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Shocking news from the Vatican (not)

Thursday, February 21, 2013

When the news came out your truly opined that someone had something on Benny. Probably to no one’s surprise, turns out I was probably right:

A potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom – the report said – were being blackmailed by outsiders.

The pope’s spokesman declined to confirm or deny the report, which was carried by the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica.

The paper said the pope had taken the decision on 17 December that he was going to resign – the day he received a dossier compiled by three cardinals delegated to look into the so-called “Vatileaks” affair.

Last May Pope Benedict’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested and charged with having stolen and leaked papal correspondence that depicted the Vatican as a seething hotbed of intrigue and infighting.

According to La Repubblica, the dossier comprising “two volumes of almost 300 pages – bound in red” had been consigned to a safe in the papal apartments and would be delivered to the pope’s successor upon his election.

The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were “united by sexual orientation”.

In an apparent quotation from the report, La Repubblica said some Vatican officials had been subject to “external influence” from laymen with whom they had links of a “worldly nature”. The paper said this was a clear reference to blackmail.

It quoted a source “very close to those who wrote [the cardinal’s report]” as saying: “Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments.”

The seventh enjoins against theft. The sixth forbids adultery, but is linked in Catholic doctrine to the proscribing of homosexual acts.

La Repubblica said the cardinals’ report identified a series of meeting places in and around Rome. They included a villa outside the Italian capital, a sauna in a Rome suburb, a beauty parlour in the centre, and a former university residence that was in use by a provincial Italian archbishop.

Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said: “Neither the cardinals’ commission nor I will make comments to confirm or deny the things that are said about this matter. Let each one assume his or her own responsibilities. We shall not be following up on the observations that are made about this.”

He added that interpretations of the report were creating “a tension that is the opposite of what the pope and the church want” in the approach to the conclave of cardinals that will elect Benedict’s successor. Another Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, alluded to the dossier soon after the pope announced his resignation on 11 February, describing its contents as “disturbing”.

(via The Guardian)

No way that Ratzi didn’t know about all this. Good riddance in any event. Unfortunately there’s little likelihood that he’ll be replaced with someone who uses his infallibility to do the obvious: allow married priests, loosen up on the gay thing, let women into the priesthood, and get out of the bedroom. There will come a time when the faithful will have had enough, and these guys will find that their flock has gone to greener pastures.

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Republicans revenge comes up short

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

I didn’t realize it was Karl Marx that said “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”, but apparently it was. But being liberals here, we won’t reject the aphorism on that account. But what happens when history begins as farce? Well, it turns out that when Republicans are at work, it returns as failed parody.

Case in point is the farce we all witnessed last year when Todd Aiken and Richard Mourdock revealed to a startled world that rape cannot cause pregnancy. Lots of people disagreed, and the two gentlemen were relegated to that portion of purgatory to which Republicans are consigned when they say out loud what the rest of the Republicans keep to themselves.

So now the Republicans think they are going to get their revenge. A Colorado Democrat, Joe Salazar, speaking in favor of a gun control measure, responded to claims that it would prevent women from defending themselves from rapists by making the following inelegantly phrased statement:

“You don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around or if you feel like you’re in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop … pop a round at somebody,” he said.

(via TPMDC)

Of course he apologized, being a Democrat, when the Republicans hypocritically fussed (suddenly they care about rape victims), but the major difference between what he said and what Aiken and Mourdoch said is that it is completely true. The last I heard rape is committed at close quarters, so close in fact, that once the crime is initiated, it’s not likely to be all that easy for the victim to grab her gun, let alone get in position to shoot it. So, unlike in Hollywood, in the real world a gun is likely to prevent rape only if the intended victim has plenty of advance notice, both in space and time, and one must wonder how often reliable notice is given by rapists. On the other hand, a trigger happy woman, like her male counterparts, might just jump to conclusions, shoot first, and ask questions later, which is precisely the situation Salazar was describing. If you’ve been following Kagro X’s gun related tweets, you have no doubt been astonished at the frequency with which people exercising their second amendment rights kill their parents, spouses or children quite by accident. It is, therefore, not at all a stretch to believe that a woman who suspects that odd looking male of intent to rape might judge him guilty and “pop a round” at him. After all, if she’s carrying a gun around with her she’s already got a bit of a problem.

Of course, the crazy people of our nation might respond that there is a more rational response to the possibility that an innocent man might be killed than making it harder for crazy people to get guns. For instance, we might just expand those “stand your ground” laws to allow white people to kill someone who is looking at them funny or who, in the case of women, they think might be contemplating raping them. That takes care of the problem without infringing on second amendment rights or giving non-white people any ideas. After all, it worked with Trayvon Martin.

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Groton safe for now

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Property does not have rights. People have rights.

Justice Stewart’s trenchant phrases came to mind when I read this morning’s Day:

Groton – A discussion by the Town Council on allowing nonresident taxpayers to vote at referendums has inspired talk about possibly revising the town charter.

Groton Town Mayor Heather Bond Somers asked fellow councilors last week for input on the idea of nonresident voting because of phone calls she received during the most recent road $11.2 million road repair referendum.

