FUSION OF CHURCH AND STATE

   From Worldometer:

        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9     1093    4732        1185       246          82

July    22     1205    7128        1293      1120         572

Aug    12     1504     6556       1242       835         130

Sept     3      1094    5886        830     1083         174
            9      1208    6222        1136      1168          82

Oct      8        957    6420         730       967        160

          12       316     3757           203       710          83

          13       843     5006           354      723       165

          14       970     6075           716       694       123

          19       442     4392           321       594         21

          20       952     6169           662       714       164

          21     1225     6849            571       703         85

          22       973     6470           503       683       102

          23       903     6526          566       656        48 

          24       784     5599          398       575         53

          25       442     4629          237       463         24

          26       529     5095          288       505        40

Summary:  If tomorrow this decline holds, maybe this next wave we're in will not be as bad as feared.

As expected, Amy Barrett was confirmed and sworn-in as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.  By coincidence I was reading the latest issue of FREE INQUIRY, where the editorial and first two articles reported on the separation of church and state issue.  While all the commotion during her hearings was about what her presence will do for the future of Obamacare and Rosie vs Wade on abortion-rights, very little was discussed about religion.

She is a member of a cult-like Catholic faith called People of Praise:

• Headed by an all-male board of governors.
• Only established in South Bend (she got her law degree from Notre Dame, and her family since the beginning has been with this church) in 1971.
• They share financially, materially and spiritually.
• She was a trustee for a private Catholic school that adhered to scripture and Christian tradition.  But so do all Catholic institutions.
• Marriage is between a man and a woman.
• Sex outside of marriage, straight or gay, is not in keeping with "God's plan for human sexuality."

With that backdrop, here are the views of FREE INQUIRY.  A particularly key point is that this magazine went into publication before they knew about Amy Barrett becoming the 6-3 decisive factor for conservatives.  The contents were already appalled about the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision made on 30 June 2020 in the case of Espinoza vs Montana Department of Revenue, now forcing the American taxpayer to pay for religious indoctrination.  I can imagine the consternation now.  The October/November issue should be a hoot.

Here is the background presented by Robyn Blumner, CEO and President of FREE INQUIRY:

• First, she went into the story of how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2015 and 2016 obstructed over 100 federal judges to be confirmed on the nomination of President Obama.  This allowed President Trump to now appoint 193 such judges, plus, of course, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett to the Supreme Court.  THEY ARE ALL LIFETIME POSITIONS.  There are 179 on the various courts of appeals and 673 in the district courts.

• 
  The courts are where the culture wars are fought.  The Christian Right, with 3,400 allied attorneys, has spent $50 million/year for decades now supporting the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).  Funds are donated from Christian Right supporters like the DeVos Foundation, from Amway success.  Betsy DeVos, Trump's Secretary of Education is from this family. 

• 
  ADF believes:
• Life begins at conception.
• God designed marriage for one man and one woman for life.  They somehow ignore polygamists Abraham, Jacob and Solomon.
• God creates each person with an immutable biological sex--male or female.
• The expectation is a TSUNAMI of upcoming legislation to link church/state matters, prevent abortion, eliminate LGBTQ rights and enhance the economic position of churches in areas such as taxes, zoning and such.

The first article by Paul Fidalgo is titled:  New Supreme Court Ruling Decimates Church-State Separation.  The bottom line is that with the Espinoza vs Montana ruling, taxpayers must now also fund religious schools, where they have complete freedom from  influence by state and federal authorities.  Says Fidalgo, this ruling sets us on a dark theocratic path.

There is the beginning of an op-ed by Tom Flynn who goes further into that Supreme Court Ruling.  And, remember, Ruth Ginsberg was still active then.  To quote Flynn:

Let's be frank about what Espinoza represents:  It's a stunning triumph for the historical-revisionists view (much promoted by the religious Right) that government action should never in any way burden religion.

With November 3 just a week away, FREE INQUIRY also went into some detail about Women Suffrage at 100, with one point being that women could vote from 1920, except for African-American and Native Indian females.  It has a been long struggle to gain equal rights just to vote, and the nation is not quite there yet.

Game #6 of the World Series begins at 8PM EDT (2PM Hawaii).  Song #64 will come from two films popular when I was in college:

• Moon River:  Audrey Hepburn
• Tonight:  Leonard Bernstein

I loved the 1961 movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's, from the novella by Truman Capote.  The movie got five Academy Award nominations, and the song won the Oscar.  Rotten Tomatoes rated it 88/91.  Minor aside, but Mel Blanc, the voice of Donald Duck and Porky Pig, played one of Holly Golightly's (Audrey Hepburn) date.

Blake Edwards directed the flick, while Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer wrote the song.  While the Hepburn version was never marketed, the instrumental by Henry Mancini got the most plays.

While I much rather favor Moon River (in this version, sang by Monica Mancini, daughter of). I nevertheless select Tonight as #64.  That was from the original cast recording of West Side Story (this is the full one hour album) featuring Carol Lawrence and Larry Kent, with the song composed by Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins, who also directed and choreographed the show.

Rotten Tomatoes gave West Side Story 92/84 ratings.  Tonight from the film sung by Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood (voice of Marni Nixon).  Somewhere from the play also was close to being #64.  The movie won ten academy awards.  Interestingly enough, Moon River won an Oscar in 1962 and none of songs from WST were even nominated.

I guess the reason why these songs were the most memorable had to do with an outing.  In my senior year at Stanford I was dating a girl who arranged for the car, dinner reservation and theater premiere seats in San Francisco for the movie, and paid for it all.

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Hurricane Zeta was weakened while over the Yucatan Peninsula and became a tropical storm.  However, it should re-strengthen into a hurricane and make landfall somewhere over Louisiana tomorrow:

In the South China Sea, Category 3 Typhoon Molave will make landfall just south of Danang.

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