Ratzinger intervened in US 2004 election against Kerry

Oh, the fun just keeps on coming.

From AFP:

"German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican theologian who was elected Pope Benedict XVI, intervened in the 2004 US election campaign ordering bishops to deny communion to abortion rights supporters including presidential candidate John Kerry.... in the November election, a majority of Catholic voters, who traditionally supported Democratic Party candidates, shifted their votes to Republican and eventual winner George W. Bush."

And you gotta love the photo. Read More......

Evangelical Christians terrorizing US Air Force Academy with outright anti-Semitism

Gee, what a surprise. America's Taliban takes over the US Air Force Academy - which frankly is a scary thought in and of itself (someone is planning for the future) - and what happens as a result? The place turns into one big anti-Semitism factory.

And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, and they'll know we are Christians by our love.

Yeah, that'll be the day.

From the AP:

Less than two years after it was plunged into a rape scandal, the Air Force Academy is scrambling to address complaints that evangelical Christians wield so much influence at the school that anti-Semitism and other forms of religious harassment have become pervasive.

There have been 55 complaints of religious discrimination at the academy in the past four years, including cases in which a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and another was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet.

The 4,300-student school recently started requiring staff members and cadets to take a 50-minute religious-tolerance class....

Other critics point to a series of incidents, including:

_The Air Force is investigating a complaint from an atheist cadet who says the school is "systematically biased against any cadet that does not overtly espouse Christianity."

_The official academy newspaper runs a Christmas ad every year praising Jesus and declaring him the only savior. Some 200 academy staff members, including some department heads, signed it. Whittington noted the ad was not published last December.

_The academy commandant, Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida, a born-again Christian, said in a statement to cadets in June 2003 that their first responsibility is to their God. He also strongly endorsed National Prayer Day that year. School spokesman Johnny Whitaker said Weida now runs his messages by several other commanders.

_Some officer commission ceremonies were held at off-campus churches. In a letter dated April 6, Weida said the ceremonies would be held on campus from now on.

Read More......

Man arrested in NYC for threatening to kill judge, bomb courthouse

Like I've been saying all along, no issue to take advantage of here, nothing to see, keep moving right along.

Oh, and be sure to Save Phil. Read More......

DeLay slams US Supreme Court Justice Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, for - get this - using the Internet

Yes, DeLay criticizes Kennedy for doing some of his own research on the Internet.

Now, I know the Republicans have gotten accustomed to having leaders who are dumb as turnips, get us into wars that are lies, kill thousands of troops, tens of thousands of civilians, yada yada yada. But, really now. Since when is doing your own research, or using the Internet to do it, cause for an uproar? What is this, the Cultural Revolution - kill everyone who wears glasses?

DeLay might be a better lawyer, politician, and human being if he checked out the wide range of legal resources available for free on the Internet. Read More......

Open thread

Man, are there are a lot of nasty facts out there about this Ratzinger. Please do scroll down and check them out, we have several new ones, all terrifying. Read More......

Ratzinger accused of cover-up in effort to shelter pedophile priests

From ABC News:

"[Father Marcial Macie] pushed my hand onto his penis. And I didn't know anything about masturbation," Juan Vaca, who was first abused when he was 11 years old, told ABCNEWS. "And he says, 'You don't know how to do it. Let me show you.' And he gets my penis himself and starts to masturbate me. I was in shock."

Now read the rest of the story:

Then, four years ago, some of the men tried a last ditch effort, taking the unusual step of filing a lawsuit in the Vatican's secretive court, seeking Macial's excommunication.

Once again they laid out their evidence, but it was another futile effort — an effort the men say was blocked by one of the most powerful cardinals in the Vatican.

The accusers say Vatican-based Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who heads the Vatican office to safeguard the faith and the morals of the church, quietly made the lawsuit go away and shelved it. There was no investigation and the accusers weren't asked a single question or asked for a statement.

He was appointed by the pope to investigate the entire sex abuse scandal in the church in recent days. But when approached by ABCNEWS in Rome last week with questions of allegations against Maciel, Ratzinger became visibly upset and actually slapped this reporter's hand.

