Bobby, Bobby, Bobby!

Here's the story of a governor named Bobby, who says he's thinking about being more than that.

In an admission that surprised absolutely no one, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told a reporter for a Heritage Foundation "news service" that he might run for Barack Obama's job in 2016.

"It's something we're thinking about. It's something we'll pray about. But...we have to win the war of ideas first," Jindal said last week. "We've got to win the elections in 2014. And after we do that, we're certainly giving it some thought."

Insert GOP boilerplate about Obamacare here.

Insert Jindal boilerplate about his miracle-working in Louisiana here.

Now, with the possibility of a President Jindal come January 2017, I think it might be useful to explore the genesis of some of the governor's "reform agenda" in the Pelican State. Here it's important to explain how an Indian-American kid named Piyush became a Southern governor named Bobby.

IT ALL comes down to The Brady Bunch.

"Every day after school, I'd come home and I'd watch 'The Brady Bunch.'" Jindal told 60 Minutes' Morley Safer in 2009. "And I identified with Bobby, you know? He was about my age, and Bobby stuck."

Well, that explains a lot. It may even explain his Louisiana "reform" agenda, where wackiness has ensued much of the time. Indeed, if we closely examine one of the earliest and most profound influences on young Piyush/Bobby, we can see the genesis of key elements of his "miracle" on the bayou.

First, let's see whether we can unearth his inspiration for entering the political arena:



THAT DONE, it shouldn't be difficult to come up with the blueprint for his voucher-driven "education reform" program. It's all a matter of a) salesmanship and b) free customer service:



GROOVY! Now, I think I have an idea concerning the inspiration for Jindal's brilliant plan to bring transparency and more "effective" ethics enforcement to the notoriously corrupt Louisiana state government:



THAT'S RIGHT . . . behind every brilliant political scheme, there's a pop-culture inspiration. Yes, there is.

Now, let's move on to the genesis of Jindal's reform of Medicaid and the state's charity health-care system:



FINALLY, how in the world do you sell yourself as someone of presidential timbre when your entire body of work as governor of a poor, small and crooked Southern state has left it just as poor, just as small and just as crooked as you found it? And then there's the whole "I destroyed Louisiana higher education" thing.

But then you go back to the well one more time.  

What would the Bradys do?"



YEAH . . . that's the (2016) ticket.

When your president's a Muslin . . .

Don Mason, via Flickr

. . . what the hell is a patroit supposed to do?

No, the troo patroit must secdee! Because we must detsroy this contrey inn order to save it!

If at first you don't secede. . . .

The last Louisianian with such a bright idea ended up taking potshots at Fort Sumter, S.C., in April 1861.  

That didn't work out so well in the end for Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, for the sovereign state of South Carolina, for secessionist Louisiana or for anybody else in the Confederate States of America. "In the end" came almost exactly four years later, after the United States Army had smashed the South into rubble, destroyed its slave-based economy, plunged its people into privation and ripped out a region's false pride with the business end of a sabre.

All at the low, low price of about 700,000 dead.

But if at first you don't secede, try, try again. Especially if there's a Negro in the White House who also happens to be a commerniss and a socialiss and maybe the Antichrist, despite governing a lot like Richard Nixon . . . and the black sumbitch done got re-elected by them DamnYankeePinkoFags. (OK, the Nixon part might qualify Barack Obama for his Antichrist Jr., merit badge.)

 
Anyway, the Gret Stet of Louisiana done had enough of that un-American crap, so one true patriot in Slidell decided that the only rational response to such a brazen attack on everything the United States stands for . . . is to blow up the whole damned Union. 

Trust me -- this makes sense to people in Slidell.

UNFORTUNATELY, reports Nextgov, it also makes sense to people in 22 other states who don't have Slidell as an excuse for being dumbasses:

Residents of 23 states had petitioned the White House for permission to peacefully secede from the union as of 4 p.m. Monday.

A petition from a Slidell, La., resident posted to the White House’s We the People website the day after President Obama’s reelection seems to have started the trend.Nextgov first reported on that petition on Friday. The other 20 petition were posted over the weekend.

The Louisianan’s petition was mostly an extended quote from the Declaration of Independence suggesting the time had come for his state to “dissolve the political bands which have connected” it with the rest of the nation.

