Santorum fights to be heard at a raucous Tacoma rally

Bangkok Post: Terror attack on 'foreign nationals' interupted

An absolutely true Valentine's Day story of Merit Making

In Thailand we usually celebrate holidays and birthdays by going to the temple or to an orphanage and 'making merit' by either feeding the monks or feeding the kids.

Currently in El Centro and with my dog in his last months due to cancer my wife has agreed to give up our apartment and we are living together in primitive conditions.

We are waiting for last month's commissions to be deposited in our account and it is now 15 days late and we are on fumes.

So don't have a lot planned for Valentine's Day and our last few bucks until we get paid.

So we take the Golden Retriever to El Centro's main park where we go once a day to let him run while I do my walk and we feed the ducks, geese and pigeons.

They have one large pond and a smaller pond that is slightly elevated that has a little fountain in it. By running the fountain they get a flow of water that helps keep it clean.

As we walk past the smaller pool we see 4 pieces of gold flashing in the water.

We discover 4 carp and one catfish swimming in only about two inches of water.

They are under attack by seagulls who have already picked apart 3 other fish.

The fish are swimming on their sides trying to move and avoid the seagulls that are starting to gang up on the last 5 fish.

The fish have only minutes left.

I get the plastic bag that had the bread for the ducks and geese and walk through the mud and reach the water, miracuously without falling into the mud.

The seagulls retreat and the fish actually swim into this plastic bag. My wife picks up two by hand. I know this sounds strange but it actually appears that the fish understand we are there to help (maybe because they get fed food in a park pond they are not afraid of people).

We carry the 5 fish to the larger pond and release them.

And this was really the best way for us to spend our Valentines Day together, finding a small little way to make merit together.

No commercialism, no cheesy cards, just my wife and I wading into the mud and celebrating the miracle of life with some fellow earth travellers watched by our dog, Champ, who loves the whole adventure.

And that is the end of the story, every word of it true.

But there is a post script. It is unrelated (in my Western objective thinking) or completely related (in my wife's hightened Thai Karmic perception) depending on your point of view to the following.

We cleaned off the mud and got back to our room.

On my email is a note from a large union that has agreed to accept a proposal we have been sending back and forth for three years. The local board has sent it to the membership for election. If it goes through it could generate what would normally be about 6 months worth of income, and it would significantly reduce the cost of some benefits for that union. As I told you it is completely unrelated to the story above and in no way am I suggesting that little acts of merit making ever have any direct impact on the mundane profane world. Just don't try and convince my wife of that.

Bangkok Post: Second Iranian bomber captured in Bangkok

"Copernicus wasn't 100% right, we should teach the other side of the theory"

Will the Michigan primary be the end of the Romney campaign? PPP Romney -15

edited to add that this LBN thread shows that ARG poll shows the exact same number as PPP

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101450921

Michigan is where Romney was born and raised and where his dad was Governor.

In 2008 it was

Romney 39%
McCain 30%
Huckabee 16%


Now PPP is projecting

Santorum 39%
Romney 24%
Ron Paul 24%
Newt Gingrich 11%

It confirms a larger trend that Romney is getting less support than he did 4 years ago and only appeared to be the front runner when there were more candidates running. As the field narrowed he stayed in place as others passed him by.

The astounding Hutzpah of the Catholic Church on religious liberty.

I was born in Cathollic hospital and sent my daughter to a Jesuit college (although both were basically secular institutions) so I grant that the Catholic Church has had some benefit to society, and there are millions and millions of devout Catholics that cast a much greater shadow than the Church hierarchy ever has.

However its actions of trying to take away the liberty of women to make their own religious decisions about their own bodies at related institutions (most of whom have only a slight connection to the Church today) may be many things but it is not a blow for religious freedom, it is rather an attempt to instill orthodoxy in its own members who are employees and coercion for non member employees in a policy that it is no longer able to get acceptance by persuading the merits of the case.

But when the Catholic Church Hierarchy starts to inject itself into the public debate about 'religious liberty' it is time to establish some historical context,

the Catholic Church has never been on the side of religious liberty and isn't on the side of religious liberty in this case either

First let's get rid of the current situation;

Prohibitting people from buying contraceptives is not an exercise in religious liberty.

If they are non Catholic employees you are restricting their religious creed on the subject.

