People in the News

John Boehner

I could never find it within myself to actively dislike John Boehner, even though I've disagreed with him on almost everything ever since he became Speaker.  Honestly, I've felt pity for him, stuck as he has been in such an untenable position as nominal leader of his divided party.  Maybe it's his inability to control his tear ducts in situations others might not consider all that emotional that appeals to me.  I'm like that too.

Like everybody else, I suppose, I was very surprised when he announced his retirement from the House as of the end of October, but all I can say is, "Congratulations, Mr. Speaker.  You're well out of it."  I wonder if his decision was influenced by his audience with...

Pope Francis

The bloated, bloviating turd who goes by the name of Rush Limbaugh says Francis is a "Marxist."  Was Jesus a "Marxist?"  If so, I guess Francis qualifies as well.  Francis, more than any Pope in my memory (including John XXIII) does his best to emulate the human incarnation of his God.

Yes, Francis is a political force in that we have not yet succeeded, even in "the land of the free [market]," in divorcing politics from morality.  We still want our leaders to do what is good, not just what is best for certain interests with extra millions to spend on election campaigns.  I wonder who gets money from...

Martin Shkreli

Shkreli is the whiz-kid who started managing his own hedge fund straight out of college, but later decided there was more money to be made buying the right to produce lifesaving generic pharmaceuticals and jacking up their prices by vast amounts.  His company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, is best known for increasing the price of one pyrimethamine tablet, a drug used to treat toxoplasmosis, from $12.50 to $750.  A closed distribution system for the drug keeps other producers of generics from offering any competition.

"I can see how it looks greedy," he said, "but I think there's a lot of altruistic properties to it."  Really?  To me, Shkreli embodies exactly the kind of capitalist evil Pope Francis wants us to end.  Well, at least we all can wave bye-bye to...

Scott Walker

Walker was planning his run for president while he still was in college, and he dropped out early to more quickly pursue his untrammeled ambition. With a lot of help from anti-union fat cats like Kathleen Hendricks and the Koch brothers, he managed to win and retain the governorship of Wisconsin by playing on the envy and resentment many private sector workers feel towards public employees.

Walker's hurry to rise to the top of the heap left him singularly unprepared to compete in presidential politics.  Combined with his mediocre intellect, his unpreparedness made his exit from the Republican primary contest pretty much inevitable.  The donors lost interest, and he was gone.  Hopefully, now, Wisconsin will come to its senses, remember its history of progressivism, and undo the damage he and his cadre have done.

Smoke Signals

Why is there so much interest in the next Pope?  Every single Cardinal in the Conclave was appointed either by John Paul or Benedict, so every single one of them is a conservative.  Since they are the candidates as well as the electors, it's inevitable that the next Pope will be a conservative.  European, Latino, North American, or African, it won't make a damned bit of difference in the theological (hence, social) direction of the Church.

No, we're not likely to see anybody like John XXIII again, just in case any of you might be old enough to remember him.  There won't be any liberation theology — that's for sure!  The Church will remain ossified, secretive, and determinedly anti-woman.  Will the occasional boy diddler be outed and prosecuted?  Probably, but only at the lowest levels.  Will there be any structural changes at the Vatican Bank?  Doubtful.

What the Cardinals have to be thinking about most right now is damage control.  They don't dare to elect a Pope who might support married priests, much less female priests.  Even though "Papal infallibility" only dates back to the 19th century, they don't want to mess with it.  It's nice to be infallible, especially when you're wrong.

Bye Bye Benedict

I certainly was surprised to hear of the Pope's impending abdication, but shall reserve judgement until I find out who will be his replacement.  He certainly set a good example for other gerontocrats, and I hope many of them follow his example, beginning with Silvio Berlusconi and John McCain.  Both of them, of late, have been more trouble than they're worth.

I never cared for Ratzinger who, as leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul (whose primary theology seemed to consist of anti-Communism and anti-anything-else-vaguely-resembling-Communism), led the pogrom against the Liberation Theologists, especially in Latin America.  Read the history, and it looks incontrovertibly pro-fascist.

Benedict was better at persecuting Catholic socialist priests than at stopping pedophile priests from diddling altar boys.  Jesus, you might recall, was a socialist, not a pedophile.  Also, when Benedict retires to a monastery inside Vatican City, he'll be out of reach of those who want to know what he knows about kiddie diddling.  Well, he may not know a hell of a lot — top level executives seldom do — but he has to know something.

