Bad American

Saint Timothy of Buffalo?

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) — The Holy See, speaking on the authority of Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, announced that it was investigating deceased American news commentator Tim Russert for beautification.

That move would put Russert on the fast track toward sainthood. Russert, 58, died of a massive heart attack Friday, preparing for his Sunday NBC television show Meet the Press.

Angelo Bunarotti, spokesperson for the Vatican, said that Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of the Washington Archdiocese had already begun the first step toward sainthood, the investigation.

In the investigation, a postulator, in this case, colleague Chris Matthews, also a Roman Catholic, acts as an advocate for the candidate and will examine the candidate’s life, his writings, teachings, acts of holiness, heroic acts and any other virtues that would indicate that the person being proposed for sainthood is truly worthy of such a declaration.

Matthews said he felt honored to serve in the role of the postulator for his colleague and friend.

“There is no doubt from anyone who knew him that (Russert) embodied the best qualities of a Catholic layman and his work on earth certainly can be held to have elevated the status of all mankind,” Matthews said. “But Tim went above and beyond the mere mortal in his work and life and you can see that being  acknowledged in the outpouring of grief on his death.”

Matthews said he had never seen so many touching tributes to a newsman upon his death as those being given to Russert.

“It’s amazing,” Matthews said. “It seems like every five minutes there’s another memorial on television. (Edward R.) Murrow never got that kind of recognition when he died and I doubt (Walter) Cronkite will either.

“But that’s the difference between mere journalism and the elevation of the human condition that Tim is being honored for,” Matthews said.

Bunarotti said Pope Benedict regards Russert as a perfect modern candidate for beatification and is waving the customary five year waiting period after a person’s death for consideration.

“We we’re particularly impressed by the almost mystical quality that was attributed to Russert’s work on American television,” Bunarotti said. “Testaments are pouring in from all over the United States that only Russert made the connection between the political and the sacred understandable for most Americans.

“He achieved a certain transcendence in that respect,” Bunarotti said. “It may be considered to be miraculous.”

Russert will need to have a miracle certified by the church for beatification, the next step to a possible canonization and eventual sainthood.

Timothy Joseph “Big Russ” Russert, Tim Russert’s father and subject of his bestselling book, said Tuesday that the family was deeply honored for Tim’s sake by the actions of the church.

“He’s already been canonized in the media, now the church will make it official,” the senior Russert said.

From Rolling Stone by way of Alternet

Perhaps the funniest expose of Christofascist nutbars I’ve ever read. I saw Taibbi on Olbermann the other night plugging his new book, from which this article is taken. I’m absolutely going to have to get it. I love the way this guy writes - snarky and brutal - I can appreciate that.

In the comments section the usual whiners show up complaining that Taibbi is hurting progressives by making fun of these people. First of all, we will never reach these brainwashed types - they WANT to remain willfully ignorant to save themselves the trouble of thinking. Second, these people think far worse of us than we do of them. I personally do not care whether these people go to heaven or hell - but if these people could, they’d probably send us all - to a hell on earth.

I have given up trying to play nice with the Christian fascist right. You cannot reason with people who sneer at reason. I simply want to be let alone to live without having to check some book or some dogma for what I should eat, drink, wear or believe. That shouldn’t be asking much of a supposedly ‘free people.’

But if you have noticed how close the Christofascists and the US military have aligned, there’s a great deal to be worried about if you have more than half a brain. I have no doubt that the Christofascists will be used as the shock troops of the coming clampdown and one should be prepared to fight them by any means possible.

But for now, we can join Taibbi and have a laugh at the nuttier factions of Pentecostalism (not evangelical Christianity as he too broadly paints them). And let us remember that these are the people and the minster aligned with John McCain. Why doesn’t the media pick up on the lunacy and hate of Pastor John Hagee?

Oh, he’s on the RIGHT side of the political spectrum so that’s OK! Thank you so-called ‘liberal media.’

