HOLY JOY

Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty Heaven and Earth are Full of Your Glory

There is a lot of Catholic misconception concerning the nature of "Holiness" that leads to
Joylessness. Holiness and Righteousness are not the antithesis of intimate conjugal love. To the contrary, we all know marriage is one of the major sacraments- just one in which the holiest of us-our priests-never get to partake from the other side of the altar.
The holiness of conjugal love ranks with the holiness of complete priestly celibacy. They are equally self sacrificial. Holiness is not a robbing oneself of all natural passion or impulse. It is not a denial of all that is human. Were that the goal, why would Christ incarnate himself? He could have yelled at us from a burning bush. Holiness is not a foresaking of all that is pleasing, lovely, and beautiful. For some that is a path chosen. But for no one should it be a path imposed. Jesus came that you might have life and have it abundantly-fully human, fully alive. New Testament scripture expressly states that a bishop or deacon should be "the husband of one wife". That is the biblical statement on church office. Jesus never said and never meant for his apostles or disciples to require throwing away their bodies or their wives. He healed Peter's mother in law and didn't tell him to dump his wife in the river. He doesn't demand or need a cast of castratti to transform himself for our consumption under the appearance of bread and wine.
Scripture all teaches that this should be a choice, and some will choose it for the kingdom- and we all should respect when some do. But many are called to be priests, and only some are called to isolate themselves from all intimacy with women for all time. The view that Prieshood must by mandate be celibate- a creation of church doctrine of the 12th Century and not anything taught by Jesus-EVER-- has within it a certain unholy fear, loathing and disgust of women. This view hurts women. It hurts women precisely because there are some women whose hearts were created to bond with men called to be holy priests and they were created from the beginning of time to be married to men who are priests. Their lives are simply discounted-given no value under this order and rule whatever. They are not asked, they are not considered, they are not valued. They are valued less than the building called the church and they are part of Christ's body, the heavenly Church. There is an understanding of the Blessed Virginal Mary and everything else womanly which is intrinsically unclean to this understanding of mandated celibacy.
Jesus taught just the opposite.
He elevated the dignity of women. He taught that the woman getting stoned was not someone to scorn, he taught that the woman at the well who had five or seven (whose counting) husbands could be spoken to and could serve him-she became the first Evangelist who ran to tell the town all about him; He taught that the woman who wasted all her money on perfume or oil to annoint his feet could use her own hair as a towel and caress his feet with her hair. The first person he spoke to when he rose from the dead was a woman (and he couldn't wait to get up to see her again.)
God himself in the Holy Spirit had conjugal love-cosmic sex-with a woman (you thought long distance relationships were hard, God reached through time/space galactic dimensions to get to his love). He knows every temptation known to man and is sinless. We are made in his image. Thus this kind of powerful life giving love of a woman is sinless. He chose one woman-and he impregnated her. Sinlessly. Love seeks -compels-union by its nature and he loved her so much he brought forth human flesh from her.
An entire theology built around a notion of holiness that mandates celibacy is frought with internal contradictions and forced deceptions, denials and delusions. God made man in his image. God impregnated a woman. God has a Holy Family. God came as a baby. All these things stare a Priest in his face every time he says Mass. And yet, somehow the church has pursuaded holy men for centuries that they cannot be both Priests and carnally intimate with a wife. They cannot even touch them. -Especially now with the litigation exposure threats.
And so many of them cheat against their own souls. They dally with temptation and face stern retribution while they torture their consciences. They are threatened with persecutions, derision and trapped then in unholy Fear accused absurdly of loving Jesus less because they love a woman also. Those are the ones who don't simply leave active service of the church making the Church the loser. And to this unholy tortured doctrinal imposition is added more than a touch of hypocracy when we note that Episcopal Priests may bring wives with them to the Catholic priesthood as can the entire Eastern Rite --
But the Roman Catholic church's Princes-after the order of Melchizadek -a married Jewish King and Priest of Salem (Jerusalem) may never know the caring tender gentle caress of a woman in love.
And at this- Jesus wept.

Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi-the Body of Christ where upon the pre-eminence of the Eucharist in the Mass is expounded. You may hear a Priest say something like "there is no greater intimacy with God" than partaking of this. Yes of course, but we do not serve a God in a Box like a Jack in the Box. God is bigger than a bread box. We serve and adore a God much bigger than that. We serve the Source that created all life. God, it was once said was not in the thunder, he was not in the wind, he was in the still small voice. The still small voice might say something like "I love you, you are mine." It may say something like "follow me." God does come transubstantiated for us as the new Manna from heaven for our spiritual and bodily nourishment in his actual presence. God also comes through the hearts of purest love which can be found in a wife. God does not limit himself to his box. My mother used to say to our dog when it wouldn't mind (behave) "Get back in your box" and it would sit in its cage. God cannot be commanded to just remain only in the Eucharist at the command of the church. God is Love. There is not anything that was created which was not created through Jesus. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. God is in the still voice. God is in the human heart. God is Love. God is Love. God is Love.

MONEY MONEY MONEY

Can I Please Have A Raise?

If you missed it, Supreme Court Justices Alito and Breyer appeared before John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary not too long ago giving a brilliant argument as to why Federal Judges should be paid more. It’s not about the fact that they make five times less than partners in major law firms in DC annually, it’s about the rule of law. I actually agree-somewhat. Breyer argued that you don’t want what the Soviet’s call “telephone justice” where the “party boss” calls to put the fix in to the vulnerable underpaid public justice servant for sale to the highest bidder. [Anti-graft Bar rules aren’t enough?] You also don’t want only people who have saved a couple million enough for lush retirements so that their paltry federal salaries don’t bother them while they neutrally dispense justice. It would be nice to have diversity on the Court-people who worked in the real world in private sector practices, corporations even. Alito argued that he knew a few Federal Judges in New Jersey who were thinking of leaving the bench because they couldn’t comfortably afford to put their multiple kids through college. The ego-power trade off looks less appealing when your kid needs a new wireless laptop to go with his crack-berry.
I wholly agree that Federal Judges should be paid more. They are generally great folk and they likely would spend it on mentoring young lawyers and supporting programs befitting their station. In fact I think that all Congressional staff salaries also have not kept pace with inflation. A temp. attorney doing doubletime overtime can almost make annually the salary of a federal judge and can make lots more than a staff attorney in the Senate. That is a bit nuts.
I vote for you-Alito- you should get a raise with the rest of them.
I only wish you had the same compassion. You know what I am talking about- that last ruling wherein Goodyear Tire got to pay the Ledbetter woman incrementally less than her male counterpart because she was female for years because she didn’t catch it in time. The lower court awarded her a nice 3 Million to even the playing field and send a much needed message- don’t do that- don’t cheat the woman because you think that the guy has more expenses or kids or financial responsibilities. You have no idea what she supports- whether she has an orphaned niece, or supports a husband, or single-handedly finances that pregnancy crisis center, or pays for her single daughter’s health-care, has twelve god-children or gives generously to the cardinal’s annual appeal. You don’t know what her mortgage is, what her car payment is, what her medical needs are. You just assumed it was cosmically OK to pay her monthly about a half grand less because no one told her how bad she was being jipped until it was too late. Instead of throwing a dollar in the plate should she now neatly tuck 59 cents into an envelope and drop it in the basket?
For every one lawsuit that ever makes it to the appellate level you know there are a hundred such untold stories in the naked city. This one made it on merit all the way to the Supreme Court and what did the Supreme Court do- na na na na na na- sorry honey- too little whining too late- shoulda caught it earlier. And for the rest of you plaintiffs lawyers living on air and church dinners to bring these suits for already financially diminished people- na na na na na na.


Are they serious? Really fellas. This is where it becomes obvious that too many Supreme Court justices are unfamiliar with the routine skank middle management with chauvinist agendas who think women who work are bad women, unloved enough to not-not have to work, or lesser humans not deserving of the same respect as men- just because they are working women forced or choosing to compete with working men . Do they think the extra half a thou just meant she now has to go to "Bubbles" hair salon rather than "Christophe's" and limit the nail emporium to once a month? If you spent most your life paid as a Yale law grad attorney working in government for respectable and respectful government people how can you be expected to know really how bad it can be out there? This ruling affects all women on discriminatory pay issues, whether they are widows, orphans, PHD students, divorcees, your mother, your sister, your wife, your daughter.
It is just astounding to me that the Supreme Court of the land would want to make it harder to address this persistent basic injustice- seems in fact totally Oxymoronic.
On this one I thank God there is such a one as the Ginsberg. And everyone in the country needs to back any Hillary legislation to fix this mess--- or Alito should get his pay docked.

It's enough to make a raging feminist out of a nice Catholic girl.

THE YOKE

IF YOU REMOVE THE YOKE FROM YOUR MIDST

THE POINTING OF THE FINGER

AND SPEAKING WICKEDNESS

AND IF YOU GIVE YOURSELF

TO THE HUNGRY

AND SATISFY THE DESIRE OF THE AFFLICTED

THEN YOUR LIGHT

WILL RISE IN DARKNESS

AND YOUR GLOOM

WILL BECOME LIKE MIDDAY

AND THE LORD

WILL CONTINUALLY GUIDE YOU

AND SATISFY YOUR DESIRE

IN SCORCHED PLACES.


Isiah 58; 9-11.



see, www.ONE.org

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MOM

I Came That You Might Have Life, And Have It Abundantly.

If you had a mother like my mother you could hear her sometimes say things like “I would give my right arm for my kids.” I used to think that sounded a bit weird. Body parts for kids. What a sentiment.

Ever love someone so much it hurt- so much you couldn’t give them enough and nothing you have you felt was enough to give them, so you just kept giving them stuff-stuff you made, stuff you bought, stuff you thought they might like? Maybe you didn't know how else to tell them. Ever love someone so much that you had that kind of love where you thought you would literally die for someone, you would give them your organs, you would give them all your blood if you thought it would make them live, because life just wasn't full life if they weren't alive and around. That’s true love. It happens like once in a lifetime to a lot of people.

