•••
“America’s choice in November is none. Bad as things are now expect worse. Bipartisan complicity assures it.”

It ought to be called American hypocrasy—The Eds

By Stephen Lendman

Fact check

True to form, The Times offered a litany of lies. Bankers, other corporate favorites, and war profiteers fared handsomely. They still do. America’s 99% got stiff-armed. Most US households were thrown under the bus. Virtually no jobs were created. Full-time/good pay and benefit ones are disappearing. Real unemployment approaches 23%. In the Great Depression, it reached 25%. Serious efforts were made then to reduce it. Virtually nothing is done now.

US Census figures confirm half or more of US households living in poverty or bordering on it. Record numbers need food stamps to survive. Congress plans cuts when they’re more than ever needed.

Feeding America says over 50 million Americans face hunger. One in six people are affected, including over one in five children. Political Washington ignores food insecurity. Serving corporate interests and imperial warmongers alone matter.

Duplicitous political convention rhetoric was enough to make a brash brigand blush. Banality took center stage. Demagogic deception hid reactionary extremism.

Convention delegates and ordinary people inhabit worlds apart. Pre-scripted yammering was predictable. Republicans showed contempt for human needs. Phony populism hid a similar Democrat agenda.

Privilege alone matters. Ordinary folks increasingly are on their own sink or swim. Obama’s first term reflected it. Betrayal and failure defined it. Another four years assures more of the same and then some.

The man promising hope and change broke every major pledge made. Four demagogic years did Lincoln one better. He fooled most people enough to matter. He’s beholden to big money. He never cared about ordinary people and doesn’t now.

“Yes we can” conceals his dark side. No pun intended. He’s a consummate con man. It’s easy to know when he’s lying, just watch his lips move.

Throughout his political career, he’s been pro-corporate, pro-war, pro-Israel, anti-populist, anti-civil and human rights, and anti all values real democrats support.

He put Wall Street crooks in charge of looting the nation’s wealth. He furthered the greatest wealth transfer in history. Rules, regulations, legal restraints with teeth, and taxes were slashed to help them. Plans are on track to make America resemble Guatemala.

Full-time/high pay/good benefit jobs are disappearing. So are social services. They’re on the chopping block for elimination. The nation’s middle class is targeted for destruction. A huge underclass is replacing it. America’s more than ever militarized to control it.

Police state laws threaten freedom. Big Brother spying is policy. Privacy is a figure of speech. First Amendment rights and dissent are endangered. Tyranny, torture, corporate empowerment, and permanent wars define Obama’s agenda.

He exceeded the worst of George Bush’s harshness, lawlessness, and belligerency. Imagine what he plans if reelected. He waged war on Islam, Latino immigrants, animal and environmental rights activists, whistleblowers, people of color, the poor, anyone challenging state power, and civil rights lawyers who defend them too vigorously.

In Obama’s America, only the privileged matter. Growing numbers of others are on their own hungry, homeless, and jobless.

He looted the nation’s wealth, wrecked the economy, ravaged one nation after another, and continues waging war on humanity.

He executed two Latin American coups. Honduras’ democratically elected president was ousted. So was Paraguay’s. He militarized Haiti, opened the country for business, occupied it for plunder, rigged its election, installed a pro-Western stooge, and increased the growing burden of impoverished Haitians who deserve better.

He supports the world’s worst despots. He sucks up shamelessly to Israel. He spurns long denied Palestinian rights. He plans war on Syria and Iran. Neither nation threatens anyone. America and Israel menace humanity.

He presides over a bogus democracy under a repressive police state apparatus. Habeas rights, due process, judicial fairness, and other civil liberty protections are quaint artifacts increasingly discarded.

Torture is official policy. So is Murder, Inc. Death squads operate in over 120 countries. Special forces and CIA operatives are licensed to kill. US citizens may be targeted at home or abroad. No one anywhere is safe.

Summary judgment means no arrests. No Miranda rights. No due process. No trial. Just a bullet, bomb or slit throat. It’s official Obama policy. Diktat authority affords justice to no one ordered killed.

It also lets Obama order US citizens arrested and indefinitely held without charge or trial. No proof is needed, just suspicions that those detained pose threats. Constitutional protections no longer apply.

US military personnel may arrest and indefinitely detain anyone globally. No one anywhere is safe. Tyranny is policy. Obama seized virtual dictatorial powers. Anyone designated a potential enemy of the state, true or false, is targeted.

