Category Archives: Political Commentary

March 14, 2012 · 00:06

True Grits: Santorum Sweeps South

Mitt Romney may have adopted a Southern drawl, learned the word y’all and tasted grits for the first time but Rick Santorum has won the south defeating Romney and Newt Gingrich in Alabama and Mississippi. This was despite the advantage of Mitt Romney’s advertising carpet bombing campaign and Newt Gingrich’s supposed Southern advantage.  Both Alabama and Mississippi were close races with Mississippi being a “barn burner” in which the candidates were separated by under 3 percentage points while Santorum won Alabama in a relatively comfortable manner by 5% over Gingrich and 7% over Romney.

Rick Santorum campaigning in Alabama (Eric Gay/AP)

The biggest loser was Romney who again struggled to gain over 30% of the vote in a Southern state.  Santorum and Gingrich more than doubled the votes cast for Romney. This is a consistent narrative in this primary season, even where Romney “wins” his totals are almost always below his opponents. As I have said since Iowa this has become the search for the anti-Mitt anti-Mormon candidate.  Romney is viewed by the Evangelical Christian and Conservative Catholic base of the Republican Party to be a flip-flopping Massachusetts moderate who belongs to a religious cult. That is the bottom line. Romney has tried hard to ingratiate himself to the base but has not been able to seal the deal despite the weaknesses of the Republican field and his massive advantage in campaign organization and financing.  The results demonstrated Romney’s inability to seal the deal with the conservative base that not only the are the key to the GOP nomination but the General Election as well.

Gingrich is another loser tonight although in my mind not as much as Romney because Gingrich really has nothing to lose at this point because he will not be the nominee.  He does not have much in terms of organization and most of his advertising comes from Vegas Casino owner Sheldon Adelson who has said that should Gingrich withdraw that he would switch his support to Romney.  One has to wonder why he stays in the race except that this is so personal for him that he cannot let it go even if it means undercutting his fellow conservative Rick Santorum.

If Gingrich was to leave the race the Republican party would finally be able to define what it intends to be not only for 2012 but maybe for the next several election seasons. A Santorum versus Romney showdown would determine if the old guard moderates or if the new more socially conservative Christian voters finally gain the ascendency at the national level that they enjoy in many state and local races.

Ron Paul finished lower than in other outings in these states and should cease to be much of a factor in the coming weeks except to draw off support that might go to one of the front runners.

There are a number of primaries coming up. While I do not any of the next primaries to be decisive they could provide some measure of momentum to Santorum or buttress the Romney campaign.  Hawaii’s caucuses will close in a couple of hours and it is more than likely that Romney will will Hawaii. On Saturday Missouri will caucus and it based on Santorum’s convincing wins there in the unofficial non-binding popular vote primary and his continued ability to beat Romney in heavily Evangelical areas I expect that he will win the majority of these delegates. Puerto Rico is Sunday followed by Illinois next week. Romney should win Illinois but the way things have been going Santorum may well challenge him hard in that state. Two weeks from now is Louisiana which I expect Santorum will win in a convincing manner.

When all is said and done by the end of March Romney should still lead the delegate count but I expect that he will not stop the bleeding. Gingrich will face pressure from Santorum and possibly senior GOP officials to leave the race. If he does there is the possibility that he could still be a Vice Presidential nominee.

The race is certainly interesting especially since President Obama remains mired in low approval ratings which promises that the General Election in November should be a nail biter unless something really happens to upset the apple cart.  This makes it fun  for me because I am actually coming to enjoy writing about politics.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 6, 2012 · 23:57

Super Tuesday Agony: Indecisive, Inconclusive and a Portent of Things to Come

The Super Tuesday primaries are supposed to provide the boost to ensure that each party has a nominee locked in a ready to go into the November general election refreshed and with party united behind them.  Even in hotly contested campaigns Super Tuesday is supposed to give a frontrunner an edge going into the last months of the primary season. It is designed to bring unity to a party, at least in what the party believes even if it differs on its candidate.

That is not the case this year. Though results are still filtering in at the moment Mitt Romney has won as expected in Virginia, Massachusetts, Vermont and Idaho. Newt Gingrich has won Georgia and Rick Santorum has won Oklahoma, Tennessee and North Dakota.

