Tone deaf climate change Canadian bishops

An article in the BC Tyee once again points out the ‘do nothing on social justice” bishops named by John Paul ll.
Writer Ian Gill, presumably a Catholic looked for signs in Vancouver of any Catholic insitutional action on history’s major moral issue, climate change.

Don’t bet on it, brother Gill, These guys have shown themselves tone deaf on anything north of the pelvic area.Weird coming from celibates. none of these JP bishops have forged a pastoral plan to deal with the issue.Sad,indeed.

Gill writes:

Here in Vancouver, birthplace not of Christ, but anyway Greenpeace, I have searched for signs that Rome’s encyclical on the environment hasn’t accidentally been tossed in the recyclical here in our self-styled Greenest City on Earth. The signs are not promising.

“The Gospel is meant to be lived on its feet — taken places,” offered Fr. Eugenio Aloisio at a recent Sunday mass in East Vancouver’s Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, which seemed like a logical place to listen out for a local interpretation of Laudato Si’, the encyclical otherwise known as Praise Be: On Care for Our Common Home.

After all, the Pope took his name from the divine champion of the natural world, Saint Francis, although judging by the homilies emanating from the eponymous church on Napier Street, East Van is a long way from Assisi. Our pastor has offered little more than a passing reference to the encyclical, and no exhortations to parishioners to change their ways. The Gospel, at least that part of it that relates to climate change, has clay feet (Daniel 2; 31-33) in my neighbourhood.

Trickle-down ecology

Up at the devoutly LEED Gold certified offices of the Archdiocese of Vancouver at West 33rd and Willow, the B.C. Catholic newspaper put a link to Laudato Si’ on its website and has reprinted some news and commentary from elsewhere, but if our archdiocese’s half-million faithful are going to be stirred into action, it won’t be from anything they’ve read so far in B.C. Catholic.
So if it is going to take perhaps months, maybe years, for the climate change encyclical to trickle down to actions in the Archdiocese of Vancouver, or anywhere else for that matter, here is something Canadian Catholics can do right now and act upon in just a few short weeks: take a vow to not vote for the Tories — and then don’t. No self-respecting and God-fearing Canadian Catholic, not a single one of them, should vote for Harper. Nor should any of them run for his party. Nor should any of them work for his party.
Why? Because Harper’s brand of economic and social evangelism directly contradicts virtually everything the Catholic Church now claims to stand for.

Reporting in The New York Times when the encyclical came out last month, Justin Gillis wrote: “Polls suggest that evangelicals are the American religious group least likely to believe that global warming is real or caused by humans.” On the evidence of Harper’s profane and unsacred term in office, Catholics should be the first to cast him out. And since, as Douglas Todd of the Vancouver Sun reported around the time of the last federal election, about half of Canada’s Catholics voted Conservative back then, that would be a lot of casting out by a lot of Tory faithful.

That alone would probably condemn Harper to electoral oblivion, but don’t count on it. One by-product of the encyclical has been the predictable backlash by industrialists and right-wing politicians who claim, as summarized by Gillis in the Times, that “the Pope should stick to religion and stop meddling in matters in which he has no competence.” Or as David Brooks opined in the Times in a singularly tone deaf column, “The innocence of the dove has to be accompanied by the wisdom of the serpent — the awareness that programs based on the purity of the heart backfire.”

No Jews or Arabs

Unknown In the Chicago Roman Catholic diocese in 2010, 50 priests published a letter in the local diocesan paper advising Catholics not to rent to Jews. Shocking, really unbelievable these days so I am glad it never happened. But it did happen in Israel where serious theological reflection id at a scarcity in some Orthodox communities.

This is but one of the stories Haneen Zoabi told in April at New York University, traditionally a serious Jewish centre of scholarship. The brave Palestinian Arab who sits in Israel’s Knesset spoke powerful truths to an overflowing crowd, almost all of whom are fed a diet of pap and obfuscation by different American media outlets. her performance was deszcribed as 
“staggering.”

Ms Zoabi from Nazareth was elected in 2009 the same year right-wing MKs physically assaulted her and tried to strip her of her parliamentary rights in retaliation for her being aboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara en route to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid and that bastion of democracy The Central Elections Committee tried and failed to disqualify her from running in two subsequent elections.

