We will find out in ensuing months the bones underneath this decision and what really happened; how reliable a non-profit can be to reverse itself twice in a few days. We’ll follow along for now, but it may have had something to do with Komen’s corporate sponsors. I’ve rec’d several emails yesterday and today asking that all write to Komen’s food and entertainment sponsors to protest Komen’s decision against the poor regarding breast cancer and screening… ...

UPDATE: See posts atop the fold about Komen rescinding their decision to withdraw funding and future applications for funding from Planned Parenthood, dateline Feb 3, 2012) Duke, a progressive university with a strong med school may have ‘a problem, Houston.” They’ve invited Brinker along with four other notable people to do 2012 commencement. Problem may rise up with parts of vocal student body and profs, as they now realize Brinker just cut off Planned Parenthood from Komen funding...

small plus or minus. Sometimes, you wish you could sort of grind them all up like sausage taking the best of each and come out with one more diverse and solid person. And, it does not surprise that a proven family man overtakes a man who has family and many wives. How ironic that Mormons used to enact polygamy mainstream, and no longer except for the likes of felon Warren Jeffs, master child molester in his renegade group of so-called fundie Mormons (Jeffs says.)… and yet we have Newt with...

When I read this letter for the many-eth time in my life, I see MLK’s spiritual discipline, the knowledge of how to go forward in four steps, the leadership, the clear demands, the efforts at negotiation, the spiritual self-examination so one doesnt go off half-cocked caught up in the yelling… and the non violent protest for clear cut goals. When I read Reverend King’s letter from Birmingham jail, I know he was in a defeatest mood for he could not get the support he needed (as...

Was it ever the truth? Or a form of blind idealism our teachers wished for us. Many of us were taught, we too could grow up to be president. Even us rag-bag kids in handmedowns either too small or too big, scuffed shoes that would never shine cause they were down to the bone of the leather, crowded in 65 to a classroom, sharing desks, not enough books to go around, never ever being able to take a book home. Even those of us whose parents spoke heavily accented English, even those whose parents...

Below is the list of negative words Newt proposed be used by potential candidates against their opponents: It is from Newt Gingrich’s 1996 GOPAC memo. I remember reading a nearly identical list of negative words in one of his books and wondered why he would broadcast his strategy that then could so easily be boomeranged back on him by his opposition. It’s odd now, all these years later, his language has not matured over these last 16 years, for many of these same negatives he touted...

Yawn, talk to the hand, how about dem Bears? Almost any conversation would be more interesting than one state’s caucuses after months, MONTHS of listening to mostly petty rhetoric that has NO specifics all in one place about how to govern, truly help a suffering country. And neither does the other side either. Tried to refinance lately? How about turning back a foreclosure? Tried to buy health insurance lately? It is HELL. Trust me on this. All talk from incumbent gov’t, but no go. No...

For much of the world, this is New Year’s Eve and is now officially 2012… and just this: My friend Rigoberta Menchu Tum, of the Mayan K’iche tribe, and Nobel peace prize winner, says of 2012, it marks the ending of an era, and beginning of a new 40 year period of an unprecedented time to bring all strength and goodness into the world. Many of us will live and give through some part or all of this next 40 years. Now would be the time to not hold back, but to pour good into our world,...

The Lost Story About What The Old Man and the New Baby Used to Mean for Human Renewal of Body, Mind, Spirit, Heart and Soul… at New Year’s We’re led to believe that New Year’s images are about the Old Year going out as a bent over old man… and the New Year toddling in as a grinning infant. That’s what the buycandy buywine buybeer folks would have us believe. But those are degraded images. Long ago, there were far brighter symbols for this ending of one revolution and beginning a new...

This is a great night and day: winter solstice; the time when the light comes back more and more for longer and longer glancing across Planet Earth to us, the Fire Star, that is, the sun, comes back to us. In our family the old people would put on their galoshes over their butchkors and bring in fresh and oh so cold water from the well pump outdoors and we would feast on something yellow, orange and/or red, the colors of the sun! most often the banana peppers, the lantern peppers and the cayenne...

For me, I’d vote to cause all persons who were polled to also make a youtube video of their phone conversation with the pollster so I can see who they are, where they are, and their tones of voice, and judge for myself how in depth the poll was, whether anything was answered in depth, whether anyone had humor, or a sick baby, or a car broken down, or a mortgage they couldnt pay, or ten classic cars outside the kitchen window. I’d vote to know/see/ and hear who exactly is being polled....

Christopher Hitchens seemed to some to have been born in a bad mood or under a bad moon on the right. He was, I think, more so a man who despised –as in George Orwell’s book, 1984 too, that there would ever be “The Party” run by the Big Brothers of the world, that would tell men and women what to think, when to think it and when to unthink it, or else. Christopher thereby took out after various cultural tropes he thought to be ‘my way or the highway’ fascists...