So Taibbi has to infiltrate Hagee’s ‘boot camp’ (or re-education or indoctrination camp is you will). As part of the cult mind altering, they start out with the touchy-feely stuff of confession some deep inner ‘wound.’ When they get around to Taibbi, he has to come up with something quick. This is what he comes up with:

My heart was pounding. I obviously couldn’t use my real past — not only would it threaten my cover, but I was somewhat reluctant to expose anything like my real inner self to this ideologically unsettling process — but neither did I want to be trapped in a story too far from my own experience. What I settled on eventually was something that I thought was metaphorically similar to the truth about myself.

“Hello,” I said, taking a deep breath. “My name is Matt. My father was an alcoholic circus clown who used to beat me with his oversize shoes.“

I almost lost my lunch I was laughing so hard at that. And wait until you get to the part about his ‘father’ having to take a job as the Carvel ice cream whale! I almost passed out laughing. And yeah, the fundies bought both stories.

Gullible yes, but unfortunately, they vote.

Lovely to see a bunch of Judeo-Christians sitting around the table discussing the ways to inflict pain on fellow human beings who may or may not be guilty of anything. Trials are so boring and so 20th century! Let’s bring out the rack and thumbscrews!

ABC News

The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

And of course, like cockroaches scurrying from the light:

Contacted by ABC News today, spokesmen for Tenet, Rumsfeld and Powell declined to comment about the interrogation program or their private discussions in Principals Meetings. Powell said through an assistant there were “hundreds of [Principals] meetings” on a wide variety of topics and that he was “not at liberty to discuss private meetings.”

Real cowards.

More:

Highly placed sources said CIA directors Tenet and later Porter Goss along with agency lawyers briefed senior advisers, including Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Powell, about detainees in CIA custody overseas.

“It kept coming up. CIA wanted us to sign off on each one every time,” said one high-ranking official who asked not to be identified. “They’d say, ‘We’ve got so and so. This is the plan.’”

Sources said that at each discussion, all the Principals present approved.

“These discussions weren’t adding value,” a source said. “Once you make a policy decision to go beyond what you used to do and conclude it’s legal, (you should) just tell them to implement it.”

Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.

“Going beyond what you used to do?” Hell, we’ve been torturing people unofficially since the country was founded. Now, the only difference is its all legal-like now.

And how that Great Christian Ashcroft? The tactics are OK, he just doesn’t want his day sullied by hearing flowery descriptions of how to inflict bodily injury. You can bet someone like J. Edgar Hoover wouldn’t have had any qualms - hell, he probably would have made a great number of suggestions.

I mean can you imagine the senior officials of the United States Government sitting around the table discussion torture techniques? What, have we suddenly decided to ape the government of Columbia, or Saudi Arabia or Indonesia? I guess we no longer have any moral standing to lecture the rest of the world on morals (as if we ever really did).

But again, there’s undoubtedly a lot of ‘Murkans who will have no problem with torturing people who pray to the wrong god or look different than us. In fact, if the government were to advertise for the job of Torturer GS-666-5/7/9 (pay grades) and Supervisory Torturer GS-666-11/12 there probably would be a double line around the block at GSA of people willing to apply. Stanley Milgram is nodding somewhere in agreement.

In answer to the question posed to Good Christians by headline, perhaps the Lord would have said:

“Verily I say unto you: you shall not spare the rod, the whip, the nettles, the rack, the thumbscrews, the water board, nor any other device of cunning cruelty upon thine enemies. You shall torture thine enemies as thou torture thine own prisoners and slaves of times past. For the Lord has delivered them unto you and have found their souls to be black as the Evil one. Verily, thou art doing the Lord’s work when thou are applying the pain of righteousness to them. “

I’m watching Lindsey Graham lie through his teeth on ABC News with George S. “Winning outcomes.” War War War. It’s what we do. We enjoy it, it’s profitable for the right people, and it makes us feel all warm and runny inside. Graham want to kill Iranian woman and children so bad he can taste it.

And I don’t exactly consider Jim Webb to be a ‘opposition’ figure. He’s just as big a militarist as Graham but he’s a ‘kindler, gentler’ enabler of the military-industrial state.

Jacob G. Hornberger writes a great column pointing out that the doyenne of Democratic foreign policy, Madeleine Albright, was a butcher too. Both parties love their war money.

And so does America. Good Christian America.

