UN human rights council orders the UK to "vote" on the monarchy.,,and there is more:

The UN report was also critical of the UK's treatment of immigrants from Sudan.

Syrian representatives accused the UK of discriminating against Muslims and Iran complained about the UK's record on tackling sexual discrimination.

the US pulled out of the council last week (they only had observer status). This kind of stuff confirms that the US was right to do so, but don't expect the press in the US to notice it.

This article discusses the Pope's meeting with Bush.

Mr Bush has filled the White House with Catholic speech-writers and consultants and is also thought to have asked a Catholic priest to bless the West Wing.

Before he became president, Karl Rove, his former political adviser, invited Catholic intellectuals to Texas to lecture the candidate on the church's teachings. Mr Bush appointed the Catholic judges Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court.

The reason is probably because Catholics believe in Natural law theory.

And natural law theory is compatible with the enlightenment, saying that reason can lead man to the knowledge of God and what is right and wrong.

Too many Evangelicals instead quote the bible.

I just finished reading about the difference between Thomism and Ocham...Thomas Acquinas, if I understood it correctly, says that reason is of God, and that we can learn about God in nature. (there is a quote from Paul that says the same thing).

Ocham said no, that nature and God were different, and just because our universe is made one way, it doesn't mean that God didn't make another universe differently (e.g. where the laws of nature aren't mathematical). Ocham's ideas allowed science to disentagle itself from tradition and Thomas' exploration of truth via tradition only but it also was an early hint of the "The bible tells me so" ideas that made quoting the bible the answer, not the analysis of how a problem was explored in the bible, and by experience and reason.

In some ways, the Regensburg speech said the same thing about the Koran.
The difference is that the Bible only quoters don't run the US and recognize a split between Biblical law and secular law...but their approach doesn't let them argue in the public square. In contrast, those trying to make Islamic republics want the a be the law, ignoring that this means the law is made by clerics who "interpret" the law, allowing them unlimited power.

So, anyway, Bush is surrounded by smart Catholics, making rumors he will convert. Maybe, since his family, like McCain, is oldfashioned Episcopalian, but the Episcopal church has now destroyed it's roots in search of Political correctness.

One of these days, the press will ask the Catholics about natural law and where the church stands on all the moral issues of the day. Alas, if Obama gets in, expect Catholics and natural law theory be marginalized in favor of PC laws...and Christians of Evangelical persuasion will be even more a subject of ridicule and paranoia than they are now.

Geraldine Farraro was ostracized for daring to say a lot of white ethnics, who had suffered from bias as an ethnic and then as bias for not being black, resent Obama's black racism.

Yet the negative effects of affirmative action on ethnics, Asians and Hispanics are obvious. My own sons were taken from a good school district in Boston and placed into a black slum school for "racial profiling", never mind they were hispanic and because they were newly adopted and spoke no English. Similarly, my sons, who never saw race in their South American home, became prejudiced when they saw teachers giving black students a free pass on grades and bad behavior, including drug use, whereas they did not get a free pass.

Nope, can't discuss such things.

Asians are even more upset about the double standard. Here we get the Korean national TV station, and they had a discussion program on prejudice in the US....I watched, and was amazed that the prejudice was Korean shop keepers lamenting that their shops (in LA area) were destroyed by blacks in the King riots and the police stood by...and that their complaints about minor theft and robbery were rarely solved.

Then there is the fact that Ivy League schools routinely profile and turn down Asian students. Punished for working hard....

Another thing that is not PC to discuss is gay marriage: that lesbians tend to stable marriages, but that gay men are unstable, and even when they live together, they have numerous affairs on the side. A recent UN report saying that the heterosexual spread of HIV in many countries that had been predicted is another side of this: the dirty little secret is that, outside of Hollywood movies, the number of sexual partners is a lot lower than people think, but that the number of sexual partners of gay men is a lot higher than people think.

As a Catholic, we believe that same sex attraction is not the person's fault (either inborn and/or influenced by upbringing, probably, like alcoholism, both), and that it is a cross for these folks to live with: A weakness that can lead to holiness if fought, and that since their sins are those of weakness,  they are less serious than sins of greed or pride...when Jesus said the prostitutes would get to heaven before the proud pharasees, I'm sure everyone in Gallilee knew that the pagans had lots of gay prostitutes in nearby towns...yet the sadness from the promiscuity often leads to repentence...


Yet to even hint that promiscuous sex is a sin is taboo: when was the last time you read someone condemning "sex and the city"?

About the only sins nowadays are being fat, smoking cigarettes, or driving an SUV...none of which destroy the soul like promiscuous sex.

Well, anyway, with all the "gay marriage", why hasn't any reporter bothered to ask a discussion with one of our good bishops? Or when reporters imply only "right wing fundamentalists" oppose it, why does no one not mention so do Hindus, Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and most traditions?

No, no discussion here.

Then we have the problem of free speech.

Mark Steyn finally got noticed in the NYTimes, but the editorial had quotes that other countries could shut him up...yet Steyn is a satirist, like Anne Coulter or even Rush...why is it okay for left wing "humorists" to ridicule people, but right wing types are "hate crimes".

Yet the Canadian examples are even worse, since they have silenced some blogs, and have silenced a pastor for hate speech for saying Gay marriage is wrong.

Finally, when a lady wrote a biography of her Episcopal father, a lot of the comments were shame to her for revealing her father's sins (he was promiscuous with men and women).
Yet at least one of the anecdotes showed an affair with a teen who had come to him for counselling for same sex urges.

If a doctor did this, he could have his license revoked.
If he was a Catholic, he'd be on the front pages, and the liberals would say the problem was not allowing priests to marry.