“We have (people) that are property owners, that maintain their properties, that are paying taxes to the town, and yet they are not allowed to vote in a referendum that affects the town,” Somers said at last week’s council meeting.

Nonresident taxpayers have been barred from voting at town referendums since 2009 based on an opinion from town attorney Michael Carey. It appears a language change during charter revisions in 2008 led to that opinion. A 2000 opinion on the same question, prior to charter changes, elicited the opposite response.

Somers said she wondered how fair the rule was considering there are others, such as Navy personnel, living in town with voting rights who do not pay taxes.

(via theday.com Mobile Edition)

Heather Bond Somers is, of course, a Republican. Isn’t it odd that the party that sees voter fraud behind every black, brown, or poor face is so solicitous of the “rights” of people who don’t even reside in the town in which they want to vote? I had thought that we had all arrived at a consensus that the right to vote is inherent in the person, but to some, it appears, only the propertied, those spacious in the possession of dirt, should vote. It is not immediately clear to me why a person who may live in Florida should have a say in whether our kids get a better school, or we get better roads, but of course I have so little respect for the rights of property. On the other hand, it is immediately clear to me why those Navy folks who don’t pay taxes should have a vote: they live here. Except, of course, when they’re at sea serving their country, protecting the rights of property. 

In these days of Citizens United this proposal raises all sorts of interesting questions. Do corporate owners get to vote? If I own four buildings do I get four votes? How about if I put each in a different corporate entity? If my wife and I are co-owners, do we both get to vote? If so, how many co-owners do we allow? Are foreigners, including the dreaded Arab, allowed to vote? If I own property worth $200K do I get twice the vote of someone whose property is only worth $100K? Whatever the answers to these questions might be, we know one thing for sure. These new “voters” will care not a fig for the quality of life in Groton; it will be their money voting, diluting the votes of those who, at least in theory, have a broader perspective on what they are doing and a real stake in the outcome.

I have a personal interest in this debate. I was on the Charter Revision commission that changed the charter to preclude non-residents from voting. In fact, I think I can honestly say that I was the animating force behind the proposal, though in the end, everyone on the commission, including the Republicans (Groton still has some old fashioned rational Republicans-a dying breed among whom Somers cannot be counted), saw the wisdom in what we did. It was certainly not an unintended result.

So, in all humility, I guess I can add this to my short list of life accomplishments. Besides keeping baseball and democracy out of Groton (long stories both, if interested, let me know) I can take credit for disenfranchising the affluent, which certainly runs contrary to the nationwide trend.

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Always look on the bright side of life

Monday, February 18, 2013

Here’s what you call mixed good news, about which I intend to follow the Python’s advice:

WalMart executives are freaking out over lousy sales, according to this article in Business Insider. After a disastrous January, one WalMart exec wrote in an email that February sales so far are a “total disaster,” according to a Bloomberg news story.

(via Daily Kos)

Now there could be several reasons for this, but I prefer to savor the delicious irony that the Walmartization of the American workforce is about to destroy a company that, if it did not start the trend, has certainly done more to impoverish the nation than almost any other. It’s that impoverishment that’s the most likely reason for the sales decline, though, as the linked article points out, there is even possibly a brighter side: perhaps the number of Wal-mart boycotters (I can proudly say I have never set foot in a Wal-mart) has grown, as Costco is not seeing similar declines.

When you make your money selling crap in volume to people on the margin, you really need to maximize the number of people who are at least at the margin. Even Henry Ford, bigot that he was, recognized that it was in his own interest to pay his employees a living wage. But again, the Waltons have already made their pile, and whoever’s presently running Walmart has probably made his or hers. It doesn’t matter to them if the company tanks, just like it doesn’t really matter to the bankers and hedge fund managers if the institutions for which they work go belly up as a result of their actions. They’ll walk away with more than anyone would ever need. There is literally no incentive for the people running these corporations to think about the long term.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, February 15, 2013

I know this is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. My only excuse is the meteor in Russia, which is sort of like an extraterrestrial visitor, which is sort of what this song is about. This is also a song that appealed to me a lot when it came out, but then, I was only eight.

 

So far as I know, God was merciful, and Sheb Wooley was never heard from again.

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Victims

Friday, February 15, 2013

We live in bewildering times. As the Jefferson Airplane sang, logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead.

I first became politically aware as the Civil Rights movement took center stage on the national scene. The forces of reaction took shelter behind a lot of arguments, but I can’t recall that any of them had the nerve to complain that proposed civil rights laws constituted discrimination against people who sincerely believed in the inferiority of black people.

But we’ve made great semantic progress since then. As John Lennon (channeling Harry Nillson) said, “everything is the opposite of what it is, isn’t it?” and this is nowhere more true than in the culture of victimhood embraced by the right wing. Latest case in point:

A Republican legislator in Illinois levied charges of discrimination against a measure to permit same-sex marriage that was approved Thursday by the state Senate.