In a wide ranging speech Zoabi took her audience through some basic history about the lack of democracy in Israel for 1.5 million Palestinians who were not expelled in 1948 The Nakba law criminalizing public commemoration of the loss of Palestine is but one of more than 50 laws that “discriminate against us in every field of life.” she said. According to the citizenship law, any immigrant can become a citizen of Israel except a Palestinian—if Jewish, instantly, if Christian, gradually. But if an Israeli Palestinian marries a Palestinian from elsewhere, the spouse cannot live in Israel. By law, Palestinians are not allowed to study their own history.

By law, Jewish residents of 700 communities, which together control 60 percent of the land in Israel, can reject Palestinians for lack of social compatibility. “What is this if not apartheid?” Zoabi asked, wishing American politicians were more aware of these discriminatory laws. Sixty-four percent of Palestinian children live below the poverty line and only 2 percent of Palestinians are employed in the private sector. There are no Palestinian banks, insurance companies or universities, not even licenses to raise poultry. Israeli Palestinians live on only 3 percent of the land because they are denied permits to use even land they still own. Palestinians are not allowed to develop their own economy or to be equally involved in the Israeli economy.

And finally this shocker In 2010, 50 rabbis published a letter saying “do not rent to Arabs,” which elicited little debate. “Close your eyes and imagine,” Zoabi urged, “if 50 priests urged people not to rent to Jews.

Indeed

Philip Weiss on his blog Mondoweiss wrote:

Zoabi spoke– a woman of small stature but majestic spirit and political intelligence, exercising complete control over the crowd, even over her opponents holding the Israeli flag at the back of the room and over Theodore the student from Stuyvesant High School in the third row who rose to challenge her — I kept wondering why the New York Times has not run a huge profile of this woman, why my president and congresspeople are not meeting her, why she does not have the status that she ought to have in our discourse as a global justice figure, along the lines of a Havel, a Walesa, a Martin Luther King, a John Lewis, an Aung San Suu Kyi. And the answer of course is, Because she is Palestinian. Why have you not heard of her?

No Jews allowed–or is that Arabs?

In the Chicago Roman Catholic diocese in 2010, 50 priests published a letter in the local diocesan paper advising Catholics not to rent to Jews. Shocking, really unbelievable these days so I am glad it never happened. But it did happen in Israel where serious theological reflection id at a scarcity in some Orthodox communities.

This is but one of the stories Haneen Zoabi told in April at New York University, traditionally a serious Jewish centre of scholarship. The brave Palestinian Arab who sits in Israel’s Knesset spoke powerful truths to an overflowing crowd, almost all of whom are fed a diet of pap and obfuscation by different American media outlets. her performance was deszcribed as 
“staggering.”

Ms Zoabi from Nazareth was elected in 2009 the same year right-wing MKs physically assaulted her and tried to strip her of her parliamentary rights in retaliation for her being aboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara en route to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid and that bastion of democracy The Central Elections Committee tried and failed to disqualify her from running in two subsequent elections.

In a wide ranging speech Zoabi took her audience through some basic history about the lack of democracy in Israel for 1.5 million Palestinians who were not expelled in 1948 The Nakba law criminalizing public commemoration of the loss of Palestine is but one of more than 50 laws that “discriminate against us in every field of life.” she said. According to the citizenship law, any immigrant can become a citizen of Israel except a Palestinian—if Jewish, instantly, if Christian, gradually. But if an Israeli Palestinian marries a Palestinian from elsewhere, the spouse cannot live in Israel. By law, Palestinians are not allowed to study their own history.

By law, Jewish residents of 700 communities, which together control 60 percent of the land in Israel, can reject Palestinians for lack of social compatibility. “What is this if not apartheid?” Zoabi asked, wishing American politicians were more aware of these discriminatory laws. Sixty-four percent of Palestinian children live below the poverty line and only 2 percent of Palestinians are employed in the private sector. There are no Palestinian banks, insurance companies or universities, not even licenses to raise poultry. Israeli Palestinians live on only 3 percent of the land because they are denied permits to use even land they still own. Palestinians are not allowed to develop their own economy or to be equally involved in the Israeli economy.