If they are Catholic employees then you are trying to enforce a heirarchical interpretation of the proper Catholic orthodoxy, but again this is not extending religious liberty, it is enforcing religious orthodoxy.



But the Catholic Church arguing for religious liberty on this particular case has the hutzpah of Lyle and Eric Menendez pleading for mercy because they are orphans after they killed their parents.

Let's recall some of the high points of the Catholic Church and religious liberty

Up until the late 1800s the Catholic Church, for example, restricted access to the Bible so that they could enforce THEIR interpretation of orthodoxy, some examples

It wasn't until 1870 that it was legal for a commoner to own a bible in Italy.

Other examples

Pope Pius IX (1846-78) in November 1846 issued an encyclical letter in which he denounced all opponents of Roman Catholicism, among which he included “those insidious Bible Societies.” He said the Bible societies were “renewing the crafts of the ancient heretics” by distributing to “all kinds of men, even the least instructed, gratuitously and at immense expense, copies in vast numbers of the books of the Sacred Scriptures translated against the holiest rules of the Church into various vulgar tongues...” What a horrible crime! Distributing the Scriptures freely to all people! It was Pius IX who had himself and his fellow popes declared “infallible” at the Vatican I Council in 1870.


Pope Gregory XVI (1831-46) ratified the decrees of his predecessors, forbidding the free distribution of Scripture. In his encyclical of May 8, 1844, this Pope stated: “Moreover, we confirm and renew the decrees recited above, DELIVERED IN FORMER TIMES BY APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY, AGAINST THE PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, READING, AND POSSESSION OF BOOKS OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES TRANSLATED INTO THE VULGAR TONGUE


Pope Leo XII (1823-29) issued a bull to the Bishops in Ireland, May 3, 1824, in which he affirmed the Council of Trent and condemned Bible distribution. “It is no secret to you, venerable brethren, that a certain Society, vulgarly called The Bible Society, is audaciously spreading itself through the whole world. After despising the traditions of the holy Fathers, and in opposition to the well-known Decree of the Council of Trent, this Society has collected all its forces, and directs every means to one object,--the translation, or rather the perversion, of the Bible into the vernacular languages of all nations. ... IF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES BE EVERYWHERE INDISCRIMINATELY PUBLISHED, MORE EVIL THAN ADVANTAGE WILL ARISE THENCE, on account of the rashness of men”


It was during the reign of Pope Pius VII (1800-1823) that the modern Bible society movement began. The British and Foreign Bible Society was formed in March 1804, the purpose being “to encourage a wider circulation of the Holy Scriptures without note or comment.” . . .. He characterized this practice as a “most crafty device, by which the very foundations of religion are undermined,” “a pestilence,” which he must “remedy and abolish,” “a defilement of the faith, eminently dangerous to souls.” Pope Pius VII also rebuked Archbishop Buhusz of Mohiley in Russia because of his endorsement of a newly formed Bible society (Kenneth Latourette, The Nineteenth Century in Europe, p. 448). The papal brief, dated September 3, 1816, declared that “if the Sacred Scriptures were allowed in the vulgar tongue everywhere without discrimination, more detriment than benefit would arise” (Jacobus, Roman Catholic and Protestant Versions Compared, p. 236).

6) Pope Leo X (1513-1521), who railed against Luther’s efforts to follow the biblical precept of faith alone and Scripture alone, called the fifth Lateran Council (1513-1517), which charged that no books should be printed except those approved by the Roman Catholic Church. “THEREFORE FOREVER THEREAFTER NO ONE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO PRINT ANY BOOK OR WRITING WITHOUT A PREVIOUS EXAMINATION, TO BE TESTIFIED BY MANUAL SUBSCRIPTION, BY THE PAPAL VICAR AND MASTER OF THE SACRED PALACE IN ROME

In England, too, laws were passed by the Catholic authorities against vernacular Bibles. The Constitutions of Thomas Arundel, issued in 1408 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, made this brash demand: “WE THEREFORE DECREE AND ORDAIN THAT NO MAN SHALL, HEREAFTER, BY HIS OWN AUTHORITY, TRANSLATE ANY TEXT OF THE SCRIPTURE INTO ENGLISH, OR ANY OTHER TONGUE, by way of a book, libel, or treatise, now lately set forth in the time of John Wyckliff, or since, or hereafter to be set forth, in part of in whole, privily or apertly, upon pain of greater excommunication, until the said translation be allowed by the ordinary of the place, or, if the case so require, by the council provincial”

