Defiler of the Faith

Donald Trump has done something I never expected him to do.  He offended American Catholics - the majority of whom have supported him at the polls - and somehow got progressives - among whom one would find many with anti-Catholic attitudes - to sympathize with them.  And he did it by doing someone he did that I once thought was too low even for him.

He posted an AI image of himself as the pope.

The blasphemous image was so offensive to Catholics that what Ira Levin, Roman Polanski, Madonna, Sinead O'Connor, Dan Brown and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence failed to do - offend Catholics to the point where those outside the faith would be equally appalled (indeed, many non-Catholics applauded O'Connor for tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II on live TV and identifying him as the "evil" referred to in Bob Marley's "War") -  Trump managed to do with a text-free picture worth more than a thousand words.

Someone somewhere online suggested that, if our lapsed Presbyterian "President" were to be elected pope, he should take the name Adolf the Turd.

As for the upcoming conclave, which begins Wednesday, my hope is that the Church will choose someone who will continue Pope Francis' reforms and his efforts to offer a more benevolent Church devoted to devotion to Christian principles such as charity and social justice.  That is exactly the sort of pontiff that the Church ought to select in the face of the demonic cruelty that Trump is trying to impose not just on the United States but upon the world.

My biggest fear is that a doctrinaire conservative like Pope Pius XII, whom my father was raised Catholic under and whose reign he spent his entire childhood and adolescence under, and thus received so much psychological damage from as a result, will succeed Francis and appoint another right-winger like Cardinal Dolan as archbishop of New York, which is the closest the U.S. Church has to a national patriarch, or a "primate."  But the only way  I can see that happening is if the cardinals choose someone more out of strategy than out of faith.  Cardinal Pacelli became Pope Pius XII in March 1939 largely because he had been the Vatican Secretary of State and was seen as someone who could deal diplomatically not just with Benito Mussolini in Italy (who would invade Albania just a month earlier) but also with Adolf Hitler, who in March 1939 annexed Czechoslovakia, forced heavily Catholic Lithuania to cede its seaport city of Klaipeda (once the German city of Memel) to the Reich, and began threatening heavily Catholic Poland to agree to German annexation of the Free City of Danzig and a strip of land across the Polish Corridor along the Baltic to connect the German exclave of East Prussia with the rest of the Reich.  Pius had become pope in a Vatican effort to play games of state and diplomacy to deal with the devil.  What the Church got was a pope who cracked the whip of authority and kept the faithful in line long after the Axis Powers were defeated in the Second World War. 

If we get another pope in the Piusian mold, the Church may not be finished, but it will deserve every derision it gets from progressives who fear and loathe the Vatican for its patriarchy and misogyny but excuse Islam despite the fact that it has the same flaws.  Of course, the whole hypocrisy of progressive relativists who go after the Church of Rome but turn a blind eye to the reactionary attitudes of mullahs who regularly make a pilgrimage to Mecca should have been exposed long ago. 

I once respected Bill Maher for his anti-Catholic views, actually, because he is is an atheist who bashes all religions and has also been virulently critical of Islam, and he's been consistent in his defense of Western civilization over the politically and religiously restrictive Middle Eastern culture that progressives excuse out of some twisted, anti-Western solidarity with non-Western and Third World perspectives that remain stuck in the Dark Ages.  Now, of course, Maher praises Trump, who threatens to bring us back to the Dark Ages, while conservative Catholic and evangelical figures applaud his medieval agenda.  And then there is actor Ben Affleck, who once excoriated Bill Maher to his face on Maher's HBO show or being an Islamophobe yet did not challenge him for his anti-Catholic views. 

Bill Maher . . .  Ben Affleck . . . I wouldn't buy a used car from either of them.  

Dinner With the President . . . Dinner With the President . . .

And if Bill Maher brought cake, I hope he brought an assortment.

Bill Maher, having spent years of bashing Donald Trump for, well, everything, had dinner at the White House with Trump and also with Robert Ritchie - the redneck rapper known as Kid Rock - a few days ago.  Maher said that he was hoping to come to an understanding with Trump and some sense of détente in today's political environment.  Or some hogwash like that.