Several states are still in the balance with the big prize being Ohio which Santorum and Romney are running in a dead heat. Ohio is so close and has such a history of big counties taking a long time to count it may not be known who has won the state until tomorrow. If the margin is under .25% an automatic recount will be triggered.  Ohio was supposed to be a Romney win and when Rick Santorum began to surge Romney and his PACs dumped massive amounts of money, somewhere close to 12 million dollars in advertising to beat Santorum down. This is not good for Romney even if he gets a narrow win. Yes a win is a win but sometimes a win doesn’t amount to much  especially if a recount is triggered.

The states that Romney has won so far are states that he had no possibility of losing. Massachusetts and Vermont, Romney is the home team. In Virginia his two strongest competitors were not on the ballot making it a race between him and Ron Paul. Idaho which has a strong LDS population was also an easy win for Romney.  However Romney was trounced in Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota.  The three southern states do matter, any Republican nominee has to win the south.  Romney is not liked in the south, he has a number of things that cause him to be less than popular in the Republican Bible Belt. His religion is part of it, many conservative Christians, both Evangelicals and Roman Catholics believe that the Mormon Church is a cult.  Romney also has to deal with the fact that he doesn’t come across as genuine. He comes across as a entitled flip flopping New England moderate who cannot connect with real people, note his comments about NASCAR.  The fact is that in many Republicans in other parts of the country believe the same thing.

Next week the campaign turns to the south where Alabama and Mississippi await Romney. I have not seen recent polling data for either state but would expect that Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum will poll very well and that Romney may even run third in both primaries. Kansas has its caucuses on Saturday and with that state’s history in the abortion wars that Rick Santorum should do very well with the GOP base.  Other states that Romney could struggle in include Louisiana and the only state that really looks positive in the coming month for Romney is Illinois.

As I said there are still states hanging tonight but it is very apparent that Romney’s money and organization is the only thing keeping him in the game.  Romney is still in the best position to take the nomination but he if he gets it will be the nominee of a fractured party whose base does not like him.  That is not a winning formula to beat an incumbent President no matter how bad that President’s numbers look.

My prediction, all four candidates remain in the race and Romney continues to take a beating from the conservative base.  This will remain a long, drawn out and bloody campaign. Romney will have to spent far more money than he ever had planned to secure the nomination and may lose the support of Republican party elders if he cannot seal the deal soon.  Gingrich will remain in at least for a while but Santorum allies may try to pressure Gingrich through the Tea Party to leave the race in order to make Santorum the sole conservative standard bearer against Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.

It certainly makes for an interesting election season.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 5, 2012 · 23:55

They didn’t Pray Enough: Pat Robertson’s latest “Patwah”

“If enough people were praying, [God] would intervene. You could pray, Jesus stilled the storm, you could still storms.” Pat Robertson on the 700 Club

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Jesus (Matthew 5:44-45)

Well Pat Robertson the Grand Mullah of Virginia Beach has again come up with new a Patwah declaring today that the people across the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys who were devastated by unseasonable tornadoes and storms this week could have avoid them “if they had prayed more.”

Of course such statements are nothing new from the Tidewater’s favorite Taliban and certainly to be expected.  Some it seems that no matter what the question that Mullah Pat needs to have an answer direct from God on high. He was responding to a question from one of his viewers about why “God would cause” such disasters and instead of doing the thing that Jesus did when asked a similar question about why Jewish insurgents had died fighting the Romans that Jesus mentioned the 18 people killed at the tower of Siloam.  Jesus basically asked his questioners if the 18 people killed at the tower of Siloam were worse sinners than anyone else in Jerusalem, the answer of course was “well duh, stuff happens.” Even in the New testament it was understood that the “rain falls on the just and the unjust.” But today it seems that the people like Pat have to find an answer that they can attribute to God to bust the chops of people that they think really need to be whacked.

I’m sorry but such theological insanity coming from a “Christian” is a shame and comparable to the Fatwahs issued by extremist Muslim preachers in Afghanistan, Iran and other locations. The only difference is that Pat is claiming that he is getting his word from Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Sorry Pat but the 39 people killed and thousands injured or displaced by these storms deserve better from a “Christian” preacher who has indulged himself upon their generous financial contributions for the last 40 years.  Heck, these were not even people that live in Blue States, these storms hit the Red State Republican heartland and some swing states.  If those states are not safe from God’s wrath then who is? But then if prayer could have kept these things from happening does that mean that the people killed, injured or rendered homeless were somehow at odds with God?