The majority of the secession petitions are carbon copies of the Louisiana petition with just the state’s name changed. A few petitions, such as this one from Texas, offered their own arguments for secession.

The Texas petition crossed We the People's 25,000 signature threshold for an official White House response around 3:30 p.m. Monday. All the other petitions were several thousand signatures shy at that point.

“Every petition that crosses the threshold will receive a response but we don't comment on what the substance of that response will be before it's issued,” a White House official said.

The majority of the secession petitions were from states that cast their electoral votes for Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the presidential contest rather than for the president. Six of the 21 petitions, however, were from states that broke for the president, including petitions from New York and New Jersey.

As of noon Monday, secession petitions had been filed by citizens of Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee, Michigan, New York, Colorado, Oregon, New Jersey, North Dakota, Montana, Indiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arizona.

I KNOW . . . I know. This is bat-sh*t crazy. And it's been long settled that a state can't secede from the Union.

And President Obama -- no matter how much he might want Louisiana and Texas to get the hell out of his rapidly graying hair -- has no authority to let any state go anywhere, being that that would require a constitutional amendment.

In other words, the secession crisis of 2012 was over before it started. This, however, is unpersuasive in Louisiana, which right now wants to know whether people thought it was over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. No, a stupid and futile gesture is required on somebody's part in the wake of Obama's re-election, and the Gret Stet just might give you a tax credit for it.

Check with Presidente Bobby Jindal.

MIND YOU, Louisianians who luv, luv, luv this petition are itching to extract themselves -- out of sheer pique over socialism, welfare Cadillacs and Obamacare -- from a country in which the hard-working, self-sufficient conservative pillars of the Gret Stet get to spend the livelong day sucking at the federal teat and bitching about how sour mother's milk has become.

Perhaps it's a fit of conscience emanating from a state that takes in $1.35 in federal funds for every federal tax dollar Washington collects from it. Maybe it's just the Louisiana "brain drain" having done a number on math skills -- after all, even with the taxpayer largess the state gets as recompense for a loveless marriage to Yankee tyrants, it still spends a smaller percentage of its budget on higher education than Haiti.

Wait till secession, when Louisiana's higher-ed budget drops overnight to about $273.86 annually. Then, the prospect of becoming another Haiti may well be a case of one's eyes still being bigger than one's distended stomach.

OR MAYBE all this secession noise might be a result of something as simple as mass insanity. My money's on this one. Besides, Louisiana has a long, sordid history of cutting off its nose to spite Washington's face, and not much of a history with civil society.

But if you're already nuts, you just as well engage in a little magical thinking. Post-secession policymakers in Louisiana would no doubt be optimistic that the sovereign state could soon -- maybe in a matter of just a few years -- be just as up-to-date as Port au Prince.

I mean, once Presidente Jindal's "kidneys for gruel" public/black market welfare partnership started turning a profit and contributing to the fiscal bottom line, the soot-choked sky would be the limit, right?

Ding, dong, is the tea party dead?

It was a bad night for the tea party.

Creepy tea-party firebrand Allen West apparently has gone down in flames in his Florida congressional district, despite outspending his Democratic opponent 4 to 1. Kooky Michelle Bachmann almost lost in her Minnesota district, this after a failed presidential bid on a tea-stained platform.

Rep. Allen West

Tea-party insurgents also got whacked in their U.S. Senate races in Missouri and Indiana after finding it impossible to speak about touchy subjects without gagging on their feet. Tea partiers cost the Republicans seats in the Senate and in the House.

Some suggest it was just a matter of bad candidates, not a wholesale repudiation of the movement. Could be. I think that's a question that will be answered over a number of years.

Nevertheless, it's interesting that the man held hostage by the Tea Party Caucus until now is singing a more conciliatory song a mere day after the election. He even said the T-word, and I don't mean "tea":

House Speaker John Boehner offered Wednesday to pursue a deal with a victorious President Barack Obama that will include higher taxes "under the right conditions" to help reduce the nation's staggering debt and put its finances in order.

"Mr. President, this is your moment," Boehner told reporters, speaking about the "fiscal cliff" that will hit in January. "We want you to lead."

