I'm a Yellow Dog Democrat. Let’s get rid of those Blue Dog Democrat Do-Nothings.

For the record, originally posted on Facebook, 9/1/2026

Concerning your pissy little etymologically correct argument about being called the “Democrat Party” by the Orange Asshole, shove it where the Sun don’t shine. In 1994, more than 30 years ago, you argued for a less boisterous, more economically elegant party leadership. More in tune with the ideals of liberal democracy, which traces its pedigree back to John Locke. Four presidential administrations later, two Republican and two “Democratic,” you managed to hobble both Clinton and Obama, whose combined IQ was higher than today’s entire GOP caucus. And they certainly had more spine. You can’t even defeat Mitch McConnell, who apparently can still fight his way out of a body bag, much less the paper bag. Wet cardboard is your sparring partner.

I lived, worked, studied, and was active in Massachusetts politics when I was a young man. They just voted to continue supporting the nursing home residents' consulting council. I worked in California Democratic politics for many years. We’re no better. Poor Diane died in office, barely able to sit upright or speak coherently. Nancy retired her Rolodex of big donors, and is apparently ready to hand it off to a new generation. But did anyone think about who they might train instead of their legacy? Not from the look of our choices.

Am I being ageist? I am 82. Not only do I think that no one my age should make decisions for the world. I know it.

But, but you say the other guys are doing it. OK, set a mandatory retirement age of 65-66 for every officeholder in the Republic. That's what the actuarial tables for Social Security recommend, except the oligarchs who keep raking it in for as long as they can sit upright and shake their heads from right to left. Maybe I hit on something. That’s the operative table: how much can a person my age rake in? It certainly seems to be the M.O. of the current Idiot-in-Charge.

Reading the Parables of Jesus as Koans.

My Scriptural justification for reading certain passages from Holy Writ as koans!

Matthew 13:11-12

“Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.”

Matthew 13:52

“He said to them, ‘Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.’”

In less than a decade, by most reckoning, we will mark two thousand years since the death of Jesus. I mention that not because I am counting the years for any particular purpose, but more to emphasize that over these many millennia the emphasis that Christians place on various aspects of his teaching has changed. It is quite clear that most early Christians in the first hundred years expected the Second Coming, and when that didn’t happen as quickly as expected, they began to refocus, and some would argue, radically alter the Teaching of the early communities.

An Indian Buddhist friend has just transferred to a University in America’s Bible Belt. Of course, some of his new friends and classmates there have encouraged him to start reading the Bible. Manik is finding some of the language and imagery jarring. I am a Christian by birth and have spent many years as a Jesuit. When I read passages from the Gospels now, the canonical ones as well as the Gnostic sources, but also the Hebrew Bible, with the possible exception of some of the prophetic writings, I find it jarring too.

But when I read one of the parables of Jesus that Manik mentioned, the Parable of the Tares, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, I thought, oh, why don’t I read this as if it were a koan? If I am going to demand that Christians give up some of the unyielding ideology of their belief systems, why not try to delve into the parts of the tradition that still speak to me, or where I suspect that there might be some treasure?

The early followers of Jesus were very clear about one teaching: the Kingdom of God is at hand. When it didn’t appear in a way they might have recognized in the early sayings of Jesus, they transformed their hope, looked for the Kingdom with fresh eyes, and took action. They realized that this process itself was as endless and as boundless as the love they saw in Christ Jesus. They began to see the Kingdom wherever and whenever it appeared, and they made it appear when only they could envision it. That place is always right here. That moment is always right now.

The Great American Delusion

Americans have been subjected to religious indoctrination almost from the very beginning of our great experiment by Divines with shoddy religious training, and we’ve paid big bucks for it. We suffered two Great Awakenings that produced some of the most outrageous and hypocritical religious movements seen since the Roman Senate decreed that Julius Caesar deserved a cult statue, and a temple shared with the goddess Clementia. Mark Antony was appointed as his priest, and Caesar was to be invoked under the name Jupiter Julius. What are we going to call Rex Donald? His Divine “whatever-I-can-lick-grope-steal-and-get-away-with " Holiness?

The Evangelical Bible-thumping of our beloved forebears is the root of the religious sham afoot today. And the New Age is not exempt! “Teachers” of MacMinfulness, hucksters with a full hundred hours of meditation training under their various colored robes, earn a certificate, and charge big bucks for some humbo jumbo gibberish, laced with tongue-twisting cliches designed to anesthetize those of us subjected to the demands of a dehumanizing corporate culture that has made profit the Golden Calf.

Read Elmer Gantry, the 1927 American satirical novel by Sinclair Lewis, which satirizes religious activity in evangelistic circles and public attitudes toward it during the 1920s. It was banned in Boston. The novel centers on Elmer Gantry, an ambitious, corrupt minister who rises to prominence in the Methodist Church despite his hypocrisy, sexual misconduct, and opportunism.

Lewis researched the novel in 1926 with the assistance of the Unitarian minister Leon Milton Birkhead, a former Methodist whose knowledge of American religious life helped shape the work. May I suggest that this might be the next worthwhile spiritual foray for James Ismael Ford?

The head of Donald Trump’s religious office is televangelist and pastor Paula White-Cain. I’ve written about her elsewhere: Call it by its correct name: Lying. “Don’t believe a word coming out of the mouth of Rev. Paula White-Cain or Bishop Robert Emmet Patrick Barron!”

The forked-tongue Bishop Baron ought to shut his filthy mouth and study the career of soon-to-be-canonized Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. Sheen knew five languages: Greek, German, Italian, Latin, and French. He spoke French, Italian, and Latin fluently. He studied at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, where his coursework was entirely in French and Latin, and he even practiced television scripts in French and Italian. Biographers noted that he was so comfortable with Latin that he naturally "thought in Latin".He had a reading/working knowledge of Greek and German, which he used heavily in his academic and philosophical studies.

After 6 years of seminary training required for ordination, he pursued an additional five years of rigorous higher education to prepare for his intellectual mission in the Church: He earned a Doctor of Canon Law degree in 1920 in one year from The Catholic University of America; after three years at the Catholic University of Leuven he earned a PhD in Philosophy by 1923; he studied in Rome for another year, earning a Doctor of Sacred Theology in 1924 from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. He authored over 70 books.

Bishop Baron can’t get his tongue out of The Divine Pussy-Grabbing Holiness’s asshole long enough to quote our Dear Lord’s sayings correctly or learn the values Fulton Sheen espoused in his modern rendition of the Teaching: “Life is Worth Living.”

Wildflowers

Song by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt ‧ 1987

The hills were alive with wildflowers and I

Was as wild, even wilder than they

For at least I could run

They just died in the sun

And I refused to just wither in place

Just a wild mountain rose

Needing freedom to grow

So I ran fearing not where I'd go

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

And the flowers I knew

In the fields where I grew

Were content to be lost in the crowd

They were common and close

I had no room for growth

And I wanted so much to branch out

So I uprooted myself from my home ground and left

Took my dreams and I took to the road

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

I grew up fast and wild

And I never felt right

In a garden so different from me

I just never belonged

I just longed to be gone

So the garden one day set me free

I hitched a ride with the wind

And since he was my friend

I just let him decide where we'd go

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

Just a wild rambling rose seeking mysteries untold

No regret for the path that I chose

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

https://youtu.be/rlbDaY7UFD4?si=ENlloj6POzL_f4Ye

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Dolly Parton

Wildflowers lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC