The Michael and Cathryn Borden Memorial Book of the Day.*

Is a four year old too too young to be a saint? No, and there are innumerably more saints in heaven than have been canonized...

Pray for us, Nellie.

From Theotokos.org:

Exquisite Miniature: Nellie Organ, 1903-1908

Book Review from Family Roundup, the magazine of the National Association of Catholic Families, October- December 2011, page 17 (http://www.cfnews.org.uk/)


Exquisite Miniature, by Leo Madigan, is the story of Ellen (‘Nellie’) Organ. Nellie was born in Ireland in 1903; her father was a member of the Royal Artillery and her devout mother, a tertiary of St Francis. At the feet of her mother, she quickly developed a deep love for our heavenly father, whom she referred to as ‘Holy ‘God’. 

Losing her mother to tuberculosis at two years old, and her father unable to raise the children, Nellie was sent to an orphanage in Sunday’s Well. Here, it was discovered that Nellie herself was in very poor health. She had severe dental caries that was destroying her jaw, a painful deformity of the spine, and had also contracted tuberculosis. 

Her story is inspirational in that it shows such a deep faith, despite her young age, in the goodness of God. She seemed to understand redemptive suffering and was deeply loved in the convent, becoming widely known in the surrounding community as a child of remarkable faith and piety. Nellie Organ died in 1908 at the age of four. 

She exhibited such a longing for our Lord in the Eucharist and such a deep faith that she was able to receive the sacrament of confirmation and receive the Eucharist several times before she died. There seemed to be no doubt among those who knew her that they were in the presence of a saint. 

This is a beautiful story of a soul deep in love with God, one which made such an impact on all who knew her despite her short life.


When asked what Holy Communion was, [Nellie] said ‘Holy communion is Holy God I receive him on my tongue and He goes down into heart and makes me, the nuns and the other children holy.’


Mo "Worse" Dowdy could learn a few things from this four year old.



On the strength of that answer, the Bishop allowed Nellie, though barely four years old, to receive the Sacrament. Shortly after her death, Pope Pius X lowered the age of First Communions, citing Nellie as his inspiration.
 

Leo Madigan is a New Zealander who has lived for many years in Fatima, Portugal. He has written a number of books on the Fatima apparitions and shrine.

 *Huh? Look here.

The Michael and Cathryn Borden Memorial Book of the Day.*

Want your kid to grow up to be an egomanical machine politician who wouldn't know a scruple if it kicked him in his fat ass? PA's own Slow Eddie Rendell has written the how-to book for you.

From PoliticsPA:

Rendell's Book: What They're Saying

Former Governor Ed Rendell takes two things very seriously: American politics, and of course, good old fashioned American sports.

The two come together in Rendell’s newly released book, A Nation of Wusses: How America’s Leaders Lost the Guts to Make Us Great. The title stems from nothing other than inevitable sports frustration. In December 2010, after a Philadelphia Eagles game was cancelled for snow, Rendell notoriously commented that America had become a “nation of wusses.”


Another loser from Loserdelphia.


Reviewers already have plenty to say on A Nation of Wusses, both complimentary and not so complimentary.


Philadelphia Inquirer:
Karen Heller, an Inquirer columnist, slammed A Nation of Wusses: “This is so not Ed.”


“Rendell made his reputation by speaking from his gut, which proved a gift to reporters – which we miss to this day! – when he wasn’t berating us (not so missed). His temper is volcanic and his judgement is often questionable.”


She even questioned his role in the work, questioning whether Rendell wrote the the book or it was “dictated.”


“With a Nation of Wusses, this self-professed ‘crafty politician’ had time think and edit himself…The result is a feat of backslapping bromides best suited for the award banquets Rendell claimed to loathe.”


She particularly criticized his omission of any comments on Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett.


To conclude, she called A Nation of Wusses “wussy”, Rendell’s worst nightmare.


Philadelphia Daily News:
Way back in early May, Chris Brennan talked Rendell and wusses.


“The book, A Nation of Wusses: How America’s Leaders Lost the Guts to Make Us Great, is classic Rendell. He marvels at his own clever political instincts, complains about the attention of the media and waxes on issues he holds dear, such as investing in the nation’s infrastructure of roads and bridges.”


“No Rendell book would be complete without a few bawdy bits. He introduces us to “Swifty,” a [very randy] donkey donated by a union to the Democratic Party when Rendell was national chairman in 2000.”


Brennan, like Heller, called the anti-wuss a wuss himself: “In a very wussie-like move, Rendell admits he could not anger the union by firing Swift so he exiled the donkey to fringes of the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles that year.”


Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
James O’Toole said the book was on the lighter side.


“But this book is not a deep dive into political theory. Rather, it is a light stew of anecdote and sound-bite-size arguments on how the nation can shake off its seeming inability to confront chronic problems.”


“Mr. Rendell proves so enamored of the term that won so much attention after the aborted Eagles game, that he repeats it, in one form or another, again, and again, and again, throughout the memoir.”


O’Toole had enough of this excessive use of “wuss” terms: “OK, Ed, we get it.”


Publisher’s Weekly:
While Publisher Weekly’s Mel Brook found some of Rendell’s arguments “sound”, he felt that overall, A Nation of Wusses wasn’t well executed.


“Former Pennsylvania governor Rendell promises big critiques and robust prescriptions in this scattered leadership manifesto and political memoir, but fails to deliver.”


“Later in the book, Rendell reasonably claims that there is no greater example of the wussification of America than the growing neglect of our nation’s infrastructure, but this scattershot collection of anecdotes, political autobiography, and fealty to the Clinton administration isn’t the best way to make a case for improving the government’s track record.”


Additionally, Brook said some of Rendell’s attacks were “undone by sloppiness.”


CBS News:
Annie McCormick, a CBS News reporter, called out Rendell’s seeming obsession with the Clintons.


