Dowd Hits Nail on Head Today

Once in awhile, New York Times Op/Ed columnist Maureen Dowd stops trying to be cute, funny and controversial and gets to the heart of the matter. This morning was one of those times. “I’m a Catholic woman who makes a living being adversarial,” she said. “We have a pope who has instructed Catholic women not to be adversarial...I’ve been wondering, given the vitriolic reaction of the New York archbishop to my column defending nuns and the dismissive reaction of the Vatican to my column denouncing the church’s response to the pedophilia scandal, if they are able to take a woman’s voice seriously. Some, like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, seem to think women are trying to undermine the church because of abortion and women’s ordination...I thought they might respond better to a male Dowd. “My brother Kevin is conservative and devout — his hobby is collecting crèches — and has raised three good Catholic sons. When I asked him to share his thoughts on the scandal, I learned, shockingly, that we agreed on some things. He wrote the following: ‘In pedophilia, the church has unleashed upon itself a plague that threatens its very future, and yet it remains in a curious state of denial. The church I grew up in was black and white, no grays. That’s why my father, an Irish immigrant, liked it so much. The chaplain of the Police and Fire departments told me once “Your father was a fierce Catholic, very fierce”.’” Ms Dowd goes on to describe her feelings about Vatican II, (and, incidentally, her feelings about being molested by a priest). Vatican II made her wince, she says. “(It) liberalized rules but left the most outdated one: celibacy. That vow was put in place originally because the church did not want heirs making claims on money and land. But it ended up shrinking the priest pool and producing the wrong kind of candidates — drawing men confused about their sexuality who put our children in harm’s way. “The church is dying from a thousand cuts. Its cover-up has cost a fortune and been a betrayal worthy of Judas. The money spent came from social programs, Catholic schools and the poor. This should be a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. I asked a friend of mine recently what he would do if his child was molested after the church knew. ‘I would probably kill someone,’ he replied. “We must reassess. Married priests and laypeople giving the sacraments are not going to destroy the church. Based on what we have seen the last 10 years, they would be a bargain. It is time to go back to the disciplines that the church was founded on and remind our seminaries and universities what they are. (Georgetown University agreeing to cover religious symbols on stage to get President Obama to speak was not exactly fierce.) “The storm within the church strikes at what every Catholic fears most. We take our religion on faith. How can we maintain that faith when our leaders are unworthy of it?” And therein lies a very big problem in the Vatican. How do you insist that people acknowledge their sins for the good of their souls; how do you insist that rigor in ones’ daily life and adhering to rules is the only way to live; how do you point to yourselves as the ultimate authority on Christian morality when you--the College of Cardinals and the Pope—refuse to acknowledge your culpability, shield yourselves from blame, point your fingers at victims as the cause of your predicament, tell lies every day, cower behind spurious reasoning, cast yourselves as sufferers, and cynically aid and abet criminals in the hollow claim that you are being forgiving? Not only is it not possible to keep the faith when leaders are false, but also, the leaders cannot remain in power. They can remain situated, but not in power.

Dowd to Vatican: “Ne Eas Ibi”—Don’t Go There

Specifically, in her Easter Sunday morning op/ed piece in the New York Times today, Maureen Dowd was referring to the Roman Catholic Church’s long-time history of anti-Semitism and the fact that The Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, a preacher in the Pope’s household, told people in St. Peter’s Basilica yesterday that the current accusations against Pope Ratz of papal misdeeds were akin to the suffering of the Jews that lead to the Holocaust. The New Republic literary editor and Jewish scholar Leon Wieseltier couldn’t understand why the church would want to bring up anything about anti-Semitism. Dowd quoted Wieseltier: “Why would the Catholic Church wish to defend itself by referring to other enormities in which it was also implicated? Anyway, the Jews endured more than a bad press.” Dowd said, “this solidarity with Jews is also notable given that Italy’s La Repubblica reported that ‘certain Catholic circles’ suspected that ‘a New York Jewish lobby’ was responsible for the outcry against the pope.” Nevertheless, not to be outdone by Father Cantalamessa’s ill-chosen, ill-timed, clueless, inappropriate and inapt simile, this morning the dean of the College of Cardinals in the Vatican, Cardinal Angelo Sodano said during the Pope’s Easter message: ''Holy Father, on your side are the people of God, who do not allow themselves to be influenced by the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials which sometimes buffet the community of believers.'' In reporting on Easter Sunday in Vatican City, the New York Times said, “Sunday's edition of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano denounced the accusations against the pope as a ‘vile defamation operation’.” One can only repeat the words that Special Counsel Joseph N. Welch said to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel Roy Cohn at the McCarthy Communist witch-hunt hearings, and direct it at The Vatican, the College of Cardinals and Pope Benedict XVI: “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Vatican: Criticism of Pope is Like Anti-Semitism

In the area of WRONG, one wonders how much more wrong the Vatican can get. First, the now-Pope from his position as Enforcer for Pope John Paul II and as the go-to guy in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which investigated abuse cases, was the one who ordered that abuse cases be kept secret. In addition to that, he was the one who moved pedophile priest Father Hullermann around from diocese to diocese in Germany and Bavaria, which allowed Hullermann to continue molesting little boys Then, when documents about Pope Ratz’s involvement in protecting pedophile priests were made public by the New York Times, the Vatican announced that the NYT was engaging in a vendetta against Pope Ratz. And now, on Good Friday if you please, Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa (a senior priest in the Vatican) speaking in St. Peter’s Basilica, said that all the criticism Pope Benedict XVI is receiving regarding his handling of pedophile priests in the Roman Catholic Church is like the anti-Semitism suffered by Jews. On top of all the deceit the Vatican is engaging in now to erase all the deceit the Vatican has perpetrated in the past, now the Vatican is saying that speaking out against its lying, deceit and calumny is like being anti-Semitic. UNBELIEVABLE! But, since Father Cantalamessa has committed this monumental error in judgment by bringing up anti-Semitism and the Roman Catholic Church, let us not forget folks, that Pope Pius XII not only did not rebuke the Nazi’s during the WWII, but he was known as a Nazi-sympathizer. And also, let us not forget folks, it wasn’t until the 1960’s that the Vatican finally said officially that Jews were not responsible for Christ’s crucifixion and got rid of the prayer in the liturgy calling for the conversion of Jews. It is hard to imagine how wrong the Vatican has always been. But since its track record is so abysmal, perhaps we can construct a rule-of-thumb. If the Vatican says it, it’s a lie.

If the Vatican Told the Truth, Which It Doesn’t

But if the Vatican did deal in veracity about its own megalomania, it would say it is outraged that anyone would have the nerve to cast aspersions on the Pope. The Vatican has endowed the Pope with super powers because he is the successor to the first Pope, St. Peter. Which means all Popes, including the ones that murdered people, the ones that had wild gorilla sex in the Vatican and now this miserable excuse for a human being, Pope Benedict XVI, are above reproach. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem I have with the Vatican. Which, may I say, is the problem I have with many writers of the Bible who amended, redacted, changed and outright lied about their subject—they are dealing in fiction. Peter the Apostle, you know the one, the guy who denied Jesus three times in the Garden of Gethsemane, surely never knew he was the Bishop of Rome, much less a Pope. According to historians, Peter probably wasn’t even in Rome when the fiction writers declared he was the Bishop of Rome. And all this nonsense about Peter being the first Pope is based on the verse in Matthew (Chapter 16, Verse 18) where Jesus says to Peter, “On this rock will I build my church”. There are many conversations quoted in the Bible, which it’s doubtful Jesus ever had. And this is one of them. Jesus never had eyes to start a new religion. It was the people who came after him who wanted a new religion. And it’s the people who came long after Jesus who put words in his mouth that he probably never said. And the Vatican took it to insane heights claiming that since Jesus said he was going to build his church on his friend The Rock, (Petra/Peter means rock/stone), that meant Peter was the First Bishop of Rome, which made him the first Pope. Such nonsense! The first Bishop of Rome, whoever he was, was not a Pope. Early Christians didn’t call any one Big Papa until the second century AD. The Vatican will give you a list of “Popes” going back to Peter, which is totally impossible to verify. There may have been guys like Linus, Cletus and Clement who were big mahoffs in the early church, but they were not called Popes, they were not even called Bishops. Ugh! So, the Vatican is outraged that all the hundreds (probably THOUSANDS) of molested little children, and their families would DARE say anything against The Vatican and its residents because they are self-declared holy persons who are incapable of wrong-doing. And who is buying this latest fiction being sold by the Vatican? The guys in the Vatican are buying it. But the people who sit in the pews--the actual Body of Christ--are going to church, worshiping God and Jesus, and calling for Pope Ratz and his minions to stop the bullshit and fess up, or at least SHUT UP!

Pope Won’t Be “Intimidated” by “Gossip”

As the New York Times reported this morning, the Pope did not directly address the pedophile scandal in his Palm Sunday message yesterday. Pope Ratz said, “Jesus leads us toward the courage not to be intimidated by the gossip of dominant opinion.” I can’t imagine how Pope Ratz arrived at that interpretation of Jesus’s message as it relates to the mess Ratz has made for himself. But surely, even a spineless, pedophile-enabler such as Pope Ratz would not equate his recent richly-deserved humiliation over facts that have been uncovered, with the intimidation and crucifixion of Jesus. And surely, Pope Ratz could not have been referring to the teaching of Jesus in “The Sermon on the Mount” about “turning the other cheek” as related in the Bible in Matthew and Luke. Because the passage in Luke ends with “Do to others as you would have them do to you”, and that is a teaching Pope Ratz rarely has adhered to. The very idea that Pope Ratz would relegate all the facts that are being released about his culpability in the pedophile priests scandal to the category of “gossip” which he is not going to be “intimidated” by, shows how little the Vatican and the Pope care about the children who have been harmed by their inaction, obfuscation, lying and yes, about their intimidation of others. The Vatican’s position, as well as the Pope’s position on pedophile priests is indefensible. The Vatican told Father Brady in Ireland to force a 10-year old and a 14-year-old to sign secrecy oaths about being molested. The Vatican was wrong. Psychiatrist Dr. Werner Huth told the Vatican in 1980 that Father Hullermann could not ever be trusted around children. The Vatican let Hullermann minister to children for decades. The Vatican was wrong. No matter how it backs and fills and reinvents history and defends itself, the Vatican was wrong. And the world needs to hear the Vatican admit it was wrong. If the Pope as Archbishop and as Cardinal did not know what was going on in his diocese, it’s no excuse...he should have known. If he gave a damn about children as much as he cared about doctrine and dogma, he would have known. Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger was wrong. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was wrong. Pope Benedict XVI is wrong. The Vatican has been wrong and is wrong and there is no getting around it. Today, NYT columnist Ross Douthat says that Pope Ratz may have been wrong about the first charge against him (that he allowed a pedophile priest to return to ministry while archbishop of Munich in 1980); but the second charge is unfair. The second charge was about Father Rembert Weakland in Milwaukee and it was about a case 20 years after the last allegation of abuse. That’s bogus. The Vatican, the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope, the pedophile priests have all been unfair to the children in the Roman Catholic faith. Get a grip, you RCC apologists! We’re talking children here. We’re talking about priests forcing children to engage in sex acts. We’re talking about the Vatican hiding all this stuff for decades! You want unfair? While the Pope dissembles and talks about not being intimidated, he should think about the two boys in Ireland who were forced by the Vatican to sign an agreement that they would not rat out the Roman Catholic Church. How’s that for unfair and intimidating? What do you suppose Jesus would think about that, Pope Ratz?