Well if you ask Jesus probably not.  However if you hold Jesus in less esteem than Pat then maybe so.  Now I do believe that God answers prayer and sometimes in most unusual and seemingly miraculous ways. However it seems that sometimes stuff happens, even to good people.  I guess that is why we need folks like Mullah Pat to guide our way…but then maybe we don’t need him to do this.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 4, 2012 · 23:33

Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word: Rush Limbaugh “Apologizes”

It’s sad, so sad

It’s a sad, sad situation

And it’s getting more and more absurd

It’s sad, so sad

Why can’t we talk it over

Oh it seems to me

That sorry seems to be the hardest word

After making a complete ass of himself in making personal attacks on a Georgetown Law School student named Sandra Fluke.  She testified before Congress regarding the provision of women’s contraceptives by insurance companies, including those that cover employees of ancillary organizations belonging to religious institutions.

Limbaugh called Ms Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute” saying “What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex — what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”

Of course that was not the content of Ms. Fluke’s testimony which focused on married women working at the University who needed the medications for conditions not related to contraception, something that is not uncommon. Limbaugh instead decided to attack the character of Ms. Fluke.  But this has become par for the course for Limbaugh who uses his show not just to confront his opponents but to humiliate and silence them.  I listened to his show regularly from the late 1980s until I returned from Iraq. It was then I realized just how abusive his tactics are and in the summer of 2008 I stopped listening to his program.

I guess what bothers me is that though Limbaugh is arguably one of the most talented radio personalities who has ever lived and certainly the most influential on the American political scene that he has become a bully. Limbaugh’s talent, especially his ability to use satire used to be humorous when directed at those in power has become a bludgeon to silence those without power as he has become a figure that Republicans are afraid to confront because he is the most influential Republican in the country.

Limbaugh has made personal attacks before, mocking Michael J. Fox who suffers from Parkinson’s Disease in 2006 for advocating for funding of Stem Cell research; calling a Iraq combat Veteran and career soldier and other soldiers who criticized the war as “phony soldiers.” I was in Iraq at the time and happened to hear about those comments in between missions in Al Anbar Province.  I found both episodes to be reprehensible.

With his rise in power has come a rise in vitriol and a hubris that comes from being so powerful and until this week unchallenged. Limbaugh has beaten up all comers and only on exceedingly rare occasions has issued “apologies” for his remarks.

What brought about this apology was not the criticism from Republican political candidates or elected officials.  There was little to speak of in that regard, however money talks even when politicians and fellow pundits refuse to do so. Limbaugh lost seven major advertisers in the past several days one of whom, David Friend the CEO of the online computer security and backup firm Carbonite said:

“No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.”

The only major figure in conservative media of any substance to condemn the lack of response by conservative politicians and candidates was George Will who said “Boehner comes out and says Rush’s language was inappropriate. Using the salad fork for your entrée, that’s inappropriate. Not this stuff,…And it was depressing because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”

Ron Paul did comment about the apology telling CBS’s Bob Schieffer “He’s doing it because some people were taking their advertisements off of his program,…. It was his bottom line he was concerned about.”

I completely agree with Will and Paul. If Limbaugh wanted to attack the policies he disagrees with that is one thing. Certainly there is room for debate on this issue as in all issues facing this country. If Limbaugh wants to attack those in political power with whom that he disagrees even in a personal matter, that is similar.  However to attack a women, a law student at that in this personal, insidious, crude, ungentlemanly and even I might say un-Christian manner is something that he should be condemned for doing.

As for me I wonder what Bill Buckley, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan would think of the man whom many call the intellectual and philosophical leader of conservatism. I don’t think that any would have much good to say at the level that Limbaugh has sunk to in this latest episode.

The irony is that Limbaugh is working on his fourth marriage and has had to deal with addiction to prescription drugs and accused of doctor shopping. He also was detained by Drug Enforcement officials at Palm Beach International Airport returning from the Dominican Republic in 2006 for having Viagra which was not prescribed in his name. Limbaugh had the nerve to attack the character of a woman speaking for something that is legal.  What has conservatism sunk to?

The last irony is that at his last marriage ceremony Limbaugh had Elton John provide the entertainment. I guess that the title of Elton John’s classic “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word” is in reality the theme of Limbaugh’s public persona.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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February 29, 2012 · 18:06

Romney Stops the Bleeding but Race far from Over

The Republican nomination process was supposed to be a done deal by now. Mitt Romney was by now to have for all practical purposes secured the nomination. It hasn’t been that way. After an advertised win that was not really a win in Iowa Romney went on to win on his home turf in New Hampshire. Then things came apart. A series of gaffes led to a strong win by Newt Gingrich in South Carolina. Then Romney clobbered Gingrich with negative ads in Florida and Gingrich added to the meltdown by two lack luster debate performances. Romney’s win in Florida made it look like he had seized control of the race.  Romney quickly picked up the endorsement of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) and a narrow and disputed win in the Maine Caucuses over Ron Paul and a win in Nevada. However that did not last as Rick Santorum stormed to victory in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri.  Those defeats sent the Romney campaign which had just seemed to have recovered some momentum int a near panic.