According to an article in yesterday’s New York Times, at the outset of the invasion the U.S. military dropped bombs on a palatial compound in which Saddam Hussein was hiding. The article states:

“But instead of killing the Iraqi dictator, they had killed Mr. Kharbit’s older brother, Malik al-Kharbit - the very man who had led the family’s negotiations with the C.I.A. to topple Mr. Hussein. The bombings also killed 21 other people, including children, and the fury it aroused has been widely believed to have helped kick-start the insurgency in western Iraq.”

And so:

The fact is that U.S. officials didn’t care whether there were innocents, including children, in that compound. Those children and their parents were obviously considered a small price to pay if Saddam Hussein had been killed at the outset of the war.

Of course, this attitude would match the attitude taken by U.S. officials throughout the period of the brutal sanctions that were enforced from 1991 to 2003. As tens of thousands of Iraqi children were dying year after year from the sanctions, the U.S. attitude was that those deaths were a small price to pay for ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein. That’s why UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright, upon being asked whether the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi from the sanctions were worth it, she replied that yes - they were “worth it.” She was expressing the sentiment of the U.S. government, a sentiment that manifested itself again in the bombing of the compound in which those Iraqi children and their families were killed.

Second, the killing of those children and their families is just one example of how U.S. foreign policy has engendered anger and hatred for the United States, which produces the threat of terrorist retaliation, which brings about the “war on terrorism,” which results in more interventions, more massive military spending, and ever-increasing loss of liberty at home.

Hornberger finishes with this:

To state what I consider self-evident moral truths, it was morally wrong and a grave violation of God’s laws to:

(1) attack a country whose government and citizenry had never attacked the United States;

(2) kill Iraqis, including children and their families, in order to achieve regime change in Iraq; and

(3) kill Iraqis, including children and their families, in order to spread “democracy” to Iraq.

One can only wonder whether the American people, in crises of conscience, will ever confront such issues.

No they won’t. For the Christofascists that support this bloodletting, God’s merciful grace does not extend to the brown heathen hordes of the world. In that way, we behave no better than the Conquistadors.

Today’s Contemporary Americana! 

But his remarks were thrown in the face of a people that don’t even know or understand their own country’s history. So it is easy to incite ignorant people who know nothing about most of what Rev. Wright preaches about. I have written on this ignorance before so I will not get into it again here.

But for those who get angry at what Wright is saying either read some Howard Zinn or check the comments of white pastors who basically said the same thing: God damn America - but for different reasons - because we tolerate gays and so-called un-Biblical behaviors. Of course, it was OK when they said it but not when Rev. Wright cites hard historical facts in his defense.

And now Wright has to fear the violence of the ignorant Bill O’Reilly-Lou Dobbs segment of the population and is having to cancel speeches for ’security’ reasons.  First Amendment for me but not thee, eh?

Sean Gonsalves writes an excellent rebuttal to Wright’s critics in Alternet today.

Take anything you read in the New York Post with a grain of salt, but. . .

March 3, 2008 — TOLEDO, Ohio - Barack Obama yesterday lashed out at political enemies who are spreading false rumors that he’s a closet Muslim as he proclaimed, “I pray to Jesus every night.”

“I am a devout Christian,” he told voters in this key state.

“I pray to Jesus every night and try to go to church as much as I can.”

It’s beyond sad that we haven’t evolved through hate and bigotry in this country that Obama has to literally shout from the church tower ‘I PRAY TO JESUS’ in order to be even considered as a candidate for POTUS.

And the sad thing is that we don’t know how much of this is coming from the typical right wing haters or some dirty tricks employees of the Clinton campaign.

As Phil Donahue used to say, “one more time for the Midwest:”

Obama’s bid to end the rumor-mongering came just days after his campaign accused Hillary Rodham Clinton of launching a deliberate smear after the Drudge Report Web site reported that one of her staffers had forwarded photos of him wearing a turban on a 2006 trip to Africa.

In addition, numerous e-mails have circulated for months saying falsely that Obama is a Muslim.

Obama’s late father, who was from Kenya, was a Christian who converted to Islam, though he was not religious. Obama himself was never a Muslim and has been a member of the same Christian church for the last 20 years.

