Showing posts with label homosexual. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homosexual. Show all posts

Monday, June 01, 2009

Nothing to see here. Move along.


The mayor-elect came. The mayor-elect blathered. The mayor-elect hauled ass.

(Sigh.)

Omaha's incoming chief executive, Jim Suttle, called a press conference to say his "community chief of staff" is out amid allegations the aide had a homosexual affair with an underage boy in the 1990s.

"I have asked Matt Samp to separate himself from my administration," Suttle said. "He will not be my community chief of staff; he will not serve in my administration."

Suttle spent the next couple of minutes saying a criminal background check wouldn't have uncovered the allegations against Samp, that too many challenges face Omaha to worry about a single blah blah blah, blahblah, blah, blah blah blah blah, blahblahblah, blah.

Nothing to see here. Move along. No questions. I'm out of here.

And then Suttle was gone.

THE QUESTIONS about the mayor-elect's intelligence and judgment remained, however, along with an angry press corps and a besieged Suttle press aide, Ron Gerard.

During his no-questions "press conference," Suttle spoke about trust and how it's "important to maintain faith among our citizens that we will not be deterred from the mission we have in the Mayor’s office." The first "mission" for any public official, though, is not to squander the people's trust by acting in a recklessly stupid manner.

Jim Suttle's first big test came before he even has taken office, and the result was an epic fail.

The mayor-elect is being disingenuous in saying no background check would have turned up problems with his prospective co-chief of staff; Suttle didn't need a criminal-records check to unveil what was stinking to high heaven right under his nose.

FOR EXAMPLE, one commenter on
an earlier post maintains Samp's practice of "'mentoring' male teenagers" is no secret in local Democratic circles. I don't find that hard to believe, being that Omaha is the big-city version of a small town -- everybody knows everybody else, and people talk.

And mayors-to-be don't have the luxury of dismissing scandalous gossip when it comes to hiring a staff to do the public's business, as opposed to pubic business. Suttle had a duty -- an obligation of trust, as it were -- to get to the bottom of those "ugly rumors." That probably would have required one phone call from the mayor-elect to the police chief.

Furthermore, it wasn't just talk. Democrats
had been warned about Samp by Nebraska's attorney general. From Monday's Omaha World-Herald story:
Nebraska attorney General Jon Bruning wants Suttle to rescind his offer to hire Samp.

"We can't have someone like that working in government," he said of Samp.

Bruning said an Omaha father contacted him earlier this year, concerned about e-mails and other communication that his 16-year-old son recently had been receiving from Samp. Although the interaction was not criminal, Bruning, a Republican, said he notified two Democratic leaders about the complaint.

When Bruning heard about Samp's city job last month, "I was sick to my stomach and angry," Bruning said. "The citizens of Omaha deserve better."
BRUNING WAS even more explicit today with KETV television:
Bruning said he thought Samp's relationship with the teen was immoral, but there was no evidence of criminal conduct. [The age of consent in Nebraska is 16 -- R21.]

"If Matt Samp can explain why he's calling a 16-year old at 1:30 in the morning and e-mailing him sexually explicit emails, then I'd like to see that explanation. But I can't imagine there's anything that I or the citizens of Nebraska are going to buy," Bruning told KETV.

He said the latest complaint doesn't warrant criminal charges but he will investigate any further allegations that may come to his attention.
CRIMINAL-BACKGROUND check, my eye. The whole stinking heap . . . right under Jim Suttle's nose. But he couldn't be bothered with such unpleasantness.

There's a word for that kind of indifference. It's negligence. Just the thing we're looking for in a mayor. Especially now.

"The mission of the next administration is important and the challenges facing city government are too numerous to focus our energies on one news story," Suttle said before fleeing from the assembled news media. In other words, having demonstrated his incompetence and negligence in the little things, Suttle wants us to "move on" and not worry that he's now in charge of the Really Big Things.

The mayor-elect is not only stupid, he thinks we're nuts.

Kaboom!


It takes a special kind of stupid. . . .

* To, if you're the incoming mayor, not conduct background checks on people you're appointing to key jobs in your administration. Like chief of staff.

*
To tell the local newspaper that background checks represent a "suspicious, punitive system, and that's not something I build on. . . . What goes on in private lives is private business. I don't sit down with anybody and say, 'Tell me about your past.'"

* To refuse to ask police for documents detailing accusations that your designated "community chief of staff" began a homosexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy and kept it up for two years. (A law-enforcement source told the Omaha World-Herald the teen, who killed himself after going to the police, "was credible and the investigation of the first-degree sexual assault allegations he made when he was 19 would have been pursued if he hadn't died.")

