Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput Says Some Catholics Treating President Obama with "Spirit of Adulation Bordering on Servility"

I find it amazing that the Roman Catholic Church suddenly has criticized President Barack Obama on so many levels, while they said very little about President George W. Bush during his eight-year tenure. The latest “godly” person who has taken offense to President Obama’s popularity is Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput. He told a Canadian audience earlier this week that some Catholics are treating President Obama “spirit of adulation bordering on servility.”
“In democracies, we elect public servants, not messiahs,” he said. Wow. This is amazing coming from the same group that reappointed a Nazi denier back into their fold.

Chaput also warned that an overly deferential attitude toward Obama makes the political situation “very hard for Catholics in the United States.” Guess why he was in Canada? To promote his book “Render Unto Caesar,” which discusses how Catholics should bring their faith into public life. It speaks volumes that 54 percent of Catholics voted for Obama, who is pro-choice, which has irked many in the upper echelons of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Archibishop should listen to his own words and acknowledge that President Obama, like Presidents John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were charismatic leaders. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. “President Obama is a man of intelligence and some remarkable gifts. He has a great ability to inspire, as we saw from his very popular visit to Canada just this past week. But whatever his strengths, there’s no way to reinvent his record on abortion and related issues with rosy marketing about unity, hope and change,” the Catholic News Agency quoted Chaput as saying.

“Americans, including many Catholics, elected a gifted man to fix an economic crisis. That’s the mandate. They gave nobody a mandate to retool American culture on the issues of marriage and the family, sexuality, bioethics, religion in public life and abortion,” he said. So, I am guessing that the Catholic Church has stood for all those things and have pushed programs in their own churches to strengthen the very things the Archbishop is complaining about. Wasn’t this the same group of people, who rather than calling the authorities on those priests molesting innocent children, they moved them around from parish to parish? Archbishop Chaput, don’t hate the messenger because he is popular, focus on cleaning up the ills dogging the Roman Catholic Church. As the Bible says, pick the speck out of your own eye before you pick it out of another’s.

Filed under: Adulation, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, President Barack H. Obama, President Bill Clinton, President John F. Kennedy, President Ronald Reagan, Roman Catholic Church

Jim Bunning, U.S. Senator, Says Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Has Nine Months to Live Tops, With Pancreatic Cancer

It would be great if more people exercised some tact when they open their mouths, but that would be asking way too much from our elected officials. The latest moron to stick his foot in his mouth is U.S. Senator Jim Bunning. He predicted this past weekend that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would likely be dead from pancreatic cancer within nine months. So, now he’s the keeper of this woman’s life?

During a wide-ranging 30-minute speech on Saturday at the Hardin County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner, Bunning said he supports conservative judges “and that’s going to be in place very shortly because Ruth Bader Ginsburg … has cancer.”

“Bad cancer. The kind that you don’t get better from,” he told a crowd of about 100 at the old State Theater. “Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live after (being diagnosed) with pancreatic cancer,” he said. Source: Kentucky Courier-Journal

Ms. Ginsburg, 75, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer earlier this month and surgeons removed a small tumor that had not spread. Doctors termed it a “Stage 1” cancer, meaning they found it in the early stages when it is most curable.

According to the American Cancer Society, people diagnosed with Stage 1 pancreatic cancer have between a 21 and 37 percent chance of living for more than five years with the disease. Only about 20 percent of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer live for more than a year, but that’s because the cancer is difficult to detect and generally is found in later stages. Source: Kentucky Courier-Journal

Okay, be that as it may, did he really need to pronounce a death sentence on this woman? Couldn’t he had made his point with more tact? I am sure he could have. There is nothing cavalier about having cancer. Out of respect for this woman, her family and the thousands of people in this country dealing with cancer, he should have been a lot more sensitive instead of so callous. If you ask me, from the looks of his picture, Bunning could possibly die before Ms. Ginsburg.

Ginsburg, appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, is one of the most liberal members of the high court.