Political prisoners fill America’s gulag. It’s the world’s largest by far and one of the worst. Muslims and people of color are most at risk. America’s super-rich and corporate crooks are free to do what they please. Bad as things are now, expect worse.

War rages against labor. Budget-strapped states get little help. Welfare is being cut. So are Medicare for seniors, Medicaid for the needy, and other New Deal/Great Society programs.

Public education is being commodified. Plans call for making it another business profit center and ending government’s responsibility. Health care is being rationed. Only those who can afford it will get help when they need it.

Food and drug safety don’t matter. Nor do clean clean air or water. Small farms and businesses are being destroyed. Large ones are bigger and more dominant than ever.

Wall Street ones are up to one-fourth larger today than four years ago. They’re double their size a decade ago relative to the economy. Ordinary Americans are much poorer and more deprived.

Financial reform was fraudulent. Institutionalized grand theft is policy. Business as usual lets Wall Street run the country. Consumer protections don’t exist.

The worst of bad practices continue. Rules either don’t exist or are made to be broken. Bankers get what they want. Ordinary people get scammed.

Obama promised “change you can believe in.” He delivered betrayal instead. He’s anti-progressive, hard-right, reactionary, belligerent, pro-corporate, and anti-populist. He’s heartless, merciless, morally corrupt, and soulless.

Austerity is policy when help is needed. Draconian cuts were enacted. Many more are planned. Eliminating trillions of dollars in social service spending is policy. Democrats are in lock step with Republicans.

Corporate handouts, tax cuts for the rich, and Pentagon spending remain virtually untouched. Bad as things are now, imagine America in four years under either party.

Obama plans more of the same and then some. Romney is a religious extremist/corporate crook/socially destructive/imperial rogue.

He and Ryan plan exceeding the worst of Obama. Both are unapologetic. They’re indifferent to human need and welfare. They represent everything wrong with a broken system. It’s too corrupted, dysfunctional, and rotten to fix.

They’re frontmen for financialized America, super-rich privilege, and imperial lawlessness. They guarantee worse wide awake nightmares than Obama.

America’s choice in November is none. Bad as things are now expect worse. Bipartisan complicity assures it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

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•••

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada – Limiting climate change to two degrees C won’t save most coral reefs, according to new, state-of-the-art research.

About 70 percent of corals are projected to suffer from long-term degradation by 2030 with two degrees C of warming, the first comprehensive global survey reported Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The planet will get far hotter than two degrees C based on current commitments by countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning oil, gas and coal. Humanity is on course to heat up the atmosphere an average of three and even four degrees C, according to the Climate Action Tracker, an international scientific monitor. Those temperature levels are what most scientists consider “catastrophic”.

Global temperatures have risen an average of about 0.8C so far and already melted much of the Arctic and generated costly extreme weather events around the planet. Keeping that global average increase below two degrees is only a matter of “political will” not technology, said Bill Hare, director of Climate Analytics, one of the partners in the Climate Action Tracker.

If humanity wants to keep at least half of the remaining coral reefs, then global temperatures cannot rise to 1.5C. “Limiting global warming to 2 C is unlikely to save most coral reefs,” the paper reports.

“We must realise what is at stake as global temperatures rise,” said co-author Malte Meinshausen of School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne.

“Countries must be as ambitious as possible in their emission reductions to give corals a chance,” Meinshausen told IPS.

Coral reefs are considered by many to be one of the life-support systems essential for human survival. For more than 2.6 billion people, seafood is the main source of protein. Corals act as the nurseries and habitat for many fish species, and are vital for up to 33 percent of all ocean species, according to the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Reefs also provide vital shoreline protection from storms. Without reefs, for example, Belize would suffer 240 million dollars in damage from storms, according to one estimate.

This study used the very latest climate models and applied them to growing science about the impacts of rising temperatures and acidification levels projected in the decades to come, said co-author Simon Donner, a marine biologist and climatologist at the University of British Columbia.

The increasing ocean acid conditions appear to be reducing coral’s thermal tolerance, Donner said in an interview. Tropical corals have a narrow water temperature range in which they thrive. When water temperature rises only two or three degrees, they “bleach” or turn white.

Corals can survive this, but if the heat stress persists long enough – weeks instead of days – the corals can die in great numbers, as they did in 1998 when 16 percent of the world’s tropical corals died.

Emissions of greenhouse gases are not only warming the oceans, they have also made them 30 percent more acidic. The oceans and the atmosphere are intimately connected. When CO2 is released into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, some of that extra CO2 combines with carbonate ions in seawater, forming carbonic acid. This level of change in ocean chemistry has not happened in millions of years and is beginning to dissolve reefs.