The Romney camp spent an anxious two weeks before the upcoming Arizona and Michigan primaries. Santorum continued to surge during these two weeks and for a couple of days began to poll ahead of Romney in that state. The two campaigns bombard each other aided by the attacks of Newt Gingrich and Ton Paul on the front runners. Santorum then departed from his emphasis on the economy and understanding of blue collar family concerns which contrasted sharply with Romney’s inability to connect on these subjects. Santorum turned the conversation to conservative social and moral issues and made some comments which probably took his numbers down in Michigan. I think that the key mistake for Santorum was his comment that President John F. Kennedy’s religious freedom speech had made him “want to vomit” accusing the late President of promoting an absolute separation of church and state that denies religious people and churches access to the public square and debate. It was a terrible misrepresentation of Kennedy’s speech and plays to a certain paranoia in the conservative Evangelical Christian and Catholic base.

Romney easily won Arizona with the conservative vote being divided by Santorum and Newt Gingrich who improved his showing in that state.  However Romney won Michigan and won the Roman Catholic vote showing a weakness in Santorum’s strategy to go after moral issues that may lay Catholics even have problems with. At the same time even though Romney won the popular vote by about 3% he split the delegates 15-15 giving Santorum a claim to have at least tied Romney in Michigan.

Romney stopped the bleeding and won what were described as “must win” states. However the post primary speeches revealed just how tenuous Romney’s wins were. Santorum closed the night with a passionate speech in which he attacked Romney and President Obama and looked like he was trying to cover some to the damage he had done over the past few days by focusing almost exclusively on moral and social issues where he already has the support of the conservative GOP base.

Romney made a speech that showed little passion and looked to me to be like a businessman trying to close the deal rather than a passionate believer in his cause.  Saturday is the Washington Caucuses and next week is Super Tuesday. I expect that Romney, Santorum and Gingrich will all have wins, just who wins what states and how big those wins are could define the next stage of the campaign.  But even more importantly it is how badly the candidates continue to damage each other will drive the narrative going into the later primary season. This could also effect their fundraising support and possibly increase the calls for another candidate at a brokered convention.

I expect that all four candidates will remain in the race and do whatever they can to gather delegates and seize the momentum. Into this mix the national GOP including major leaders are beginning to wonder what the primary campaign is doing to their chances of winning in November.  When people like Jeb Bush, Sarah Palin and others question the viability of their field in a general election it is time for the GOP to wake up.

The race continues and my prediction is that the GOP fratricide will continue and that if it does the chances of the party winning in November will go down with them. I think that  at this point barring reconciliation and a true united front in the GOP before the convention that any nominee that they field will be damaged goods and despite the obvious weakness of President Obama and the economy stand a diminished chance of winning in November. Democrats should not rejoice and count they’re chickens before they are hatched because they can still lose the election especially if the economy gets worse. However, if the inter-GOP civil war continues they stand an excellent chance of losing an election that even a few months ago I assumed as did many others was theirs for the taking.

It shall be interesting.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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February 27, 2012 · 11:19

The War that Cannot Be Won: Afghanistan 2012

“There is no single piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by a Soviet soldier . . . no single military problem that has arisen and not been solved, and yet there is still no result.”  Sergei Akhromeyev, Soviet General Staff Chief 1986

Sometimes one wonders if anyone actually reads history and if they do whether they actually want to learn from it. Back in 1979 the Soviet Union had advisors in Afghanistan. A lot of them. A local and indigenous Communist Party had some measure of political power and this was before the Soviets invaded.

However in March 1979 a major unit of the Afghan National Army in the city of Herat mutinied against the Soviets and the Afghan government. Before the mutiny was put down 50 Soviet advisors as well as 300 of their dependents were brutally murdered by Afghan Army personnel. A further 5000 Afghans died in the revolt.

Since 2009 the trend of Blue on Green killings, that is Afghan Soldiers or Security Force members killing US or NATO personnel has been increasing at a troubling rate. We should not be surprised, the one thing that the Afghan loathes above all is the foreign soldier on Afghan soil.  While some Afghans may desire a more modern society and something more akin to the Western democratic political model to include women’s suffrage they are in a distinct minority.  The fact is that as General Barry McCafferty recently noted regarding the murder of two US military advisors in the supposedly secure Afghan Interior Ministry “we may be seeing a watershed event after billions of dollars and 16,000 u.s. casualties. we see how shallow the impact we have on this primitive society is.” 