On a recent visit to Cleveland, The Post conducted an informal survey of about a dozen people and found that most didn’t know Obama’s faith - and many incorrectly assumed he was a Muslim.

Of course a Post informal survey could have been pulling people aside on Public Square but I can believe that most people are quite ignorant of Obama’s faith, some willfully so. In my little town I have met several that FIRMLY believe, against all evidence, that if he isn’t a overt Muslim, he’s some kind of ‘Manchurian candidate’ for radical Islam.

I’m beginning to think it may be a very uphill climb for Obama to be elected POTUS in a general election.

Not only will this issue not go away, the Chistofascists are going to have a field day with Obama’s church, the United Church of Christ, which will no doubt be smeared in scurrilous e-mails, as an apostate church - not a true Church of Jesus Christ but a ‘liberal non-church.’

As if it isn’t enough that the IRS has launched a bogus investigation of the UCC on the flimsiest of pretexts. You will never see the IRS conduct a similar inquisition on any of the right wing megachurches or televangelists who absolutely DO conduct political business from the pulpit. But these ‘persecuted Christians’ have friends in high places.

So whatever Obama does to establish his Christian bona fides it wont be enough. You can bet on that.

Chris Hedges in Truthdig

I didn’t know anything about these guys until I read this article:

Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out at Christian colleges—a few days ago they were at the Air Force Academy—to spew racist filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as Focus on the Family. It is a clever tactic. Curly, Larry and Mo, who all say they are born-again Christians, engage in hate speech and assure us it comes from personal experience. They tell their audiences that the only way to deal with one-fifth of the world’s population is by converting or eradicating all Muslims. Their cant is broadcast regularly on Fox News, including the Bill O’Reilly and Neil Cavuto shows, as well as on numerous Christian radio and television programs. Shoebat, who has written a book called “Why We Want to Kill You,” promises in his lectures to explain the numerous similarities between radical Muslims and the Nazis, how “Muslim terrorists” invaded America 30 years ago and how “perseverance, recruitment and hate” have fueled attacks by Muslims. 

These men are frauds, but this is not the point. They are part of a dark and frightening war by the Christian right against tolerance that, in the moment of another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, would make it acceptable to target and persecute all Muslims, including the some 6 million Muslims who live in the United States. These men stoke these irrational fears. They defend the perpetual war unleashed by the Bush administration and championed by Sen. John McCain. McCain frequently reminds listeners that “the greatest danger facing the world is Islamic terrorism,” as does Mike Huckabee, who says that “Islamofascism” is “the greatest threat this country [has] ever faced.” George W. Bush has, in the same vein, assured Americans that terrorists hate us for our freedoms, not, of course, for anything we have done. Bush described the “war on terror” as a war against totalitarian Islamofascism while the Israeli air force was dropping tens of thousands of pounds of iron fragmentation bombs up and down Lebanon, an air campaign that killed 1,300 Lebanese civilians.

Well, yeah, what else is new(s) other than these three stooges? You’ll always be able to find stooges who’ll take the right’s money to get carted around the country to spout hate. It’s as American as apple pie and cluster bombs.

I guess the important point that Hedges is making is to remember the Christofascists never quit trying to instigate religious hate against those they consider to be ‘the enemy.’ I wish people understood the history of Islamic fundamentalism and how much of it was instigated and created by our own CIA.

But of course, we’re not talking about real Christians as much as terrorist groups represent real Muslims. What we’re talking about, and what Hedges needs to be more explicit about, is a powerful politically connected group that has hijacked Christianity to their own ends.

These people are from several groups. The first are those who are no more Christian than I am a duck but use the patina of Christianity to cloak their political or business ambitions. They generally lead the second group who are committed fundamentalist Christians who believe in end times prophecy and believe that people, places and conditions in the Middle East are just props in the final story which ends with quite a bit of bloodshed and death but with these people getting into Heaven. The third group are people who do not believe in the Christianity of the New Testament but cloak their religious bigotry and xenophobia in the right-wing Christianity of the Old Testament to justify said bigotries.