Make No Mistake...GOP Rage is About RACE

This morning’s Op/Ed column by Frank Rich is headlined: “The Rage Is Not About Health Care”. And after chronicling and chapter-and-versing the obstructionist ways the conservative GOP assholes have reacted to every move the United States has made to stamp out racism, Frank Rich wrote: “After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is ‘now on the books.’ Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s ‘reload’ rhetoric.” We have a black President and we have a Hispanic Latina in the Supreme Court. And the ultra-conservative branch of the Republican Party—THE TEA PARTY—is foaming from its mean, ignorant, KKK-based, death-breath mouth. The current stupidity coming out of Palin, Perry and Boehner is hate-based racism, pure and simple. This group is fomenting racist hatred and inciting violence from morons who throw bricks. As I see it, the recourse is for normal, sane, balanced, thinking Americans to call out these idiots in every media venue available. Only 20% of the people in the United States want to be linked with racists. We need to let the media know that. And the media needs to call a halt on its lily-livered cowardly non-response response to the racist Tea Party. The media needs to let the Tea Party know the United States of America wants no part of Tea Party bigotry.

Vatican Attacking Truthtellers Not a Good Plan

The New York Times had two articles today on the pedophile scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. Rachel Donadio reported in her article (“Pope May Be at Crossroads on Abuse, Forced to Reconcile Policy and Words”) that yesterday an unsigned editorial in the Vatican newspaper (“L’Osservatore Romano”) “criticized The Times for an article published Thursday on the abuse issue. The Italian editorial said that Benedict had always handled such cases with ‘transparency, purpose and severity,’ and accused the news media of acting ‘with the clear and ignoble intent of trying to strike Benedict and his closest collaborators at any cost.’” In view of the fact that Archbishop/Cardinal/Pope Ratzinger has NEVER handled abuse cases with transparency, and in view of the fact that the news media is simply telling the truth (which truth, is now available via documents that lawyers have released), it’s beyond stupid for the Vatican to claim people are trying to discredit Pope Benedict XVI. And by beyond stupid, I mean: Desperate and idiotic. I am currently reading a book by James Lee Burke, an author I love in the mystery genre. The book is “The Tin Roof Blowdown”. Burke’s protagonist, Dave Robicheaux, lives is New Iberia, LA. This book is not only about murder and mayhem in Robicheaux’s parish, but it’s about Katrina and the woeful response by our government, then ruled by so-called president, George W. Bush. In the book, there is a black priest named Jude LeBlanc, who is dying of cancer. Father LeBlanc is a junkie because of his pain. He lives with and sleeps with his girlfriend who is a prostitute and a junkie. Still, the priest gives communion and absolution to sinners who ask for it, and he gives aid and comfort to whomever he can--once a priest, always a priest. I mention this only to say that I believe that if a priest such as Jude LeBlanc exists, he is more morally correct and in tune with God and the precepts of Jesus Christ than Pope Benedict XVI.

Yeah, I Know...Old News...Pope Ratz Is Fallible

This morning, the New York Times treated us with two stories about the pedophile priest scandal plus an editorial for good measure. 1) “Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys” by Laurie Goodstein; 2) "Abuse Scandal’s Ripples Spread Across Europe” by Katrin Bennhold, Nicholas Kulish and Rachel Donadio; 3) Editorial: “The Pope and Pedophilia Scandal”. So now that everyone knows that the Roman Catholic Church has been actively trying to keep all this pedophilia a secret, now that we know the RCC has been more interested in protecting its own corrupt ass than keeping children from harm, and now that we know all the high mahoffs in the Vatican, right up to the present pope, have been protecting pedophile priests and throwing the abused kids under a bus, we are left with two interesting issues: 1) Why are so many RCC priests pedophiles? 2) What is the Doctrine of Infallibility? Numero Uno: As you may imagine, I have my own theory. Many men who are attracted to the priesthood in the RCC are stunted in their emotional growth. Pedophiles are at least 85% heterosexual and researchers say the emotional development of many pedophiles is arrested. Ergo, with all that arrested development running around in the Roman Catholic Church, you are going to find a lot of pedophiles in the RCC. And, let me say, it’s not the requirement that RCC priests be celibate that is the problem. It’s the guys who are attracted to that kind of life that is the problem. Numero Duo: The Doctrine of Infallibility Okay. The RCC says that the Holy Spirit part of the Trinity would not allow the church to be wrong in its beliefs or teaching. Therefore, the teaching of the RCC is infallible. And not only that, when the Pope teaches with the authority of being the Pope (ex-cathedra), he also cannot be wrong. And when a pope is found to be wrong, then he simply was not speaking or teaching ex-cathedra. Now here is why all of that is bullshit. Everything in the Bible, everything taught in every church anywhere has been written and/or taught by a human being. All teachings taught are taught by human beings who err all the time. And just because a human being says, “God told me”, does not make it necessarily true that it came from God. And just because a human being says, “this is a perfect teaching that God himself handed down to me” does not necessarily make it true. The human being could be crazy as a loon. We all can take whatever we want on faith that it is a true teaching of God. But since all religious teachings have been handed down by a human being, we really don’t know if it is a true teaching of God or not. And that is why no human being can say for sure that a teaching is from God and therefore is infallible. It may be a teaching from God, or it may be a lie some guy is telling, or it may be a nutty vision. But since we are human beings, not one of us knows for sure. Not you, not me, not the guys at the Vatican Council in 1870 who defined the infallibility of the Pope, and certainly not the Pope. So believe what you like. But for sure, no one in the God-business has a pipeline to God. God-business guys are flawed human beings like the rest of us. And no religious teaching is infallible because all of it has been reported by a human being, and you know how reporters are.

Now It’s Nuns

This must be historic. To my knowledge, this is the first time that nuns have been officially accused of sexual abuse. While Pope Ratz is dividing his time between accusing others of his crimes and apologizing for all the crimes those others have committed, pedophile priest abuse scandals are popping up all over. Not the least of which are the claims of sexual abuse in the Regensburg Diocese in Bavaria. This morning, the New York Times reported: “The claims of sexual abuse in Regensburg have attracted particular attention because the brother of Pope Benedict XVI, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, directed a choir there from 1964 to 1994, raising questions about whether he would have known about sexual abuse at a school linked to the choir. Monsignor Ratzinger has said that he knew nothing about the sexual abuse, and he apologized for slapping students during his tenure.” Later on in the NYT news story, the Regensburg Diocese spokesman, Clemens Neck, was quoted. Neck said that in addition to the accusations against four priests and two nuns, other victims had come forward with accusations against men who had since died. Mr. Neck said both of the accused nuns have dementia. Lucky for them. So we’ve got Pope Ratz’s brother slapping kids around in his choir, four priests and two nuns molesting kids in his diocese, and neither Brother Ratz nor Pope Ratz knew anything about it. You believe that, I’ve got a worthless newspaper in Philadelphia run by a worthless public relations blowhard I’d like to sell you.

“Pope Does Little to Assuage Irish Anger”-NYT

No kidding! What a surprise! The New York Times headline this morning says it all. The Pope’s letter to Catholics in Ireland who have been abused by pedophile priests was a bust. Why? Because Pope Ratz didn’t call anyone to account. He simply pointed his finger of blame at everyone except himself and said everyone, from bishops to priests, was “sinful and criminal” and then he asked Jesus to forgive them. Ireland isn’t buying it. So when is Pope Ratz going to go before the world and finally admit, “It is I, Lord. I am to blame for the pain and suffering in the world caused by pedophile priests in the Roman Catholic Church”? Probably when hell freezes over. However, if what the Bible has been saying about sinners and particularly those who do harm to little children is true, then Pope Ratz will be in hell when it freezes over, and he will be there with all the other lying, immoral, unethical, greedy, gluttonous blaspheming Popes since 500 AD.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Pope?

Pope Benedict XVI has pointed the finger of blame at everyone but himself in this priest abuse scandal. And it becomes clearer every moment that it’s Archbishop/Cardinal/Pope Ratzinger who is to blame for every child who has been molested by pedophile priests in the Roman Catholic Church for the past 30 years. For thirty years, the decisions, rules and requirements for secrecy ordered by Ratzinger to be followed by all priests regarding pedophile priests in the RCC have allowed pedophile priests to continue in their criminal perversions. Yesterday, Pope Ratz sent an eight-page pastoral letter to Catholics in Ireland. He apologized to the people who have been harmed by pedophile priests. But he did not accept any blame for his own actions. And he didn’t address the problem of pedophile priests that is burgeoning in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. Pope Ratz confined his apologies to people who had been harmed by pedophile priests in Ireland. In that eight-page letter, Ratz criticized bishops for “grave errors of judgment and failure of leadership”; Ratz blamed local Catholic leaders for betraying parishioners; he spoke of “a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations”; he even had the balls to attribute Ireland’s priest-abuse problem to “a misplaced concern for the reputation of the church and the avoidance of scandal, resulting in failure to apply existing canonical penalties.” But he never once admitted that it was he himself that had committed each of these errors. He blamed underlings. Pope Ratz's culpability is a fact that can be researched and verified by anyone who wants the information. Now that everyone in the world can search out this information for himself and confirm that Pope Benedict XVI is the perpetrator of all the errors of judgment and failures in the Roman Catholic Church for the past 30 years that have lead to this horrendous betrayal by the church of the children and their parents in the RCC, it is a monumental problem for the Vatican (the city-state in Rome that runs the Roman Catholic Church) and all of the Pope’s henchmen in the Curia (the administrative apparatus of the Vatican). How is the Vatican and Curia going to handle this Pope Benedict problem? Don’t for one moment assume the Vatican will ask, “what would Jesus do?” Because Jesus--as a model for righteous behavior--has not been a consideration in the Vatican since well before Popes took up their regal residence in the Vatican palace around 500 AD. The Vatican has only ever been concerned with power and image. It’s the Vatican, after all, that in all its arrogance and grandiosity decided unilaterally in 1870 that popes are infallible. A more perfect example of nonsense and balderdash never existed. The better question would be--how would the Cosa Nostra handle such a serious problem with its Capo di Tutti Capi? Just asking...

