Thank God the Pope Died
Wow, the Bushies -- especially Tom DeLay -- must be thanking their lucky stars for the timing of Pope John Paul II's expiration. With the media giving its undivided attention to the Pope's life, his death, his corpse, his mourners and All Things Papal this week, it's almost enough to get everyone's minds off the neocons' disastrous recent attempt to destroy social security, the transparent political opportunism of the their fake Shiavo grandstanding (which NOBODY bought) and the continued unraveling of majority leader Tom DeLay.
But I'm exaggerating, because the truth is, these things haven't gone unnoticed by Americans. Most of us, even conservatives, saw through Bush's melodramatic, entirely political reaction to the Schiavo situation (which Dubya considered important enough to disrupt his vacation -- and even the Tsunami couldn't do that!). With his popularity waning in the wake of his coldly received Social Security privatization pitch, I'm sure he saw it as an opportunity to rile the right-to-lifers back into his good graces, but alas! -- it backfired.
And then there's DeLay. Trying to keep track of this asshole's scandals makes my head spin. But here are some of the big ones, as identified by MoveOn.org:
*Promised a role in drafting legislation to a corporate donor
*Tried to coerce a Congressman for a vote on Medicare
*Allegedly used corporate money given to his PAC to finance Texas campaigns in violation of state law
*Used Homeland Security resources in a dispute with Democrats in Texas
*Diverted funds from a children's charity for lavish celebrations at the Republican convention
*Threatened retaliation against interest groups that don't support Republicans
*Stacked the House Ethics committee with representatives who have contributed to his legal defense fund
*Accepted trips from corporations and later helped kill legislation they opposed
*Accepted trips from the lobbyist for a foreign government in violation of House rules
*Crippled the effectiveness of the House Ethics Committee by purging members who had rebuked him
*Pushed for a rules change for the House Ethics process that paralyzed the panel
*Sought a rule change that would have no longer "required leaders to step aside temporarily if indicted"
and, this just in:
*Paid family members more than $500,000 out of campaign contributions
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Help get DeLay fired by signing the petition at this link:
http://www.moveonpac.org/delay/?id=5320-3738727-YlF38AQXU7w6RXtxoKHrwQ&t=1
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FOR AN ANDREW SULLIVAN PIECE ON POPE JOHN PAUL II, GO TO THE 'COMMENTS' SECTION
posted by andeee* @ 12:10 PM
1 Comments:
from AndrewSullivan.com:
Last night on Hardball, I said what I think needs to be said. Under John Paul II (and his predecessors), the Roman Catholic church presided over the rape and molestation of thousands of children and teenagers. Under John Paul II, the church at first did all it could to protect its own and to impugn and threaten the victims of this abuse. Rome never acknowledged, let alone take responsibility for, the scale of the moral betrayal. I was staggered to see Cardinal Bernard Law holding press conferences in Rome this week, and appearing on television next to the man who announced the Pope's death. But that was the central reaction of the late Pope to this scandal: he sided with the perpetrators, because they were integral to his maintenance of power. When you hear about this Pope's compassion, his concern for the victims of society, his love of children, it's important to recall that when it came to walking the walk in his own life and with his own responsibility, he walked away. H
e all but ignored his church's violation of the most basic morality - that you don't use the prestige of the church to rape innocent children. Here was a man who lectured American married couples that they could not take the pill, who told committed gay couples that they were part of an "ideology of evil," but acquiesced and covered up the rape of minors. When truth met power, John Paul II chose truth. When truth met his power, John Paul II defended his own prerogatives at the expense of the innocent. Many have forgotten. That's not an option for the victims of this clerical criminality.
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