This obnoxious stew of haters, opportunists and the delusional make for the modern American Christofascist movement. It bears repeating that I know many Christians (whom the Cfascists would label ‘apostate’) who also find this movement abhorrent and take great pains to articulate why these people do not represent them as Christians.

I hope that is all clear.

In many of the comments under where Hedges’ articles have been posted, he’s being taken to task for seemingly painting ALL Christians as nutbars. This is why I separate Christofascists from my friends who may be Methodist, liberal Catholic or UCC members or other forms of mainstream Christianity.

I think Hedges is making a great point with how this hatred is being spread but should take more pains not to paint all Christians as nutbars.

That being said, the Christofascists certainly would like to do exactly what Hedges writes - plunge the world into a ‘purifying’ bloodletting, which, in practice, is merely another version of the ‘last man standing’ theory, but in this case, the last man standing is the Christian West. What they don’t tell you is they’ll be standing over a smoking radioactive ruin of a planet because they seem to ignore the objections of the Russians and the Chinese to such world domination. And they have nukes too, in case people forget.

Having the vision of 45 years I can say this:

One day they told us to hate the Communists.

The next day they told us to hate the Muslims.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little tired of being instructed in who I’m supposed to hate this decade.

Tom Batiuk you’ve got some guts to publish this strip in this country:

PS: Lucy has Alzheimers. 

But then again, I quite agree with Batiuk. When I think of what the human race has done to itself and this planet one has to question the motivations of any ‘creator’ that would sit back and watch all the horror. Why create a species with a self-destruct gene built into its own DNA? It’s sick.

Of course Batiuk’s sentiment here is more personal and understandable. When people like Donald Trump (my perfect example) live and thrive in a culture that worships wealth and power and good people rot away in nursing homes or in poverty, you wonder, again, why. And no, I don’t any coherent answers from the Bible. “The poor you will always have with you,” Jesus said in a quote often used by right-wing fundamentalists. In essence, a recipe for hopelessness and inaction.

Not my kind of religion or deity I choose to worship, thank you.

I’m sure Batiuk, a Northeastern Ohio native, will get lots of hate mail for this strip.  But he’s my hero of the day.

This was the wreath that was:

This is the wreath and symbol dedicated to Wiccan followers that was taken down by someone from the top of Green Bay City Hall Monday, Dec. 17, 2007. Jim Matthews/Press-Gazette

Horrifying, isn’t it? It could cause all the good little boys and girls that view it to grow horns and worship the devil.

This is what remains and ONLY remains after all the brouhaha:

Green Bay council member Chad Fradette’s manger scene resides above the northwest entrance to Green Bay City Hall. Jim Matthews/Press-Gazette

Green Bay city hall - only the Baby Jesus need apply. Why did I think this would happen this way? Ignorance, sheer ignorance and hateful bigotry rule over so much of America on this Yuletide season.

Thanks to LC’s dove on the local pagan boards for keeping us up to date on this situation:

From: Circle Times <circletimes@ circlesanctuary. org>
To: circletimes@ circlesanctuary. org
Sent: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:56 pm
Subject: [circletimes] Solstice Talks for Equal Rights for Pagans at Yuletide

Late this afternoon, Rev. Selena Fox, High Priestess of Circle Sanctuary,
met by phone with Jim Schmitt, Mayor of Green Bay, Wisconsin, a city that
continues to be embroiled in a growing controversy over the display of
religious holiday imagery at its City Hall.

Selena requested the meeting yesterday and today in a series of phone
conversations with staff members in the Mayor’s office.

“I am glad that the Mayor called me and we were able to talk directly.  I
told him that I requested our meeting in the spirit of peace,
reconciliation, and understanding that is an important part of the
religious observances of both Winter Solstice and Christmas,” said Fox.
“‘Tis the season to make peace and I sought to do this.”

During the meeting, Selena endeavored to clear up misconceptions about the
Wiccan religion that may have been behind the Mayor’s recent anti-Craft
public remarks and his refusal to let Circle Sanctuary’s Yuletide pentacle
wreath be reinstalled next to the Christmas nativity scene at City Hall
where it had been last weekend.