And finally this shocker In 2010, 50 rabbis published a letter saying “do not rent to Arabs,” which elicited little debate. “Close your eyes and imagine,” Zoabi urged, “if 50 priests urged people not to rent to Jews.

Indeed

Philip Weiss on his blog Mondoweiss wrote: Zoabi spoke– a woman of small stature but majestic spirit and political intelligence, exercising complete control over the crowd, even over her opponents holding the Israeli flag at the back of the room and over Theodore the student from Stuyvesant High School in the third row who rose to challenge her — I kept wondering why the New York Times has not run a huge profile of this woman, why my president and congresspeople are not meeting her, why she does not have the status that she ought to have in our discourse as a global justice figure, along the lines of a Havel, a Walesa, a Martin Luther King, a John Lewis, an Aung San Suu Kyi. And the answer of course is, Because she is Palestinian. Why have you not heard of her?

The prophet

Jimbo was a good priest

He was a very good pastor who just retired. Jimbo was a Vatican ll guy who lived the vision. In the end he outlived the reactionary papacies of Woytyla and Razinger, the failed attempt to return to the status quo ante of clerical control and top down management. He really believed in the sensus fidelium, that the Spirit was not the province of celibate leaders but really belonged to the people of God. And oh yes, baptism was the central sacrament not Holy Orders.

Years ago his parish was flooded with evacuees from one of those sad right wing orders which proliferated under the previous two papacies. He did what he could under the harsh regimes of bishops imposed by Rome. In every parish he raised up the lay voice to leadership positions and he then retired with much respect and his dignity intact. He was enthused by the new Francis pontificate.

He told me about his sadness at seeing so many young people leaving the church, at looking out and seeing only the grey heads at mass. He wanted to dedicate his remaining years to alleviate this sad scene.

In many ways Jimbo was constrained by the lack of freedom he had as an official rep of an authoritarian church which seemed fixated on the pelvic issues. Lay people had a much greater freedom to speak. He knew that every parish had the Catholic thought police which would report every putative deviation from what is seen as “orthodoxy’.
Jimbo did not feel free (nor did many other clerics) to really say what was on his mind. He knew he would be derricked by the ecclesial politburo who got where they were by swearing fealty to the Polish pope that they would never ever deny the birth control encyclical or mention horribile dictu the ordination of married men or women. He would be out on his ass with no pension. Many priest friends told me this. What do you do ahen you are 55 and out of a job? While it was true the ratio for celibacy was that it gave you more freedom to speak truth to power because you had no family, that was only partially true. In the top down military command centre, you obeyed or took a hike.
I told Jimbo it was obvious to me why youth had deserted the institute—and the synagogue as well. Young people are really idealists at heart. They want to be engaged in history and their parishes never were. My former students all told me the same thing. They left our school on fire for the call of the kingdom and when they had kids of their own and went into parishes there simply was no engagement or it was one issue abortion and that was it.
The priests never twigged that having male clerics telling women what to do with their bodies was a very bad optic. And that celibates should be the last to lecture married people and women who have few rights in the Catholic church
The most recent example of this is the radical failure of the Catholic church to confront the climate change issue. Maybe 1 or 2 parishes in Toronto have their young people engaged here but most are doing nothing—or maybe greenwashing a bit. Jim Wallis of Sojourners said this

Ultimately, as followers of Christ, climate change is about our faith, our theology, our moral identity, and our calling as God’s children.Climate change is not another issue to move higher up the list of our concerns. Rather it is the concern central to all other issues.”

Wallis also said that you have to ask yourself about any parish meeting, is this connected to a movement outside the church? If not you are wasting your time.Pious navel gazing, a church outside of history, no cross, no crown.The old Catholic truism, if we are not leading the parade we are not in it. What do I have to learn from Suzuki, Friends of the Earth or the Sierra Club. Every Catholic parish should be linked to one of these organizations.

So the young go where the action is, where there is life and this sadly is decidedly not in Catholic parishes.

It was once—when Youth Corps thrived but the bishop canned that, too much lay control.

I do not know how Jimbo can change this. Pope Francis is sending radical signals but the gatekeepers in major dioceses are the JP ll dogmatists who have never shown any interest in justice of any kind.

Sheep without a shepherd, Jesus said as he looked at the turgid leadership of his time so he as a layman started the kingdom rolling.

