The largely forgotten separation of Church and Stage!

Excuse me if I’m not at my best today. Nothing contagious and nothing bad so those readers who would like the malaise to be non-trivial are going to be disappointed. No, the trouble is that I got to bed very late last night and that problem was compounded by my inability to stay in bed after 5 o’clock in the morning. More about this later and I would probably have begged off this post had it not been for an email I received this morning.

Now there was both good news and bad news implied in the email. The good news was that somebody had actually read my last post and the bad news was that the criticism was valid.

The thread of it was my look at the second 100 days of the Obama governance and the lack of progress therein and thereby. Well, the writer took me to task and bewailed the inarguable fact that I had omitted to be more specific about his shortcomings as I perceived them. I mean Obama’s shortcomings of course not those of the author of the email. Although I cannot imagine that the author's are more egregious. So, ever one eager to please but rarely succeeding, I undertook this post reluctantly from a physical perspective but mentally so willingly.

Clearly the wars in the Middle East have not ended. On the contrary, Obama has elected to escalate the conflict in Afghanistan and to put boots on the ground in Pakistan as well. All this had led to the greatest loss of life last month in those theaters since the initial invasion. This fact has gone largely unreported in this country but not so among our allies mainly the UK and Germany.

The Military Tribunals continue and Gitmo has not closed principally because the rest of the world wants nothing to do with the inmates which they know to be vicious killers although that fact seems to have eluded Obama’s razor-sharp intellect.

One of Obama’s key support groups during and after the election were the Gay activists but they haven’t got what they wanted either as Obama steadfastly continues to renege on his promise to support marriage of same-sex couples.

Remember when this was going to be the most “transparent” of regimes? Well, it’s turning out to be one of the most secretive as we see from the abandonment of the commitment to publish legislation via the Web. And, even more than that, Obama sends out people like Linda Douglas to propose tactics reminiscent of those beloved by Goebbels and Felix Dzerzhinsky who created Lenin’s Cheka.

Then there was mantra about “No New Taxes” unless a person earned more than $250,000 per year. Well that’s gone bye-byes as well and you only have to read the proposed government-run healthcare scheme to see that lie in black and white.

And, then I would be remiss were I to omit the issue of “earmarks” which were much castigated by Obama. Again, the evidence is clear. The “Stimulus Package” is stuffed with earmarks as is the “Cap and Trade” legislation.

So, dear and dissenting emailer is that enough to be going on with? No wonder a reader from the other side of the Atllantic told me of a headline which had appeared in the British press, “Has the Obama bubble burst?” You betcha!

I promised to tell you why my tail is dragging this morning. I spent last evening at an event called a “Freedom Concert” which was a charity event to raise funds for the education of boys and girls who had lost a parent in the line of duty.

Not surprisingly, it was an evening of unbridled patriotism, conservative beliefs and support for our brave men and women and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I was accompanied by an unabashed Obama booster. I was uncomfortable with the Christian-dominated bits for obvious reasons. She though, the confirmed agnostic, delighted in all that and sang along with gusto.

Her verdict, at the end of the evening was that it wasn’t very democratic or perhaps she meant Democratic. In either case, she was right but I didn’t know that a concert was supposed to be.

In a similar way, a church service isn’t supposed to be either and, if I’m wrong about that, then someone had better point it out to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and also to Obama who listened to his hate-filled maniacal ravings for 20 years without complaint.