Catholic Bishops Put Sex Obsession Ahead of Mission to the Sick and the Poor By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet.
First they threatened to take down health-care reform over abortion coverage. Now they’re threatening services to the sick and poor of Washington, D.C., over same-sex marriage.
They lead a church that claims to stand on the side of the sick and the poor, the meek who shall inherit the earth. But in the course of a single week, the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church proclaimed themselves willing to see health-care denied to millions of uninsured Americans, and to yank the social-service rug out from under the feet of tens of thousands of urban poor in the nation’s capital — all to serve the bishops’ obsession with the sex lives and reproductive organs of others.
The church’s week of shame began with the bishops’ role in creating the monster that is the Stupak amendment to the health-care reform bill passed last weekend by the House of Representatives, when the bishops refused to bless a compromise made between pro-choice and anti-abortion Democrats in the language of the bill. (Without the bishops’ blessing, anti-choice Democrats vowed to vote against the bill, so Speaker Nancy Pelosi was strong-armed into allowing Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., to bring an anti-choice amendment to the floor.) Finishing off the week with a brutal bang, the church threatened to sever its social service contracts with the District of Columbia if the city council of Washington, D.C., passes a measure legalizing same-sex marriage — a move that would throw services to 68,000 of the poorest and most vulnerable citizens of the nation’s capital into chaos. READ MORE:
Christian Bootcamp Seeks to Arm Home-Schooled Youths for “Spiritual Warfare” Posted by Eleanor Bader, RH Reality Check
“Life is not a playground,” says Rev. Rusty Lee Thomas in The Kingdom Leadership Institute Manual. “It is a war zone.”
Rev. Rusty Lee Thomas, Assistant Director of Operation Save America, is worried. According to studies by the Barna Research Group, California pollsters specializing in tracking religious and spiritual attitudes, only nine percent of teenaged Christians believe in moral absolutes. What’s more, Barna reports that the vast majority of kids raised Christian will abandon all or part of their faith by the time they finish high school. “Assembly of God leaders estimate between 65 and 70 percent will depart, while the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life estimates roughly 88 percent will leave,” Thomas writes.
To remedy this, Thomas’ Elijah Ministries has started the Kingdom Leadership Institute, a weeklong ideological boot camp for home-schooled Christians between the ages of 14 and 21. His recently released book, The Kingdom Leadership Institute Manual, is a roadmap for their training and a fascinating — if twisted — look at the concerns of far right evangelicals, complete with a game plan for action.
There’s no pussy-footing in Thomas’ screed. For him the battle between God and Satan is at hand, pitting True Believers against Sinners. Common ground? Impossible since there are only two sides, one resulting in heavenly salvation and the other ending with the earth’s destruction.
“Life is not a playground,” he rails. “It is a war zone — a clash of ideas, philosophies, values, and worldviews. It demands leaders who do not shrink back in [sic] the day of battle.” He calls it “spiritual warfare” and repeatedly summons images straight out of the Middle Ages, with gallant Knights protecting grateful maidens, and courtliness trumping gender equity. READ MORE:
Geithner Singled Out in TARP Watchdog Neil Barofsky’s Scathing Report on AIG Bailout by Shahien Nasiripour, The Huffington Post
A brutal report issued Monday by a government watchdog holds Timothy Geithner — then the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now the nation’s Treasury Secretary — responsible for overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs.
The authoritative new narrative describes how, while bailing out insurance giant AIG last fall, a team led by Geithner failed nearly every step of the way.
Instead of bargaining with AIG’s numerous counterparties to resolve its billions of dollars in souring derivatives contracts, Geithner’s team ended up paying top dollar for toxic assets — “an amount far above their market value at the time,” the report notes.
“There is no question that the effect of FRBNY’s decisions — indeed, the very design of the federal assistance to AIG — was that tens of billions of dollars of Government money was funneled inexorably and directly to AIG’s counterparties,” the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said.
Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia got full value for their derivatives contracts with AIG, and taxpayers got the bill. In total, $27.1 billion of public money was transferred to companies that did business with AIG.
Throughout the bailout of AIG, the report says, the New York Fed failed to develop appropriate contingency plans; failed to properly assess the impact of its decisions; and generally engaged in negotiation strategies that were doomed to fail.
Then, after Geithner’s team paid off AIG’s counterparties on Wall Street, it imposed “onerous” terms on the troubled insurer, the report says. READ MORE:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/17-8
Hightower: Obscenely Rich Bankers Claim to Do God’s Work — They Can Go to Hell By Jim Hightower, AlterNet.
Top executives were initially hurt by the public’s moral outrage. But their sense of entitlement quickly kicked in, and now they claim they’re the good guys.
“Repent,” the preacher cried out, startling those who heard him.
This was no street evangelist ranting at the passing crowd, but the archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England. His sharp admonition was pointed directly at a particular set of sinners, who undoubtedly had never given any thought to the morality of their actions: the barons of global banking.
As in our country, people in Europe are enraged at those hustlers of high finance who wrecked the world’s economies, then flexed their political muscle to get governments to replenish their bankrupt vaults. Infuriatingly, these bailed-out bankers have now returned to business as usual, including grabbing monstrous bonus payments for themselves.
In Europe, such greed is not only being assailed politically, but it is also being cast as a matter of fundamental moral failure. As another of Britain’s leading clergymen put it, “There is a general feeling that the level of bonuses we’ve seen have been obscene.” READ MORE:
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