Why Don't The Democrats Just Put The Marines Outside The Doors To Their Healthcare Hearings And Tell Them To Shoot Any Citizen Who Tries To Come In?

Why is it that the Congress always has time for the show-hearings with the big baseball players, coming in to chat about steroids and sign autographs, have their pictures taken next to the Senators and Representatives.

And why is it that Congress always has time to interject itself into the story-of-the-day, like when they brought in that guy who was the captain of the boat that got hijacked by the pirates, got lots of photo ops with him asking him completely stupid questions.

And why is it that Congress always has time for their corporate masters who bring truckloads full of bribes and kick-backs. Plenty of time for Blue Cross and Aetna and Kaiser Permanente. Plenty of time for Citicorp and Bank of America and General Electric.

But no time for us. No time for the citizens. Not even a minute to let anyone come to Congress to testify before their "hearing" about healthcare. Why would they care what Blue Cross says? Blue Cross doesn't have any problems. They've got all the money. It's the citizens who've got the problems, because they don't have the money, and they either have no, or inadequate and grossly overpriced healthcare. It's ridiculous. It's just another opportunity to solicit more corporate bribes.

I'm surprised the Democrats don't line up the military outside their hearings, and just tell them to shoot any citizen that comes near.

What change? Exactly what change? I don't see it.

Those Corrupt Money-Loving Back-Stabbing Traitorous Democratic Politicians Are Cheating On Us Again. Demand Single-Payer Healthcare.

(NOTE: "Single-Payer" Healthcare means that one person pays the bills. Generally, that means the government pays the bills. Doctors receive information from the government about how much they pay for office visits, procedures, etc., where to send the bills, and the doctors get paid by the government. No insurance companies involved, and no premiums paid to the insurance companies. They contribute nothing, so they are rightfully eliminated from the entire system).

President Obama and the Democrats, in general, have been promising Americans for decades that if only they (the Democrats) had any power at all in the national government, they would make sure that we all have a healthcare system that provides healthcare to all Americans.

Well hallelujah hallelujah. The Democrats are in control. Of the White House. Of the Senate. Of the House of Representatives. And better still, there's no real opposition left. So let's do it, Democrats, let's move forward on one of the most disgraceful failings of our country, the refusal to provide our own people with medical care when they are sick.

I suppose only a moron would be surprised to learn that now they have gained power, by making these fraudulent promises to the citizens, the Democrats have no intention whatsoever to change the healthcare system. It turns out, they were just throwing out the word "change" as a paddle to get the Medical Industry to pay them even more bribes. "Here," the lobbyists said, "Here are millions more of our money. Don't change a thing."

Just like the credit card industry did to stop the Democrats from putting a cap on interest rates and getting rid of the late fees. So Congress abandoned any protection of the consumers and passed some stupid, meaningless, toothless "borrower's rights" laws that do nothing to stop the credit card companies from raping the public, and do nothing to help the citizens. With help like that, maybe we should have just elected the Republicans. What change? This isn't change.

Doctors make a bundle. In addition to their main practices, many of them have sidelines like weight-loss clinics, sports training facilities, they buy MRIs then get their friends to send all their patients to them for testing, they get hospital contracts and staff them with their friends, taking a piece out of everything paid. They even become consultants to soap operas. They're cleaning up, making a fortune. And one way they can continue to do that is to grossly overcharge for their services, keep an artificially-created shortage of doctors so they don't have much competition, and bribe Congress so that nobody passes laws to change this rotten system.

Actually, every time a hospital says they're going to cut back, they always cut back on the nurses who earn a paltry wage and do most of the work. There should be little difference between what a nurse earns and what a doctor earns, but the fact is that nursing has always been a female-dominated profession, and that's why they are paid so little. For example, if nurses make $50,000/year, and doctors make $350,000 (which is minimal where I live), then why not pay the nurses $75,000, pay the doctors $150,000, and have money left over to refund to the patients. They're both making a good living, and the provision of care becomes more affordable.

As far as hospitals go, they have become "profit centers." Built by community funding then eventually taken over by for-profit criminals, this $5.00 for an aspirin is straight-up fraud and theft. Let's take the hospitals back, turn them into non-profit centers owned by the community, and get rid of this smelly mold-like growth that goes by the name "hospital administrators."

