Friday, April 29, 2011

Qaddafi And Trump - Twins Separated At Birth? 500 New Saints

Paul Krugman
David Ignatius
Jack Germond
"The Libyan government says Moammar Qaddhafi is still in 'high spirits,' even though his compound was destroyed this week. Most people would be devastated, but here's the thing — he's insane." – Jimmy Fallon
"A new poll shows that President Obama's approval rating is down to 41 percent. A lot of people that voted for him now say they liked him a lot better when he was a Democrat." – Jay Leno
"President Obama released his long-form birth certificate yesterday. So we found the birth certificate. Now it's on to bin Laden." – David Letterman


Why Russians Don't Smile By Michael Bohm:
"It is a primitive stereotype and myth that Russians are doomed to be gloomy and morose. The problem has little to do with Dostoevsky, the cold climate or lack of sunlight and much more to do with the rampant corruption, lawlessness, weak civil society and low level of freedom"...


Moammar Qaddafi and Donald Trump - twins separated at birth? People have been very forthright, calling out Donald's BS statements, yet they ignore Paul Ryan's health bill and anything generated by Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. Rush can do no wrong because he will get you by making disparaging remarks for hours on end on his radio show. I thought Al Franken might take him on when he had a radio show, but then he lost his sense of humor and got elected to Congress; see what can happen if you cross Rush... Nobody takes him to task whenever he makes statements like these:

"We need this in perspective. Obama never had a birth certificate problem. He has a spending problem. He has a redistribution of wealth problem. He has a socialism problem."

"Is there anybody in our field who would refer to Obama as a disaster? No. They are petrified. But what they will do is say, 'I think the president's policies are taking the country in the wrong direction.' Yeah, that and a wet noodle will get you some fried rice."

"Trump started out his press conference by saying, 'This is the proudest day of my life, look what I did, only I was able to do this.' For a while I thought, 'My gosh, I'm watching myself here!'"

"Frankly, folks, when you get down to brass tacks, getting rid of Obama -- throwing him out of the Oval Office and ending his regime -- has to be priority number one. It must be! And he is eminently beatable."

"You want to talk about silliness? Obama just turned the White House communications into a circus, if you ask me. The country's going to hell in a hand basket, and he's responded to Trump more directly than he's responded to Paul Ryan or John Boehner."

"The two things about this birth certificate that really shocked me the most are, one, that Obama was born at all -- I thought it was a miraculous conception -- and two, that his parents were actually mortals."

"Fearless, core beliefs are such that you don't need to read a memo before you go out and make a speech, that you don't need a teleprompter. You believe it. You believe it to the point where every media event is an education opportunity."

"If you're a columnist at the New York Times and you actually write that you are mesmerized by the crease in some politician's slacks, and then you say that because of that crease he's going to be a damn good president, I submit you are a fool and the essence of star-screwer. But that's David Brooks."

Folks either love or hate Rush. They either revel in his mean remarks and hang on to every word, or they are offended by what he says. It's not even what he has to say, ratheer the way he says it, and he has gotten a lot meaner since he weaned himself off of Oxycontin. Myself, I'd love to be in the studio with him as a counterweight to what he says. I usually mutter to myself the whole time I listen to him, so why not get paid for it? Maybe that can be my next project on the Internet, takiing apart each broadcast and putting it on youtube or itunes...

But I get tired of the constant negative language and imagery. Maybe that's what set off the tea party folks , getting pissed off from listening to too much Limbaugh and  Mike Rosen and Michael Savage and Mark Levine and Sean Hannity and whomever else you have on your local stations. The mind can only take so much negativity before it has a meltdown and has to get away. so the anger expressed by the tea party comes from having to get away and act out all of the negativity and anger they absorbed from their shock jocks, listening to toxic radio...