"Come to me when the moment is given," Ratzinger told ABCNEWS, "not yet."

"Cardinal Ratzinger is sheltering Maciel, protecting him," said Berry, who expressed concerns that no response was being given to the allegations against the man charged with sex abuse. "These men knelt and kissed the ring of Cardinal Ratzinger when they filed the case in Rome. And a year-and-a-half later, he takes those accusations and aborts them, just stuffs them."

The cardinals knew all of this, yet they still chose Ratzinger. They had a choice. They chose evil. Unfortunately, this is what the leadership of the Catholic Church has come to, and become. In a word, hubris. In two words, Tom DeLay. Read More......

Ratzinger as Nazi

When is it fair to call a Nazi a Nazi?

That seems to be the debate surrounding Cardinal Ratzinger, the new Pope. He was a member of the Hitler youth, and he belonged to a a Luftwaffe AA battery. And sure, as some on the left note, just because he was a German soldier doesn't make him a Nazi (though I must admit the nuance is lost a bit on me - I mean, yeah, he was just being a good German, but I thought that excuse went out of favor a long time ago).

The thing is, I feel like some are exonerating Ratzinger's past SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE OF his past. It's almost as if the fact that he was in the Hitler Youth and the Nazi army somehow means "of course he wasn't a Nazi." That logic is a bit weird. It's as weird as folks today who say "how dare you compare what is happening in America to what happened in Nazi Germany." Many people like to think, for whatever reason, that the sins of the Nazis could NEVER happen again, so per se it's bad form to even worry that they might or are. That's a rather dangerous and flippant view of history. And I think it's what's motivating some of the "how dare you call Ratzinger a Nazi" rhetoric.

It's almost as if we've gone from "how dare you think the Nazi horror could occur again" to "how dare you think the Nazis were Nazis?" Folks aren't saying - yes, Ratzinger has some explaining to do. Rather they're saying, per se it's unfair to worry about his unfortunate youth working for Hitler's final solution and victory, and to at least suggest that maybe the Catholic Church could have done better for itself and the memories of what it did, or didn't do, during WWII.

I mean, they couldn't have skipped a generation when picking a German pope?

And while we're at, I looked up the word "Nazi" online:

Nazis (naht-seez, nat-seez)

A German political party of the twentieth century, led by Adolf Hitler. The Nazis controlled Germany from the early 1930s until the end of World War II. The party's full name in English is National Socialist German Workers' party; Nazi is short for its German name. Despite the word socialist in its name, it was a fascist party, requiring from its members supreme devotion to the German government - the Third Reich (see fascism and socialism). The Nazis rose to power by promising the people that Germany, which had been humiliated after World War I, would become powerful again.

The Nazis opposed communism and free intellectual inquiry. Desiring to form a master race that would rule the world, they fought the influence in Germany of peoples not of "pure" descent. Their power was particularly directed at controlling Jews in Germany and in the countries that Germany conquered in war. After depriving Jews of their property and confining them in concentration camps, the Nazis employed the Final Solution of killing them in large numbers; an estimated six million Jews lost their lives (see Holocaust). Also marked for extermination were the mentally and physically handicapped and "enemies of the Reich" such as Slavs, communists, Gypsies, homosexuals, Christians who resisted the government, and defenders of intellectual freedom. The Nazis fought World War II to spread their principles worldwide but were defeated.

All I'm saying is that the man is hardly a picture postcard of the anti-thesis of Nazi thought. The comparison is valid for discussion at the very least, lest we ignore history altogether. Read More......

Ratzinger defends pedophiles

Ratzinger to the Catholic News Service in 2002, commenting on the Catholic church pedophile priest scandal:

"I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offences among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower."

"In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1% of priests are guilty of acts of this type," he said. "The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information nor to the statistical objectivity of the facts.

"Therefore, one comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the Church. It is a logical and well-founded conclusion."

Like I said. Talk like a Hitler Youth, write like a Hitler Youth... Read More......

Sad story from Baghdad

I don't know this woman, but happened to find the story via some links. Sad.

(Kind of weird, I just realized I know Chris Allbritton, the guy whose blog I'm linking to. Well, don't know him as a friend, but had worked with him on a story or something in the late 90s, he's in my email rolodex, small world.) Read More......