That’s where the action is.

Conservative MP compares Stephen Harper government to Jesus,

Wai Young, the Conservative MP for Vancouver South, apparently told the congregation at Harvest City Church that the Harper government’s pushing through of controversial antiterrorism bill C-51 resembles the work of Jesus Christ, who Christians believe was the son of God.

“Jesus served, he saved, but he acted, as well,” Young said in a speech, according to Press Progress.

Proving Canadians have not lost their sense of humour,the following tweets arrived

Blessed are they who persecute for the sake of the party for theirs is a seat in the Senate.

And #CPCJesus said “debate not with Mulcair or Trudeau nor dignify their questions with answers for they are false prophets”

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged by the PMO and Peter Mackay.”
-Matthew 7:1-2

Then shalt thou present 3 IDs for voting, no more, no less. 3 shall be the number of IDs, and the number of the IDs shall be 3.”
Blessed by the political party donors, for their donation shall return to them a thousand fold in tax breaks
Let he who is without sin cast the first ballot. All others shall require 2 pieces of ID.

“Blessed are the 1%, for theirs is the Kingdom of Ottawa.”

Watch me turn water into tarsands tailings

God saw the light, and saw that it was good – so he cancelled its funding

The bully state : An ongoing story of injustice

40 residents of Susya face deportation:

This from the beautiful Rabbis for Human Rights in israel

• The Palestinian village of Susya in the West Bank is an ancient historic village. Its residents lived in ancient caves for decades before the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.It is s under imminent threat of demolition and expulsion by the Israeli military.  30 years ago the IDF evicted the village residents in favor of an archaeological site and expropriated their land.  The expropriation was illegal and not really needed.

• The residents moved to their private land where they survived for 30 years without infrastructure for electricity and water.

• In 2001,  the army destroyed the caves at the present site and tried to evict the residents. The High Court of Justice ordered the army to stop the eviction. After the caves were destroyed, not having a roof over their heads, the residents were forced to erect tents and sheds to survive.

• The unauthorized construction in Palestinian Susya is neither criminal nor “an attempt to seize land.” It is being done on private land out of lack of choice.

• All of the residents’ attempts over the years to obtain building permits were rejected by the army. Neither appeals nor requests for clemency helped.

• The only solution is to legalize planning for the village. The residents raised large amounts of money, hired experts and submitted outline plans to the army. The plans were rejected on the basis of discriminatory reasons and unequal criteria.

• The State raised no security arguments nor did it argue against the petitioners’ ownership of their land. The only basis for erasing the village is supposedly planning claims but in fact it is a political decision.

• Now the State wishes to destroy the 100 flimsy structures and sheds the evicted residents built on their private farming land after their caves were destroyed, and to throw the residents into the desert.

. A recent High Court petition, submitted by the village council Dirat, Rabbis for Human Rights, Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Society, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, and St. Yves – Catholic Human Rights Center, demands  planning authority be returned to Palestinian villages for their own communities in order to prevent the tragic demolitions of hundreds of homes every year due to the impossibility of obtaining building permits.

Dear Prime Minister:

I have been to Susya and seen the dire poverty
and the disgusting settler attacks, the killing of  sheep,
the damage to olive trees, the destruction of bee hives
and worst of all, the  settler protection of  the Israeli army.

Many delegations from around the world have come  to this
small  farming village  to see for ourselves.

I am requesting  you to plead for a cease and desist order
to the demolition and destruction of this and other
Palestinian villages whose destruction is imminent.

No child should have to live with this.

Canada should be protesting these violations
of UN conventions and the disregard for
international law.

Ted Schmidt

Gaza one year later

Shahd Abusalama writes from Istanbul a year after the slaughter in Gaza…and just after the pathetic Hilary Clinton’s groveling in front of her huge Jewish donor Haim Saban.When will the Americans see Gazans as human beings abd living under a brutal occupation? People like Clinton are held hostage to wealth and power. Justice is a mere afterthought on their way to the White House.
I can almost hear my dad’s voice breaking in tears and echoing in my ears when I called him on 13 August 2014 following the murder of our neighbor Hazem Abu Murad.

Hazem grew up next door to our home and was like a son to my Dad and his best companion whenever he sat at the front door of our home. Along with five others, Hazem was killed while trying to diffuse an unexploded 500 kilogram Israeli missile in Beit Lahya.

I can still recall the unspeakable shock that my family suffered on the first day of Eid al-Fitr over the loss of my uncle Muhammed Abu Louz who was killed leaving behind a very young widow with a 2-year old son and 3-year-old daughter. The children were too young to comprehend what was going on around them. They were dressed in new clothes for Eid and constantly asking when their father would be back to give them candies and gifts.

I can almost hear my mum’s shaky voice on the phone saying whenever I called, “We’re okay, thank God. Don’t worry.” Continuous bombing rumbled in the background, almost every second. Sometimes, right after I heard the terrifying sounds of explosions, the call disconnected. That would drive me mad as dark thoughts about death, destruction and loss filled my mind. I would endlessly try to call back as panic overcame me.
Only when I heard their voices again could I calm down and breathe, or at least sigh as attempts to keep myself together failed. During those traumatic times, sleep was the last thing on my mind. If I slept, I dozed unintentionally on my computer or my sofa. But I woke from these accidental naps terrified, almost out of breath, thinking that anything could have happened while I slept. I would run to call my family, and could only relax once someone answered the phone. I would break into tears that were a mixture of conflicting emotions: fear, trauma and happiness. Their voices on the phone indicated they were still alive, or not dead yet.

These fears filled me for 51 days and nights, but intensified more as the war grew crazier, more brutal, then beyond brutal. My days and nights merged so I no longer kept track of time. It became meaningless. Food lost its taste. Even rest, though I was exhausted, became undesirable. I spent 51 days in isolation, sitting in front of my computer and phone, watching al-Mayadeen coverage, and at the same time listening to Palestinian radio channels like al-Quds, al-Aqsa and al-Shaab online.
Anger

To keep my sanity, I wrote on social media, sometimes filling my sketchbook with black and white, or marching through Istanbul’s streets with a group of Palestinians to express our anger. We chanted as loudly as we could for justice and holding Israel accountable for its crimes, for stopping the attack on Gaza and the bloodshed. Looking outside my window in Istanbul used to feel like a slap in the face as I saw typical, ordinary days, as if nothing was happening in Palestine and no one was dying almost every moment.

At times, I felt that even though I was privileged to study outside the Gaza ghetto, where the lives of everyone, regardless of age of gender, were threatened by the Zionist murder machine, it was harder to bear than the times I was there, experiencing attacks first hand. But I think that was because I had been there when death was everywhere and bombings surrounded us. I knew what it was like, and that was what made me go mad. We had survived many attacks, but that did not mean we would survive all of them.

The last Gaza massacre was beyond brutal. The Israeli occupation crossed all red lines with its immoral and inhumane measures. Neighborhoods were completely destroyed. Families were wiped out, with not even one member surviving to pass on the stories and ambitions of those who were murdered. But the international mainstream media had reduced this devastating cost that the Palestinian people endured into numbers in its headlines or even between the lines.

One year later

A year has passed since the ceasefire was declared. But Palestinians civilians died in front of the whole world as Western powers parroted their commitment to Israel’s “right to self-defense.” Meanwhile the death toll rose higher and higher. Self-defense against whom?

Numbers themselves tell the whole story clearly. More than 2,200 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed in Gaza, and more than 100,000 buildings were totally destroyed, while 73 Israelis, nearly all soldiers, died. This is an occupation against the occupied, not equal armies fighting in a “conflict.” Ours are a people calling for legitimate rights, rejecting brutal living conditions that resemble a slow death sentence under a suffocating siege, and resisting oppression that has lasted 67 years by a colonial power that treats them as less than human and continues to deny their most basic rights while attacking their very existence, identity, culture and history.

A year has passed and the piles of rubble remain as cruel reminders of all our people endured during the 51-day onslaught, its devastating aftermath and how little progress has been made since then. Reconstruction has barely begun. Thousands still live in makeshift shelters, leading a life of uncertainty and struggling daily for survival. I am sure every Palestinian, especially those from Gaza, is still traumatized. What we survived during the summer of 2014 will take a lifetime to heal. It will always remain like a scar on our psyche until justice for the victims who died is achieved, and the freedom for which we paid this huge price is gained, until Israel is held accountable, denormalized and treated for what it is in reality: a settler-colonial state.