That’s what Jesus did. What did he give us? They drew lots for his clothes--so we didn't inherit his clothes. What did he give us instead? He gave us his very body, He gave us all his blood. He keeps giving it every Mass. So we can live. That’s true love. Harder than the kind your mother has.

Happy Mother's Day.

12 THINGS ODDLY DELICIOUS

You try now-----What a Wonderful Wonderful World

1/Green Tea Ice Cream
2/If at the end of Mass the Priest said instead of “Go in Peace”, “Stay in Peace- I like the company.”
3/Chocolate Sushi (substitute dark, white or milk chocolate for the fish-not kidding!)
4/If at the end of the Mass the Priest said instead of “Go in Peace to Love and Serve the Lord” “Go Home and Kiss your Wife who is the closest thing to the Lord still living in your House.”
5/Fried Calimari with Wasabi
6/ If the Pope said to Bush "Anyone who shoots anyone, instructs anyone to shoot anyone, pays anyone to shoot anyone or conspires with anyone who does any of the above in an unjust war has automatically excommunicated themselves sua sponte. I'll take care of the paperwork."
7/Anything and everything Cordon Bleu class in Firenzi dishes up
8/If Paris Hilton who got 45 days for DWG-driving while georgeous and tipsy and hurting no one wondered what would be the appropriate punishment for having a “late term” abortion, slicing and dicing her offspring with intent while sober.
9/Teriaki Salmon braized in lime juice and ginger cooked in orange juice marinade over boiled artichoke hearts resting on whole wheat pasta primavera (really).
10/If during Mass the Priest said “this is my body which is given for you” and added “because I must like to live vicariously.”
11/If the most beautiful holy consecrated people had beautiful more holy consecrated children
and
12/ If every nearly vacant old historic monestary in a beautiful bucolic European countryside or town converted half its space retrofitted to be a home for AIDS orphans from all over the world, complete with a school so they could grow up listening to monks chant the liturgy of the hours, sing with them and help with the dishes. I volunteer to cook for room and board.

Vatican Information Service Press Release- a View of Women

PROMOTE DIGNITY OF WOMEN AND THEIR ROLE IN SOCIAL LIFE

VATICAN CITY, APR 24, 2007 (VIS) - Made public today was the text of a talk delivered by Msgr. Franco Follo before the executive council of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), on April 20.

Msgr. Follo, Holy See permanent observer to UNESCO, dwelt on the importance of the authentic promotion of the dignity of women and of their participation in social life.

"Christian faith," said the permanent observer, "nourishes the conviction that no human being, man or woman, can be denied the intrinsic value that God granted to each person," a value "that cannot be alienated. At the same time, this original dignity reminds us that all human beings must be treated as people and not as objects."

Msgr. Follo highlighted how political and social, national and international organizations "have the duty to do everything possible to ensure that such dignity is always respected, in all the stages of a person's life. In this context, greater attention must be given to ensuring respect for women and girls, especially as concerns their physical integrity, their free decision to choose a husband, and the need for them to access education and social life."

"Thanks to women, whose often humble and unseen activities must be supported, it will be possible to promote the family more effectively as a basic social cell, young people will learn to integrate into social networks, peace will be sought with greater intensity, and dialogue and human relationships will become factors for fraternity and solidarity at the local level. In other words," he concluded, "all of society will benefit from the vocation, the activity and the genius of women."
DELSS/DIGNITY WOMEN/UNESCO:FOLLO VIS 070424 (290)

WHEN JUSTICE KISSES PEACE

FREEDOM FROM WANT

We hear a lot of talk about giving Freedom to people half a world away.
For that we are sacrificing our finest.
Yet, you can't turn on Sunday morning TV and see the Feed the Children guy and not know that there is suffering everywhere. But you knew that. John Edwards calls it the "two countries" where the middle class is losing ground in a newly stratified "have, have not" society or according to Bush, a society of his base of "have mores" and everyone else. John Kerry railed against decimation of communities by "outsourcing" jobs to India and elsewhere closing factories that supported entire communities. Everyone knows people are hungry everywhere-except maybe Simon Cowell who was shocked to find a Food Bank kitchen in Los Angeles. Any given early morning in Washington, DC I can walk past Western Avenue Presbyterian Church a block from the Watergate where Condolezza lives and see homeless men lining up around the block for breakfast.
The American Idol personalities last night travelled to Africa to "give back" to people who don't have antiretroviral drugs or food much less TVs. But you know you don't have to go to Africa to find it-while it is stark there. If you look hard enough you can see it everywhere-its ugly-its shameful- its POVERTY. There might be some of it in your family even that has annoyed you and to which you turned a blind eye-that relative who is a bottomless pit of need. There might be some of it in your street at that crackling painted house, and for sure there is some of it in that neighborhood where you seldom drive without locking the doors and the windows up in the city.

"A National Scandal" is what Peter Edelman calls Poverty in America. He has been fighting the "War on Poverty" since working for Robert F. Kennedy as an idealistic young Harvard lawyer who could have easily instead probably gone to Wall Street. He is heading a task force on fighting Poverty with the Center for American Progress.
See, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/poverty_numbers.html

Katrina got to him. How on earth in this country could we lose entire parishes of people who were trapped and just drowned right before our eyes on TVs--IN THIS COUNTRY! No cars to get out, no bank accounts, no means to go anywhere but squatting in a sports stadium if they were rescued. You couldn't watch that and not be just sick at your stomach. People floating face down in the streets of New Orleans. Unspeakable.

Moral Lectures don't pursuade people to care about each other. Bad Boy, you made so much money you should give more of it away doesn't pursuade people to care more about those less fortunate. But economic arguments might. Poverty costs more than its worth. It costs in lost productivity costs for sick workers and for the non-integration of under-educated people who could be in the workforce, it costs in emergency room health bills, it costs in the emotional toll on people who love the people they know in poverty and it costs in terms of our international competitiveness in a thousand ways. Economists have ways to quantify this but it is obvious that Poverty costs us all. That is what the "ONE" campaign also understands.
Go to www.ONE.org and read about what they are doing to fight global poverty.

Ted Kenendy believes we can and must do better in Educating everyone to meet the competitive challenges of the global marketplace now. And don't tell him that anyone from a poor neighborhood cannot learn as well as the next kid from a rich suburb. Our public education system needs major overhauling at a national level to meet the obvious challenges, he argued.

Jesus spent his ministry doing three things basically; teaching, healing (healing people through teaching forgiveness, healing spirits and minds by driving out demons, and physically curing disease) and feeding people. He continues to do it and he continues to tell us to do it in his name. Matthew 25 is the clearest blueprint for what he has instructed and how he holds us accountable. We know that in so much as you do this to "the least of these" my brethren you do it to me. There will be sheep and goats, and you know the story. OK, so fear of firey hell doesn't motivate people much either these days. Charlie Rangel has another Angle. National Security. If we don't take care of people in poverty, they easily fall into crime, if we don't create employment in communties we create pathologies instead that eventually come back to bite us.
And the richest of us aren't saying "Bite Me." They are often really nice people who are happy to give if asked nicely in the right way by the right people-so long as they can write it off.

We have a chance now to make a real serious difference. In fact, Peter Edelman's goal is ambitious but realistic. We are the "Can Do" Nation and we Can Do this. We can cut Poverty in half in the next ten years. Certainly we can cut childhood poverty in half, and a huge percentage of people in poverty are kids. Think about it hard. A huge number of people in poverty in this country are kids. Kids. His task force has planned a 12 point legislative agenda toward this goal of cutting poverty in half in ten years and completely eradicating it in this country in a generation.
see, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/podesta_poverty_testimony.html
We can do this painlessly if we commit ourselves to it. 12 points, like the 12 apostles of progressive reform, or the 12 steps to sober reality checking the country's conscience.

What does Poverty mean? It means people really don't have peace of mind that they can meet their bills, it means keeping a roof over the head sheltering from the elements, it means food on the table regularly, it means a place to go to work or not instead of hanging on the street, it means that the struggle is with existence itself.

And here is what else it means-it factors hugely into calculations concerning whether women think that they can afford to bring another child into the world. Poverty is the single most influential factor on the Abortion crisis. You cannot look at Abortion in this country and ignore the issue of Poverty. To solve the Poverty problem goes a long long way toward solving the Abortion crisis. Ask any single female. 51% of all women in this country are now living without husbands single. We cannot plan public policy on the old Father Knows Best model because husbands and fathers are missing from the picture of over half the women in America now. Women are struggling. Women with children are struggling much more. Three million people a year abort their offspring in this country. Every two years we have a holocaust sized abortion pile of dismembered fetal arms, legs and heads created largely by the Bondage to Want in a country that isn't paying attention to the effects of Poverty on women.

We all want Peace, Peace in Iraq, peace of mind, peace from the tortured violence of self-destructive, emotionally devastating, fetacide abortions.

When we achieve the Justice that can happen through this 12 point legislative agenda proposed by the Task Force on Poverty, that is when Justice meets Peace and kisses it.

PERVERSIONS AND OTHER SICKNESS IN THE CITY

ARE THEY KIDDING?

This has been an interesting week in Washington. We had a moment of silence today for the 32 victims of the Virginia Tech slaying.

How many years of silence should we have for the half a million Iraqis we slaughtered for their “freedom” and favorable oil trade terms? There is something just a wee bit perverse about that.

