Michael Kelly that goddamned george bush 2006 computer drawing

Just spotted this tiny item in this morning's Newsday:

BLEEPS ON A PLANE. So much for God and country, at least during some in-flight showings of the Oscar-nominated movie "The Queen." All mentions of God are bleeped out of a version of the film distributed to Delta and some other airlines, The Associated Press reports. Jeff Klein, president of Jaguar Distribution, the Studio City, Calif., company that supplied the movie to the airlines earlier this month, said it was a mistake, committed by an overzealous and inexperienced employee who had been told to edit out all profanities and blasphemies. Jaguar has been sending out unedited copies to the airlines.

[image from openstudio, spotted while searching for an image for "goddamned",]

"holy anger"

Abbé Pierre died yesterday. If there is such a thing as a "saint", this man clearly deserved the title, but he will never be canonized by the Church. Too excessive.

He wrote that as a young priest, he had sex with a woman, and further infuriated Roman Catholic authorities by advocating gay marriage.

Even Jeanne d'Arc, who finally made saint after waiting 600 years, had never talked that kind of nonsense.

This and (almost) everything else in this remarkable NYTimes obituary of a 20th-century St. Francis almost reads like pure invention; it describes the perfect French or even universal hero of the poor, the homeless, the disenfranchised. And there's recycling in there too!

ADDENDUM: In doing a little searching I've just discovered that l'Abbé was a good friend of this dangerous man.

[image of Jacques Nadeau from Le Devoir]

is this trip necessary?

Does our singular bellicosity stem simply from our addiction to oil, or from our growing cult of christianism? Or is it simply the pathological expression of a frightened, isolated, ignorant, provincial and bored people?

My question seems to assume that all Americans are responsible for creating and sustaining the most war-like society in history, but while it's clear the buttons themselves are pushed by a military-industrial-media establishment, if we continue to describe our nation as a democracy we have to take as full a responsibility for the evil done in our name as for the good.

[image from C-130 Headquarters]