"I mean, Trump is one of the most effective politicians, whatever you think of the policy and him as a person," Maher said after the dinner. "Just him as a politician, just understanding that [you should] always lean in to being more who you are."  Maher also added that he was amazed how the Democrats had tried in vain for decades to find someone like that (hey, Bill, ever hear of Barack Obama?  Joe Biden?).  From all accounts, Bill had a good time, while his now-former fans were just plain had.

Maher's capitulation to Trump is only the latest in a series of high-profile post-election knee-bending exercises that began with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski making their November 15 pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago.  As the comedic equivalent to Scarborough's and Brzezinski's journalistic transgression, this was even more painful than Joe and Mika's stunt, because Maher was speaking truth to power long before those two started doing so.  He repeatedly called out George Walker Bush during his Presidency, and he wasn't afraid to call out Barack Obama whenever he got something wrong.  Now he's joined a whole host of once-reputable public figures in, having once correctly dismissed Trump as another Hitler and MAGA as Nazis, embracing Trump out of fear of losing their standings, their careers, and possibly, to be fair and honest, their lives.  But mostly their standings and their careers, as the only people rounded up by Trump's secret police and sent to a Salvadoran concentration camp so far are undocumented immigrants and even some documented immigrants, though that could change.  (I had feared that Trump would round up people he perceived to be a threat to his regime and send them to a  concentration camp in North Dakota.  The only thing inaccurate about that prediction is that the camp  isn't in North Dakota.)

Perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised at Maher dining with Trump.  Because even though he has progressive politics, Maher seems to support progressive policies for all the wrong reasons.  He's pro-choice; maybe that's because he's afraid of impregnating his girlfriend du jour.  He's pro-immigration, mainly because he's admitted to having a thing for "Latin chicks."  (So did John Wayne.)  He's consistently bashed all forms of religion, going after Catholicism, the faith of his birth, and Islam, both of which are known for patriarchy and misogyny . . . but I sometimes wonder if he only takes pot shots at the Vatican to deflect from his pot shots at Mecca, which, unlike Vatican-bashing, is still a no-no among progressives, who believe that Islam demands respect, if only because so many brown people adhere to it.

It's quite galling, really, to see so many celebrated figures, many of whom likely supported Kamala Harris for President, pretend that Harris never even existed (refusing to acknowledge your party's most recent failed presidential nominee, of course, is nothing new for Democrats) in a rush to make nice with Trump.  As the latest celebrity to bend the knee to Trump, Maher hoped to find common ground with Donald (presumably, their common lust for women), but all he found was an angry bunch of former fans deserting him; and he lost his credibility as a comedian and as an entertainer.  

I don't have HBO anymore (not because of Maher, my household dropped premium cable long ago), but I notice that Bill Maher's HBO show is now available on CNN, which is part of the conglomerate that owns HBO.  (Maybe that was the reason for Bill burying the hatchet with Donald - to please his corporate bosses.)  I'll pass, thanks.  I'm as done with him as  I am with Joe and Mika. 

The China Syndrome

I'm going to do something I rarely do - agree with Donald Trump.  I think this is only the third time I've agreed with him, the first time being when he said that Hillary Clinton was crooked and the second time being when he said that new government buildings should be designed to look like Greek temples, like they used to be.  This time, I agree with him on China - it's responsible for the COVID-19 virus and should be held accountable.

Now why would I say something like that?  Because the virus originated in China, the Chinese assured us it was under control with all of the public-relations bluster associated with Soviet attempts to downplay the Chernobyl accident, and the unsanitary practices of the so-called "wet markets" in China allowed the virus to make the jump from animals to humans.

This also puts me in agreement with Bill Maher, who, on his HBO show last month, explained how most viruses and diseases are named for the places the originated in, and that the wet markets where exotic animals like bats are sold for human consumption were a breeding ground for a deadly virus, just as they had been for previous coronaviruses that got out.  I also agree with Maher, by the way, that it's only appropriate for such unorthodox dietary habits to be called into question.

To respond to the inevitable complaint that terminology such as "Chinese virus" is racist, it is not racist to say that it is a Chinese virus because it was discovered in China any more than it is to call rubella the German measles because it was discovered by German doctors.  China is responsible for this virus because the Communist government there, which is known for cracking down on anything that threatens the "stability" of its one-party rule, should have been able to contain the virus before it got out of not only mainland China but out of Hubei Province.  Heck, I'm beginning to wonder how different things might have been if the Republic of China government on Taiwan hadn't been driven off the mainland back in 1949 and were still running the country, and how we would have all been better off - because, I would like to point out, the Taiwanese government has been doing a great job in containing the virus on that island.

