Pope Sorry, Again or Still

Pope Fester met with a delegation of Canadian aboriginals at the Vatican. He apologized to them for an entire century, during which young children were ripped from their homes and families and forced into Catholic Church run boarding institutions, far away. There they were held in bondage, against their will, commonly for over a decade, raised coldly and impersonally under the direction of priests and nuns, subjected to harsh physical and psychological punishments over extended periods of time, for offenses they didn't even understand they had committed, sodomized and otherwise repeatedly sexually abused, at the hands of perverted and opportunistic staff. When they complained or rebelled against the treatment they recieved, their lives were made even worse or terminated. The grounds of these children's boarding institutions are littered with unmarked graves, though the children that filled them were unusually resilient, stoic and hardy.

This resulted in a native culture that was and still is rife with isolation, distrust of authority, mental illness, domestic violence, criminality, substance abuse and suicide.

He wants everyone to know, he couldn't be sorrier.

To paraphrase Madeline Kahn, in Blazing Saddles. " What a nice guy !"

Most of these institutions were closed in the 1970s. Even after they closed, one of the favorite strategies of the Church in dealing with documented pedophile priests was to transfer them to the ministry of remote, Canadian aboriginal communities, where complaints were rarely lodged. In these communities the sexual abuse of children by priests was so commonplace it was regarded as part of White culture that must be accepted. It's not uncommon to find whole regions of remote native communities, where every single child, over multiple generations, has been the victim of priestly sexual abuse.

Gay Marriage May Not Be Such A Good Thing

I'm pretty sure no more than 3 % or so of the population are homosexual by nature. On the face of it, gay marriage doesn't seem like such a bad thing. I'm beginning to have doubts. Heterosexual marriage has been one of the bulwarks of human society for a long time. Homosexuality, while it may not be stigmatized as much in some cultures as in others, is not mainstream in too many places.

Not everybody in society is real smart or real successful. Not everyone is able to read and write well. The ability to actually evaluate large quantities of conflicting data and come up with personal opinions about individual subjects is beyond the abilities of most. A great many people simply accept the cultural norms as great truths by which to live. They find a job, go to work every day for forty five years and do what everyone else does. One of the things that most people of even marginal ability and intelligence aspire to is marriage. For many of them it's not an easy thing. Men and women are not that much alike. Unless you're dealing with an arranged marriage, getting someone of the opposite sex to agree to a life long sexual bond, requires skills that a person may never have developed or use again, unless they are interested in fornication. Of course almost everyone is interested in fornication but it is too expensive and time consuming for most.

If gay marriage was not stigmatized, it's possible that a lot of heterosexual young adults would simply settle for a life together with a same sex friend. Someone of similar interests and outlook. The sex might not be everything they ever dreamed about but it likely wouldn't be with an opposite sex spouse either and probably beats the fear and uncertainty of dating.

Another problem would be with slippery slope issues. Some young men would probably like to marry their sisters or girl cousins. These are females that they have known for a lifetime and are comfortable with. Most people have already formed an opinion about polygamy involving one man and many women. What about a group of young men who pool their resources to afford one really attractive and compliant female. After all, twenty minutes a day is really about enough quality time, isn't it? Is that something society should legally sanction? It would have sounded pretty good to me when I was twenty.

I think we may not, as a society, have evaluated all of the consequences of gay marriage. What do you think?

Swine Flu

It's flu season. A new strain is coming into the country, this time from Mexico. Supposedly it's more virulent than most strains. Supposedly it is a killer. No evidence of either of these things has yet been presented. Numbers of cases are small, as are the numbers of deaths. The deaths are among those groups that you would expect. The very young. The very old. Those with compromised immune systems. The kill rate isn't very high, even in Mexico, where preventive innoculation and therapeutic medications are not always available to everyone. There are several anti viral medications stockpiled that work effectively against this flu.

Why the huge amount of news coverage? Why are they cracking down on the borders, issuing travelers alerts and cancelling cruises to Mexico? I don't get it.

Bristol is focused on going to college, raising Tripp and advocating abstinence

Read all about it on the Fox News site.

These people are the lowest kind of ignorant, bestial, permafrosted, white trash. Hopped up on drugs. Fornicating indiscriminately out on the tundra, under the midnight Sun. Squatting to birth wherever they happen to be and then taking another snort of crank, before burning down Mommy's church.

It's surprising Bristol was even able to identify Levi as the father. I wonder if anyone has thought to do a paternity test.

Both sides can see personal gain in the raising of little Tripp. Lawyers have been put on retainer and a custody battle looms. It's obvious nobody really gives a shit about the kid.