Let's talk about the drug pushers -- the legal ones. Guess who funds most of the medical research? Taxpayers do, through the universities. When a university discovers something of value, it is licensed to a drug company, then sold to the public with a 1000% mark-up, or more. Mostly these corporate drug pushers invest in drugs for healthy people who don't need drugs. You want to sell drugs to healthy people so they will stay alive and keep buying the drugs for a long time, providing an income stream. Let's say, for example, that the corporate drug pusher can convince the public that anyone who feels uncomfortable in a roomful of strangers is actually suffering from a medical disease known as Social Anxiety Disorder. But before you panic, here's the good news: THERE IS A CURE!!! Call your doctor (they tell you, in the TV commercial) and get a prescription.

Now why would doctors push this crap on people? Because the doctors get bribes and kick-backs. There is an entire industry known as "Pharmaceutical Sales." Almost to a person they are young and exceptionally good-looking people. They make their living by "visiting" with doctors, flirting, smiling, be pretty or handsome, dining, wooing cooing and noodling, all to get the sale. And they're well-paid to do it. The doctors like having these good-looking young people hanging around. And what the heck, they get lots of free samples so their patients are happy. Every-body-makes-money. Well, except for the patients.

These drug pushers actually calculate the income stream per target -- or patient. Let's say you get someone to buy Drug A, at $30/month, you determine the person's life expectancy, add in a factor for inflation and increase in price of the drugs, calculate it out till the date of death, discount to present value, and you can put a dollar number on exactly how much that patient will pay to the drug company for Drug A during their lifetime. Pretty cool, huh? How can you guarantee the patient will take the drug for life? Have warnings against going off it, for one thing. And maybe throw in a little something extra that will make it uncomfortable for people to go off. They're hooked, baby, and they're going to be paying money to the corporate drug pusher until the patient dies.

Most of the drugs the drug pushers make and sell have nothing to do with health or healthcare, and have everything to do with the question of what is most profitable. My God, Alzheimers is a terrible thing, no question. But most people who get it are relatively well-off white Americans, fairly old. Only about 1.6% of the population of this country suffers from Alzheimers. Even once people reach 90, there is only about a 7% chance they will get Alzheimers in any given year. It isn't quite the epidemic level that one might believe from the news. But why all the advertising, fund raising push for this particular problem? Because there's money in it, that's why.

Relatively well-off people who see mom beginning to slip will spend a lot of money to fund medical research to help mom, because they're terrified they'll get it themselves. But if we really want to help the people in this country, we would be better off starting school programs to provide kids with 3 meals/day of healthy food so they don't end up so fat. Kids are fat because their parents feed them junk, because the food industry has been taken over by people who want to maximize profit, which they do by selling junk to kids. Want to improve our health? Start there.

Viagra. Anti-balding pills. What a pathetic waste that we have millions of children in the world who die from lack of clean drinking water, but the medical industry in the U.S. devotes much of its resources to finding drugs to help men have thick hair and 3-hour erections. And of course the new area of focus for the drug pushers is to try to find a drug for women over 50 that will make them horny all the time. To go along with the old man with the thick head of hair and the 3-hour erection.

The Medical Industry in our country is corrupt. They care about nothing except making money, and they do not care how many Americans die from the gross failure of the entire system. They're in it for the money, they'll get theirs, it's not their problem.

But it is our problem. And now that the Democrats are in complete control, what can we expect by way of relief?

It doesn't look good. Go to OpenSecrets.org (link below) and look under the Healthcare Industry for donations. Go back to about 1990, the Medical Industry paid $20 million in bribes and kick-backs to the politicians. That started to jump up under the pro-business Republican president Clinton, up to $68 million in bribes paid by the Medical Industry to the politicians by 1996. Then we have a huge jump up to $100 million paid by the Medical Industry in bribes and kick-backs in 2000 and 2002.

Somewhere in there, the Republicans passed a law saying the Medicare system would pay for drugs, and forbidding the government agencies from trying to get a discounted price on anything. This was a two-fold level of corruption by the Republicans. First, it was an enormous giveaway to the corporate drug pushers who, in turn, paid enormous kick-backs and bribes to the Republicans. Second, the Republicans want to bankrupt Medicare so they can end the entire program. A two-fer.