Pope Ratz Doesn’t Give a Damn About Children

Given the facts that are now emerging about priest abuse in Germany in 1980, one can only conclude that then-Archbishop Ratzinger (who became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005) knew about the abuse of children being committed by Father Peter Hullermann and didn’t care. Or, after he sent pedophile priest Peter Hulllermann into therapy he didn’t keep apprised about the Hullermann case because he didn’t care. It’s one way or the other. But Pope Ratz didn’t care about children being abused. He cared only about the image of the Roman Catholic Church. The New York Times reported today (“Church Was Warned About Priest, Doctor Says”): “The German archdiocese led by the future Pope Benedict XVI ignored repeated warnings in the early 1980s by a psychiatrist treating a priest accused of sexually abusing boys that he should not be allowed to work with children, the psychiatrist said Thursday. ‘I said, ‘For God’s sake, he desperately has to be kept away from working with children,’ the psychiatrist, Dr. Werner Huth, said in a telephone interview from Munich. ‘I was very unhappy about the entire story.’ “Dr. Huth said he was concerned enough that he set three conditions for treating the priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann: that he stay away from young people and alcohol and be supervised by another priest at all times. “Dr. Huth said he issued the explicit warnings — both written and oral — before the future pope, then Joseph Ratzinger, archbishop of Munich and Freising, left Germany for a position in the Vatican in 1982. “In 1980, after abuse complaints from parents in Essen that the priest did not deny, Archbishop Ratzinger approved a decision to move the priest to Munich for therapy. “Despite the psychiatrist’s warnings, Father Hullermann was allowed to return to parish work almost immediately after his therapy began, interacting with children as well as adults. Less than five years later, he was accused of molesting other boys, and in 1986 he was convicted of sexual abuse in Bavaria.” Hullermann returned to his priestly duties, which included working with children, while he was in therapy, the NYT said. He refused one-on-one therapy and consented only to be involved in group-sessions. It was reported that Hullermann was not highly motivated to change his ways and only sat in therapy sessions to ensure that he would not be sent packing from the RCC. The Vatican is now claiming that Archbishop Ratzinger was not kept in the loop, so he didn’t know Hullermann kept abusing children after Hullermann’s so-called therapy. That doesn’t fly. In 1982, as Cardinal Ratz, Ratzinger made himself head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Ratzinger himself turned over all authority for handling abuse cases to the congregation. It was this organization that kept all matters concerning pedophile priests secret--at the direction of Cardinal Ratzinger. Pope Ratz cannot have it both ways. Either he knew about the abuse and didn’t care about the children, or he didn’t know about the abuse because he didn’t care about the children. Since it has been highly documented that as Pope John Paul II’s Enforcer, Cardinal Ratzinger was a hands-on control freak, there is no doubt that he knew all about Hullermann’s criminal activities with children. And he knew all about Dr. Huth’s recommendations. His response was to ignore the warnings and to keep reports about pedophile priests secret. The NYT also reported: “The former vicar general of the Munich archdiocese did not respond to repeated attempts to contact him for comment at home. Phone calls to the archdiocese for reaction on Thursday night were not answered. On Wednesday, speaking generally about the question of Father Hullermann’s therapy, a spokesman at the archdiocese, Bernd Oostenryck, said, ‘Thirty years ago, the subject was treated very differently in society.’” It may be true that in podunk communities around the world the subject of pedophilia was treated differently thirty years ago. But obviously, from what Dr. Huth told the New York Times, the Vatican was told by a psychiatrist thirty years ago exactly what the Vatican would be told today: you cannot let a pedophile near children under any circumstances EVER. But the Vatican, at the direction of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, ignored it.

And That’s the Problem, Cardinal Brady

Yesterday, Cardinal Sean Brady of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland unintentionally addressed the crux of the problem of child molesters in the RCC. Brady issued an apology in Dublin for the way he handled accusations of child abuse decades ago. He said he was “ashamed” that he took part in forcing boys to sign secrecy oaths about a priest who had abused them. However, Brady said, “We had no guidance. We were in uncharted territory, and now we have higher standards, thankfully.” There you have it: THE PROBLEM! That a priest or an archbishop or a cardinal or a pope or ANYONE would feel he needs written guidance as to what his response should be when a ten-year-old is molested by a priest, is a horrendous indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. That a priest would actually force a ten-year-old to sign an oath of secrecy about being molested by another priest is unbelievable. That the Roman Catholic Church would approve of such behavior at any point in time, whether now or twenty or a thousand years ago, is a horrible condemnation of the Roman Catholic Church. Cardinal Brady said he was “not a manager and not a bishop” at the time he participated in forcing the ten-year-old to the oath of secrecy. Like that absolves him from responsibility? That is disgusting. And the Roman Catholic Church is defending its policy of keeping mum about pedophile priests by claiming that it helps to protect the victims. NO! IT DOES NOT! AND IT NEVER DID! The policy of the RCC regarding keeping pedophile priest abuses a secret has always and ONLY protected the priests and the church. Oh! And another thing. The New York Times reports today: “Some Irish church officials have said the problem has been deepened by confusion over the interpretation of a 2001 directive by (Pope) Benedict, then a cardinal, reiterating a strict requirement for secrecy in handling abuse cases. The directive also gave the authority in handling such cases to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Benedict was prefect of the congregation from 1982 until becoming pope in 2005.” So, when Pope Ratz was Archbishop Ratz, he not only moved pedophile priest Peter Hullermann around in Germany from Diocese to Diocese to keep Hullermann’s molesting crimes secret, but when Cardinal Ratz became "The Enforcer" for Pope John Paul II, Ratz turned over the authority for handling abuse cases to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which he himself ruled with an iron hand. Is there any doubt about Pope Ratz’s profound, deep and long-standing involvement in protecting and shielding pedophile priests in the Roman Catholic Church? Not by me!

Pope Mouthpiece Parses Word “Responsibility”

It’s fitting that today-- St. Patrick’s Day--Pope Benedict XVI focused his weekly audience on Ireland’s priest-abuse scandal. The Pope’s comments to Ireland came a day after the Vatican acknowledged Germany’s priest-abuse scandal. The Pope said he “hoped” a forthcoming letter--which in part deals with Ireland’s priest abuse problem--would help “repentance, healing and renewal”. Good luck with that Pope Ratz, since you are the one who moved around a buggering priest in Germany and allowed him to force hundreds of young boys to service him sexually for 30 years. The facts that are coming to light about priest abuse in Germany and the then-Archbishop Ratzinger’s culpability are bad enough. But now, Msgr. Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s internal prosecutor, is dissembling about what the word “responsibility” means as far as Ratz is concerned. And even though Archbishop Ratzinger was THE GUY who approved of moving pedophile priest Peter Hullerman from Essen to Munich and knew Hullermann was active in the Roman Catholic Church in Germany for 30 years, yesterday the Vatican forced an auxiliary bishop to take the fall for now-Pope Benedict. That is so ugly. The New York Times reported this morning that Monsignor Scicluna said, “It depends what you mean by responsible. If he was involved in the decision, he would be. If he was not involved, it’s a responsibility that comes from his office, a ‘the buck stops here’ sort of thing.’ But I think that the person concerned has already taken responsibility for what he did; the answer to that question has already been given.” Oh for God’s sake! The Pope and his lawyers are total unrepentant weasels! I gagged when Andrew Young took the fall for John Edwards and said he was the father of Rielle Hunter’s baby. (At least Young finally told the truth.) But for the Pope to have his mouthpiece parse the word responsible and then for the Vatican to make an underling falsely confess...PULLEEZE!!!! I will now discharge my bounden duty to be The Reminder. Remember that all the problems the US and the world are facing today is because of crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration. And remember that the office of Pope has a woeful track recorder. In the past, Popes have committed murder, Popes have had all manner of sex in the Vatican, Popes have been engaged in money laundering for the Mafia, and a Pope was a Nazi-sympathizer. Look it up for yourselves. There is no more reason to expect ethical behavior from a Pope than to expect ethical behavior from Karl Rove.

Pope Ratz Personally Hid Molester’s Abuses

Oh this is a fine howdoyoudo! It turns out that Archbishop/Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was the one who allowed Father Hullermann of the Archdiocese of Essen to be transferred to the Archdiocese of Munich. So, not only did Pope Ratz know about the abuse, the New York Times reported today that it was Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger who reviewed the case of accused molester Father Hullermann and Ratzinger personally allowed Hullermann to transfer from the Diocese of Essen to the Diocese of Munich and continue molesting boys. One of the charges against Hullermann in Essen was that he forced an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex. And now after 30 years of abusing boys and after hundreds of victims have come forward, the priest, Peter Hullermann, as of yesterday has finally been suspended from his priestly duties. From the NYT article, the level of ignorance in the Roman Catholic Church about pedophilia is stunning. People were quoted as saying Hullermann was down to earth and popular, that he was “loving and appropriate” with children, that “if we can no longer believe in forgiving sins, we might as well close the whole store.” It’s not about whether Father Peter Hullermann seemed sweet and kind, it’s not about forgiving sins. It’s about the fact that a pedophile cannot be cured. A pedophile can NEVER be around children. It’s about the fact that after being convicted of sexually abusing minors in 1986, this priest was given an 18-month suspended sentence with five years of probation, fined 4,000 marks and was returned to priestly duties with no oversight whatsoever regarding his working with children. And the person who allowed this man to abuse children for 30 years is Pope Benedict XVI. It’s impossible to find an analogous situation to explain to people what returning pedophiles to priestly duties with children is like. Because it’s like nothing else. It’s not like hiring a convicted bank-robber to work in a bank, because no bank would hire a convicted bank-robber and besides he wouldn’t be harming children. It’s not like hiring a recovering alcoholic to tend bar, because some can do it successfully and besides, they wouldn’t be harming children. When the Roman Catholic Church knowingly allows pedophile priests to continue to work in the church with children, the church has also committed the crime. The church is aiding and abetting. The church is a criminal. And let us be clear, pedophilia has nothing whatsoever to do with homosexuality. If a pedophile is also homosexual, it’s a coincidence because 85% of pedophiles are straight. What is mind-boggling about this case and the Pope is that Pope Benedict is adamant about homosexuality in the church--it is not to be tolerated, although it harms no one. And yet pedophile priests who cause lifelong injury and harm to children are coddled and protected by this Pope.