Cheney Says Torture Is Good

Dick Cheney says we got good info from the guys we tortured. He says there is evidence to prove this. Hillary says Dick is not a reliable source.

There were two guys, that between the two of them, were water boarded 266 times. That's a lot. They should tell us what info they got from them and exactly when in the process of hundreds of water boardings over multiple years, they got it. We need to know if the information was valuable or even true.

Cheney lies. He lies a lot. No WMDs have ever been found. There were never any nuclear or biological threats from any countries in the Middle East, other than Israel. Nobody bought any yellow cake. The only country whose government has documented ties or gives money to al Qaeda is Saudi Arabia and we're not fighting them. The United States gets no political, military or economic benefit from its support of Israel. Cheney says all these things were true. He still says they are. Dick Cheney is a guy who drinks too much at lunch on hunting junkets, shoots a friend in the face after lunch and tries to cover it up.

We should do that whole trust but verify thing with Dick.

Health and Human Services.

Kathleen Sibelius is going to weather the nomination process and be named HHS Secretary. She is a Catholic girl. A graduate of perhaps the premier Catholic women's college in the country. She is quiet, clean living, well behaved and has devoted her life to public service. She has a degree of intelligence and sensitivity for the concerns of others unknown in any of the George W. Bush cabinet, of either term. She is well prepared by experience and disposition for the job, another obvious difference from most of the Bush cabinet.

The wing nuts don't like her because she believes women should be allowed to make their own choice about abortion, when faced with the prospect although in this, she seems no different to me, than Sarah Palin. The elderly, largely closeted gay, reactionary Catholic hierarchy hates her because she exemplifies the liberal, affluent, Catholic elite and a growing segment of the middle and working class, over which they no longer have any influence or control. Fuck'em. I think she'll do a great job.

I hope Barry puts her on the Supreme Court before he leaves, if Oprah isn't available.

Plan B Available, Without a Presciption, to Minors

20 years ago, big pharma came up with RU 486. It was a cheap, effective, morning after contraceptive pill. The wingers, church ladies, thumb screwers and other minions of the reactionary right criticized it from the very beginning. It's action is abortifactant in nature. Never mind that it is only used within the first few days of conception. RU 486 went on to be an effective and much used drug, all over the World, for a generation. It is still used today. It was never widely available in this country because of the opposition of the whack job right, who presumably would never even have any use for it.

The drug companies spent a whole lot more money and came up with a morning after pill that isn't and abortifactant. They call it Plan B. There was nothing the Bush administration could do to stop it from being made available. They were able to stop it from being distributed to girls under 18 years of age. The Bush administration is history. That decision is being reversed.

Cry me a river.

This Guy Beck is Tapped In to the American Psyche

I was watching the Glenn Beck Show today. He had John Bolton and Karl Rove on at the same time. They were all three of them agreeing how President Obama is an Islamic jihadist, Shining Path Communist, miscegenated Mud Person traitor, selling out white, Christian America to the slavemasters of the Axis of Evil. After them, for the lighter, softer women's view of the same issue, he had on Michelle Bachman, because she loves small children and fluffy kittens.

It was very well scripted and produced but I'm not convinced that the strategy is all that great. I think these commentators, while undoubtedly sincere, might have credibility issues with the target audience. Perhaps Fox should stick to some of their more intellectual and objective commentators, like Michael Hayden, Alberto Gonzales or Dick Cheney.

Did you see this show? Were you impressed? What do you think?

It's perfect, just the way it is

There are a hundred parodies and responses out there. If you haven't seen it, here is the original one minute spot commercial by the National Organization for Marriage against the legalization of homosexual marriage.

It doesn't need satirization or excoriating commentary. It's perfect, just the way it is.

Why Is She Being So Coy?

We're getting a clearer picture of Sarah Palin's true feelings on abortion. We now know she purposefully kept her recent pregnancy of a mongoloid child secret until very late and considered having a abortion. She is very proud that she chose not to. She is very proud that her daughter, Bristol, chose to recently have a child in her mid teens, out of wedlock, resulting in her quitting school. The daughter lives with Sarah and Todd and is a stay at home mom. Sarah doesn't believe in abortion for any reason, except perhaps the documented death of the fetus.

Sarah Palin has still not publicly stated that she wants to remove from all women the choice as to whether or not they have the right to terminate their pregnancies under any circumstances or what circumstances an abortion might be acceptable.

Why is she still being so coy?

Who Would Be Left?

I don't have a problem with the tea baggers out in force yesterday, protesting high taxes and big government. I am more concerned with the spending of money that the government doesn't have than high taxes and am more against government programs that are full of waste and corruption than money spent that actually does some good for somebody. That's mostly semantics though. I think I agree with them, that the government is fucked up.

