Michael Riley, a Baptist minister and member of The Asbury Park Press editorial board says “Jesus was a card-carrying socialist” in his Only Human column in today’s print edition. The column is not yet on the app’s web site.
Someone better inform Barack Obama who insists that he is a Christian, that he is not a socialist, and that he was born in Hawaii.
But Riley is not writing for Obama. He’s writing to Republicans:
“I hate to break it to the far-right wing in this country (or as it is more commonly called these days, the Republican Party), but Jesus was a car-carrying socialist. Or, he would have been, if cards had been invented, and if pockets to carry the card had been around and if the word socialism had made it into the language in the first century.
I have no doubt about it.”
I have doubts about what Riley understands about Jesus, government and freedom. That there will be a slew of cancelled subscriptions to The Press as a result of Riley’s column, I have no doubt.
The first thing that struck me about Riley’s column is that he is talking about Jesus in the past tense. Even a Jesuit trained lapsed Catholic like me believes in a Living God. Why is this Baptist minister telling The Press’s remaining readers that Jesus is dead? Didn’t we just celebrate His resurrection two weeks ago?
Riley paraphrases the Gospel of Luke and Karl Marx to make his case.
“One thing you lack,” Riley quotes Luke quoting Jesus talking to the rich, “go and sell all you possess and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”
“But Jesus was a conservative compared to those who followed him,” Riley continues in the past tense again, “In the book of Acts, we read, ‘All the believers were together and had everything in common, They sold property and possession to give to anyone who had need.’
No one claimed that any of their possession were their own; they shared everything they had.
That is right out of the Marxist playbook: ‘from each according to his ability to each according to his need.’ And woe to anyone who tried to wiggle out of the deal.”
Without getting all theological and politically scientific on Michael, the Nudnik of Neptune, let me just point out two key words from his paraphrase of Luke paraphrasing Jesus that hopefully will set him straight:
Sell and Give. Both involve a concept that is fundamental to Christianity and foreign to Marxism: Choice.
Never mind that Christians believe that God created Man (and Woman) and that Marxists believe than Man created God. Let’s look at selling and giving.
In order for Jesus’s followers to sell all of their possessions, they first had to have them. Hmmm, how would that happen in a Marxist socialist society?
In order for the rich to give to the poor, someone would have to buy those possessions. More than likely someone else who was rich.
While Riley starts his column with no doubt that the dead Jesus was a socialist, he seems to have some doubt as he concludes:
Obviously, human sin makes this kind of socialistic/communist economic system unworkable over the long haul and in large groups. But capitalism is a sinner’s banquet as well, full of abuse and greed and loopholes that turn into nooses for the poor.
The point here is that socialism is not necessarily a dirty word. It seems to be sort of what God was hoping for as a model for his people. So let’s not get all high and mighty about using it as an epithet.
How about we do get high and mighty about Liberty, Choice, Charity and Responsibility.
How about the preachers and ministers do their jobs and spread The Word and convert the sinners so that capitalism, the only system that has ever worked and creates genuine sharing and empowerment as opposed to the compelled sharing and mediocrity of Marxism, can work better for the rich and the poor.
Riley’s heart might be in the right place, but his head is a dark place.
Karin McQuillan, a retired psychotherapist and author who served in the Peace Corps in Senegal, writes at American Thinker that Hillary Rosen’s recent rant that Ann Romey never worked a day he her life is part of the Obama political strategy rooted in the politics of envy. Worse, she says the strategy is deeply rooted in Obama’s psyche as a result of his upbringing.
Closer to home, our friends at InTheLobby have a hilarious account of how Port Authority Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni turned the table on U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg during the senator’s hearing this week over the fairness of toll increases and patronage at PA.
Turns out that Lautenberg as a former commissioner of the PA he had a free EZ pass for decades and didn’t pay tolls from 1978 through 2006 when the PA stopped issuing free EZ passes to cronies.
Regarding patronage, a former Lautenberg campaign staffer joined PA in 2002, and U.S. Senator Bob Menendez’s son is an intern at PA now.
West Virginia U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller came to Lautenberg’s defense. New Jersey Democrats have been silent, just as they were during Lautenberg’s dust up with State Senate President Steve Sweeney and George Norcross over the Rutgers-Rowan merger earlier this month.
“I’ve never seen a less optimistic time, in my lifetime, in this courtry. And people wonder why. I think it’s really simple. It’s because government’s telling them stop dreaming, stop striving, we’ll take care of you. We are turning into a paternalistic entitlement society…”
“….more importantly, there will be more money, more hope, more aspirations, in the hearts of our children and grandchildren than there are today. And that’s what will make the 21st century the second American century. That more than anything else, will allow the United States to export hope, and liberty and freedom around the world. Not by just saying but by living it everyday in the way we conduct ourselves and in the way we govern ourselves.”