Having said all of that, though, I would like to stress that it is not proper or permissible to blame Americans of Chinese origin for the virus and make racist threats against them.  But I would also like to especially stress this: Donald Trump may be right to blame the virus on China, but China's culpability does not exonerate Trump from the numerous boneheaded mistakes he made that allowed the United States to become the most COVID-19-infected country on the planet.

Below is Bill Maher's commentary on the issues from April 10, 2020.

 

The Doctors Are In

I thought I'd let others do the talking on my blog this time.

After NBC News and the Daily Kos - two apologist media outlets for the Democratic establishment, the latter being especially adept at mainstream-liberal smugness - reported on a trip Green Party leader Jill Stein made to Russia in December 2015 in an effort to paint her as a stooge of Vladimir Putin and a willing participant to undermine Hillary Clinton for Donald Trump's benefit, Dr. Stein waited for awhile to muster up a defense.  She finally offered one last week.  Here are her comments in their entirety:  

NBC recently reported that I had been at an event in Russia along with Vladimir Putin in 2015. Notice that whenever you see this story in the corporate media, it consists of nothing more than a photo, because if they reported any of the facts behind the photo it would undermine the story they are trying to invent. In reality, the NBC report didn’t say anything that wasn’t in my campaign’s press release about the Moscow event in December 2015. My trip to Russia, like my visit to the COP21 climate conference in Paris as part of the same trip, was about promoting diplomacy, peace, and international cooperation on pressing global issues. I criticized the militaristic policies of both the Russian and US governments, and proposed an alternative vision: working together on a “Peace Offensive” to de-escalate conflict in the Middle East and around the world. I was one of a number of American advocates for a more peaceful and just foreign policy in Moscow, including Thom Hartmann, Rocky Anderson, Ray McGovern, Max Blumenthal, and Jesse Ventura. The Moscow conference featured public figures, politicians and academics from across Europe and North America, as well as journalists and major media leadership from India, China, Russia, Europe and the US. It was an honor to be able to address the international community, and show them we Greens are fighting for a foreign policy based on international law. human rights and diplomacy, not on economic and military domination.

It is not only justifiable to attempt to communicate with other nations, it’s essential to do so if we are to have any hope of solving the gravest threats to human survival: endless war, climate meltdown and the threat of nuclear conflict. The Greens are the only political party with a plan to address all these issues. No wonder we are under attack by both Democrats and Republicans, and their surrogates in the corporate media, even outside the election cycle.

NBC and other corporate media outlets have tried to create the impression that I refuse to answer questions about my Russia trip. Actually, I have answered these questions so many times I’ve lost count, but when the corporate media realize that the answers don’t support their pre-conceived smear narrative, they refuse to print the facts. No, I did not speak with Vladimir Putin. Nor did I receive any payment from Russia. Why has one reporter after another, after hearing these facts, decided not to publish them? Why do they choose instead to encourage sensational conspiracy thinking based on a photo?

This transparent campaign of neo-McCarthyism perfectly demonstrates why Americans’ trust in mass media has plummeted to an all-time low.

This is just the latest in a long line of smear campaigns from the corporate media. For a look at the many desperate attempts to discredit our grassroots movement, check out our “Haters Gonna Hate” page debunking the smears.

It’s time to withdraw our trust and support from these masters of misinformation, and put our resources towards building independent, non-corporate people’s media to provide the truthful information we need to create the future we deserve.

Meanwhile, the fact that Democratic apologists are attacking us outside of an electoral campaign is a great sign. We have become a force to contend with and they are rightly worried. The American people are clamoring for a new way forward and together, we're creating a future whose time has come, that puts people, planet and peace over profit.

And then there was Dr. Cornel West, who supported Dr. Stein in the 2016 presidential election and had supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016  Democratic primaries.  He went on Bill Maher's HBO talk show a couple of weeks after Maher criticized him and others for supporting Dr. Stein at Hillary's expense.   Although Dr. Stein never came up in the tête-à-tête that resulted over the election results, it is worth watching and Dr. West's comebacks should be taken quite seriously.  Here is the video of that exchange.

Peace, bro.

Maher's Attacks

Bill Maher used his "Real Time" show this past Friday night to take Jill Stein supporters to task for voting for the Green Party presidential nominee instead of Hillary Clinton.  He made the argument that if the had not been such "liberal purists," they wouldn't be bitching about Neil Gorsuch, Scott Pruitt, or his tyrannical executive orders.

Uh, yeah . . . let's remember a few things about the election:

Hillary Clinton lost because she failed to carry Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  If every Stein voter in those states had voted for Hillary, she would have won Wisconsin and Michigan but not Pennsylvania, and Trump would still have won.

I voted for Jill Stein.  I live in New Jersey.  Hillary won New Jersey with a majority.  My vote absolutely did not affect the outcome, and Maher's statement denigrates people who voted their conscience and took a big risk to help the Greens get federal funding for next time.

Dr. Stein came in fourth in the popular vote, with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson third.  Republicans and centrist and center-right independents who dislike Trump and who could have voted for Hillary - voters Hillary could have possibly won over - gave Johnson vote margins larger than Hillary's defeat margins in some states.  Why isn't Maher taking Johnson voters to task?     

Oh yeah, Maher told Stein backers - including Dr. Cornel West - to go f**k themselves.

Guess Dr. West won't be a guest on his show anymore.

Stein voters - and Johnson voters - are not to blame for Trump. Hilary is to blame for Trump because she was a lousy candidate.

Meanwhile, Hillary says she takes responsibility for loss while still deflecting blame for it to others.  Come on, Hillary, even your husband parses words better than that.

The Great Exasperator

I didn't see Christine O'Donnell's first U.S. Senate debate with her Democratic rival Chris Coons, but people say he seemed exasperated with her, and they probably feel sorry for him. I'm sure some pundits, though, say Coons lost the debate because of his exasperation, just like when Albert Gore condescendingly sighed during a presidential debate with George Walker Bush. But, as Bill Maher proved with a montage clip of O'Donnell's appearances on his 1990s show "Politically Incorrect," which he showed on his current program on HBO, she has exasperated a lot of people.

Among the panelists on various installments of "Politically Incorrect" were Ben Affleck, Dana Carvey, Al Franken (can you imagine him and O'Donnell in the Senate together?), author Clive Barker, Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller, screenwriter Larry Gelbart, television actress Edie McClurg, comedian Steven Wright, "Dallas" actor Patrick Duffy, British comedienne Patricia Routledge, and "Partridge Family" alumnus Danny Bonaduce.

Okay, Patricia Routledge was never on "Politically Incorrect" with Christine O'Donnell, and I'm sure she was never on that show at all. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. But every other person I mentioned did have to deal with O'Donnell. Imagine someone so thickheaded she exasperated Danny Bonaduce. She is that bad. Plus, like Claudia Zimmer from Alan Alda's movie The Four Seasons (played by Rita Moreno), she always kept playing up the fact that she's Italian, at least on her mother's side. Patrick Duffy - who, as his name suggests, was probably happy she didn't play up her Irish side - was so fed up with her saying she's Italian, he said to her, "So eat something and shut up!"

All of these "Politically Incorrect" episodes had their moments, with friends and guests that Bill Maher can recall. Some are dead and some are living. In their lives, Christine O'Donnell annoyed them all. :-D

It's Witchcraft

Bill Maher, commenting on Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, noted that the Republicans may still have a shot at winning Joe Biden's old Senate seat because O'Donnell, unlike Sarah Palin, comes across as a nice, sweet person. But he probably increased the chances of Chris Coons, O'Donnell's Democratic opponent, to win in November when, on his HBO show, he played a clip of O'Donnell from his old show "Politically Incorrect" - the clip was from around 1997 - saying that she "dabbled" in witchcraft.

So O'Donnell was actually involved in diabolical rituals and learned how to cast spells on people? Kind of what Palin is famous for!