Then yesterday on the Hill:
Our Attorney General has proved that he should now be called “The Right Honorable Esteemed Little Lying Putz, Esquire.” His rehearsed lapses in memory make one wonder how he remembered to put a tie on. He was there, he wasn’t there, he had a meeting with discussions, without discussions, what meeting? he forgets who was there, he is the decider, he had minimal involvment, it's the DAG's job, it's his job, he didn’t know about it, Who’s on first? GIMME A FRIGGIN BREAK! The only things he can specifically remember about why he fired brilliant, highly educated, highly experienced, successful chief US attorney prosecutors in EIGHT jurisdictions had something to do with failings in the areas of “energy level” (from someone who could put the Energizer Bunny to sleep), vague ill-defined “judgment” areas (meaning they disagreed with the Torture Czar’s judgment) and failing in some undefined way to more vigorously prosecute immigration and obscenity cases.
What is really obscene, however, is the Attorney General’s total Perversion of Truth.

And for the triple hitter on the Too Perverse to Leave a Head Unscratched Meter, is the slew of statements from virtually every Democratic Presidential contender condemning the 5-4 Supreme Court “partial birth abortion” decision that was quickly eclipsed by the more macabre news. We actually have to have a law and we actually have to have the Supreme Court of the land saying it’s a good one, that we can’t puncture the skulls and suck the brains out of viable pre-born children as they are being born. The weird fact that we actually have to have a law saying that is trumped only by the weirdness of every Democratic Presidential contender boldly declaring that the law violates women’s rights to –what privacy-? Aren’t you forgetting that there is someone else present getting his or HER skull punctured in and brains sucked out?. In the last days it is said, people will call right wrong and wrong right and really not know the difference. Hard to see how we could be more there than now. A procedure that most people would recognize as inhumane torture worthy of locking someone up for life if done to a puppy, somehow should be permitted because to not permit it violates women’s rights? Are they kidding?

Women, who are by Democrats presumed to be completely emotionally incapable of making a choice to not have sex and thus avoid an unwanted pregnancy as if they had no clue how babies are made, want all the choices in the world when and how to dispose of the natural repercussion after ignoring the fact of how babies are made, abnegating all pre-conception choices, and after having made a baby.
Here are the choices they apparently thought they didn't have a problem exercising in a timely manner- whether to meet a man, to go to a private place with a man, to take off one’s clothing and have a man take leave of his clothing, to then consummate. Here are more choices no one seems to have a problem with- do you want the chicken or fish at dinner? Do you accept the guys call or hang up on him? Do you want to take a cab to his place or have him come to yours? Do you want to pay for parking or park on the street? Do you want to go to a movie first or just home? Do you want to go upstairs or just sit on the couch? Do you want to have the red or white wine? Somehow we think women are mentally capable of exercising all those choices out of their own free will-and guess what- they do!. But they don’t apparently have the last choice when to succumb to having him insert himself into them. Are they kidding?
Then they want to say that because their fetus (which contains DNA different than theirs and can even have different blood type) is in utero- regardless of the fact of whether it can exist viably outside the womb- it is something somehow etiologically of a different substance than the identical DNA it is ten minutes later after it makes it outside the birth canal such that they can't call it a "baby" or "child" and they have exclusive right to deny it of all legal right to existence. Just Totally Perverse.

The Democrats want to canonize people like Kate Michaelman because she was victim to an abusive husband whom she divorced and so she wants the legal right to “terminate” her offspring before she figured out how to leave him. Cry me a River Honey. Sorry- Again- Just Perverse. Why are we canonizing women not having the strength or intelligence to exercise their bodily integrity before they get pregnant? We have bodily integrity enough to stick to a Jenny Craig diet, South Beach Diet, and bodily integrity enough to know when we have our clothes on or off. People have been leaving their abusive husbands for thousands of years. Aren’t we catering to and promoting a culture endorsing the bigotry of low expectations of women’s underestimated emotional intelligence? Can’t we insist women be –hello- just a little smarter than that? Because most of us are and we are sick of the argument.
Family Planning starts at “Hello, here’s my number.”

We are creating a culture where men treat women like disposable trash because, frankly, we treat the fruit of ourselves, our offspring that way. I would rather live in a country where women are considered worthy to be trained to be smarter than that, because until we respect ourselves and the lives within us how do we expect men to?

THAT's WHY THEY CALL IT A MIRACLE

That wasn't supposed to happen


You know it isn’t supposed to happen that you can take a few jugs of water and turn it into enough wine to feed a wedding party. Just thought I would remind you that this was one of my first miracles. A wedding. That’s because I adore weddings if you have not noticed.
It isn’t supposed to happen that I can say to a dead girl “Talitha Koum” –or “Get UP little sweetie!” and she isn’t dead anymore.
It isn’t supposed to happen that a guy who was blind from birth could see after I spit in a bit of dirt and made mud patties on his eyes. Some people might have even thought mud spittle pattys were disgusting.
It isn’t supposed to happen that someone who was lame for years could pick up the floor mat he sat on and skip away on the Sabbath when I asked him to. That one was really against the rules.
It isn’t supposed to happen that I could take a few loaves of barley bread and a couple fish and feed about five thousand people hanging out on the hill to hear me give a little lenten talk.
It isn’t supposed to happen that people can walk on top of water.
It isn’t supposed to happen that people can walk through walls to an Upper Room-I was really excited to see my old friends and the door lock was annoying-locked doors can't keep me from being with my friends.
It isn’t even supposed to happen that you could be dead and buried in a tomb and walk out come to think of it.

It isn’t supposed to happen that old ladies can be love and in love such that they have children well past what everyone thinks are usual child bearing years- but Sarai, wife of Abraham-the great patriarch of all nations did, Elizabeth, wife of Zechariah-the holy righteous Priest did, and Anna-wife of Joachin did, without which act credited to them as righteousness we never would have had Isaac, John the Baptist or the Most Blessed Mother Mary, thus Me. So get over it-you are too old- I love old ladies.
In fact I love all ladies- even skanky ones- even ones married five times, even ones getting stoned for being ho's, even one's with no money sense who waste all their money buying me annointing oil for my feet (still remembering that one aren't you), even ones who refuse to do the dishes so they can sit at my feet listening to me instead.

Listen- Do you need a Miracle? I am the storehouse of Miracles. I am the CEO of Miracles. I am the Way. All of you who are tortured, burdened, heavy, labored, just come to me. Just come to me. I can give you rest. Don’t you believe in miracles yet?
What are you blind? I have something for you.

"FIRST DO NO HARM"

THEN FIX THE PROBLEM NOW

God Saw the Light and that is was Good. And God divided the Light from the Darkness.-
And God called the Light Day and the darkness he called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so.


Remember when “Christmas in April” was a clever play on words, not the fact that it snowed at Easter and the trees were budding at Christmastime in Washington? When was the last time you saw snow covered cherry blossoms? Can you remember a freakier weather system than what we have experienced lately? Have you seen the “Inconvenient Truth” movie yet?
Have you heard the connection between parts of the Nile Delta and Sudanese water systems drying up contributing to water wars and Darfur horrors and displacements?

I bought a portable DVD player recently. I can use it in the spoiled event I want to watch a movie on a plane that isn’t showing at the in-plane central listings on the screen right in front of me. Then I remember that my dearly departed grandmother was born in the year 1900-- 8 years before the Ford Model T was manufactured, when horses drew carts in the streets of New York, before there was such a thing as an airplane in the common man’s mind. Can you imagine it? Flying like a bird in the air?
In the year 2007 we have things totally unheard of to those living at the time that my grandmother was born; phones with cameras, blackberries, email, portable computers, internet, airplanes, electronic washing machines, electric hair dryers, convertibles, space shuttles, CDs, microwave ovens, electronic fences and garage doors, cameras in phones, to name just a few.

In the year 1960 when I was born, a computer was the size of an entire room and flicked IBM punch cards with holes in them through it. You could not “desalinate” the sea, you couldn’t nuke your dinner in the microwave, you couldn’t email your Mom in 1960. We have had a technological and communications revolution. The Internet has proved more revolutionary to civilization than the Guttenberg press and movable type. In a mere century the world has been amazingly transformed into something barely recognizeable to those who lived a century before.

But it is a mixed blessing that comes with a curse. We apparently are freefalling in a reckless desecration of the earth to birth all of it without much notice except for a few famous “environmentalists” who seem like John the Baptist to be screaming in the wilderness or Ralph Nader screaming at the Pinto or chicken little screaming the sky is falling--- Which one is the more apt analogy?
Sure, Al Gore got an award for his slide-show movie, so scientists think we are burning ourselves alive in a carbon overload that is melting everything to drought, flooding other parts in a dysfunctional greenhouse gone mad. Who actually gets it and how serious is it really doc?

Apparently, people who really know, really know how serious it is. It’s really serious. Take the Earth’s temperature over the last decade or so and you get part of the prognosis. Serious people like NASA scientists and the Harvard egg-head collection referenced by uncle Al in his movie all agree with the rest of the world scientific community apparently- Houston, we have a problem; we are in melt down. Ice caps are looking like my 7-11 slurpee.

Remember my DVD player above. Well, I dropped it on it’s head. It is rather delicately made and there is a laser that reads the DVD track paths unseen to my naked eye so it can project on a screen the DVD. All I see is the movie. I don't see the laser or the tracks. After I dropped it on it’s head, it disturbed the laser alignment and would not read the DVD. It projected instead on the screen “loading, loading, loading” forever and nothing came up. I damaged the laser alignment by dropping it on its head beyond repair. There was a “tipping point” of knocking about I could do before irreparably knocking the laser out of alignment. I had to go back to Radio Shack and get another one which, thankfully, they just replaced.

We are doing the same thing with our planet- only we can’t go back to Radio Shack and get another one, God gave us only one. There is a tipping point in the carbon cosmic meltdown after which the laser will be so out of alignment that it won’t read the DVD. It will be orphaned polar bears frying alive in Aruba heat, Avalon New Jersey the way of Atlantis and no such thing as about a thousand other species who will be remembered only in books if we can figure out how to make books non-combustable or instantaneously flammable and if we survive the melt down according to some. Is this science fiction or real science?