The reason I'm not a big Republican voter or supporter, is that they continue to provide a home for the religious fanatics seeking to impose their rules on everyone, the xenophobes who want to stigmatize, ostracize and persecute those that don't meet their strict definition of "real American" and the warmongers who want to bully and terrorize the rest of the World through constant military aggression. These three groups were the face of the late, unlamented Bush administration. This was the same administration whose profligate spending and blatant graft and corruption dwarfed anything that had gone on in America before. They get rid of those people and I'll support them. The problem is, who would be left? Right now, I have no place to go but the Democrats, uncomfortable as I may be with that.

Dangerous Right Wing Extremists

I think it's hilarious that Obama's big dyke, running DHS, is going to use all it's questionably legal investigative resources, built up during the lawless Bush years, to target right wing extremists. I don't know how dangerous they are but they're probably at least as dangerous as the pathetic losers that they have been victimizing.

I hope she castrates them, not that the little cocksuckers have any balls to begin with.

I'm not identifying Obama's big dyke as Hillary Clinton or Janet Napolitano. I figure it's a twofer.

Throw the Bitch Out

People are saying that Caroline Kennedy was proposed as ambassador to the Vatican and turned down. I don't know that's true but she's obviously not a fit candidate. In the first place, she's a woman. She doesn't seem mentally impaired at all, so how Catholic could she really be? She doesn't have a big whisky nose. She's not actively pro life or even a member of Bill Donohue's Catholic League. She doesn't make excuses for priests that suck the penises of little boys.

I mean, even if they made her ambassador to the Vatican, what use would she be?

He Talked Just Like Elmer Fudd.

I knew this little kid. It's fifty years ago now. Long time. He was real smart but only did OK in school. He spent a lot of time by himself. A very quiet, gentle soul. He had big hips and narrow shoulders and was kind of doughy soft. He stuttered a little but a lot of kids did that. The main thing with his voice was, when he talked, he sounded just like Elmer Fudd. Not really a lisp, something else. I don't know what that's called.

This kid got picked on and made fun of, a lot. He never got mad or fought back. He just withdrew a little more. He seemed to be halfway living in another dimension anyway. Seeing things the rest of us couldn't see and hearing things we couldn't hear. Maybe it was a better, kinder place. Maybe the voices there all sounded like Elmer Fudd. The ribbing that he took from all of us was not that vicious. People liked him OK. The fact that he could take a lot of kidding was a definite plus. He was a pretty fair baseball player. He was one of the first guys to get a steady girlfriend, in the fifth grade. She was a little wall eyed and didn't talk much but a lot of us envied his social skills with the opposite sex and the fact that he had access to an actual girl.

His shortcomings didn't go unnoticed by his parents. They were concerned and got right on it. They made sure he was involved in a lot of activities, scouting, little league, top hatters, which was an organization that taught social skills and dancing, church youth groups. They fed him a low carb, high protein diet and kept him in swimming programs to ensure he got plenty of exercise. They arranged intensive speech therapy for the Elmer Fuddism. I remember once, his mother picked up a group of boys and gave them a ride. She implored them not to make fun of her son or call him names anymore. That may have been a mistake.

So by the time this kid is out of high school, he's a lanky six foot two. He grew his hair long so nobody could notice his head was a little funny shaped. He spoke in lovely, well modulated tones. He had learned to concentrate on didactics and his grades had gone from OK to very good. He got out of college with a degree in geology, which was something you could actually use to make a decent living. He had a setter named Gandalf and pretty little hippie girlfriend that he married. They all moved up to a mountainous region of Oregon, not too far from the coast. He did geological surveys of the area, quadrant by quadrant, for a big mining company. In his spare time he would collect logs on the beach, mill them himself and do woodworking. They had a shitload of kids, six or seven, right away.

Eventually, the geological work petered out. He couldn't bring himself to leave Grant's Pass. He and his family were happy there. He opened a small business that went bust after several years. He tried teaching in the local public school but didn't like it, too much pressure.

In the end, he and his wife made a marginal living by working as walk on coaches for high school girl's sports, driving school buses morning and evening and doing schoolyard supervision. The kids got plenty to eat. They went to State schools. They did all right. It was a big, happy family. They loved their parents.

Sometimes I used to talk to Mike on the phone. Not often. He talked just like Elmer Fudd and seemed to be living halfway in another dimension. Maybe it's a kinder, better place. Maybe all the voices there sound like Elmer Fudd.

Barry Doesn't Need It

I never realized but it has been a tradition since John F. Kennedy that newly elected US Presidents accept the invitation of the University of Notre Dame to speak at commencement. The Catholic hierarchy is dead set against President Obama speaking this year. They don't feel he embodies the attributes and values that a commencement speaker at a Catholic college should have.

