State of the Disunion

It was really sweet; President Obama earnestly running through his Wish List – preschool classes for every child, investments  in R&D, bridges repaired, people put back to work, a budget balanced on both smart cuts and smart taxes – while behind him Boehner sat stone-faced, thinking to himself, “When pigs fly.”

So, the country will get the sequester it doesn’t want or need, draconian and pointless cuts that will harm both the economy and real people, because the most important thing to Republicans is that Obama fail.  The country’s welfare no long matters to The Grand Old Party, because it has turned into the New Confederacy and is in full Gotterdammerung mode – By God, If we have to burn the whole damned country down to get rid of all those liberals and negroes and women and Mexicans, then strike the match! 

Which likely explains why some right wing doofus Congressman invited White Trash Rocker, Ted Nugent, the guy who said the president should suck on his gun, to be his guest and sit in the balcony looking like a sulking sophomore. All that was missing was Ted wearing a white hood, waving a Confederate flag and swilling a jug of ‘shine. Talk about “messaging.”

Speaking of which, viewers could watch the repeated  spectacle of half of the chamber (Democrats) standing up to applaud  calls for things involving equality, fairness, justice while  half the chamber (Republicans) all sat stone-faced and cross armed, thereby sending out the visual message that they think all the nation’s kids should just go die, women should continue to be battered, gays must remain second-class citizens and the victims of gun violence can all just go to hell.

No wonder Republican strategists keep wringing their hands and worrying that maybe the Party just needs to tweak its message?  Uh, don’t think that’d do it. The last election proved that Americans got their message and said, No thanks.  So, tweaking won’t do it.  What the  GOP needs is a new message instead of repeating the same old one.

Which Republican spokesman, Marco Rubio, the GOP’s Great Brown Hope, attempted to do in his official reply to Obama’s State of the Nation speech, a follow-up event that usually turns out to be The Place Where Young Pols Go To Die On Camera. 

And poor Rubio was no exception.  He’s a bright young thing, but even he ended up parroting the same old radical Republican crap,  contradicting himself into thematic incoherence, sweating like he was cutting cane under a hot Cuban sun, and awkwardly reaching off camera for a water bottle.  In short, he pulled a Bobby Jindal.

But, he’ll recover.  He’s got the backing of the old guard GOP, will have plenty of money to run for whatever he wants to run for. 

And so the nation lurches along for two more years of poisonous politics, after which, Americans will have another chance to take a look at their elected representatives and decide if they’re sick of these Party of NO jerks or want to double-down on more gridlock and political extremists and so get themselves and the nation even more dysfunction. 

In short, business as usual.

Sigh.

Holy Walkout, For Real

I titled my February 5th  "Cannon, "Holy Walkout," and suggested that in a just world, every non-complicit Catholic in the world should walk out the front door of the church until the Pope agreed to open the secrets and begin a sweeping investigation and reform of his molesting church.

But instead of the faithful walking out, it turns out that it's the the Pope himself,  Benedict XVI, former Cardinal Ratzinger, the Grand Inquisitor, the keeper of the secrets, who will walk out the Vatican's door Feb. 28th on his shiny red, butter-soft Italian leather shoes rather than be carried out feet first on a bier.

Historic on many levels. But if anyone is expecting some vast reform to result when the church hierarchy arrives in Rome in all their pomp and self-created glory to select another Pope, don't hold your breath.  The one driving force for the church has always been and still is the protection and survival of . . . the church.  By any means necessary.  So, it'll be business as usual-- vote trading, power politics, schmoozing, unseemly strong-arming, until the puff of white smoke from the locked room signals that . . . well, nothing has changed.

Meantime, back in L.A., the Times reported that [retired in good standing] Cardinal Mahony had secretly "borrowed" money from the faithful's in-perpeturity burial fund to pay off the lawsuits caused by molesting, child-raping priests. It was a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, only in this case, the Paul in question was the burial fund intended solely to maintain catholic cemetaries.

Whaaaat?  You're outraged?  Hey, the fleeced are dead so they're not going to complain, though their relatives are pitching a fit.  But even "borrowing" from the dead apparently won't raise enough money, so the  church has also embarked on a new fund-raising campaign to help pay off it's legal debts. And, believe it or not, a some of the people interviewed for the story, intend to donate.  Go figure.