By 2004, after Bush had shown his willingness to allow the Medical Industry and all the other criminals to completely loot our country, the Medical Industry paid out $124 million in bribes and kick-backs to the politicians.

In 2008, realizing that the horse was about to change in mid-stream from Republican to Democrat, the Medical Industry paid out almost $165 million in bribes to the politicians (slightly over half of that paid to the Democrats).

One hundred sixty-five million dollars in bribes paid in 2008 alone. Over half of that paid to the Democrats. What do you think are the chances that the Democrats will bite the hand that feeds them? None, unless we make them.
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=H

What should we demand? That all citizens have the right to participate in a single-payer health system. Anybody who wants to continue to buy private insurance should be free to do so. People who would prefer buying into a single payer system run by the government, like Medicare, should be free to do so. Let the people have a choice. The Democrats, who formerly promised that they would make single-payer one of the options available, are now refusing to even discuss it. That's because they took bribes from the Medical Industry, and one of the conditions of the bribes was that the Democrats tell the citizens that there will be no single-payer option. Period.

How would single payer work? Just like Medicare does. Everybody who chooses to be a part of the single payer system would sign up, get a card, then go to the doctor when they need to. The government pays the bills. That's it.

Now, should people who work contribute something to the cost? That seems fair. As long as they earn enough money. People who are poor shouldn't have to pay. Since the businesses have stopped paying healthcare for employees, their taxes should be raised to capture some of that savings. But most working people would gladly pay to the government some monthly amount for healthcare.

For self-employed or unemployed people, who have to buy their own insurance, health insurance is illusory: it "exists" so long as you're healthy, you pay money to them and they pay nothing for you, but if you get sick they will jack up your premiums to the point that you can no longer afford insurance, and they will walk away with all your money in their pocket, and leave you to die. I know a guy who had a heart attack at 42, and his health insurance premiums went up to over $1,000/month. He couldn't afford it. I just heard about some guy, 59, just diagnosed with adult onset diabetes, his premiums went from $300/month to $1300/month, so he no longer has insurance because he couldn't afford it.

These insurance companies take premiums for 40 years, but as soon as the person gets sick they raise the premiums to force the sick person to drop the insurance. These insurance companies all are staffed by psychotic mass-killers, and they should be in prison.

These insurance companies contribute nothing to healthcare. They take our money but when there is a medical problem, they do everything in their power to deny paying for the care. They will delay processing a claim for treatment in the hopes that the patient will die, so they won't have to pay. These people and this industry have no business being involved in healthcare.

As far as the whining doctors, with their AMA lobby bribing Congress, all they're in it for is the money. I'd say that if a doctor can treat patients under a single-payer system and earn $150,000/year, they should be grateful because they're still earning a lot more money than most Americans do. And because they always whine about malpractice insurance, and the high cost of a medical education, I'm sure we could work something out to offset those costs, over time, for doctors who participate in the system. For doctors who refuse, fine, let them go treat people who have private health insurance. Rich people.

Demand a single payer option be made available to the American public. The health insurance industry is fighting hard against this because polls show that when people are told what this option would mean, a huge percentage of Americans would choose it rather than continue to be raped by the criminals running the health insurance industry. I would take that single-payer option in 2 seconds if it was available in order to get away from the scumbucket health insurance industry. I've been self-insured for over 15 years, in good health, but all they ever do is suck money out of me and I get nothing in return.

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Here's a link to, and some excerpts from, an article by Ralph Nader discussing the single-payer healthcare issue, and the plan of the Democrats to abandon it in exchange for all the bribes paid to them by the Medical Industry:

"Remember the Baucus Eight! - The Single-Payer Taboo"
By RALPH NADER

"Among the giant taboos afflicting Congress these days is the proposal to create a single payer health insurance system (often called full Medicare for everyone). ... [S]ingle payer is only supported by a majority of the American people, physicians and nurses. They like the idea of public funding and private delivery. They like the free choice of doctors and hospitals that many are now denied by the HMOs. "

"There are also great administrative efficiencies when single payer displaces the health insurance industry and its claims-denying, benefit-restricting, bureaucratically-heavy profiteering. According to leading researchers in this area, Dr. David Himmelstein and Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, single payer will save $350 billion annually."

