COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

67 Million Catholics Could Decide the US Presidency



There is no other greater block of voters. Catholics outnumber blacks 2:1 and their votes are critical in every key state. Catholics have held every political and economic office in the country and have provided more numbers to the US military than any other religious group. They have their own schools hospitals and political organizations. In sheer numbers there are more Catholics in the world than Muslims. However in their sheer numbers lies both their strength and weakness as a voting block. Catholics cover so many nationalities and is so inclusive as a religion, that they rarely vote as a block.

Also hidden in their numbers is the fact that many Catholics are nominal participants in their religion. Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry are all Catholics.

This video is a call to arms.

67 Million Catholics could decide the US Presidency. If they show up in their numbers and vote their faith and doctrine, McCain will win.

From American Thinker:

Eileen McDevitt
Disgusted and perhaps outraged at the false and misleading statements made by apostate Catholics Nancy Pelosi and Joseph Biden, Catholics (but not the Church itself) have responded with a request to the devout to email and circulate a video that captures both their faith -- and their belief in America.

Whether or not you agree with all the principles held dear by the faithful, it is a moving and well-presented piece.

Once upon a time political campaigns followed the same tenor; campaigners sought to inspire and draw people into a fellowship of pride. Groundswells of patriotism, not anger, were once the norm."



79 comments:

  1. I'm a Lutheran Swede, more Swede that Lutheran, these days, my wife, Irish Methodist, she put in nearly twenty years working with disabled kids. Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

    Vote for the kids.

    She did, with her whole life.

    I did too, pulled the lever for Sarah and John.

    You can too.

    It' simple.

    It feels good to do so.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If people of faith vote with the conviction of their core Christianity, support the believe in the glory and preservation of life, decency and family, McCain and Palin will win.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Business sometimes takes me to a part of Brooklyn where there is a very heavy concentration of conservative Jews. It always brings a smile to my face to see young couples with four, five and six young children carrying their Bible, or seeing their school busses, taking them to their religious schools.

    It reminds my of the Amish in Pennsylvania where hard work, family and commitment to their community and culture and bringing no harm to others is their life.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It felt good, taking the wife to work, then going farming. Knowing you are taking part, making it a little better.

    I miss it.

    Pull the lever for Sarah and John.

    ReplyDelete
  5. If people of faith vote with the conviction of their core Christianity, support the believe in the glory and preservation of life, decency and family, McCain and Palin will win

    Maybe, if Catholics were single-issue voters. While it is true that Catholics helped carry Bush in 2004 (probably because John Kerry is such a fuck head), in 2006, Catholics favored Democrats 55 to 45.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You always got to bring things down to earth, first post.

    Right down to earth.

    I don't like you.

    I like the kids.

    And a good woman that hits the time clock, for twenty years.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I perceive, you have done nothing with your life, or very little.

    ReplyDelete
  8. "Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate to ever run for the office of President of the United States." Professor Robert George.

    ReplyDelete
  9. A Catholic Shift to Obama?
    By E. J. Dionne

    In an interview on Monday, Gabino Zavala, an auxiliary bishop in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, said his fellow bishops have long insisted that "we're not a one-issue church," a view reflected in their 2007 document "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship."

    "But that's not always what comes out," says Zavala, who is also bishop-president of the Catholic peace group Pax Christi USA. "What I believe, and what the church teaches, is that one abortion is too many. That's why I believe abortion is so important. But in light of this, there are many other issues we need to bring up, other issues we should consider, other issues that touch the reality of our lives."

    Those issues, Bishop Zavala said, include racism, torture, genocide, immigration, war, and the impact of the economic downturn "on the most vulnerable among us, the elderly, poor children, single mothers."


    "We know that neither of the political parties supports everything the church teaches," he added. "We are not going to create a culture of life if we don't talk about all the life issues, beginning with abortion but including all of them."

    ...

    Bishop Zavala's desire to speak out with an alternative view is a sign of how much has changed in four years: Progressive Catholics are now as organized as conservative Catholics were in 2004. At Web sites such as prolifeproobama.com, they are arguing that the abortion question does not trump all other concerns.

    The impact of the new Catholic politics could be substantial. Catholics are often a decisive electoral group partly because church membership ranges from upscale to working-class whites, a large community of Latinos, and a significant number of African-Americans.

    Catholics typically make up about a quarter of the electorate, and they are strategically located. White Catholics are important in such swing states as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, while Latino Catholics make up a notable share of the populations of New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Florida.