Screw helping the old people, what about bashing the fags?

America's Taliban is upset that Bush decided to devote his presidence to helping America's seniors rather than bashing America's homos.

More on the Rapture Republicans from Bloomberg:

Phil Burress, who helped President George W. Bush win the battleground state of Ohio last November by leading the charge among religious groups to pass a gay- marriage ban, isn't pleased with the president's focus on Social Security.

``How come he's not stumping across America defending marriage?'' said Burress, 63, an evangelical Christian and president of Citizens for Community Values in Ohio. ``Marriage is a whole lot more important than Social Security.''....

``We're wising up to the fact that we're very important nine months before an election and we're not very important nine days after that election,'' said Don Wildmon, 67, an ordained minister who is chairman of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Mississippi.

There is ``a lot of disappointment'' among those who voted for Bush expecting him to make his primary focus in a second term a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and other social values issues, Wildmon said.

Read More......

More bad poll numbers for Bush and the GOP

From the National Journal (no link available):

Fewer than a third of CBS respondents said the country was going in the right direction, and 62 percent said it was off on the wrong track -- a much starker contrast than the 42/52 split in February's CBS News/New York Times poll. President Bush's job approval rating inched up one point since March to 44 percent, but his disapproval also climbed to 51 percent from 48 percent.

Seven in 10 said they were uneasy about Bush's approach to Social Security, while a quarter said they were confident. Presidential job approval on individual issues remained relatively consistent with last month's poll, with the exception of his handling of terrorism. That number, which has consistently earned Bush's highest marks, slipped to 53 percent, an 8-point drop since the previous poll.

More numbers from CBS. Read More......

Ratzinger defends violence against gays

Gee, this sounds like pure Senator Cornyn talking about the judges.

Sure, violence is wrong, but fags shouldn't be surprised when their own existence invites violence. Spoken like a true former member of the Hitler Youth. Links here and here.

‘It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church’s pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.

‘But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase (No. 10).

8. "What is at all costs to be avoided is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behavior of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable. What is essential is that the fundamental liberty which characterizes the human person and gives him his dignity be recognized as belonging to the homosexual person as well’ (No. 11).

Read More......

Open thread

Doesn't have to be about the Pope. Read More......

The new Pope is Ratzinger, the candidate from the Hitler Youth, think "Karl Rove as Pope"

Oh, it's over. They elected the former Hitler Youth as the new Pope. He's going to be known as Benedict XVI. Ironic they chose the name of a traitor.

I checked in with Michael in NYC, as he's my resident Catholicism expert. Here's what he just said by phone:

He sends shivers down the spines of liberal Catholics and Catholic thinkers. He's bee been the head of the inquisition in the church, literally. He's called dozens upon hundreds of theologians and priests to the carpet, put a chill through free speech and debate in the church. John Paul's legacy was of spreading democracy in eastern Europe but he quashed it inside the church. Ratzinger was the main instrument for killing free speech in the church. Ratzinger helped quash democracy inside the church, intellectual thought. He believes the church always knows what right, is never wrong.

He's UBER-conservative, he was a bit of a liberal, a moderate, as a young man. But the 1968 student uprisings turned him into an arch uber-conservative, he's like a convert, the worst kind of conservative.

It's as if Karl Rove became president.

My personal take, speaking as John in DC, is I hope Ratzinger leads this church to a quick and painful loss of credibility in America and Europe. Let him be a conservative nutjob. This will only disaffect more Americans and more Europeans and cause even fewer young men in the West to enter the priesthood. And yeah, he'll inspire the conservatives in Africa and Asia, and in Latin America (though I hear they're more liberal with regards to poverty issues). And I hope he does. That will only sharpen the divide between the Western church and the developing country church, making the church get more conservative while Western culture gets more liberal, ultimately weakening the church leadership's influence in America, and therefore lessening it's horrendously bigoted and harmful influence in American politics. Read More......

