R-ISLANDER

Irish Prime Minister, Dublin's Archbishop, the Vatican and Abuse

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny says Cloyne report on child sex abuse by priests in Ireland, just released, highlights dysfunction and elitism in Rome.

Analysis by Maureen Dowd and the story from the Guardian follow...

This is a full revelation of how the Church has and continues to undermine Irish Law which is for the protection of children from "abuse and torture."

Dowd also reports how the Vatican and other Irish Bishops are isolating and ignoring the Archbishop of Dublin for his support of the victims. 'What church “cabal” is this in the Vatican or Ireland, he asked, “who try to undermine what is being done, or simply refuse to understand what is being done?”'

Ireland once enshrined a special place for the Church in its Constitution. Not any more. As one political observer noted of Irish Prime Minister Kenny and his late July 2011 speech to parliament “Kenny has tapped into a vein in the Irish psyche, people saying, ‘Well done for standing up to those bloody bishops and the pope.’ It was lancing a boil.”

The Guardian report: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/20/irish-prime-minister-attacks-vatican?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

The Maureen Dowd Report: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24dowd.htm
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ELIZABETH WARREN FOR U.S. SENATE IN MASSACHUSETTS 2012

Join the Coffee Party! http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/ collective group for progressive Americans... Supporters of Elizabeth Warren for U.S. Senate from Massachusetts.

REPUBLICANS ARE FOR THE WEALTHY; DEMOCRATS FOR THE MIDDLE AND WORKING CLASSES

Republicans are the one's to blame over debt impasse according to the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson. He's absolutely right, President Obama is bending over backwards to please them. I am not a fan of the cutting of any entitlements...the middle, working and poor classes need them to survive. Actually we should be doing more and could if the RICH were required to pay their fair share of the nation's taxes. Read all of Robinson's perspective in todays Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-blame-both-sides-for-debt-impasse/2011/07/11/gIQA0XDg9H_story.html

Kentucky's Two Second-Rate Senators....shameful!

The Republicans, being led by Kentucky's two second-rate senators, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, are putting the country and it's citizens at risk in order to protect the tax-bill of millionaires and billionaires. Shameful...poor Kentucky has to deal with these two...Nick Kristof asks of us, Do we do what these second-rate Republican senators want us to do when he writes:

"Do we try to balance budget deficits just by cutting antipoverty initiatives, college scholarships and other investments in young people and our future? Or do we also seek tax increases from those best able to afford them?"

We are the richest and most successful country in the world. We can afford anything we'd like to do, it is just a matter of where we want to focus our resources...do we want to insure tax savings for the richest among us with no taxes and tax loopholes? Or do we want to save those programs that help the middle and working classes not to mention the elderly and our students? The answer is clear to a majority of Americans according to the polls: TAX THE RICH!!!

BISHOP THOMAS TOBIN: A KNOW-NOTHING-CATHOLIC

Most Americans at one time refused the dignity of respect for American Catholics. In fact, it was so bad for American Catholics, in the 1850s a gift of a block of marble from Pope Pius IX for the connstruction of the Washington Monument “was thrown into the Potomac River” by members of the anti-Catholic “Know-Nothing” party. Just as Nativists taught hate for the difference that Catholics represented, Bishop Tobin et al are now preaching against Gay Americans and their legal rights. He is a sad little man, an ignorant bureaucrat hardly in tune with the Jesus who taught us about LOVE....he should be ashamed of himself...as a Catholic I certainly am ashamed of him while at the same time very proud of the majority of Catholics who support marriage equality for their gay brothers and sisters according to multiple polls. I guess it is pretty safe to call Tobin a Know-Nothing-Catholic....