Life in the Third Layer

So, let me get this right: The Catholic church plans to choose as leader of the free world George W. Bush, who supports the death penalty even for mentally incompetent people, who is on record as refusing to allow a stay of execution even for the hearing of new and exculpatory evidence, and who cost uncounted (or at least unreported) numbers of civilian and military lives in an invasion of Iraq that was actively opposed by the Church and was unsanctioned by the United Nations. The Church hopes to do this by denying communion to John Kerry because he supports a woman’s right to choose.
The history of the Catholic church in choosing leaders for states is long and intriguing. (Someone should write a book about it.) The corruption and abuses associated with this history are the motivations for the whole idea of separation of church and state. Collusion between the church and the state has little to do with the holiness or godliness of kings and a great deal to do with power and influence traded over a negotiating table. So what do you suppose George W. Bush has that might interest a couple of Cardinals enough to make them endanger the tax exempt status of their property in the United States by an attempt to influence the outcome of a democratic election?

For a couple of months now. or maybe more accurately a couple of months ago, because I didn’t try a lot recently, I could edit and save entries, but the system kicked me back to the log-in when I tried to publish them.
I figured that today I had time to get it figured out, so I made a new entry and it posted the first time.
That is confusing.

I don’t know if I can get this posted or not, but I am trying to get in the pattern of updating my blog at least once a month or so.

Thank you for waking up the Democratic party and giving people hope. This is the element that has been missing from our political and economic lives — and therefore from our personal lives. We have watched the conservatives advance and the rich get richer, and we have been manipulated by their use of a perverted Christian message that falsely equates support for the Bush agenda (evil as it is) with faith and patriotism. Perhaps we had come to think there was nothing we could do as ordinary citizens to make our voices heard.
The Christian message from its beginning was one of hope for ordinary people, acceptance of people, and love (i.e., granting of human dignity and hope) to people of all races and creeds. Christianity needs to be taken back from the spoilers also, as does Islam. These creeds are both based upon individual human dignity and worth, not the power pyramid we see in them today. Jesus was a Democrat, maybe even a Socialist. Mohammed was a kind and generous person who taught love and acceptance of people. The teachings of both of these great messengers have been subverted to the service of powerful men who use them to enrich themselves and enslave others.
The Constitution of the United States, while it is a civil document and not bound to Christianity any more than to any other religion, has been ignored and misrepresented by the Bush admininistration. Our rights and liberties have been questioned and limited, and Bush has found “loopholes” to get around the provisions of the document he has sworn to uphold.
Thank you again for waking up the Democrats and letting us hope that we can take back our nation. The other candidates who came forward to join the Democratic field of hopefuls came and succeeded because of the energy that you engendered, and now we can really look forward to a new administration.

Watching 60 Minutes last night, I was again impressed by the grace with which evangelical Christians so frequently come down on the wrong side of the logic fence. How is it that they can ask us to believe that government (education, economy, environment, human rights, etc.) should be in the hands of people who believe that the Apocalypse is already written by God into “future history” and most of the world is going to Hell very soon anyway?

I had my photograph taken with Wesley Clark tonight! I am the one in the foreground.