Teabagged

It is a strange saturday. I have a cold and forced myself out of bed at 9:30 a.m., but would have preferred to lay in bed all day. Very little business, but still, checks going out. A wack job with serious bi-polar tendencies came by to sell me some things that I have absolutely no use for, but I felt bad for her and coughed up some dough. Feel like I have 10 things to do and I can only remember 6 of them. Psychic gnawing.

We got a county complaint a few weeks ago about our yellow lab running around unrestrained when we were not home. We have had 5 or 6 great dogs in the last 30 years and never a problem like this one. Or any problem, honestly.  She is a female pure bred with all of the brains and obedience bred out of her. Our good friends Jim and Janis agreed to take her for some remedial work. Janis taught third graders for thirty years in Chicago as well as service dogs and she is taking it back to square one with Maddie. She is an absolutely fantastic teacher. They may keep her. I feel pretty much a failure but still miss her.

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Got this letter from a friend this morning:

In the NY Times today is a blurb about the Obama White House Seder.  I cannot think of a better example of how the change in the White House affects me, and others, personally.   Reading the story I feel encouraged and connected in a way to the U.S. that I never felt before.  Here is a leader who despite the trappings and power of office somehow manages to convey that the greatest of us needs at times needs to be humbled, and the humblest among us shall be lifted.   Differences in peoples are to be explored and celebrated- as opposed to feared and demeaned.   He connects to Jews not necessarily in theology, but in the human element- slavery shall not be forgotten.  Suffering is not the exclusive domain of anyone- nor is the necessity for the empowered to attend to the needs of all.  The tradition of story telling and inclusion of others that has been an important element of all my family seders (no matter how informal) is an element that all cultures of the now or formerly oppressed peoples can share.   Next year in Jerusalem indeed.    Shalom


With all the bad news around it was a pretty positive letter. Than I received this picture from the guy who sent me all of the babybodyparts stuff. From Kill the Jews Day in Los Angeles. I am impressed that he spelled Israel right, usually you see it spelled Isreal on this type of signage.

So the day is kind of a wash on the jew front.


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I was talking to Jim about the whole teabag movement. I wondered if it bothered him that all of the faces at the rallies were always white. Jim has been to a teabag rally and actually told me that it was okay that there were no minorities present because white people basically paid all the taxes. I tried not to choke. Jim is a fiscal conservative who is socially liberal, you know the drill. Love the guy but we don't always agree. Guess it depends whose ox is getting gored.

He thinks that I allow the voices of a few wackjobs on the lunatic fringe to obscure the greater message of the conservative movement. None of the conservatives that I know are the least bit concerned with associating with racist, violent trailer trash and white supremacists. Like Sarah Palin, says, We are all teabaggers. What an unfortunate name for a political movement. Nuts really.


Every time I hear a tea bagger talk, from Palin to Bachmann on down, I think, jeez, do these people ever open a book? It has empowered a lot of very stupid and uninformed people to vent their anger and to pretend that they have a clue as to what is going on. Unfortunately few can speak in a complete sentence and they make little sense to me. But I've said it all before and there's no point repeating myself again. Their penchant for violent rhetoric is alarming. Feed the wind, reap the whirlwind.


I thought it was funny that the shmegeg who came up with the idea of throwing bricks through legislators windows and hates big government so much actually lives on a government disability check.


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Obama is finally showing some huevos. Slammed through health care and made 15 recess appointments, defeating Republican stalling. It's about time. Wasn't it a short time ago that Dick Cheney was saying that he could care less about sagging poll numbers in Iraq, that people could make their case known at the ballot box? Maybe we can go through both terms without a single republican vote on a bill. That would be sweet.


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Something very creepy about the whole catholic molestation business in Wisconsin. These deaf boys told everybody who would listen what was going on, sadly to no avail. From Laurie Goodstein's article in today's New York Times : 


They told other priests. They told three archbishops of Milwaukee. They told two police departments and the district attorney. They used sign language, written affidavits and graphic gestures to show what exactly Father Murphy had done to them. But their reports fell on the deaf ears of hearing people.


This week, they learned that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, received letters about Father Murphy in 1996 from Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, who said that the deaf community needed “a healing response from the Church.” The Vatican sat on the case, then equivocated, and when Father Murphy died in 1998, he died a priest.The deaf men and their advocates were told that Father Murphy, the school’s director and top fund-raiser, was too valuable to be let go, so he would be given only administrative duties.

They were outraged. They distributed “Wanted” posters with Father Murphy’s face outside the cathedral in Milwaukee. They went to the police departments in Milwaukee, where they were told it was not the correct jurisdiction, and in St. Francis, where the school was located, Mr. Conway said. They also went to the office of E. Michael McCann, the district attorney of Milwaukee County, and spoke with his assistant, William Gardner.


“A criminal priest was an oxymoron to them,” Mr. Conway said. “They said they’ll refer it to the archdiocese.”


Calls to Mr. McCann and Mr. Gardner this week were not returned.

I can not fathom the pain that these children have undergone and the scarring that they have carried for life. From authority figures that they trusted. And the concurrent whitewash from Rome. Pedophilia is not an exclusive province of the catholic church, but it certainly was a cottage industry in some diocese. Sexuality is a powerful thing. Were these priests always gay and did they join the priesthood for cover or was the abuse a carryover from a theology that denied normal human sexual relations? I unfortunately do not believe in the devil or hell, but if there was indeed such a place, I hope that there is a special room for those that labored to cover up these poor kids' suffering. Penance can go so far, at some point we need jail time. Of course, the Vatican is in full court press, blaming the bad publicity on elements that wish to hurt the holy see. I know a lot of great catholics, people that I love, and I am not condemning their faith. But there needs to be accountability.