“In fact, his love for the Clinton’s and their service is mentioned throughout his memoir. For a man who is known for his charisma he seems envious of Bill Clinton’s ability to work a room.”


However, McCormik did contend that the memoir wasn’t all work, no play.


“It’s really a memoir about the 30 plus years of his life in public service…The book is speckled with fun along the way. He talks sports, impromptu stops for cheese steaks with President Clinton and a lengthy piece on the DNC’s overexcited donkey.”


The Philly Post:
Unlike other reviewers, Tom McGrath, Philly Post contributor, found A Nation of Wusses to be ‘so Ed’ and had only glowing comments to make.


“That take — not to mention language — are quintessentially Rendellian, and A Nation of Wusses is filled with plenty of funny stories and insider accounts as only Ed can tell them.”


“I’m well aware that Rendell’s prescription for solving our problems — essentially, government needs to be more active — is likely to turn off as many people as it will excite in these highly polarized times. But reading the book you can’t help but be reminded of why Rendell has been the most powerful and dynamic Philadelphia political figure of our generation.”


The reasons why Rendell was the most powerful Philadelphia political figure? Rendell’s candor and passion for problem solving.


“Candor and problem solving — both of which fall under the now-quaint notion of “leadership” —  are two things decidedly lacking from our politics these days. No, Ed Rendell won’t be running for president, or probably anything else in the years to come. But our country could use a few more Eds — and far fewer wusses.”


Regardless of feedback, Rendell claims not to care. He told Jim Gardner with ABC News that “his book won’t top any NY Times bestseller list, but he hopes some people read it and think about what he wrote.”

*Huh? Look here.

Mo Dowdy's afflicted conscience once again causes her to lash out in anger against God's grace.

The Old Gray Whore's old gray mare "mans" the front line of of the perverts' jihad against the Natural Law:

Is Pleasure a Sin?

You know, Mo, old Stalin could only get a hard-on while his toadies read accounts of the "confessions" that were beaten out of his enemies before their murders.

It’s hard to say what is weirder: 

A Sister of Mercy writing about the Kama Sutra, sexual desire and “our yearnings for pleasure.” 

Or the Vatican getting so hot and bothered about the academic treatise on sexuality that the pope censures it, causing it to shoot from obscurity to the top tier of Amazon.com’s best-seller list six years after it was published. 

Just the latest chapter in the Vatican’s thuggish crusade to push American nuns — and all Catholic women — back into moldy subservience. 

Even for a church that moves glacially, this was classic. “Just Love: a Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,” by Sister Margaret Farley — a 77-year-old professor emeritus at Yale’s Divinity School, a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and an award-winning scholar — came out in 2006. 

 Sister Margaret is a bitter old commie stooge who infiltrated the Brides of Christ to destroy the family, her country, and her Church. She should shut up and start her own religion because she obviously isn't a Catholic.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which seems as hostile to women as the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, spent years pondering it, then censured it on March 30 but didn’t publicly release the statement until Monday. 

The denunciation of Sister Farley’s book is based on the fact that she deals with the modern world as it is. She refuses to fall in line with a Vatican rigidly clinging to an inbred, illusory world where men rule with no backtalk from women, gays are deviants, the divorced can’t remarry, men and women can’t use contraception, masturbation is a grave disorder and celibacy is enshrined, even as a global pedophilia scandal rages. 

In old-fashioned prose steeped in historical and global perspective, Sister Farley’s main argument is that justice needs to govern relationships. In the interest of justice to oneself, she contends that “self-pleasuring” needs “to be moved out of the realm of taboo morality.” 

Immanuel Kant, who considered masturbation “below the level of animals,” must give way to Alfred Kinsey. “It is surely the case that many women, following the ‘our bodies our selves’ movement in the fourth quarter of the twentieth century, have found great good in self-pleasuring — perhaps especially in the discovery of their own possibilities for pleasure — something many had not experienced or even known about in their ordinary sexual relations with husbands or lovers,” she writes. “In this way, it could be said that masturbation actually serves relationships rather than hindering them.” 

A breath of fresh air in the stultifying church, she makes the case for same-sex relationships and remarriage after divorce. “When it truly becomes impossible to sustain a marriage relationship, the obligation to do so is released,” she writes, adding, “as when in the Middle Ages a broken leg made it impossible to continue on a pilgrimage to which one had committed oneself.” 

Taking on the Council of Trent and a church that has taken a stand against pleasure, Sister Farley asserts that procreation is not the only reason couples should have sex. Fruitfulness need not “refer only to the conceiving of children,” she writes. “It can refer to multiple forms of fruitfulness in love of others, care for others, making the world a better place for others” rather than just succumbing to “an égoisme à deux.” 

The Vatican showed no mercy to the Sister of Mercy, proclaiming that “the deliberate use of the sexual faculty” outside of marriage or procreation, or on one’s own, is wrong; that homosexual sex acts are “deviant,” and that marriages are by and large indissoluble. Sister Farley issued a statement that she did not intend for the book to be an expression or criticism of current official Catholic teaching, and academics and the head of her order rushed to her defense. 

This latest ignoble fight with a noble nun adds to the picture of a Catholic Church in a permanent defensive crouch, steeped in Borgia-like corruption and sexual scandals, lashing out at anyone who notes the obvious: They have lost track of right and wrong. 

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York blasted The New York Times after Laurie Goodstein wrote that, as the archbishop of Milwaukee in 2003, he authorized payments of up to $20,000 to sexually abusive priests “as an incentive for them to agree to dismissal from the priesthood.” 

Cardinal Dolan insisted through a spokesman that it was “charity,” not “payoffs.” But if you were the parent of a boy abused by a priest who went away with 20,000 bucks, maybe “charity” is not the word that would come to mind. 

Its crisis has made the church cruel. The hierarchy should read Sister Farley’s opprobrium against adults harming vulnerable children and adolescents by sexually exploiting them; respect for the individual and requirement of free consent, she says, mean that rape, violence and pedophilia against unwilling victims are never justified. 