Lets assume that the environmental histrionics is based on real science, what should we do?

Gingrich in a rare moment of non partisan honesty actually applauded John Kerry for his new book, and indicated that there should be a vigorous debate on how best to most expeditiously address the problem. He doesn’t like big government, new taxes or apparently the “Fix” reputed to be “in” about carbon caps. But he surprisingly agreed that the problem is real, urgent and serious. He has a message for the Republicans stonewalling the debate which has to be well beyond whether it is a big problem or not, or whether there is any urgency to the need to address it. The challenge now is how to reverse the carbon overload immediately and stop the meltdown.

The laser knocked out of alignment is the point of no return. It caught me by surprise. We are working in the thinning margin.

The good news is that we are where the people were in 1900 when my grandmother was born in terms of not imagining what we can invent, what technological revolutions can be birthed in another ten to twenty years. Incentivization models, legislative structures, all these things can facilitate it- the best and brightest of the country should now be focused attentively and intensely on how to create it.
It is insane only Japanese companys make competitive hybrid cars.
Our American contribution to the carbon footprint is just piggish. I know insulting people does not motivate them, but come on now.
If this doesn't make you throw your soda can in the recycler I don't know what will.


This is apparently no time for arrogance of legislative posturing.
If there is one thing upon which we all should agree it is basic Stewardship of the Earth.

WHEN LOVE PENETRATES THROUGH THE RULES

THE WAY, THE TRUTH,
THE LIFE


Happy Resurrected Jewish Messiah Day all. Easter. It’s easy to fall into clichés of happy Hallmark cards and Christian Country Songs without realizing really what exactly happened here. The laws of death that bound everyone were pierced through and forever voided, the veil in the Holy of Holies torn for access to all to the inner sanctum, and Eternal Life forever triumphed-if only you believe it. Think about it. Rules and laws of gravity, death and political retribution, all of them overcome with a stone rolled away from a temporary Tomb that could not contain or suppress this Supreme Love. What Wonderous Love Is This.
This is Radical Revolutionary Love. This is love that did not let us die bound under the rules of death. Not that there is anything wrong with rules-they keep order, they provide guidance, but Love creates Life, not Rules-and LIFE is of the very essence of the Divine.

Nancy Pelosi must have known that this gives us power to bless those who persecute us and pray for our enemies. Love even your enemies breaks all rules of War. Those seeking to bind her to the rule of death in War who favor perpetual war for its own presumed rewards shouted she violated some law, possibly a felony, certainly "aid and comfort" to the enemy, probably the Alien and Sedition Act prohibitions. Those seeking to lock us in perpetual War, which when unjustified is just state sanctioned mass murder, are co-operators with Evil. Co-operators with Life don’t kill their enemies, they pray for them.

Love is much stronger than man made rules or even church made rules. Love is stronger than ceremony. Love compels, propels and insists on creating Life from death and nullity, even when the rules prohibit it. Love cannot be suppressed any more than you can silence the stones shouting out “Hosannah in the Highest.”

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. He rendered death void, and his love lives forever, penetrating through the rules that bind us to death. Love is stronger than Hate; it cannot be contained by ceremony. Love creates Life, and Love has already overcome the World. The Creator of all Life compels it.

The Lord Indeed Lives, and Blessed Be My Rock

STRAW MEN BURNING

LYING FOR A LIVING

Veritas splendor. Truth. The Way, the Truth, the Life.

A beautiful white robed Dominican Deacon FRIAR (soon to be a beautiful Dominican Priest) named Brother Dominic Legge gave a lecture recently in Arlington, Virginia on the topic of “Truth” in which he recounted for the ethical bemusement of a group of listeners the story of planned deception of the Allies during WWII in which we tried to fake out the Germans by staging a distracting planned battle in a part of France other than Normandy just before the Norman invasion to divert German resources instead to that fake battle. Can there be some instances where planned premeditated deception is more noble than playing a patsy- of course.
There was another such planned political deception story told in the movie Amazing Grace where to end the British slave trade the Member of Parliament circuitiously hurt the shipping industry first by a disguised bill with intended but unforseen consequences that paved the way for the slave trade industry to be dismantled almost without notice. Brilliant in that case.

But what we are dealing with in this Administration is not remotely of the same ilk. It is far more disturbing. It is far more akin to the Stalinist ends justified means by whatever slaughter kind of political deception can be cooked in perverted minds type of deception. It is a culture of lying for a living that has jeopardized the very soul of the country because we betray that Truth which is the divine person of Christ for ends that are self defeating and rather stupid. When you lie a country into war based on whole cloth fabricated evidence, when you persist in lying the country into a state of fear siege , when you stand and address the country in a State of the Union address and make up things to create straw men to attack, when you persist in misrepresenting the state of success or lack thereof to justify more billions spent, and when you fire, persecute or otherwise intimidate anyone who disagrees (including outing CIA agents to set them up), anyone essentially who stands for Truth, you have completely lost your soul and sold the country down the Euphrates river.

Who can we trust now? Our money says “In God We Trust” and I do. I trust God to right the wrongs done by those in authority we pray for. I trust God to make sure that the person charged with being the Chief Justice officer, the Attorney General of these United States, is someone of impeccable integrity- and that anyone who lies to Congress and to the public to serve the deceptive political agenda will simply not be allowed to be the Attorney General. Period. The Attorney General of the United States must serve Justice, which cannot know political favoritism. Right and Wrong cannot depend on which club you play in. US Attorneys cannot have investigations influenced or jeopardized by partisanship. People have to have confidence that corruption will not be rewarded-no matter which team is doing it.

Senator Schumer could not be more right when he says that this is very serious stuff indeed. Whatever your political stripe, we all need to agree that when we have lost trust in the truthfulness and integrity of our Attorney General, we are all in serious trouble. The big news today should come as no shocker- he lied. Big Time. More than Once. To more than one person, and about official matters. These aren't little white lies, or in the service of higher good lies. These are career destroying lies defaming long term professional public servants, Officers of the Court and good people- by someone whose greatest legal distinction after graduating from law school before being tapped by Bush to be the "what Geneva Conventions" torture czar is that he got Bush off from a DUI conviction just prior to his running for Governor of Texas.
That should be the end of the story. Really. Lets see how long until it is.

Coulter- Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

Cultural Obsessions with Blonde Boobs

We laid Anna Nicole Smith to rest but Fear Not, we apparently still have a bigger blonde boob hanging around to amuse us-Ann Coulter. Whew, I thought the news might get us back to sane matters (Anderson Cooper reminded us that there is a War on), but no- With a Double-D Brain, Coulter almost calls Edwards a "Faggot" and almost apologizes for it -and the blogosphere exploded. I almost paid attention to any of it.
Coulter appears to be a bigger embarassment to the legal profession than Howard K. Stern-it's anyone's guess who is getting paid more for being a "media whore" and living off the celebrity of others. A guy I work with thinks she needs to be "pimp slapped." I would prefer to have Keith Olberman invite her on his show - they both went to Cornell -he apparently listened in school while she was organizing the campus republicans and experimenting with hair bleach-
Come on Keith- take her on. I will pay good money to see you ask her if she is bullemic or just
enjoys throwing up insane vitriol to see if the other dogs will eat it.

Stop Already-Rewriting History is called Fiction

It’s getting absurd.

Once again, we have to suffer the annoyance of people with their “proof” that something about the church teachings is deeply flawed and that branch of Judaism now known as Christianity is off the tracks. While I may have some minor doctrinal differences (are condoms O.K. to stop Aids spreading, etc), that is not what I am talking about. There are some actually trying to confuse the facts in attempt to undermine the basic story-this time with the persuasion of a “documentary” to be aired next Sunday alleging Jesus had a kid, a wife and all of them are buried with his mother. To call it a documentary seems, to put it mildly, a misnomer.
The documentary claims that the burial boxes containing the bones of Jesus, his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene and his alleged son were found and still exist. In the words of the “church lady”: ‘Well, Isn’t that special.’
Once again we have to suffer the smarter set who proclaim that their statistics prove it and the rest of the world is just ignorant science deniers who don't get it. Notwithstanding this intellectually hubristic presumption, the chances of Jesus, his mother, his follower and an alleged son all being housed in the same place is about as likely as Anna Nicole Smith, Howard K. Stern, Danny and Grandma being buried in the same space- in the yard of the Supreme Court. The statistical probability of their being a Jesus, son of Joseph, Mary or Marie and Joshua his son all in one place depends on how big the place was. The docu-dramatists would obviously have to explain how big the statistical pool is.
For example, the chances of a Jesus, son of Joseph, Marie or Mary or Mirium and Joshua and Matthew being all together in a place where 10 boxes were is more interesting than when in a place where there are 100,000 boxes. Lets assume they explain that and the statistical pool is small enough to matter. The names Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Mirium, Marie and Joshua and Matthew at the time and place are more common than Smith, Stern, Anna, Mary, Marie, and John.
So they found a box with John Smith on it next to a box with the name Mary on it and someone named Joshua is the son of Jesus. And in Mexico City today there are about forty-thousand Jesus's. That ought to shake the foundations of all of Christendom. Catch me, I'm shaking.
No one pretends to think that this "discovery" (which has been hanging around without much attention for a decade) had anything to do with the Resurrection, because Jesus still could be resurrected and leave his bones behind (while the Resurrection body biblical understanding is a bit different) so Easter is still apparently safe from Archeology. Whew. Further, it’s hard to disprove a resurrection theory when Jesus showed people he himself resurrected people, notably Lazarus and the daughter of Jarius and Elijah even resurrected at least one person from the dead. To challenge the possibility of the Resurrection also would challenge a basic Jewish teaching of a portion of Judaism that believed in the possibility of the Resurrection of the dead (an ongoing debate with the Pharisees and Saducees). So to attack Christianity without attacking Judaism (hard to do when Jesus claimed to be the Jewish Messiah) the challengers have to go after the Assumption.
So this challenges only the “Assumption” –a rather unique event which sounds spooky while -wait-Elijiah also it is written somehow "ascended" into Heaven. Hmmm. Note that the attack on the Assumption attacks Protestant and Catholic teaching because Catholic teaching also maintains that Mary had an Assumption (celebrated every August 15th) and her remains are thus not anywhere on planet earth either.