Pope Ratz and Brother Ratz

When the now-Pope Benedict XVI was just lowly Cardinal Ratzinger—better known as Pope John Paul II’s Enforcer--he said that the buggering of little boys in the Roman Catholic Church was “an American problem”. Now it turns out that Cardinal Ratz not only allowed a buggering priest in his Archdiocese in Munich in 1980 to return to pastoral duties after a period of bogus therapy but the offending priest went on to commit further abuses. AND Pope Ratz’s brother Ratz, Msgr. Georg Ratsinger was slapping kids around in a choir he directed in a German boarding school from 1964 to 1994. Not only that, two students in that boarding school have come forward with abuse claims. On Friday, the New York Times reported: “Experts said the scandals could undermine Benedict’s moral authority, especially because they cut particularly close to the pope himself. As head of the Vatican’s main doctrinal arm, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he led Vatican investigations into abuse for 4 years before assuming the papacy in 2005. “What is at stake, and at great risk, is Benedict’s central project for the ‘re-Christianization’ of Christendom, his desire to have Europe return to its Christian roots,” said David Gibson, the author of a biography of Benedict and a religion commentator for Politicsdaily.com. ‘But if the root itself is seen as rotten, then his influence will be badly compromised.’” So much for abuse in the RCC being an American problem. The NYT also said, “The scandal is not limited to Germany. This week, two dioceses in Austria suspended five priests pending investigations into allegations they had molested students. The church in the Netherlands has said it would open an investigation after more than 200 people came forward in recent weeks.” The Pope’s apologists are saying, of course, that he didn’t know any of this was going on. NONSENSE! As John Paul’s Enforcer, Ratz knew EVERYTHING about JPII's realm and dynasty. And JPII knew all about the abuse and molesting going on in churches and church schools around the world. What I don’t understand is why these big-time moral authority guys (read, all the Popes) can’t man-up and admit when they are wrong or when they’ve made major bad decisions. Popes, without exception, weasel out. Naturally, Pope Ratz has put JPII up for sainthood. When I hear of these guys in the God-business who have made huge moral mistakes being beatified and canonized, I always think of Livia in “I Claudius” (so wonderfully played by Sian Phillips) begging to be made a goddess, after all her shenanigans, murders, and nasty double-dealing. It's as though they believe, as Livia did, that if they can sit on Mount Olympus they won't have to face up to Judgment Day.

The Truth About Scientology...Again

Simple logic makes it difficult for many of us to believe in religions that are under 200 years old. And yet, Mormon founder con-artist Joseph Smith bamboozled enough people in 1826 to believe in a religion brought to him by an angel named Moroni, that today Mormons are still finding plenty of new converts. Whether the angel took those gold plates back to a realm far-far away named Moron, is not known. And nutcase Escriva de Balaguer of Spain started the Roman Catholic cult Opus Dei in 1928. It had strange practices including daily mortification with a whip and the requirement that devotees turn over all their worldly goods and assets to the cult. By the 1990’s word was leaking out about intimidation, forced labor, and Opus Dei members being kept prisoner. Nevermind, Pope John Paul II had Balaguer canonized in 2002. In 1954, Sci-Fi writer, L. Ron Hubbard cynically started a cult called Scientology which he later admitted was a hoax. And although exposes are routinely mounted regarding this religion, the warnings seemingly are never heeded. Hubbard was so crafty that he said he had in fact started Scientology to bilk the gullible, but then, to his amazement, all of his writings turned out to be the truth. In 1982, L. Ron’s son, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., was interviewed on “20/20” telling horror stories about Scientology and his admitted role in its heinous practices. And in June of 1983, “Penthouse” magazine printed a 9000-word interview with Hubbard, Jr. about the inner workings of Scientology and its Nazi-like shenanigans. But either no one was listening, or, as detractors have alleged, people were scared to speak out lest they be punished or killed. In any case, Scientology is still alive and well. Yesterday, the New York Times printed a 2600-word article, “Defectors Say Church of Scientology Hides Abuse”. People who have left Scientology (and it ain’t easy) are now able to access Internet sites that cater to Scientology defectors who are disillusioned and broke. They are all talking to each other and publicly spilling the beans. So let's hope people are finally listening and that Scientology’s methods of intimidation and scare tactics no longer work. May I say that I absolutely believe every word ever printed about the evils of Scientology. I also believe that Scientology’s prime propagandists John Travolta and Tom Cruise are so frightened of what the church’s enforcers will put in print about them--all of which would be true because taped confessions are part of Scientology’s “auditing” methods and they are archived just in case of defection—and they are toeing the party line until death them do part. Scientology morphed from being a laughably on-the-cheap do-it-yourself psychotherapy system in 1954, into having mega-buck centers and opulent so-called churches around the world. I remember seeing pictures of the original e-meters that looked like nothing more complicated than two cans on a string. After years of living on a boat, being on the run, fleeing from tax audits, fraud claims, being addicted to drugs, sex and his own self-aggrandizement, L. Ron Hubbard died on a ranch in California in 1986. David Miscavige, who now controls Scientology, said of L. Ron Hubbard in 1987 that Hubbard had deliberately discarded his body to conduct his research in spirit form and was now living on a planet a galaxy away. L. Ron, Jr., who used the pseudonym Ron DeWolf for years because he was scared of what Scientology might do to him, made a big bucks settlement with Scientology in 1986 in order to pay his medical bills. He signed papers prepared by Scientology, retracted things he’d said previously and agreed to comment no further. He died in 1991. Yesterday's NYT article about Scientology is very good. The “Penthouse” article which can still be accessed on the Internet—“Penthouse Interview With L. Ron Hubbard, Jr.”-- is an eye-popper. Miscavige and everyone who has anything to lose by negative Scientology PR, say all the negative stories are a pack of lies. They say the folks who have defected and have lost years of their lives and all of their money are liars. Film director Paul Haggis who was in Scientology for years says he has now come to believe that what the defectors say is the truth. If Nancy Cartwright (the voice of Bart Simpson) ever pulls her earnings out of Scientology, the whole house of cards may tumble down. Maybe she, Tom Cruise and John Travolta at long last will have the guts to defect.

Washington Post Headline aTad Overstated

This morning, the Washington Post featured this head: “Democrats’ Ethical Lapses Could Threaten Hold on Power” In the first place, the Democrats haven’t had a “hold” on power since the Clinton era. When Obama became president, the Democrats merely gave the nation a chance to bring to an end the deadly stranglehold the Republicans had on the federal government. But secondly, even if the Dems had a hold on power, how come the recent ethical lapses in the Democrat Party were endangering that hold? For eight years, from 2000 through 2008, the Republican Party’s egregious ethical lapses did not threaten its hold on power. And those ethical lapses were not the puny ones the WP is referring to today in the Democrat Party. The Republican Party’s ethical lapses included an unnecessary war in Iraq; granting unheard of powers to the executive branch of government; lies and cheating in the Justice Department; lies and cheating in the State Department; lies and cheating in the Defense Department. When the WP talks about the Democrat’s gaining the upper hand, it is referring to the Dems’ reclaiming control of Congress in 2006. However, the Repubs’ never turned loose its control of the federal government until Obama was elected. Which control, let us be clear, was gained by the Repub’s using illegal means of coercion, wiretapping, threats, blackmail, and giving itself wartime powers never intended to be used when the US mainland was not threatened by war. And even the WP had to admit that the ethical lapses it referred to were “not as severe” as the Repubs’ lapses--Jack Abramoff going to jail, for one, and Mark Foley putting the make on Senate pages, for another. But let’s face it, the media seems to be only too willing to jump on the Repub bandwagon when the party cries “foul” or makes up bogus charges. It’s as though the media is still scared to death the Repubs will exact retribution if it doesn’t toe the GOP party line.

How Do We Know Karl Rove Is Lying?

First, as is my wont, and, as I see it, my duty, let me remind you: Everything that is going wrong right now in the world, in the USA, in your city, in my city and in our back yards is due to the malfeasance, misconduct, and crimes of the Bush administrations from 2000 through 2008. Do not forget that. There, that done, back to Karl Rove. Karl Rove, the man with the title of being President George W. Bush’s senior adviser and deputy chief of staff during the Bush years, has just come out with a book, “Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight”. Now let’s all stop being coy and acting like we didn’t know what was going on while GWB held the title “president”. For eight years, Karl Rove was the president of the United States. So when Rove writes a book which is a defense of George W. Bush’s presidency, Rove is defending himself. And how do we know there are major lies in Rove’s book? The book is by Karl Rove, what other evidence do we need? But also, Rove is telling the same lies he told while he was president and, according to the review in the New York Times this morning by Peter Baker, apparently Rove has added some new lies. “For the most part,” Baker writes of Rove’s memoir, “his book is an unapologetic defense of Mr. Bush and his presidency, and takes aim at Democrats, the news media and others for what he describes as hypocrisy, deceit and vanity.” According to Baker, Rove writes that “the White House” genuinely believed the reports about Weapons of Mass Destruction. He asks and answers the question, “Would the Iraq War have occurred without W.M.D.? I doubt it...Congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without the W.M.D. threat. The Bush administration itself would probably have sought other ways to constrain Saddam, bring about regime change, and deal with Iraq’s horrendous human rights violations.” No, Mr. Rove, that last sentence is total sophistry—it sounds plausible but it is total bullshit. The first goal of the Bush administration was to take over Iraq by force. The second goal of the Bush administration was to kill Saddam Hussein because he was powerful. The rhetoric about regime change and human rights violations was thrown into the mix to justify attacking a small country that the US feared might pose a threat in the future and whose oil we wanted immediately. When Rove says “the White House” he means Karl Rove and Rove’s minions. But even if he meant George W. Bush, it rings hollow. GWB could not and did not think a cogent thought for eight years, due to being an idiot and to his medications for, among other things, being an idiot. Rove asks and answers two more questions: “So, then, did Bush lie us into war? Absolutely not.” Baker reports that Rove says the White House had only a “weak response” to the harmful allegation, which became “a poison-tipped dagger aimed at the heart of the Bush presidency.” “So who was responsible for the failure to respond? I was. I should have stepped forward, rung the warning bell and pressed for full-scale response. I didn’t. Preoccupied with the coming campaign and the pressure of the daily schedule in the West Wing, I did not see how damaging this assault was.” Oh please! That’s not the point. The point is, and Rove should have said, “I did not see how damaging this assault was to my plan. I thought we’d bamboozled the entire world." Dubya supposedly is writing a memoir called “Decisions”. But it’s not out yet. The ghostwriters no doubt needed to see how the ventriloquist would rewrite history before tackling the dummy’s version. Now that Rove’s book is out, The Decider’s deciders can decide which lies to print and which lies to let lie.