Boehner said House Republicans are asking Obama "to make good on a balanced approach" that would including spending cuts and address government social benefit programs.

"Let's find the common ground that has eluded us," Boehner said while congratulating the president on winning a second term.

The Ohio Republican spoke a day after the president's clear re-election victory. He said conditions on higher taxes would include a revamped tax code to make it cleaner and fairer, fewer loopholes and lower rates for all.

BUT we are talking about a budgetary standoff between the Party of Lust and the Party of Greed, so getting all optimistic that sanity might prevail in Washington is, to say the least, premature.

What I do know is that a people as arrogant and hubristic as ourselves usually gets the leadership it deserves. And you're looking at it every night on the network news.

Expect no miracles.

Viral video of the century

This needs no explanation. At all.

We feel your pain, kid. We all feel your pain.

Going after the twit vote

This is almost enough to make me vote for Mitt Romney out of sheer disgust at the mind-numbing emo craptasticness of it all.

Almost.

What I want to do is to start a social-media campaign to convince any college kid susceptible to this kind of stupidity to not bother on Election Day (Erection Day?) -- that his or her vote really doesn't count. That everyone under 35 should just dial up something sufficiently navel-gazing on the ol' iPod, crack open a six pack of PBR and call it good on Nov. 9.

(Wink, wink.)

And if that didn't work, I'd be open to poll taxes and literacy tests. Or mass kidnappings. One approach or the other.

Because, like, President Obama, you're creeping me out, man. The only thing worse than the cynicism behind this ad -- the whole "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public" je ne sais quoi of it all -- is that it probably represents an astute reading of the demographic tea leaves.

In other words, "Just kill me now."

If Otter were Romney's debate coach. . . .

Greg Marmalard, who goes by Barack Obama these days, thought he was being smart in the foreign-policy presidential debate Monday night.
 
And Pinto just sat there and took it up the wazoo with that "horses and bayonets" bit o' condescension. I blame it all on that wussy little angel hovering over his one shoulder.

The one that told him he shouldn't hire that disreputable Eric Stratton as his debate coach. Who would have had Pinto, who goes by "Mitt Romney" these days, riposte with something like this:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the issue here is not whether we have these ships that planes can land on or boats that can go under the water. We do. The issue here is that we have the president of the United States of America -- The commander-in-chief! -- comparing the United States Navy to horses and bayonets like it's some irrelevant and antiquated entity.

"Can you imagine, the commander-in-chief looking upon our brave sailors as if they were something quaint from an exhibit at the Smithsonian put together by a bunch of liberal eggheads? If the commander-in-chief can cast aspersions upon and ridicule the entire United States Navy, what's to stop him from disrespecting the United States Marine Corps?

"And if he can disrespect the United States Marine Corps, the Army and the Air Force surely will be next! How do we know he hasn't already? We don't! And he probably has! I mean, if you can disparage the United States Navy -- if, indeed, you can give up the ships -- there's no reason why he wouldn't go after the grunts and the devil dogs and the airmen, too!

"And if Barack HUSSEIN Obama can belittle the military he unjustly commands, he'd just as well disown the United States of America! And when you have a president who disowns the United States of America, ladies and gentlemen, what you have is a fifth column at the heart of the American government.

"And if you have a fifth columnist at the heart of the government of this venerable and God-blessed republic . . . I cannot bear to repeat the word one would use to describe such an individual.

"I put it to you, Mr. President - isn't your statement a repudiation of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to me, but I'm not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!"

AND THEN "Pinto" Romney would lead half of the debate audience out of the hall, humming the Star-Spangled Banner.

Yeah, that would have been a debate worth watching. 

As opposed to what we actually got.

So, I'll just give my fellow Americans my standard advice. What we need to do now is to start drinking heavily. No one should have to sit through the last two weeks of this election sober as a judge -- it's in the Geneva Conventions.

Mormons, Quakers . . . they're all the same, right?

Go to 4:49 in the video for Whoopi's epic fail

There always have been idiots on television.

Thing is, they used to be limited -- on network television, at least -- to areas where their lack of intellectual prowess didn't really matter that much. Now, however, the mere fact that you're famous for something automatically means you must be qualified to talk politics, or science, or about any damn thing where the "little people" obviously need straightening out.

This cultural development, then, just had to lead to this moment on The View, where noted intellectual (snort, sputter)  Whoopi Goldberg tries to play gotcha with Ann Romney, wife of the Republican presidential nominee, about Mitt's lack of military service but apparently gets Mormons confused with Quakers or Jehovah's Witnesses or something.

Because all those religious freaks are all alike, no doubt. 

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: As first lady, if you get the job, it’s going to entail a lot of things, and one of those things is going to be talking to the mothers whose children are coming home in bags, you know, from wars. Now, I know -- I believe that your religion doesn’t allow you to go fight.

ANN ROMNEY: No, that's not correct. We have many, many members of our faith that are serving in armed services.

WELL, at least Whoopi didn't ask Mrs. Romney why Mitt didn't have a beard and why they had electricity and cars and stuff.

I guess that's not nothin'.

1948: Dewey doesn't defeat Truman

Ladies and gentlemen, you are watching here via the facilities of NBC television and Life magazine, coverage of the 1948 national elections, live and direct across the network.

This is looking more and more like a stunning reversal in fortunes for the Republican ticket headed by Gov. Thomas Dewey, a ticket that had seemed to be destined to coast to victory against a riven Democratic Party and a president whose popularity has steadily faded since he assumed the high office upon the death of FDR. And it is our privilege -- Life and the NBC network -- to bring this live coverage to you, the television viewer, thanks to this electronic miracle of our modern times.


IF YOU will indulge us ladies and gentlemen, as Ben Grauer fires up yet another Camel and we peer into the iconoscope through a smoky haze . . . just a moment, ladies and gentlemen, we are getting word that we have results in from Ohio . . . yes, the results are in ladies and gentlemen of the television audience across the East Coast from Schenectady to Philadelphia to here in New York City and down to our nation's capital, and President Truman has taken Ohio. We repeat, President Truman has won Ohio and thus has claimed the necessary electoral votes for re-election as president of the United States . . . this is extraordinary, a stunning reversal of fortune, television friends.

Now we understand the president may have a statement for the assembled press and supporters at his Kansas City hotel, and you will hear that right here on the NBC hookup, but you won't see it, because we can't do that yet because we don't have the coaxial cable running that far yet. But you will hear it over our NBC microphones, viewing friends as the camera pans wildly to and fro.

Now if you will bear with us as you squint at your 12-inch screen, we have a little confusion here, as it's just 1948 and no one has ever done this sort of thing before -- and frankly, kinescope compadres, we just have no idea what the H-E-double hockey sticks we're doing.

At all.

BUT at least we're not the Chicago Daily Tribune.

Phonies leave us in the soup

The country's secular intelligentsia has gotten its knickers in a twist because GOP veep candidate Paul Ryan, in our betters' eyes, went all Taliban when he -- correctly, I think -- said he didn't "see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith."

"Our faith informs us in everything we do,” he continued, causing The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik, among others, to wet himself. Figuratively, of course. I don't want to know whether he did literally -- TMI and all that.

Still, one must beware of such philosophical musings from a politician. That would be like putting your faith in Otis Campbell's eloquent pronouncements on the joys of teetotalism.

This dispatch from the Romney-Ryan campaign trail in Ohio (speaking of "Do as I say, not as I do") suggests, perhaps, that the congressman from Wisconsin might want to take a closer look at his Catholic faith, his own heart or -- ideally -- both.

BEARING WITNESS to ugly here is the Youngstown Vindicator:

The president of Mahoning County’s St. Vincent de Paul Society is “shocked” and “angry” that Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan used the soup kitchen for a “publicity stunt.”

Brian J. Antal, who runs the society, said the campaign “ramrodded themselves in there” without getting proper permission for the visit Saturday that followed Ryan’s town-hall meeting at Youngstown State University.

“They said they got permission from the right people, but that would have been me, and I never would have given them permission,” Antal said Monday.

Juanita Sherba, St. Vincent’s Saturday coordinator for the dining hall, said she gave the Ryan campaign approval that day for the visit by the candidate and his family.

Sherba say she now realizes it wasn’t her call to make.

The event “was a photo op,” she said. “It was the phoniest piece of baloney I’ve ever been associated with. In hindsight, I would have never let him in the door.”

