Poor Vatican

The Pope must be wearing ratty, ragged underwear under those silk robes; all the fancy gold statues in the Vatican must be gilt over rotting wood; the famous paintings are all cheap reproductions. The place must be on the verge of economic collapse. At least, that’s what I assume must be the case, since the UK government paid for the Pope’s visit out of Department for International Development funds, a part of the budget that is normally earmarked for aid to “war-torn or fragile states” as part of a commitment to fight global poverty.

So the Vatican must be sort of like Somalia. I had no idea they were in such a dire state.

I’m a middle-class kind of guy who is doing all right economically right now. But I think next time I visit Minneapolis I’m going to get my gas money by beating up some homeless folk, and then I’m going to eat by crashing a soup kitchen…oh, and I’m bigger than those scrawny half-starved old codgers, so I’m going to demand double helpings of everything. Don’t think badly of me, I’ll just be trying to live up to the Catholic ideal.

Holy crap, Texas, how can you stand your governor?

Governor Rick Perry has been talking about education.

Well, there is a lot of fat to cut from our public schools, especially those in our biggest urban areas like Houston and Dallas. I am concerned that some the highly diverse Magnet public schools in this city are becoming hotbeds for liberalism. Do we really need free school bus service, Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Asian-Pacific Heritage Month, ESL, special needs and enrichment programs like music, art or math Olympiad? I think we should get back to the basics of the three Rs, reading writing and arithmetic. I mean when is the last time a 6th grade science fair project yielded a cure for a disease?

There are strange, wild, guttural sounds spilling from my lips right now; I dare not transcribe them here lest innocents repeat them, summoning vindictive elder gods to rend their sanity. I’m a trained professional in coping with madness, others may not be.

In this same talk, he also babbles about making private Christian schools more affordable. Kill public education, promote religion instead. That’s his position.

When’s the insurrection? Or at least the repeal? Don’t Texans have any self-respect?

I have been snared by Poe’s law! All I can say in defense is that I was only caught because it’s a hair’s breadth from reality.

Speaking of “WTF” moments, heeeeeere’s Sarah!

What a stupid, ignorant woman. She’s baffled by the phrase “Sputnik moment”; she reads it over and over; it makes her vaguely uncomfortable, with that Russian sound to it; and rather than asking someone or looking it up, she decides to invent her own totally wrong definition built on false premises (the Soviet Union was bankrupted by a satellite launch in 1957? Ha ha, screw you, Ronald Reagan!), and declare it on national television? It must be bad, that commie Obama said it.

Man, if I thought the American electorate cared at all about intelligence in its presidential candidates, I’d announce that Palin is toast and we can just scrape the burnt crumbly bits into the sink, try to salvage her with some butter, take a bite, decide she’s ruined, and throw her in the kitchen recycling bin for deposit in the compost heap once the snow melts.

Yeah, that metaphor ran away with me, but then I just watched the video, so I have an excuse for a little temporary brain damage.

Texas: Our bold leader into the Future!

For many years now, Texas has been carrying out a great experiment: they’ve been pursuing Republican policies to a far greater degree than other states, and Texas is therefore a little glimpse into the American future, if we continue as we have. And that future seems prosperous, with a strong pro-business environment fostered by a government that would do anything to help a millionaire.

So why don’t I want to live in that future?

It turns out that the price Texas pays to prop up business is paid for with the dreams of children. Happy corporate income reports are gouged out of the next generation’s potential for prosperity.

“A sick, uneducated, unskilled work force does not propel a state forward,” Garcia writes in the report’s preface. “The devastating forecasts depict a Texas that few of us would want to visit, let alone call home.”

The bi-annual Texas legislative session opened this month to news of an estimated $27 billion budget shortfall. But even before legislators took their seats in the capitol, Texas lagged every other state in per-capita spending. Before considering budget-cutting proposals, Texas also ranked 50th among states in health care coverage for children, mental health services for children with diagnosed challenges, preventing childhood homelessness, preventing childhood food insecurity, and preventing obesity among adolescent girls, according to the report.

The cumulative impact of previous budget cuts has put Texas children behind the rest of the nation. When compared to children in the rest of the U.S., a Texas child is 93 percent more likely not to have access to health care, 33 percent more likely not to receive mental health care services, 35 percent more likely to grow up poor, and 16 percent more likely to drop out of school. Given that Texas is not a poor state — its citizens’ median wealth ranks 27th out of 50 — the dire status of its children is all the more startling.