There were people like Saint Paul at the time who converted from being one of the hardest persecutors of the church who would have laid little rocks (a Jewish custom) or flowers at any burial box site were there one any time he was back in Jerusalem. In fact, pilgrimages from all over the world would have come all the time just to see it over the years and we have no recording of any such event ever. Jesus' popularity grew like wildflowers after his resurrection in spite of the persecutions. People from every corner of the Middle East would have come to see the body if there were one. People would have robbed the boxes and sold them to cathedrals and tried to buy their way into heaven with them.

Jesus was considered, inter alia, a great Rebbi (Rabbi) and there is a belief that visiting the tomb or remains of such holy men confers blessings. This is a tradition carried on by Catholics who make pilgrimmage to the remains and relics of Saints. Peter (the first Pope, a Jew) was considered so holy that merely passing by his shadow could cure disease. The mere touching of the fringe of the garmet of Jesus cured a women who had a chronic incurable hemmhorage. A church was built on Peter's remains and the Tomb of Saint Peter currently is in the base of the Vatican itself which is built around it. Yet, in spite of the Crusades to the Holy Land and centuries of relic devotions, we are to believe that Voila! they just discovered the box with the bones of Jesus in it that no one knew about before the BBC discovered it a decade ago. Right.

There are historic recordings that indicate that Mary and John were smart enough to realize that if a lynch mob just hung her son and best friend respectively from a cross bar tree, it was a wee bit uncomfortably hostile in Jerusalem and they might be more secure if they got out of dodge. It has long been believed that they went to the Fifth largest city in the greater Middle East at the time Ephesus (in current Turkey) where they would have been more anonymous and where there was a growing church community thanks to Paul’s missionary journeys and letters to the Ephesians (one of which is in the New Testament.) John in fact wrote letters some of which are comprised in the New Testament well into his old age. Jesus charged him with taking care of Mary after Jesus' death. Someone had to because she was widowed and lost her only son. There is no writing of him or Mary, Jesus mother visiting Jesus' remains or bones at any time after he resurrected from the Tomb.

Mary Magdalene has been through the ages hailed by the French as one of their patron matron saints (hence the great Church of the Magdalene Cathedral in Paris) and she is rumored to have ventured even further North than Ephesus into Aix-en-Provence and other Southern French towns. It’s unclear whether these rumors pre-dated the efforts by the Popes to remain in Provence during the Schism when 13 Popes lived in Avignon on the Cote du Rhone trying to claim their legitimacy there over Rome. Some stories have her with a companion who was later named a Bishop. Her remains have been alleged to be in various places throughout in France.
The attempt to impose myths that Jesus had a child are to say the least wildly far fetched inasmuch as he didn’t have means to support a wife much less a child and relied, it is written on the benevolence of his followers. Neither was his widowed mother wealthy enough to support another family. He left his carpentry trade to enter full time ministry at the age of around 30 for three years of itinerant preaching, and he never stayed in the same place more than a few days and nights as he traveled the countryside preaching. There are zero accounts of his taking along with him anyone like a son and wife when he went anywhere.

Jesus cast 7 demons out of Mary Magdalene. She was a demoniac. If he was to be taken seriously, it would not make much PR sense for him to wed the former demoniac. Everywhere he went he would be known as the lover or husband of the former demoniac. It’s kind of like Howard Marshall getting ripped for marrying a young former topless dancer- he might lose a wee bit of credibility at the deacon’s meeting. Jesus had enough trouble convincing people what he was about without laying that on people. And how would the former demoniac get along with her mother in law? She would surely want to be buried with her, the Virgin pious Mary Mother of the Lord. Right. The likelihood of that is about the likelihood of Judge Larry ordering Anna Nicole to be buried with her mom Vergie.

Clearly this is all more or less crazy bunk. It makes more sense that if all these names appear together that someone tried to create an impression that they all ended up together there and did not “Ascend” anywhere to discredit the story that was growing like wildfire. In the early days Christians were rather persona non gratis, hiding in catecombs, thrown to lions and set afire to light Nero’s rose gardens like tiki torches. Jews weren’t fond of losing people to this sad martyrdom- for reasons they thought were meritless. What better way to debunk the story than to claim that Jesus had sex with the former demoniac slut, bore a son and everyone including mom Mary stayed in Jerusalem until they died. Right.

The liklihood of those boxes carrying Jesus's bones along with a son, Mary Magdalene and his Mother the Virgin Mary are about as likely as Anna Nicole Smith being canonized and Howard K. Stern dying a monk, after giving away all his money to charity.
My advice; Don't miss Church to watch the docudrama.

PROFILES IN COURAGE -All We Are Saying Is Give Peace A Chance

MARCH 16.
Put it on your calendar.

see,
www.ChristianPeaceWitness.org

There will be a huge eceumenical gathering of Christians of all stripes at the House of Prayer for all People, the National Cathedral in Washington, DC followed by a March to the White House.

People are serious folks. We are not fooling around anymore. Whatever may come of suppressing the Senatorial debate about the most misguided Foreign Policy folly based on pure deception we have ever engaged in, We the People will not be intimidated, threatened or silenced. It is our moral patriotic duty to stop the madness.

Last Sunday an unlikely opponent of the War stood before a Congregation at the Bethesda Presbyterian Church in an affluent Washington suburb where congregants who are employed by the government, contracting companies and Exxon Mobil sat in attendance. She is the Pastor. Her name, one you should not forget, is Reverend Anne Troy. She is a Chinese American, and understands persecution of the Church throughout the World. The silencing and threatening of people who oppose this war is indeed a form of persecution of the church. She insisted that the sort of witness that Christians are called to be in order to honor the mandate to be Peace Makers in this context must be bold. Christians- if you are "lukewarm" I spew you from my mouth - it is written. Boldness in a Christian Peace Witness DEMANDS we stand and be counted and heard.

You may think this not so unusual coming from a pulpit. So let me tell you more about the Reverend Anne Troy. She is also an attorney who is on a part time basis employed by the Federal Government. She is a former JAG attorney, and thus a former ranked military person, who stands to lose by her confession of faith her high security clearance and possibly her job.
She confessed that her, and indeed Christian leadership's past silence and acquiescence to this war is a form of betrayal to the character of Christ, the Prince of Peace.
There was no evidence to start this war, she insisted, speaking as an attorney.

The Administration seems completely blinded to the fact that it is the problem;
that it has engaged in policies that have directly inspired more murderous mayhem and put Americans in more danger around the globe, that its aggression and warmaking has catalyzed
our enemies to bond together against us, and that it incited the Iranians to join forces against us.
No, Mr. Gingrich, it is not the debate that is dangerous, it is the failure to debate responsibly that is dangerously irresponsible.
It is the only responsible thing to understand what is actually happening in our name because our actions are further endangering our security.

Imagine that if in our civil war the entire country of France joined the confederate army while they were being defeated. That would of course inspire the British to join the Union forces and massive bloodshed the likes of which would be characterized a "world" or global war would have followed until half the country was dead- and it would be fair in that case to blame the French for the escalation.
What we are doing in Iraq MUST be questioned because we not only have a moral obligation to see what our money is funding, but because we are being placed in far greater danger by the strategic ineptitude and policy miscalculations of a Foreign Policy so off the reservation that Congress, as co-equal to the Presidency must slam on the breaks before we all careen over the bridge.

BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS

Join us on March 16.

THE PRIVATIZATION OF EVERYTHING

THE PRIVATIZATION OF WAR
By Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
02-06-07 © Tribune Media Services
Reprinted with permission


They guard U.S. officials. They patrol the Green Zone, the U.S. headquarters in Iraq. They supply the food, the oil, clean the barracks and fix the machines. They aren’t U.S. soldiers; they are private contractors. The Bush administration has privatized war. The second-biggest army in Iraq consists of armed security forces supplied by private contractors.
They act above the law — and with unclear lines of authority. They work abroad, so they are largely beyond the reach of U.S. law. On contract from the U.S. government, they are beyond the reach of Iraqi law, as established in an order issued by the U.S. Authority there before turning power over to the Iraqi government. When the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandals were revealed, private security forces and interrogators were at the center of it. But none was held accountable under law.

It isn’t only the U.S. that privatizes war; the British have followed suit, as well. The British charity, War on Want, reported last year that there are three British private security guards to every British soldier in Iraq.
Congressional investigators are about to unearth massive abuses and corruption in Iraq, but the mercenaries operate across the world. In 1998, for example, DynCorp security agents in Bosnia were implicated in a highly publicized sex-slave scandal. The firm quickly recalled at least 13 agents from the country; none faced criminal prosecution.
The modern-day mercenaries also operate largely free of government scrutiny or oversight. Their contracts and their activities are shrouded in secrecy. Companies, unlike government agencies, are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act and often stonewall congressional inquiry. Members of Congress have sought — thus far without success — to get an explanation of the contracts that Blackwater USA security officers have in Iraq.
Under George Bush, the use of private contractors generally has doubled to about $400 billion a year in 2006, as the administration is driven by a philosophy that would privatize everything it can. Finally, with Democrats reviving congressional oversight, questions are being asked.
Private contractors claim to provide savings and efficiency because of the benefits of competition. In fact, the GAO now suggests, in most areas, the contractors have little competition. Sole-source, no-bid contracts are the rule, not the exception. And the contractors — as we saw in the bribing of Rep. Duke Cunningham and the other scandals of the DeLay Congress – spend millions wining, dining and rewarding the legislators who provide them with their immensely profitable contracts. Instead of saving money, taxpayers are likely getting fleeced.
The Privatization of War
Page 2
The top 20 service contractors, according to The New York Times, have spent nearly $300 million since 2000 on lobbying and have donated some $23 million to political campaigns.
The whole thing gets incestuous. The New York Times reports that in June, the General Services Administration, short of employees to review cases of incompetence and fraud by federal contractors, actually hired a private contractor to do the investigation. And the contractor — CACI International — had itself barely avoided suspension from federal contracting for its role in Abu Ghraib’s crimes. For the GSA, CACI supplied six people — at $104 an hour — over $200,000 per person annually.
These private armies now may themselves become a problem. The Guardian reports on a bizarre plot in Equatorial Guinea, where 67 foreign mercenaries were arrested in what may have been a foiled attempt to overthrow the dictator of that oil-rich nation. And former Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide charged that the private guards who were supposed to be defending him instead abandoned him under orders from the U.S. government when he was overthrown.
If privatization doesn’t produce savings and offers such scope for abuse, why has it continued to grow? Part of the reason is simply the animus for government by modern day conservatives. Part of it is political grandstanding. President Clinton, for example, boasted that he had cut the size of the federal bureaucracy — even as those cuts were feeding a cancerous growth of contracting out vital services. The problem now is that the government lacks the capacity to control its contractors — and has begun contracting out that oversight. The result, too often, is costly waste. But when the government is creating private armies, often beyond the reach of war, the perils are far greater.
The Congress has begun a great debate about our policy in Iraq. But it is vital that they investigate — as Sen. Joe Biden and Rep. Henry Waxman have promised — the privatization of war. This must be brought under control before the Congress finds itself — like the Roman Senate at the end of the Roman Republic — faced with mercenary armies that are out of control.

You've Come A Long Way, Baby

So Can You Please Stop Calling Me 'Babe' Now?

Lets stop calling us “Baby” or "Babes" and please call us “Madam Senator” “Madam Speaker”, “Madam Secretary”, and maybe even “Madam President”
Let’s call babies “baby”- and OK, maybe the occasional Lover- but only if she is your lover.
We have come a long way, and people forty-ish stand on the shoulders of our mothers and sisters a decade and a generation older who made enormously needed strides for all women, but we still are apparently not all there yet.
We still are denied jobs, mortgages, equal pay and respect. We still are judged by a different standard and have to work harder to prove ourselves if we can even get the job to begin with . We still are assumed unqualified for certain jobs, passed over more frequently for partnerships, derided with comments, silent sufferers of sexual harassment and stereotypical objectifications, and our competence at times threatens the male ego which has unlimited capacity to sabotage.

Did you notice that the only Presidential candidate who is a woman is called by her first name and no one else is? Maybe that is so we don’t confuse her with the other Clinton. Or, maybe its because we insist that women are “Laura” “Condi” “Hillary” and not Bush, Rice and Clinton. Why don’t we call the men Barack, Johnny and Rudy baby?
Hillary, the one who didn’t just stand by her man like Tammy Wynette, stood by her man anyway. She has to suffer the nation wondering if it is out of strength or battered wife wimpiness. Maybe she just has unlimited capacity for forgiveness and loves her husband deeply. A decade or so ago, she announced she didn’t bake cookies as if to distance herself from a version of motherhood that didn’t look professional enough. Why she felt she had to do that means that there is still a perception that motherhood isn’t professional enough.

I can only imagine what the male cadre surrounding Hillary is telling her to become;
Soften up, lighten up, give us that belly laugh Terry McAuliffe keeps talking about but don’t let it sound too fake. Smile more, wear a pink shell under-sweater, soften the make up, wear pink lip gloss (forget the lip liner), tone down the platinum blonde with a few brown streaks. Can you see the men getting advice like: put a bit of brown through your grey hair, don’t put your hands on your hips, don’t sound so aggressive. Do you hear anyone commenting on Obama’s hairstyle?
The people who attack Hillary with irrational rage use terms like “aggressive” “angry” “mean” and “strident.” When people like John Edwards get fired up over the same issues, its righteous indignation.
Do you hear anyone saying John Edwards might just be too pretty to be President?

We have come a long way to have credible a female front runner Presidential candidate.
But we still are not there. We still have to ask if she would be the frontrunner candidate if her husband were not already a former two-term President.
Joe Biden characterizes the female Senator from Alaska’s remarks on the Foreign Relations Committee as “articulate” as if you could possibly be inarticulate and succeed in getting a whole State to send you to the Senate. Cynthia McKinney had to have press conferences on her change of hair style. And no one ever accused Bob Dole of riding on the skirt-tails of Libby, a former Cabinet Secretary Harvard educated attorney.

Hillary in her own right, could very well be, as some have concluded, smarter than Bill, have received better grades at Yale law school than Bill, received higher LSAT scores, made light-years more money in private law practice before Bill was president, and people will still accuse her of only being as highly viable a candidate because of her husband and his connections.

My advice to Madam Presidential Contender would be simple; Be Yourself. It’s great enough. Laugh when you want to and don’t force a fake laugh because someone told you to lighten up. Be angry when your ire is up and if they can’t handle it –tough. Be as kind as you are, as smart as you are as principled as you are and as driven as you are. There will always be men whose egos are threatened by smart, kind, principled, driven women.
But those are very small mean men. And we are a great, large, kind and wonderful country.

My advice to the rest of the country: Be Fair.

This time if Hillary trades on her husband's reputation, maybe later some husband will get to trade on his wife's. If there is a good woman behind every good man there can be a good man
secure enough to let his wife peddle in front once in a while. That way no one gets too tired to peddle where the bike needs to go.

A Class Act Bows Out

John F. Kerry

Today, John Kerry, with dignity and firm conviction still in tact, put to rest all speculation that he would run for the nomination of President in 2008.
John Kerry, the man who asked "who will be the last man to die for a mistake" in Vietnam, asks the same question again in his long explanation of his opposition to the troop surge and Iraq policy.
Many people to this day believe he actually won and the computers rigged it against him.
He said he came close enough to tempt him to run again. That might be the understatement of the century. There are a lot of disturbing questions surrounding his quick concession that do not rest well with people. There were rumors of "unconcession" and people who hoped against all hope and invested their own time, energy and funds for months after his election to prove the official results wrong.
For the first time in about a hundred years, a Senator and Congressperson, Barbara Boxer and Stephanie Tubbs Jones refused to accept the electoral college vote counts from Ohio before a full debate based on a phrase we haven't stopped hearing in two years "election irregularities."
Standing typically Lincolnesque today, the most handsome man in the Senate by lightyears, likely as cheated from his mantle as Gore, he can savor not quite defeat in less privacy than Gore now, because he is still fighting, still in office, still in the Senate and running for Senate re-election in Massachusetts in 2008.
So don't say Good-bye to John Kerry just yet. His second act is likely to be as effective in the Senate as he could have done in the White House in terms of stopping a war.

His race kickstarted a firestorm of election protection movements and organizations fighting for truth in reporting election tallies. His determination to end the war is something we can all stand behind.

THANK YOU JOHN KERRY.
THANK YOU for being the kind of American who takes it on the chin for all of us. The kind who
jumps on the grenade of electoral politics or the kind of authentic Purple Heart that actually hears the cry of the poor and pain of the injured Veteran.
Our hearts are a bit blue but we will get over it and buck up.

I raise my right hand to my forehead and I salute you as my Veteran father taught me as a little girl.

JOHN F. KERRY, a Great American Hero.

SAY 'AMEN' SOMEBODY

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD GOES TO JESSE JACKSON Sr.

Pilgrims, Patriots and Prophets here gives special recognition and Thanks for the Commitment, Vision and Perserverence of The Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr.

Jesse Jackson is currently hosting his tenth annual Rainbow Coalition/PUSH “Wall Street Project” symposium, complete with workshops, networking receptions, awards ceremonies, panel presentations and press conferences in New York at the Sheraton on 53rd and 7th Avenue. Part religious revival, part Congressional Black Caucus, part financial networking summit, part peace movement, part church, part Presidential contender showcase, part job fair, this incredibly ambitious project fuses the interests of progressive black politics with main street Wall Street financial savvy aspirations with big league democratic politics in a remarkable gathering-some would even say “Spirit filled” gathering of people who walk the talk to make America a better place for everyone. The food was great also.
With his remarkable and enviable ability to network individuals in high finance, the biggest congressional power brokers, presidential aspirants, and ordinary folk to forge policy objectives, while mingling with the likes of Magic Johnson, Chris Dodd, and schmoozing at receptions at which the Platters and Temptations sing, one is left with the impression that while he did not get elected President (he ran twice; in 1984 and in 1988) he is doing a pretty good job at it anyway.