"Yet, on Capitol Hill and at the White House there are no meetings, briefings, hearings, and consultations about kinds of health care reforms that reform the basic price inflation, indifference to prevention, and discrimination by health insurers."

"There is no place at the table for single payer advocates in the view of the Congressional leaders who set the agenda and muzzle dissenters."

"Last month at a breakfast meeting with reporters, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) responded to a question about health care with these revealing and exasperating words: "'Over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it's not going to be a single payer.'"

*********************************

Ralph Nader goes on to discuss the hearings just begun in the Senate to discuss health care changes, but not one single person invited to speak will support single payer healthcare. The Democrats have barred any witness who supports single payer healthcare. They refuse to even let the public hear about this option. Demonstrators have been evicted from the hearings for standing up and speaking out for single payer healthcare.

http://singlepayeraction.org/.

So, what can you do? Call, e-mail, write your representative and senator and your local paper, and speak out in support of single payer healthcare.

Point out the bribes paid to the politicians in Washington D.C. by the Medical Industry (almost $400 Million Dollars paid by the Medical Industry to the politicians in Washington D.C. from 2004 through 2008, most of it as bribes and kick-backs to make sure Congress does not pass any law to help the citizens of this country get a modern, rational, affordable healthcare system).

Point out that the only reason single-payer is being rejected is because of these enormous bribes and kick-backs that have been paid by the Medical Industry to our politicians. Point out that a corrupt government will not stand, will not survive in times like these when the citizens need help, but all we see is the government continuing to give massive hand-outs to the corporations and the rich, and back-of-the-hand to the people. Point out that it may be the right to time to start a new political party, maybe call it the "Honest" party, if the Democrats keep giving all the money to the rich people and refuse to do anything to help everyone else. P.S.: we need dental care included in the bill.

Ralph Nader's full article can be seen at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/nader05112009.html

And here's a link to a website about the bill in Congress proposing a single payer healthcare system. http://www.healthcare-now.org/hr-676/whats-single-payer/

"Songs My Mother Taught Me," by Antonin Dvorak

Songs my mother taught me
in the days long vanished
Seldom from her eyelids
were the tear drops banished.

Now I teach my children
each melodious measure.
Often tears are flowing
from my memory's treasure.

Orange Poppy Puzzle

Happy Mother's Day. The Righteous Mothers: Old Fat Naked Women For Peace.

Mother's Day didn't really start as just a day for breakfast in bed. Its origins lie in the decision by Julia Ward Howe to issue a public proclamation and demand that the carnage and brutality of war, in her case the U.S. Civil War, be ended, and that women take up the role as an anti-war force in societies throughout the world, since they seem to be the only ones with enough sense to realize that war must end.

Mother’s Day Proclamation (1870) (Julia Ward Howe)

Arise then ... women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly: We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the voice of a devastated
Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace ...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God—

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

She was right then, and she's still right now. Men start wars, grab the children from the arms of their mothers and send them to foreign countries to kill or be killed so that some few leaders can grab more riches for themselves. Who can stop this madness except women?

Here are some Old Fat Naked Women who are committed to the cause of peace:

More Americans Thrown Out Of Work. 16% "Real" Unemployment. Our Economy Does Not Work For The Average Person.

We now have almost 16% "real" unemployment in this country, and economists say we will continue to bleed jobs every single month for at least the rest of 2009, and high unemployment will continue in our country at least until 2011.

The only people getting rich around here are the criminals on Wall Street, in the Banks, and in the executive offices, the same ones who have looted the country and devastated the economy of the world. For most working people in this country, the economy does not work. Wages have been essentially frozen (when adjusted for inflation) since 1970 -- for 40 years, for some people, an entire working career.

While wages have been frozen, and a smaller piece of the pie went to the workers, a bigger chunk has been stolen by the executives and the CEOs, a percentage of which they use to pay kick-backs and bribes to Congress to cut their taxes and pass laws to let them take jobs out of the country.

Prices have risen dramatically, particularly in healthcare (no longer paid by employers, with the most minor procedure now costing even insured people tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket, driving many people into bankruptcy every year). Many people now pay half their take-home just for housing, a level which is, by definition, unaffordable. They exhaust their savings and, in a downturn, they have nothing. But the rich get richer and everyone else gets hosed.