When an advance person from the Mitt Romney/Ryan campaign asked about the visit, Sherba said it took her by surprise.

“I didn’t know it was my place to say ‘no,’” she said. “I made a mistake.”

The event was completely staged by the campaign, she said.

“They couldn’t have cared less,” Sherba said. “The advance man said Paul Ryan wanted to come and talk to our clientele, but he didn’t."

(snip)

Despite some media reports, Sherba said Ryan and his family washed a few dirty pots and pans, but it wasn’t necessary.

It was all about him coming in and doing dishes for publicity,” Sherba said. “We had to save dishes. We would have gone home by the time he arrived. We didn’t need him to do the dishes. It was getting late, and I said that we were closing in five minutes. I waited longer than that, and he finally arrived.”

I SAY that Mr. Gopnik, from his enlightened (ahem) perch somewhere that matters, would be far better served to worry a lot less about some pending Jesus-freak mullahocracy in America and worry a lot more about the American a**holeocracy that's already in place.

Obama the appeaser: Soft on seagulls

What you see here is the global seagull menace, caught in shocking detail in videos shot by ordinary folk . . . and in a couple of instances by the winged terrorists themselves.

Above, we see how a participant in a brazen San Francisco radical-seagull theft ring swipes a GoPro video camera from a French tourist as she photographs the setting sun behind the Golden Gate Bridge. Note how the felonious fowl, unmolested by the law under the Obama Administration, has no fear whatsoever of apprehension or of legal repercussions.

And note well what we've heard from the administration concerning such organized crime against unarmed, innocent individuals on American soil -- nothing. It is difficult to understand such indifference from the president or any of his Washington "comrades" in the face of this wave of terror taking flight across the homeland.

One supposes right-thinking Americans might be grateful that Barack Obama at least hasn't issued politically correct statements expressing sympathy with the "oppressed" gull community, caught no doubt in the maw of "parasitic" humanity. Yes, me must count our blessings, no matter how meager . . . assuming, of course, that the Obama Administration isn't at this very moment preparing to extend sympathy toward avian extremists.


BUT THE REACH of organized terror so fowl extends far beyond American shores. Europe is in seagull crosshairs, also.

Watch this from Cannes, France (above).

Not only does the gull extremist openly strike against the video camera of yet another hapless victim, it uses its purloined prize to record some sort of manifesto for fundamentalist seagullism. AAWWWWK, indeed.

And the response from the appeaser-in-chief to this seagull attack upon a close, still-capitalist European ally -- note that this happened last year, when the pinkos had yet to seize the reins of French power -- was again nonexistent. Birds of an ideological feather, perhaps?

We report. You decide.


IT IS AMERICA, though, that is the epicenter of terror attacks by fundamentalist seagullism. And it is here that the Obama indifference (or worse) most enables the destruction of American property . . . and American values.

Listen to these young Americans (above) -- brainwashed by this Obamanation against our fair land -- laugh at the terrible sight of criminal seagull anarchy. Words fail. Tolerance of airborne terror, corruption of America's youth . . . when, pray tell, will enough be enough?


AND WHERE is the ultraliberal Humane Society of the United States when even house pets are victimized by global gull terrorism? And for the record, at least dogs tied to the roofs of family station wagons are able to eat unhindered by the criminal plague of avian extremism.


IS WHAT we're saying.


WHEN will the madness stop?

It will stop when Americans stop it. But the necessary War on Seagulls cannot commence until we first achieve a different sort of victory.

Our first blow against this extremist enemy so fowl will be to give Barack Hussein Obama, appeaser of fundamentalist seagulls, a one-way Greyhound ticket back to Chicago. But not a plane ticket -- that would be the height of budgetary imprudence.

Freedom from seagulls: It's fundamental, and Mitt Romney will not rest until Americans, from sea to shining sea, once again can look to the sky without fear.

May Our Heavenly Father continue to bless the United States of America.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

Yeccch!

Yeccch!

Given the alternatives, he sounds good to me.

* * *

YES, I AM saying that a smart-ass, adolescent cartoon character, Alfred E. Neuman of Mad magazine fame, would make a better president than Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.

Why? Because, not being a real person, Al Neuman would do absolutely nothing if elected. This means he at least would do no harm.

