Manhattan Diary
by Cahir O'DohertyRecent Posts
- Bill Donohue: blame Madonna not Catholic Church
- Governor Chris Christie cares little about civil rights
- Kansas Speaker Mike O'Neal's prayer for President Obama's Death
- Governor Chris Christie says majorities should vote on minority rights
- Newt Gingrich plays on racial, political and social resentments
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Bill Donohue: blame Madonna not Catholic Church
Another day, another opportunity for Bill Donohue to blame some unsuspecting soul for all of the ills affecting the Catholic Church.
This week's pinata is Madonna, the nemesis of all that is wholesome, proper and sacred since 1984 (to hear Bill and his Catholic League of one tell it).
Kansas Speaker Mike O'Neal's prayer for President Obama's Death
Kansas Republican House Speaker Mike O’Neal stepped onto the national stage last week when he was forced to apologize to First Lady Michelle Obama after an email he forwarded to fellow lawmakers calling her 'Mrs. YoMama' made national news.
O'Neal's offense giving impulses were not over, however. Another email he forwarded to his fellow House Republicans asked them to to pray Psalm 109, which contains these verses:
Governor Chris Christie says majorities should vote on minority rights
Honestly, they could have spared themselves the mess, according to our esteemed historian.
I imagine the leaders of the civil rights era would have an unmistakable response to Christie's contention, and I imagine much of it would be delivered in quite strong language. A plebiscite in the late 1950's or 1960's that would have overturned Jim Crow? Really Governor?
Newt Gingrich apparently blames media for marital infidelities
How dare CNN and its sinister fellow travelers in the so-called 'elite media' dare to question Gingrich's integrity by raising the latest revelations of his second wife, he thundered?
Gingrich was not there to discuss his requests for an open marriage. To underline that point he then brought both CNN and host John King to the woodshed.
Cardinal Francis George: gays are the new KKK
Hours after he learned the organizers of Chicago's annual gay pride parade would delay the start of 2012's citywide pride march to avoid disrupting morning Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, the Cardinal still found the opportunity to take (and give) further offense.
'You don't want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism,' he told visibly startled Fox News host Dane Placko.
‘Nothing gold can stay’ - throwing the first punch and being forced to leave small-town Ireland
The only punch I have ever thrown was at Christmas. I'm not sure what it says about me. I'm certainly not proud of the fact.
No drink was involved. There was no long festering family dispute. I hadn't stepped out to settle some old score. It just occurred.
Adios Rick Perry
Duck and roll folks, apparently the gays aren't content with ruining Christmas and the wedding announcement section of your local paper - according to Rick Perry now they're after Christianity itself.
They're waging war against it. They want to outlaw it. They want to make it illegal for you to pray. Or something.
What the Bible says to women - shut up and stay home
People who enjoy condemning their neighbors with the use of bible verses written long before running water was a feature in most homes really ought to dig into the book a little deeper.
Women especially should take a little look, because it has lots of advice to share with them, such as -
Conservatives versus Newt Gingrich
With the Cain, Perry and Bachmann's campaigns unravelling, yesterday's man Newt Gingrich is suddenly looking viable. It's a sign of desperation, not strength though.
And it's a development that's leaving many conservatives feeling decidedly queasy. When character becomes the issue Gingrich's life becomes a minefield.
What's behind the Walmart Black Friday panic and chaos?
What are we looking at here? I mean apart from the rudeness, the herd instinct and the all the panic? Is it desperation? Is it fear that someone else will cheat you out of the what you need?If you have an increasingly small budget, then being cheated of what you want must cut deeper surely? Could that explain the depressing frenzy you're looking at?
These absurd mass hysterics have all unfolded at Walmarts. That's probably not an accident. Certainly other big chains have witnessed similar scenes, but truly biblical mass hysteria seems to have played out at the big box store with more regularity than just about anywhere else.
Pope Benedict kissing Imam controversy in Benetton ad
Everyone has their pieties, even nonbelievers. It's how we respond when we see them debased that underlines who we are.
That's why the responses to fashion house Benetton's latest ad campaign have been so depressingly predictable. In fact it's why Benetton supported the campaign at all.
Gays created by the Devil says US Catholic Church Policy Advisor
In the column Daniel Avila, who is a Massachussetts attorney and (take a breath here) Policy Advisor for Marriage and Family of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, bluntly says that 'the scientific evidence of how same-sex attraction most likely may be created provides a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil.'
So if you're gay the phrase the devil made you do it has a whole new meaning this week. We are all made in God's image (except for the gays, obviously).
2012 Republican economic plan - more tax cuts for the rich
It's simple really, easy to get your head around.
Never mind that America's rich haven't created any worthwhile jobs or industries in a decade, just accept that the rich should be getting richer at an even faster pace.
Occupy Wall Street is just getting started
Let me clarify something at the outset: I don't like it. It's human nature to resist profound upheaval, particularly when it's international. Change of this magnitude - even positive change - can be scary.
But dramatic change, and the growing desire for it, is now the defining characteristic of our era because we find ourselves living in an age where our government - both sides - seems increasingly incapable of governing well, where our faceless corporations have been ruled 'people' by our Supreme Court, where those same corporations seem to have more power than elected officials, where social inequality is off the charts and where special interests apparently hold more sway than the voting public.
Irish President Mary McAleese accepts most gay friendly politician award
Her acceptance speech was classic McAleese: informed, heartfelt, genuinely supportive and speaking as a president for all of the Irish people.