Filed under: Hardin County, Jim Bunning, Pancreatic Cancer, President Bill Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stage 1 Cancer, U.S. Supreme Court

President Bill Clinton Doling Out Advice to President Obama Once Again, Says He Should be More Hopeful

President Bill Clinton is back and he’s giving President Obama some advice. All I can say is though he may be right, but we don’t want another fallout from his comments. Hillary, control your man! President Clinton says he thinks President Barack Obama should talk more optimistically about the prospects that the nation will recover from its current deep economic woes.

Clinton said that he wants Obama to assure the people that America will surmount this problem. Was that sort of how he wanted to assure the American people that he did not “have sexual relations with woman [Monica Lewinsky]?” At least we haven’t heard such salacious mess coming out of the Obama marriage. But at the same time he tried to clean it up by saying, in an interview broadcast Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that “I like the fact that he didn’t come in and give us a bunch of happy talk.”

He also said he believes “you will see some good economic news form the stimulus fairly soon.”
For his part, Obama has said he thinks the country will get past the recession, but that it will be a long slog. Sorry President Clinton, stop giving President Obama advice in public. What you discuss privately is a different matter. Hey Hillary, you need to rein in your man! We don’t need the drama coming from President Clinton.

Filed under: Cr, President Barack H. Obama, President Bill Clinton, Stimulus Bill

President George W. Bush Ranks Near Bottom of Top Presidential Leaders in C-SPAN Poll

CSPAN– Historians Survey Results Category

Total Scores/Overall Ranking

<!–

–>

		President’s Name	2009 Final Score	Overall Ranking
2009	2000
Abraham Lincoln	902	1	1
George Washington	854	2	3
Franklin D. Roosevelt	837	3	2
Theodore Roosevelt	781	4	4
Harry S. Truman	708	5	5
John F. Kennedy	701	6	8
Thomas Jefferson	698	7	7
Dwight D. Eisenhower	689	8	9
Woodrow Wilson	683	9	6
Ronald Reagan	671	10	11
Lyndon B. Johnson	641	11	10
James K. Polk	606	12	12
Andrew Jackson	606	13	13
James Monroe	605	14	14
Bill Clinton	605	15	21
William McKinley	599	16	15
John Adams	545	17	16
George H. W. Bush	542	18	20
John Quincy Adams	542	19	19
James Madison	535	20	18
Grover Cleveland	523	21	17
Gerald R. Ford	509	22	23
Ulysses S. Grant	490	23	33
William Howard Taft	485	24	24
Jimmy Carter	474	25	22
Calvin Coolidge	469	26	27
Richard M. Nixon	450	27	25
James A. Garfield	445	28	29
Zachary Taylor	443	29	28
Benjamin Harrison	442	30	31
Martin Van Buren	435	31	30
Chester A. Arthur	420	32	32
Rutherford B. Hayes	409	33	26
Herbert Hoover	389	34	34
John Tyler	372	35	36
George W. Bush	362	36	NA
Millard Fillmore	351	37	35
Warren G. Harding	327	38	38
William Henry Harrison	324	39	37
Franklin D. Pierce	287	40	39
Andrew Johnson	258	41	40
James Buchanan	227	42	41

Filed under: Abraham Lincoln, Former President George W. Bush, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Washington, John F. Kennedy, President Bill Clinton

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Underwent Surgery for Pancreatic Cancer Today

Photo: LA Times, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Bad news for the United States Supreme Court justices. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman on the Supreme Court and one of the most consistently strong liberal voices in the United States, had surgery today for pancreatic cancer.

In a statement, the court announced that Ginsburg, 75, underwent surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York for removal of a cancerous tumor from her pancreas. The court said:

Justice Ginsburg had no symptoms prior to the incidental discovery of the lesion during a routine annual check-up in late January at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. A Computerized Axial Tomography (CAT) Scan revealed a small tumor, approximately 1 (centimeter) across, in the center of the pancreas. Source: LA Times

My thoughts and prayers go out to her and her family. Ms. Ginsburg was appointed by President Clinton in 1993. She was the second woman appointed to the court, an early litigator and strategist for women’s rights. She had colon cancer 10 years ago.

