Author: Michael A. Ventrella

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Can the Pope change American politics?

American conservative leaders have often argued that greed is good, and controls on capitalism are ungodly.  The logic is thus:  Stalin was an atheist.  Stalin liked socialist policies.  Ergo, socialism is against religion.

This, of course, makes no logical sense whatsoever but the Powers That Be in the economic world gladly used it in the same way Stalin used communist promises to keep the people in their place.  The right used religion to further its aims.  People who believed that abortion and gay rights were against God could easily be swayed to also believe that welfare and controls on capitalism were also evil, since look, the same people who are on God’s side are also on the side of the bankers and billionaires. papa Clearly, therefore, all bankers and billionaires were Godlike.

Well, this new Pope is throwing all that out the window, and boy, is the right wing up in arms.  Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh are now attacking religion with a fervor never before seen, and are apparently claiming that they have more authority than the Pope about what Jesus would want.  (You remember Jesus — that guy who threw the moneylenders out of the temple and said that the rich could not get into heaven?)

For years, the right has proclaimed that we are a “Christian nation” (despite all evidence to the contrary) and yet now, when the leader of the largest Christian organization in the world tells us what we should be doing, suddenly Christian values are not important to us.

“As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems,” the Pope said.  He’s talking about uncontrolled capitalism, about markets that crash and hurt the poor because the rich are gambling with our future, about the ridiculous idea that money “trickles down” to improve everyone’s lot.

Maybe it’s time that the Christian right started acting like Christians.

Editorial cartoon of the day

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Happy Thanksgiving

“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.” – Jon Stewart

“Thanksgiving is America’s national chow-down feast, the one occasion each year when gluttony becomes a patriotic duty.” – Michael Dresser

“Proper turkey preparation is critical. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more Americans die every year from eating improperly cooked turkey than were killed in the entire Peloponnesian War. This is because turkey can contain salmonella, which are tiny bacteria that, if they get in your bloodstream, develop into full-grown salmon, which could come leaping out of your mouth during an important business presentation.” – Dave Berry

“Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.” – Johnny Carson

“Thanksgiving is a magical time of year when families across the country join together to raise America’s obesity statistics.” – Stephen Colbert

“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.” – Erma Bombeck

“My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor.” – Phyllis Diller

“My mother won’t celebrate Thanksgiving. She says it represents the white man stealing our land. But she’s not angry, she figures, ‘What the hell, we’re taking it back one casino at a time.” – Larry Omaha

“Thanksgiving. It’s like we didn’t even try to come up with a tradition. The tradition is, we overeat. ‘Hey, how about at Thanksgiving we just eat a lot?’ ‘But we do that every day!’ ‘Oh. What if we eat a lot with people that annoy the hell out of us?'” – Jim Gaiffigan

“Thanksgiving, man. Not a good day to be my pants.” – Kevin James

“Here I am 5 o’clock in the morning stuffing bread crumbs up a dead bird’s butt.” – Roseanne Barr

 

Editorial cartoon of the day

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Obamacare support remains unchanged

Most Americans aren’t dumb, despite what certain news organizations and political parties want to believe.

For instance, most Americans understand that the problems with a website don’t have anything to do with the program the website was set up for, and they realize that the website problems are not permanent.doctor-obama

Just about the same amount of people support Obamacare from a month ago as do now.  The website fiasco has hurt Obama in the polls — because it makes him look incompetent — but it hasn’t hurt Obamacare.  (Obama is still ranked much higher in the polls than Congress, but that’s not saying a lot.)

A new CBS poll shows that 58% of Americans say they oppose Obamacare, which is about what it was before.  As has been pointed out many many times (but which Republicans never seem to tell you), that 58% includes 14% who oppose Obamacare because it doesn’t go far enough.  People like me, who think we need a medicare-for-all plan and that the problems with Obamacare are directly related to the fact that we’re still treating health care as a profit-making product in America instead of as a service.

That means 54% — a majority — think Obamacare is fine or want it expanded even further.   A majority has consistently wanted some sort of national health care policy. That has never changed.

So when Republicans scream that most Americans don’t like Obamacare, they are fooling themselves, because that 14% will never support them no matter what.   A majority support it.  A majority voted against their candidate who ran against it.  And that hasn’t changed in three years.

Editorial cartoon of the day

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Is the Pope Catholic?

Apparently so, which is something I’m not sure could be said for some of the Popes who came before him, who seemed more interested in gathering wealth, sitting in gold-covered thrones, and hiding pedophiles.popes

This new Pope appears to have even read the Bible.

Today, he released a treatise where he basically called trickle-down economics evil, and called governments who protected the rich at the expense of the poor (that’s us, in case you weren’t paying attention) as not serving Jesus’ teachings.  “How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses 2 points?” he asked.  No, seriously, he really said that.

This is a guy who said he really didn’t care that much about prosecuting gays (“Who am I to judge?”) and worried that the Church had lost its way fighting over things like abortion when the real issue was fighting injustice and poverty.

I mean, he still has a way to go — for instance, he refuses to let women be priests — but it looks as if he is taking the Church in a good direction.

Editorial cartoon of the day

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In defense of Wal-Mart

No, I’m not forgiving them for paying their employees minimum wage when they could easily pay them $11 an hour and give them all health insurance and still make a hefty profit.    Not only would that be the right thing to do, it would also help the economy (money trickles up, after all — if people have money, they spend it.  Amazing, but true).   Instead, Wal-Mart admits their employees are basically living in poverty, and some stores are even holding food donation drives for the employees.  o-FOOD-BANK-570

However, instead of criticizing them for that (which is well deserved), today I want to defend them against the “closing on Thanksgiving” thing.  There is a boycott proposed against them (and other stores) for making their employees work on Thursday.

Lots of places are still open on Thanksgiving, because we the people want them to be open.  Someone always remembers a last minute thing they need and they run down to the grocery store and are happy when it’s there.  (Remember:  Wal-Mart has groceries, too.)  Many gas stations remain open (which you will be thankful for when you get halfway to grandma’s and realize the tank is empty).  And of course, some people never get holidays off (hospital workers, police, emergency services).

But really, we’re the ones to blame.  If we didn’t create the demand, they wouldn’t be filling it.

So the protests I see now asking people not to shop on Thanksgiving are good — because it puts the onus on us.  We’re the ones ultimately responsible for stores opening on holidays and at 12 am on Black Friday and so on.

Of course, one of the reasons for the protests is that Wal-Mart treats their employees terrible.  If they paid them well and gave them overtime for working holidays, you probably wouldn’t be seeing these protests.  So while we can blame ourselves for wanting these places open, we also need to keep in mind that the companies themselves can soften the blow to the point where employees will want to work on the holidays for all the extra benefits and money.

Editorial cartoon of the day