Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Disgrace

Could someone help Joey Ratz find his forever home?

On March 10 (2010), the chief exorcist of the Vatican, the Rev. Gabriele Amorth (who has held this demanding post for 25 years), was quoted as saying that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican," and that "when one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' in the holy rooms, it is all true—including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia." This can perhaps be taken as confirmation that something horrible has indeed been going on in the holy precincts, though most inquiries show it to have a perfectly good material explanation.

Concerning the most recent revelations about the steady complicity of the Vatican in the ongoing—indeed endless—scandal of child rape, a few days later a spokesman for the Holy See made a concession in the guise of a denial. It was clear, said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, that an attempt was being made "to find elements to involve the Holy Father personally in issues of abuse." He stupidly went on to say that "those efforts have failed."
He was wrong twice. In the first place, nobody has had to strive to find such evidence: It has surfaced, as it was bound to do. In the second place, this extension of the awful scandal to the topmost level of the Roman Catholic Church is a process that has only just begun. Yet it became in a sense inevitable when the College of Cardinals elected, as the vicar of Christ on Earth, the man chiefly responsible for the original cover-up. (One of the sanctified voters in that "election" was Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, a man who had already found the jurisdiction of Massachusetts a bit too warm for his liking.)

I truly do not wish to relive the stench of the Church in this matter of pedophilia. It might be enough that this pope takes to his grave, and to the hottest Hell he believes in, the eternal shame of a life filled with evil and cloaked in piety. From his childhood in the Hitler Youth all the way to the present day, Pope Benedict XVI has absolutely no claim to the grace of God.

If there is a God, that is.

Not even the Onion's account makes this matter amusing.

The RCC is in greater need of a reformer than any other institution on the face of the Earth. It would give great hope to its legions of believers if the next pontiff were African, or Latino, but that might be too much to ask of the Cardinals. We'll just have to wait for the holy smoke to see.


In the meantime, those of us non-Catholics can hope for something that at least looks like progress. This pope was never intended to represent that.

Good riddance to bad, bad rubbish.

Both jobsanger and Socratic Gadfly have more.

Monday, February 11, 2013

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance sends its best wishes for an early spring to everyone digging out from last week's blizzard as it brings you this week's roundup.

The school finance ruling has been handed down, and it could be a game-changer for schools and the Legislature. Off the Kuff explains.

The Democrats in the Texas House are trying to show that the GOP doesn't care about public education. They should, since it's been the best winning strategy for Texas Democrats in the recent past. WCNews at Eye on Williamson posts on this week's news from the Lege: Texas House Democrats have a plan.

"Tip your server, save the world" is a suitable mantra for living in the second decade of the 21st century. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs shares the message of transforming everything you can, within the reach of your own arm, from Will Pitt.  

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is watching Ted Cruz hissy fit no votes on anything and everything, including no on the Violence Against Women Act.

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote that President Obama's policies on the uses of drones will lead to abuses both internationally and at home.

Over at TexasKaos, lightseeker explains how corporate school reform is The Stupid on Steroids. Give it a look.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Tip your server, save the world

Will Pitt of Truthout wrote it, and would you please read it.

It's your fourth shift in a row at the restaurant, all doubles because you only make $2.65 an hour and need to pay for rent and heat and electricity, and your section is a set of booths and tables - six four-tops, four two-tops, one eight-top - that seat forty-four customers total, and it's been packed from start to finish across your whole rip with couples and clusters of workers from the accounting firm next door and families with children and foreigners who can't read the menu and have never heard of tipping, and twenty different people in your last two shifts have sent their meal back because the cook is new and in the weeds and can't handle the volume and keeps screwing up the orders, and that's not your fault, but the customers take it out on you because you're there.

And your feet are throbbing and your back is a bag of iron rods and your arm is knotted with aching muscles from carrying huge trays of food and drinks as you weave around and through the small sliver of space available after table three joined with table four and their chairs are sprayed out into the lane, and you move through them like smoke balancing six dinners and seven drinks on one hand without spilling a drop or disturbing a soul.

And would you please go read all of it. The waiters and waitresses and bartenders apparently get paid $2.65 an hour in some state, but in Texas it's $2.13, the federal minimum. That hasn't seen an increase since 1991. Twenty-two years, and no raise.

If tips don't bring the actual wage up to the federally required minimum wage for everybody else, which just rose to $7.25 per hour (in July 2009), then the restaurant owner must make up the difference. In practice, experts say this rarely comes into play.

You perhaps took note of the female pastor who objected to an 18% gratuity added to her large party at Applebee's with the note on her tab? That got posted to Reddit and then Facebook and other social media? And when the disgraced clergywoman complained to the manager at Applebee's about being outed as a skinflint, the manager fired the waitress who posted the photo?

Here's more scolding. But it's for me and you.

So.

Worry about drones, about lawyers for the president arguing they can kill Americans anywhere and for basically any reason, worry about all of that and everything else besides...but real change comes in small doses, and actual kindness happens within reach of your arm.

Want to help the workers? The economy? The whole country?

Tip your server, don't be a jackass about it, and worry about the rest of the world after you do what is right within reach of your arm. Maybe, if you're really interested in helping your community, work towards establishing higher wages for the people who bring you food when you go out to eat; there are thousands of them right where you live. First things first; if you shaft the person making slave wages who feeds you and then go home to whine on Facebook about the poor, poor people from somewhere else, you're as much a part of the problem as the people in Washington dropping bombs and deploying drones.

All politics is local.

And if you need some additional encouragement for penance, here's how those first-world problems sound when they are read in third-world voices.



Must. Do. Better.

Sunday Funnies

Back to posting text in short order.


Your Sunday Talking Heads lineup is here.

After a few months of intensive market research and focus grouping, Republicans concluded that their message, not their policies, was responsible for the party's losses in the November elections, and decided to undertake a major rebranding campaign.

Leading these efforts are hip-hop savior Marco Rubio, top Jew Eric Cantor, and Karl Rove—whose new scam, the Conservative Victory Project, aims to function like the female body by shutting that whole "rape" thing down.

Although it's too soon to tell whether they will ultimately be successful, the early signs are not exactly encouraging.

Luckily for them, รผber-pundit Dick Morris is sitting on the sidelines, ready to lend a helping hand (or foot).