Pornography kills

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The objectification of men and women in pornography  is a great evil.  It leads, as we see in this video, to death. Sexual objectification is the practice of regarding or treating another person merely as an instrument (object) towards one's sexual pleasure, and a sex object is a person who is regarded simply as an object of sexual gratification or who is sexually attractive. Objectification is an attitude that regards a person as a commodity or as an object for use, with little or no regard for a person's personality or sentience.  Eventually the performer, the object, realizes that he or she has become nothing more than that.  After a life of self destruction in film, they end their life believing that they have only worth in their pornography.  

Brantigny

Hollande promises to tax the rich...

...to pay off French deficit

Leftwing frontrunner in presidential race launches manifesto on how Socialist party would deal with financial crisis

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris guardian.co.uk,

The Socialist rural MP, who recently declared "my real adversary in this campaign is the world of finance", launched his manifesto on Thursday, a road map of how the left would deal with the financial crisis. Hollande said he would raise taxes for banks and big companies as well as France's richest people, and use the money to help wipe out the nation's crippling public deficit.

By scrapping some €29bn (£24bn) worth of tax breaks for wealthier people introduced under Nicolas Sarkozy, he said he could find €20bn to deal with the corrosion of French society: record unemployment, soaring youth jobless figures and an education system that has been shamed as one of the most unequal in Europe, where one in six children leave with no qualifications.

Hollande increased his lead in the polls after his first big rally on Sunday used Barack Obama-inspired slogans of "hope and "change". But he was under pressure to counter the charges by Sarkozy that the French left is high-spending, with its head in the clouds of idealism and little credibility on managing the world's financial crisis.

For the first time since the second world war, the election campaign is dominated by an unpredictable economic crisis. Unemployment is at a 12-year high with 2.8m jobless, and youth unemployment is over 20%. Last year, the new unemployed were equal to the entire population of the city of Grenoble (about 157,000).

With France losing its AAA credit rating, and a gaping hole in state welfare coffers, the French left cannot make its traditional high-spending promises on public services, and has little room for manouevre.

If Hollande's Sunday rally was aimed at injecting some dazzle into what critics have called an unexciting campaign, the manifesto launch marked Hollande's return to the careful, number-crunching technocrat who ran the Socialist party for 11 years. The Nouvel Observateur likened him to an anaesthetist sitting in a white coat by the bed reassuring France about its major surgery. Le Monde called it a "Churchillian" manifesto; France isn't at war, but "things are bad", the paper said.

If there is to be blood, sweat and tears in France, Hollande suggested they would come from the richest 5%: "If there are sacrifices to be made, and there will be, then it will be for the wealthiest to make them".

The plank of his manifesto was making the tax system fairer — raising the tax bracket for the highest earners favoured under Sarkozy. He focused on education and youth, promising 60,000 new jobs in schools and 150,000 state-aided jobs for youth, as well as help for small start-up companies. The banking industry will be forced to draw a line between its speculative financial market operations and the more traditional role of using savers' deposits to finance industry and the economy — a policy also being considered in Britain. Hollande said he could bring France's bloated deficit back on target by 2017.

The electoral battleground will now be fought over France's middle class, such as teachers, nurses and social workers, who have low salaries but earn too much for French social benefits and too little for tax breaks. They are disillusioned and angry that France's social mobility has ground to a halt.

Sarkozy's rightwing UMP party said Hollande's manifesto would lead to a "middle class tax bloodbath". The party leader, Jean-Francois Copé, likened Hollande to Venezeula's Hugo Chávez.

Sarkozy is to announce a last-ditch reform package this weekend, including a likely rise on sales tax to help meet social welfare costs. The Socialists claim this will hit the middle class the hardest.

Meanwhile, Hollande, who aims to be the first leftwing president since François Mitterrand, sparked amusement in London when it emerged that a Shakespeare quote he used in his Sunday rally — "They failed because they did not start with a dream" – actually came not from the playwright William but from the novelist and Daily Telegraph book reviewer Nicholas.