But not only Israel is responsible for what our people have endured. It is a responsibility shared by the whole international community, who give Israel a green light to cross all red lines. Israel’s impunity is fortified by the silence of a world that not only watches silently, but is proactive in its unconditional support for Israel’s crimes. International solidarity with Palestine has to move beyond mere sentiment to serious political actions that fight the policies of governments who support Israel and all it does.

Do not allow your governments to continue their support of Israel in your name! Have your say! Boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) is a tactic that is growing all over the world and effectively threatening Israel. Empower it more wherever you are and help spread the voice of justice. And always remember that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Abbas recalls Palestinian ambassador to Chile over anti-Semitic remarks

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has recalled his ambassador to Chile, following anti-Semitic statements the envoy made at a convention held in Santiago.
Once again the hoary conspiracy The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had sprung into life and Abbas was justifiably furious.

After the Nakba,the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and in the early stages of Palestinian trauma, many lashed out at Israel and Jews in general for the catastrophe Palestinians had experienced. Radical Muslim groups in the Arab world (mainly in Egypt) promoted the scurrilous Protocols, a notorious forgery which was cobbled together in Russia to coincide with pogroms in the Ukraine and Russia. It was a despicable piece of antisemitism which over time reached the west and was widely used by antisemites convinced of a Jewish plot to rule the world. Henry Ford distributed far and wide.

In some iterations after the Russian Revolution “Bolsheviks” were substituted for Jews.It was exposed as fraudulent by a journalist in England in 1921.
We know that Hitler consistently referred to this from 1921 onwards. It then migrated to the Middle East and indeed other parts of the world. One can then understand why “Arabs in pain” would resort to such garbage.That it apparently still has a life is sad.
At the conference, Ambassador Jadaa said that “a group of intellectuals and financial advisers, mostly non-Jewish Europeans, decided to establish the Zionist movement with one aim: the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. However, the truth of the matter was that it was meant to facilitate Jewish plans to dominate the entire world.” Alas the Protocols were referenced. Jadaa’s words were published by the New York-based “Institute for the study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy.”
Undoubtedly Israel will use this anomaly as symptomatic of the sick Arab world.No surprise here.
Abbas quite correctly did the right thing.

The gall of George W. Bush

The worst president in living memory  George W. Bush now is under fire for charging $100,000 to speak to a group of veterans wounded in the brutal and stupid wars which he began.

The great “war time president” (remember Mission Accomplished) actually has the chutzpah to accept this blood money. The guy who said Jesus was his favourite philosopher.

It’s amazing that the vets didn’t all rise up and boo the bozo off the stage.

It is however gratifying that Bush is spending so much time helping these poor people

“I’ve decided to dedicate the rest of my life to helping our vets, to helping those with whom I was honored to serve, They face challenges really different from the battlefield. Some feel misunderstood or under-appreciated. To many desperately so.

Whatta guy.

Members of the Texas-based Helping a Hero charity told ABC News that Bush charged $100,000 for his 2012 speech at a charity fundraiser for veterans who lost limbs in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. he was also given use of a private jet at a cost of $20,000 and former First Lady Laura Bush was paid $50,000 to speak to the group last year.

Have these people no shame?

The group’s chairwoman told ABC News that Bush reduced his fees from $250,000 to $100,000. But Bush’s typical speaking fee was reported by Politico at being between $100,000 and $175,000.

Only in America.

The fees infuriated one of the board members, who told CNN Wednesday that Bush should not have accepted any money.
“The point here is that a leader should not charge to speak on behalf of the men that he sent into combat, at any level, let alone the commander in chief,” said Eddie Wright, a Marine who lost both his hands in a 2004 rocket attack in Fallujah, Iraq.
Chuck Jenness, the group’s chairman, lists Bush as a “close friend” and said the Bush speech grossed $3.2 million.a great Republican I guess, a real pal of Bush’s who said nothing as Bush led the country into these disasters.
Republican contender Donald Trump tweeted on Thursday in response to news reports.
“You mean George Bush sends our soldiers into combat, they are severely wounded, and then he wants $120,000 to make a boring speech to them?”

Yep.