U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Speaks; Reminds Me They're Lunatics

So, President-Elect Obama has not even taken office yet and he's getting threats from religious groups - play nice or else. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, or NAMBLA for short, has issued a statement. And it wasn't exactly a statement of unabashed congratulations.

The statement...also state[s] that the election was not a referendum on abortion, and will suggest that aggressive abortion-rights polices "would alienate many Americans and be interpreted by many Catholics as an attack on the Church."

An attack on the Catholic Church, you say? Good to know that when your little Papalist sewing circle comes together, you guys don't take things overly personally. But the insanity continues...

"Any one of us here would consider it a privilege to die tomorrow--die tomorrow!--to bring about the end of abortion," Auxiliary Bishop Robert Hermann of St. Louis said during a press conference at the Bishops’ conference in Baltimore.

Good thing we go hunting for religious extremists in Tikrit. They're so hard to find here in America. They're hiding in plain sight - in Baltimore. Although, to be fair, you can send the Army and the National Guard to Anwar Province, but they'll be damned if they're traipsing into the Inner Harbor or Towson. That city is a shithole, yo.

But Bishop Joseph Martino offered a sinister message to the new administration. Martino runs the Popa Nostra in Scranton, PA - and he had a message for Lunchpail Joe Biden: you're pro-choice, then don't come 'round here no mo'.

"I cannot have the vice president coming to Scranton and saying he learned his values there when those values are utterly against those of the Catholic Church," Martino said.

As I had always suspected, the Catholic Church runs Scranton - and with an iron fist, no less. As Bishop Martino makes clear, if you learned your values in Scranton, you learned them from the Catholic Church. Period. Joe Biden is Roman Catholic and grew up in Scranton. Thus, everything Joe Biden knows from his time in Scranton came from the Roman Catholic church. There is simply no possible way that Senator/VP-Elect Biden could have learned something somewhere other than in his pew on Sunday. Frankly, I'm not even sure why he bothered to go to school Monday through Friday. In Scranton, Sunday is the only day that matters where it comes to learning your life-lessons.

Just another message from Crazytown, USA. Peace be with you, and also with you. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

(NOTE: Perhaps Bishop Martino should simply be happy to see one of his own back in the White House, seeing as how Mr. Biden is the first Catholic ever elected to serve as Vice President. You don't see the Muslims dumping on Senator Obama, do you???)

*****UPDATE*****

An assist to DP on this one, but apparently in Greenville, South Carolina, if you attend St. Mary's Catholic Church and you voted for Obama, you have some explaining to do. To God, that is.

The priest at St. Mary's Catholic Church in downtown Greenville has told parishioners that those who voted for Barack Obama placed themselves under divine judgment because of his stance on abortion and shouldn't receive Holy Communion until they've done penance.

That sounds to me like any Catholic who voted for O is on the outs with the Trinity. So it must be a small number, right? I mean, even though his running mate was a Catholic, the abortion thing must have been a deal-breaker for all those Papalists out there, right?

At issue for the church locally and nationwide are exit polls showing 54 percent of self-described Catholics voted for Obama, as well as a growing rift in the lifestyle and voting patterns between practicing and non-practicing Catholics.

D'oh! Good thing they didn't call their parishioners who voted Democratic evil or anything though. Kept it respectful-like...

In a letter posted on St. Mary's Web site, Newman wrote that "voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."

But Reverend Newman goes on, and I can't even tell you, it's a screamer. I can't upstage the man - let's Warner Wolf it. To the videotape:

Newman calls abortion the "chief battleground" in the so-called culture wars, and different from "prudential" matters such as health care, education or the war on terror. A Catholic who gets an abortion, encourages one or assists in the procedure is automatically excommunicated from the church, Newman said, a penalty he said doesn't apply to other forms of killing.

Now, I want to make sure I read this right: Let's say my mother, a practicing Catholic, drives someone - let's say they're a cracked-out former student who comes to her for help - to the doctor where that woman intends to and then gets an abortion. This would be, arguably, encouraging an abortion. According to Reverend Newman, my mother, who has attended church virtually every week of her life and is actually a real-life believer in the faith (not many of those around these days), worked with handicapped and mentally disabled children as a profession, and - unlike I would wager Reverend Newman - has actually met a Pope, is automatically excommunicated by the Church. However, conversely, let's say she gets tired of my father chewing with his mouth open (which, let's be honest, the whole family is pretty tired of) and stabs him to death with a kitchen knife... she is not automatically excommunicated. She might be, but not a dispositive act. That's what you're saying here? That's what you're selling me? That's the blue plate special today?

Seriously?

Nope, I have nothing else. I'm finished. Turn out the lights when you leave.

(note: I try to avoid bringing my mother into things, but she's a very good example of a practicing, faithful and non-lapsed Catholic who also happens to have a functional brain. Reverend Newman, not as much.)

