Phony baloney

Newsletter: Phony baloney

The current dust-up over the birth control issue is a farce, when in fact 28 states already comply with the mandate, including catholic institutions, and it is clear to everyone with their head screwed on tight that 99% of women, including Catholic women, have chosen to ignore the bishops and the church’s teaching on contraception, to practice birth control at some time in their life. Rarely do you nowadays see broods like Bobby Kennedy had or like Rick Santorum has, that darling of reactionary religionists. Both my parents came from a family of seven kids. Birth control in the early 20th century meant, more times than not, no more sex. My wife’s grandmother told her husband after birthing three kids that was it; there was no more sex for 45 years. (Could that really happen?) And they weren’t catholic. The right wing has pounced on this issue of contraception as a way to cast aspersions on President Obama who they have been trying to tag as the anti-Christ, to go along with his illegitimacy as a citizen, the fact he’s really a Muslim, a big government Socialist, and last but not least, a repellent black man in a white man’s office. It is a phony baloney issue being used to fling more mud at a hated figure, nothing but a trumped up gimmick. It also serves to put the Bishops in a hostile relationship with American women, proving once more that the Catholic hierarchy is more interested in dogma and dominance than women’s welfare. Pundits worry that the president will lose the Catholic voters. Not to worry; the better part of the deal is the women he’s pleased and won over to his cause.


Gawd, I am so sick of this mud-slinging primary season, and to think we aren’t even close to the main event later this year. I can’t stand Santorum’s whole schtick: the pious Boy Scout with seven kids peddling a rancid brand of warmed-over religiosity based in the 1950’s Good Housekeeping seal of approval. To hear him carry on makes me believe he is living on another planet. But it looks like he is leaving Newt in the dust, as Romney’s super-pac annihilated him in Florida. It only cost $15 million to do the job. Santorum’s eager embrace of socially conservative issues may make him the choice of the like-minded base of the party, but they are, I am convinced, of tertiary value to Democrats and independents in the big cities of America. They have a more secular cast of mind and they don’t care who marries who or what one’s sexual orientation is. Those issues are no longer wedge issues for the Right, like they used to be. Attitudes have switch sides. Most folks are concerned with practical matters, namely, jobs, jobs, jobs, and holding on to their houses. Pseudo-issues like the church and birth control barely register on their meter of importance. Those issues are the stuff of beltway beanbag played for political points, where relevance has long since been abandoned. Be serious! Let’s face it; Republicans are off their heads, too gone into politics to think sensibly about anything. They have ears like Dumbo, a nose to rival Pinocchio, and staffs composed of the seven dwarfs. They have surrendered all sense to one goal: defeating Obama—a tactic that has their nose to the grindstone, a narrow focus which has handicapped their vision. They are little more than extensions of the will of a small clutch of billionaires who are trying to buy the seat in the oval office. And I fear, they may succeed, as Obama’s support is not what it was like in 2008.

And isn’t the situation in Syria a tragic mess? It is where the “Arab spring” has run afoul due to complications that didn’t apply in North Africa and Egypt. Syria is at the nexus of several states of regional and political importance, with strands going out in several directions, to both friend and foe alike. Nation after nation have condemned what is going on in Syria where a ruthless dictator is slaughtering his own people to maintain maniacal control of the country which has been under the control of either Assad’s father or himself for 40 years. But the thirst for freedom has driven the masses to revolt, like they did elsewhere in the Arab world, but because Russia and China are backing Assad, and there are worries about Iran entering the fray, the UN feels its hands are tied. The Israelis are watching the situation too, very closely, because they are considering a raid on Iranian nuclear facilities sometime soon. Russia had an envoy in Syria last week talking reform, which is ridiculous as the Rubicon was passed months ago. Assad is not about to negotiate with people he’s branded as “terrorists,” and the rebels know all he wants is a chance to identify the opposition and wipe them out like his father did in the eighties. Like his father, Assad has no moral scruples and could care less what the rest of the world thinks. I realize that Syria isn’t Libya, but there has got to be a way to stop the slaughter. If something isn’t done soon Assad is going to obliterate Homs, man, woman and child. Over a million people live there. Somehow the Arab League and Turkey seem the key to me.