Over the last seven days...
Maryland: Pastor Jerry Darnell Bartley charged with molesting a 13 year old boy.
Maine: Pastor Colin Haag and his wife arrested for kidnapping his wife's children from their biological father.
Wisconsin: The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) has filed a 55-page lawsuit against the Pope for shielding the crimes of pedophile priests.
Tennessee: Father Bill Casey arrested for molesting a 10 year old boy.
Brazil: Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa arrested on multiple counts of child molestation.
Wisconsin: Pastor Leonard Van Vlaenderen charged with embezzling from his church.
Indiana: Court rules that Father Francis Markey can be extradited to Ireland to face charges of child molestation.
Alaska: Pastor Shawn Anthony Justice charged with 12 counts of sexual abuse of a female minor.
Wisconsin: Pastor John West charged with conspiracy to sell heroin.
Texas: Pastor Robert John Weber charged with ten counts of sexual assault on a 15 year old girl.
Indiana: Pastor Ernest M. Beal Jr charged with stealing the trust funds of residents of the group home for mentally challenged adults that he manages.
Illinois: Father Alejandro Flores charged with molesting an 8 year old boy. Flores is already in jail awaiting trial for molesting the boy's older brother.
Ireland: Father Eugene Lewis charged with 11 counts of sexual assault on three pre-teen sisters.
Belgium: Bishop Roger Vangheluwe has resigned after confessing to child molestation.
This Week's Winner
Utah: Pastor Kris Lounsbury has been charged with two counts of rape and aggravated sexual abuse of a ten year old girl. Lounsbury was a GOP candidate for Congress in 2006, running on a platform of abolishing the income tax, deporting illegal immigrants, abolishing the United Nations, and fighting LGBT rights laws. In January 2009 he posted a recording of a sermon calling for imprecatory prayer curses against President Obama. In the linked clip, Lounsbury rails against the repeal of DADT, saying that "you have no idea how vicious, these homosexuals, can be."
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Teabagger meltdown! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDED_vGkTfA&feature=player_embedded
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Can we please be done with this myth that the Founding Fathers wanted a christian nation?
Another interesting tidbit in this video is the teabagger split between Palinites (government should promote Christian values) and Paulites (government should go away). Either way, they're a party of loons.
Olbermann - Thomas Jefferson Pwns Sarah Palin & Her God http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j5ncmZizJ0&feature=player_embedded
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Skippy's environmental news.
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For your weekend enjoyment, take a look inside the battle against forced-microchip implantation in state legislatures around the country.
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Secret forced sterilizations in Uzbekistan
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, April 25 (UPI) -- Many women in Uzbekistan are sterilized without their consent under a government order meant to reduce the number of poor people, human rights activists say.
A human rights campaigner who requested anonymity because of fear of detention said about 5,000 women have been sterilized without consent since February, The Sunday Times of London reported.
Doctors visit the homes of women and lie to get them to hospitals, where they then perform sterilization.
One young woman, 26, was told she had a fatal cyst. She had no symptoms. She was frightened into admitting herself to a local hospital, agreed to surgery, and then woke up to find she had been sterilized.
"I could not stop crying. They tricked me and treated me like an animal."
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Crayola thanks the tea partiers.
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Mario Piperni: Republicans eating their own
As predicted, Michael Steele's honest criticism of his own party's record on African-American relations did not sit too well with Republicans.
"I think it's too bad that Steele gave Democrats reason to believe that their distorted vision of how Republicans came to dominate the South is correct. It may be his biggest gaffe so far."
"Steele's job is to make TODAY'S GOP attractive to voters, not to declare that we haven't pandered enough to any group."
Funny. TODAY'S GOP isn't attractive to anyone, including most conservatives. It's a party of intolerance, morally bankrupt, void of fresh ideas and insensitive to the needs of the majority of Americans. At some point in the last few decades it stopped evolving beyond it's single mission of attaining power at any cost. It now finds itself being held together by the ten second soundbites of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.
The era of the moderate Republican is long dead and gone. Charlie Crist is deemed too liberal for daring to agree with the President on some issues. Same goes with John McCain who at one time in his past, believed that crossing party lines to uphold a sacred principle was a good thing to do. The time for cleansing in the Republican party has begun in earnest. Bipartisanship is viewed as a treasonous act and has now become the new four-letter word in conservative circles.
So be it. Let the mongrels eat their own. They deserve it.
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Obama eulogy for the W Virginia miners: "These miners lived - as they died - in pursuit of the American dream." The American dream is at the bottom of a coal mine?
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Mario Piperni - Claiming bisexuality to win votes
Jerry Falwell is turning in his grave.
PHILADELPHIA — The old tactic of dragging out an opponent's sexual skeletons for political gain is being turned on its head in the City of Brotherly Love.
In a left-leaning district anchored by a roughly three-square-block area known as the Gayborhood, where gay pride rainbows grace even the street signs, a state representative accuses her foe of pretending to be bisexual to win votes.
Rep. Babette Josephs says Gregg Kravitz, her challenger in the May 18 Democratic primary for the 182nd District House seat, told her he was gay, then appeared at a campaign event with a woman who introduced herself as his girlfriend.
