18 states report drop in unemployment

STATE UNEMPLOYMENT LEVELS OUT: (click title to entry - thank you) Unemployment fell in 18 states and Washington, D.C. in July, while it increased in 14 states and stayed the same in 18, the government said Friday. That's a slowdown from the previous three months, when more than 30 states reported drops.

BRIGHT SPOTS: Massachusetts and New York both reported strong job growth. Massachusetts added 19,200 private sector jobs, the largest monthly gain in 20 years.
WARNING SIGNS: Manufacturers added jobs in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. But economists warned that it might not last unless consumers ramp up their spending.

Franklin Graham is an ignorant man. Forgive him, he knows now what he does. He ain't his father, that's for sure.

\.                                                                  .The Rev. Franklin Graham ( click titel to entry if you want to - it isn't a very enlightened view. Words of a bigot if you ask me, but, no one is asking me.) waded into the discussion with his own controversial explanation of why people wrongly believe the president is a Muslim. Graham, who prayed with Obama in a session with his father, Billy Graham, earlier this year, was asked whether he has any doubts about Obama's self-avowed Christian faith.

"I think the president's problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim....

Graham is dead "W”rong ! Barak Obama's father for the time he was alive and with his son was an atheist. He dismissed Muslim as a faith he abided by in his life. President Obama's mother was a Christian all her life. A non-practicing Christian, but, she raised the President and home schooled him as well as sent him to public schools. She was proud of his American heritage and insisted he maintain it from a young age.

Unfortunately, the President's father was mostly obscure to him. His mother was a 'woman of her time.' She believed in 'knowing and understanding' multiple faiths. She felt a knowledge of religion was important to a well rounded view of the world. I am sure that dedication to DIVERSITY has served the President well.

There are many marriages where each member of the couple has their own affiliation within their marriage. It is not uncommon for a Christian to marry a Hebrew. It is also not uncommon for the children of those marriages to be exposed to both religions as they grow up.

Recently, we witnessed a bi-religious marriage where Chelsea Clinton married a man that actively practices the Hebrew faith.

It is also not unusual for the children of such marriages to become adults and decide which religion is the center of their life.

That is what occurred for Barak Obama when he became an adult. He knew many religions and decided to be baptized in the Trinity United Church of Christ.

The issue here is not about the Muslim faith and whether or not the President rejected it to practice Christianity, it is the bigotry of the Southern Baptist convention and its willingness to advocate hate of other faiths, including other practices of Protestant religions. They reject every other form of religion and 'in that' reject any civilized approach to diversity.

The problem here as I see it, is about the demands of Evangelical Christians to dominate government policy over and above any other faith including Catholicism or the absence of faith. Franklin Graham needs to apologize to a nation insulted by his limited view of the world. He is allowed to practice that limited view, however, he is not allowed to espouse hate as a result of it. In other words, we all outside his view of the world HAVE TO tolerate him, but, he does not have to tolerate us. That is a definition of a bigot.

This isn't the first time religion has been 'an issue' in the USA, but, last the time the issue actually surrounded an election.

Then Seantor John F. Kennedy was a Catholic and the opposition to his candidacy believed the Pope would run the country and not the President. 

It can be said, under George W. Bush, the Pope did.

...While the so-called religious issue is necessarily (click title to entry - thank you) and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that I believe that we have far more critical issues in the 1960 campaign; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers only 90 miles from the coast of Florida -- the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power -- the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctors bills, the families forced to give up their farms -- an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space. These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues -- for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barrier.
But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured -- perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again -- not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me -- but what kind of America I believe in....