Tom's Thoughts

Name:
Location: Granite Falls, North Carolina, United States

I'm an ordained United Methodist minister no longer pastoring churches, a former media producer with skills ten years out of date, a writer trying to sell my first novel, and a sales associate keeping body and soul together working for the People's Republic of Corporate America. I'm married to the most wonderful woman in the world, who was my best friend for 17 years before we married.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Why So Many Perverted Republicans?

What is it about the "Family Values" party that brings out so many hypocrites? A Republican official from Raleigh earlier this week, then Rep. Vitter from Louisiana, and just this morning we hear about Coy Privette, head of North Carolina's Christian Action League. This was after the Ted Haggard scandal and all the rest.

It used to be said that Democratic scandals were about sex and Republican scandals were about money. But now the Republicans are the ones caught with the weenie in the cookie (jar?).

Research has shown that those who make the most noise about homosexuality are the ones least secure in their own sexuality. I guess the same thing goes for other sexual proclivities. I guess we need to exercise forgiveness, as the Bible tells us, but it is hard when these have been the most unforgiving toward others.

So is there something about the Catholic priesthood and the Republican Party that attracts perverts? Or do these institutions give people a way of covering for and denying to themselves the true nature that resides in their hearts? A nature that they don't want to admit, even to themselves?

I pray for all of them.

Saturday, July 07, 2007

The System Works

Treating terrorist acts like the crimes they are is the most effective way of dealing with them, as was demonstrated in England this past week.

Terrorists tried to blow up car bombs in England, and none of the intrusive street cameras or other national snooping had anything to do with it. People on the street saw smoke coming from the cars and alerted police. They tracked down the criminals and arrested them, and another group of incompetent terrorist wanna-bes is in gaol.

The same thing happened during the Clinton Administration in the U. S. Those who blew up the truck under the World Trade Center were hunted down, arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced without having to resort to any unconstitutional Patriot Act, warrantless snooping, or anything else. Criminal actions were prosecuted by the criminal justice system, and it worked.

Meanwhile, the Clinton Administration stopped the attempt by Saddam Hussein to assassinate George H. W. Bush, the terrorist attempts on the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels and LAX and others, all without shredding the Constitution the way the Bush/Rove Administration have. The Clinton Administration was more successful, too.

Meanwhile, the Bush/Rove Administration took military action against the criminal element that had 15 Saudis and four others fly--or attempt to fly--planes into buildings on 9/11/01 and it has been a miserable failure. Terrorist attacks have increased exponentially around the world.

Also, when the had the head of al Qaeda--Osama bin Bush's Friend--surrounded in Afghanistan, they cut and ran to go off and start a war with Iraq, which, as Bush has admitted more than once, had nothing to do with 9/11. Now, his Iraq War is the greatest recruiting tool al Qaeda has ever had.

The system works, if anyone has sense enough to use it.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

On Protest

In 1968 I was hovering over the peace movement. I wasn't happy about the Vietnam War, but I thought as a patriotic American I should support the Johnson Administration for which I had campaigned so hard four years before. When a young graduate student came into the music library where I worked wearing a "McCarthy" button, that sealed it for me. Her fiance was a Lieutenant in Vietnam, so if she could support the anti-war candidate, that gave me permission, in my own mind. Thus I became a vociferous opponent of the war, writing letters to the editor, marching in the streets, attending rallies, etc.

Those days are behind me, even though we are in the midst of a mess at least as bad as Vietnam. Still I have my outlets for protest. I have this blog, and I have the ability to write letters to the editor.

There are two proposals I would like to add. First, how can we get a nationwide rally of chiropractors to descend on Washington to help the Democratic leadership find its backbone? If anybody has any ideas about that, please let me know.

Second, I intend to do this, and I would like to invite as many others as possible to join me: to send to the Supreme Court justices, the President and Vice-President, and our own Senators and Congressmen copies of the Constitution, with a note attached: "Here's something you seem to have lost sight of. You need to read this and remember what you swore to uphold." (or words to that effect)

Anybody got any other ideas?