Filed under: Pancreatic Cancer, President Bill Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court, Women on Supreme Court

Congressional Black Caucus Lobbying President Obama to Pick John Thompson as Commerce Secy, Says Clinton Chose More Blacks For Cabinet Than Obama

The Congressional Black Caucus is trying to throw it’s virtually nonexistent weight around with President Barack Obama. Well, according to The Hill, is lobbying the president to pick African-American technology executive John Thompson to be his commerce secretary. Thompson is chairman and chief executive officer of Symantec Corp, the software security company best known for its Norton computer protection products. He is expected to step down in early April.

In a letter to Obama, the caucus members stressed that Thompson is the only African-American leading a major technology company. The letter, sent last week and obtained Thursday by The Hill, also lists the seven black Cabinet members chosen by President Clinton during his two terms. Obama has selected four African-Americans for Cabinet positions.

“We commend you for making diversity an important priority as you consider your Cabinet selections, in terms of race, perspectives, party and geography given past progress by other presidents in naming African-Americans to senior Cabinet posts,” said the letter, signed by 38 of the 41 members of the CBC. Source: The Hill

Boohoo. Barack Obama isn’t Bill Clinton. I just can’t stand this sense of entitlement that some of us seem to have. I personally don’t care with the racial background of a person is, as long as the best person gets the job. I suspect President Obama shares my view. The last time I checked the CBC was a joke and with little achievement to show for social and political issues confronting blacks in this country. If President Obama decides to pick this man for the Commerce Secretary position, it should be a decision made by he and his team, not the Congressional Black Caucus. This amounts to nothing more than strong-arming and trying to dictate to President Obama how to do his job. I have no doubt that Mr. Thompson is qualified for the position, but the decision should come from Barack Obama and not from the CBC and its sense of entitlement.

Filed under: Commerce Secretary, Congressional Black Caucus, John Thompson, Lobbying, President Barack H. Obama, President Bill Clinton

Barack Obama Selects Nancy Killefer, a Former Assistant Treasury Secy in the Clinton Administration, to Chief Performance Officer Position

UPDATE

Nancy Killefer is reportedly withdrawing her name from nomination. It is being reported that the former McKinsey consultant faced a $900 lien in 2005 on her home for not paying taxes on household help. It can’t be just that. There’s more to this. Now I wish Tom Daschle would do the same. Still developing……

How many more appointees will Barack Obama have from the Clinton Administration? It seems that we just can’t get away from Bill and Hillary Clinton. President-elect Barack Obama has selected Nancy Killefer, a top management consultant at McKinsey & Company, to serve as the country’s chief performance officer, a post he said would help oversee reform of the federal government and its budget.

Killefer was a former assistant secretary of the treasury in the Bill Clinton administration. Obama is expected to announce his choice this morning. I know that Bill Clinton’s team was, for the most part, brilliant, but didn’t Barack Obama said his presidency would be a much needed change from politics as usual? This appointment comes on the heels of his appointment of Leon Panetta, Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, to head the CIA.

Filed under: Chief Performance Officer Position, CIA, Leon Panetta, McKinsey and Co., Nancy Killefer, President Bill Clinton, President-elect Barack Obama

Barack Obama Opts for Workout Instead of Going to Church

The media is having a field day with Barack Obama’s absence from church since his historic win in the presidential election. He has opted instead to hit the gym. This is a stark departure from his two immediate predecessors, President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton. Asked about the president-elect’s decision to not attend church, a transition aide noted that the Obamas valued their faith experience in Chicago but were concerned about the impact their large retinue may have on other parishioners.

“Because they have a great deal of respect for places of worship, they do not want to draw unwelcome or inappropriate attention to a church not used to the attention their attendance would draw,” said the aide.