Wall Street cheered and stocks again rose on the news that another 540,000 Americans lost their jobs in April. Almost 2.6 million Americans have been thrown out of work during the first four months of this year, while the government has handed billions of dollars over to the richest people on Wall Street as bonuses.

The entire goal of Wall Street, the corporate masters, and their servants in Congress, has been to throw Americans out of work, take their jobs to third world countries, open the borders and allow tens of millions of immigrants in to compete for work. Once Americans have been crushed, their life savings gone, homes gone, cars gone, jobs gone, pensions gone, then they will be willing to "compete" with third world workers, to work for a dollar day if that's what they can get.

JOBS LOST IN U.S.

December, 2008
524,000

(Sept. - Dec. 2008)
1.9 million

2008 Total: 2.6 million jobs lost, worst year since1945.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/09/news/economy/jobs_december/index.htm?postversion=2009010912

January, 2009
598,000 http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20090207_598_000_U_S__jobs_lost_in_January.html'>http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20090207_598_000_U_S__jobs_lost_in_January.html">http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20090207_598_000_U_S__jobs_lost_in_January.html

February, 2009
706,000

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a75eifvEz47k

March, 2009
742,000
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a75eifvEz47k

April, 2009
539,000

8.9%: Current "official" unemployment rate.

15.8% Current "real" unemployment rate when including people whose unemployment benefits ran out even though they are still unemployed, and people who have lost a full-time job but have part-time work.

This is now the longest recession since World War II.

13.7 Million Americans unemployed. (Plus, see bottom, 2.1 million "marginally attached" workers weren't even included in this number, even though they were unemployed, because they did not report having looked for a job during the past four weeks.

(AP is reporting): "Looking ahead, economists expect monthly job losses for most -- if not all -- of this year. However, they hope the reductions won't be as deep."

"Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, wouldn't speculate on the future pace of layoffs, but warned that some of the jobs lost "may not come back." She urged jobseekers to get the training and education needed to be contenders for work in growing industries, such as health care, which added nearly 17,000 jobs in April. "

"The Fed says unemployment will remain elevated into 2011. Economists say the job market may not get back to normal -- meaning a 5 percent unemployment rate -- until 2013.

"Microsoft Corp. said it was starting thousands of the 5,000 job cuts it announced in earlier this year and left the door open to even more layoffs." [SOMEBODY SHOULD ASK THEM WHETHER THEY ARE THROWING AMERICANS OUT OF WORK AND JUST REPLACING THEM WITH H1B VISA IMMIGRANT CONTRACT WORKERS FROM INDIA, WHO THEY PAY $11,000/YEAR LESS THAN AN AMERICAN.]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Layoffs-slow-to-539K-in-April-apf-15180628.html

"Ranks of Discouraged Workers and Others Marginally Attached to the Labor Force Rise During Recession."

"When economic conditions deteriorate, greater attention is paid to persons who are without work and seeking jobs—the unemployed. At such times, there is also greater interest in a group of persons who do not meet the official definition of unemployment but who have shown interest in labor force participation. These individuals—referred to as “marginally attached to the labor force”—wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not actively searched for work in the past 4 weeks. The number of persons who were marginally attached to the labor force increased sharply during the current recession, rising to 2.1 million in the first quarter of 2009. From the U.S. government Bureau of Labor Statistics. http://www.bls.gov/opub/ils/ils74abs.htm

Father Cutie-Pie

Father Cutie (the media pronounces it Q-tee-aay) is a Catholic priest, formerly assigned to Miami Beach, Florida. He's very good-looking.

But the really big news is that he's not only heterosexual, but he actually likes grown-up women instead of children. No little boys or girls for Father Cutie-Pie. He was photographed rolling around in the sand, on a beach, with some good-looking woman, engaged in normal adult heterosexual contact. So the church went ballistic.

One might think that the Catholic Church would be so overjoyed to find a priest in their midst who not only was not a pedophile, but who actually likes grown-up females, that they would give him a Straight-To-Pope pass, and this guy would be headed to CEO Heaven, or at least the Catholic version of it. But you would be wrong.