As for me, I'm still puzzling over what kind of catchy phrase the folks running the fund-raising campaign will come up with.  Maybe something like, "Having the dead pay for molesting priests -- priceless."  

Your Sunday Poem

This by Jack Gilbert, another of my favorite poets, from "Collected Poems," published by Alfred A Knopf, (2012) shortly before his death. 

Seen From Above

In the end, Hannibal walked out of his city
saying the Romans wanted only him.  Why should
his soldiers make love to their swords?
He walked out alone, a small figure in
the great field, his elephants dead at
the bottom of the Alps' crevasses.  So might we
go to our Roman death in triumph.  Our love
is of marble and large tawny roses,
in the endless harvests of our defeat.
We have slept with death all our lives.
It will grind out its graceless victory,
but we can limp in triumph over the cold
intervening sand.

Holy Walkout

Calhoun's Cannons for March 5, 2013

The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more, and tolerated by all.

                                                                                    Tacitus

In a just world, every Catholic and non-molesting priest and nun in the world would walk out of the church doors and stay out until the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith agrees to start a publicly transparent, world-wide investigation and open the child abuse files.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith has the complete paper record of the systematic cover-up by the church of molesting priests and the decades-long obstruction of justice.  So The Congregation is uniquely suited for just such an investigation both because it has all the evidence in those files (which it kept buried for years) and because it has conducted many, many such investigations to  root out sin and sinners throughout Europe.  After all, in the 16th century, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which  was also known as The Inquisition, was a very effective tool to root out and punish the wicked. Plus, as an added bonus in seeing justice done, the former head of the Congregation, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the man who knew all the secrets for years, is now Pope Benedict XVI.

Who better than the one man with access to all the evidence and the power to see that justice is finally done?

You're laughing.  Yes, of course. The days of righteousness in a religious organization that has systematically corrupted itself from the lowliest priest up to bejeweled and red-shoe clad Pope himself is over.  Instead, as a template of behavior, we have to settle for  the arrogant Cardinal Mahony, proud master of the enormous, glittering Los Angeles Cathedral that looms over the number 10 freeway.

For years, Mahony fought a rear-guard action to protect priests, protect the documents, all the smoking guns while making conciliatory noises in public.  Until a recent court ruling by a courageous judge forced the church to disgorge the beans.  Twelve thousand pages worth of beans, now posted for all to see, names named, paper trails heading through Mahony, up the line and straight for the Vatican.  The public stench got so bad that even though Mahony had recently been retired with all honors to a nice cushy life, still a priest in good standing (?), his superior, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez, felt he had to publicly censure his predecessor.

Did Mahony acknowledge his sin and slink away to spend the rest of his life in humble and sincere atonement, perhaps working anonymously in some poverty-stricken corner of the  globe as penance for his sins?  He did not.  Instead, he went to his blog to whine about being unfairly picked on, defend his record of being in the forefront of the reforms (while his lawyers battled behind the scenes for years to keep the real record hidden), and then go on to reproach the reproaching  Archbishop Gomez  by reminding him that even Gomez ignored the issue for years himself.  It was all whining pots and finger-pointing kettles in a filthy kitchen that stank to high heaven.

So much for righteousness.  So much for accountability.  So much for justice when all the chickens have been eaten and the feathers buried deep in Vatican vaults, safe -- for now -- from secular law by means of a claim of  sovereign "statehood" for themselves, a dubious "statehood" crafted out of a special deal Pope Pius XI cut with the fascist dictator, Mussolini in 1929.   

Well, lay down with dawgs, git up with fleas.  In a just world, this structurally and internally infested cur would be brought to heel.  But we don't live in a just world.  We live in a world of perverted power, self-serving omerta, corrupting money, corroding apathy, fierce superstition and fear, all bending the arc of justice away from heaven.

Jesus surely weeps, but on this issue, only the Catholic laity and the non-molesting priests and nuns have the power to stop the need for His tears. There is the front door of the church.  It only takes one step.  

Your Sunday Poem

Considering the gun debate raging on outside the doors, this poem by Billy Collins, from his book, "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes," seems apt. This book is available at your local bookstore in paperback, as are most of Collins' works.  Buy a book of poetry today. Make a poet happy.

Another Reason Why I don't 
Keep a Gun in the House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.