“Seduction and manipulation of persons who have limited capacity for choice because of immaturity, special dependency, or loss of ordinary power, are ruled out,” she writes. 

If only the church could muster that kind of clarity, rather than Dolan-style “charity.”

 

The Michael and Cathryn Borden Memorial Book of the Day.*

Golly, who would despise, criticize, and mock a book review that took six years and a whole bunch of experts to write?

From the Catholic News Service:

Vatican warns against errors in nun's 2006 [Emphasis mine. F.G.] book

 The Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith warned June 4 that Mercy Sister Margaret Farley's 2006 book, "Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics," contains "erroneous propositions" on homosexual acts, same-sex marriage, masturbation and remarriage after divorce that could cause confusion and "grave harm to the faithful."

In a notification signed by U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada and approved March 16 by Pope Benedict XVI, the congregation said the book "is not in conformity with the teaching of the church" and "cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic teaching, either in counseling and formation, or in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue."

Sister Farley said in a June 4 statement that she feared that the notification "-- while clear in its conclusions -- misrepresents (perhaps unwittingly) the aims of my work and the nature of it as a proposal that might be in service of, not against, the church and its faithful people."

"I do not dispute the judgment that some of the positions contained (in the book) are not in accord with current official Catholic teaching," she said. "In the end, I can only clarify that the book was not intended to be an expression of current official Catholic teaching, nor was it aimed specifically against the teaching. It is of a different genre altogether."

She said the book "offers contemporary interpretations of traditional meanings for the human body, gender and sexuality" and "was designed to help people, especially Christians but also others, to think through their questions about human sexuality."

Sister Farley, who taught at Yale University Divinity School from 1971 to 2007 and now serves as Gilbert L. Stark professor emerita of Christian ethics, is a past president of both the Catholic Theological Society of America and the Society of Christian Ethics.

The five-page Vatican notification says the congregation first wrote to Sister Farley about its concerns through her superior, the president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, more than two years ago. Urged to "correct the unacceptable theses contained in her book," Sister Farley sent responses in 2010 and 2011 that "did not adequately clarify the (book's) grave problems," the congregation said.

Mercy Sister Pat McDermott, current president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, expressed "profound regret" at the issuance of the notification and said the process initiated by the Vatican congregation "has been lengthy, arduous and extremely difficult."

Calling Sister Farley "an extraordinary teacher and pastoral minister who is deeply committed to the Gospel and the following of Jesus Christ," she added, "While being faithful to her own faith tradition and commitments, her sensitivity to the varied circumstances, realities and needs of her students is the context she consistently honors."

The Yale professor emerita also drew praise from Harold Attridge, a Catholic layman who is dean of Yale Divinity School, who said she "has inspired generations of students ... to take seriously the task of theological ethics by examining the logic of our moral judgments in the light of Scripture, tradition and human experience."

"In time, I suspect, those who react negatively to (her book) will come to appreciate the important contribution it makes to what must be our constant effort to examine the foundations of our moral life," he added.

The congregation cited five specific problem areas in "Just Love," published by Continuum:

-- Masturbation: Sister Farley's view that masturbation "usually does not raise any moral questions at all" and "actually serves relationships rather than hindering them" does not "conform to Catholic teaching ... that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action," the notification said.

-- Homosexual acts: Sister Farley writes in the book that "same-sex relationships and activities can be justified according to the same sexual ethic as heterosexual relationships and activities." But the Vatican said "this opinion is not acceptable" because it fails to distinguish between persons with homosexual tendencies, who must be respected, and homosexual acts, which are "intrinsically disordered" and "contrary to the natural law."

-- Homosexual unions: Sister Farley says domestic partnerships, civil unions and same-sex marriage can "be important in transforming the hatred, rejection and stigmatization of gays and lesbians that is still being reinforced by teachings of 'unnatural' sex, disordered desire and dangerous love." But the Vatican said that position "is opposed to the teaching of the magisterium," which says that "respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions."

"Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity," the notification said, quoting the doctrinal congregation's 2003 document, "Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between homosexual persons."

-- Indissolubility of marriage: Sister Farley writes that "a marriage commitment is subject to release on the same ultimate grounds that any extremely serious, nearly unconditional, permanent commitment may cease to bind." But the congregation, quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, says love "cannot be an arrangement 'until further notice'" and marriage requires "an unbreakable union" between the spouses.

-- Divorce and remarriage: Although a "residual bond" exists between former spouses, it does not preclude remarriage "any more than the ongoing union between spouses after one of them has died prohibits a second marriage on the part of the one who still lives," Sister Farley writes in her book. But the Vatican congregation said such a view "contradicts Catholic teaching," noting that the catechism says those who remarry civilly after a valid first marriage "find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God's law" and cannot receive Communion "as long as this situation persists."

General problems surrounding Sister Farley's book include an incorrect understanding "of the role of the church's magisterium as the teaching authority of the bishops united with the successor of Peter" and "a defective understanding of the objective nature of the natural moral law," the notification said.

"In addressing various moral issues, Sister Farley either ignores the constant teaching of the magisterium or, where it is occasionally mentioned, treats it as one opinion among others," it added. "Such an attitude is in no way justified, even within the ecumenical perspective that she wishes to promote."

The congregation expressed "profound regret that a member of an institute of consecrated life ... affirms positions that are in direct contradiction with Catholic teaching in the field of sexual morality."

"Furthermore, the congregation wishes to encourage theologians to pursue the task of studying and teaching moral theology in full concord with the principles of Catholic doctrine," the notification added.

Sister Farley has been no stranger to controversy during her career as a Catholic theologian.

She was among two dozen U.S. women religious threatened with expulsion from their religious communities by the Vatican for signing on to an Oct. 7, 1984, ad in The New York Times arguing that Catholics should be free to hold a variety of views about abortion.