Some corals will undoubtedly survive and some will adapt to the new conditions, although the changes are far more rapid than anything corals have ever experienced, said Donner.

“The bottom line is that humanity will lose the services that corals have provided for thousands of years,” he said.

Even at 1.5 C degrees of warming, only about half corals are likely to survive, the study found. That adds scientific weight to the small island nations’ and other countries’ call for a global target of 1.5 C, Donner said.

Every nation in the world officially agreed to keep global temperature increase below two degrees C at a U.N. climate meeting in Cancun, Mexico in 2010. An alliance of small islands and African countries had lobbied for the global target of less than 1.5 C due to the damages they are expected to suffer if temperatures rise above that mark.

Emissions must begin to decline this decade for either target so it is pointless to debate these targets right now, says Meinshausen. Once emissions are in significant decline, then how fast and how deep those cuts will have relevance for the final target, he said.

“I fear we’re going to miss our only chance to peak emissions this decade,” he said.

Some of that fear arises from recent musings by U.S. representatives at a recent U.N. climate meeting in Bangkok on the need for a more flexible target than two degrees C.

There are a number of studies showing how the two-degree target can be reached at modest cost and with a number of benefits such as reduced air pollution.

“It’s very important to get people motivated to do their fair share,” Meinshausen said. “A strong international agreement is essential if we’re to have any hope of getting emissions low enough.”