French Socialist presidential candidate outlines how he intends to increase taxes for the rich, cut tax on profit for small businesses, and cancel billions of euros of tax breaks

Taxing the rich will not work monsieur, it never has. When you punish the successful you decrease the desire to succeed.

Brantigny

A desperado in kindergarten

..Police handcuff Ga. kindergartner for tantrum

MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — Police in Georgia handcuffed a kindergartner after the girl threw a tantrum, and the police chief is making no apologies.

WMAZ-TV (http://on.wmaz.com/I0ZrNE ) reports that 6-year-old Salecia Johnson is accused of tearing items off the walls and throwing furniture at school in the central Georgia city of Milledgeville. The police report says the girl knocked over a shelf that injured the principal.

The elementary school called police after the Friday tantrum. The report says when an officer tried to calm the child, she resisted and was handcuffed. The girl was charged with simple assault and damage to property.

Police Chief Dray Swicord says the department's policy is to handcuff people in certain situations, and "there is no age discrimination on that rule."

The child was suspended from school until August.

Meanwhile Milledgeville has a higher crime rate than the average US City, and has had a higher crime rate for 7 out of 11 years 1999 to 2010.

These statistics may seem a bit out of whack as crime has been on the decline over the last few years, no doubt as a result of the incarcerating prepubescent violent youth.

Brantigny

Brantigny

Newark Mayor Cory Booker saves woman from fire

Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark, N.J., rescued a woman trapped in a burning house Thursday night and carried her to safety.

Booker was treated for smoke inhalation at a local hospital and released. He also suffered second-degree burns on his hand.

The New York Times reports that Booker arrived at his Newark home after taping a television interview and found a neighbor's house ablaze. Before firefighters arrived on the scene, the mayor and two members of his security detail entered the house and helped the residents get out safely.

Booker then heard a woman screaming for help on the second floor and went back inside.

"I just grabbed her and whipped her out of the bed," Booker told The Star-Ledger.

Booker posted a Twitter message shortly after the incident: "Thanks 2 all who are concerned. Just suffering smoke inhalation. We got the woman out of the house. We are both off to hospital. I will b ok."

The mayor added that one of his security officers had tried to stop him from going inside. "We actually get into a fight because his job is to protect me," Booker said.

Newark Fire Chief John Centanni said Booker and his security detail performed a professional rescue and that their actions may have saved the woman's life.

Not many people would have thought to do what Cory Booker the man did, let alone a politician.

Brantigny

Who can we trust?

Nun: I was fired for reporting priest's dirty mags

By JOANN LOVIGLIO

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A nun testified Monday in a landmark church sex-abuse trial that she was fired from a southeastern Pennsylvania parish for reporting concerns to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia about explicit mail that a priest had received.

Sister Joan Scary said she lost her job as director of education at St. Gabriel's in the rural Montgomery County town of Stowe, near Pottstown, after she complained to then-Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua about the Rev. Edward DePaoli shortly after his arrival in 1995. She said she was concerned about mail DePaoli began to receive, including computer disks from Denmark and magazines containing "deplorable" content, none of which included DePaoli's clerical title or indicated that his address was a rectory.

DePaoli, who was defrocked in 2005, is not a defendant in the trial but prosecutors are using the testimony about him and others to build a case against Monsignor William Lynn, who was the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's secretary of clergy from 1992 to 2004 and entrusted within investigating complaints against priests.

Lynn is the first Roman Catholic official in the U.S. charged with endangering children for allegedly moving priests suspected of molestation from parish to parish without warning anyone of previous sex-abuse complaints. He is on trial with the Rev. James Brennan, who is charged with the attempted rape of a 14-year-old boy in 1996. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Scary said Monday she was unaware when he came to St. Gabriel's that DePaoli was convicted in federal court in 1986 of possessing child pornography and sentenced to probation. The conviction was not announced in the parish but Scary said she did think it odd that "he didn't really have duties."

"During Mass he would sit in the sanctuary and wouldn't do anything, other than just be there," she said. "Most priests would either read the gospel, give a homily, help out with communion ... it just seemed strange."