I think President Obama should decline the invitation of Notre Dame. There are plenty of places that would like him to speak. Notre Dame was never prestigious as an academic institution. They were a big football school but not even that, anymore. It seems to me that it would be a sign of sensitivity to the differing sensibilities of others for him to decline and not something he could be faulted for. I can't imagine he really cares about speaking there.

He could speak at the U of Hawaii commencement. He and the girls could get in a little beach time. I'm sure Rush Limbaugh or Laura Schlessinger would be glad to speak at Notre Dame. I don't think either one of them is Catholic, so it would be kind of ecumenical. Talk radio hosts are more their speed at ND and they have the preferred moral persuasions. They could also get almost any Catholic prelate they wanted or perhaps a nice Abbess or Mother Superior, to prove they aren't sexist.

A Bushel of Light Exposed

You know what? During the recent election cycle I overlooked Meghan McCain. She didn't seem substantial but kind of silly and Valley girl. My mistake.

She is beginning to emerge as the young, affluent, secular humanist, gay friendly face of the conservative movement. She is smart to remain in the pro life camp but I bet on closer inspection, she will prove to be as functionally pro choice as her mother has always been. I like the way she rides into the conservative camp on the back of Ronald Wilson Reagan. The old queen ought to be good for something still and was always a comfortable and gentle mount. Somebody get her a bio of Barry Goldwater. She could get some mileage out of him too. If Daddy can get through one more term in the Senate, she will be old enough to take over and Mommy has the money and friends to make it happen.

She put Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter and fat Rush down and out. The fundies don't know what to do with her. She's made it to 24 without a drug problem, a boyfriend with a drug problem, pregnancies or abortions. At least as far as we know.

She's got a better book deal than George Bush or her Daddy.

Anglican Seminary President Named

You gotta wonder what this story is doing on a Catholic website. I guess maybe they're just warning the faithful that even though the Pope talks a lot about ecumenism and the eventual "one big church" goal, it's not probably going to happen as long as this Sister is in the saddle.

Jesus Lives

Didja go to church today to commemorate the resurrection of Christ? If you did, why? It seems to me that the churches are full of very evil conservatives and all they do is preach and make up rules that they want others, including non believers, to follow. They are disgusting and nobody listens to them, not even their own spouses and children. They never make converts. Others join them when they get too old, mean and stupid to get along with regular people.

There are some Christians that you find out in the World, with real people. They don't make rules, they set an example. Many of these Christians are politically progressive. Many are women. Most are not openly acknowledged by organized religion as "real" Christians. They may be the kind of gay or lesbian that don't molest little children, the kind the Church doesn't like. The Churchmen may think they want to usurp positions of authority in the hierarchy, although this is almost never the case.

I grew up with enough Christianity to know what the major tenets are and when the significant annual celebrations are. I don't believe any of it. Still, I admire and respect those Christians out in the World doing good work. The ones in the churches are Nazis and scare the shit out of me. When they start to spread their poisonous hate they should be put down like hydrophoby skunks.

Abortion in Brazil to Change.

Abortion laws in Brazil, the largest Catholic country in the World, may soon be liberalized. Who is responsible for this? Catholic priests.

Thank you priests.

Barack Should Stop Puffing In Secret

About 25% of Americans still smoke. Heavy new taxes, designed to discourage smoking went into effect today. So far, smokers have been pretty laid back in their acceptance of the prejudice and discrimination of their fellow Americans against them. Eventually there will be a backlash.

It is a myth that smoking costs society. Smoking is actually a big bonus. Most smokers die young and die quick. They use only a small percentage of the health care services that a person who lives to be old does and even less in retirement and Social Security benefits. The government should celebrate and encourage smoking.

At 25%, smokers could be a powerful swing voting block. The first major political party to include a rollback in tobacco taxes could well gain control of the Federal government for the foreseeable future.

Don't Hold Your Breath

Still, this can't be bad. Maybe in thirty or forty years, the main use for petroleum will be as cheap lubricants.

Big Pole on a Pedestal, No Hard Feelings Here

This is pretty interesting. You would be pressed to find a woman more revered in Italian culture, alive now or in the past century. Born illegitimately in a charity hospital, whose own marriage was not sanctioned by the Catholic church and persecuted because of it. Yet she is often held up in Italian society as a paragon of wisdom and virtue, worthy of emulation.

She takes an active interest in the doings of the church. She endorses the church plan to give the big Pole his halo as soon as possible. She clearly sees JP II as a good influence.

Interesting woman. I wonder what else she thinks.