All the most media exposed candidates for GOP POTUS are over age 50, some like Newt, only a couple years shy of 70 years of age. Only 11 out of 44 Presidents have been under age 50, tilted strongly toward the aging and the elderly. There’s a saying that old dogs in fading power try to diminish and hold power away from the strongest of the dogs… which are not the elderly, rather the young who are filled with new ideas and insights not clouded by cronyism and comforts. THis is an old Story....

Look for Newt in coming days to bring up his old ideas in borrowed sequins: WIDEspread orphanages for children, work/labor programs for poor children, “Newt’s plan for the improvement of poor people” to the tune of huge amounts of money in the Federal and State budgets that are already overwhelmed… and others of his oddly stentorian-gleeful workhouse-like throwbacks to a Dickensian’ culture no one wanted to live in… so much so, many many left 19th century England...

MAY WE LAUGH Dear Brave Souls: For family dinners at holiday season. May we laugh. May we return good to good. May we return good to not-so-hot. May we laugh. May we return kind to kind. May we return kind to cruel. May we laugh. May we return calm to calm. May we return calm to flagrant. May we laugh. May we stay long as we like. May we stay short if need be. May we laugh about how we all belong to a family by birth, or a family of choice, or both… a family inevitably made of banditos, pirates,...

by Rafael Jesús González, M.Div: University of Creation Spirituality, California ministry to the poor. Veterans Day When the First World War officially ended June 28, 1919, the actual fighting had already stopped the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the previous year. Armistice Day, as it was known, later became a national holiday, and in 1954 (the year I graduated from high school), the name was changed to Veterans Day to honor all U.S. veterans of all wars. The only veteran...

Penn State and their sexual abuse intrusion cases are not alone is being peered at by a Grand Jury in Pennsylvania. See excerpt from EWTN news Feb 15 of this year 2011 below detailing Grand Jury findings on abject neglect of credible complaints of sexual intrusion of children in Catholic Diocese… one wonders what the h.e. double hockeysticks is in the water in Pennsylvania. But, then, it must be in the water in Ireland, Denver, all of Canada, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, New Orleans, Africa,...

You know, 40 years ago, an entire decade might go by without a sexual accusation or scandal. Profumo, anyone. And nowadays, it seems like, well, only a day or two and there’s another ‘wide stance’ or another batch party hired dancer claim, or another this that or the other claim regarding body parts. And using those body parts, whether words from mouth, or bird from south, to… do something unwarranted. No one can predict what will happen to/for Assange who is accused of rape...

There is so much to be serious about, so much to be concerned about, so much to see what each person can do something about, what we as a nation can do to help… and yet, I think we would all go starkers if we didnt sometimes smile once in a while. In that spirit…. ta dah!

Surely there must be a cartoon in the world somewhere showing Assange going through Herman Cain and Obama’s last 25 years of history, and letting the cat(s) out of the bags. Right now Politico gets the ‘Cat Out of the Bag award’ re Herman Cain’s ‘silent settlement’ to make sexual harrassment charges ‘go away’ it seems. What does Politico win? I think a trophy three piece gilded suit torn to shreds… by the cats. On a serious note, I wonder, not...

Driving through Tennessee in the outback, and there is plenty outback to Tennessee, one sees tiny shotgun shacks with tiny side yards planted in tobacco. Driveways ripped out, if ever existing, all aerable land, no matter how small, planted with sentinels of tobacco, yellow, green, brown, depending on time of year. One sees too that tobacco more or less takes care of itself til ready to harvest, so the poor can work at other things. I’ve often thought of the old aproned grannies and grandpaps...

this from the South Bend Trib. the only newspaper within a many mile area from my small hometown population 600. Harry Houdini was like a folk hero where I grew up… and every year on Halloween, people waited til near midnight to tell the story, not of his life… but of his life after. You decide. Houdini was never convinced in his lifetime that the dead could contact the living. But he vowed to continue trying to make it happen, even after his death. He made a pact with several of his...

“The bodies of Gaddafi, his son Mutassim and former Defense Minister Abu Bakr Younis had been held in cold storage in the port city of Misurata since the dictator and members of his entourage were captured near his hometown of Sirte on Thursday. Gaddafi and Mutassim were captured alive, with some injuries, but died in unclear circumstances later that day. “Libya’s interim leaders have promised an investigation, responding to mounting international pressure. “On Monday, Beitalmal...

One wonders what would have happened for Cain if he made jokes about lynching black people who make no effort to work…but then later, much later, he said ‘awwwwww, that was a joke, and America needs to get a sense of humor.’ Unfortunately, Cain himself is becoming not a leader, but is seen as a reason to laugh as he blunders along trying to find his way into a presidential nomination. He had my attention at first; talking about hard work: check. Talking about being self made: check....

Some might remember in my book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, I wrote about the veiled Muslim women transgressing the stringent rules of their religious and political land that forbades women to drive cars… that when the war broke out and people were imperiled, they ran and started up the engines of the family automobiles and drove all over hill and dale to warn people and help people. The very same women were not allowed to walk out of the house, nor to shop, nor to appeal to petty or local...