Texas ranks third among the seven worst states in overall child well-being, according to the advocacy organization Every Child Matters; the other six states are the nation’s poorest.

In the area of child protection — a fundamental measurement of child well-being — Texas ranks last again. In the last decade, more children in Texas than in any other state have died as a result of abuse or neglect. The state invests far less in prevention than it does in child welfare services, which are provided after the abuse or neglect has been identified.

I’m glad to hear your banks are doing well, Texas; it’s too bad the kids are dying or lacking education, and that your economic well-being isn’t benefiting the actual people living in your state, but if the blood and sweat of of the people is needed to grease the Happy Fun Slide of bidness, well, that’s what it takes.

You can read the full report here.

That’s our Michele

I didn’t vote for her. I still feel embarrassed for the whole state of Minnesota that Michele Bachmann represents us in congress. This is a woman who worships the constitution but has no idea what’s in it.

I was just listening to the president’s state of the union address, and getting very annoyed at all the obnoxious lip service paid to bipartisanship…when the Republicans have put up this moron to argue against Obama after his speech.

She’s not the Republican representative. She’s the official Tea Party representative.

Wait, what? Since when did the Tea Party acquire the credibility to share equal time with Republicans?

Oh, well…here’s more schadenfreude for you. Watch Sal Russo, some teabagger bigwig, get ripped apart over Bachmann’s performance.

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Governor of Alabama apologizes…sorta

Robert Bentley must have been feeling some political heat. After openly announcing his sectarian bias in a MLK Day speech, Bentley has offered a not-pology.

If anyone from other religions felt disenfranchised by the language, I want to say I am sorry. I am sorry if I offended anyone in any way.

Jebus, but I hate that poor excuse for an apology. It happens all the time; someone says something stupid and wrong, and instead of saying, “I was wrong, I’m sorry and will try to change,” they say, “I’m sorry you were offended by my remarks” — suddenly, the problem lies not in the error of the speaker but in the sensitivity of the listener.

That’s not an apology. It’s a transparent attempt to twist the blame to fall on everyone else but the person who made the mistake.

Even that’s too generous: this wasn’t a mistake. Bentley was honestly and intentionally expressing his views, as he has said, “speaking as an evangelical Christian to fellow Baptists.” The man sincerely believes that his fellow superstitious louts are his special brothers and sisters who he has been elected to serve, and the riff-raff who don’t go to his church are of lesser consideration.

That’s what he needed to apologize for, and correct. He doesn’t need to apologize for people finding offense in his stupidity and bias.

He especially doesn’t need to apologize for that because pandering to a smug majority is what got him elected in the first place.

But I don’t think I want to be this bigot’s brother

The Republican governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley, has moved on a little bit from the 1950s — he made a speech on Martin Luther King Day in which he declared himself colorblind and the governor of all the people of Alabama. How nice! But then, unfortunately, he had to ruin it by making a few exceptions.

But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.

Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.

Gosh. I guess Christians in Alabama are just extra-special people. The rest of us — Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, Hindus, animists, whatever — not so much.

Isn’t it just amazing that the governor of a secular state would stand up and unabashedly make a speech declaring a specific religious group as having a privileged status with him?

Why we need separation of church and state: an example

Jackie Trebesh and her daughter attended a Catholic church presided over by “Reverend” John Kelly. One weekend she was surprised when they were both denied communion. She was in for a further surprise: when she left the church, she was pursued by a Santa Rosa County deputy, pulled over, and given a warning for trespassing, at the request of the priest.

What do you think her crime was?

According to Trebesh, she learned the reason she was denied communion was because someone at the church had seen the daughter dispose of the host, as it is called, improperly in the church parking lot.

“The matter of disposing of the Eucharist in an inappropriate way is a serious matter to us,” Peggy Dekeyser, the communications officer for the diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee said in confirming Trebesh’s theory.

Trebesh said the only thing she could think of that Kelly or anyone else might have seen her daughter do was “spit out a piece of gum in the parking lot.”

It’s fine that crazy Catholics want to enforce their crazy doctrines within the scope of the church; if crazy John Kelly wants to refuse to do his crazy mumbo-jumbo for anyone, that should be his right. But what’s really disturbing here is the county deputy using his official status to administer punishment outside the church.

I don’t care what the priest believes or does, but that deputy needs to be fired.