Frank Rich, David Barstow...And a Nutty World

As usual, the New York Times op/ed column by Frank Rich this morning (“The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged”) was easy reading. It was about the Republican Tea Party. And because Rich mentioned David Barstow’s “chilling” investigation of the Tea Party--Barstow’s NYT article (“Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right”) was printed in the NYT on February 16th—I downloaded the Barstow piece. It was not easy reading. Not because the writing is turgid...quite the opposite, the writing is clear and a very good read. But the subject matter is hard to get through. Although there are, of course, sane and thoughtful people who have allied themselves with the Tea Party because of frustration with the current lack of leadership and disorganization in the Republican Party. But a majority of the Tea Party constituents are (as Dorothy Rabinowitz noted in the Wall Street Journal) “conspiracy theorists, anti-government zealots, 9/11 truthers and other cadres of the obsessed and deranged”. And that’s hard to read about. Barstow says, “the Tea Party movement has become a platform for conservative populist discontent”. But it’s also a lunatic fringe dump site where proponents of militias taking over Washington, DC meet with “No Government Whatsoever” nutcases and talk about the morality and beauty of dying for one’s country and say things like, “I’m cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show”, “you’re either with us or you’re the enemy”, and they chew over the possibility of fighting “another civil war”. And underneath all the rhetoric and bombast, under all the gun-totin’ bluster and ill-thought-out mechanics of getting rid of all government agencies is the very real racism that still exists in the United States. One faction of the Tea Party is a core of folks who despise Barack Obama just because he is black and who want to have done with all government because we now have a black president who has tainted our government forever. It’s not as though the Tea Party has co-opted the Republican Party and has an agenda for a plan to democratically change things. The Tea Party's point is that they have guns, they are pissed and they will use their arms to make their point if given half the chance. Recently, Louis Menand noted in an article in the “The New Yorker” magazine about mental illness and the trend of mental health professionals toward pathologizing depression, that being depressed is not a disease but a very sane response to a crazy world. The emergence of the Tea Party is major evidence of how crazy our world is.

Evan Bayh Tells Why

Frank Rich was off yesterday so I opted for reading Evan Bayh’s (D-IN), “Why I’m Leaving the Senate” in the New York Times Op/Ed page. It was not nearly as amusing and incisive as a Rich report, and I pretty much knew what he was going to say: Times have changed, the Senate has changed, the Senators have changed, nothing is good and trustworthy anymore, the Senate needs to be reformed, the Senators need to be reformed, there’s no honest dialogue anymore. And yeah, that’s what he said. One line actually made me laugh out loud: “In my final 11 months,” Bayh said, “I will advocate for the reforms that will help Congress function as it once did, so that our generation can do what Americans have always done: convey to our children, and our children’s children, an America that is stronger, more prosperous, more decent and more just.” Well Evan, that’s going to be tough, because thanks to the Bush administration, America is not stronger, more prosperous, more decent or more just. But after 12 years of service to your country, it’s understandable that you just want to get gone. And I am sincerely sorry to see you go. (Expect a major digression here.) While reading the Bayh-Why, I was reminded of another Why-I-Left article. The two writers have little in common except their need to put distance between themselves and a political party they held dear. Back in the middle 1950’s, I was working for a Mutual Funds outfit in New York run by Gabriel Gladstone. Oddly, there are quite a few Gabriel Gladstones in the world, but this one would be in his 80’s, if he’s still alive. I was the office secretary and sometime-Assistant Trader in the Over-the-Counter stocks department. The Assistant Trader part was a joke. The Trader was a young hotshot named Jerry Kohn. He took me down to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange one time and I could not believe the shouting and yelling and shenanigans of the stock traders on the floor. Oh my! What fun! It was thrilling! But our little operation merely had a tiny room for the OTC trades which was equipped with six toggle switches connecting us with six big Wall Street firms. I can remember only one of them: Kidder, Peabody. Jerry was awesome, I watched him making trades and working the toggles like piano keys and I marveled. But Jerry couldn’t man the toggles all the time, so when he needed a break, I was elected to sit in the hot-seat. I didn’t know anything about buying and selling stocks, but I loved the drama. One time I bought when I should have sold. There were specific things you had to say to the big-guys down on Wall Street (or there were, I have no idea what it’s like now) depending on whether you were buying or selling. I got it turned around. Jerry came back from lunch just in time to save my sorry ass. We also had a few mutual funds salesmen who weren’t in the office much. One of them was a guy named Bernie—I was always relieved when he’d go out on sales calls because he was annoying. He was in his late twenties but acted like an eager, ingratiating nervous little shmo. He gave me agita. I think he and Gabe had known each other years before in Brooklyn. Gabe had the most wonderful speaking voice. He sounded like actor Malachi Throne or maybe José Ferrer. He could have made a living with his voice. Gabe was full of ideas. He had one idea I thought was grand. He decided we should start a monthly magazine about current affairs, mutual funds and OTC stocks. In memory, it seems the idea became fact in the blink of an eye. I remember Gabe talking about starting a magazine he wanted to call Prospectus and all of a sudden we had a dummy copy in our hands. Gabe wasn’t worried about what would go in the first issue because he was turning over the whole issue to an article by one man. The title of this mega-piece was, “Why I Left the Communist Party”, to be written by Howard Fast. This was a blockbuster. It was the first article by Fast appearing anywhere explaining his decision to leave the Communist Party. My memory is that Fast came up to the office a number of times and at least once was on a Saturday. I remember doing a lot of typing and listening to him talk. I think we did the article by him speaking into a Dictaphone and my transcribing it. I thought Fast was very impressive and a really nice guy. Impressive, he was. He had been an important member of the Communist Party. He had written novels and screenplays and he’d been blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities gang. AND, he hadn’t named names—I loved him for that. So I typed this mega-piece—25,000 words—into existence. And the first issue came out with a cover screaming WHY I LEFT THE COMMUNIST PARTY by HOWARD FAST. And then the ceiling fell in. The SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) got wind of the magazine and they came in to investigate. It turned out Gabe had used over 50% of his capital for this magazine that had nothing to do with operating a mutual funds venture, which was a big no-no. We were shut down overnight. Sometime in the 1960’s Bernie came back into my life. Well, his name came back into my life. The first time I read gossip about Bernie Cornfeld, I plotzed. I had to sit down and take deep breaths. I knew Bernie had taken off for Paris sometime in 1955 and I was tickled to see him go. But, OMG! He had moved to Geneva, started a mutual funds company called Investors Overseas Services and he had gotten very rich. I began to see pictures of Bernie Cornfeld in magazines. Sure enough, it was my Bernie, a little older but my Bernie none-the-less. I had the feeling he was still annoying, ingratiating and a shmo, but when you’re rich, those things don’t matter as much. When IOS was flying high, it had over 25,000 salesmen. About Bernie Cornfeld, Wiki says: “Cornfeld owned a villa in Geneva, a 12th-century chateau in France, a house in Belgravia, London, and a mansion in Hollywood, as well as a permanent suite in a New York City hotel and his own fleet of private planes. He is quoted as saying, "I had mansions all over the world, I threw extravagant parties. And I lived with ten or twelve girls at a time." He had romances with Victoria Principal; Heidi Fleiss; Alana Hamilton (née Collins - a model and former spouse of George Hamilton who subsequently married Rod Stewart); and Princess Ira of Fürstenberg. “Cornfeld settled in Beverly Hills and moved in a circle of movie industry people. He lived in the Grayhall mansion, built in 1909 and at one time leased by Douglas Fairbanks. Known for his playboy lifestyle, Cornfeld numbered among his acquaintances Victor Lownes, Tony Curtis, and Hugh Hefner, at whose Playboy Mansion he visited and attended parties.” Who in the world would have thought!? By 1967 I was looking to find a new way to make a living. Working as a secretary at magazines like Interiors, Show and Holiday had lost its luster. I still had friends who were connected with Wall Street. One of them who worked at Kidder was amused to give me a WATs tie-line number (now, it would be an 800-number) that was a direct connection to Bernie Cornfeld in Geneva. I thought, what the hell, maybe he can help me get a stockbroker’s license. So one fine day in the beginning of June 1967 I dialed the number and within seconds I heard Bernie say, “Hello”. I said Hello back and identified myself. There was some crackling on the line, then Bernie said, “Hey! How you doin’? What’s up?“ I told him I was thinking of getting back in the Wall Street biz, so I was giving him a call. He said, “You know what? It’s really great to talk to you, but the phones are going nuts here, everything is going nuts here. A war just started in Israel.” Then we lost our connection. It was the first day of the Six Day War. That’s the last time I spoke to Bernie Cornfeld. He was an early version of our Bernie Madoff. In 1969 there were complaints that he’d pocketed funds from IOS and in 1973 he was charged with fraud. Wiki says, “Cornfeld returned to Beverly Hills, living less ostentatiously than in his previous years. He developed an obsession for health foods and vitamins, renounced red meat and seldom drank alcohol. In his last years he was a chairman of a land development firm in Arizona and also owned a real estate company in Los Angeles. He died in 1995.” Howard Fast lived to the age of 89 and died in 2003. I have no memory at all of why Howard Fast had left the Communist Party. And I’m not going to remember why Evan Bayh is quitting the Senate, I’ll only remember that their parties of choice had become onerous and weren’t fulfilling their dreams anymore. If Evan Bayh would be offended by being in the same sentence with Howard Fast, that’s unfortunate. I can only say I would rather be in the same room with Howard Fast than with anyone in the Tea Party or with Sarah Palin.