    Polls have varied in measuring the Catholic shift toward the Democrats, but Obama seems to be running ahead of John Kerry's performance in 2004. According to the network exit polls, Bush carried 52 percent of the Catholic vote to 47 percent for Kerry. By contrast, a mid-October Pew Research Center survey showed Obama leading John McCain among Catholics by a margin of 55 percent to 35 percent

    ReplyDelete
  10. My wife and I, we already made our choice.

    It's past, for us.

    We chose life.

    Do the same.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Pakistan, Taliban, War on Terror, few care, now

    More attacks against the Afghan main supply route

    If this report from the Times is accurate, Taliban forces inside Pakistan are stepping up their effort against the Coalition’s main supply route into Afghanistan:


    Read More @ westhawk

    ReplyDelete
  12. Westhawk continues to focus on the LOC, reminiscent of Lang's obsession with same through southern Iraq - waiting, pining, for the inevitable game-changer in an endeavor that doesn't float one's boat.

    Funny how the inevitable never arrives to satisfy either prediction or desire.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I missed the best part:

    "With only an air bridge to Afghanistan, the U.S. would be able to support a much smaller tribal-based, special operations-led campaign of divide-and-conquer, punitive raiding, and general chaos throughout the theater."

    "Interesting" characterization of SOF.

    ReplyDelete
  14. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  15. George Packer at the NYer:

    First Colin Powell, Now…

    Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.

    In recent years, Adelman and his friends Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz fell out over his criticisms of the botching of the Iraq War. Still, he remains a bona-fide hawk (“not really a neo-con but a con-con”) who has never supported a Democrat for President in his life. Two weeks from now that’s going to change: Ken Adelman intends to vote for Barack Obama. He can hardly believe it himself.

    Adelman and I exchanged e-mails today about his decision. He asked rhetorically,

    Why so, since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?

    Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.

    When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.

    Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.

    That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.

    I sure hope Obama is more open, centrist, sensible—dare I say, Clintonesque—than his liberal record indicates, than his cooperation with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid portends. If not, I will be even more startled by my vote than I am now.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Bobal,

    You certainly don't know much about me. My mother specialized in dealing with 'disadvantaged kids' - mental retardation and Down's syndrome in particular. I spent a fair bit of time in my high school years working with these kids. Through college I spent a fair bit of time working with children through a psychiatric hospital. I feel I have a fair idea how bad it can be and it is because of that that I am appalled at how lightly some people take Palin's decision to run for VP while choosing to bring up a down's syndrome child. That is no easy task dealing with a 'special needs' child of that order.





    More to the topic of this post - I find it ironic that Obama is much more religious, and Christian religious, than McCain is.

    ReplyDelete
  17. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  18. oh, and Doug, with respect to Reverend Wright and your moaning on about not defending him as described by your caricature of his views - From what I've seen of him he is not racist. He speaks of race and racial inequities but he, to the best of my knowledge, has not asserted that race, the genetics of race, determine how one acts - unlike Mat who specifically advanced this argument.

    ReplyDelete
  19. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Great, Ash, you and Trish can drop Acid and suck Powell's Dick, just so you'll be in touch with REALITY!
    DUMBFUCKS!
    ---
    Laura Ingraham piece on Powell that she wrote in 1995. - PDF

    ReplyDelete
  21. By E. J. Dionne ... ROTFLMAO

    ReplyDelete
  22. Fsckoff, Ashley.

    What I advocate is the preservation of my Hebrew ethnic cultural/religious national identity. Genetics plays a role in that. So what?

    ReplyDelete
  23. Will Chaput Be Kaput After Criticizing Obama?
    - Steve Schippert
    ---
    My Reply:

    Steve,

    Thanks for sending your article.
    Only this Orwellian Candidate could talk about the "Health of the Mother"
    when the topic is infanticide and his support of it!

    ...as if leaving the "previable fetus" in the linen closet to suffer and die will have some positive effect on the mother.

    Doug

    ReplyDelete
  24. Sorry, Trish,
    I thought one of Ashley Brainless Farts was yours.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Infanticide for Black Babies isn't Racist, Ash, it's MURDER!

    ReplyDelete
  26. Great, Ash, you and Trish can drop Acid and suck Powell's Dick, just so you'll be in touch with REALITY!
    DUMBFUCKS!

    - Doug

    Grumpy, Doug? I've got some more Doris Day. Say when.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Is that the erudite DOUG who previously said on Tue Oct 14, 09:38:00 AM EDT:

    Doug said:

    Best to have your kids bend over and take it in the ass

    Best to have your kids bend over and take it in the ass

    Best to have your kids bend over and take it in the ass

    Best to have your kids bend over and take it in the ass

    Best to have your kids bend over and take it in the ass

    Best to have your kids bend over and take it in the ass

    Best to have your kids bend over and take it in the ass

    Best to have your kids bend over and take it in the ass

    Best to have your kids bend over and take it in the ass

    Best to have your kids bend over and take it in the ass
    Tue Oct 14, 09:38:00 AM EDT

    Therapy Doug, Couch Time

    ReplyDelete
  28. I'm beyond salvation this morning, spent the night reading Academic apologies for hate filled, unrepenitent terrorist Murderers who got off Scot free to indoctrinate kids and elect a Marxist, Amerikkka Hating Baby Killer POTUS.

    ReplyDelete
  29. My mother specialized in dealing with 'disadvantaged kids' - mental retardation and Down's syndrome in particular.

    Sweet Mother of God she failed every way possible with you.

    ReplyDelete
  30. "with respect to Reverend Wright ....From what I've seen of him he is not racist. He speaks of race and racial inequities but he, to the best of my knowledge, has not asserted that race, the genetics of race, determine how one acts - unlike Mat who specifically advanced this argument."

    You are the most screwed up person on any blog I have read to date. You're entitled to your opinion but try to have it touch reality just every so often, it aids digestion because you are so full of shit you need a good enema.

    (sorry Doug , that should have been your line)

    ReplyDelete
  31. Trish: When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird.

    The bottom line is he helped balloon a $700 billion dollar hit on the taxpayers to $840 billion dollars by tacking on 450 pages and a crapload of pork. Then McCain has the audacity to complain about Obama's plans to redistribute wealth, and he says, "Elect me, I'll freeze discretionary spending" which sounds to me a lot more like "I'm not pissing on your leg, it's raining,"

    ReplyDelete
  32. Doug,

    I'm beyond salvation this morning, spent the night reading Academic apologies for hate filled, unrepenitent terrorist Murderers who got off Scot free to indoctrinate kids and elect a Marxist, Amerikkka Hating Baby Killer POTUS.

    Tue Oct 21, 10:04:00 AM EDT

    Hey me too. Revolution now!

    ReplyDelete
  33. Is "Nearer My God To Thee" on the jukebox? Or we can hum it.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Kim was for him before she was against him before she was for him before she was against him.

    She's Transpolitical.

    ReplyDelete
  35. ash,
    you say mr. wright isn't a racists. the explain why is subscribes to the teachings of Black Liberation Theology?

    ReplyDelete
  36. Poisonous “Authenticity” by Heather Mac Donald

    Like Hale, Hilliard argued that disrupting the classroom through “impulsive interrupting and loud talking” is inherently black. His bogus Afrocentrism, propounded in his “African-American Baseline Essays,” metastasized in educational circles during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Hilliard argued that Western civilization was at once stolen from black Africa and crippling to black identity. As the late Arthur M. Schlesinger recounted in his 1991 alarum about multiculturalism, The Disuniting of America, Hilliard urged schools to teach black students that Egypt was a black country; that Africans invented birth control and carbon steel; that they discovered America long before Columbus; that Robert Browning and Ludwig van Beethoven were “Afro-European”; and that the Atlantic Ocean was originally named the Ethiopian Ocean.

    Wright’s speeches have shown how quickly academic insanity becomes incorporated into practice. And now we may be on the verge of seeing such madness spread into the White House. The mainstream media have had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into questioning Obama’s affiliation with Wright. By now, Wright’s 9/11 and AIDS diatribes are well-worn—and Obama’s repudiation of them a no-brainer. It is imperative that someone at CNN or the New York Times ask Obama whether he, too, believes that the way to “fix the schools” is through Afrocentric curricula and double standards in student discipline, and whether he, too, believes that blacks only think with the “right side” of their brains.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Mo Dowd thinks Wright is a Racist, but to Ashley, that means Dowd is a RightWingNut.

    ReplyDelete
  38. can hum it.

    I'll bet you can.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Terrorist Murderers Dohrn and Ayers got Millions from Barry by way of Annenberg and "Small Schools" headed by Maoist Michael Klonsky.
    ...Dr. M Klonsky, that is.
    Highly respected in Communist Academic Circles in Chicago.