One might hope the College of Cardinals will select a new Pope just a little more liberal than John Paul or Benedict, but don't count on it.  John Paul and Benedict left the College of Cardinals pretty much the same way George W left the United States Supreme Court — weighed down with conservatives.  If they skip over the front-runners, and pick an African Pope — and a lot of developing world Catholics are holding their breaths hoping for that — you can bet that African Pope will be even more conservative than any of the Europeans in the running.  They execute homosexuals in much of Africa.

The Italians (who are a lot less religious than they are Catholic) really would hate that — or, at least, their calcio (soccer) fans would hate it, judging by all the recent racist rhetoric about Mario Balotelli and a couple of Muslim drafts.  I suspect the Süden Deutsch also will be less than thrilled.

Those of us in the civilized world (wherever the hell we are) should not expect much. After we're all dead, our progeny or our progeny's progeny's progeny may be able to look back on what happened — if they're allowed.

Does Scott Brown want to be President?

Does the bear shit in the woods, and is the Pope both Catholic and hoping to protect his brother (Georg Ratzinger, former director of the scandal plagued Regensburger Boys Choir) from accusations of facilitating child abuse?

Okay, forget Georg and the boy buggering — you can research that on your own, and form your own unsubstantiated conclusions based on the wonderful "free information" of the internet. For reasons not too hard to imagine, I have plenty of doubt about anything I read on the internet. One definition of "free" is "devoid of value."

As for Scott Brown, though, all you have to do is look at him to see what an attractive candidate he can be. Hell, he's cute, winsome, and winning — and why anybody ever thought the unappealing Martha Coakley had a chance against him is beyond me. He's taking a chance, though — betting that intrinsic politico-sexual charisma can triumph over ideological (read Tea Party) nuttiness. Personally, I think it's a pretty good bet.

Brown took a big chance when he voted for the "finance reform" bill — but coming from Massachusetts, it doesn't seem like that much of a bad move. He's betting that, by 2012 or 2016, all the Tea Party bullshit will be revealed for the bullshit it is. Hopefully, he's got that right.

Frankly, though, I suspect he's more cute than smart. Listening t0 him talk on TV left me less than overly impressed regarding his general intelligence. On the other hand, this is the country that elected George W. Bush — but at least Brown will be surrounded by people from Massachusetts rather than Texas.

By the time we get some actual regulations out of the new financial reform bill, there's no telling who will be appointing the regulators. The most important question is just how toadying the toadies will be. Franklin D. Roosevelt, you may have noticed, has been dead for a long, long time.

The Pope's Little Problem

I was researching a possible video with the working title of "Vic Solves the Pedophile Priest Problem" when I ran into the survey commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Granted, there is no valid reason to assume that findings for the U.S. apply to Ireland, Germany, or other areas involved in the widening scandal, but I think they are, nevertheless, pretty interesting.

For one thing, the data show that roughly three quarters of the accused were not actually pedophiles — they more properly should be referred to as ephebophiles (also known as hebephiles or, in the terminology of the Stonewall era, chicken hawks.) Ephebophiles are not interested in little boys, but only in larger, postpubescent big boys. In many jurisdictions around the world, that means the priests who diddled a good many of them — the sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds — were just gay. (Actually, in the Pashtun regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, diddling adolescent boys is just a prerogative of being rich and powerful — neither gay nor perverse in any way.)

Mind you, this does not mean I approve of pedophile/ephebophile priests — whatever the age of their lovers. After teaching high school for thirty years, I know that sixteen-year-olds will have sex with whoever's available, whenever they're horny enough — but just the same, they shouldn't be led to believe that letting the priest lick their ding-dongs will put them on the path to heaven.

The real scandal, of course, is the cover-up — the cover-up, as always, being more damaging than the initial offense. They won't come right out and say it, but what the Catholic leadership wants us to understand is that Benedict wasn't officially infallible before he became Pope. Whatever he did when he was just an archbishop, or Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, or a member of the Hitler Youth, didn't actually count — no matter what the New York Times has to say about it.

Anyway, I do have a solution for "the Pope's little problem," but you'll have to wait for the video if you can't figure it out on your own. As you may have noticed, my "simple solutions" always are eminently rational, truly simple, and never adopted (unless the U.S. actually is buying the opium from Marja.)

Wait and see.