All These Self-Serving Apologies, Do I Care?

Public figures screw around, then they call a news conference on TV and say, “I am soooo sorry!” Or sports figures use forbidden drugs, are caught and go on TV and say “It wasn’t illegal when I used it, but I’m sooooo sorry I did it!” For 13 minutes, the unparalleled golfer Tiger Woods publicly apologized on TV last night for the indiscretions that have ruined his life. Why do these folks apologize to us? Actually, I cannot get enough of the gossip! When famous, rich, and/or famously rich assholes are caught doing juicy things that either are illegal or immoral or just plain tacky it’s delicious. I will pretty much watch the debacle unfold before my eyes on TV and glory in it. But what’s with the public apologies? They haven’t done anything personal to me. Do they think I really care? I do not care. And what do these morons expect will happen after a public apology? They want their pre-fall-from-grace lifestyle back, which includes product endorsements, idolatrous love from supporters, perks such as the ability to run for higher political office than the one they currently enjoy, and sports figures want to play their game at their level of competence before the sky fell in. Will the public apology do the trick? Will these idiots get their former lives back? No. In an inverse ratio, as much fun as the public airing of the dirty laundry was, the apology is just as boring. So why do they do it? Because people living off the money generated by these apologees want their lives back too and they are giving their sullied clients profoundly bad advice. It’s not that I want to see Tiger Woods’ life go down the toilet because he couldn’t keep his pants zipped. It’s that I don’t care. Woods and all the other apologees were willingly complicit in marketing themselves as entertainment. And now they have broken the rule for entertainers: You can’t entertain if you are boring. Apologizing is boring. Tiger Woods has bored me to tears since the day after the car crash. The moment Senator John Edwards got caught sneaking a visit to his secret baby-mommy was wonderful entertainment. But then it all went downhill. Hearing details of an indiscretion is boring. I don’t care how or why an assignation is made. I only care about the moment the idiot is caught out. Apologies are boring. Don’t tell me you’re sorry. I don’t care. Just go out and hit home runs. Go out and make impossible putts. Go out and wow your constituents with your oratory. But do not bore me. And if your handlers and agents don’t believe they can sell your ass for endorsements, well gee! That’s tough! But I don’t care. If you can no longer entertain me in the way you used to entertain me, then make room for the next guy. The point is, I don’t care about your personal life. I only care about being entertained. And after the reality show of your public disgrace is over, I don’t care about how or whether you can cope. I don’t care about how or whether you are being rehabilitated. I don’t care about how or whether you have ruined your life. Entertain me or don't. BUT DO NOT BORE ME!!!!!

So Sick of the God-Whiners

Why is God doing this to me? What did I do to deserve this? If there is a God, how can he make innocent people suffer? Whimper...moan. Listen up! All the suffering in the world is caused either by random acts of nature and/or mankind’s stupid and cruel tendencies. And now that we’ve gotten so smart about being able to influence nature, many of nature’s random acts of destruction are aided and abetted by mankind’s malfeasance. Who released radiation into the atmosphere without knowing what the effects would be? It surely was not God. Who keeps testing nuclear weapons even though we know it causes cancer and creates havoc with our auto-immune system? Not God. Who has been using virus- and germ-killers willy-nilly without realizing that by killing one virulent strain of disease another will take its place? Most assuredly it was not God. Who lets every idiot who has mayhem in his heart have a weapon that is capable of destroying hundreds of people? Not God. Who lets the pharmaceutical firms peddle killer-drugs like candy? Not God. When a child is maimed or killed by a drunk driver it is the act of a human being at the height of his or her wantonness and ignorance, not God. If it makes you feel better to blame God for your suffering, or if it’s nice to think He has singled you out for special favors, go ahead...the positive force in our lives that is God doesn’t really care. But the one thing you can be assured God won’t do is reach into your life and personally manipulate it like a puppet on a string. Because the way you handle your life and its demands is your job, not God’s. The other irritatingly silly thing to listen to is nonsense about the devil. The devil didn’t make anyone do anything, ever. The devil is a convenient construct to explain mankind’s tendency to be callow, mean and malicious. But our own nastiness has sufficed since the beginning of time to create mischief and malevolence. We never have needed the machinations of an überbastard to inflict pain. And here’s one more nauseating and absurd question from the God-whiners: Why doesn’t God stop all the horror and pain on earth? The answer is: We have the God-given human-kindness, compassion and smarts to end much of the suffering on our planet. It’s our job, not God’s. If we don’t want our world anymore, it’s not God’s job to save it.

Frank Rich Is Right and He’s Wrong

Frank Rich was right on January 31 when he said we must never forget (and consequently, we must ever remind) that the Bush administration caused all the problems the United States and the world is battling now and for decades to come. Therefore, I will constantly remind, like right now: DO NOT FORGET, the Repubs caused every problem President Barack Obama is having to deal with. And additionally, the Repubs have no right whatsoever to blame anything on Obama. And they have no right to complain about one single thing...the Republican Party caused ALL of our problems. That done, I must point out that today Frank Rich is ignoring a conspicuous element of the Sarah Palin phenomena in his New York Times op/ed piece--"Palin's Cunning Sleight of Hand". Rich said, “Liberals had a blast mocking Sarah Palin last weekend when she was caught addressing the Tea Party Convention with a cheat sheet scrawled on her hand. Even the president’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, couldn’t resist getting into the act and treated a White House briefing to a Palin hand gag of his own. “Yet the laughter rang hollow. You had to wonder if Palin, who is nothing if not cunning, had sprung a trap. She knows all too well that the more the so-called elites lampoon her, the more she cements her cred with the third of the country that is her base. Her hand hieroglyphics may not have been speaking aids but bait.” That is no doubt true. I’m not persuaded that Palin could have come up with the idea, but she surely is canny enough to have latched onto the ploy once it was presented to her. Rich went on to say, “The Palin shtick has now become the Republican catechism, parroted by every party leader in Washington... Incredibly enough, this message is gaining traction...The GOP populism is all bunk, of course. Republicans in office now, as well as Palin during her furtive public service in Alaska, have feasted on federal pork, catered to special interests, and pursued policies indifferent to recession-battered Americans. And yet they’re getting away with their populist masquerade.” Rich seems to think that Palin, with the backing of the Republican Tea Party, is a force to be reckoned with, even though she and the Tea Party have no substance. Rich quoted David Broder to back up his fear: ”The Dean of the Beltway press corps, the columnist David Broder, cited Palin’s “pitch-perfect populism” in hailing her as “a public figure at the top of her game” in Thursday’s Washington Post.” Calm down guys. Take a deep breath. Rich noted that in her question-and-answer session last weekend, Palin’s “only concrete program for dealing with America’s pressing problems” was to say, “It would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again.” Oddly, that may be exactly what has happened--a divine intervention. Rich and many other politicians, writers and commentators have apparently forgotten that Sarah Palin--the populist paragon the Republicans are placing stage-center as the embodiment of all things GOP, past and present--is incapable of hewing to any ideology except her own self-interest. If God has picked Sarah Palin to lead the Republican party, as she herself has declared, then God has chosen someone who will inevitably betray her minders, her writers, her party and her supporters because it is her nature to do so. Sarah Palin is this era’s “Face in the Crowd”. She is our Arthur Godfrey. She is Joe McCarthy and OJ Simpson. Sarah Palin is fatally flawed and she is powerless against these flaws. She must break faith and desert, she must foul her nest, she must implode and destroy everything in her path. It's her nature.

Parsing Mary Matalin

Describing the form, part of speech and function of the word matalin. Matalin is the feminine form of the noun gasbag. However, matalin can be verbized, as in: matalined. As a verb, matalined is used in much the same way as scorned, derided, or disrespected. The function of the noun matalin is as the subject of a sentence: “A prominent Bush administration matalin was on CNN last night pooh-poohing global warming.” The function of the verbized form of matalin is to express the action in a sentence: “Mary Matilan matalined the entire idea of global warming last night on CNN, as is her wont.” However, to parse is not necessarily to understand. And I will never understand Mary Matalin. As a Republican strategist, as a colleague of Karl Rove’s and member of the ultra-conservative war-mongering WHIG (White House Iraq Group) which lied the Iraq War into being, as the editor of the Swift Boat Veterans book that maligned John Kerry, and as the far-right virulently-biased political contributor on CNN who toes the Cheney partyline, I will never understand Mary Matalin. How did she get to be the mendacious Bush administration-apologist gasbag that she is? I can only imagine she was infected with a toxic Lee Atwater virus in 1987 and never recovered.

Palin Faction Charmed By Hubris and Ignorance

Granted, seeing a rube outsmart city slickers can be satisfying. But how long will it be before Sarah Palin publicly turns on her newfound Tea Party supporters to show she’s slyer and more canny than they are. Perhaps Palin thought she’d be seen as cute and naive when, inevitably, the cameras would show she had used her left hand as a crib sheet during her speech at the Tea Party Convention last Saturday night. And sure enough, we’re being treated to pics and videos of Palin glancing down at her left hand where she had scrawled the words “energy”, “tax cuts” and “lift American spirits”. We’ll never know if Palin thought this ploy through and decided to use it as a gimmick to enhance the ”lovable hick” character she likes to portray; or was she so arrogant as to think no one would notice because she was playing her “dazzling personality” role? In the end, it really doesn’t matter, because today she’s put on her “gutsy Sarah against the mean media” face and she says she will fight them by mocking them. There are things we know about Sarah Palin by observing her. She will never become thoroughly knowledgeable about the economy and foreign policy because she can’t. She cannot study and bone up in any real way, just as George W. Bush was incapable of deep thought, study or analysis. And just as GWB knew he wouldn’t have to do any of the heavy lifting involved in being president because others would do it for him, so Sarah Palin assumes she will get by on her looks, quick-study-and-forget-it performances and that the wonks will forcefeed whatever information she needs. Sarah Palin is sure in her bones that all the really powerful people in Washington, DC are also faking it. What would be the point of studying and learning and keeping all that info in your head if you didn’t have to? That would be absurd. To paraphrase a line in “A Thousand Clowns”: Sarah Palin’s superficiality runs deep. Fortunately, time is on the side of the folks who view the possibility of a Sarah Palin presidential candidacy as a monumental disaster. In time, Sarah Palin betrays everyone--husband, family, friends, political allies, running mates, voters, minders. It's a character flaw and she's powerless in its thrall. It's her nature. Who among her supporters today will be in her camp in six months? A year? My guess--few, if any.