On the other hand, no matter who wins between Obama and Romney in November, this country is going to face a first-class cluster-you-know-what. It will be an utter disaster, though which disaster or disasters we face will depend on which calamitous candidate we get stuck with.

This is what I know about the coming election. Either way, we'll get the president we so richly deserve.

The air that Cher breathes

Cher won't grow up
(She won't grow up)
It's more fun to just emote
(Lots more fun to just emote)
Learn to squawk just like a parrot
(Tweet and squawk just like a parrot)
And spew like a fireboat
(And spew like a fireboat)

If growing up means
It would be beneath her dignity to let her dumbth flow free
She'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not she!
Not her!
Not she!
Not sheeeeeeeeee!

-- Apologies to Carolyn Leigh

More viral, please

This video of Shepard Smith violating Fox News policy (and MSNBC policy . . . and CNN policy . . . and . . . ) by telling the unvarnished truth needs to go more viral than it already has.

That is all.

'Pretend it's Obama!'

Louisiana strikes again.

And again.

And again.

Sunday evening, at Greenwell Springs Baptist Church in Central, near Baton Rouge, the pastor told the congregation at a Rick Santorum rally that "this nation was founded as a Christian nation." And if you don't like how we roll in that regard, "Get out!"

"There is one God, and his name is Jesus!" shouted the Rev. Dennis Terry.

In the sanctuary, a massive American flag hung behind him. On the video of his remarks, nowhere could you see a cross.

THEN on Wednesday, Saints fans all across Louisiana became irate that the National Football League hammered their team over its practice of paying bounties for injuring opposing players. The fine, Christian people of the Gret Stet may believe, technically, in "Thou shalt not kill" but point out that the good book never said "Thou shalt not cripple the other team for cash."

Besides, everybody else does it.

And today, during a Santorum event at a West Monroe shooting range, a woman in the crowd drawled "Pretend it's Obama!" as the Republican presidential candidate, .45 in hand, drew a bead on a silhouette target.

People around her laughed.

BECAUSE that's how people roll in the Christianest part of Christian America -- "Thou shalt not kill . . . unless it's that commerniss son-of-a-bitch Barack Obama." It's in the Bible -- somewhere in the black . . . uh, back.

"And if you don't love America, and you don't like the way we do things, I have just one thing to say. Get out!"

I think the "or else" is -- click -- understood.

American idol

“A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss."

-- Ignatius J. Reilly

Rick Santorum: Slave of the Most High God

There is nothing Barack Obama can do to the Catholic Church that comes close to the kind of treachery righteously perpetrated by Catholics proclaiming the false gospel of the Most High Santorum.

The followers of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum worry that the liberal devil they see will kill the church by diminishing freedom of conscience in the name of contraception. In their ardor for a more morally perfect union, these "orthodox" Catholics hold high the banner of the conservative devil they refuse to see.

And who might that devil be? The one whispering into the election-year ear of Rick Santorum: Good Catholic Man.

Some proclaim the Pennsylvania politician as a "traditional" Catholic, while others prefer "orthodox." I prefer other terminology.

But the editors of a right-wing website by the grandiosely presumptuous name of CatholicVote.org were "proud" to endorse the man:

Catholic voters are looking for a candidate who can successfully combine the principles of the dignity of life and the dignity of work. Senator Santorum understands better than any other candidate the profound link between the moral, cultural and economic principles foundational to the success of America. We are convinced that Rick Santorum is the candidate best equipped to win not only the political arguments, but also the hearts of American voters as he did in Iowa on Tuesday. . . .

Finally, Senator Santorum is a man of honor, integrity, and authenticity. What you see is what you get. He has faithfully served the cause of life and marriage as an elected official and as a husband and father. And while no political candidate, or human being for that matter, is perfect, Rick Santorum’s baggage contains his clothes.

“Republicans hoping to win back the White House in November must unite behind the candidate most dedicated to the foundational issues of faith, family and freedom. If the GOP hopes to defeat President Obama, it takes a Rick Santorum to get it done.

I SUPPOSE we are to compare the clothes-filled baggage of the former U.S. senator to the Obama-, contraception- and abortion-filled baggage of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House and Everybody's Favorite Bad, Bad, REALLY Bad Catholic.