No, apparently the sin of a priest being heterosexual-while-praying is still a mortal sin inside the Catholic church. Those heterosexuals must be banned from the cathedrals, stripped of their robes (which, strangely, is exactly what the beach-babe seemed to be trying to do).

I' m just thinking of all those pedophiles over decades who, when they were caught, the church stood by them. Pedophile = good, heterosexual adult women = bad. Go figure. Remember how it came out that every time a pedophile priest got caught, the church would shuffle him off to some new (unsuspecting) parish. The church later said this was some kind of "punishment." But it looked to me like it might be a rewards system. If they like you, then every few years they send you to a new parish full of young, apple-cheeked innocent young 5 year old boys, so you get a fresh crew. These pedophiles sexually stimulated 5 year old boys, touched their penises to try to make them get erections, made these little boys kiss and lick the old man priest's penis so he could get an erection. And the church protected those priests as if they were goblets from the last supper.

As a basic, fundamental, organizing principle of the Catholic Church, one that precedes all others, they preach and teach and believe that women are disgusting. Women are the most vile, unclean creatures on earth. I'll bet if a priest screwed a pig they'd get off with barely a Hail Mary as contrition. But screw a woman, or even think about it, and you may be defrocked. Women exist, in the eyes of the church, only to entice men, spread their evil ways, lead men to the devil, encourage men to have sex with women for pleasure and for reproductive purposes, so they will leave the church. Or leave "God," is how the church puts it. What kind of twisted mind would turn Jesus' birthmother into a virgin (huh?). If a woman has a problem in a pregnancy, they kill the woman, save the fetus. It's dogma. Women are of no importance other than as slaves and breeders to raise little children to be future victims of the pedophile priests.

How can any institution claim this much power, and retain this much wealth, when they require their leaders to deny one of their basic human instincts: to have sex, usually with a member of the opposite sex? And how can they convince generations of young men that they should do this? By painting women as the most disgusting, dirty, filthy, dishonest, ignorant, worthless creatures that ever lived.

I know other religions have similar attitudes, except their VPs get to have sex. Sometimes they have sex with all their parishioners, during "prayer." So they all have some weird attitudes about sex, and promote the view of women being servants and slaves.

But the Catholic Church is the worst. We hear so much about Islam, about the Muslims and the Taliban and all the crazies, and yes, as a modern branch, they're pretty awful. But the Catholic church exists in modern nations in modern times. Their priests are educated, and many of their parishioners are educated, intelligent people. The Catholic church clings to these old attitudes because of a perverse hatred of women, a need to ascribe to women some terrible status in order to prop up an unworkable, irrational, man-created doctrine that for some reason took hold in the Church, and said the priests may no longer marry. Little boys are okay, but grown women are off-limits.

Wake up Pope. You're losing your best people.

********************************************************************

(From the Miami-Herald, 5/5/09):

"The Rev. Alberto Cutié, a national figure with movie star looks, was removed from his Miami Beach church Tuesday after photographs appeared in a magazine showing him frolicking with a woman in the sand on a Florida beach."

"A wildly popular Catholic priest, newspaper columnist and radio and television personality, Cutié will no longer run operations or lead Sunday Mass at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church."

"Word of Cutié's punishment came during a brief news conference in front of a small gathering of reporters at the Archdiocese of Miami headquarters on Biscayne Boulevard in Miami Shores.

''The vow of celibacy is part of the ordination,' said spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta. 'A man who is a priest is able to totally focus on the church.'"

"Earlier in the day, Cutié spoke with Archbishop John C. Favalora, who said that the pictures of Cutié and the woman saddened him. 'Father Cutié's actions cannot be condoned despite the good works he has done as a priest,' Favalora said in a statement. 'I ask for everyone's prayers at this time.'"

"This week's cover of TVnotas shows Cutié, 40, lying on his back in blue shorts with an unidentified, long-brown-haired woman in a dark bathing suit wrapping her legs around him.

The other 24 pictures, which TVnotas says were taken over a three-day period in March, include one with Cutié's hand inside the woman's bathing suit touching her posterior. Still another shows the couple kissing at an unidentified terrace bar.'' (Miami-Herald, 5/5/09)