29 May 2015

Five Faith Facts about Rick Santorum: Church-State Separation Makes Him Want to ‘Throw Up’ 29MAI15

rick santorum makes me want to throw up. He spews hate, he lies, he deceives and politically he turns his back on the least among us, something Christ never did and teaches us not to do. He works to change the U.S. to a theocratic plutocracy. From +Sojourners , follow by some wise words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer .....

Five Faith Facts about Rick Santorum: Church-State Separation Makes Him Want to ‘Throw Up’

by Cathy Lynn Grossman 05-29-2015 | 11:37am

He won 11 primaries in 2012 with his devoutly Catholic, homeschooling-dad culture-warrior campaign. On May 27, he declared for the 2016 race with his traditionalist moral views freshly sharpened.

U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum after formally declaring his candidacy on May 27, 2015. Image via RNS/REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk

Here are five faith facts about Santorum:
1. He’s opposed to abortion, same-sex marriage, and the teaching of evolution
Santorum served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, where he staked out positions opposing abortion, same-sex marriage, and the teaching of evolution. The breakdown of the traditional man-woman family is America’s most urgent problem, he told the Homeschool Iowa Capitol Day Forum in April.
2. He would not attend a same-sex wedding
Pope Francis may say, “Who am I to judge?,” but not Santorum. A Daily Beast writer called him “a few Knights Templar short of a holy war,” highlighting comments such as Santorum’s view that contraception is “dangerous” because it offers “license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
In an April interview, he told radio host Hugh Hewitt, “As a person of my faith, (attending a same-sex wedding) would be something that would be a violation of my faith. I would love them and support them but I would not be a participant in that ceremony.”
3. He appeals to evangelicals
He can talk the talk with evangelicals who want to see politicians spell out the ties between their personal faith and their actions. Catholic traditionalist Robert P. George told Religion News Service that Santorum is one of the few Catholic Republicans who has “figured it out.” Santorum had the endorsement of traditionalists at CatholicVote.org for his “unified moral and economic vision,” according to the National Review. But a New York Times look at exit polls in the 2012 primaries showed Santorum lost the Catholic vote to Mitt Romney by significant margins in 10 of 12 states where pollsters asked about religion. It also found that more than 40 percent of Catholic voters didn’t even know Santorum is Catholic.
4. He’s not a fan of church-state separation
The concept of separation of church and state — at least as expressed when Catholic John F. Kennedy addressed Baptist ministers in the 1960 presidential election campaign — makes Santorum “want to throw up.” In 2012 he told George Stephanopoulos, “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” and Santorum called that notion “antithetical” to the vision of our country.
Also antithetical: liberals. He told the Spartanburg Herald-Journal that the American left “hates Christendom.” According to ABC News, he also told a South Carolina town hall that the national ideal “is rooted in the Christian ideal — in the Judeo-Christian concept of the person” and not in any Eastern faiths or philosophies.
5. He works for a Christian movie distributor
Santorum has a culture warrior day job. In the wake of his failed 2012 campaign, he found another way to “impact people’s lives” — he’s the CEO of Christian movie distributor EchoLight. It produces and distributes Christian family movies directly to hundreds of U.S. churches. Santorum told the National Journal: “I think culture is upstream from politics, and maybe it’s important to get involved in the upstream and see what the impact can be to the country generally as a result.”
Cathy Lynn Grossman is a senior national correspondent for Religion News Service, specializing in stories drawn from research and statistics on religion, spirituality and ethics, and manager for social media. Via RNS.

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Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"PEARL" OF WISDOM

Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.

-Janis Joplin

The Thundering Failure of the Democrats 28MAI15

MOST, if not all of the members of the george w bush administration are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. I dream of the days they will be arrested, tried and punished for their crimes. Corrupt politicians in the obama administration and U.S. congress will never allow justice in these cases but there is a higher power, and unless these criminals have made things right with God they will be held accountable. From +Daily Kos .....

The Thundering Failure of the Democrats

by One Pissed Off Liberal Follow

I'm a Tom Joad democrat, a prison reform democrat, an anti-poverty democrat and a pro-justice democrat - so the party left me a long time ago...and they never looked back as they went chasing after the fat checkbook crowd. The few indisputably good things the party has done, such as the war on poverty and support for the civil rights movement, recede into the distant past as a brave new world emerges in which we are left to wonder just what IS the difference between neocons and neolibs, and whether democrats bombing the world in an unending war orgy is any better than repubs doing the exact same thing. The Military Industrial Complex is an evil piece of work and the same can be said about anyone who supports it. All the fear mongering, hate and bullshit in the world cannot change that simple fact.