    ReplyDelete
  40. From what I've seen of Wright hasn't indicated he believes that the genetics of race determine behavior. Maybe he does believe that. Personally I don't really give a shit. He's not running for POTUS and I've seen no evidence that suggests Obama holds those views. In fact Obama has specifically repudiated the Wright clips that ran on FoxNews over and over and those don't suggest that race determines behavior. He did say "God Damn America" Oh my, the horror, the horror.

    ReplyDelete
  41. ash said...
    oh, and Doug, with respect to Reverend Wright and your moaning on about not defending him as described by your caricature of his views - From what I've seen of him he is not racist. He speaks of race and racial inequities but he, to the best of my knowledge, has not asserted that race, the genetics of race, determine how one acts - unlike Mat who specifically advanced this argument.


    Ash...

    The "jews" have been wiped off this planet from one end to the other...

    Jews seeking not to be plowed under by those such as rev wright is our right to survive..

    Rev Wright is a piece of crap...

    The fact that you dont see it?

    doesnt surprise me...

    But please KNOW one thing....

    Those that support, endorse, make excuses for wright are those not worthy of support...

    Dont be surprised when the backlash against those that support farakhan, cone, wright happens...

    it will not be pretty and truthfully?

    i wont give a shit...

    The Wright's of the world have re opened and ignited real bigotry...

    it will be 40 years from now when their sickness is gone...

    until then?

    just watch minority aid programs evaporate...

    ReplyDelete
  42. Doug,

    Did you see the sign up sheet for the revolution?

    I'm bringing a covered dish. Would you like to be one of the persons of interest?

    ReplyDelete
  43. " In fact Obama has specifically repudiated the Wright clips that ran on FoxNews over and over "
    ---
    AFTER sending his girls there for years, and AFTER Supporting the Church, including the "Trumpet" Newsletter, Proclaiming Farakahn Man of the Year!

    ...not racist, at all Ash, you Dumbfuck!

    ReplyDelete
  44. Potatoes au gratin. I do a mean potatoes au gratin.

    ReplyDelete
  45. A Covered Dish?
    Cherry Jello with Marshmellows?

    ReplyDelete
  46. No Jello! No, no, no, no. Traumatic food memories of same at midwest potluck picnics!

    ReplyDelete
  47. In 1969, after the Manson family murders in Beverly Hills, Ms. Dohrn told an S.D.S. audience:
    ''Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim's stomach.''

    A month earlier, a profile of Ayers in Chicago Magazine included a picture of Ayers stomping on the American flag.
    Marcia Froelke Coburn wrote the accompanying article: “Talk to him for any length of time and some rhetoric of the past slips into the conversation. ‘I think there will be another mass political movement,’ he predicts, ‘because I believe that the kind of injustice that is built into our world will not go quietly into the night.’”

    ReplyDelete
  48. You shoulda seen the Presbyterian Potlucks in Avenal, back in the Halliburton Heydays!

    ...Lime and Marshmellows was big too.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Doug: Kim was for him before she was against him before she was for him before she was against him.

    This is what I'm for:

    1) Peace through superior firepower.

    2) 100% access control on both borders.

    3) The delegation of most federal powers back to the states in areas such as building infrastructure and funding education. If that means some states like West Virginia take a hit because they were getting more federal largesse back than they were paying in, so be it, we're not running a charity here.

    4) No more War on Drugs, War on Terror, War on Cancer, War on Poverty, War on Inflation, or War on Puberty. If you really want to do those things wear a button, don't take my money.

    5) Public funding of all election campaigns to eliminate the influence of corporate interests in government. Don't cry "free speech" to me, the future of our representative democracy is in the balance.

    6) Start closing our overseas bases. Roll up the Empire. We don't have national interests overseas, and we never did. If we want to import oil lets just pay for it like China and Japan and Europe do. If we want to protect our citizens overseas there's INTERPOL.

    7) No bank or mortgage bailouts. Let the house of cards fall down so prices and find their true level again in the free market. The American economy will start again, but right now every government intervention distorts pricing and delays that day of reckoning.

    8) No 401(k) bailouts. I realize that the geezer lobby is a powerful political force, but if they had all their funds in the stock market they knew the risk going in.

    9) Annual tax cuts. You get rid of government waste by squeezing it, year over year.

    10) Nukes. Currently the US gets only about 1/5 of our energy from nuke plants. We need to be more like "liberal" France, which is 90% nuke. And it will make the global WarmOngers shut the fuck up.

    ReplyDelete
  50. The Comments below that Chicago Link are priceless.