Palin Says She May Run for Prez in 2012

Saturday night, just before giving the keynote speech at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, TN, Sarah Palin told Chris Wallace on Fox News regarding her run for president in 2012, “If I believe that that is the right thing to do for our country and for the Palin family...it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country...I won’t close the door that perhaps could be open for me in the future.” Here’s what is bad about that idea. It’s not so much that Palin is ignorant. It’s not so much that Palin has never for one minute thought about what’s good for the country and always puts her desires of the moment first and foremost, it’s not so much that Palin is self-absorbed and childish, it’s not so much that Palin can’t run her own life intelligently, let alone run the most powerful country in the world. Although all of above is important, what is bad about the Tea Party giving Sarah Palin any credence whatsoever is that she is a willing tool. The United States has already been through eight years of having another ignorant, narcissistic, immature, ego-driven willing tool as President in the person of George W. Bush. And the biggest problem with his presidency was not his personality quirks; it was that he was an ignorant know-nothing loser wanna-be and he had to be advised and controlled by a cadre of advisers who drove the USA into bankruptcy, wrongly pushed the country into an unnecessary war, and gave extraordinary powers to themselves. It is astonishing that yet another group of Republicans is courting yet another, attractive, intelligence-challenged, arrogant, vain, puppet who will read prepared speeches and do as the advisers say or else. Else? Else be put on medications that will ensure compliance. One can only wonder WHY? Are there no knowledgeable, intelligent, thoughtful, trustworthy, reliable, steady, honest persons in the Republican Party? What’s with the attraction to uninformed, grandiose, borderline sociopaths like George W. Bush and Sarah Palin?

More Blackwater Crimes and Misdemeanors

First, let it be said that yesterday Frank Rich wrote in his Sunday Op/Ed piece that it is ridiculous for President Obama to adhere to, and I quote, “the Beltway’s unquestioned cliché that one year after a new president takes office he is required to stop blaming his predecessor for the calamities left behind...who dreamed up that canard?” Amen! Who did dream that up? And for sure...I will NEVER stop blaming the George W. Bush administration for the mess the whole world is in and will be in for years and years to come. One of those messes is the unnecessary BushWar in Iraq and all of its fallout, one example of which is the disaster caused by the US Department of Defense’s use of Blackwater mercenaries. The New York Times reported this morning: “The Justice Department is investigating whether officials of Blackwater Worldwide tried to bribe Iraqi government officials in hopes of retaining the firm’s security work in Iraq after a deadly shooting episode in 2007, according to current and former government officials.” The NYT’s “so-what” paragraph (which is the retelling of what we already know for the benefit of morons who don’t read the news) reported that, “A federal judge in December dismissed criminal charges against five former Blackwater guards implicated in the episode, but Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. recently announced that the Obama administration would appeal that decision.” Regarding the latest inquiry into Blackwater shenanigans, the Justice Department has obtained two documents from the State Department regarding alleged Blackwater bribes. Document One is a handwritten note in which a Blackwater representative tells a senior official at the American Embassy that Blackwater had hired an Iraqi lawyer to make “compensation payments” to the 2007 shooting victims. The other document is an email response from a senior Embassy official warning Blackwater not to bribe the Iraqi government. The Iraqi lawyer in question is Jaafar al-Mousawi, who was the chief prosecutor in the trial of Saddam Hussein. According to the NYT, Mousawi said that in February 2008 he had worked with top Blackwater officials to spend up to $1 million to compensate the Nisour Square victim’s families and that he had consulted with Iraq Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki about the payments. The NYT also said: “According to the document, as described by the two government officials, the Blackwater official said the firm had hired the lawyer hoping that the lawyer’s close ties to top Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, would help Blackwater obtain a license to continue operating in Iraq." Oh yes, indeedy! Yummy stuff! And may Blackwater (now known as Xe Services) and its religious zealot founder Erik Prince and his far-right religious nut pal, James Dobson, who was a spiritual mentor to George W. Bush, all rot in hell!

Will “Why a Saint?” Beat Out “Game Change”?

I tried to buy the new political tell-all “Game Change” at Borders yesterday and they were sold out. Maybe I’ll lower my sights (or raise them, depending on your view) and buy “Why a Saint?” I give you saint-watcher, intimate of popes and writer Monsignor Slawomir Oder. Today, Reuters tells us a thing or two about Pope John Paul II (the current Pope’s predecessor), according to Oder. “'Pope John Paul II flagellated himself regularly to imitate Christ’s suffering', according to a book published Tuesday by the Vatican official in charge of the process that could lead to the pope’s sainthood. The book says that John Paul, who died in 2005, engaged in a practice known as mortification, the self-infliction of pain in order to feel closer to God, whipping himself with a belt that he kept in his closet.” Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the chief honcho of the cause for John Paul’s canonization, says that whipping yourself is “an instrument of God’s perfection”. So, all you guys who thought my posts about “Opus Dei” were nonsense, listen up. “Opus Dei” (God’s work), is the cult founded in 1928 by Jose Maria Escriva, a monsignor in Spain who, among other esoteric beliefs promoted the practices of beating oneself and wearing a hairshirt (cilice) to show how much one loved God. “Opus Dei” has roughly 85,000 lay members worldwide and about 3,000 in the United States. Pope John Paul II thought the “Opus Dei”cult was so marvelous and so filled with pious people who exemplified the Christian ideal that he canonized Jose Maria Escriva in 2002--an act which, by me, was as insane as Escriva. We are told by Oder that, “Pope John Paul II whipped himself with a belt, even on vacation, and slept on the floor as acts of penitence and to bring him closer to Christian perfection”. Well, here’s my point: If these religious guys want to feel Christ’s pain on the cross (which, of course, they can’t because they are not Christ), but if that’s what this crapola is all about, then I would not question their religious zeal in going out and being crucified. But whipping and hairshirts? Please! It’s too close to autoeroticism for me to equate it with Christian perfection. And as to that, has any research been done on whether all this whipping leads to the perfection of an awesome orgasm? But back to the current Pope Benedict XVI who was called Pope John Paul’s “Enforcer”. Pope Benedict wants to canonize the guy who canonized the nutjob Escriva. I know it’s mean to find humor in the crazy acts of crazy people, but this latest pronouncement from the Vatican has me ROTFLMFAO!

Biden and the Blackwater Appeal

On Saturday, January 23rd, Vice President Joe Biden assured Iraqi leaders that the dismissal of manslaughter charges against Blackwater mercenaries for their violent and unjustified attack against Iraqi civilians in 2007 would be appealed. On January 2nd, Federal District Court Judge Ricardo M. Urbina had dismissed all charges against the Blackwater thugs in an unusually detailed and critical ruling, which teachers of criminal law say makes an appeal highly unlikely. Judge Urbina’s ruling came about, he said, because there had been a “reckless violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights”. Ugh! Can of worms! The judge may well have felt he had no choice but to rule as he did in the matter. And Biden may well have been advised to pledge that the judge’s ruling would be appealed in order to pave the way to withdraw combat troops in August after the March 7th parliamentary elections in Iraq. But I am fairly sure there will be no appeal. Well, no appeal as such. A lot of rhetoric will be spewed...I mean, we’re talking Joe Biden here...of course rhetoric will be spewed. And Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is a formidable bullshitter who, out of one side of his mouth decries any interference by the Americans in Iraq, while out of the other side of his mouth, cries and begs for help, aid and justice from the Americans when situations become difficult to control. But I will bet (and I would like to be wrong) that no legal appeal will be brought and that the ruling will not be reversed. But what with the current Republican Tea Party assholes feeling they now have a clear and unimpeded path to controlling American politics because the Dems lost an important election in Massachusetts recently, I would like to remind the TP folks about a few things in the Republican recent past. The entire financial crisis the US is currently experiencing was brought about by the Republicans. The stupid and unnecessary war in Iraq, which has bankrupted the US and sullied its reputation throughout the world, was brought about by the Republicans. And it was the Republicans who decided that George W. Bush--a ne’er-do-well, alcoholic loser with a messianic belief that he was sent by God-- should be president of the United States. And it was this same narcissistic silly twat, known as “Dubya”, who welcomed and received spiritual counseling from James Dobson, the founder of “Focus on the Family”. And it was this spiritual advisor of GWB who was a close pal of Erik Prince, the wealthy far-right Christian fanatic and former Navy SEAL who built a training camp for mercenaries in Camden County, North Carolina, called Blackwater. Dobson and Prince had a vision for the course Christians would need to take. Dobson said, “I stand in a long tradition of Christians who believe that rulers may forfeit their divine mandate when they systematically contravene the divine moral law. We may be rapidly approaching the sort of Rubicon that our spiritual forebears faced Choose Caesar or God. I take no pleasure in this prospect, I pray against it. But it is worth noting that such times have historically been rejuvenating for the faith.” Dobson wrote and Prince agreed that the United States was heading for “a showdown between church and state” and a “morally justified revolution”. So when the Bush administration couldn’t interest enough people to go to Iraq to fight its BushWar, they suited up the Blackwater mercenaries to make up for our lack of troops and they sent Blackwater hoodlums to fight beside our soldiers and be representatives of the United States. In that circumstance, the Blackwater enforcers marauded, murdered and created mayhem. The above is by way of saying: LEST WE FORGET. And now that the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party is bloviating and bragging and in general sounding like Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Erik Prince and James Dobson at their deluded worst and lying best, one wonders, where are Condi and Dubya and what are they up to? And how is Blackwater doing under its new name, Xe? Have you war-mongering morons got any new wars to sell? Or as William Kristol said in his 1997 Project for the New American Century manifesto--which gave credence to starting wars in little countries where the US wanted to usurp resources--are there any “regimes hostile to our interests and values” you guys would like to invade and overrun for the good of the Republican Tea Party?