I want to laugh, but I also want to cry - I mean, she could be in the United States Senate in four months! This is a woman, after all, who has theorized that of scientists creating mice with human brains. (I think the opposite theory - humans with mouse brains - is more plausible, especially in explaining why Democrats are always caving in to conservatives!) But the more I learn about her, the more I feel sorry for the poor girl. She comes across as a sweet naive young woman who doesn't know what she's talking about and doesn't even know what she's saying half the time. She's like a cross between Sally White - Mia Farrow's ditzy character in Woody Allen's Radio Days - and an MSNBC morning talk show host who obviously needs the guidance of a smarter, savvier sidekick. But I'm not here to discuss Joe Scarborough. ;-)

As for her witchcraft, I can imagine O'Donnell over a hot cauldron trying to put a curse on Mike Castle, and - possibly by twitching her nose - hexing Karl Rove for opining that she's a flawed candidate. And I'll bet she really looks cute in one of those pointed hats! Maybe, if elected, she'll continue to live in Delaware and commute to Washington by broom! But after sending to the Senate heavyweights like Joe Biden, William Roth, and Thomas Carper, is Delaware really serious about sending to the Senate a self-professed ex-witch with the perkiness of Samantha and the maturity of Sabrina?

O'Donnell has laughed off the witchcraft remark, and it will probably give her the free media she wants, but her wackiness is bound to illicit laughter and fear in many voters. Rove may have had his bark stripped for suggesting she's a weak candidate, but he's been proven right every day since the Delaware primary. I just want to know one thing - if O'Donnell gets into the Senate, will her economic agenda be referred to as "Wiccanomics?" :-D

Chris Coons is probably thrilled that Bill Maher showed this clip; I'll bet he could kiss him for this! I wouldn't recommend it. O'Donnell will only make insinuations against Coons and ask him where his "man pants" are.

The United States of Stupid

Recently Bill Maher said on CNN, and again on his own HBO show, that America is a stupid country. And even though that got a lot of right-wingers angry, Maher was armed with plenty of evidence. Among the facts supporting his opinion:

Polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain the Bill of Rights.

Seventy percent of Americans thought in 2003 that Saddam Hussein was behind the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September 11, 2001. While it's now down to one out of three Americans (about 34 percent), that's still too high, and it corresponds with the number of people who still approved of George Walker Bush's job at the end of his Presidency.

Nearly a quarter of Americans could not name the country we fought in the American Revolution. (Well, we know it was an English-speaking country, that should give 'em a hint!)

Nearly half of Americans don’t know that each state has two senators, and more than half can’t name their own congressman.

A Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, a theory disproved by Copernicus, a Polish astronomer - that's right, a dumb Polack! - in the sixteenth century.

And these are just statistics on what passes for common knowledge. Consider examples of America's dumbness in the big picture. Look at our living pattern. We spent the past sixty years and may spend another sixty years building human settlements that are accessible and easy to get around in by car, leaving no opportunity for public transportation and walking, as if everyone in America can own and drive a car. And what kind of vehicles do many of us drive? Big cars and SUVs, the kind of cars that Heinz Nordhoff, Volkswagen's CEO in the fifties and sixties, said had more power than could be used and "thus violate every principle of engineering and technical science."

Among other American feats of engineering are bridges that collapse and domed stadiums with roofs that cave in.

How about all the money invested in the athletic programs of colleges and universities, which made many of our institutions of higher education more expensive to attend because of all that overhead and turned them into health spas where literature and math are only occasionally studied? That's what makes Title IX in the 1972 Education Act an example of American stupidity. Instead of giving women more opportunities in scholastic athletics, why not give them more opportunities in education?

And don't get me started on our obsession with violence, from handguns to nuclear missile warheads. Or our belief that weapons keep the world safe. What other country could have developed a cannon in the 1840s (a faulty demonstration of which almost killed President John Tyler and did kill his Secretary of State) and a long-range missile in the 1980s and called both the "Peacemaker?"

It doesn't surprise me that Americans are so dumb. Back in 1987, high school seniors were polled on questions of common knowledge. Asked who wrote "The Grapes of Wrath," many said Ernest Hemingway. (It was John Steinbeck.) Asked who wrote "A Christmas Carol," many named the story's character, Ebenezer Scrooge, as the author. (It was British author Charles Dickens, who famously satirized Americans in one of his novels.) And many thought the Civil War began in 1492. Well, I got news for you; these high school seniors of the late eighties are adults on the edge of turning forty, and they're just as dumb. Their high school diplomas and, where applicable, their college degrees aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

And some of them may even vote.

Many of them have parents who oppose health care reform because they don't want the government taking over their Medicare plans.

We may be of different races, creeds and colors, but we Americans are uniformly dumb all over.