A Sad Day For America

See if you can identify the pattern….

First 1987

 

 

Then 1991 (HERE and HERE

 

 

and Now

‘When you see Sotomeyer and Kagan tell them Lindsay said hello, because I voted for them…. this is the most unethical sham I’ve ever gone through.’

https://youtu.be/5Nzg5Bf__V4

 

 

 

What Does The Smartest Man On Earth Think About?

HERE

https://youtu.be/Nabs_bjSDME

 

https://youtu.be/MpmDQljqQ1E

https://youtu.be/LABjxm6YVdA

https://youtu.be/gkBmxkDp2BY

 

 

Lust and Bill Clinton – 7 Deadly Sins

I hope you’ve stumbled upon the podcast series – Slow Burn.  It’s a series put out from Slate that digs deeply into historic events in a 7 0r 8 part long-form interview. The production and research value is impeccable. The first series was on Nixon and Watergate and the latest series is on Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

The series brings you back to the time of Bill Clinton and paints the picture of how lust overtook his life and almost toppled the Presidency.  Clearly, Clinton had ambition and a hunt for power but it was his inability to control the lust that haunted him from an early age. His charisma and pure ability to sway a room and a country propelled him to the highest position on earth, the US Presidency.  His lust almost took him down.

 

I remember the news articles and some of the details while they were happening but this in-depth, play by play showed me just how out of control Clinton really was. Should we care is the bigger question.  Kennedy was a known philanderer and he didn’t have the same scrutiny. His short 3-year term was focused on his policies and not his personal lives. Clinton hit the history books when the media was evolving into a 24 hour a day news cycle. The 1990’s were the beginning of the internet and America’s hunger for all types of stories.  Clinton was caught by the times he lived.

The leap from the independent investigation into Whitewater by Ken Starr to the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the blue dress and the definition of is ..is, has parallels with the Mueller investigation of Trump today.  The irony that a young and hungry attorney, Brett Kavanaugh served on the Starr investigative team is not lost on his Supreme Court confirmation hearings of today.

Give Slow Burn a shot, you won’t be sorry.

Find the series HERE or on you podcast feed of choice.

 

Rural America Dissapears – That’s A Sad Ending

Farming is in my blood.  I grew up in a farming community in Wisconsin just outside of Minneapolis.  My grandparents ran a beef farm and butcher shop about 3 miles outside of town. Back in the days before the mega grocery store, it was customary to travel to your local butcher shop to stock up on meats and cheeses for the family. That small farm supported 8 kids and over 50 grandkids got the chance to learn what rural America was all about. I’ve dug into this topic before – HERE.

Our small town, New Richmond, had 3000 people and when I was growing up, one stop light.  We always lived in town but afternoons and summers were filled with working and exploring on the farm. Even when we moved to Arizona, my sister and I would fly to Wisconsin and live the farmer’s life each summer until my sophomore year of high school.   I can’t think of a better way to grow up and that work ethic and willing to chart my own course was instilled in me by my grandparents and uncles on that beef farm.

I’m being pulled back to that life now more than ever. As I get older and reflect on what makes a happy life, I harken back to the long hours and hard work on the farm.  In my theory of the 12 negative trends challenging America, chapter/argument #5 deals with the flight to the cities.  As America moved into cities an important community fabric was unwoven. We lost the culture of knowing and helping our neighbors. We went further and further away from the family farm down the road that grew our sweet corn or provided our hamburger. My thesis on this argument is that we are social beings by our nature and the move to cities made walling off into our apartments or suburbs easier than ever.  As we walled off we disconnected and turned to our government for food, shelter and medical support. We moved away from our neighbors and became dependent on a nameless faceless government. Our war on poverty that was started by LBJ and where we spent $1 trillion dollars has left us 50 years later at the same spot in the number of poor in our society.

I am working to recreate that lifestyle in my hectic world. If it’s only on weekends that I can pretend to have the farmers life of my yesterday I’ll be a happy man.

To give you a sense of the lifestyle and what is lost I recommend the following documentaries found on Netflix or Amazon Prime;

The First Season – Follows a family that just started a dairy farm in upstate NY.

Farmland – shows the transfer of a generational farm told through 4 young adults taking over.

Hannah Ranch – covers the encroachment on ranching in Colorado

Milk Men -The Life And Times of Dairy Farmers

Troublesome Creek – Follows a family struggle and liquidation

Take some time to immerse yourself in these powerful stories. Think about what our society is like with and without these lifestyle businesses. Is bigger better? Is it the government’s job to protect this way of life? These are big questions that I wrestle with and I hope you do as well.

 

The First Season – Promo

 

Hannay Ranch Promo

 

Farmland – Full Documentary

https://youtu.be/5omgAqgEYAc

Milk Men – Promo

https://youtu.be/NdB7KmMwn-w

Troublesome Creek – Promo

What farming was to me:

 

Indisputable Proof Of The 7 Deadly Sins? Catholic Bishops In Fighting That May Roll Up To The Pope.

The Antichrist orders people to be executed and even resurrects a man, while a group of clerics, huddled together like a fortified citadel, resist the devil’s temptations by praying.

An American Cardinal rises through the ranks of the clergy, admits to visiting seminaries for homosexual sex, gets removed from all powers by Pope Benedict, ends up in good favor under Pope Francis and gets his power restored.  An American Bishop Vigano writes a manifesto that names high ranking bishops involved in the conspiracy publicly exposes all the mess to the world.  The sins of LUST, PRIDE and WRATH on full display in the global Catholic faith.