Last week, the Mayor and the majority of the Green Bay’s Advisory Council
approved the request of City Council President Chad Fradette to add a
nativity scene to City Hall.  City Hall already had been decorated for the
holiday season with wreaths, a Santa image, and reindeer.

Fradette purchased the nativity scene and sought to have it placed at City
Hall in defiance of the attempt by Freedom From Religion to challenge a
nativity scene on public land in a smaller community about forty miles
from Green Bay.  Fradette erected his nativity scene above the northwest
entrance to City Hall on Tuesday, December 11, 2007.

On Wednesday, December 12, Mayor Schmitt publicly invited the addition of
contributions of symbols of other faiths to the nativity scene. Selena
decided to take him up on this offer.  She contacted the Mayor’s office
and requested that Circle Sanctuary’s evergreen wreath with Wiccan
pentacle be added to the display in celebration of Yuletide, also known as
the Winter Solstice. After learning that this contribution would be
accepted, Circle Sanctuary’s Assistant Minister Robert Paxton crafted and
delivered the wreath to the Mayor’s office on Friday, December 14.  Later
that day, City Hall staff placed the Yuletide pentacle wreath next to the
nativity scene.

Circle Sanctuary’s pentacle wreath remained next to the nativity scene all
weekend.  However shortly before 1 am Monday morning, a vandal mangled the
wreath and its stand and tossed it off the roof into the bushes by the
entrance.  He abandoned the ladder and wreath when police were called to
the scene by a passer-by.  The case is still under investigation by
police.

On Monday, both Paxton and Fox had a series of telephone meetings with
Mayoral staff and the City attorney.  They requested that either their
original wreath, or a replacement that they would provide, be returned to
the holidays display.  The Mayor refused to return the pentacle wreath to
the display and issued a moratorium that prevented the adding of any other
emblems.

During her phone meeting today, Selena invited the Mayor to work with her
to bring some peace and healing to the situation by finding a way to have
Circle Sanctuary’s Yuletide pentacle wreath returned to the holiday
display to commemorate the religious holidays of Winter Solstice Eve and
Winter Solstice Day on Friday and Saturday.

“I told the Mayor that Green Bay included Wiccans, Druids, and Pagans of a
variety of denominations who observed Solstice as a religious holiday and
that I was aware that many were upset because he and some other City
officials were not giving Pagans and our Yuletide observances the same
consideration that they were giving to Green Bay Christians and Christmas
since they allowed the nativity to remain up through Christmas day.”

The Mayor cast the deciding vote in the City Council meeting last night
which permitted only the nativity scene to stay at City Hall out of
consideration for Green Bay Christians celebrating Christmas and which
denied other symbols including the Yuletide pentacle wreath.

Although the Mayor acknowledged to Fox that he could call a special
meeting to consider her request today to have the pentacle wreath up just
for Solstice, he told Selena that he was unwilling to do this.  Fox and
Schmitt agreed to talk again in 2008 in connection with the creation of
requirements that the Mayor and other City officials plan to draft for
holidays displays at City Hall for next year.

More info: http://www.circlesa nctuary.org/ gbpentacle

HOWEVER 

Green Bay Press-Gazette Editorial Dec. 20

By their actions Tuesday night, Mayor Jim Schmitt and the Green Bay City Council have become the very thing that the founding fathers intended to prevent by writing the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Breaking a 6-6 tie, Schmitt decided that a nativity scene will stay atop an entrance to City Hall until the day after Christmas, but no other religions may be represented in a holiday display until guidelines can be drafted.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” is a reference to the established Church of England and the persecution by a combined state and church that led the Pilgrims to escape to the new world in 1620.

Courts and later constitutional amendments have since applied the language of the Bill of Rights to local and state governments.

Now the city of Green Bay has, in no uncertain terms, established that the Christian faith has the sole right to a place at City Hall.

Council President Chad Fradette’s defiant act of placing the nativity scene on public property, now with the consent of the mayor and half the council, has tarnished a festive season and divided the community.