Archbishop Pio Laghi, then papal pro-nuncio to the United States, and now-retired Archbishop John R. Quinn of San Francisco withdrew as speakers at a 1985 meeting of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious because Sister Farley also was scheduled to speak.

Her case was resolved in 1986, when a Vatican representative announced that she and other signers had expressed "their adherence to the teaching of the church with regard to abortion." The Vatican termed Sister Farley's action a "retraction" but the nun and her Mercy superior said no retraction was involved.

In 2005, the Cardinal Newman Society protested her choice as a commencement speaker at St. Xavier University in Chicago, describing Sister Farley as "an outspoken dissenter from Catholic teaching on embryonic stem-cell research, sexual activity and homosexual 'marriage.'"

She received the John Courtney Murray Award for excellence in theology from the Catholic Theological Society of America in 1992 and won the 2008 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion, presented by Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, for "Just Love."

She also served as co-director of the All-Africa Conference: Sister to Sister, a project designed to empower African women to tackle the AIDS pandemic in their country.

 
Editor's Note: The full English-language text of the Vatican notifications is available at http://press.catholica.va/news_services/bulletin/news/29292.php?index=29292&lang=en#TESTO IN LINGUA ORIGINALE.

  *Huh? Look here.

 

Hitler was ambitious.

"Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition."

- From the transcript of Hussein Insane Husaner's commencement address at Wesleyan college in May 2008.

You have two choices: Either Benito's a low-grade moron...

...or, he's a Leninist-Leninist dictator wannabe without the stones to start shooting people.

Personally, I think he's both. And he's got the goofiest pair of ears in creation.


From ABC via Yahoo! News:

O: "ALL IS WELL", CALLS FOR SHEEP TO REMAIN CALM

Above: Benito Hussein Insaner dons military garb to show how tough he is and reassure his victims...er, fellow countrymen.

Either Dumbo The Presiphant* just outed his wife or he's an even bigger dope than I thought.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

If it lies like a commie, steals like a commie, and kills like a commie, it's a duck.

But nobody cares, which means if the AmericaLast media covers it up, it doesn't exist.

From National Review Online:

O’s Third-Party History

On the evening of January 11, 1996, while Mitt Romney was in the final years of his run as the head of Bain Capital, Barack Obama formally joined the New Party, which was deeply hostile to the mainstream of the Democratic party and even to American capitalism. In 2008, candidate Obama deceived the American public about his potentially damaging tie to this third party. The issue remains as fresh as today’s headlines, as Romney argues that Obama is trying to move the United States toward European-style social democracy, which was precisely the New Party’s goal.

In late October 2008, when I wrote here at National Review Online that Obama had been a member of the New Party, his campaign sharply denied it, calling my claim a “crackpot smear.” Fight the Smears, an official Obama-campaign website, staunchly maintained that “Barack has been a member of only one political party, the Democratic Party.” I rebutted this, but the debate was never taken up by the mainstream press.

Recently obtained evidence from the updated records of Illinois ACORN at the Wisconsin Historical Society now definitively establishes that Obama was a member of the New Party. He also signed a “contract” promising to publicly support and associate himself with the New Party while in office.

 Minutes of the meeting on January 11, 1996, of the New Party’s Chicago chapter read as follows:

Barack Obama, candidate for State Senate in the 13th Legislative District, gave a statement to the membership and answered questions. He signed the New Party “Candidate Contract” and requested an endorsement from the New Party. He also joined the New Party.

Consistent with this, a roster of the Chicago chapter of the New Party from early 1997 lists Obama as a member, with January 11, 1996, indicated as the date he joined.

Knowing that Obama disguised his New Party membership helps make sense of his questionable handling of the 2008 controversy over his ties to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). During his third debate with John McCain, Obama said that the “only” involvement he’d had with ACORN was to represent the group in a lawsuit seeking to compel Illinois to implement the National Voter Registration Act, or motor-voter law. The records of Illinois ACORN and its associated union clearly contradict that assertion, as I show in my political biography of the president, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism.

Why did Obama deny his ties to ACORN? The group was notorious in 2008 for thug tactics, fraudulent voter registrations, and its role in popularizing risky subprime lending. Admitting that he had helped to fund ACORN’s voter-registration efforts and train some of their organizers would doubtless have been an embarrassment but not likely a crippling blow to his campaign. So why not simply confess the tie and make light of it? The problem for Obama was ACORN’s political arm, the New Party.

The revelation in 2008 that Obama had joined an ACORN-controlled, leftist third party could have been damaging indeed, and coming clean about his broader work with ACORN might easily have exposed these New Party ties.
Because the work of ACORN and the New Party often intersected with Obama’s other alliances, honesty about his ties to either could have laid bare the entire network of his leftist political partnerships.

Although Obama is ultimately responsible for deceiving the American people in 2008 about his political background, he got help from his old associates. Each of the two former political allies who helped him to deny his New Party membership during campaign ’08 was in a position to know better.

The Fight the Smears website quoted Carol Harwell, who managed Obama’s 1996 campaign for the Illinois senate: “Barack did not solicit or seek the New Party endorsement for state senator in 1995.” Drawing on her testimony, Fight the Smears conceded that the New Party did support Obama in 1996 but denied that Obama had ever joined, adding that “he was the only candidate on the ballot in his race and never solicited the endorsement.”

We’ve seen that this is false. Obama formally requested New Party endorsement, signed the candidate contract, and joined the party. Is it conceivable that Obama’s own campaign manager could have been unaware of this? The notion is implausible. And the documents make Harwell’s assertion more remarkable still.

Is Roger Ebert a moron or is he part of the War Against Catholics?

A review of For Greater Glory

by Roger Ebert

La Ebert seems to be hung up on the notion of all those millions of 1920's Mexican Buddhists the film makers ignored because of bigotry...