She testified she was warned by the church's pastor to keep any concerns about DePaoli to herself "or I could pack my bags and leave."

That's exactly what happened after she anonymously mailed one of DePaoli's magazines to Bevilacqua, she testified, with a handwritten note asking whether the cardinal thought that it was appropriate material for a priest. She was fired by the Rev. James Gormley, the pastor, in May 1996 after seven years at St. Gabriel's.

A detective went on the stand Monday to read a series of memos regarding the case of the Rev. Thomas Shea, who was removed from active ministry in 1994, a week after the archdiocese was contacted by an attorney who said his client was sexually abused as an altar boy by Shea in the 1970s at Saint Helena parish in Philadelphia. In one memo, Lynn suggests the priest might have been "seduced into it" by the then-altar boy.

Shea, who was sent to a Catholic treatment facility and diagnosed as a pedophile with the emotional maturity level of a 12- or 13-year-old boy, was permitted to retire in 1995 and said he had only two victims — the boy whose lawyer contacted the archdiocese and a boy who had since died.

In 2002, however, the archdiocese received an anonymous letter from someone who said his or her family member was one of several boys molested by Shea in the 1970s at Saint Joseph parish in Collingdale and "cannot to this day stop running away from his life."

A detective on the witness stand told Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington that investigators found no evidence that the archdiocese tried to locate the letter writer or any other potential victims. This isn't getting better. The church needs to remove these demons by the root. This realy angers me. We see the result of 50 years of indifference of Bishops in choosing qualified candidates for the priesthood. Liberal leanings have alowed these heinous acts to continue.

Brantigny

‘Deeply Offensive & Blasphemous’?:

Catholics Protesting ‘Ale Mary’s’ Bar in Maryland.

A bar in Fells Point, Maryland, is under fire as Catholics are claiming that the local business is mocking the church. But the owners of the establishment, Ale Mary’s, are defending themselves and dismissing the allegations that put it at the center of a religiously-based protest.

The business’ name, which is a play on the “Hail Mary,” a prayer devoted to Jesus Christ’s mother, is one of the main points of contention. But inside the bar, there are also religious relics and jokes that don’t seem to sit well with believers. From a holy water dish-turned-candy dish to a bobble-head Jesus, there’s plenty of religious imagery to go around. The Baltimore Sun has more:

They decorate with photos of nuns. They post their draft list on a hymn board. They offer Father Luies Grilled Wings and Father Tom’s Fried Ice Cream Sundae. And, possibly their most serious transgression according to the group: the bar’s “chalice” club where people can get their beer served in a chalice.

One of the bar’s owners, Tom Rivers, appeared in an interview with WBFF-TV, where he claimed that the name of Ale Mary’s was inspired by his wife and sister-in-law, not by the Catholic Church.

“My wife is named Mary, my brother who is my partner — his wife was named Mary — we were brought up in a Catholic house — church — it just seemed to fit,” he explained. “It was cool.”

But local Catholics aren’t amused, nor are then accepting these explanations. Individuals opposed to the bar’s tactics and theme have launched a Facebook page called “500,000 Against Ale Mary’s.” The group explains the intentions behind the protest:

This group has been formed to protest, and make known, the deeply offensive and blasphemous use of sacred objects used in the Catholic Church in Her most profound rituals and liturgies by the bar Ale Mary. In this establishment Chalices that contain the precious blood of Christ are being used as common drinking cups, and a Monstrance that is to be used to display the Sacred body of Christ for adoration is being used as a kitch decoration sitting on a bar where patrons while their time over drinks. A holy water font is also used as a simple candy dish.

So far, the movement has 761 members.

762...

Brantigny

A nerw round of Anti-Catholicism

It is said that you are known by who your enemies are. Why attack the Catholic Church? It is because satan knows that only by destroying the Catholic Church can he control the world without opposition.