CNN's Fact Error: "Awaiting Name of 265th Pope" -- Nope, It's The 263rd Pope

This confusion arises because Benedict IX held the office of bishop of Rome on three separate occasions in the eleventh century. Therefore, there have been 264 pontificates, if you will, but only 262 Popes counting from Peter to John Paul II. So whomever is named today will be the 263rd man to become Pope. Just one quick way to impress your friends courtesy of Americablog. (MSNBC makes the same mistake and Fox News avoids naming a number, at least on its scroll.) Read More......

They've picked a new Pope

Waiting to hear who he is. Read More......

Kill Phil

UPDATE: It's worse than I thought. The Save Phil! cartoon, after an agonizing number of minutes, takes you to a text-laden Web page where the big action step is to - ta dah! - do nothing (the "take action" link is practically hidden on the page). So again, the point of this campaign would be, what?

This is the ad campaign from the big establishment liberal non-profits, taking on the GOP's effort to turn our country into a theocracy run by judges and politicians to the right of Mullah Omar. The ads are on several of the top liberal blogs, and point you to this SavePhil.com. Yes, this is their best shot.

It's still unclear whether Save Phil! is intended to bore the Republicans to death or mobilize the critical under-five age demographic. Read More......

Open Thread

It's a beautiful, and pollen-filled day, in D.C. What's going on? Read More......

GOP corporate welfare express train continues

Those poor oil companies are struggling and could really use a tax break. Never mind their profit margins and the struggling economy, it's payback time for those who bankrolled this team. Full speed ahead! Read More......

In a shocking discovery, another personal data loss larger than first reported

It's just so hard to count these days and somehow the initial report of lost credit card, checking and drivers license information was under reported ever-so-slightly last month. It is now being reported that the DSW data which was stolen was 1.4Million credit card numbers which is ten times the previously reported amount. If credit reports are going to be so critical for Americans, it's time that companies accept higher responsibility for holding this information. Read More......

Bush During Armstrong Deception Of Public: He Was Either Lying Or Clueless

USA Today headlines its story on the Education Department's investigation of itself with the innocuous: "Report: No ethics breach in Education Dept."

Here's a better headline: Bush Lied To America Or was Hopelessly Out of the Loop.

Yes, the report makes clear that Bush was wrong when he first commented on the scandal of the Education Dept. paying commentator Armstrong Williams $240,000 to plug its No Child Left Behind. At the time, Bush said, "We didn't know about this in the White House."

But this initial report makes clear that David Dunn, "a special assistant to President Bush" took part in AT LEAST FOUR CONVERSATIONS about the Williams contract with Education Dept. officials. Not only that, during at least two of them the officials expressed concern about the arrangement. Naturally, the White House had refused to let the investigators speak to Dunn directly about what he did at the time as a presidential policy adviser, saying it lacked the authority to interview White House staffers. Two more investigations of this ethical breach are underway.

And don't believe Williams' lie that he was already a big fan of NCLB. He conceded in an interview with USA Today that NOT ONE of 194 newspaper columns he wrote in nearly three years mentioned it, but as soon as the money started flowing he wrote about it in glowing terms five times.

By the way, the report said there was no technical violation but that the contract smacked of "bad management" and "poor judgment."That's one way to phrase manipulating the media to deceive the American people, but I can think of harsher terms to use. Read More......

DeLay In Email: It Ain't Me, Babe (Nope, He Still Doesn't Get It)

The Washington Post reports that Tom DeLay emailed an extremely lengthy missive defending himself (running SIX pages, single-spaced) to supporters in his suburban Houston district. Is somebody getting desperate? The gist of the email: DeLay good; Democrats bad.

Titled "What The Press Isn't Telling You," it goes on to blame the Democrats for his numerous admonishments last year and his current pile-up of ethical doo-doos and when it isn't blaming the Dems it blames the Dem-loving media. And everyone's lying about why the three Republicans who crossed party lines to uphold basic standards on the ethics committee by admonishing DeLay were kicked off: it had nothing to do with him. DeLay has never done anything wrong in the past; he ain't doing anything wrong in the present and he's not going to do anything wrong in the future.

Guess Newt isn't exactly on speed-dial with this guy. Let's hope this time the stonewalling doesn't pay off. Read More......

Late night open thread

Off to bed. Read More......