The Council of Toulouse (1229) FORBADE THE LAITY TO POSSESS OR READ THE VERNACULAR TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE (Allix, Ecclesiastical History, II, p. 213). This council ordered that the bishops should appoint in each parish “one priest and two or three laics, who should engage upon oath to make a rigorous search after all heretics and their abettors, and for this purpose should visit every house from the garret to the cellar, together with all subterraneous places where they might conceal themselves”



and so on excerpted from http://www.wayoflife.org/files/4ef3f30d5ea4253059dc014c8c9f6db3-79.html

Santorum: 'Romney bought the CPAC straw poll.' Then fails the syllogism.

Thomas Friedman to Republicans: This time around you should just take a pass, try in 4 years.

WATCHING the Republican Party struggling to agree on a presidential candidate, one wonders whether the G.O.P. shouldn’t just sit this election out — just give 2012 a pass.





Josh Haner/The New York Times

Thomas L. Friedman


You know how in Scrabble sometimes you look at your seven letters and you’ve got only vowels that spell nothing? What do you do? You go back to the pile. You throw your letters back and hope to pick up better ones to work with. That’s what Republican primary voters seem to be doing. They just keep going back to the pile but still coming up with only vowels that spell nothing.

There’s a reason for that: Their pile is out of date. The party has let itself become the captive of conflicting ideological bases: anti-abortion advocates, anti-immigration activists, social conservatives worried about the sanctity of marriage, libertarians who want to shrink government, and anti-tax advocates who want to drown government in a bathtub.

Sorry, but you can’t address the great challenges America faces today with that incoherent mix of hardened positions. I’ve argued that maybe we need a third party to break open our political system. But that’s a long shot. What we definitely and urgently need is a second party — a coherent Republican opposition that is offering constructive conservative proposals on the key issues and is ready for strategic compromises to advance its interests and those of the country.

Without that, the best of the Democrats — who have been willing to compromise — have no partners and the worst have a free pass for their own magical thinking. Since such a transformed Republican Party is highly unlikely, maybe the best thing would be for it to get crushed in this election and forced into a fundamental rethink — something the Democrats had to go through when they lost three in a row between 1980 and 1988. We need a “Different Kind of Republican” the way Bill Clinton gave us a “Different Kind of Democrat

more at the link

PPP National Poll: Romney collapsing, Santorum surging with + 15 point lead.

Everything seems to be going bad in a hurry for Romney;

PPP is showing Santorum leading in Romney's childhood home of Michigan (2008 had 51%), Is showing a weak third in Georgia and may get embarassed today in Maine.

Now PPP is showing that Santorum is becoming the consensus conservative candidate;




http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/02/santorum-surges-into-the-lead.html

Riding a wave of momentum from his trio of victories on Tuesday Rick Santorum has opened up a wide lead in PPP's newest national poll. He's at 38% to 23% for Mitt Romney, 17% for Newt Gingrich, and 13% for Ron Paul.

Part of the reason for Santorum's surge is his own high level of popularity. 64% of voters see him favorably to only 22% with a negative one. But the other, and maybe more important, reason is that Republicans are significantly souring on both Romney and Gingrich. Romney's favorability is barely above water at 44/43, representing a 23 point net decline from our December national poll when he was +24 (55/31). Gingrich has fallen even further. A 44% plurality of GOP voters now hold a negative opinion of him to only 42% with a positive one. That's a 34 point drop from 2 months ago when he was at +32 (60/28).

Santorum is now completely dominating with several key segments of the electorate, especially the most right leaning parts of the party. With those describing themselves as 'very conservative,' he's now winning a majority of voters at 53% to 20% for Gingrich and 15% for Romney. Santorum gets a majority with Tea Party voters as well at 51% to 24% for Gingrich and 12% for Romney. And with Evangelicals he falls just short of a majority with 45% to 21% for Gingrich and 18% for Romney



Mitt its time to get out the money and start destroying Santorum.

Its what you do Mitt.

Just pretend he's Seamus.