I guess that is in implicit that the president must attend church, even if he’s cheating on his wife, like President Bill Clinton. Barack Obama reached out to Christians and professed his faith. I guess the least he could do is find a church in Chicago to attend.

In November of 1992, Clinton went to services in Little Rock, Ark., on the three weekends following his election, taking pre-church jogs on the first two and attending on the third weekend a Catholic Mass with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, with whom he was trying to smooth over lingering campaign tensions.

In the weeks after the contested 2000 election, Bush regularly attended services at Tarrytown United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas, and Al Gore was frequently photographed arriving at and leaving church in Virginia.

Obama was an infrequent churchgoer on the campaign trail, though he did make a series of appearances in the pews and pulpits of South Carolina churches ahead of that heavily religious state’s primary. Considering the massive fallout from his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ, one could understand his position. For about two decades, Obama and his family attended the church. Obama and his wife, Michelle, in June resigned their membership in the large South Side congregation.

During the campaign, Obama returned to Chicago to attend the South Side’s Apostolic Church of God on Father’s Day Sunday to give a speech aimed at the black community on the importance of fatherhood and family. It would have been nice to see the Obama’s attending church once more. Barack Obama is an extremely intelligent man and he should have realized that his absence from church, especially in the aftermath of such a historic win, would ruffle many feathers and raise some questions. He professed his faith in Christ, then I would have expected to see him in church, even one Sunday with his family. He’d better get used to traveling with a huge security detail and retinue. That’s just a part of the game and not an excuse not to attend church. Just my thoughts, you be the judge……

Filed under: Barack Obama, President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Rahm Emanuel Reportedly Accepts Chief of Staff Position In Barack Obama’s Administration

Well, Barack Obama has reportedly filled his first high level position in his upcoming administration and I am very happy with his choice of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. Emanuel has a reputation of being a wily, aggressive West Wing strategist under President Bill Clinton. I must applaud Barack Obama for his choice of a fine public servant. This move will, undoubtedly, send a clear signal that Obama is eager to work with the Israeli government. The move also reinforces Obama’s desire to work with the Congress and launch an aggressive agenda that will focus on the economy, taxes, energy, education and health care.

Obama has also decided on longtime aide Robert Gibbs as his White House press secretary. Rahm has been given a powerful position. “The chief” is sometimes considered as the second most powerful person in Washington. The job has vast authority, as the boss of the hundreds of aides who work directly for the president, a public face of the administration on television, and a negotiator and salesman on Capitol Hill.

Emanuel, 49, is the fourth-ranking House Democratic leader, with the title Democratic Caucus Chair. He is also a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, which is among the most desirable assignments in Congress. As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Emanuel was the relentless architect of the Democrats’ House takeover in 2006, and some Republicans said the choice sends a partisan signal at time when Obama is promising a new politics.

Rahm is a fighter and will be a true champion for Barack Obama. His mastery on Capitol Hill will help speed his proposals at a time when money is tight and the nation’s problems are great. Emanuel has a hard-nosed style, and is known for aggressively working the press. He has working relationships with many congressional Republicans, including Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Fla.), a rising GOP star who said after his reelection this week that he plans to leave his No. 3 post in the party’s House leadership.

I like Emanuel because he is known as a centrist and a pragmatic dealmaker. That is exactly what we need to navigate the treacherous waters. Under Clinton, he helped engineer passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which is opposed by the party’s left wing. From his official biography: “Emanuel began his career with the consumer rights organization Illinois Public Action. He worked on Paul Simon’s 1984 election to the U.S. Senate and in 1989 served as a senior advisor and chief fundraiser for Richard M. Daley. Emanuel served as a senior advisor to President Bill Clinton. After leaving the White House, Emanuel returned to Chicago to serve as a managing director at a leading global investment bank. “Emanuel graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1981, and received a Master’s Degree in Speech and Communication from Northwestern University in 1985. He is a resident of Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood where he and his wife are raising three children.” Way to go Barack. You have made a wise choice.

Filed under: Barack Obama, President Bill Clinton, Rahm Emanuel