In the years 1926 through 1929, Mexico fought a war over the freedom of Roman Catholics to worship. As a result of the Mexican Revolution, the constitution of 1917 stripped great power from the church, along with half of its enormous land holdings. But it was not until the regime of President Plutarco Elias Calles, who began to strictly enforce the constitution, that an uprising ensued. Supporters of the Catholic Church, who called themselves Cristeros, began a campaign against federal troops and had surprising success after they hired Gen. Enrique Gorostieta Velarde to lead their forces.

An atheist and a hero of the revolution, Gorostieta signed on for the cash and because he supported the principle of religious freedom. In the context of a new English-language epic called "For Greater Glory," that principle apparently applies only to Catholics. No other religion is ever mentioned. [The truth is only the Catholic Church can and will stand up to the power-mad. The bad guys don't go after "protestants" or Shintoists for a reason. - F.G.] The war took heavy casualties on both sides, and the United States played a behind-the-scenes role in protecting the interests of U.S. oil companies whose concessions controlled much of Mexico's oil.

This war has all the elements to make it well-known, but I confess I'd never heard of it. A close Mexican-American friend, well-informed in Mexican history, told me she never has, either. Is it in the usual history books? You'll learn a lot about it in "For Greater Glory," the most expensive film ever made in Mexico, an ambitious production with a cast filled with stars.

It is well-made, yes, but has such pro-Catholic tunnel vision I began to question its view of events. One important subplot involves a 12-year-old boy choosing to die for his faith. Of course the federal troops who shot him were monsters, but the film seems to approve of his decision and includes him approvingly in a long list of Cristeros who have achieved sainthood or beatification after their deaths in the war.

The central figure is Gorostieta, played by Andy Garcia with impressive strength and presence. He values his own leadership expertise, defends the fact that he is serving because of the money, and indeed is a brilliant general. There's an effective sequence where he warns a jealous Cristeros leader he is probably leading his men into an ambush. The man won't listen. Gorostieta lets him go, and then leads his own troops up behind the ambushing federales, who are exactly where he predicted they would be.

President Calles (Ruben Blades), who can't believe the Cristeros can possibly be successful, pursues the war beyond what seems to be all common sense. It's one thing to enforce legal restraints on the Catholic Church and another — a riskier one — to order such extremes as sending all the bishops and foreign-born clergy out of the country and authorizing the murder of priests in their own churches. In an early sequence, Peter O'Toole plays a 77-year-old priest killed by the federales, and it is Jose, the altar boy who sees him die, who later becomes the martyr.

So dedicated are Jose and a young friend to the Cristeros cause that they ride out on horseback and find the secret camp of Gen. Gorostieta. He rejects them as soldiers and puts them to work caring for horses. But his love for the boy grows so much that he regards him as a son, and indeed the boy only dies because he is on a mission for Gorostieta. The general surely deserves some of the blame for putting a child in a hazardous position.

"For Greater Glory" is the kind of long, expensive epic not much made any more. It bears the hallmarks of being a labor of love. I suspect it's too long for some audiences. It is also very heavy on battle scenes, in which the Cristeros seem to have uncannily good aim. But in its use of locations and sets, it's an impressive achievement by director Dean Wright, whose credits include some of the effects on the "Lord of the Rings" films. If it had not hewed so singlemindedly to the Catholic view and included all religions under the banner of religious liberty, I believe it would have been more effective. If your religion doesn't respect the rights of other religions, it is lacking something.

MLB umpires continue to run amok.

Thank goodness baseball died decades ago...

From AP via Washington's other newspaper:

Earn the privilege?: Yankees C Russell Martin says ump Laz Diaz punished him for arguing

Yankees catcher Russell Martin says home plate umpire Laz Diaz decided on an unusual way to punish him for arguing balls and strikes.

Martin says Diaz wouldn’t allow him to throw new baseballs back to his pitchers after fouls during New York’s 6-5 win over the Los Angeles Angels on Wednesday night.
 
Martin and Diaz got into it early in the game, and Martin says Diaz “was punishing me” by making all of the throws himself. Martin prefers to make the throws to keep his arm loose for base-stealers.

Martin says Diaz told him that throwing the balls was “a privilege I had to earn.”

Martin was mystified by Diaz’s treatment. He is a three-time All-Star selection and a Gold Glove winner with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2007.

Diaz was unavailable for comment because Martin spoke nearly an hour after the game.

 

DUMBASS MOVIE ALERT!

This one has the potential to be epically dumbass!

From IMDB:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, discovers vampires are planning to take over the United States. He makes it his mission to eliminate them. 

I can smell it from here... 

Today is the anniversary of one day among many when better men than you spilled their blood so you could be free to sell your freedom to commie killers and thieves.

 



 

Today is the anniversary of D-Day...

From Life.com via Yahoo! News:

Rare color photos mark D-Day anniversary 

 Click here to see the full collection at LIFE.com

 



 

Today is the anniversary of D-Day...

From Roto-Reuters via Yahoo! News:
Tiny remnants of war found in Omaha Beach sand

When Texas geologist Earle McBride visited Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, in 1988, four decades after D-Day, the visible remnants of the Allied Forces' invasion there had long ago vanished.

But he and a colleague would later discover the history of the June 6, 1944, invasion of Normandy's beaches - which marked a turning point in World War Two - lingered in the sand in the form of tiny pieces of shrapnel only visible under a microscope.

It wasn't a discovery that McBride and colleague Dane Picard of Utah set out to make during their tourist visit to Omaha Beach, where U.S. forces suffered their greatest casualties in the assault against heavily fortified German defenses.
"We didn't think about, ‘Hey, there should be shrapnel here?'" said McBride, 80, a professor emeritus at the University of Texas who retired in 2005 but still goes to his office five hours a day to study rocks.

But the geologists did what long ago became their habit when they visit a beach anywhere in the world: they put a bit of sand in a plastic bag and took it home.
McBride didn't fully analyze the sample for more than two decades. Finally, in retirement, he made a slide of the sand by using blue-dyed epoxy to bind the grains together.

