28 November 2012. Mattingly Gushes over Weigel… One of the Cabinet Weighs in on Consumerism… A Little Something that I Saw That Explains Why the GOP’s Going to Learn NOTHING From Its Shellacking

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Firstly, Terrence Mattingly gushed all George Weigel in his latest essay. Weigel is an extreme rightwinger who makes Victor Potapov and James Paffhausen look positively RED. Of course, what Mattingly doesn’t tell you is that Weigel’s part of that Far Rightwing K Street crowd of think-tankers, lobbyists, and other assorted political hangers-on and flunkies (as is Mattingly, Paffhausen, and Potapov, by the way). That is, he’s not objective in the least. He makes his living at a rightwing think tank, so, that’s a warning right there. His latest cause is “marriage”. We’re supposed to get all hot n’ bothered about it because of something these activists call “gay marriage”.

Here’s the scoop… if there’s any change in the legal definition of marriage, it won’t affect the Sacrament of Matrimony… not one little bit. No church will be forced to marry anyone that it considers “beyond the pale”. The sacrament will remain inviolate. I’ll tell you why…. the Church doesn’t receive any state funds in re marriage, so, the state doesn’t have any leverage over the Church in that matter. What may happen is that the USA may go the European route… that is, Church weddings will be religious ceremonies only, and that all couples would have to register their marriage with the state first. Trust me, this has been the way of it in Europe since 1789. Both Orthodox and Catholics accept this reality and don’t fight it.

It’d cut out the dispute. All couples would register with the state, and, then, all those who wish a religious ceremony may have it. The only legal marriage would be the state registration, but the only sacramental marriage would be in the Church’s hands 100 percent and fully. In short, the Sacrament would be beyond tampering. Since the Church would no longer be acting as an agent for the state, as it’s doing now, it’d be beyond the state’s radius of control.

Mattingly says nothing of that… that’s because he, Weigel, Potapov, Paffhausen, and all the other “religious” rightwingers aren’t interested in pro-family policies… they’re only interested in using the Church as an Inquisition against their perceived foes.

Now, that we’ve dealt with rightwing nastiness, let’s look at someone who showed some true religious insight. One of the Cabinet said:

I spend some at Christmas, but it’s hardly to excess. I’ve had a habit for years of getting people things they needed or would consume anyhow such as clothes or art supplies, sometimes books for the children, also, homemade baked goods or some sort of edible/drinkable for adults. I send out a few Christmas cards. I go to church on Christmas, spend the day with people close to me. Folks would be happier, I daresay, if they were able to pull back from all the buying and be more satisfied with a holiday gathering with good food and drink and loved ones around, and token gifts, if they must be given. It certainly takes the pressure off. My Christmas tree is going up this weekend. I like the lights!

That’s what we should focus on in this holiday season… not trying to ally Christ’s Holy Church with mammon worshippers such as Weigel and extremists like Gallagher. Remember, it’s come unto me all ye that are heavily laden and I will give thee rest, it isn’t come unto me all ye with stuffed boodle bags so that we can all party and carouse. We stand in the ruins of “deregulation” and “Trickle Down economics”… they may be many things, but are they in sync with Our Lord Christ‘s social teachings? Definitely not!

I saw this in the commboxes on a post. It’s a good analysis on why the Republicants will learn NOTHING from their shellacking:

Therefore, the problems with the GOP losses are:

1. The Message was not adequately massaged (i.e., enough people didn’t eat our propaganda).
2. Voter Fraud. No proof, but it must be there because the GOP took it on the chin.
3. Romney wasn’t conservative enough. Any of the more conservative candidates could’ve beaten Romney, say in the primaries or caucuses. The GOP had plenty of “real” conservatives to choose from, and they chose a flip-flopping liberal, out of a central belief in Core Values.
4. Obama “gifted” voters. Not to be confused with tax breaks, continued subsidisation of industry, passing Medicare Part “D”, or sending out $300 checks to voters before an election. Also, don’t confuse “gift” with Red States that take in more federal money than blue states. It’s different; trust me.
5. The “47 Percenters”. Again, not to be confused with the 47 percent of voters that voted for Romney.

Did I miss anything?