She will be a very tough act to follow. I hope the Irish public will keep her example in mind when they go to the polls to elect a new president on Friday.
President Barack Obama, US Defender in Chief
In comparison to his immediate predecessor his success in bringing the world's most wanted terrorists and dictators to justice has been nothing short of remarkable.
In fact the contrast speaks for itself.
George W. Bush's legacy: now anyone thinks they can be president
Thanks to his presidency, and the utterly lost decade he presided over, America has now reached the point where anyone - anyone - thinks they'd make a fine president.
How else to explain the clown car of 2012 Republican presidential contenders currently running? These are not world class political operatives by any yard stick - most of them are not even sophisticated enough to head up a suburban Rotary Club - but they'll probably be the last to know.
Spanish scandal - 300,000 stolen babies stolen and sold for adoption
The shocking practice began during General Franco’s dictatorship, trafficking babies by a secret network of doctors, nurses, priests and nuns, and it continued until the early 1990's.
Children were removed from the homes of politically suspect parents, or from single mothers or the unreligious, and transferred to good Catholic homes.
John Boehner golfs with 1% as 99% wait for a Jobs Act
So spare a thought for hard working Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who'll be playing a round of strenuous golf at Newport Beach in California today in the company of some of the richest people in America.
As Wall Street is under siege from a growing international protest that's condemning corporate influence on our elections, apparently tone deaf Boehner is cozying up the richest 1% they blame for our woes.
Herman Cain, if you can't get elected blame yourself
Many plots were hatched to help her and other royals escape the approaching Terror, but she rejected all of them because she felt assured it would all blow over. When you're that rich it almost always does.
So it's hard not to think of her high-handed arrogance when you listen to Herman Cain talk.
Who wants to shower with Rick Santorum?
'The problem is that sexual activity with people who you are in close quarters with who happen to be of the same sex is different than being open about your sexuality,' Santorum said.
That quip raised Fox host Chris Wallace's eyebrows, forcing him to ask Santorum if he was suggesting gay soldiers would 'go after' their straight colleagues.
Peter King fears Occupy Wall Street may gain political clout
Speaking on the Laura Ingraham radio show this weekend King did his best to vilify the growing movement as a 'ragtag' band of malcontents, rather than a populist movement riding the surge of anger at the income inequality that is still growing in the United States (and which is now so unequal it puts us closer to Honduras than Sweden, say).
King recalled that such protests arose before in the 1960's. And that's when he also remembered how effective they ultimately were in changing the national debate.
New US banking fees and unbridled greed
When the Obama administration stepped in to put an end to the geyser of ridiculous charges, fees, and dodgy rates, for a while there it looked like the banks didn't know who to shakedown.
Fear no more. Our banks have found brilliant new ways to charge the under privileged for the privilege of being allowed to use their own money.
Occupy Wall Street protestor blasts Fox News, interview dropped
Fox News went down to Wall Street to meet the Occupy Wall Street protestors. Should have been an easy gig, right? Just point the camera at these wooly headed socialists and pop it on Greta Van Susteren.
But that's not what played out at all. In fact, they interviewed protester Jesse LaGreca and got schooled. The offer to LaGreca to go 'on the record' was forgotten and its understood this interview ended up on the cutting room floor.
Bullying is violence, it should be considered a crime
And what if, as you watched your friends run out to dances and teenage parties, you realized that you would never find anything you were looking for there? What if you watched the doors to love and life opening for your friends, but all you saw were doors being slammed shut?
Then things get weirder. Suddenly you became a stranger in your own home. Your parents, once the source of all comfort to you, became potential jurors. Your siblings started to give evidence against you. You start to dread coming home.
Fear and loathing of a David Norris presidency
After all the media has a distinct liberal bias we're told - usually by the agents of Rupert Murdoch's unprecedented international media empire.
Take the conservative British broadsheet The Sunday Times for example. Yesterday evening John Burns, the Associate Editor of The Sunday Times, tweeted that he had six more letters from Irish presidential candidate David Norris pleading for clemency on behalf of his former partner Ezra Yitzhak to Israeli authorities (presumably).
Republican debate audience loudly boos gay soldier
Still, I was startled when the audience at a previous Republican presidential debate cheered Rick Perry's unbroken death penalty execution record.
Then later I was even more surprised when the crowd cheered the idea of allowing an uninsured young man to die. It gave me a real sense of what ancient Rome must have sounded like to anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves standing in the center of the Colosseum.
Archbishop Timothy Dolan's gay bashing letter to President Obama
On July 20, 2005, Canada became the fourth country in the world and the first country in the Americas to legalize same-sex marriage with the enactment of the Civil Marriage Act.
By 2011 the only major social change that has occurred is that gay people have almost total equality under Canadian law.
GOP class warfare: protect billionaires at all costs
Let's start with you.
If you're like most other working Americans now you probably can't get a raise, or you can't get health insurance, or you can't get a pension, or you can't get a 401k, or you can't bargain collectively, or you can't get a mortgage, or you can't get social security, or you can't get Medicare, or you can't get a student loan, or you can't a credit card, or you can't get a vacation - and you sure as hell can't get a financial bailout.
Pat Robertson: if your wife has Alzheimer's, divorce her
The troubled husband wrote to Robertson for advice on the right thing to do?
Divorce your wife, Robertson replied, but make sure she has 'somebody' to look after her, and then move on with your new life partner.
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