On a recent day in his tiny office at the Austin university where he taught for 46 years, McBride showed a visitor what he found. Under a microscope, rounded grains - quartz, feldspar, clam and oyster shells - were visible, along with jagged-edged grains.

"You see how angular that grain is?" he asked. "It's an anomaly - if it had the same origin and history, it should have been well-rounded, too."

A different light source on the microscope revealed that the jagged-edged grains had a metallic sheen and a rust-colored coating, and when McBride held a magnet to some of the sand, the angular grains proved to be magnetic.

McBride suspected the jagged grains were shrapnel, and he used a scanning electron microscope to verify his hunch. It showed the grains were iron with a bit of oxygen from rust.

He also found the sand included small spherical iron and glass beads, which he and Picard believe were formed by munitions explosions in the air and sand.
"It's a detective story," McBride said. "Sand has an exciting history."

He said it's not surprising that shrapnel was left on the beach. Rather the surprise is that it remained there decades later, long after the wrecked ships, tanks and aircraft were gone.


But the shrapnel won't be in the sand forever, he and Picard wrote in Earth Magazine last year.

"The combination of chemical corrosion and abrasion will likely destroy the grains in a century or so, leaving only the memorials and people's memories to recall the extent of devastation suffered by those directly engaged in World War II," they wrote.

The research by McBride and Picard - a professor emeritus at the University of Utah - was published in the September 2011 edition of The Sedimentary Record, a scholarly journal.

"It was a great approach," said Xavier Janson, a research scientist at the University of Texas and an editor of the Record. "It was using a geological tool that you usually use to understand where sand grains come from, but instead, it was used to understand what happened on this beach."

For McBride, the discovery is an example of why he still finds passion in his lifelong work studying sedimentary rocks, the ones most commonly found on the earth's surface.

The latest project on his desk is a 450-million-year-old rock from Utah roughly the size of a softball; he's trying to reconstruct the history of how it formed and where its grains originated.

The earth is old, McBride said, and "all I can do is work on one little chunk of the history of sandstones. As we say, so many rocks, so little time."

The voters of the Wisconsin SSR box the ears of The Community Organizer From The High-Yellow Lagoon. [No mean feat, that.]

Even Cheeseland, which is home to some of the most virulent forms of American communism, voted for the reality seated deep in their empty wallets.

How 10 major media outlets reacted to Walker recall win

The votes are counted in the Wisconsin recall election, and Scott Walker will remain as governor in a victory big enough to avoid a recount. So did 10 major media outlets react to Walker's big win?

-  National Constitution Center via Yahoo! News 

 

 

 Gov. Scott Walker makes history, survives Wisconsin recall election

 

In a victory seen by Republicans as a mandate of a political agenda that included sharp cuts to public sector union rights, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday became the first governor in US history to win a recall election.

 - Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News

 

 

 Walker's Win is Obama's Loss

 

President Obama wasn’t on the ballot on Wisconsin, but Gov. Scott Walker’s decisive victory in last night’s gubernatorial recall is a stinging blow to his re-election prospects.

 - National Journal via Yahoo! News

 

Scott Walker's Wisconsin recall victory: 4 lessons

 Wisconsin's Republican governor gets to keep his job, delivering a big blow to organized labor. Still, Democrats may have won a big consolation prize -The Week via Yahoo! News

  

My personal favorite is this bucket of bilgewater from some totalitarian of the middle called Walter Shapiro at Yahoo! News, who also flings his poop for the New Republic:

What Scott Walker can teach Barack Obama

 The Wisconsin governor survived the recall, but he could have avoided it altogether by trusting voters with the truth.

 

 In this throw-a-chair era of political combat, it was inevitable that the recall election results from Wisconsin would be misinterpreted. Flush with vindication over having survived the over-hyped recall challenge, Republican Gov. Scott Walker declared, “Tonight, we tell Wisconsin, we tell our country, and we tell people around the globe that voters really do want leaders who stand up and make tough decisions.”

Walker, who won his rematch with Tom Barrett, the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee, by a larger margin than in 2010, is entitled to assume that yak herders in Mongolia—like everyone around the globe—cheered the results from Waukesha. The governor is even free to believe that facing down the public-sector unions in Wisconsin is courageous leadership on par with Abraham Lincoln preserving the Union. But what is flat-out wrong was Walker’s claim that voters crave leaders who make “tough decisions” the way that he did.

During Walker’s initial race for governor two years ago, Wisconsin voters knew that he was a fiscal and social conservative enraged by government spending plans like building a high-speed rail connection between Milwaukee and Madison. So no one should have been surprised when, shortly after taking office last year, Walker ripped up the tracks on the high-speed rail plan, spurning $810 million in federal funds. That is what political leadership should be—presenting your vision to the voters and, if elected, trying to enact it.

In contrast, Walker kept under wraps during his first gubernatorial race his driving dream of drastically curtailing the collective bargaining rights of public employees. This stealth campaigning was probably smart politics. Wisconsin, after all, is the state that pioneered public-sector unionism. But by not running on this issue, Walker deliberately deprived himself of an electoral mandate.

That hush-hush strategy partly explains the seismic shock that hit Wisconsin when Walker, a month after taking office, revealed the full extent of his anti-union agenda. At a dinner for his Cabinet in February 2011, the night before he unveiled his legislation (Act 10) to roll back union bargaining rights, Walker compared himself to Ronald Reagan standing up to the air-traffic controllers in 1981. The freshly minted governor said, “This is our time to change the course of history.”

What Walker missed with his bend-history rhetoric was that Reagan broke the air traffic controllers union in response to an illegal strike. This is what presidents and leaders do—react to unexpected crises in a way that reflects their already articulated governing philosophy.

But in Wisconsin, there was no public employee strike, just the budgetary shortfall that afflicted most states in this stagnant economy. Without a crisis, Walker went beyond his electoral mandate in an effort to neuter the unions. Act 10 was an act of preventive war, a surprise invasion into a political area that many voters had assumed was off limits.