Dems “Caught Napping”? Not The Problem

The New York Times reports this morning that Obama’s senior advisor David Axelrod said the Dems “got caught napping” regarding Republican Scott Brown’s win in the Massachusetts election to replace Senator Edward Kennedy. That’s not the problem. The problem was the Democrat candidate Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. Why the Dems would run an idiot like Coakley in an important election like this one is a total mystery. She barely campaigned and because she is an idiot no one wanted to back her and she had no money in her war chest. Therefore, she ran no polls to see how she was faring against her opponent. Not that she would have done anything remotely intelligent had she known she was losing so badly. Because whenever she was given the chance she made stupid remarks about Scott Brown and ridiculed his campaign. The problem is that the Dems never have considered the effect of the racist backlash, because they think if they don’t admit there is one, there won’t be one. Note to the Democratic Party: The United States is still a very racist country and millions of people cannot wait to vote against our black president in whatever way they can. The problem is that health care reform is NOT the main issue in most people’s minds today. The main issues are jobs and housing and keeping food on the table. How Obama and the Democratic Party could be so wrong about the main focus of the Democratic Party is beyond me. The young don’t worry about health care because they don’t get sick. The impoverished old and impoverished minorities figure they will get what they need by either going to the hospital and not paying their bill or going to an emergency room. That leaves the chronically ill and the rich who don’t want their coverage pared down. And those two demographics do not form a majority in the United States. Why is it that the top people in both the Republican and Democratic Parties have not got a clue about what the majority of people in the United States want? And why is it that when the top people in both the Republican and Democratic Parties hear rumbles from their constituents about what the voters want, they decide the people don’t know what’s good for them? Now that the people in Massachusetts have clearly said they would rather have a smart Republican Senator than a moronic Democrat, now that they have said they do not want another Kennedy Dynasty, now that they have said they want to give a black president a hint: they are not color blind, and now that they have said health care reform is not a top issue, IS ANYONE LISTENING?!

Ah! How Prudent Was I!

A few months ago, when it seemed a foregone conclusion that Sarah Palin would be a constant presence on TV, a friend of mine offered me a purple and green Power Popper multi-shot no-nonsense foam ball action gun so that I could safely shoot my TV set whenever the Palin visage appeared. I eagerly accepted the gift. And yesterday, Reuters confirmed that my preemptive act was very sensible indeed. A Reuters aviso announced that “Republican Sarah Palin is coming to your television -- as long as it's tuned to the Fox News Channel.” Palin has signed a multi-year deal to serve as a Fox News contributor. Reuters reported: “The move will help give Palin a large audience for her views as she mulls whether to run for president in 2012.” University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato said, "She can always resign the position to run for office." Palin confirmed that she has not ruled out a 2012 assault on the presidency. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is also on Fox News and also has not ruled out running for Prez in 2012. Although it would be an interesting coupling, I am assuming Palin would not again accept a VP slot in any candidacy ever again. I don't watch Fox News very often. But still, now that Palin has signed a TV contract, chances are that bits and snippets of her will be seen often on many channels and I will need my Power Popper to defend my liberal self.

Tiny Blackwater Payback But It’s Something

Last Thursday, the Associated Press reported that two former Blackwater contractors had been arrested on murder charges. This was not about the Nisour Square incident in which unarmed civilians were fired on and killed by Blackwater mercenaries in 2007 and which charges were dropped by Federal District Court Judge Ricardo M. Urbina on January 1, 2010. This was about a shooting of two Afghans in a traffic accident in Kabul last year. The FBI arrested Justin Cannon and Chris Drotleff, charging them with attempted murder of two people and injuring at least one other person in this recent episode of unwarranted violence by Blackwater employees. The AP also reported that federal prosecutors intend to charge another Blackwater contractor in the murder of an Iraqi guard in 2006. The North Carolina right-wing religious zealot training camp for mercenaries has changed its name from Blackwater to “Xe Services”.

Spare Me!

This morning, The New York Times has this headline: “Seeing Old Age as a Never-Ending Adventure”, accompanied by this teaser: “The limitations of age are being tossed aside by active men and women as the global travel and leisure industry races to keep up.” Then we read about a 90-year-old who sprained her ankle hiking in Africa and an 89-year-old who wing-walks. We are told, “Intensely active older men and women who have the means and see the twilight years as just another stage of exploration are pushing further and harder, tossing aside presumed limitations. And the global travel and leisure industry, long focused on youth, is racing to keep up.” Ah! There you go...”older men and women who have the means...” and “the global travel and leisure industry”--a marriage made in Shangri-la-la-la. The rest of us who don’t have the means...okay...MOST of the rest of us, see being in our 70’s and 80’s as a great trial and challenge. And not the least of the annoyances of being old is listening to the chatter that comes from old people. We fall into two main categories: The complainers about aches, pains, unloving children and grandchildren, and the determined Pollyannas who thank Jesus every five minutes for allowing them to live and chastise the complainers the other 55 minutes of every hour. A complainer-subset is the knot of elders that competes with each other to tell the most horrible story about hospital or caregiver abuses. And a thank-you-Jesus subset is the clot that competes with the aches-and-pains competers but end their horror stories with a smile and a testament that “God is good!” Although the upbeat and sunny article in the NYT doesn’t say so, you can trust me that the elders of means who are taking these daring and brave jaunts into the unknown also fall into the two major categories of old folks. They either complain like bloody hell or they smile bravely and cast sunny rays of shame on those who don’t smile bravely at infirmity and aging. And you can also trust me that these elders of means who are providing a nice profit to the global travel and leisure industry are also causing their travel keepers to load up themselves on antacids, mood elevators and blood pressure medicine because of the worry caused by the old folks. No matter how dimly I view this cheerleader view of the super-aged and their adventuring spirit, there is a golden lining. For the few weeks great-granny is tramping across the frozen Arctic, she’s out of her children’s and grandchildren’s hair and they are ecstatic. And for those same few weeks that some travel outfit has to pack medications in coolers, tend to throwing away adult diapers and search for lost dentures in snow drifts, the travel minders are making a very good living.

Good Question.

“What’s the Point of Leaving Things The Way They Are?” Murray Burns asks. I watched “A Thousand Clowns” for the umpteenth time last night. It’s the 1965 movie version of Herb Gardiner’s 1962 play about Murray Burns (Jason Robards), an affable and funny oddball who is raising his twelve-year-old genius nephew in New York City. But Murray has quit his job writing for the “Chuckles the Chipmunk” show and the Child Welfare Bureau has come to investigate his lifestyle. The movie is also about who is the bigger fool in this life—the shlemiel (jerk who always spills the soup) or the shlimazl (putz who always gets soup spilled on himself). And it’s about the balancing act between conforming but not losing our identity. Murray’s commentaries on life and interactions with people on the street are reminiscent of Jean Shepherd’s old 1950’s WOR radio show. Gardiner acknowledged he based Murray on Shepherd. It’s said Shepherd was not pleased. In any case, “A Thousand Clowns” has some very funny stuff even 50 years later. And the answer to Murray's question, “What’s the Point of Leaving Things The Way They Are?”? There is no point. We can’t leave things the way they are because they are always changing. But at least we can have the fun of shaking people up a little.

The Blackwater Travesty Lives On

A New York Times headline this morning: “Judge Drops Charges From Blackwater Deaths in Iraq”. And I’m not saying that Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of the Federal District Court in DC didn’t have good and proper reasons to drop the charges. Nor am I saying he was morally right. He may have had no choice. He wrote in a 90-page opinion that “the government’s mishandling of the case requires dismissal of the indictment against all the defendants.” What I’m saying is: these fuckups (aka mishandling) started when the Bush administration used a bunch of thugs from a camp of mercenaries trained at an outpost of religious fanatics in North Carolina because the Bush administration couldn’t get enough bonafide recruits to fight their bogus war in Iraq. And these fuckups have been so monumental that if there were a medal given for amoral behavior and bad decisions, medals would have to be presented to Blackwater’s Erik Prince/Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld/President George W. Bush. That’s all I’m saying. To recap this particular case and to quote from this morning’s article in the NYT, this ruling is about an incident in Iraq. “A shooting at Nisour Square (in Baghdad) frayed relations between the Iraqi government and the Bush administration and put a spotlight on the United States’ growing reliance on private security contractors in war zones. “Investigators concluded that the guards had indiscriminately fired on unarmed civilians in an unprovoked and unjustified assault near the crowded traffic circle on Sept. 16, 2007. The guards contended that they had been ambushed by insurgents and fired in self-defense. “A trial on manslaughter and firearm offenses was planned for February, and the preliminary proceedings had been closely watched in the United States and Iraq.” And now, because of what Judge Urbina has ruled as the government’s mishandling, he has dropped all charges. Daniel C. Richman, a former federal prosecutor who teaches criminal law at Columbia University, said it’s rare for a judge to issue such a long opinion at this early stage and since this opinion was based on factual findings not on interpretation, it would be hard to challenge on appeal. The religious zealot assholes at the North Carolina camp are overjoyed, of course. And please note, they have changed the name of their camp from Blackwater to “Xe Services”. The families of the people in Iraq who were murdered are furious. (Oh yeah...murdered! You bet! They were murdered!) Ali Khalaf, a traffic police officer who was on duty in Nisour Square when the Blackwater guards opened fire said, “There has been a cover-up since the very start. What can we say? They killed people. They probably gave a bribe to get released. This is their own American court system. “Some of the victims had been burned so badly, he said, that he and others had to use shovels to scoop their remains out of their vehicles. ‘I ask you, if this had happened to Americans, what would be the result? But these were Iraqis.’” Now that the whole world knows and recognizes the extent of the crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration, we would like to see Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld and the various Attorneys General rounded up and put in jail for the senseless war in Iraq, for the financial meltdown, for the arrogant corrupting of our justice system, for the trampling on the Constitution. But failing that, we would like to see the prosecution of someone or some group that symbolizes these wrongs. Such a symbol is Blackwater. Using Blackwater thugs as mercenaries fighting next to our brave soldiers and subverting our military system by their presence in Iraq and by their mindless violence, symbolizes all that was wrong about the war in Iraq, and all that was wrong in the Bush administration. And now, we won’t even get to see Blackwater, AKA XE Services brought to justice. Fah!