Illinois state Sen. Kyle McCarter ® took to his Facebook page to argue that the bill passed by the Democratic-controlled chamber was an injustice against “those who hold the sincerely held religious belief” that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

(via TPM LiveWire)

Yet another of those right wing pronouncements that leave you awestruck. One is tempted to rebut it, and then one must pause. Anyone who needs an explanation for why this is absurd is too far lost to reason already.

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Colbert on Rubio

Thursday, February 14, 2013

My wife and I got a kick out of this, so I’m passing it on for those who haven’t seen it.

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The Keyboard Commandos Get Their Due

Thursday, February 14, 2013

This was one of my favorite Gary Larson Far Side Cartoons:

Of course, back in those innocent days, no one could have expected that there really would be rich rewards for saving the Princess, much less that the military would be awarding medals to men and women who bravely rain death and destruction upon the innocent and guilty alike from thousands of miles away. But apparently, nothing is too good for the men and women who struggle into their PJs every day to man their keyboards and clutch their mice in order to protect us from school children, wedding parties and the occasional actual terrorist:

They fight the war from computer consoles and video screens.

But the troops that launch the drone strikes and direct the cyberattacks that can kill or disable an enemy may never set foot in the combat zone. Now their battlefield contributions may be recognized.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Wednesday that for the first time the Pentagon is creating a medal that can be awarded to troops who have a direct impact on combat operations, but do it from afar.

(via Hullabaloo)

The medal will be below the silver star, but above the bronze, meaning a keyboard hero rates higher than someone who has seen actual combat. But that kind of stuff is so 20th century. No need to get your hands dirty, or actually see the results of your actions, to be a hero these days.

So, the laugh’s on those of us who laughed with Gary Larson, and also on those of us who used to make fun of those other keyboard commandos who valiantly cheered from behind in support of the Iraq War, and the other military misadventures that it was so easy for the right wing blogosphere to support. Why nowadays, even they can contribute, so long as they can wield a mouse.

We Democrats can take special pride in knowing that it was a Democratically controlled Department of Defense that recognized the unique contribution, the special sacrifices, and the extraordinary bravery it takes to anonymously kill and maim. Who says we don’t support the troops?

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My friend Rubio sends me an email

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

All of us, at least those of us that are politically engaged, from time to time wonder just how we got on a particular email list. So it was with me today, when, in very timely fashion, I got an email from the slurper touting his new proposal to destroy public schools. Of course, he doesn’t present it that way. It’s all about school choice: funneling public money to private schools. Nonetheless, that’s what it is, and there’s really no point in proving the obvious.

What struck me was the list of endorsers for his attack on public schools. Besides the almost inevitable Jeb Bush there’s a virtual laundry list of ethnic front groups:

  • Julio Fuentes, President of Hispanic Council For Reform and Educational Options
  • Kenneth Campbell, President of the Black Alliance For Educational Options
  • Rabbi David Zwiebel, Esq., Executive Vice President of Agudath Israel of America
  • Kevin P. Chavous, former D.C. City Councilman and current Executive Counsel for the American Federation For Children

See boys and girls, this must be all hunky dory, because look, they’ve got well rewarded colored folks and Jews to endorse it. These astroturf organizations with the names-with-which-you-cannot-take-issue (though certainly they could have snuck the word “family” in there somewhere) are a specialty of Republicans. It would be interesting to know if the ploy still works. Democrats, of course, never do this, nor do they call bullshit on the people who do. That would be so impolite and besides, they are scared to death that they might scare away the one voter in a thousand who might support such organizations and also consider voting for a Democrat.

I suspect that it’s not as easy these days to gain instant cred by making up a compelling name and lining up some token endorsers. It’s an old game and people have grown somewhat inured to it. At least that’s my hope, but it would be nice if the Dems would fight fire with fire once in a while.

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Pope Defies God

Monday, February 11, 2013

Some may wonder how the simple act of “resigning” can be a god defying act, but such people don’t understand the religious nuances involved here.

Let’s rehearse the facts.

The Pope is elected for life.

Although the Pope is “elected” by a bunch of pedophile protecting cardinals, they are actually only a conduit for God, whose choice is channeled through them. Ipso facto, the Pope is chosen by God.

God knows the rules. The Pope is elected for life, and he damn well better serve out his term. If God didn’t want a senile geriatric running one of the world’s largest religious corporations, then he’d impose term limits. Besides, God is omniscient, meaning that he knows when he picks them that they’ll do for their entire term. (And don’t ask me why, if God can see the future, he’d pick a guy who is going to resign. The answer to that is far too complex to develop in a blog post).

The betting here in this secular backwater is that someone has something on Ratzi, though I can’t imagine what could be any worse than what we already know about the former Nazi pedophile enabling and yet judgmental guy. His reasons for retiring are the papal equivalent of wanting to spend more time with his family.

As I did the last time a papal vacancy arose (in the time honored fashion, by a respectable death) I do want to announce my continued availability for the post. Technically, I’m still a Catholic, given that baptism left an indelible mark on my soul. I’ve got some great ideas for the Church going forward. Now that my views have evolved on gay marriage, I’m all for married priests.

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