on Pope Francis. Sometimes I jump the gun before I wait to see if anything else is known. Now I will say the Pope meets the martially misguided clerk who pays no attention to the feelings and rights of others wanting to be married to the one they love. Ms. Davis says no you can't because my religious views trump your happiness. I say an emphatic no they do not! As a public clerk she has the obligation to perform her public duties and if she cannot then find another who can. No one is telling her what to believe but she has no right to impose her private beliefs on the public while doing her public job.

Still, Pope Francis's message generally, except on this issue and some others, was a humane one. I do believe Davis CAN refuse marriage licenses to gays but must let someone else who will issue marriage certificates do so. It is the law after all.

I think some in the Papal Curia are at odds with Francis's other liberal positions. He did say on homosexuality "Who am I to judge?" So he speaks out of both sides of his mouth. I have no idea why he chose to meet with this divorced four times and had-children-out-of wedlock lapsed former Catholic.

I would love to ask Pope Francis: Does he think homosexuals who have been ostracized, bullied, kicked out of their homes onto the street by their parents, turned to drugs and worse attempt suicide are less worthy of his empathy and support? I do NOT get it and yes I am bothered by what he did and loathe looking stupid myself piling tons of praise on him.

I tried to love him and still think he is better than Benedict and many other popes before Benedict but Pope Francis disappointed me on this one. Maybe someday he will say by meeting Davis: Father, forgive me, I know not what I did.

Soft Landing

Cardinal O’Malley said “Pope Francis’s first visit to the United States was something akin to a national religious retreat.” Never, the cardinal said, had he witnessed a papal visit generate such widespread interest, particularly from non-Catholics. I am one of them. I cannot believe that I, who have been laser sharp critical of Vatican history, could find a Pope Francis so wonderful.

I put aside my disagreements as no one is perfect but, in general, this Pope gave many a soft landing on the sharp vicissitudes of life. I watched his visit, hours of it, because I was mesmerized by his stamina and the message he delivered to so many so many times. People (including me) are hungry for humane and smart leadership. Will he accept women priests, married priests, and gay humanity? He is not Superman of the Catholic Church but he has changed the tone and the general feeling that comes from a man who knows hardship, poverty and knows how to use his intelligence promoting kindness and humane policy for greater good.

He came here with painful stenosis, sciatica, one lung and who knows what other physical maladies that sometimes come with age. The amount he did and the stamina with which he did it were miraculous. He was amazing to me and made me think twice about mending fences that were broken in my own life.

In the end we are the sum total of who we were in life. I want to be remembered for the help I gave, the kindness I showed and the humane political policy for which I advocated.

Jesus is said to have said "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me." Rabbi Hillel summarized Judaism by saying as I have repeated often: "Do NOT do unto others that which you would NOT want done to you. All the rest is commentary."

I could not have said it better myself!

Months After White Supremacy Scandal, Steve Scalise May Become House Majority Leader

(See link below.)  What happened to my country? I am just sad. Where did it go so wrong? It was always divided for as long as I remember but not this extremist badly. The president for the 2010 midterms I am sorry to say did NOT sell his healthcare plan well enough and logically enough. He needed to make a huge tour around the country doing so as if he were up for reelection. The Tea Bags and Republicans sustained a huge majority it still has and legislation ordinarily easily passed was/is like pulling teeth. The nation had suffered tremendous upheaval with bank bailouts and CEO's getting so much taxpayer money and bonuses to boot.

The Republican Party that is now the Republican Party's anti-government base revolted against the government debt and the spending of more taxpayer bucks. Instead of these middle class whites gravitating to the Democratic Party where they economically truly belong the Republican Party that allegedly hated spending lassoed them in taking full advantage of their opposition to social programs meaning their money perceived to go to persons of color and hence the basically all white, conservative, southern and Midwestern tea bag party was born and became right wing extremist persons with power. They literally economically stepped on their own toes because the at least old Republican Party is NOT about them. It is about the richest 1% but hey racism tops it all.