[Related: Barrett slapped by supporter after conceding race]

Walker’s unquestioned triumph Tuesday in beating back the unions and the Democrats may vault him onto Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential list. But in truth, there is little honor for Walker in being only the third governor face a recall election—and the first to survive one—since the Progressives came up with this drastic remedy for bad governance more than a century ago. For all Walker’s glib talk about leadership, a politician is doing things wrong when he becomes so polarizing a figure that he has to spend nearly $50 million to avoid being booted out of office after just 19 months.

Walker’s hubristic overreach brings to mind Rahm Emanuel’s assertion, during the 2008 transition period after President Barack Obama’s election, “No crisis should go to waste.” Just after being named Obama’s White House chief of staff, Emanuel told a conference, “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.” As a result, Obama’s much-needed 2009 short-term stimulus plan (remember: the economy barely had a heartbeat) was larded with long-term projects like high-speed rail and revamping the nation’s electrical grid.

Upon taking office, of course, Obama had to go beyond the limited economic jump-start plan that he articulated during his campaign. The world changed on September 15, 2008, with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. During the remaining six weeks of the presidential race, neither Obama nor John McCain grasped that this Wall Street financial crisis would produce the worst sustained economic downturn since the Depression. This is why endlessly parsing campaign position papers is folly. Every presidency is shaped by unforeseen events and unimagined crises.

As we wait for the Supreme Court to rule later this month on the constitutionality of health care reform, Obama’s signature legislative achievement, it is worth pondering whether a more incremental approach by the president would have made more political sense. Throughout the 2008 campaign, Obama, to his credit, made clear to the voters that revamping the health care system would be a major priority. 

 

 But in his public rhetoric, Obama never said a federal mandate would be at the center of his health-care plan. During the Democratic presidential primaries, Obama even attacked Hillary Clinton for championing a legal requirement that every American have health insurance. (Needless to say, Obama’s turnabout is more than matched by Romney’s amnesiac approach to the health care mandate that he enacted as Massachusetts governor.)

My point is not to create a false equivalence between Obama and Walker, who spurned traditional norms of governing as soon as he took office in Wisconsin. But it is telling that two of the most unpopular aspects of the Obama presidency (the overreach of the stimulus package and the health care mandate) went far beyond his 2008 campaign oratory.

The secret to political leadership—whether as a governor or in the Oval Office—is to trust the voters with the truth. That way an electoral mandate can mean something beyond an opportunity to assert power for the sake of asserting power. If Wisconsin can provide a lasting lesson in the dangers of political overreach, then maybe the partisan excess of the third recall election in American history was not entirely wasted.

 

 

Murderous Cannibalistic Canadian Sodomite Porn Star Update

Let this horror show serve as a warning to all the soccer moms who think the S&M "mommy porn" of Fifty Shades of Grey is merely titillating and innocent fun between consenting "adults".

From AP via Yahoo! News:

Canadian body parts suspect arrested in Berlin

 

 From the Vancouver Sun via Yahoo! Canada News:

Body parts delivered to schools

 

 From The Atlantic Wire via Yahoo! News:

More Body Parts Mailed in Canada, Including a Fake One

 

 

The Mel Crapper, Jr. of Political "Science"...

...or, "Pay no attention to the man behind the polls."

In case you don't know, Mel Kuiper, Jr. is ESPN's NFL "draft expert". He created the position out of thin air and became rich without knowing a single thing about anything except self promotion.

G. "Wizz" Terry Madonna has done the exact same thing with political polling. 

From TPM:

Pennsylvania Poll: Obama Leads Romney By 12

 Once upon a time, kiddies, Unoriginal G. was a knownothing PoliSci prof at a D- II public university in Amishland. He used the serf kids in his classes to do polls and convinced one of the local yokel TV stations to put him and his polls on the air. Of course, he was labeled an "expert" so the peons would think ol' G. was chock full of gravitas.

After a couple of years of this nonsense, the Wizz was hired by Franklin & Marshall College, an elitist D-III institution in Lancaster, PA. [Rich kids without the grades to get into Ivy League schools go there.] Along with a bump in pay, G. got himself a whole bunch of establishment street cred and now you'd think he was the only person in the Commonwealth who knows anything about politics.

At least that is what the chattering classes want you to think.

As Rick Santorum reminded us a couple of months ago, G. is nothing but a failed local Democrass pol. [He couldn't even win the one Lancaster County Commissioner seat guaranteed to go to the top Democrass vote-getter.]

So the next time you see a F&M poll announcing the primacy of crony communism in our Commonwealth, remember that little Terry just made it all up so he could pretend to be a big shot.

SEX IS DEATH. (Acting out out of the closet)

I came to Carthage, where I found myself in the midst of a hissing cauldron of lusts. I had not yet fallen in love, but I was in love with the idea of it, and this feeling that something was missing made me despise myself for not being more anxious to satisfy the need. I began to look around for some object for my love, since I badly wanted to love something. — St. Augustine, Confessions


From AP [via Yahoo! News] comes this story of sodomy gone awry...and then some.

Canada police: Body parts victim a Chinese student

The man killed in a videotaped attack that was discovered after body parts were mailed to Canada's top political parties was a Chinese student, police said Friday, as authorities in France searched for the suspect, a Canadian porn actor.

Did he only do "gay" porn? Or was he a really good actor?

Montreal Police Cmdr. Ian Lafreniere identified the victim as Jun Lin, 33. Police have said he dated Luka Rocco Magnotta, who is now on Interpol's equivalent of its most-wanted list.

Rocco, huh? Sounds like one of my idiot Italian cousins.

A senior French police official said he is sure Magnotta is in France and that Magnotta has been there in the past. Another French police official said Magnotta apparently flew to Paris from Montreal last weekend, before the case emerged.