© 2012 IPS North America
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

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September 17, 2012
THIS WEEK
In this week’s Too Much, we have these numbers and more.   a project of the Institute for Policy StudiesProgram on Inequality and the Common GoodSubscribe to Too MuchInequality.orgJoin us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter
GREED AT A GLANCE
gravity neutral point” near the moon. Seats go for $150 million each. Interested in more bargain-oriented space travel? Virgin Galactic is promising a two-hour suborbital flight, with five minutes of weightlessness, for just $200,000. Over 500 future space-goers have so far booked a ticket . . . handed Birkenfeld a $104 million whistle-blower award for outing Swiss banking secrets. The Romney link? His 2010 return and other records indicate a Swiss banking account and a family tie to UBS. Romney, analysts speculate, may have taken advantage of the 2009 IRS amnesty . . .Agree or disagree: “Money is the only thing I can really count on.” Researchers from three different U.S. universities recently put this comment — and a host of related observations — to a broad cross-section of Americans in a series of laboratory experiments designed to have people imagine themselves in stressful and chaotic situations. The researchers found a “dramatic polarization” in the responses from rich and poor. The affluent tended to focus “on holding onto and attaining wealth,” the poor on “spending more time with friends and loved ones.” The research, funded partly by the National Science Foundation, “suggests that in times of economic uncertainty and social instability disparities between the haves and the have-nots could grow ever wider.” Quote of the Week“Since the late 1970s, economic policy has increasingly served the interests of those with the most wealth, income, and political power and effectively shifted economic returns from typical American families to the already well-off.” Lawrence Mishel, Josh Bivens, Elise Gould, and Heidi Shierholz, The State of Working America, 12th edition, Economic Policy Institute, September 12, 2012
PETULANT PLUTOCRAT OF THE WEEK
the headline, “Get Lost, You Jerk!” Arnault quickly sued. His citizenship move, he asserted, had no tax-dodging intent. But news reports soon revealed that Arnault had talkedabout France’s impending tax hike with a Belgian public official — and reminded readers that Arnault had left France back in 1981, the last time a newly elected French president had threatened higher taxes on the wealthy.
PROGRESS AND PROMISE
a proposition to raise the state tax rate from 10.3 percent on income over $1 million to 12.3 percent over $500,000. Revenue from this Prop 30 will help prevent local public service cutbacks, and users and providers of those services — from the Los Angeles Child Care Alliance to the Chief Probation Officers of California — are backing the measure. Meanwhile, from the University of California at Berkeley has come new research that bolsters the case for stiff taxes on the state’s rich. States with low tax rates on the rich, the research documents, turn out to gain no statistically significant economic and job creation advantage. _________ Take Action on InequalitySupport the “the next chapter in the fight against plutocracy,” the ongoing Chicago teacher struggle against the top 1 percent agenda for America’s schools.
INEQUALITY BY THE NUMBERS
IN FOCUS
have no library. To help homeless and other children in unstable family situations, the 350,000-student Chicago schools have only 370 social workers.One reason: The conventional wisdom can be unconventionally profitable for the corporate execs who run the rapidly expanding chains of charter schools. At campaign time, these execs love to show their appreciation. But support for the teacher-bashing conventional wisdom goes well beyond the ranks of those who stand to profit directly from public education’s privatization. In affluent cocktail party circles, as the New Yorker magazine noted last week, “a certain casual demonization of teachers has become sufficiently culturally prevalent that it passes for uncontroversial.” The well-heeled today, adds the New Yorker analysis, talk about breaking teacher unions “with the same kind of social enthusiasm” usually reserved for recommending “a new Zumba class.” This teacher bashing has been spreading for several decades now, ever since the United States first began growing much more unequal in the 1980s. This linkage should surprise no one. These two basic phenomena — a rich growing richer and a rich growing more hostile to public services and the people who provide them — have always gone hand in hand. Wealthy people, after all, don’t typically use much in the way of public services. They don’t partake of public parks or public education. They belong to private country clubs and send their kids to private schools, and they royally resent having to pay taxes to support public services they don’t use. These well-to-do need rationalizations for this resentment, and teacher bashing makes for an ideal one. We don’t need to “throw money” at troubled schools, the argument goes. We just have to find and fire all those lousy teachers. Interestingly, back in the much more equal United States of the 1950s, we did “throw money” at schools — and plenty of it. In 1958, after the shock of the Soviet Sputnik launch, lawmakers didn’t bash teachers. They appropriated billions, through the National Defense Education Act, to strengthen schools. A half-dozen years later, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act vastly expanded funding for low-income students. puts it, has to be about as absurd as “blaming doctors for the diseases they are seeking to treat.” But bashing makes sense to the rich. And in a plutocracy, the rich drive the debate — until the rest of us rise up and change the conversation. In Chicago, teachers have now done just that. Like this article? Subscribe and get Too Much in your email inbox every Monday. Email this Too Much issue to a friend New Wisdom on Wealth James Ledbetter,  What exactly do we mean by ‘inequality’? Reuters, September 11, 2012. In recent decades, we’ve forgotten how to grow the economy except by increasing inequality. The result: a series of bubbles, and bubbles always do damage when they pop.David Korten, Growth or Equality: Two Competing Visions for America’s Future, Yes! September 13, 2012. On how closing the wealth gap can open the way to a fairer, more prosperous economy.Salvatore Babones, How to End Hard Times? Reduce Inequality, Inequality.Org, September 13, 2012. A new United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report details how equality promotes economic growth.Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, What Krugman & Stiglitz Can Tell Us, New York Review of Books, September 27, 2012. That CEOs could cause so much damage and suffer no paycheck pain “suggests an extraordinary culture of self-justification.”
NEW AND NOTABLE
Why Inequality Matters, a pamphlet produced by members of My Fair London in association with the Equality Trust, with funding support from Centre for Labour and Social Studies, September 2012, 32 pp.In years gone by, people who worried about growing gaps between the rich and everyone else used to voice their concerns in abstract moral terms. Growing inequality, egalitarians would argue, endangers our democracy. But today’s egalitarian advocacy has become much more concrete. Worry about inequality? We sure should. Inequality impacts almost every aspect of our everyday lives, from our health to the trust we have in one another. This new pamphlet, a labor of love by activists with My Fair London, offers a solid, UK-oriented intro into the inequality research evidence. But you don’t have to be British to pick up new insights from these bright and lucid pages.Web GemOccupy Together An online networking hubfor all things Occupy-related.
ABOUT TOO MUCH
Too Much, an online weekly publication of the Institute for Policy Studies | 1112 16th Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036 | (202) 234-9382 | Editor: Sam Pizzigati. | E-mail: editor@toomuchonline.org | Unsubscribe.

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•••

By Shamus Cooke

With the November elections right around the corner, the millions of unemployed and under-employed have little reason to care. Aside from some sparse rhetoric, neither Democrats nor Republicans have offered a solution to job creation. Most politicians seem purposefully myopic about the jobs crisis, as if a healthy dose of denial might get them through the electoral season unscathed.   

In reality, the jobs crisis continues unaddressed, and threatens to get worse after the election. The post-election “fiscal cliff” of social cuts — “triggered” by Obama’s debt commission —will pull the economy below the current treading-water phase, drowning millions more workers in America in unemployment and hopelessness. In addition, two million more long-term unemployed — those lucky enough to still receive benefits — face the very likely possibility of having their benefits ended due to the trigger cuts.