The truth will set you free… indeed… but you do need to acknowledge it. Terrence Mattingly, Maggie Gallagher, George Weigel, James Paffhausen, et al don’t. If the Church is the “Pillar and Ground of Truth” (the biblical reference, not the Florensky heresy), what does that tell us? Nothing good…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Wednesday 28 November 2012

Albany NY

 

Is This Election Really All About Race And National Identity? (slightly condensed)

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There certainly is an argument over government finances under way… it isn’t about spending or taxes. It’s an argument about race and national identity. It hasn’t really been about fiscal policy for decades. Any democratic system of wealth transfer relies on a sense of social solidarity. During the post-WWII boom, Jim Crow laws insured that African-Americans were under-represented in the country’s political life. This allowed a thin version of national solidarity to take hold. This version envisioned a white nuclear family, which in turn, undergirded Social Security and progressive tax rates. White people could hold to the basic assumption that redistributed wealth flowed mostly to fellow whites who might be “slightly poorer than themselves”.

Then, came the civil rights movement, voting rights for minorities, and integration of the public sphere. This produced white flight from the nation’s cities and from the public school system, in both the north and the south. Many resisted the racial integration imposed by the federal courts. Instead of money being distributed to white nuclear families, these dissenters saw money flowing to “shiftless” blacks and immigrant Hispanics. For those who resist these changes in the national life, their understanding of the basic compact of citizenship is being threatened. In this new atmosphere, the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, in 1965, would be the last welfare initiatives until the passage of Obamacare half a century later.

Mitt Romney’s proposed tax cuts are irrational if viewed as a contribution to debate on sound economic policy. However, they make perfect sense as an expression of deep animosity towards the idea of a shared national life. Obama may have said when he took up his presidency that there were no black, white, or Hispanic Americans, just Americans with a shared destiny. Nevertheless, what if a large part of the voting population doesn’t see inclusion as a desirable goal? For politicians on the right, Obama’s vision threatens to drag people back into an integrated public space they’ve been trying to escape most of their political lives.

It would explain the re-alignment of the two political parties in this country, with the GOP taking over the conservative South and more or less abandoning that nation’s cities. A majority of whites voted against Obama last time around, and seem poised to do so again. As viewed through this lens, the efforts of conservative judges to limit social justice initiatives such as Affirmative Action, and to undermine the entire structure of Roosevelt’s New Deal, make perfect sense, as do GOP attempts to restrict the voting rights of minorities. It might even explain the GOP’s obsession with being belligerent overseas, for if you see your own identity group losing power over fellow citizens with darker complexions, it makes you feel better if you can hold sway over what are seen as “lesser breeds without the law”, as Rudyard Kipling put it, in foreign countries.

It also might explain all the efforts of commentators on the right to brand Obama as somehow un-American, as the proverbial “other”, either as a socialist, or even a communist, or an anti-colonialist Muslim. The New York Times recently editorialised against anti-Obama conspiracy theories, and efforts to discredit important but non-political institutions in our government, writing, “Mistrust of the most basic functions of government can destroy the basic compact of citizenship”.

However, a good portion of the population already believes that the basic compact of citizenship has been undermined, if not broken, by the politics of inclusion personified by Barack Obama. Some Republicans are aware that time is not on their side. Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina said, “The GOP isn’t generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term”.

20 October 2012

H D S Greenway

Global Post

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/commentary/election-really-all-about-race-and-national-identity

Greek leader Warns “We’re Going to Run Out of Money Next Month”

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Yesterday, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras warned that his country’s coffers would run dry by November unless international lenders disbursed a vital 31.5 billion euro (1.28 trillion Roubles. 41 billion USD. 25.5 billion UK Pounds) loan instalment soon. Samaras invoked a comparison with the Weimar Republic in Germany before the Second World War, warning of “chaos” in Greece if his coalition government failed and democracy collapsed. Mr Samaras told reporters, “The government’s giving a fight on all sides for the credibility and salvation of this country so the people’s sacrifices don’t go to waste”.

Athens and its debt inspectors are still trying to hash out new spending cuts to help speed up the release of the next round of bailout funds. Amid this uncertainty, Mr Samaras highlighted the consequences of a Greek exit from the euro, warning it would be “a total disaster” and could prove “very destabilising” for Europe, saying that once one member country left, the international markets would probably target the next “weakest link”. Samaras pointed up that this would prove “painful for everybody and could prove fatal for many”. Athens is grappling with the worst financial crisis of its modern history with one in four people out of a job and the country’s recession predicted to continue for a sixth year. In Athens, international lenders continue to delay the release of the loans. Gerry Rice, a spokesman from the IMF, said the lending organisation would not hand out its portion of cash unless it gauged the viability of Greece’s debt as being sustainable or other lenders filled a financing gap in the bailout.