Approximately 130,000 US and NATO troops including a number of my friends are deployed in penny-packets across Afghanistan and are increasingly isolated and in danger.  The “inadvertent” burning of copies of the Koran in a garbage dump by US personnel has resulted in the deaths of at least 4 US military personnel and the wounding of 8 more and put our bases on lockdown as thousands of Afghans protest and attack them.  More than two dozen Afghans have died in the recent violence.

As deployed they are able to achieve local success but unable to secure the country. Dependent on supplies delivered by air or along tenuous supply lines hundreds of miles long these forces though numerous are dispersed and deployed in areas where their inherent technological and operational superiority is negated by weather, terrain and restrictive rules of engagement as well as a counterinsurgency strategy in which these advantages matter little and that they do not have enough troops to accomplish.

US and NATO forces are embedded with the Afghan Army, Police and Border forces, many of whom are either incompetent, corrupt or allied with Taliban or Al Qaeda. Most Afghans feel that any foreign occupier is a mortal enemy and mistakes such as the recent Koran burning only add fuel to the fire of hatred no matter how many times our leaders apologize. Formerly unclassified but now classified reports easily available on the internet including at US Government websites paint a picture of mutual distrust and animosity that can only be described as toxic between the Afghans and NATO personnel, especially Americans.

To make matters worse the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan are surrounded to the west by an ever more bellicose Iran, to the south and east by an unstable and often adversarial “ally” Pakistan through which 30-40 percent of their supplies transit.  To the north the United States and NATO are dependent on agreements with the former Soviet Central Asian Republics Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with most having had to transit Russia.  In the 1980s the Soviets only had make a withdraw across the border into their own country.

Another potentially disastrous situation would be for a war to break out between Iran and Israel or with the United States and our allies. The way our troops are deployed means that they cannot be easily concentrated to parry any threats and their isolation prevents them from being used as an offensive asset should a war break out against Iran.

The fact is that US and NATO forces are now in a very similar position to the Soviets in the mid to late 1980s.  We are engaged in a war where military success is not going to win the war. No matter what any politician says there is nothing that can change that unless they would be willing to commit to greatly increasing the number of ground forces in Afghanistan with the costs and logistical problems that would entail.

President Obama is in a “damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t” position.  If he keeps the status quo the danger persists and maybe increases. If he were to begin a more precipitous withdraw there would be the same dangers and possibly more during the withdraw. But mitigating against a faster withdraw is the 2012 election in which his Republican challengers would accuse him of “losing the war and betraying our troops.” However the chance to end the Afghan War from a position of strength was lost in 2003 when we diverted our efforts to the invasion of Iraq. That action gave Al Qaeda and the Taliban the breathing space that they needed to make a comeback and that was not on President Obama’s watch.

Geopolitically the presence of 130,000 US and NATO forces does nothing for regional or US national security and prevents those forces and the attendant resources needed to support them unavailable for any other dangers in the region. The goal of “creating a stabile and secure Afghanistan” is a myth. Afghanistan is not Iraq and will for generations remain a backward, tribal and religiously intolerant society that will never embrace western ideals that conflict with their culture.

The question now is how do we get out of this place, seal it off to keep terrorist threats from emanating from it and endangering US, NATO and Allied interests in the region.  The reality is also that no matter what we do that any defeat or withdraw will be grist for Al Qaeda, Iran and other Islamist propaganda.  The inability of the Soviets to “win” in Afghanistan was of the factors that brought down the Soviet Empire and ended the myth that Soviet Communism was invincible. The same could happen to the United States.

When presented with a cataclysmic strategic situation on the Western Front in 1944 Field Marshall Gerd Von Rundstedt was asked what should be done. His simple response was “End the war you fools.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch56NAL1C-I

We are not yet in a cataclysmic situation but the time to make decisions is now not later because there is nothing that can change the strategic or operational conditions in or outside of Afghanistan. Facts are facts and politicians from both the Republican and Democrat parties should stop trying to turn this into short term political advantage and look at the actual strategic interests of our country as well as our broader security and economic interests in the region.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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February 26, 2012 · 16:36

The Drudge Distort: A New Feature at Padre Steve’s World

I do most of my business on that dirty Internet that you were just talking about, where I find there is a lot of freedom to report exactly what I want.”  Matt Drudge

I have been noticing for quite some time that conservative media scion Matt Drudge, publisher of the Drudge Report has a penchant for producing sensational and sometimes misleading headlines to articles linked to his site. Sometimes the headlines twist the meaning of what was in the article so completely I have to believe that Drudge’s intent is to stir up and mislead an already paranoid readership who probably will not actually dig into the article to find out the truth.