People like Pelosi are "cafeteria Catholics," don't you know? They give scandal to Jesus Christ and His church by keeping those of His -- and its -- teachings they like and denouncing the rest as the rantings of a bunch of out-of-touch, celibate men. Who probably are just a bunch of pedophiles, anyway.

This is true, so far as it goes. "Bad" public Catholics like Pelosi, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Vice President Joe Biden, can tolerate anything but the authoritative teaching of Catholicism on social issues like abortion.

Unlike Rick Santorum.

Another of the CatholicVote.org people, "American Papist" blogger Thomas Peters cannot say enough good things about the good things Santorum brings to the presidential election. Then again, that just might have been the "man crush" talking last year:

Catholics, we need to stick together behind good guys like Rick. This includes offering constructive criticism at times, but it also means not missing opportunities to say good things when that’s what’s needed.

As I bring up often when I talk about Catholic identity in politics and the public square, the number one attack those who hate the Church or disagree with her teachings have is the attack of disunity. Those who oppose the Church know the Church is at her weakest when she is internally divided, which means what they are most scared of is a united Church.

INDEED, it is good when Catholics can stop the incessant left-right squabbling and stick together on something. On the other hand, it would be nice if the something -- or someone -- we stuck together for represented something better than the same degree (just different) of cafeteria Catholicism exemplified by Democrat pols Pelosi, Sebelius and Biden.

Catholics of America, ecce Santorum:


SANTORUM'S eagerness for war with Iran, absent any present or imminent Iranian attack on the United States, may be many things -- moronic, reckless, foolish and catastrophic come to mind -- but it isn't Catholic. The church embraces something called the "just war theory," which it thought enough of to make authoritative . . . and binding on Catholics. It's in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says:

2308 All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war.

However, "as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed."

2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

- there must be serious prospects of success;

- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

WHERE IS the "certain" damage addressed by a preventive war? I'll wait while Santorum's Catholic enthusiasts search in vain for a rationalization to neuter the clear teaching of their own faith.

For instance, where is the "orthodox" Catholicism oozing out of this statement by the "traditional" Catholic for whom we're supposed to "stick together"?


SORRY, but when I think of "orthodox Catholics for unprovoked, pre-emptive missile strikes and bombing runs," my minds keeps drifting off to the faithful witness of "Catholics for Free Choice." As in the "free choice" to kill your unborn child in the holy name of Personal Autonomy.

On the other hand, you don't want to know what I think of when I hear pious drivel like "the number one attack those who hate the Church or disagree with her teachings have is the attack of disunity" while watching Mr. Real Catholic Guy here:


AND THERE'S this, of course, from a radio interview last year on The Hugh Hewitt Show:

HH: Now did the bin Laden killing cause you to hope that the enhanced interrogation debate returns center stage about whether or not, and when such techniques ought to be used?

RS: Well, not only that, but the first thing that should happen, Hugh, was that the President of the United States should have stepped forward and said we are going to stop this, well, potential prosecution of those within the intelligence community who were involved in the enhanced interrogation program. That should have been step one, going to Eric Holder and saying enough is enough, we’re not doing this anymore. We need to give these guys medals, not prosecute them.

Number two, he should have stepped forward and said look, I was wrong, the enhanced interrogation program did work, it did produce my greatest foreign policy success. And I’m going to admit when I was wrong, and we’re going to look at how we’re going to redeploy this under obviously different rules and regulations, since of course the Obama administration told the enemy what we were doing in the previous enhanced interrogation programs.

HH: Now your former colleague, John McCain, said look, there’s no record, there’s no evidence here that these methods actually led to the capture or the killing of bin Laden. Do you disagree with that? Or do you think he’s got an argument?

RS: I don’t, everything I’ve read shows that we would not have gotten this information as to who this man was if it had not been gotten information from people who were subject to enhanced interrogation. And so this idea that we didn’t ask that question while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being waterboarded, he doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works.

I mean, you break somebody, and after they’re broken, they become cooperative. And that’s when we got this information. And one thing led to another, and led to another, and that’s how we ended up with bin Laden. That seems to be clear from all the information I read. Maybe McCain has better information than I do, but from what I’ve seen, it seems pretty clear that but for these cooperative witnesses who were cooperative as a result of enhanced interrogations, we would not have gotten bin Laden.