Obama Assassination Plot Foiled! UPDATES AND CORRECTIONS

AP wire reports the ATF intervened in a plot by neo-Nazi skinheads to assassinate Barack Obama and murder 102 African-American individuals in Tennessee.

That's building racist energy turned kinetic. You see it on the far fringe of the Republican base - the very far fringe. Same intolerance that justifies bombing an abortion clinic, holding up a placard stating "God hates fags," and decreeing a man's middle name is indicative of a connection to Islamofascism.

The only saving grace?: Almost all of this fringe element are too lazy or disaffected to put crazy into motion. Almost all.

***UPDATE***: Some of my conservative peers are livid, angry at the purported intimation of this post - that I am conflating a despicably racist group of skinheads with a living component of the Republican base.

I will not retract my statements, but bring them into focus.

No. These pitiful nihilists, these sub-citizens who bring our democratic enterprise down and defile it, are not part of any Republican party I know.

Notwithstanding, I will not avert my eyes and disregard the patent correlation between the rancid intolerance bandied about by the outer most edges of the current GOP base (Karl Rove's, Rush Limbaugh's and James Dobson's Frankenstein collective) and the impetus to commit harm held by misanthropic groups like the Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan or skinheads. I agree - the dogma birthed by such defective thinking is not exclusive to the Republican party. The Democratic base is no more immune. Its far left extremities also meddle with black principles of radicalism, anarchism and fascism. On the rare instance, these doctrinal underpinnings are seized by beyond-the-pale factions to promote equally aberrant acts (think PETA or the faceless, feral mobs protesting the WTO).

There are domestic terrorists - and many of them have a ideological bent, whether right or left. The Council for Foreign Relations and the FBI classify them accordingly:

The FBI classifies domestic terrorist threats mostly by political motive, dividing them into three main categories: left wing, right wing, and special interest.

And the right-wing extremists share a predictable dynamic:

What is right-wing domestic terrorism?

Attacks committed by people who favor individual freedoms over governmental regulation are classified as right-wing domestic terrorism. Such extremists may be motivated by issues of race, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or other issues, such as opposition to abortion or immigration. According to the FBI, right-wing terrorists often take “racist and racial supremacy and embrace antigovernment, antiregulatory” platforms. Far-right movements often blend political rhetoric with racial undertones, despite recent attempts to reach a broader audience by eliminating racial language. Authorities do not categorize people with extreme right-wing political ideals as threats unless the group they are affiliated with demonstrates a real potential for violence.

Once this threat for violence manifests itself, the bastards have no place in the Republican tent. I concede this. Even the right, militant fringes recoil and reconvene, far away from these pariahs.

No - I do not conflate extremist groups with the Republican base. Even the most abhorrent sub parts of the Republican base. However, if you cannot find at least a tenuous link between the credos or ethos of the farthest right wing of the GOP and the folks that fall off the party's edge into the criminal abyss, then allow me to recommend a 24 hour cable news network you may enjoy.

Are the bovine hoards lumbering through McCain-Palin rallies, documented by video in various states, shouting filth like Obama is a "negra," "Muslim" (as if it's a bad thing), "Arab" (as if it's bad thing), "terrorist" and today, within earshot of Governor Palin, "n*gger," [see UPDATE 3 below] not an ostensible appendage of the Republican base? Are they not an old vestigial tail lingering on the larger Republican organism, doddering into the evening of this election cycle? Even a single drop of water is a constituent part of the greater ocean.

Do you not find an ill-informed, ignorant, intolerant sect infecting the base of the greater GOP at this moment in history? Do you not believe Pat Robertson and James Dobson hate homosexuals when they say they hate homosexuals or blame "abortionists" for the fate of 9-11? Do you not think Phil Berg and Andy Martin, who spout lies that Obama is Muslim and previously schooled at a madrasa, are not sympathetic to some segment of Republicanism in vogue? When Hannity and Limbaugh happily grant them a mainstream audience, amplify their slimy rhetoric and impassively condone their message without factual challenge or providing context?

Yes, the Democrats have their proximal fleas as well. Scroll down to my post about Reverend Wright. I mention him in the same breath as Ward Churchill and Cindy Sheehan, a cabal of far left pernicion. However, the assassination plot hits closer to the Republican home.

If Pat Robertson wants to say abortionists caused 9-11 and Ward Churchill speaks of folks who died in 9-11 are "little Eichmanns," then they can sleep together. I'm not making a distinction. I only note that if hate-mongering devolves into hate-crimes, you can normally locate the perpetrators banging on either the Republicans' or the Democrats' front door as if they belong inside. And you know which door is which.

***UPDATE***: According to David Duke, Obama's candidacy is a "visual aid" for hate groups.

***UPDATE***: I reported erroneously based on other erroneous sources that "n*gger" was shouted at a Palin rally a few days ago. Apparently, the word screamed was "redistributor." Even the pinkos over at Daily Kos make the concession. However, I continue to stand behind every other word of my post and the gravamen of my complaint against the farthest right fringe of the GOP and the farthest left fringe of the Democrats.