Today’s entry was Town Considers Banning Smokers From Smoking — Outside Their Own Homes!

The article was from the local CBS News affiliate in Sacramento http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2012/02/24/rocklin-considering-banning-smokers-from-smoking-outside-their-own-homes/

The headline on the CBS site read “Rocklin Considering Banning Residents From Smoking Outside Their Own Homes.” However the town is not considering that. The council was asked by a citizen to do it but the Rocklin City Manager Rick Horst said the city has “no intention of considering the matter.”  This was actually mentioned in the article, but if you just read the headline you would think that the local town council is coming after smokers in their homes. The headline is a deliberate distortion of the story both by the local reporter and Drudge.

 

I look at Drudge a couple of times a day and have been doing so ever since Drudge broke the Clinton Lewinsky scandal.  The site often has great links and the format allows me to quickly scan his headlines to see what some of the major stories are before I start looking through the large number of other sites that I read to see what is going on in the world.

That being said since I returned from Iraq in 2008 I have looked at all news sites much more critically and weigh each of their respective biases when formulating my interpretation of events. When I started doing this I noticed that Drudge was masterful putting sensational headlines to various links, headlines that anyone who studies group psychology and mass movements knows are designed to inflame the passions of his readers by appealing to fear, in this case fear of intrusive government.  It is what William Randolph Hearst did so well in the 1890s, back then it was called yellow journalism.

Drudge is a internet news pioneer and a powerhouse and a lot of times he breaks news that is important or provides links to articles that are sometimes ignored in larger traditional news outlets. I admire the fact that he can get stories out sometimes before other media. Drudge’s presence does make the media more accountable.

That being said Drudge has a political bias and will distort headlines when it suits his purpose. His page will often feature links to several unrelated articles which paint a narrative of what he wants to point out.  He is very good at doing this and it is a reason for his immense popularity. Thus readers need to take that into account before getting too spun up when they see one or several sensationalist headlines on his site.

In the 2012 campaign it goes without saying that Drudge does his best to zing President Obama at every opportunity but he appears to me to be playing kingmaker in the GOP primaries in helping take down Newt Gingrich in Florida as well as Ron Paul and more recently Rick Santorum.

The Drudge Report for all of its prowess is as susceptible to bias and creating bias as is any traditional media outlet or reporter. Unfortunately many of Drudge’s readers can’t see that and as such what is highlighted on the Drudge Report often ends up repeated all over the media, especially the conservative “new” media even if the headline is a sensationalized distortion or outright falsehood propagated by another news site.

So I will be adding a tab at the top of this page called The Drudge Distort and when I notice something terribly distorted I will post a short note about it with the link and any other supporting articles.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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February 21, 2012 · 22:48

Christian Dominionsim on Display the Return of Constantine: We Were Warned by Barry Goldwater

“[I]n our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds — that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.” — Justice Robert H Jackson, American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 US 382, 438; 70 SCt. 674, 704 (1950)

It is Fat Tuesday and tomorrow Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, a season of penitence   and self reflect that hopefully draws the Christian into a closer relationship with Christ and his people.  Unfortunately I don’t believe that the political climate of the country now dominated by the most extreme will allow many people to enjoy that as politicians and politically minded preachers are using their “faith” to fuel animus against President Obama and Mitt Romney to further their political aims.

I am a Christian and a Priest in a small Old Catholic denomination. I am a graduate of a premier Evangelical Protestant Seminary where I came to appreciate and revere religious liberty. What I am going to write today may offend some but it has to be said. I believe that the cause of religious liberty, and for that matter the liberty of the Christian Church to be faithful to its call and unencumbered by unseemly political alliances is in danger due to the actions of people that in many cases honestly believe that they are defending religious liberty. Justice Robert Jackson prosecuted the major Nazi War criminals at Nuremberg and was able to view the results of what happened when churches that entered into such alliances.