* To dismiss the allegations about the aide, Matthew Samp, out of hand as "character assassination" and tell a reporter something as dumb as "You have to set (rumors) aside and just look at whom is trying to embarrass whom. I've seen this, and this happens."

UNFORTUNATELY for Omaha, alas, it looks like Jim Suttle is going to be a "special" kind of mayor. God help us all.

Imagine for a moment that we're not talking about the chief executive of a city of 435,000. Imagine instead that we're talking about a Catholic bishop who has just named a new chancellor for his diocese.

And say there were credible allegations that the priest picked as chancellor had initiated a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy, who five years later reported the underage relationship to police, who found the teen "credible" and initiated an investigation, but then this tormented youth killed himself.

Furthermore, let's say the new bishop was taking a leisurely swim down the River of Denial and publicly refused to even consider looking into the matter himself. And let's just imagine His Excellency then proclaimed that he didn't believe in conducting background checks, calling them a "suspicious, punitive system, and that's not something I build on."

How do you think that would go over?

ME, I THINK an enraged public would be burning the chancery down by now -- and not totally without justification, given the recent history of these kinds of things. In fact, a Catholic priest facing "credible" allegations of the sort now dogging Samp would be immediately removed from active ministry pending a complete investigation.

What, is it somehow more dangerous (or unseemly, or unjust, or whatever) when sexual-abuse scandals occur in the Catholic Church than when they hit city hall?

But that's a rhetorical question. Here's something more concrete: Your average forklift driver probably undergoes more pre-employment scrutiny than Jim Suttle's average chief of staff.

According to this morning's World-Herald, we are not amused:


Some angry and appalled leaders and residents want Omaha Mayor-elect Jim Suttle to look further into allegations that a top aide had a sexual relationship with a teenager in the late 1990s.

The World-Herald reported Sunday that a 19-year-old Omahan told police in 2001 that he had a sexual relationship, starting when he was 14, with Matthew Samp. Samp, now Suttle's co-chief of staff, was about 23 at the time.

It is illegal for an adult to have sex with someone under 16.

Suttle said Saturday, while out of town on vacation, that he did not plan to ask police for more information and did not do background checks on employees.

Suttle, who could not be reached Sunday, plans a statement today at a 1:30 p.m. press conference, spokesman Ron Gerard said. Suttle, a Democrat, takes office June 8.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning wants Suttle to rescind his offer to hire Samp.

"We can't have someone like that working in government," he said of Samp.

(snip)

A 2001 police investigation into the report about Samp stalled when the youth, Brad Fuglei, killed himself a week after filing a police report. Fuglei was 19.

Patlan said Samp, expected to handle communication with external groups such as neighborhood associations, will have no credibility unless he is cleared.

"If the kid was still alive," Patlan said, "the question remains: Where would Samp be now? Would he be in prison? There's too many questions."

Omaha resident Amy Adams, who attended high school with Fuglei, was incensed to hear that Suttle wasn't investigating further.

"That disgusts me," she said. "If allegations come up and you don't look into it, that seems ridiculous."
THAT SEEMS ridiculous because it is ridiculous. I guess Jim Suttle is just a ridiculous kind of guy.

Who is going to be our next mayor.

I think we're about to learn the hard way that not being Hal Daub is no good reason to elect somebody mayor.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Speaking of f***. . . .


The "community chief of staff" for Omaha's mayor-elect apparently has a rather low opinion of the city's daily newspaper, the World-Herald.

Matthew Samp, on his Twitter account, had some choice words for the newspaper -- which endorsed former mayor Hal Daub -- after the returns were all in and Samp's guy, Jim Suttle, had been elected Omaha's next mayor.

"Love me some Jim Suttle. F*** the World-Herald," the Democratic political operative tweeted after the May 12 election.

WELL, as it turns out, the World-Herald is reporting Samp may know a little something about f***:
A top appointee to Mayor-elect Jim Suttle's administration faced an investigation in 2001 into whether he had sex with a 14-year-old boy.

The teenager, who championed gay rights in high school, killed himself a week after telling police about his sex with two men, including Matthew Samp, who has been named Suttle's co-chief of staff.
SOMETHING TELLS ME this morning's Sunday World-Herald will be burning a hole in our driveway. Which is nothing compared to the impact it will have at the Suttle residence.

"F*** the World-Herald"?

Matt Samp just may have learned his last lesson in politics: That which f***s last f***s well, indeed.



UPDATE: The teen-ager involved in the story, says the World-Herald, was Brad Matthew Fuglei. Here's an excerpt from a 1998 feature in the newspaper on the then-North High School student.


Note who figures prominently in the piece:
Brad Matthew, the son of Nancy Fuglei of Omaha and Bruce Fuglei of Montana, is a member of North's Student Council and show choir. He volunteers for the Nebraska AIDS Project and recruited friends to help out with Teens Educated to Combat AIDS.

When he is not working at the men's department at Younkers, hanging out with friends or doing homework, Brad likes to play the piano and write music. His lyrics often reflect his thought about God, he said.

"He's a total free spirit. He doesn't care what others think," said Matthew Samp, an older friend who is like an older brother to Brad Matthew. "He's every parent's dream child -- strong, intelligent and dependable. He's completely against smoking, drinking and drug use. He doesn't need a baby sitter."

The murder of Shepard hit Brad Matthew hard. The idea for a vigil came to him around 2 o'clock one morning while he was talking online and doing homework. The next day he called Samp, who had been an events coordinator in Minneapolis, for help. Samp outlined a plan for Brad Matthew, who went right to work.

Between classes, he called gay and lesbian support groups seeking speakers and spreading the word. He selected Memorial Park because it was built, he said, in honor of those who have died in battle. It seemed appropriate.

Brad Matthew wrote press releases, selected the music and outlined the program. He asked Brink to speak because he knew members of her youth group.

"I think he showed a lot of initiative," said Bruce Fuglei. "I was amazed he did it. But then I'm often amazed by him. He's always been a unique kid. He thinks of others before himself."

Samp said Brad Matthew's natural charm and charisma make people enjoy being around him. He knows who he is and what he wants out of life.
OF COURSE, we won't know a lot until the World-Herald story actually hits the street in a bit. But I think it might be safe to say that the sound you just heard was a nuclear bomb going off in the middle of Omaha politics.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Tips for the conscientious Catholic

This is offensive:


This is what the Church thinks is proper fare for cathedral museums:


Does everybody have all that straight? Uhhhhhhhhh, perhaps "straight" was a poor choice of words.

It used to be that "abomination of desolation" was just another scary Biblical phrase.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

The smoke of Satan. . . .

Sancte Michael Archangele,
defende nos in proelio.
contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.
Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur:
tuque, Princeps militiae coelestis,
Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos,
qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo,
divina virtute, in infernum detrude.
Amen.

This could have been my first NC-17 post if I had embedded the video depicting what's being exhibited at the Dommuseum in Vienna. That smutty "art" is being exhibited in some European museum isn't, in itself, exceptional.

What's exceptional is when smutty art -- including depictions of the Last Supper as a homosexual orgy and a naked Roman soldier performing a sex act on the crucified Christ -- is the focus of an exhibit at the art museum of the Catholic cathedral of St. Stephen. Well, it used to be exceptional -- back when the faithful still recited the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel at the end of every Mass.

From United Press International:

The Dommuseum in Vienna, the art gallery attached to the historic Catholic cathedral of St. Stephen, is running an exhibition of works by a self-avowed Marxist atheist, titled "Religion, Flesh and Power," that includes depictions of explicit homosexual sex acts. Prominent among the works is a rendition of the Last Supper with Christ and His Apostles depicted as homosexuals engaged in an orgy.

Another work depicts Christ on the cross without a face but with uncovered genitals. The Last Supper rendition is displayed in a prominent place near the entrance to the exhibition,
LifeSiteNews.com reported Wednesday.

Dommuseum Director Bernhard Böhler said visitors asked "in a more or less emotional way" why the Apostles are depicted copulating. According to the director, the artist responded, "There were no women around."

AND AT THE DOMMUSEUM, one might suppose there are no actual Christians around. Next door to the cathedral. Literally under the nose of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. Who needs to redecorate his museum with a can of lighter fluid and a match.

It is said that Pope Leo XIII composed the prayer to St. Michael in 1896 after receiving a vision of how Satan would attack the Church for roughly 100 years, beginning in the 20th century. I think we've been getting a damned good idea of why Leo XIII went as pale as a corpse and rushed to his office to compose the prayer, which he ordered recited after every Catholic Mass.

That practice ended in 1965, after the Second Vatican Council's revision of the liturgy.

Oops.

If Muslims get apoplectic about cartoons of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, Christians have every cause to get three times more exercised over this blasphemy aimed at God Himself. God will deal with the Marxist, atheist artist, Vienna's Alfred Hrdlicka.

Pope Benedict XVI needs to deal with Schönborn, the prelate who allowed this sacrilege -- this scandal -- on his watch, at his cathedral, in its art museum.

Now.


HAT TIP:
Crunchy Con.