The Catholic Monitor

By Thomas Roeser Obama's Creed When asked why I am outspokenly anti-Obama, here is a main reason. Last April 9 at a news conference in Turkey, he said that while there is a great number of Christians in the United States... "... we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values." You can check the quote for accuracy on the Internet. It's verifiable. Well, as reader Joan Solms (and conservative activist) says: who are "we"? And what "ideals and a set of values"? What are they? Here is the closest affirmation I can find of what this 3rd World-indoctrinated mystery man of murky genealogical background really "believes" if in fact belief is the right word. He is really not very smart. He poses often with his forefinger dug into his cheek with a faraway look in his eyes from which we are to deduce he's an intellectual...

http://www.truthout.org/101009A Nobel Prize for Promises? Saturday 10 October 2009 by: Howard Zinn, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed I was dismayed when I heard Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on wars in two countries and launching military action in a third country (Pakistan), would be given a peace prize. But then I recalled that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Kissinger had all received Nobel Peace Prizes. The Nobel Committee is famous for its superficial estimates and for its susceptibility to rhetoric and empty gestures, while ignoring blatant violations of world peace. Yes, Wilson gets credit for the League of Nations - that ineffectual body which did nothing to prevent war. But he also bombarded the Mexican coast, sent troops to occupy Haiti and the Dominican Republic and brought the US into the slaughterhouse of Europe in the first World War - surely, among stupid and deadly wars, at the top of the list. ...

-"Nothing good can come from the Federal Reserve," writes Texas Congressman Ron Paul in his latest book hitting shelves this week, titled "End the Fed." -"It is the biggest taxer of them all. Diluting the value of the dollar by increasing its supply is a vicious, sinister tax on the poor and middle class." -"The Fed is using all its power to drive the monetary base to unprecedented heights, creating trillions in new money out of thin air ." -"From April 2008 to April 2009, the adjusted monetary base shot up from $856 billion to an unbelievable $1.749 trillion." -"Was there any new wealth created? New production? No, this was the Ben Bernanke printing press at work. If you and I did anything similar, we would be called counterfeiters and be sent away for a lifetime in prison." -"But, when the Fed does it, complete with a scientific gloss, it is seen as the perfectly legal and responsible conduct of monetary policy." h...

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=346 -"One of the most important contributions of Catholic social teaching to economic thought is the Church’s insistence that the economy is not the result of implacable laws or impersonal forces, but of specific moral decisions. -"The capitalist notion that the purpose of economic activity is profit, and that the greatest good for the greatest number follows automatically from this principle, is in the first place morally false and in the second profoundly arbitrary." -"The socialist notion that economic activity is not rooted in personal ownership, and that the state alone can bring about equity and peace in the social order is, in the first place false as to its understanding of human nature and in the second inevitably totalitarian." -"Neither system is based on the full truth about man, and so neither is capable of fostering authentic development or, as the Church puts it, 'development of t...

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/economic9-11.php ECONOMIC 9-11: DID LEHMAN BROTHERS FALL OR WAS IT PUSHED? Ellen Brown, September 7th, 2009 A year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, questions still swirl around its collapse. Lawrence MacDonald, whose book A Colossal Failure of Common Sense came out in July 2009, maintains that the bank was not in substantially worse shape than other major Wall Street banks. He says Lehman was just “put to sleep. They put the pillow over the face of Lehman Brothers and they put her to sleep.” The question is, why? The Lehman bankruptcy is widely considered to be the watershed event that changed the rules of the game for those Wall Street banks considered “too big to fail.” The bankruptcy option was ruled out once and for all. The taxpayers would have to keep throwing money at the banks, no matter how corrupt, ill-managed or undeserving. As Dean Baker noted in April 2009: “Geithner has supposedly ruled out the bankruptcy opt...

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/secret_of_china.php THE SECRET OF CHINA’S MIRACLE ECONOMY: THE GOVERNMENT OWNS THE BANKS RATHER THAN THE REVERSE Ellen Brown, August 17th, 2009 www.webofdebt.com/articles/secret_of_china.php “The banks -- hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. They frankly own the place.” -- U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Democratic Party Whip, April 30, 2009 While the U.S. spends trillions of dollars to bail out its banking system, leaving its economy to languish, China is being called a “miracle economy” that has decoupled from the rest of the world. As the rest of the world sinks into the worst recession since the 1930s, China has maintained a phenomenal 8% annual growth rate. Those are the reports, but commentators are dubious. They ask how that growth is possible, when other countries relying heavily on exports have suffered major downturns and remain in the doldr...

"Since when is threatening the detonation of the economy unless 700 billion is handed over immediately not economic terrorism." http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1364-America-Is-Running-Out-Of-Rope.html America Is Running Out Of Rope Oh no, we don't cheat: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. research analyst Marc Irizarry's published rating on mutual-fund manager Janus Capital Group Inc. was a lackluster "neutral" in early April 2008. But at an internal meeting that month, the analyst told dozens of Goldman's traders the stock was likely to head higher, company documents show. Nothing like selling bonds out the front door and shorting them on your prop desk, right? Oh wait, Goldman did that too! Securities laws require firms like Goldman to engage in "fair dealing with customers," and prohibit analysts from issuing opinions that are at odds with their true beliefs about a stock. Steven Strongin, Goldman's stock research chief, says no one g...

By Richard Salbato I was asked by many people to expand on my last Newsletter, Sins Against Purity Cause Wars. Father Bart believes we should start a movement within the Church on Purity and Dating. I love the idea, but personally I am a hermit and too involved with my own family to organize anything. I will, however, offer guidelines and suggestions for those teachers and priests who want to bring Purity and Virginity back to the Church. For over ten years now I have been writing Newsletters on Moral Theology because more people today go to Hell for sins against morals than any other reason. Some of those Newsletters are linked below. I suppose the most controversial Newsletter I have ever written on Morals is one of the first I ever wrote. It was a result of people asking me why I did not get involved in the Right to Life Marches and Sit-ins that my friends were involved in. Quickly without even thinking I said, “Abortion is not the problem.” At the time I did not even know what I me...