Today I saw Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham basically say that President Obama was a Moslem without saying it flat out and that Mitt Romney is not a Christian.  The fact is I don’t care what Franklin Graham thinks about anyone’s faith that is not and never has been a criteria for elected office in this country. Meanwhile Rick Santorum running against Romney has all but compared the President to Hitler and the President’s Christian faith into question but then when asked if he was doing acted like he didn’t mean anything by his comments. I was incredulous as I watched and realized just how right Barry Goldwater was so many years about the character of this movement.

Barry Goldwater, the man who inspired Ronald Reagan to run for President and who was the conservative bulwark for many years in Washington DC warned what would happen when the Religious Right took over the Republican Party. Goldwater said of the types of people that currently dominate the conservative movement, if it can be still called that:

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.” November, 1994, in John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience.

Billy Graham, a saint if there ever was one and a man who used his faith to build bridges even while being unabashedly evangelical warned back in 1981 about the current crop of religious conservatives and stand in sharp contrast to the words and actions of Franklin:

 “I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.” Parade Magazine February 1, 1981, from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

What we are seeing today is the expressed manifestation of religious bigotry operating under the guise of defending religious freedom. It is being shown in its ugliness by the brazen If there is any way to lose religious freedom it is to follow this attempt to marry the Christian faith with the American government is not only short sighted but does great damage to the faith and our American liberties.

Rick Santorum, Franklin Graham and a host of influential of Evangelical leaders, politicians and even Roman Catholic Bishops have said what they believe religious liberty means to them and it has little in common with the understanding of our founders. It has nothing to do with limited government nor religious liberty. It is the imperial religion of Constantine, dressed up a bit to keep up with the times.  It is simply an attempt by these leaders to use the apparatus of the government to support themselves.

George Truett, the great Southern Baptist Pastor who served as President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote in his book Baptists and Religious Liberty in 1920 about the decidedly negative effect of when the Church became the State religion:

“Constantine, the Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ’s people which awakened his interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the marble steps of the Emperor’s palace, with the church robed in purple. Thus and there was begun the most baneful misalliance that ever fettered and cursed a suffering world…. When … Constantine crowned the union of church and state, the church was stamped with the spirit of the Caesars…. The long blighting record of the medieval ages is simply the working out of that idea.”

The late Senator Mark Hatfield a strongly committed Evangelical Christian before it became popular in Washington made this comment concerning those that are now driving this spurious debate:

“As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more than its self-serving misuse of religious faith. What is at stake here is the very integrity of biblical truth. The New Right, in many cases, is doing nothing less than placing a heretical claim on Christian faith that distorts, confuses, and destroys the opportunity for a biblical understanding of Jesus Christ and of his gospel for millions of people.”  quoted in the pamphlet “Christian Reconstruction: God’s Glorious Millennium?” by Paul Thibodeau

The current campaign is the imposition of Christian Dominionism onto the rest of the country. It may reference the Gospel and even certain Christian moral understandings even as it mocks other just as “Biblical” Christian teachings.

Back in 1981 Barry Goldwater said on the Senate Floor “The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent.” 

Like it or not Goldwater was right about this crowd. They will drive their churches and their political party into the abyss.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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February 10, 2012 · 00:56

Religious Freedom and Religious Hypocrisy the New Improved 2012 Model

In the last few days there has been a uproar regarding the Department of Health and Human Services decision to require employers, including church related service institutions including schools, universities and hospitals to provide FDA approved contraception in their health insurance benefits.  Such benefits are already law in over half of the States of the United States. While many provide some exemptions for churches in eight States churches and related religious institutions receive no exemption in the State laws from contraception mandates.

The Roman Catholic Church as well as some Evangelicals such as Richard Land the President of the Southern Baptist Church have called this an assault on religious liberty.  They have been joined by numerous politicians who with the exception of Rick Santorum seem more intent on using it as a rallying cry against President Obama because for years under Republican administrations they did not complain a bit about about this. It just seems disingenuous and I just have to wonder why now and not then?

However my purpose today is not to argue the particular merits of this case. I really don’t see it as a case of religious liberty but rather employment rights under the law which apply to all employers which religious institutions receive numerous exemptions that no secular employers receive in kind. Religious institutions receive tremendous amounts of tax exemptions, exemptions regarding employment rights and other benefits  that secular institutions or employers do not. That is a product of our continued religious liberty and the place of privilege of religious institutions, particularly Christian ones in this country.