Vandals Deface Seattle Church on Easter Morning With Bizarre & Anti-Catholic Messages

While children were just hours away from enjoying their Easter baskets filled with candy and delightful trinkets, vandals were preparing another “gift” for a Seattle church on Easter eve.

Over a dozen messages were found spray-painted on St. James Cathedral on Resurrection morning. Church officials believe that the attack on the church occurred sometime between Saturday evening and Sunday morning.

Red paint was sprayed on a statue of the Virgin Mary and bizarre and disturbing graffiti messages were painted on the front of the church and in the courtyard. One message read, “Child killer.” Another said, “Death Angel, we won’t be silent.” And a third proclaimed, “The Catholic Church was not born in the U.S.A.”

It took workers all day to sandblast and remove the damage. The parish will now be increasing security to prevent future attacks, as authorities attempt to figure out who was responsible.

Larry Brouse, an administrator at St. James, dismissed the graffiti, though, and said that it is “not important.”

“What’s happening inside is important — that we’re celebrating Easter,” This is at least the second time that unfavorable messages have been posted on the church. In March, other anti-Catholic notes were reportedly stenciled at the cathedral as well.

Of course this is in Seattle, Washington one of the most intolerant states in the United States.

Brantigny

bad week in Washinton

Brutal week for Obama, the worst of his presidency
By Charles Hurt

The past seven brutal days will go down as one of the worst weeks in history for a sitting president. It certainly has been, without any doubt, the worst week yet for President Obama.

Somehow, Mr. Obama managed to embarrass himself abroad, humiliate himself here at home, see his credentials for being elected so severely undermined that it raises startling questions about whether he should have been elected in the first place — let alone be re-elected later this year.

Consider:

Last Friday, Mr. Obama wandered into the killing of Trayvon Martin. Aided by his ignorance of the situation, knee-jerk prejudices and tendency toward racial profiling, Mr. Obama played a heavy hand in elevating a tragic situation in which a teenager was killed into a full-blown hot race fight.

Americans, he admonished, need to do some “soul-searching.” And then, utterly inexplicably, he veered off into this bizarre tangent about how he and the poor dead kid look so much alike they could be father and son. It was election-year race-pandering gone horribly wrong.

By the start of this week, Mr. Obama had fled town and was racing to the other side of the planet just as the Supreme Court was taking up the potentially-embarrassing matter of Obamacare. While in South Korea he was caught on a hidden mic negotiating with the president of our longest-standing rival on how to sell America and her allies down the river once he gets past the next election.

Meanwhile, back at home, the Supreme Courttook up the single most important achievement of Mr. Obama’s presidency and, boy, was it embarrassing. The great constitutional law professor, it turns out, may not quite be the wizard he told us he was.

By most accounts, Mr. Obama and his stuttering lawyers were all but laughed out of the courthouse. They were even stumbling over softball questions lobbed by Mr. Obama’s own hand-picked justices.

Mr. Obama closed his week pulling off a nearly unimaginable feat: He managed to totally and completely unify the nastily-fighting Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Late Wednesday night, they unanimously voted — 414 to zip — to reject the budget Mr. Obama had presented, leaving him not even a thin lily’s blade to hide behind.

So, in one week, Mr. Obama got caught whispering promises to our enemy, incited a race war, raised serious questions about his understanding of the Constitution, and then got smacked down over his proposed budget that was so wildly reckless that even Democrats in Congress could not support it.

It was as if you lumped Hurricane Katrina and the Abu Ghraib abuses into one week for George W. Bush. And added on top of that the time he oddly groped German Chancellor Angela Merkel and got caught cursing on a hot mic.

Even then, it wouldn’t be as bad as Mr. Obama’s week. You would probably also have to toss in the time Mr. Bush’s father threw up into the lap of Japan’s prime minister. Only then might we be approaching how bad a week it was for Mr. Obama.

N0t that you will see any trace of embarrassment in the face of Mr. Obama. He has mastered the high political art of shamelessness, wearing it smugly and cockily. Kind of like a hoodie.

Charles Hurt can be reached atcharleshurt@live.com

Brantigny