While the Rainbow Coalition is a little light on the lighter frequencies of the spectrum with a “few invited white guests” it’s goals are no less lofty than those of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. who advocated and chose peace over war, love over hate, equality of inclusion over Jim Crow divisions and the unity of brotherhood of mankind over the haves-have nots-and have more’s splitting our current culture into a national Tale of Two Cities. The civil rights era has historically defined symphonic movements and we appear to be in the fourth; the first was to abolish slavery, the second to get the right to vote by constitutional amendment, (and later enforcement teeth in the Voting Rights Act), the third to outlaw legal Jim Crow discrimination (supplemented by title VII prohibitions against other legal forms of discrimination) The current fourth is a movement for economic equality and enfranchisement through equitable lending policies, and “greenlining the red-lines” with greenbacks. Now its time to “Show us the money.” He noted that people will sell to blacks but not lend to them and the banking industry still needs reform in this regard.
With Wall Street salaries for CEOs roughly 400 times that of the average employee as opposed to fifty years ago when it was four times greater, something is spiraling out of control with notably perilous consequences on segments of our society that will affect us all. A rising tide can only raise all boats if the boats are not stuck in dry dock.
Jackson argued that the area “north of the trees” in New York, otherwise known as Harlem was a place to which blacks mostly non-home-owning renters are exploited through various predatory lending and financial policies that keep them from breaking through to vigorous entrepreneurship. He noted the tax credits/certificates previously provided to sell radio and TV stations to black owned operations have been revoked making them less competitive. Harlem is by no means unique. He believes Wall Street was built on the commodity and exchange of the slave trade and shipping industry that fed off it, so finds it particularly poignant that African Americans are excelling in the finance arena. He toasted and applauded the 75 most influential blacks on Wall Street.

“Katrina is a metaphor for the abandoned inner city”, declared Jackson. He was disappointed that no one in the first 100 days sought to formally address the plight of Katrina victims. Nancy Pelosi did dedicate a Mass at Trinity College at the kick off of the Pelosipaloosa to the children of Katrina and Darfur while Katrina does not feature into the 100 hours agenda. Other Congressional leaders noted that 9-11 victims through the compensation fund received over a million dollars per family (some Katrina survivors are still waiting on their insurance settlements and many are still displaced over a year later) Jackson applauded John Edwards (who was not in attendance) for declaring his Presidential candidacy at a Katrina site in the 9th Ward.

Aspiring Presidential personalities (some officially declared, some not) who made an appearance in the first two days, without any official premature Jackson endorsement included Hillary Clinton, Barach Obama, Dennis Kucinich, and Chris Dodd. Chuck Schumer warmly greeted people to his beloved home city over a breakfast reception. Hillary applauded the efforts of her husband in creating enterprise zones and initiatives reaching into the inner city while Kucinich railed against the War in which we have destroyed a country, killed off about 650,000 of its citizens, killed 3,000 of our own troops (more than the disconnected 9-11 caused )and created about 50,000 severely injured and suffering amputees, brain injuries, trauma victims- all people whom we have an obligation for life to care for. Kucinich has from the beginning opposed the war and he explained well his spiritual revulsion to this war.

Barach Obama, was guardedly escorted into and quickly out of a reception as if he were already a secret service protected President (or the lead singer in the Rolling Stones) and no one could get within ten feet of him to shake his hand or congratulate him on the fine ethics legislation with Feingold and Reid that he spoke about in the afternoon with the Freshman Senators before heading up to New York. He spoke about living in the city as a student at Columbia when Jesse Jackson ran for President and noted with gratitude that it was his run that paved the way for people of color to credibly run for President now.
The conference featured two of the most powerful members of Congress, Sage Deans with a lifetime of congressional experience John Conyers, Chair of House Judiciary and Charles Rangel, Chair of House Appropriations, two long time friends of Jackson. John Conyers has the task of Chairing the Committee currently charged with Congressional oversight of the Department of Justice, and a number of other serious matters of federal enforcement and could hold hearings that investigate everything from voter fraud to fraud on the country that led us into war to various other impeachable offenses and high treason if he felt like it. For that reason, John Conyers is possibly the most powerful person in the Congress right now.

The Democrats in Congress have a mandate and know it; they don’t want to let anyone down. Jackson reminded everyone that the “Democrats are us.”
The various elected representatives noted that Congress relies on the activism of the citizenry to move the agenda. There are 300 Million of us after all and just a couple hundred Congresspeople.

Against the backdrop of Surge strategic discussions in Iraq, Dennis Kucinich gave an impassioned rally cry to stop the madness now and bring the troops home. Jackson seconded that it was nonsense to say you are against the war and continue to fund it. “If you are against the war, don’t vote to fund it.”

Jackson also noted that while the minimum wage hike is a nice gesture, it is meaningless to someone without a job. He argued it is a little like building a track for a double amputee. First he needs the prosthetics to use it. Jobs, Job training programs, and affordable high quality educational opportunity have to come into the mix first or raising the minimum wage on jobs no one has because they can’t get them or because they are shipped overseas won’t help anyone.

Hillary noted no one is going to turn the clock back on globalization because we can’t get a grasp of it so we have to prepare the nation to be competitive in the world against the forces of cheaper labor and lower manufacturing costs overseas better than we are.

As will always be the case some people don’t want to play fair. The issue of electronic voting machinery which has the open-ended potential to be hacked or programmed maliciously to tilt an election with source code protected from disclosure by trade secret protection and intellectual property laws, is still a very real threat. While some people want to call Ohio the new Florida, Clint Curtis the programmer who maintains he created a vote flipping program for Tom Feeney thinking it was to test security vulnerabilities and ran against him in Congress in 2006, with a pending House challenge underway, insists that the old Florida is still Florida. He attended the conference and was pleased that people seem to be understanding more clearly the risks. He is seeking to demonstrate the degree of unreliability of the electronic machines, not just in Christine Jennings race but throughout the entire State of Florida is so tenuous that Congress has to address legislatively national standards for federal elections or our democracy is simply a sham and 2008 a pipedream. Chris Dodd in fact has with Feinstein drafted legislative initiatives addressing voting issues.

While Jesse Jackson Jr. more or less every year proposes a constitutional amendment to make the Right to vote an affirmative Constitutional Right (as opposed to a non-discrimination mandate) other Congress people noted that Congress already has the authority to regulate Federal Elections and impose uniform standards and it should pass measures with more than all deliberate speed.
On that note, John Conyers has the ongoing ability now to issue subpoenas regarding the theft of the 2004 Presidential election and more than a few people still want to see the Mitofsky exit polling raw data to disprove once and for all the “reluctant republican” myth. Others would simply like every executive, engineer, programmer, and quality control person who ever touched an electronic DRE-Direct Recording – voting machine working at Diebold to answer for their collective sins.

Al Sharpton reminded us (without trying) that above all, whatever anyone wants to say about him he has a Preacher’s heart, and a Damn good one.
Jesse Jackson, who has traveled the world freeing hostages, freed a few more people from the limitations of their egos and small vision at the PUSH conference. You can still go tomorrow and catch the last day of it which features a reception at the UN at which Hillary is promised to make a reappearance Wednesday evening. It is worth a trip to New York- you can register on the Rainbow-PUSH website or on site.

This event was a non-stop networking fete, but with something more powerful at work- receptions and meals opened with prayer and thanksgiving to the Creator Great God who makes all good things flow- and flow they did.

As ever, leave it to Jackson to Keep Hope Alive--- To which I heartily say....
Amen.

WHAT IS TRUE

ADVENT REFLECTIONS

This is True
by Allan Boesak

It is not true
that this world and its people are doomed to die and be lost.

This is true;
God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him, shall not perish but have everlasting life.

It is not true
that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction.

This is true;
I have come that they may have life,and that abundantly.


It is not true
that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction have come to stay forever.

This is true:
Unto us a child is born,and unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.


Allan Boesak (b. 1945)Allan Boesak, who was a courageous and insightful leader of the Reformed Church in South Africa in the struggle against apartheid, served as President of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches from 1982 to 1991.

DO THEY KNOW ITS CHRISTMAS IN DARFUR

FATAL INDIFFERENCE AND MACY'S WINDOWS

The tree is up in Rock Center. Macy's has its window display making merriment. Sidewalk trees in Washington and New York are sprouting red bulbs flecked with gold and little white lights at night.
Condolezza Rice in five inch heels (because she is shorter than DeVito) sits four pews from the rear of the National Presbyterian Church, a whitewashed tomb like building in Washington, DC, just as she always does when she is in town. She listens to one of those Sermons meant to make you feel the world is hunky dory even if you can't stop genocide and have caused a civil war and loss of life and limb in the hundreds of thousands (and your day at the office?) if only you accept Jesus in your heart. She heartily shakes the pastor's hand with two hands as she leaves the church and he wishes her well "on all your adventures."
Downstairs in the "Alternative Christmas Market" of the Church you can buy stuff for other people to make you feel less guilty about the money you will spend on your immediate family and yourself over Christmas. You write checks to other organizations to help them for various efforts. The Sudan Refugee Relief project in Darfur in conjunction with Action by Churches Together International ("ACT") will let you buy for $80. a "family survival kit" which consists of two plastic sheets, three blankets, two mosquito nets, soap, cooking supplies, fortified cereal, oil and sugar. That ought to fend off the Janjaweed militia assassins. I ask the nice gray- haired retired government worker lady at the Africa table if she has any information or pamphlets on what the church is doing in Darfur. Nope. Nothing. We aren't doing much of anything there. Can't stop it really. Let them at it if they want to kill each other off.
OK. So that is the formal church policy or just your informed opinion? Did you happen to notice that Condolezza Rice was sitting upstairs? This might be an obvious question but what is she doing about it? I heard there was some UN Resolution or something that might get signed- know anything about that?
The National Presbyterian Church pridefully boasts connections to Abraham Lincoln and General Eisenhower, both Presbyterians who frequented the church or its precursor churchs. It has an Eisenhower chapel dedicated to him. It has hosted most the big schmukety muck Presbyterians who ever held office in town at one time or another including the Doles, Dick Thornberg, Trent Lott, Frist, John Glenn, that taller than Karim Texan Bush advisor and "soccer mom" lady Karen Hughes and, of course, Condi. Condi is one of about ten darker- than- my- freckles people in the entire church but don't tell her you noticed. If she brings a friend she is one of about eleven black people. But don't ask her to racially identify with the ethnic slaugher of black people by white people in a place where the Middle East meets Africa just South of Egypt. And don't you dare tell her she isn't black enough if she didn't notice. In fact, don't talk to her, she's not there to make friends.
Let me get this straight. The African American Secretary of State of the leader of the Free World is either (a) indifferent to (b) unimpressed by (c) incompetent towards or (d) oblivious to
the largest genocidal slaughter of black Africans by whiter Muslims in her term in office and that we have seen in that region since Rwanda. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt. She already concluded she can't do anything about it- unlike Iraq where they try anyway and no one was engaging in ongoing mass slaughter at the time of our invasion.
Maybe it doesn't have oil. Maybe no one is going to name an oil cargo freighter after her for helping. Maybe she isn't going to get to be named to the Boards of Exxon Mobil or Phillips Connoco for helping.
Excuse me if I have this wrong but rape, murder, rape of children, chopping off the arms, slicing out the eyes and burning bodies alive strike me as a humanitarian crisis that should take slight precedence over face time with Malicki, but who am I?
Let me repeat it- rape, murder, rape of children, chopping off the arms, slicing out the eyes and burning bodies alive. This apparently evaded the "axis of evil" diagram.