In an interview published yesterday with the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Mr Samaras warned that the cohesion of Greek society was being “endangered by rising unemployment, as was Germany towards the end of the Weimar Republic”. Such grim conditions are fertile ground for the rise of extremism. Support for the extreme-right Golden Dawn party has soared, and the Prime Minister warned in the interview that Greek democracy is “facing perhaps its greatest challenge”. Society, he went on, was threatened by extreme left-wing populists and “the rise of a right-wing extremist, one might say fascist, neo-Nazi party. People know that this government means Greece’s last chance. We’ll make it. If we fail, chaos awaits us”. He also outlined solutions, including the recapitalisation of Greece’s banks directly from a European fund to avoid further debt piling onto the country, noting, “The European Central Bank, which owns Greek government debt, could declare itself happy with lower interest… or agree to a rollover when these bonds are due”. So far, EU officials have adamantly rejected this.

A German government spokesman announced yesterday that Chancellor Angela Merkel would go to Athens on Monday to show support for reform efforts. However, many Greeks blame Germany’s insistence on austerity for their hardship, and the left-wing SYRIZA party urged unions to protest against the German leader. Union leaders said, “Workers, pensioners and unemployed people can take no more of the EU’s punitive policies”. Nevertheless, a German statement stressed that it wants Greece to stay in the euro bloc, albeit while pushing ahead with painful reforms. Since Greece received its first bailout in May 2010, it’s repeatedly slashed incomes, increased taxes, and raised retirement ages.

6 October 2012

Nathalie Savaricas

Independent (London UK)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/were-going-to-run-out-of-money-next-month-warns-greek-leader-8200184.html

Editor’s Note:

“Reform” means pain (and downright penury) for working people and retirees so that the McMansion filth can party on without a care. That’s the policy of the US Republican Party, too… it intends to slam its boot-heel hard into the faces of the most vulnerable Americans so that the Affluent Effluent can profit whilst kids starve. That’s objectively evil… a vote for the Republican Party (or any of its foreign analogues) is a vote for undisguised greed, malevolence, and wickedness. The Republicans worship Almighty Mammon… and God did say, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”. If you shill for the GOP, you’re my enemy… full stop… I’ll do whatever I can to defeat your criminal ideology and stop its malicious grasping any way that I can. Yes… our immortal souls DO depend on it…

BMD 

23 September 2012. RIA-Novosti Infographics. A Day Without Gasoline: How Much Can Muscovites Save?

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If you’re planning to take a walk or ride a bike, why not do it on 22 September… that’s World Car-Free Day (click here for more information). RIA-Novosti is using this Infographic to inform its readers what the inhabitants of the capital would’ve saved if they’d all given up the use of their cars for at least 24 hours.

The annual tradition to give up one’s car as a public holiday was born in 1997 in the UK. The first day without cars took place there, then, there were informal World Car-Free Days. In 2000, the European Commission extended the idea to the entire EU. This initiative led to a new organisation, Carbusters, who support the concept of holding the event globally as World Car-Free Day. Moscow joined Car-Free Day in 2008. Traditionally, on this day, the city authorities reduce prices on public transport, releasing a special one-day ticket. However, many Muscovites don’t actively participate in this campaign… previous experience has demonstrated the loyalty of Muscovites in favouring the use of their cars.

20 September 2012

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/infographics/20120920/176032112.html

Editor’s Note:

Here in Albany NY, we’re lucky, there’s an adequate public transport system here. For instance, our car died on Friday, but I was still able to get to work by using the bus system. Unfortunately, most of the USA, especially in “conservative” Republican areas, lacks even a vestigial public transport system. If I had lived there, I’d be “Shit Out of Luck”… and the Republicans would blame me for not being at work; I’d be fired in godless “Right to Work” thugocracies such as Texas and Alabama (which also have nasty public transport systems… one thing does lead into the other). You see, the GOP believes that if you can’t afford a car, you’re subhuman, you’re not “productive”, and so, you don’t count for anything. That’s the result of their theomachistic “greed is good” ideology… reflect on that.

BMD