Sunday, April 15, 2007

Paul Krugman | For God's Sake

Paul Krugman For God's Sake This is an excellent explanation of what the far Christian right is trying to pull off. Basically they are no different from extreme Islamist. They want to rule the world! God helps us if they continue to stay in power. The neo-cons think that they can use them for their own nefarious ends. But they can't. Here is an excerpt from this article:

Friday 13 April 2007

In 1981, Gary North, a leader of the Christian Re-constructionist movement - the openly theocratic wing of the Christian right - suggested that the movement could achieve power by stealth. "Christians must begin to organize politically within the present party structure," he wrote, "and they must begin to infiltrate the existing institutional order."

Today, Regent University, founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson to provide "Christian leadership to change the world," boasts that it has 150 graduates working in the Bush administration.

Unfortunately for the image of the school, where Mr. Robertson is chancellor and president, the most famous of those graduates is Monica Goodling, a product of the university's law school. She's the former top aide to Alberto Gonzales who appears central to the scandal of the fired U.S. attorneys and has declared that she will take the Fifth rather than testify to Congress on the matter.

The infiltration of the federal government by large numbers of people seeking to impose a religious agenda - which is very different from simply being people of faith - is one of the most important stories of the last six years. It's also a story that tends to go underreported, perhaps because journalists are afraid of sounding like conspiracy theorists.

But this conspiracy is no theory. The official platform of the Texas Republican Party pledges to "dispel the myth of the separation of church and state." And the Texas Republicans now running the country are doing their best to fulfill that pledge.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Custodians of chaos

Custodians of chaos


I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale".George W Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr Hervey Cleckley, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia, published in 1941. Read it!Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These were people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything.PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll George Bush, and not because he's against gay marriage.So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation.They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do.

-- Kurt Vannagut

A GOOD THOUGHT FOR FRIDAY THE 13TH

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html: "
'If flying-saucer creatures or angels or whatever were to come here in a hundred years, say, and find us gone like the dinosaurs, what might be a good message for humanity to leave for them, maybe carved in great big letters on a Grand Canyon wall? Here is this old poop's suggestion: WE PROBABLY COULD HAVE SAVED OURSELVES, BUT WERE TOO DAMNED LAZY TO TRY VERY HARD...
-- Kurt Vonnegut "

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Bob at Westminister Chapel, London


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This is me standing on the steps at the front of Westminster Chapel in London.[Pretty slim and trim!] Number 38 Buckingham Gate about 200 meters from the gates to Buchingham Palace. I wish that I had mentioned this to Wes and Annette before she left on her trip to London. Westminster Chapel is a well known Church in London. There are three: Abby, Catherdal and Chapel. Over the years I had the priviledge of supplying the pulpit for my friend, the Rev. Dr. R. T. Kendall, during the summer when he was on holiday.

Posted by Bob Ferguson at 9:43 AM 0 comments Links to this post
April 12, 2007

The Moral Dilemma of Homelessness

If the shoe were on the other foot we might not be so smug! I have never been homeless and don't think I will ever be ... but "what if?" This editorial by Jim Evans offers an insightful look at the possibility. Click on the link and read it.