~Governor Chris Christie
Chris Christie believes that unrestrained by oppressive and “paternalistic” government, that ordinary people can and will live lives of accomplishment.
Tom Moran, that sanctimonious polyhistor responsible for The Star Ledger’s editorial page, thinks that makes Christie conceded.
The Asbury Park Press editorial board, the Nudniks of Neptune who have fewer orginal thoughts that Joe Biden, agrees with Moran.
Christie made his remarks at a George W. Bush Presidential Center gathering in New York on Tuesday, April 10. Moran posted his rant calling the governor’s message “condescending” early yesterday morning, the 12th. The Nudniks followed yesterday evening calling Christie’s message “hectoring,” “insulting” and “condescending.”
The editorialists of New Jersey’s two largest news outlets must be appalled by Christie’s soaring popularity.
It was the content of Christie’s remarks in between the two phrases I quoted above that got to the liberal regressive pundits. Without naming the president, Christie had the audacity to point out that the Obama agenda has not resulted in hope, but in pessimism. That if it continues we will be financially and morally bankrupt, waiting for the check to show up rather than striving for bigger checks.
Here’s what Christie said, unfiltered by the bias of Moran, the Nudniks or MMM:
The big story in yesterday’s Asbury Park Press was the political spat between southern Jersey lawmakers and U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg over the proposed Rutgers-Rowan merger. Large photos of State Senate President Sweeney and Lautenberg covered most of the front page.
In case you haven’t been following, Governor Chris Christie has proposed reorganizing Rutgers, Rowan and the University of Medicine and Dentistry. Rutgers-Camden would become part of Rowan. Rowan would get a medical school associated with George Norcross Univeristy Cooper University Hospital. Robert Wood Johnson Hospital would become part of a medical school at Rutgers-New Brunswick, and it will be a while before there are more UMDNJ indictments.
MMM hasn’t been following it all that much. Our young legal eagle friends at Save Jersey don’t like it because they think it will devalue their law degrees if they apply to a firm that doesn’t know the difference between Rutgers-Camden and Rutgers-Newark. And then there’s the two idiots who don’t like the deal…that former Navy SEAL that ran for Assembly who got into it with Christie at a Town Hall meeting and Lautenberg.
If not for the idiot SEAL and the idiot U. S. Senator nobody from New Jersey who isn’t directly affected by the merger would know about it, except for news junkies like us.
Lautenberg wrote to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan alleging the proposed merger is improper and copied U.S. Attorney General Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder and New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney Paul “New Jersey is not corrupt” Fishman, thereby implying that the merger is criminal.
Having already used “idiot” and “numb-nuts” with great fanfare, Christie’s team dubbed Lautenberg’s letter as “outrageous,” “uninformed,” and “bizarre.”
None of that was front page newsworthy. It took Norcross and Sweeney launching Sweeney’s 2014 campaign for Launtenberg’s job to make the front page of the APP.
Wednesday morning Sweeney emailed a scathing open letter attacking Lautenberg for opposing the merger and for his failure as a U.S. Senator to bring home Washington money for New Jersey’s higher education institutions. Several other south Jersey lawmakers, including two Republicans, signed with letter with Sweeney. Norcross later sent a statement calling Lautenberg a “great Senator for north Jersey” who has failed southern New Jersey to the same email list.
The Sweeney/Norcross statements are not really about the Rutger-Rowan merger. The real message is that Lautenberg’s career is coming to an end. That message has been confirmed by the silence of Democratic leaders who have staid out of this fight. U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, Assembly Speaker Sheilia Oliver, Democratic State Chairman John Wisniewski, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker have all been silent. No one is backing up Lautenberg.
The message to Lautenberg…prepare for retirement… just don’t quit and let Christie appoint your replacement. The message to Democratic donors…don’t give to Lautenberg’s 2014 reelection campaign.
So, the point of the last 460 words is that The Asbury Park Press made the 2014 race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate front page news yesterday. That wouldn’t be so bad if there were not a U.S. Senate election between two relatively unknown candidates, U.S. Senator Bob Mendendez and State Senator Joe Kyrillos this year.
The Asbury Park Press editorial board is doing such a good job covering Monmouth and Ocean Counties that they’ve decided to expand their coverage north to Essex County.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker had a sit down with the APP editorial board yesterday. It was a nice interview judging from the write-up; Booker agrees with Governor Christie’s proposed public education reforms. He disagrees with Christie’s restructuring of higher education. He differs with Christie on gay marriage and diet. He thinks the Governor is a good guy. As is usually the case, no news was broken by The Asbury Park Press.