    ...you could read and cogitate, Ash, maybe you'd join the Adults.

    ReplyDelete
  51. ...I'm tired, Kim.
    I'm goin w/Trish's observation:

    "She believes in NOTHING!
    NOTHING!
    "

    It's the easiest thing to do.

    ReplyDelete
  52. Bill Bryson has an absolutely hilarious - hilarious because it perfectly captures the put-marshmallows-in-it-and-top-it
    -with-rice-crispies truth - spiel on Middle America potluck in The Lost Continent. Priceless.

    ReplyDelete
  53. One of the Chicago/Ayers Comments:
    ---
    ">>> "Teaching has always been, for me, linked to issues of social justice," he says. "I've never considered it a neutral or passive profession."
    - Bill Ayers

    ---
    Of course not.
    Neo-Marxists don't view education as the conveyance of information and skills, but as a means of political indoctrination for the next generation. No wonder his views are so popular amongst the American education monopolists.

    Would love to hear his arguments in opposition to school choice and voucher programs, or rather why parents shouldn't be allowed to influence the educational system in any way. I bet he dances a merry jig around that one."

    ReplyDelete
  54. My wife keeps tellin me:
    She's got 7 or 8, says I should start with

    "The Thunderbolt Kid"

    ReplyDelete
  55. We read it aloud together. My son loved it - the Thunderbolt Kid. Second only to A Walk in the Woods.

    I grew up at the tail end of the era Bryson describes. A world receding when I was born but that I could still recognize. You'll enjoy it.

    ReplyDelete
  56. Doug: I'm goin w/Trish's observation:

    "She believes in NOTHING!
    NOTHING!"

    It's the easiest thing to do.


    I do not despise the man who disagrees with me and has a plausible basis for doing so; but he who has the capacity to rationally think and deliberately chooses not to do so out of intellectual laziness, that man has my eternal contempt.

    ReplyDelete
  57. ...but I can always hope you'll CHANGE and
    Vote Contempt '08!

    ReplyDelete
  58. ...I'm tired, Kim.
    I'm goin w/Trish's observation:

    "She believes in NOTHING!
    NOTHING!"
    ==

    That is why I recommended Bob's "Palin Power" bumper sticker to be glued to her forehead.

    ReplyDelete
  59. Am I the only American that's never seen a SINGLE Ophra Show?
    ---
    ...just excerpts on the Internets.

    ReplyDelete
  60. "who's"
    Don't want to objectify the Doug.

    ReplyDelete
  61. ash,

    avoiding talking about rev wright and his belief in black liberation theology isn't going to change the fact that it is a supremely racists doctrine, to which he subscribes.

    how do you square his embrace of BLT and your comment that he isn't a racist?

    simple fact is you can't.

    ReplyDelete
  62. Well, like I said Habu, my opinion is only based on what I've seen of him in the popular media. If you say he embraces BLT and BLT is racist then fine. Like I also said, I really don't give a shit what Wright thinks.

    ReplyDelete
  63. Barry claims he doesn't give a shit either.
    He just Raised his Precious Children that way.
    No Biggie.

    To Morons

    ReplyDelete
  64. Funny how much self-criticism there is here, Ash, when you have not owed up to a SINGLE Imperfection in your
    Godly Progressive Religion.

    ReplyDelete
  65. Time to get fitted for them new, "changed" Jackboots.

    ReplyDelete
  66. I saw an Oprah show. It was on the overhead at a Pizza Hut off the interstate between somewhere and somewhere.

    The guest was Maya Anjelou. 2004.

    ReplyDelete
  67. I've never watched a whole one. A couple minutes of that show and I'm outta there.

    ReplyDelete
  68. Around Easter. Late March?

    Funny how some things stick with you.

    ReplyDelete
  69. It is so sad. None of you know.

    You paint with too broad a brush, Bob.

    Some of us know far more than you'd suspect, knowing only what your dear wife might tell you over a cup of coffee.

    Bless her.

    But don't expect us to stain these pages with our tears.

    Ash is a zero, but so what?

    You don't know how hopeless it is.

    Speak for yourself. Hope has been a single tenuous strand keeping many of us anchored when it seemed the world's travails were overwhelming. Faith and prayer and hope. Not necessarily in any particular order. You learn to shake off the despair and get on with life, doing what needs to be done. Like many farmers I've known.

    ReplyDelete
  70. I took it down, Linear. It was too broad, you are right.

    ReplyDelete