Lafreniere said Jun Lin doesn't have family in Montreal, but a family member reported him missing on Tuesday. He had last been seen May 24. 

Lafreniere said the murder occurred the night of May 24-25, and the suspect left for Europe on May 26.

According to a missing person's notice on the website of the Chinese consulate in Montreal, the victim was from the city of Wuhan and arrived in Montreal in July 2011.

"He is a Chinese citizen who studied at a university here in Montreal and was here for a certain time," Lafreniere said. "Thanks to the Chinese embassy, we have been able to reach the family with the sad news of what happened."

The case began Tuesday, when a package containing a severed foot was opened at the ruling Conservative Party headquarters. A hand was discovered at a postal facility, addressed to the Liberal party of Canada. A torso was found in a suitcase on a garbage dump in Montreal, outside Magnotta's apartment building.

Montreal police have said they believe Magnotta, 29, fled for France based on evidence they found at his apartment and a blog he once wrote about how to disappear.

So... it's political, too?

"What will hinder him the most is what he used to glorify himself, the web, with all the photos we have of him," Lafreniere said. But he warned that Magnotta is "someone who can disguise himself, he can change into a woman, wear a wig."

Maybe he was a really, really good actor and the Chinese guy thought he was dating a chick after all.

France's fugitive search unit has been ordered to hunt for Magnotta, the French officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about such searches publicly. They gave no details about his suspected whereabouts.

Lafreniere said Magnotta could be anywhere in Europe, and "there's even been talk he might have returned to Canada under another identity."

Police suspect Magnotta filmed the murder. The video, posted online, shows a man stabbing another man with an ice pick while the victim lies naked and tied up. The first man later reveals he has slashed the other man's throat. He also dismembers the corpse and performs sexual acts with it.

A "gay" porn snuff film. I'll bet this is much more popular in the sodomite community than they would be willing to admit. 

You have to admit that's real love there. After all, if you love a guy enough to keep sodomizing him after he's been murdered and chopped up...

"We have quite convincing proof of the crime he committed," Lafreniere said Friday, referring to the video.

Other body parts remain missing.

Imagine what sort of trophies this monster might keep.

Police said Magnotta is also known by the names Eric Clinton Newman and Vladimir Romanov, and they described him as white and 5 feet 8 inches tall (1.78 meters) with blue eyes and black hair. A police official said he was a porn actor.

Hey! Italian and Russian? That's my schtick!

Derek MacKinnon, a former resident of the building where Magnotta lived, said he was the only person Magnotta would speak to in the building. MacKinnon identified himself as an actor who played a serial killer in the 1980 horror film "Terror Train."

"I was a killer who killed 11 people in this film, so he was rather interested in my career versus his," MacKinnon said. "It was like a quick conversation, not like anything big. And knowing that we were both gay, I think that's probably where he had the connection with me because he was extremely cold, standoffish, wouldn't talk to anybody, but he would stop for a sec to say something to me, and I think that he felt there was a kindred spirit or something between the two of us."

La MacKinnon is lucky he's old and not so cute anymore. He could have starred in Magnotta's greatest cinematic effort.

He said Magnotta "was always well groomed" until the last time MacKinnon saw him, on May 25. He said Magnotta was having "a bad hair day."

 Cops just love witnesses who notice the little things.

"It was red, and he normally is dark," MacKinnon said. "It looked like a really bad wig."

It seems cannibalism is IN this year.

From AP via Yahoo! News:

Maryland man says he ate heart of victim

A 21-year-old college student accused of killing a housemate told police he ate the victim's heart and part of his brain after he died.

Alexander Kinyua hid the head and hands of the dead man in his family's basement laundry room in a suburb of Baltimore, according to the Harford County Sheriff's Office. Kinyua, a student at Morgan State University, was charged earlier in May in another attack in which the victim was brutally beaten but survived.

Kinyua, a Kenya native, is charged with first-degree murder and other charges in the death of 37-year-old Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie. He was ordered held on no bail.

His public defender did not return a call seeking comment, and a voicemail left at Kinyua's home was not returned.

Sheriff's spokeswoman Monica Worrell said the chief medical examiner had not yet officially identified the body parts, but that authorities believe they are those of Kodie, who was reported missing May 25. His cellphone and wallet were left in the home and police were initially told he had gone for a run.

On Tuesday, Kinyua's father, Antony Kinyua, called detectives and reported that another son, Jarrod, found what he thought were human remains in the house where they all lived in Joppatowne.

Jarrod found two metal tins, which held a human head and two human hands. Police say Jarrod confronted his brother, who said the remains were animals.

According to charging documents, Jarrod and his father went to the basement, where Jarrod "observed that the items he observed were gone and Alex Kinyua was cleaning the container he observed them in."

Detectives obtained a search warrant and found the head and hands in the house. Police say Alexander Kinyua admitted to killing Kodie by cutting him up with a knife and eating his heart and part of his brain.
Authorities say Kinyua told detectives the rest of the body could be found in a trash container at the Town Baptist Church in Harford County where they discovered remains.

The attack comes in the same week as a man in Miami chewed away another man's face along a busy highway and wouldn't stop until an officer shot him to death. Witnesses say 31-year-old Rudy Eugene growled at the officer and continued to chew away. 

The victim, identified as 65-year-old Ronald Poppo, a homeless man who lived under the causeway, was in critical condition and will be permanently disfigured.
On May 19, Kinyua beat a man with a baseball bat on Morgan's campus, fracturing his skull and making him lose sight in one eye, according to Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

Kinyua was arrested May 20 and released on $220,000 bail.

Morgan officials say Kinyua studied electrical engineering and was also in the ROTC.

According to court records, the victim, Kodie, a native of Ghana, was convicted in November 2008 in Baltimore County of sex offense and assault in September 2007 and harassment, stalking and telephone misuse for making repeated calls in 2007 and 2008 to a woman. He was sentenced to at least a year and a half in jail.