But seriously, check your local listings and watch this Independent Films documentary. “Unmistaken Child” is absolutely incredible.

“Politicians selling us out. Paying lip service to the suffering of the people, but hob-knobbing with those who want to rob substance from the people. That’s why Jesus said it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to see the Kingdom of Heaven.”

His reference is to a scripture that’s always been troubling to me in a certain way. “Rich” is not descriptive enough for the nuanced thinker, but I believe if you place it in the context of the spirit of the New Testament it becomes clear: A rich man, like Martin Luther King, Jr. said, is one who values things more than people.

Anyone who tells you that Sunday’s passage of health care reform legislation is the end of America as we know it is an alarmist, pure and simple. What he have here, friends, is simply a case of poor timing. We’ve need health care reform in this country for decades, and the party in power chose the worst possible time to put forth a plan. Because of this, they had to beg, borrow and steal to get the votes.

Here’s my take:

• The Democratic Party will fly or fry on the success or failure of this legislation. Major social legislation in the United States has historically been backed with bipartisan support. Not this time. The Democrats didn’t receive a single vote of support from Republicans. Because of this, HCR is a high risk, high reward endeavor.
• Let’ s just say that the Democrats are wrong and that this legislation will not save money in the long term. Further, let’s say the Republicans are wrong and this legislation won’t bankrupt the country. All things being equal, 32 million people getting coverage is positive change.
• On this issue, I’d love to hear from people who have spent years without health insurance. I don’t want to hear from the people who’ve always had it and, because of this, feel entitled to it. Not having health insurance in this country can ruin your life.

Let’s see what they have to say about Flint:

Flint in spring | Gerry Leslie

OK, so this morningn I’m thinking about stereotypes. Let’s just be honest about why they exist: They’re simple.

Think about it, which is easier: Going through life considering all the nuances it offers, or making sweeping assumptions about complicated matters so you can treat opinion as fact?

Thinking can be tough, and research even tougher. That all takes time and, when we don’t have it, we always can settle on stereotypes.

Just recently there was an editorial in my old newspaper regarding downtown Flint and its importance to Genesee County, and vice versa. And then, in the comments, this:

HEY,
THE DAYS OF PEOPLE GOING DOWNTOWN FLINT AND SPENDING MONEY IS OVER WITH. THEY GO SHOPPING IN THE MALLS, EASY PARKING ALOT SAFER. I WOULDN’T GO DOWNTOWN FLINT FOR ANYTHING…IT ISN’T SAFE. A GOOD PLACE TO GET ROBBED OR KILLED. DOWN TOWN FLINT IS A BAD JOKE.

The truth, of course, is something more like this: Downtown Flint is actually safer than the parking lot at Genesee Valley. Look at the statistics. Apparently this individual didn’t read that particular piece in the Journal less than a year ago. If he had, he would have read the following:

Dave Stamm, Grand Blanc Township’s police chief, said while he couldn’t comment on the comparisons with the suburbs, he knows that downtown has a low crime rate compared to the rest of the city. “People may have a perception of crime that’s not based on fact,” Stamm said. “You can’t paint all of the areas with the same brush.”

Kenneth Litwin, a criminal justice professor of the University of Michigan-Flint, said many downtowns across the country are safe. Litwin said people learn about crime from the media, and they don’t differentiate where the crime is happening. “They hear about crime in Flint and they just assume that it’s spread evenly throughout Flint,” Litwin said. Litwin, the adviser for the University of Michigan-Flint’s criminal justice club, said students usually go through a transformation. “When they get here, they’ve heard a lot of negative and scary information about Flint,” Litwin said. “But they learn pretty quickly that they are probably in the safest part of Flint.”

Many people in Flint, I found, had the some perception of where I lived in Detroit. “Aren’t you scared to live downtown?” I was always asked. The answer, of course, was no. I walked around downtown at night, almost every night, and never had a problem. Downtown Detroit is no less safe than the average big American city. Detroit’s crime, like Flint’s, is not a downtown problem.

From the Times of London:

Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon”

He added: “When one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia.”

One priest, who recently authored a book on the practice of exorcism, claimed that the “attack” on Pope Benedict at Christmas was also the work of the devil. You remember, it was that crazy woman who basically just ran at the pope screaming. She toppled the pontiff and his old-boy network like dominoes.

I can’t confirm this, but give the devil his due.

Check them out here… 

Check this out from Truthdig:

Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He promised us that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), however, admitted last week that banks have reduced lending at the sharpest pace since 1942. As a senator, Obama promised he would filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation. He told us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facility at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened.

In essence, we have a group of people who, much to my surprise, believed the political rhetoric of candidate Obama and are only now taking stock of his work . They wanted, to be sure, what conservatives are just certain they’re getting: Some form of socialism.

“Here in the United States, at the beginning of the twentieth century, before there was a Soviet Union to spoil it, you see, socialism had a good name,” the late historian and activist Howard Zinn said in a lecture a year ago at Binghamton University. “Millions of people in the United States read socialist newspapers. They elected socialist members of Congress and socialist members of state legislatures. You know, there were like fourteen socialist chapters in Oklahoma. Really. I mean, you know, socialism—who stood for socialism? Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, Upton Sinclair. Yeah, socialism had a good name. It needs to be restored.”

Zinn is 100% right about socialism. The defining nature of it is has been refashioned to the point of being almost insubstantial. Obama is not a socialist. In fact, in the strict sense he’ not even much of a progressive. He’s every bit the corporatist that George W. Bush was. And that’s a bitter pill to swallow for the true believers on the left. Ralph Nader was right.