So to give you some context, Cardinal McCarrick of Washington (Cardinal is like a 4 or 5 Star General, the Pope is like the President and Bishops are like Colonels in the military if this helps you better understand Catholic hierarchy), was known to have visited seminaries (priest schools) and engaging in homosexual sexual relationships. McCarrick is the Catholic face in America to the media and to Presidents.

It was known within the ranks of the American and Vatican clergy.

In 2009 or 2010, according to Archbishop Vigano;

But finally, I learned with certainty, …… Pope Benedict (the Pope before the current Pope) had imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposedon him by Pope Francis: the Cardinal was to leave the seminary where he was living, he was forbidden to celebrate [Mass] in public, to participate in public meetings, to give lectures, to travel,with the obligation of dedicating himself to a life of prayer and penance.  (That saction is a big deal for a sitting Cardinal)....

In turn, I repeated them to Cardinal McCarrick at my first meeting with him at the Nunciature. TheCardinal, muttering in a barely comprehensible way, admitted that he had perhaps made the mistake ofsleeping in the same bed with some seminarians at his beach house, but he said this as if it had noimportance. (Wow)The faithful insistently wonder how it was possible for him to be appointed to Washington, and asCardinal, and they have every right to know who knew, and who covered up his grave misdeeds. It istherefore my duty to reveal what I know about this, beginning with the Roman Curia…

Immediately after, the Pope asked me in a deceitful way:
“What is Cardinal McCarrick like?” answered him with complete frankness and, if you want, with great naiveté:
“Holy Father, I don’t know if you know Cardinal McCarrick, but if you ask the Congregation for Bishops there is a dossier this thickabout him. He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance.”
 The Pope did not make the slightest comment about those very grave words of mine and did not show any expression of surprise on his face, as if he had already known the matter for some time, and he immediately changed the subject. But then, what was the Pope’s purpose in asking me that question:
“What is Cardinal McCarrick like?” He clearly wanted to find out if I was an ally of McCarrick or not.

The McCarrick Mess

So lots of commentators — left, center, and right — have chimed in to say that the real cause of the McCarrick disaster is, take your pick, the ignoring of “Humanae vitae,” priestly celibacy, rampant homosexuality in the Church, the mistreatment of homosexuals, the sexual revolution, etc. Mind you, I’m not saying for a moment that these aren’t important considerations and that some of the suggestions might not have real merit. But I am saying that launching into a consideration of these matters that we have been debating for decades and that will certainly not admit of an easy adjudication amounts right now to a distraction.

From: Bishop Robert Barron is an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles 

and

FirstThingsFirst – Why We Stay;

Everlasting life is offered to us sacramentally at every Mass. That is what we believe; that is why we remain in the Church; and that is why we must all bend every effort, from our distinct states of life in the Mystical Body of Christ, to reform what must be reformed so that others may know and love the Lord Jesus and experience the life-giving fruits of friendship with him. The Church’s current crisis is a crisis of fidelity and a crisis of holiness, a crisis of infidelity and a crisis of sin. It is also a crisis of evangelization, for shepherds without credibility impede the proclamation of the Gospel—which, as the other headlines of the day suggest, the world badly needs….

Third, Archbishop Viganò is a loyal churchman of a certain generation and formation, bred to a genuine piety about the papacy. His training in the papal diplomatic service would instinctively lead him to make the defense of the pope his first, second, third, and hundredth priority. If he believes that what he has now said is true, and that the Church needs to learn that truth in order to cleanse itself of what is impeding its evangelical mission, then he is overriding his ingrained instincts for the gravest of reasons.

and

The Crux Now

Let’s be clear: This is an accusation that a pope was personally involved in a sex abuse cover-up, from a former Vatican official who was in a position to know. If anyone thinks media outlets around the world aren’t going to pursue that story with maximum aggressiveness – knowing that bringing down a pope would be infinitely bigger than what the Boston Globe did in 2003 by bringing down Cardinal Bernard Law, winning a Pulitzer Prize and inspiring a Hollywood movie in the process – they’re delusional.

Overall, the scorecard so far is four bishops speaking in defense of Pope Francis (Cupich of Chicago, Tobin of Newark, Wuerl of Washington (YouTube Sunday – HERE  and McElroy), six supportive of Viganò (Konderla of TulsaOlmsted of Phoenix, Strickland of Tyler, Texas, Chaput of Philadelphia, Schneider of Kazakhstan and Morlino.)
.

Go Small

I caught a podcast (On Being with Krista Tipped)  with retired Presbyterian Pastor, Eugene Peterson and he said something profound about finding the right church.  Here is a man who’s written 30 books on faith, lead a congregation and is retired after a lifetime leading the faithful, when asked ‘how do should I find the right church to join in my community?’, Peterson’s answers is to find the smallest church in your town and join and watch. If that doesn’t work, find the next smallest church in your town.  Why small? For the very same reasons, the Catholic Church has been plagued by scandal, politics and the 7 Deadly Sins for over 2000 years. Organized religions are lead by men, men are broken, what else should we be expecting? 

Bishop Vigano has gone into hiding. Power, intrigue, politics, and danger, right out of a novel.