"I outed him as a straight person, and now he goes around telling people, quote, 'I swing both ways,'" Josephs told supporters April 15 in recorded comments at a fundraiser at a downtown pub. "That's quite a respectful way to talk about sexuality."
So is it now a plus to be gay, lesbian or bisexual when running for office?
A spokesman for the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund…
"There are only a few places where being openly LGBT might be a net plus: in this district in Philadelphia, Dupont Circle in Washington, the Castro in San Francisco," he said. "In the vast majority of places — and vast majority is an understatement — it's still a hurdle."
"I outed him as a straight person." There's my quote of the week right there.
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There are fears of an environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, as efforts to clear up an oil spill have been suspended because of bad weather.
Good thing Obama refused to expand offshore drilling. Oh wait.
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Lucy and the Football
How many times will this Lucy and the football game be played by various GOP senators before the administration catches on.
Instead of cartoons, why don't we just look at another kind of drawing:
Since there aren't enough Democratic votes for cloture, various Republican prima donnas are going to be drawn, like moths to the flame, to the potential fame of being #60. These drama queens will enjoy their moment in the sun as they become the center of media and Democratic attention. And, yes, they'll often flake out, as narcissists are wont to do.
None of this has anything to do with the administration's ignorance—they know full well that they're playing Charlie Brown to the Lucy du jour. Atrios is certainly smart enough to realize this. I'd like to hear his alternative to kissing Lindsey Graham's ass, because I have no clue what other, better strategy is waiting in the wings.
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Remember when WW2 was referred to as "Mr. Roosevelt's war"?
But now, there is at least one young member of the Party of Hoover who has forgotten that little bit of history. Probably because Glenn Beck has likely never mentioned it.
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Back in the game: Texas goes for the nukular of crazeeeee!
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Hooker-lovin' slimeballs
Scary loser Scott Lee Cohen will be governor of Illinois
One depressing sign of how thoroughly corporatism has distorted our political discourse is that during a Wall-Street-caused economic crisis, the President of the United States addressed the corporate criminals and instead of having them all arrested, he asked for their help.
Even worse, the MSM praised this begging-on-bended-knee as "standing up" to the financial fuckers.
John Nichols at The Nation has a welcome corrective:
The problem with the conciliatory rhetoric the president was spouting Thursday is that it denies the reality that Wall Street celebrates when Main Street stumbles. If there has been one economic constant across the past two decades (since the victory of the free-trade absolutists who backed the North American Free Trade Agreement and the extension of permanent most-favored-nation trading status to China) is has been this: The stock price for a corporation does not rise when the CEO announced that he is hiring; it rises when he announced that the company is shutting U.S. factories and laying off U.S. workers.Wall Street bets against Main Street.
Wall Street champions corporations that open factories in foreign lands, not along the Main Streets of American cities.
Wall Street rewards banks that refuse credit to Main Street businesses, homeowners and small farmers.
This is not some theory. It is the fundamental economic reality of our times.
Indeed, as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders explains: "We have got to make it crystal clear to Wall Street that the era of wild speculation and greed is over. We need a Wall Street which invests in the job creating productive economy, and not one that continues the unregulated gambling activities which have been so devastating to the middle class of our country."
To suggest that the interests of Wall Street and Main Street are complimentary is absurd.
Candidate Barack Obama was right. If Main Street is going to thrive, Wall Street is going to have to change -- fundamentally and permanently.
It's like Bernie Sanders says: "With rampant unemployment and when small- and medium-size businesses are unable to obtain affordable credit, it is insane that our largest financial institutions continue to trade trillions in esoteric financial instruments which makes Wall Street the largest gambling casino in the world."
The message Obama should have taken to Wall Street is the one that elected candidate Obama.
It is the message that Senator Sanders continues to deliver when he says, as Obama should have on Thursday, that: "Disgust at Wall Street is profound. The American people want us to change in a very profound way how Wall Street functions, and Congress must deliver."
Of the rich and powerful on Wall Street, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said "I welcome their hatred."
President Barack Obama welcomes their support.
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Republican-approved bipartisan financial regulations attacked by Republicans
New financial regulations seem likely to become law, are publicly welcomed by most Wall Street fat cats, and have been put together in about as bipartisan a manner as is humanly possible in 2010. As a result, Republican senators went on the teevee yesterday to puff up and lie about how there's no way in H-E-Double-L the dirty Soviet Democrats will ever pass this elitist legislation that would finally put an end to patriotic bad-mortgage derivatives used by major banks to bet against their own investors. Washington Post/Wall Street Journal
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The Deciderer
He who shall not be claimed writes a book:
The publisher of former President George W. Bush's
book "Decision Points" on Sunday set a Nov. 9 release date, unveiled its cover design and announced new details about it.
Bush has said he is not writing a traditional memoir but an account of key decisions in his life. The cover features a photo of then-President Bush alone with his thoughts, standing in the Rose Garden Colonnade, wearing a dark suit and holding a briefing book, his head turned slightly from the camera.
I prefer the earlier work-in-progress artwork:
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The New Zealand Army.
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Krugman: McConnell's been 'trying to stop reform with possibly the most dishonest argument in the history of politics'
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