And how was your Christmas? I hear that you can pick up Ferragamos pretty cheap in the January post-Christmas inventory Macy sales Condi. Care to do lunch?

Follow-Up:
Of course, it has oil, only the Chinese have one up on us in getting there. It's "complicated"
and this week's Economist magazine tries to explain it: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8380843&fsrc=nwl


In December 6, 2004 John Podesta gave an address at Yale titled "Dealing with Darfur: Can the World Act on it's responsibility to Protect". If you call the Call the Center for American Progress they would be happy to send you a copy.

Livin In The USSR- How to Re-Establish American Democracy

WHAT’S ALL THE FUSS IN FLORIDA?

Can we all agree that if voting machines screwed up and didn’t properly count votes that we should figure out a way to get them counted correctly so the right person whom the people wanted in office gets to take office?
What if you can’t properly count the votes because there is no record of them other than what the screwed up machine did? What if there was no sort of receipt, or paper ballot to count manually? What if the memory card in the machine is defective but you can’t tell because it is programmed maliciously? What if the only thing that happened is that voters touched a screen that they thought voted for someone, the screen then said “Thanks for voting!” and the voter walked away without ever knowing whether the machine screwed up or not.
What if it was worse than that. What if the computer itself was designed to eat votes or flip them. What if there was some malicious programming in the source code that caused defaults to one candidate or flipped counts after a certain number hit or allowed anyone by touching hidden points in the screen to flip votes when the voting was cast. Any baby computer programmer can do this on a voting machine. It isn’t rocket science. Just ask Clint Curtis, the Democratic Congressional Candidate in Florida’s 24th who did just that. He developed a program where if you hit a sequence of points on the screen you flipped the vote count. Instead of Kerry 50 Bush 20, zip zip zip , Kerry 20 Bush 50. Child’s play.
Clint Curtis tried to explain it to people in Congress and testified before John Conyers’ committee. For explaining simple computer science he was castigated as a looney, tin hat
publicity grubby crazy man. All he was doing was explaining computer science 101 for the technoidiots who still don’t get it.

Let me ask the question again: Can we all agree that if voting machines screwed up and didn’t properly count votes that we should figure out a way to get them counted correctly so the right person whom the people wanted in office gets to take office?
APPARENTLY NOT IN FLORIDA.

In Florida the game is all about stacking the deck and keeping the popular will from being known.
When the computer eats your vote, or flips the tallies, there are ways to prove statistically that the machines are malfunctioning (in the vernacular- rigged crap)
You can get lists of the people who showed up at the polls per precinct and look at certified official results of vote tallies per precinct and go knock on doors and actually talk to the voters themselves. You can just ask them- hey, we know you came to the polls because we have your name here so who did you vote for? It’s more reliable than an “exit poll.” If you find that in fact abundantly more people voted for a candidate than registered you have a prima facie case of machine malfunction, and some might say election fraud. You have to look at the source code to see whether it was maliciously programmed to do that—and guess what.
The source code is a proprietary trade secret protected piece of intellectual property and the voting machine companies fight tooth and nail in court to avoid showing it to anyone-in fact they intimidate anyone who looks and send cease and desist orders around to anyone prying. This, in a Democracy that relies on the transparency and fairness of the voting process is completely unacceptable.
WHO THE --DO THEY THINK THEY ARE?

Let me try to explain it another way.
With the current laws and practices concerning voting technology and the voting machine manufacturers, no one has the first assurance that where certain machines are used that their votes are properly registered. NO ONE. They may be getting it right some of the time or twice a day like the proverbial broken clock but the American public can have absolutely no assurances that these machines are working properly and correctly registering votes because the source codes are never made public and there is ZERO electronic security. So you have to go to the voters themselves and get them to swear in Affidavits how they voted.

In Florida, they don’t even give you the data on who showed up at the polls to run the numbers and hit the streets until it’s too late- until the ten days from certified results challenge period is almost or already expired. They have an unspoken rule that they should just stonewall the data to prevent people from challenging what they do there. Once you get the data you can look and say- hey, there was actually a large “phantom overvote” situation here- where more votes were counted than people who showed up at the polls. Hmmmmmmmm. How could that happen Sherlock? As Bob Fitrakis likes to say, it's the "Loaves and Fishes Faith Based" concept of vote counting.

And in Christine Jennings’ case in Florida’s 13th, she found out that unbelievably huge and unlikely numbers of voters showed up at the polls to NOT vote for their Congressional representative (“undervotes.”) Where is Columbo when you need him? Are people in Sarasota Florida so consummed with who the local school board is but they don't care who they send to Congress when all the candidate exposure on TV ads was about the congressional candidates? Give me a break!

In 2004, Wally O’Dell the head of Diebold, who was a Bush “pioneer” fundraiser putting on thousand dollar plate dinners for Bush promised he could “deliver Ohio” to Bush, it wasn’t idle boasting. He knew he could. If I say He did I am accusing someone of a crime of vote rigging. WAKE UP PEOPLE! He was the head of Diebold. No one would ever be able to see the source coding that was in the machines that allegedly counted the votes.

Here is something else that can happen. Right now as you read this glance to the bottom right of your computer screen and look at the little time indicator. What time is it? Is it the correct time? Remember when you turned your machine “off” last? Do you turn it off every night? When you turn it back on does it still register the correct time or does it lose time when you turn it “off?” It is always the correct time-right. So how does it do that when the machine is “off?” Guess what- it is never completely off even when you think you turn it off and take the plug out of the wall. That is because there are active “hot” live components/chips/elements that you can’t see that are perpetually on. The same thing can be done to voting machines. They can be “hot wired” with components that respond to wireless interface and no one would ever see it.-- Certainly not the geriatric octogenarians that run the polling station on election day, not the voters, not anyone from the Board of Elections. Someone in a van in New Zealand can interface wirelessly with a machine sitting in Columbus theoretically. No Joke Folks.

In short, the Fuss in Florida is the Fuss that should be being made loudly everywhere in the country and nationally in Congress. Because we simply have the ruse of a chimeric Democracy and not a real one at present. We have oligarchic rule of a republican party with a consortium of voting machine manufacturers with sworn Republican loyalties who are committed to making the machines work for them- and they can and will work for them unless we do something about it. Don't think this recent Democratic sweep means they don't know how to rig it in 2008 or won't. Unless this is set right in the next two years, faaagetabout a Democratic Presidency.


So what should Congress do about it? Here are a few ideas that Congress has bandied about without solid legislation of any meaning to date and a few more. Congress should of course require:

PAPER BALLOTS that can be manually inspected. This is better than “paper trail” which of course Diebold can do because they make ATMs- Duuuuuh. Diebold can also make the paper say something other than what the machine actually tallies and trick the voter into thinking it got it right.

Revise the Intellectual Property/copyright rules so that there is NO TRADE SECRET PROTECTION for source coding in any machines used in public elections as an obvious necessary exemption and
MANDATE that all source coding in voting machines be inspected and disclosed to the public at large and posted widely and publicly.

MANDATE that all voting machines be inspected and tested thoroughly by bipartisan engineers before voting day running testing and reverse engineering source coding.

MANDATE that all voting be done in rooms designed to interrupt all outside wireless signals. We might have to build some especially for elections. We might have to staff enough machines there for the numbers of people registered there also.

MANDATE that the data concerning who showed up at the polls be made available not later than 3 calendar days from voting day. It is unacceptable that people go on vacation over Thanksgiving and on Nov. 27 get back to their office to make discs of something that happened on Nov. 7. Impose severe monetary penalties on anyone and everyone connected with the reporting process if it is not done in 3 days and extend the time in which to challenge the vote a day for every day after the 3 days that the data is late. All November voting runs into Thanksgiving. The public records release stonewalling over the holiday is something that happens every year. For national elections the entire country, not just the State has an interest regarding who sits in Congress, thus it falls on Congress to set national standards, rules and regulations regarding this.

MANDATE that for any candidate for whom his contender has not conceded defeat, that he or she only be sworn in provisionally pending investigation on the challenge with the understanding that this person may be removed after the time he assumes office provisionally if it is later determined at any time that his election must be redone.

MANDATE that for all elections for which there was more “phantom over votes” in any one precinct than the percentage by which any candidate lost that the entire election must be automatically recast in a special election.
There just is no excuse for machines counting more votes than people who showed up and it indicates conclusively that someone programmed the machine to rig the vote. The entire election must be cast into doubt in such a circumstance as void for presumptively rigged and we need to adopt a ZERO TOLERANCE for it.


And so these are not all just unfunded MANDATES, audit the HAVA funding of everyone because the money is there- it was just misappropriated.

And then, and only then, can the American public believe with any confidence that their votes Count and were Counted and we have the right men and women at the helm.