The negative spin from Israel over Egypt's attempts at reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas has gone into overdrive. No no no no Egyptians, you must do as we say and not think on your own! Look, even the bobble-headed US State Dept agrees, see them nodding?.. That Egypt is taking a more humanitarian view of their treaties should come as no surprise, it's what happens after a rebellion over regaining their own rights, of course they are going to treat others similarly. In fact, that's why they were so successfull in getting Hamas to come to an agreement - they treated them with respect.

"The deal between the Palestinian factions capitalized on the forces unleashed around the region by Egypt’s revolution. In its aftermath, Hamas found its main sponsor, the Assad government of Syria, shaken by its own popular protest movement, while the Fatah government in the West Bank faced throngs of young people adapting the chants of the Egyptian uprising to the cause of Palestinian unity.


Egypt had laid out a proposal virtually identical to the current deal for both sides as early as 2009, several participants from all sides said. But the turning point came in late March, about six weeks after the revolution. For the first time in years of talks the Hamas leaders were invited to the headquarters of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs instead of merely meeting at a hotel or the intelligence agency — a signal that Egypt was now prepared to treat Hamas as a diplomatic partner rather than a security risk.


They also met with Egypt’s interim head of state, Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, the leader of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and Mr. Mubarak’s longtime defense minister. “When I was invited to the meeting in the Foreign Ministry, that was something different, and this is what the agreement grew out of,” said Taher Nounou of Hamas. “We definitely felt that there was more openness from the new Egyptian leadership.” Foreign Minister Nabil el-Araby told the Palestinians that “he doesn’t want to talk about the ‘peace process’ any more, he wants to talk about the peace,” Ambassador Bakhoum said."

Egypt also wants to open up the border crossing, so that it isn't so punitive for the people living in Gaza, and they have approached Israel on changing that policy. Israel wants the status quo, where it can manipulated two sides against each other, creating dissension instead of an economy. As it is now, Fatah won't sit down with Israel until Israel stops building on their land, and Israel won't sit down with Hamas until Hamas recognizes Israel's right to be where it is. In order for a real peace to be negotiated, all three factions are going to have to sit down and hash things out, so, in reality, this is a very good first step in that direction.

The other problem is Egypt's wanting to normalize relations with Iran, no longer ignoring the 800 lb guerilla in the room. Every other nation in the world has relations with Iran except for the US and Israel. If Egypt and every other Middle Eastern nation can start going into Iran on a daily basis, it can only affect Iran for the better. Now, if we can only get those Europeans to stop being so anti-jihabic, a phrase I just coined and you have permission to use it...

Wow! Jihab Barbie

It turns out that Pope John Paul 11 and our current Nazi Pope are total Saint sluts, canonizing over 500 new saints so far between them. Now, Pope Benedict even wants to make John Paul into a Saint, even manufacturing a miracle, as told by the NY Times: “This beatification is different because this pope is different. He’s a man with a role in history, not just in church history,” said Andrea Riccardi, the founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio, a liberal Catholic group and a biographer of John Paul who testified in his favor in the beatification process. “The seal of sainthood doesn’t close the debate on history,” he added. “In a certain sense, for many Catholics he’s already a saint, even without beatification and, let’s be honest, even without a miracle.”


Saint-making is intensely political. The impulse must arise from the faithful, but ultimately most saints’ causes are championed by religious groups with the organizational skills, and fund-raising, to keep their causes alive. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and head of the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog, Pope Benedict in 1989 criticized this tendency, saying there had been too many beatifications of marginal figures.


But John Paul was an avid saint-maker who loosened the rules to make the process easier. He beatified more than 1,300 people and canonized 482 saints. Since 2005, Benedict has beatified 790 people and canonized 34 saints.


For John Paul to be beatified, a Vatican committee had to rule that he had performed a miracle. (To advance to sainthood, he needs an additional miracle.) In the proceedings, doctors and experts testified that a French nun had been miraculously cured from Parkinson’s disease after praying to John Paul. Their testimony was then notarized, and the committee certified the miracle."

No wonder this world is so much tougher, when people don't even know who to pray to anymore. Late at night as I lay me down to sleep, I just want to feel a little bit cheerful:

Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.



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