WOW. Just wow.

John McCain doesn't understand torture? Maybe this "orthodox" Catholic man who would be leader of The World Formerly Known as Free thinks the "Hanoi Hilton" really was a Hilton. And that the now-senator from Arizona and all the other prisoners of war there really did spend all day playing volleyball, just like in the North Vietnamese propaganda films.

But I digress.

It would seem Santorum -- and those who unconditionally love his candidacy -- may be unfamiliar with the authoritative teaching of not only the catechism, but also of Gaudium et Spes -- one of the core documents of the Second Vatican Council:

27. Coming down to practical and particularly urgent consequences, this council lays stress on reverence for man; everyone must consider his every neighbor without exception as another self, taking into account first of all His life and the means necessary to living it with dignity, so as not to imitate the rich man who had no concern for the poor man Lazarus.

In our times a special obligation binds us to make ourselves the neighbor of every person without exception and of actively helping him when he comes across our path, whether he be an old person abandoned by all, a foreign laborer unjustly looked down upon, a refugee, a child born of an unlawful union and wrongly suffering for a sin he did not commit, or a hungry person who disturbs our conscience by recalling the voice of the Lord, "As long as you did it for one of these the least of my brethren, you did it for me" (Matt. 25:40).

Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.

AS I SAID at the beginning of this post, President Obama can do what he likes to the Catholic Church regarding the "contraceptive mandate," but he can't really hurt it. Catholicism has survived 2,000 years of tyrants and maniacs in high places. It survived the Borgia popes. It survived the Reformation. And it will survive whatever cute, demagogic tricks Obama has in store to help shore up the Democratic base before the election.

What really can hurt the church is us. People like Santorum who tout their "orthodox Catholic" bona fides while standing in the cafeteria line, picking up this doctrine and passing on that one.

Political persecution can make us martyrs, but clowns like you, me, the former senator from Pennsylvania and the "real Catholics" who back him . . . we can make Christ's church look foolish or, worse, evil. All we have to do is put ourselves out there as proclaimers of the Truth while telling a little lie here and another there.

In other words, where is the apostle Paul when we need him? Let us turn to Acts 16:

16
As we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl with an oracular spirit, who used to bring a large profit to her owners through her fortune-telling.
17
She began to follow Paul and us, shouting, "These people are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation."
18
She did this for many days. Paul became annoyed, turned, and said to the spirit, "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." Then it came out at that moment.
19
When her owners saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them to the public square before the local authorities.
20
They brought them before the magistrates 7 and said, "These people are Jews and are disturbing our city
21
and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us Romans to adopt or practice."
22
The crowd joined in the attack on them, and the magistrates had them stripped and ordered them to be beaten with rods.
23
After inflicting many blows on them, they threw them into prison and instructed the jailer to guard them securely.
24
When he received these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and secured their feet to a stake.
25
About midnight, while Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God as the prisoners listened,
26
there was suddenly such a severe earthquake that the foundations of the jail shook; all the doors flew open, and the chains of all were pulled loose.
27
When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew (his) sword and was about to kill himself, thinking that the prisoners had escaped.
28
But Paul shouted out in a loud voice, "Do no harm to yourself; we are all here."
29
He asked for a light and rushed in and, trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas.
30
Then he brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
31
And they said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you and your household will be saved."
32
So they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to everyone in his house.

AS THEY SAY, the devil is in the details.

Just as the demon-possessed oracle told everyone that Paul and his company were slaves (not children) of the Most High God and proclaimed a way (not the way) of salvation, Santorum conflates his ham-handed -- yet basically correct -- pronouncements on abortion, birth control and sexuality with Satan's social teaching on torture and war. The effect -- once we Catholics and the secular media have finished making Santorum into the exemplar of the true church -- is to make the true church look like a damned lie.

Good job -- not.

Now at the risk of being horribly presumptuous (but tired of waiting for someone more qualified to do it), I feel it somehow necessary to trade my inner Jeremiah for my inner Paul in the case of Rick Santorum and His True Catholics for Chaos.

So, with apologies in advance to St. Paul . . . "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of them."

Now.