Tag: Politics

Farrakhan on the Jews

Current Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan
What a friend he has in Muammar

There he goes again:

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said on Tuesday that Jews and Zionists are trying to push the US into war and that Zionists dominate the US government and banks.

Farrakhan, 77, made the comments at the Nation of Islams annual meeting near Chicago.

His friend Muammar:

President Obama, Farrakhan said, if you allow the Zionists to push you, to mount a military offensive against Gaddafi and you go in and kill him and his sons, as you did with Saddam Hussein and his sons… Im warning you this is a Libyan problem, let the Libyans solve their problem among themselves.

Farrakhan called Muammar Gaddafi my brother and my friend.

It’s a matter of religious belief:

Some of you think that Im just somebody whos got something out for the Jewish people, Farrakhan said. Youre stupid.

Do you think I would waste my time if I did not think it was important for you to know Satan? My job is to pull the cover off of Satan so that he will never deceive you and the people of the world again.

Anti-Defamation League response:

ADL National Director Abe Foxman said in response that, Anti-Semitism has suffused the Nation of Islams message, and Farrakhan is the standard bearer and bigot in chief… Perhaps what’s more disturbing is that despite his anti-Semitic rants, he has not been made a pariah in his own community. What does it take for him to stop being a pied piper of hatred?

For starters, Fr. Michael Pfleger could disown him. Won’t happen, of course. What a reflection on Pfleger is his friendship with and endorsement of Farrakhan, including his anti-semitism. What a disgrace.

Public unions: a way to buy jobs

Rev. Robert Sirico quotes John Paul II in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
“Unions do not have the character of political parties struggling for power; they should not be subjected to the decision of political parties or have too close links with them.”
 
Contrast that with what the Wisconsin bishops’ lobbyist said about what the bishops think about teachers’ and other public unions:
The bishops are merely reminding everybody of the teaching of the Church [about] the dignity of work and the appropriate place for unions without giving them carte blanche to have everything they want. [italics mine]
The dignity of work is not the point here.  
 
Fr. Sirico:
Generally speaking, the long history of unions has been bound up with the right of free association. So far as I can tell, the current practice of public-sector union organizing has little or nothing to do with this principle, so it is right and proper that Catholic social teaching should also recognize this.
Free association, a human right.  “But the driving force behind the budgetary move has nothing to do with human rights, unless one considers the rights of Wisconsin taxpayers,” says Sirico.  “It is nearly impossible for anyone to work for the public sector without being a member” and paying dues.
 
Teachers vs unions
Some do not like that idea.
But freedom of association has worked against unionization.  Unions could not bribe employers, but they could pay into campaign funds and get similar results from legislators and governors and presidents.  Unions became office-seekers’ and -holders’ financiers.  These politicos in turn had jobs to offer — public service jobs, where membership was not the point, dues were.
 
Sirico closes:
The bias toward unions in Catholic social teaching is rooted in a perception that unions fulfill certain moral conditions. When they fail to do so, the application of moral teaching can change. There is no a priori reason to back every union demand and no reason for Catholics to feel under any doctrinal obligation to do so.
As he said earlier in the column,
Just because something is called a union does not make it automatically good and moral. Essential considerations of justice and freedom must be in place.
Once in a Newspaper Guild meeting, I said we should support the delivery truck drivers if they had a good case and was accused of being a Jesuit.  Worst thing my union brother could think of at the moment, I guess.
 
His point: this was no time to bring up rightness of demands.  Solidarity was at issue.  Fr. Sirico is making that point.  Just because you support freedom of association does not mean you are with the public unions at a time of dreadful financial crisis.
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Day care threatened: why?

Chi Trib’s Vikki Ortiz Healy comes up with featurization of real problems, a tear-jerker well done. But something’s missing as it is in many, I’d say most, such stories, namely any nod towards the fiscal insanity that has led to this situation and the need to cut the budget before worse things happen, far worse than this loss to young apparently unwed parents in Cicero.

Parents and child at Morton East (Trib pic)

Thank heaven for little girls, sang boulevardier Maurice Chevalier, and thank it for a culture and perhaps religious motivation that leads them to have their babies in the first place. But is it hard-hearted to ask for a little balance in such stories?

Wind shifts in abortion camp

Pro-choicer Frances Kissling urges retrenchment for tactical reasons.

Writing Feb. 20 in the opinion section of The Washington Post, Kissling said abortion rights advocates can no longer pretend the fetus is invisible. … We must end the fiction that an abortion at 26 weeks is no different from one at six weeks. … We need to firmly and clearly reject post-viability abortions except in extreme cases.

More more more at NCReporter.

There’s a long history of such message-changing. Birth control advocates once urged eugenics reasons, switched to women’s rights.

Boo-hoo and your father’s mustache, Scott Walker!

Protesting Scott Walker
To the Madison streets!

They come at you hammer and tong, do they not?

Messing with unions in Madison is like messing with Notre Dame football in South Bend. Think twice, no matter how many votes you got in the last election.

These folks don’t give a hoot about no stinkin’ election but truly believe that democracy has its limits.

Action in the streets and in the capitol are what does it. Brown shirts help but are not always necessary. In the case of Wis. Gov. Walker eating out, all you have to do is boo.

When aldermen head for Cal City

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Mt. Baldy, M...
City council could flee to the dunes.

Chicago’s new mayor has big municipal money problems, of course. No kicking can down road can be contemplated.

The changes that Emanuel is likely to pursue could put him on course for conflict with the citys large unionized workforce. The labor unions representing the rank-and-file members of the two biggest components of city government the police and fire departments endorsed Gery Chico over Emanuel, as did the union for city garbage-crew laborers. Emanuel angered them but may have scored points with the broader, tax-paying public with a campaign ad in which he said City Hall is not an employment agency.

I picture him — he’s for hope and change, isn’t he? — calling for major cuts and finding teachers and others lining up outside The Hall for doctors’ permits for missing work, aldermen heading for Michigan City or Evanston, the whole kid and kaboodle (sp?) of labor-union democracy. Fun times ahead as he (we hope) tries to keep Chicago from falling into Lake Michigan.

Eddie Burke, where you gonna live?

A Critical Mass gathering on the Daley Plaza, ...
Will he bicycle to work?

I don’t believe it. He loses the finance committee chair?

Edward Burke: Daley and Burke were never close friends, but throughout Daleys 22 years in office, the dean of the council maintained great clout and amassed vast wealth with his city-related side work due to a non-aggression pact with the mayor. With Daley retiring, Burke scoffed that Emanuel lacked the right approach to dealing with aldermen and he endorsed Chico. Emanuel responded by threatening to strip Burke of his powerful Finance Committee chairmans job.

I’d put such a change up there with Jane Byrne beating Bilandic in ’79. “You did it, Chicago!” Royko rejoiced, celebrating the machine loss. Snow did it, actually.

Arrest those people, they offend me

Picture of Billboard put up by the United Amer...
Huh!

Sharia law NOT, says T. More Law Center.

The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) announced today that the City of Dearborn, its Mayor, John B. OReilly, its Chief of Police, Ronald Haddad, 17 City police officers, and two executives of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce were named as defendants in a ninety-six page federal civil rights lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court in Detroit this morning.

Thou shalt not rule Christian preaching out of order.