Democrats (not all of them of course, but enough of them) enabled the Bush administration in some of the worst crimes against humanity in modern history: the illegal invasion of Iraq, the shameful atrocities at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo and elsewhere, kidnappings, torture, murders, assassinations, double-taps such as that shown in the Chelsea Manning video and on and on.
Every single one of the thousands of Americans who stooped to the torture of their fellow human beings got a pass, except the guy who reported it. He (John Kiriakou), and only he, went to prison.
These crimes are well documented. Even though the CIA illegally and outrageously destroyed video evidence and have told a million shameless lies to try to cover it up – everybody knows what they did – what WE did. Everybody knows that the United States stooped to the lowest and most disgusting forms of human behavior - that we committed outrageous crimes against humanity. And that we stand in denial and have done absolutely nothing to atone for it. It is obvious to everyone that we are utterly without honor or human decency.
These crimes will never be forgotten and pretending like they never happened is an insult to the whole world – and a shameful doubling-down on our complicity. We correct these wrongs or we own them.
The outrageous failure to prosecute the criminals in the Bush administration is a stain on democracy and makes the USA, as a whole, and both parties in particular, complicit in the Bush administration's crimes. And if we in the rank and file of either party put up with this horrendously low standard of behavior, we're complicit too.
My judgment is especially harsh for the Democratic Party because the whole world looked to them for justice and were denied. Justice is what we owed the world. JUSTICE!
The prospect of a Republican freak out is no excuse for Democrats not pursuing justice. We're always crowing about what a great nation we are – but we can't even manage to bring our own worst and most public in-your-face criminals to justice.
This is not political, it's criminal. They stole trillions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury and lied us into invading what they knew damned well was the wrong country costing hundreds of thousands of lives, creating untold human misery and creating ISIS and a global jihad. And they did it on purpose so they could have their precious forever war and a Military Industrial Complex wet dream. And they only got away with it because the Democratic Party enabled them, aided and abetted them and then let them slide. All for filthy lucre. What could be more shameful?
There is no moral high ground left for us, we've pissed it all away. We stand before the world naked in our hypocrisy. Torturers, thieves, bullies, murderers - not exactly the legacy most of us hoped for.
In the long list of people, things or entities that have let us down over the past couple of decades, the Democratic Party is, sadly, right up there with the best of them. And if we as dems don't face it, we'll never change anything for the better.
Unpunished thieves and war criminals are still an albatross around our nation's neck. Ask your candidate what they are going to do about that.
bush-admin-legacy

Originally posted to One Pissed Off Liberal on Thu May 28, 2015 at 09:39 AM PDT.

Also republished by Group W: Resisting War.

DAILY KOS RECOMMENDED 29MAI15

BIGOTS really are stupid people. This and more from +Daily Kos ......

Director of the National Spelling Bee nails it when dealing with bigot

by RightHeaded Follow

The 88th Scripps National Spelling Bee has now come and gone and, just like the 87th last year, ended in a two-way tie. And, just like last year (as well as many other recent years), the champions have come from Indian ancestry. Naturally, this doesn't sit well with a certain segment of society, the members of which have made their unhappiness known in predictable social media rants. Apparently, at least one of them has also made it known to Paige Kimble, spelling bee director. Her response, however, was perfect in its simplicity:

The domination of the bee by Indian American spellers over the past 15 years has created some backlash, including an ugly outburst of racial insults on social media last year. Paige Kimble, the longtime director of the bee, said that she was approached Thursday and asked whether any “Americans” made it to the finals. “ ‘Yes, they’re all Americans,’ I told them,” Kimble said. “We obviously still have a long way to go.”

Oops, that's right. They are all Americans. Actually, there are a few contestants from outside the U.S., but that is irrelevant to the story of this years winners, as one hails from Olathe, Kansas and the other from Chesterfield, Missouri. The distinction is likely lost on our poor bigot anyway. The only thing I might add to that is that if you don't like the fact that children of Indian, or Chinese, or Japanese, or Korean, or whatever other heritage are outperforming those of your own, maybe instead of directing your frustration at the children or their families, you might try directing it at the elected officials who are responsible for overseeing the performance of your own school. Oh, and maybe do your own part while you're at it, if you happen to have children in that school.