Gannett’s Middlesex/Somerset publication ran the same article and included a video on MyCentralJersey.com
This from Central Jersey’s supposed major news source that didn’t know that a new Monmouth County freeholder was elected in January until they read about it here and on Patch.com.
Monmouth County had 53 mayors. Ocean County has 33. Has the editorial board ever sat down with one of them?
Gannett is apparently surrendering the local news market to the Patches. Maybe as they change their business model they plan to merge all of the New Jersey publications and and put out a statewide edition of USA Today. To bad for them that NJTV already took the name NJ Today.
It’s been a day since Gannett announced that they are going to start charging to read the news on their websites, including app.com, the site of The Asbury Park Press.
APP has yet to report that news. Maybe they didn’t get the memo.
Gannett, publisher of The Asbury Park Press and 79 other community newspapers throughout the country, announced today that they will emulate The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal by charging their readers to access their websites, according to multiple news outlets, not includingThe Asbury Park Press.
Readers will be able to read between five and fifteen articles each month before being charged, according to Forbeswho covered the investors conference where Gannett announced the news.
The company also announced that they will shed $1.3 billion in cash, distributing it to shareholders through dividends and a $300 million stock buy back.
As reported here at MMM last November, Monmouth County Democratic Chairman Vic Scudiery, 78, is not seeking another term.
Scudiery formalized is retirement last week in a letter to the Democratic County Committee.
Congressman Frank Pallone today expressed his regrets that Scudiery is retiring, telling The Asbury Park Press that “I think Vic was going a good job.”
Pallone joined Jon Corzine in asking Scudiery to resign the chairmanship in 2006. Scudiery refused and was reelected twice since.
This morning The Asbury Park Press argues in an editorial that public labor contracts should be posted online. They argued that municipalites that don’t have websites that can handle such postings should post them on the Department of Community Affairs’ site.
We agree. While we’re at it, why not public notices that municipalities, school boards and private sector zoning and planning applicants now pay millions per year to advertise in newspapers where very few people see them?
During the last legislative session a bi-partisan bill that would have given jurisdictions the option of advertising legal notices in newspapers or online was passed in committee and scheduled for a vote in both houses of the legislature on the last day of the session. It met fierce resistance from the newspaper industry in committee and before that scheduled vote.
The corporate welfare recipients of the newspaper industry argued that politicians would use the choice to punish newspapers who didn’t give them favorable coverage, and that the savings wasn’t that much, if anything. In their final push to kill the bill, which worked, they argued that some towns don’t have websites that could handle the ads.
The legislature’s Democratic leadership, Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Shelia Oliver, killed the bill by not letting their chambers vote on it.
Well, thanks to the good nudniks of Neptune, The Asbury Presseditorial board, we now have a solution to the problem of a small number of towns not having websites that can handle posting legal notices. Notice publication could be a shared service hosting by the Department of Community Affairs or by the counties.
Sweeney has already announced that the legal notice bill will not be a priority in the legislative session that just started, signaling to the reformers that support they bill that they shouldn’t bother. Now that The Asbury Park Press has come up with a solution to the newspaper industry’s latest objection, maybe Sweeney will reconsider.
Live Action Video released a tape of a Perth Amboy Planned Parenthood office manager coaching an actor posing as a pimp how to “beat the system” set up to protect underage sex trafficking victims. Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog, called the video a hoax and defended Planned Parenthood for alerting the FBI about a potential multistate sex trafficking ring. Amy Woodruff, the Planned Parenthood office manager, was fired. Frank Pallone was silent on the matter. The Asbury Park Press issued an inaccurate editorial defending Planned Parenthood.
The U.S. Census Bureau released the results of the 2010 census. New Jersey lost a congressional district. Hispanics became the state’s largest minority group. New Jersey’s population shifted from the north to the southern and central regions of the state.
New Jersey’s newpaper industry appealed to Trenton Democrats to maintain their corporate welfare in the form of “legal advertising.”
By-laws, and the lack thereof, for the Monmouth GOP became a hot topic for a week or two.
Red Bank Councilman Ed Zipprich likened Congressman Chris Smith and American Catholics opposed to abortion to the Arizona shooter.
Freeholder Deputy Director John Curley called for a public review of Brookdale Community College’s budget and spending after learning of expensive country club memberships and a housing allowance for college President Dr. Peter Burnham. Burnham had drafted a budget that called for a 8.2% tuition increase and blamed the need for the increase on the Freeholder Board reducing the county subsidy for the college.
The Republican Association of Princeton was reconstituted as The Lincoln Club of New Jersey under the leadership of Scott Sipprelle.
Manalapan Mayor Andrew Lucas, Wall Committeeman George Newberry and Spring Lake Councilman Gary Rich launched their campaigns for the GOP nomination for Freeholder.