But this is all part of the plan. The current jobs crisis is not accidental; there are public policies that could be implemented — such as a federal jobs program — that would stop unemployment in its tracks. Both parties agree that this cannot  be done for the same reason: high unemployment is desirable since it acts as a sledgehammer against wages, lowering them with the intent of boosting profitability for corporations.  Creating this nationwide “new normal” takes time.

Until corporations have an ideal environment to make super profits — aside from the short-term money printing of the Federal Reserve — unemployment will remain purposefully high. The Feds massive money-printing program — called Quantitative Easing (QE) — is a desperate move that risks super inflation, yet is deemed necessary until politicians implement the economic new normal for workers in America.

This policy is referred to as an “adjustment” period by some economists. Corporations and their puppet politicians have used the recession to start implementing the new normal of lower wages, reduced benefits, and fewer social programs on a city, state, and federal basis. In order to complete this national adjustment, expectations for working people must be drastically lowered, so that they’ll be less likely to be angry and fight against this onslaught.

This was Bill Clinton’s intention when he told the Democratic National Convention, “The old economy isn’t coming back.”  Most people in America have yet to realize this, but the economic policies of the Democrats and Republicans reflect a conscious plan to push wages down and shred the safety net to fit the “new economy” standards sought by corporate America.

Because corporations only hire workers in order to make profit, businesses today are sitting on trillions of cash, waiting for a sunnier day to invest in labor. The lower the wages of workers in America, the brighter the skies for corporations’ bottom line. It is this basic economic interest driving the jobs crisis, as politicians only offer solutions that “encourage businesses to invest” rather than creating immediate solutions for working people.

But millions of people are waiting for sunnier days too. A large number are seeking to wait out the recession by returning to school and are now graduating; a record 30 percent have bachelor degrees, a number that is expected to rise. The increasing number of graduates will drive up unemployment, while those lucky enough to find jobs aren’t finding one capable of paying off their massive student loans. The trillion-dollar student loan business is yet another example of wealth transference from bottom to top: students borrow money from the wealthy, and pay them back with interest, sometimes exorbitant interest.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that there are 12.5 million people who are officially unemployed but an additional9.5 million who are “unofficially” unemployed — those who are not actively looking for work, “discouraged workers,” part-time workers who want full-time work, etc. The number is almost certainly higher. These workers are not counted in the “official” unemployment numbers, and this unofficial number is getting worse. In August 2012, 368,000 more workers joined this illustrious group by dropping out of the labor force, i.e., they gave up looking for a job and thus are no longer counted as unemployed, in this way giving Obama “positive news” since the unemployment numbers actually improved!

These workers are often referred to as “unemployable,” meaning that they are usually over fifty years of age or under 30 and are tarnished with a lack of job experience or an excess of it. Corporations can now have an abundance of workers to choose from, and are being extra picky on whom they hire, if anybody.

The new “private sector” jobs that Obama constantly brags about are much lower paying than the jobs they are replacing.   According to a study performed by the National Employment Law Project, 58 percent of all new post-recession jobs come with wages below $14.00 an hour, i.e. a not a living wage.

For those millions unable to find jobs, their future lies in either dependence on family or the state, or a risky life in the informal economy, which implies the possibility of imprisonment.

The reason that many labor and community groups have not fully explained the above facts — nor protested against them — is because they are “embarrassing” to the Democrats.  Labor unions have gone into pre-election hibernation, ignoring reality as they push their members to campaign for the president who is overseeing this economic “new normal.”

The still-sputtering economy is expected to grind to a halt post-election, with average working people again footing the bill. But millions of Americans are experiencing the politics of the 1%, and drawing conclusions; ever since the recession government policy has been aimed at benefiting the wealthy and corporations, while working people have only experienced layoffs, lower wages and benefits, and slashed public services.  To stop this dynamic of austerity working people must unite and protest in massive numbers, like the working people of Europe.

In Portland, Oregon, such a demonstration is being planned, pre-election, by a coalition of community groups to “stop the cuts,” for debt relief, and against the above national policy of austerity for working people. By highlighting the bi-partisan nature of the attack against working people, the community organizers in Portland hope to educate the community to take action, so that working people are prioritized. Let the wealthy pay for their crisis.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org).  He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/economy-watch/2009/05/actual_us_unemployment_158.html  

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•••

Just a transcript of the logs from the St. Matthew the Evangelist Show (SMtE)

SMtE: Thanks for coming on the St. Matthew the Evangelist Show, Jesus. I know you’re a busy man so let’s get right to it. You probably know of the great income disparity in the world today. What would you tell those who call themselves ‘Christians’ to do about it?

J :    Go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. 19:21

SMtE:  Gee, I don’t hear any televangelist saying that. That’s a pretty hard thing to do, give all your money to the poor. No wonder
there aren’t that many true Christians.

J :    Many are called but few are chosen. 22: 14 The harvest is rich, but laborers are few. 9:37

SMtE:  But you’re saying the opposite of what our consumer culture is telling us, that we should be as rich as we possibly can.

J:     You can’t serve both God and money. 6:24 You must worship God and serve him alone. 4:10

SMtE:  So you’re saying we shouldn’t want to be rich, huh?

J:     I tell you truly, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. 19:23 It is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads
to life, and only a few find it. 7: 14 Many who are first will be last, and the last, first. 19:30

SMtE: Yikes, it sounds like there are a lot of rich and famous people we won’t be seeing in the hereafter. What would you tell the Occupy Wall St. folks, who are protesting the inequalities of our economic and political system?

J:     Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. 5:6

SMtE:  But they’re getting beat up by the police!

J:     Blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of righteousness. 5:10  Don’t be afraid of those who can kill the body, but not kill the spirit. 10: 28

SMtE:  But they’ll haul them off to court to face a judge. What then?

J:     Don’t worry about how to speak or what to say, because it is not you who will be speaking. The Holy Spirit will be speaking through you. 10:19, 20

SMtE: But you’re facing a court of law.

J:    The weightier matters of the Law are justice, mercy and faithfulness. 23: 23

SMtE:  Golly, I’m not sure they teach that even in Christian law schools! I gotta tell ya, the police state and all, sometimes I get
scared, not for myself but for my kids and grandkids.

J:     Don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself. 6:34

SMtE:  Yeah, but it’s still a little scary.

J:    Why are you frightened, oh ye of little faith? 8: 26

SMtE: Well, okay, I admit I’m a little lacking there.

J:     Don’t be afraid. 17:7 If your faith was the size of a mustard seed, nothing would be impossible. 17:20

SMtE: Do you think we should be going to church more?

J:     When you pray, go to your private room and pray to your Father,  who is in that secret place. 6:6

SMtE: The churches are telling people to be critical of abortion, contraception, gays, and all things pubic. What would you tell them?

J:     Do not judge and you will not be judged, because the judgments you give are the judgments you will get, and the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given. 7: 1, 2 That is how my heavenly Father will deal with you, unless you forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart. 18:35

SMtE:  There are a lot of people making huge sacrifices for those causes. What do you want from them?

J:     What I want is mercy, not sacrifice. 9: 13

SMtE:  But what our priests and preachers and televangelists are saying is so opposite to that!

J:     Beware of false prophets! 7: 15 The tree can be told by its fruit. 12: 34 It is not those who say ‘Lord, Lord’ who will enter the
kingdom, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven. 7:21

SMtE:  Have you been reading about pedophiles in the clergy recently?

J:     Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of God. 18: 3 Never despise any of these
little ones. Their angels in heaven are continually in the presence of my Father. 18:10

SMtE:  What do you think of free speech? Does anything go?

J:     By your words you will be acquitted, and by your words condemned. 12: 37 The things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and it is these that make a person unclean. 15:18

SMtE:  You probably know what’s happening between the US and Iran today. What words of wisdom would you give Americans to meet this crisis?

J:     Always treat others as you would like them to treat you. 7: 12  Do not be afraid. 14:28

SMtE:  Fair enough, but what will we tell the Zionists who are goading us into a war?

J:     Hypocrites! It was you Isaiah meant when he so rightly prophesied: This people honors me only with lip-service, while their
hearts are far from me. 15: 7,8

SMtE:  Is there anything you’d like to say to us to wrap things up?

J:     O, faithless and perverse generation! 17:17 What does it gain for a person to win the world and lose his soul? And what will a
person offer in exchange for her soul? 16:26 You are all brothers and sisters. 23: 8

SMtE:  Gosh, why is it that humans just can’t seem to get things straight?

J:     The worries of this world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word. 13: 22

SMtE:  Hey, I gotta tell ya that this has been great, and probably wonderful for the show’s ratings. Thanks a lot.

J:     Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 6: 21
___________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Rayner Kelly is a retired educator, a philosopher and a novelist. Among his novels is LITTLE POOR MAN The Story of St. Francis of Assisi

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