Months After White Supremacy Scandal, Steve Scalise May Become House Majority Leader

The Louisiana congressman had spoken to a group founded by former KKK leader David Duke.

huffingtonpost.com

Pope Francis Makes Surprise Stop To Bless Sculpture Symbolizing Catholic Unity With Jews

Another wow moment. Pope Francis is touching every base and this base is particularly impressive to me! It is worth reading for Jews and Christians alike really for everyone emphasizing man's ability to right centuries' long wrongs and work together uniting us in our common humanity. It is nothing short of amazing. It is our 1962 Vatican II's "Nostra Aetate" (In Our Time) in 2016. Here is the link or below. I urge you to read it!

http://forward.com/news/321629/pope-francis-makes-surprise-stop-to-bless-sculpture-symbolizing-catholic-an/?utm_content=daily_Newsletter_TopSpot_Title_Position-1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Daily%202015-09-28&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20%28Monday-Friday%29

God's Plan

"Hundreds Turned Away From Only Session On Gays At Catholic Meeting"

"The room was changed last minute from one that could hold 10,000 to another that seated just 1,000." Link here or below.

 

Justice and fairness are part of this papacy and should be no less so for gay Catholics. I love this Pope and have said it numerous times even though I am not even Catholic BUT the second class citizenship of Catholic gays is also a part of the Church and a view of the Pope's that has changed somewhat as he said when asked about homosexuality “Who am I to judge?”  It has, though, obviously, changed not enough if hundreds of gay Catholics can be frozen out of a room lest it look like there are too many.  Guess what?  There ARE many.

 

It is ridiculous to assume everyone else on planet earth can enjoy another human being in the closest way possible but this is something if one is born gay, and I believe it is DNA directed for most, that no person should be denied. It is preposterous that they moved hundreds of gay people and maybe more so they could include only a small amount of gays in the room because it just looks better. I ask better to whom?  It is like persons of color being told it's natural for them to sit separate from whites in the back of the bus or that they cannot enjoy a movie in the same way whites can; indeed, told they are not the same or as good as whites and should not enjoy the privilege white bestows. 

Gays are human beings, part of God's plan but they are evidently to the Church not quite as good as straights.  I say baloney this cannot be coming from a Church just a decade ago that was a magnet for male homosexual priests whose thought process was often not celibacy.

I want to love this Pope and his papacy even more but until they make the human life experience acceptable and not an instrument of torture for their gay brothers and sisters I cannot say that I do accept it more ... yet.

 

I believe in time the Church will know the etiology of one's sexuality and accept it as it did Galileo’s understanding of the earth's place among the planets with the sun as its center. I believe in time the Church will accept women as priests, I believe in time that it will allow priests to marry in the same way it has lightened the load for divorced Catholics and brought the Church back into to the lives of the poor, the elderly, the sick and the dispossessed.

 

Until that time Pope Francis, though I love him much more than any other Pope I have subjected to my own historical analysis, will still leave an empty spot in the many hearts of his gay flock.

REPUBLICANS WE KNOW WILL MAKE ROOM FOR NO ONE EXCEPT THE COLOR WHITE.  ANOTHER IMPERATIVE TO MAKE SURE TO TURN OUT IN NUMBERS LARGE THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE!!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/world-meeting-of-families-gays_5605df2ee4b0768126fdb237?utm_hp_ref=religion

Methods to Some Madness

One should READ this article below instead of simply a knee jerk response that Russia is bad. There are methods to some madness and Putin's rationale might just be correct AND serve US interests in the process. Are there NO smart, prescient minds in our National Security state?


http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/why-russias-vladimir-putin-standing-syrias-embattled-bashar-assas-n432936

A World of Miracles

When I go to my email first thing in the a.m. I now am on an email list from the "Forward" newspaper, a long known Jewish paper created in 1897. It was (and still is) progressive, dedicated to the Jewish Community at that time. It was called then "The Daily Forward." The story it sent last night to me is a story of interest posted here or below.

Some I know saw the Therezen concentration camp (sometimes it said called Theresienstadt) and is entitled "Searching for a Photo of Childhood Friend Lost in the Holocaust." It is an amazing heart string-pulling story that has a rather miracle ending. It is truly a wonder in our mind numbing age of technology and the reach of Facebook.

http://forward.com/news/321503/a-survivor-searched-for-a-photo-of-her-lost-childhood-friend/?utm_content=daily_Newsletter_TopSpot_Title_Position-1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Daily%202015-09-26&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20%28Monday-Friday%29

I am not Catholic but I may become one. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this Pope!

"Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade." - Pope Francis, in his concluding remarks to the U.S. Congress