We Christians can cry out that we are being persecuted but we do so from a position of privilege that Christians in other countries where persecution is real and often involves prison and death. I find it hard to take seriously the cries of persecution on this issue by Bishops who preside over diocese which have universities and hospitals that already provide the contraceptive coverage to employees that is being mandated now. Likewise I have a hard time reconciling a claim of persecution by many who have been complicit in the cover up of massive numbers of sexual abuse crimes by clergy and religious and who have used the courts to try to deny the redress if these issues by the victims of these crimes.

The point I want to make is that it seems to me that Christians in the United States generally only rally to the cause of religious freedom when it benefits them economically, socially and legally. I seldom see conservative Christians be they Catholic or Protestant come to the defense of religious rights of minority religions.  In fact more often than not it seems that they are all in favor of restricting the practices of those that don’t agree with them.

I respect the right of the Roman Catholic Church to its beliefs and practice. However it is hypocritical for it or other churches accept and lobby for special exemptions and privileges that no one else receives from the government and then cry that it is being persecuted when required to provide benefits that all other employers are required to provide. It is simply a matter of fairness.

Thomas Jefferson wrote to Horatio Spafford in March 1814 that “In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.” It seems to me that this is the case now.

I do think that the choice of Catholic bishops as well as the denominational leaders of churches which have no opposition to contraception to make this a major fight is a mistake. I believe that will harm the witness of the church and further increase the perception that American Christians care more about themselves and their rights than they do about those of others. Truthfully this kind of action is the opposite of the early church which in spite of real persecution never stopped loving or caring about those that persecuted them. But then those Christians didn’t have to worry about running the church like a business, political party or government.  I guess that must make a difference.

I do expect some hate mail on this post but oh well, such it life.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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February 6, 2012 · 23:59

Those that Should Know Better: Judgement at Nuremberg

“There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that – can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us: ‘Lift your heads! Be proud to be German! There are devils among us. Communists, Liberals, Jews, Gypsies! Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.’. It was the old, old story of the sacrifical lamb. What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It will be discarded sooner or later. Hitler himself will be discarded… sooner or later. The country is in danger. We will march out of the shadows. We will go forward. Forward is the great password. And history tells how well we succeeded, your honor. We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The very elements of hate and power about Hitler that mesmerized Germany, mesmerized the world! We found ourselves with sudden powerful allies. Things that had been denied to us as a democracy were open to us now…”  Judge Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) in Judgement at Nuremberg

I am getting ready to do some serious writing over the coming months about what Hannah Arendt called “the Banality of Evil.” Banality is not a word often used now days. But it simply means trivial, uncreative or simply ordinary and unremarkable.  I have been pondering this for years and believe that history has to be continually learned and written about in order not to see it repeated.

I studied Weimar and Nazi Germany as well as the Holocaust under Dr. Helmut Haeussler at California State University at Northridge as an undergraduate and in a year of graduate studies.  I also continued that study while in Seminary as well as in my Masters Degree in Military History. I was stationed in Germany several times, done an exchange tour with the German Army and my German friends say that I am fluent in German. I have been to Nuremberg, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. I have stood on the reviewing stand where Adolf Hitler preached to the multitudes of assembled party faithful on the Zepplinfeld in Nuremberg.

As such I am a realist about the unique horror of the Holocaust. I am a realist about people and how and the circumstances of the times brought ordinary people, men and women to either commit, support or simply turn their backs on the greatest atrocities ever committed by a “civilized” Western nation. A nation steeped in the traditions of Christendom and the Enlightenment.

I have broken out many of my old books used in my various degree programs as well as  as the resources of museums and universities now available on the internet. I am also watching films about the era. Not war films, films about the ordinary men that carried out these crimes either by pulling the trigger, pushing a button, signing an order or simply turning their backs and remaining silent.

At the end of the movie Judgement at Nuremberg Spencer Tracy as the Presiding Judge Dan Haywood concluded his sentencing remarks with this statement. It is perhaps one of the most powerful statement and something to remember as the Unholy Trinity of Politicians, Pundits and Preachers urge us to hate one another and those different than us. It is something that is especially needed in times of great societal stress as well as real and perceived dangers from without and within.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3BwK51YFgQ

“Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the Government of which he was a part. Janning’s record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial: If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe.

But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary – even able and extraordinary – men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat through the trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen. There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” – of ‘survival’. A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient – to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is ‘survival as what’? A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.”

This is an unsettling subject and people on the political right and left in this country are apt to compare their opponents to those that were tried at Nuremberg and those that led them. However it is possible that any party in society when divided by fear, hate and the desire for power can behave just as the industrialists, financiers, doctors, soldiers, jurists, civil servants, pastors and educators who oversaw those heinous crimes. People that should have known better.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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