Or maybe it was the Yahoo who vandalized the pentagram in the first place that got this ugly ball rolling. I bet whoever he is, he’s sitting in his cozy home now feeling quite satisfied with himself. He and he alone, saved Christmas for the Baby Jesus on the steps of Green Bay’s City Hall. Congrats dude, you get the Bill O’Reilly Hero of Christmas Medal, First Class.

And for the record, as a Unitarian Universalist, this display also failed Mayor Schmitt’s First Amendment test:

This peace symbol made by Green Bay Area Unitarian-Universalist member Taku Ronsman, has, for the time being, been rejected for inclusion in Green Bay City Hall’s holiday symbol display. Jim Matthews/Press-Gazette

Peace - out.

Five more days before the madness ends and we can concentrate on a truly fun holiday - New Year’s Eve.

It isn’t bad enough that the birth of the Prince of Peace (if you believe in that sort of thing) has become an exercise in orgiastic capitalism. It isn’t bad enough that people get surly and pissy at Christmas because of the demands this so-called wonderful holiday put on us.

No, now the phrase “Merry Christmas” has become some kind of litmus test in this so-called “War on Christmas.”

In my store, I always wish people a cheery Merry Christmas when they wish me one and sometimes I do it unprompted. As Dickens once wrote, it costs me nothing and makes people happy. However, it has come to my attention that the phrase is being used in commercial transactions as a challenge and the response had better be a “MERRY CHRISTMAS” and not any wussy “happy holidays” or they’ll take their business elsewhere in the new year.

Perish forbid I should wish anyone a “happy Solstice” or “Happy Yule.” Some people have the mistaken notion that pagans worship Yule logs and don’t pray. Or if they do pray, their prayers are not ‘real.’ Smug, aren’t they? Even ‘liberal Christians’ seem to have this conceit.

I try, I really really try to be tolerant and understanding. But sometimes I just want to tell everyone to kiss my pagan ass.

Ahem.

Back to the issue at hand. Of course, I can’t tell whether people are being genuinely nice (I think the vast majority are) or are using it as some kind of cultural challenge.

But tonight, I feel a sense of kinship with none other than Barack Obama.

Witness this from Media Matters:

On the December 19 edition of Fox News’ The Live Desk, while discussing Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) newly released campaign commercial — which Obama’s campaign website calls its “New Holiday Ad” — host Martha MacCallum and political analyst Keli Goff noted that it is one of Obama’s daughters, rather than Obama himself, who says “Merry Christmas” in the ad. Fox News contributor Father Jonathan Morris claimed, “I’m sure his advisers were saying, ‘Better not say Merry Christmas.’ ” Morris continued: “[I]t’s not just about this War on Christmas, that nobody’s — everyone’s afraid to say it. There’s more to Christmas than just the wording. But the fact that in our political atmosphere right now, political advisers — ‘Don’t say it, don’t say it. Have your daughter say it. Beautiful.’” McCallum responded by saying: “Yeah, but you know what? I also guarantee, given everything he’s been going through lately, that they wanted that Merry Christmas message somewhere in that ad. And they said, ‘You know what, let’s have your adorable daughters say it.’ “

In the ad, Obama — seated with his wife, Michelle, and daughters, Sasha and Malia — says: “So from our family to yours, I’m Barack Obama, and I approved this message,” at which point his daughters say, “Merry Christmas,” and, “Happy Holidays.”

Only the brain addled hatemongering shitheads (and I use the term advisedly) on Fox could construe this as some kind of back handed attack on Christmas.

As for this Catholic Priest who apparently has nothing better to do than spread his particular brand of poison on this happy holiday, I would question whether his Jesus needs his constant guardianship lest some Presidential candidate demean his Holy Name.

Is your faith that weak that you need to make this kind of public pronouncements that somehow, because Barack himself didn’t say MERRY CHRISTMAS that its somehow a dig at Christianity? You know Father, you can shove it. Seriously.

It think Obama’s ad is wonderful.

Have we all lost our collective minds?

Yeah, I can’t stand Christmas. Its a holiday absolutely stolen from pagan traditions. But stories like the one above are the main reason I can’t stand it. That and the rampant consumerism and phony generosity.

So Merry Christmas. No agendas

Now leave me alone.