In the same vein, the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire was elected because the gays took over the middle management, chasing out a lot of ordinary folks, and then elected him. So he now is "marrying" his partner...
Yet how many partners did he have in between his marriage and this guy?
And since when does a church allow a bishop who deserts and divorces a wife because he no longer loves her? Isn't divorce for clergymen against Pauls' advice to Timothy?

Well, never mind.

I'd put references for all these things, but I'm too lazy to look them up.

But sometimes one wonders why the press doesn't bother to check things out.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/06/notes060608.DTL&type=printableTonight, after 54 hard-fought contests, our primary season has finally come to an end.

Translation: I have won all 54 states...except for the ones Hillary won of course, but it doesn't matter.

Sixteen months have passed since we first stood together on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. Thousands of miles have been traveled. Millions of voices have been heard. And because of what you said — because you decided that change must come to Washington; because you believed that this year must be different than all the rest; because you chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations, tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America...

Because you believed, things will change...of course, no president can do that, but never mind. We expect you to believe with all your heart, and voila, instant utopia

At this defining moment for our nation, we should be proud that our party put forth one of the most talented, qualified field of individuals ever to run for this office. ....

I'm the most qualified individual who has ever run for President. Now if Hillary will just get the F*** out of the way...

All of you chose to support a candidate you believe in deeply. But at the end of the day, we aren't the reason you came out and waited in lines that stretched block after block to make your voice heard. You didn't do that because of me or Senator Clinton or anyone else. You did it because you know in your hearts that at this moment — a moment that will define a generation — we cannot afford to keep doing what we've been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. And for all those who dream of that future tonight, I say — let us begin the work together. Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America.

Translation: I am messiah, and I promise a socialist utopia.

Silly me. I"m old enough to remember when children were the responsibility of parents. 

Change is a foreign policy that doesn't begin and end with a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged. I won't stand here and pretend that there are many good options left in Iraq, but what's not an option is leaving our troops in that country for the next hundred years — especially at a time when our military is overstretched, our nation is isolated, and nearly every other threat to America is being ignored.

Pay no attention to the success of the surge, the decimation of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the demise of FARC or the slow demise of Alqaeda related groups in the Philippines and Indonesia. They don't count.

....It's time to refocus our efforts on al-Qaida's leadership and Afghanistan, and rally the world against the common threats of the 21st century — terrorism and nuclear weapons; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. That's what change is....

Yes, rally the world to stop genocide like the UN and African Union are doing in Dafur, Central Africa and Zimbabwe...as for disease, ignore the millions of lives saved by the Bush initiative against HIV...

Change is realizing that meeting today's threats requires not just our firepower, but the power of our diplomacy — tough, direct diplomacy where the president of the United States isn't afraid to let any petty dictator know where America stands and what we stand for.

Yes, and if they ignore me, I'll keep sending them nasty letters that remind them we stand for goodness and light.

...Maybe if (mcCain) went to Iowa and met the student who works the night shift after a full day of class and still can't pay the medical bills for a sister who's ill, he'd understand that she can't afford four more years of a health care plan that only takes care of the healthy and wealthy. She needs us to pass a health care plan that guarantees insurance to every American who wants it and brings down premiums for every family who needs it. That's the change we need.

Or her sister could get on Medicaid, or she could quit college for a semester, or maybe even she could ask her sister's father or mother to cough up the money. But instead of trying to do that, we'll socialize medicine.

Maybe if he went to Pennsylvania and met the man who lost his job but can't even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one, he'd understand that we can't afford four more years of our addiction to oil from dictators.

Well, the guy could borrow fifty bucks from his neighbors and get a job in Maryland...or Calgary (where my relatives are working in the oil boom).

As for oil from dictators, since when are Canada and Mexico, which are the largest suppliers of oil to the US, dictatorships?

That man needs us to pass an energy policy that works with automakers to raise fuel standards, and makes corporations pay for their pollution, and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future — an energy policy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced. That's the change we need.

Does he mean he's going to allow drilling in Alaska and off the coast? Because if not, oil companies who can't make profits will say byebye and drill elsewhere, and sell to China.

we owe it to our children to invest in early childhood education; to recruit an army of new teachers and give them better pay and more support; to finally decide that in this global economy, the chance to get a college education should not be a privilege for the wealthy few, but the birthright of every American. That's the change we need in America.

Translation: stick the kids in daycare, so that parents don't have to care for them, get rid of local school boards and federalize our education system, with a huge bureaurocracy run by union members who vote Democratic.

And lower university standards so that the 50% of people with IQ's under 100 can go to college...it's their "Birthright"...

I have brought many together myself. I've walked arm-in-arm with community leaders on the South Side of Chicago and watched tensions fade as black, white, and Latino fought together for good jobs and good schools.....

Ah, but where did those jobs come from?

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations.

That's not what you said above. You were bragging that merely voting for you would change the world.

But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless;

Yup. No one bothers to care for the sick nowadays in America.

this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.

Ah, the oceans will not rise, the garbage and pollution will disappear, and everyone will live a carbon negative lifestyle like my friends in Zimbabwe. As for Iraq, the people in Iraq will be abandoned to a genocide that makes the killing fields of Cambodia a romp in the park.

But he's got that last part right. The elites and the newspapers and media will stop printing negatives stories about America.

. The media adores Obama.

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And this article puts even more fear into me:

Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.

Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me. But you gotta wonder, why has, say, the JFK legacy lasted so long, is so vital to our national identity? Yes, the assassination canonized his legend. The Kennedy family is our version of royalty. But there's something more. Those attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK wasn't assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It's because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.

Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up. 

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hell where is Richard Dawkins when we need him?