Discontent in The Catholic World of Sex

A Cruel Conspiracy Between God & Nature

Spiritual literature tends to be naïve and in denial about the power of sexuality, as if it could be dismissed as some insignificant factor in the spiritual journey. As if it could be dismissed at all.  It will always make itself felt, consciously or unconsciously. Nature is almost cruel in this regard, particularly to the young.  It fills teenage bodies with powerful hormones that fuel the sexual drive. No matter that they don’t have the emotional and intellectual maturity to properly understand and creatively channel that energy. Read more...

Kind of mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, glad to see Catholics finally wising up to reality. But on the other hand I'm not sure in which context he means that sexuality is a cruel conspiracy between God and nature. I mean, if you maintain the traditional Catholic view, then you almost have to conclude that puberty is a conspiracy, perpetrated by God & nature to convict & condemn. What I'm not sure of, is IF he is still encouraging the traditional Catholic view.

Catholic Nun Tells Vatican to Decriminalize Masturbation "Self-Pleasure"

Sister Talks Sex

It’s hard to say which is weirder. A Sister of Mercy writing about the Kama Sutra, sexual desire and “our yearnings for pleasure.”
Or the Vatican getting so hot and bothered about the academic treatise on sexuality that the pope censures it, causing it to shoot from obscurity to the top tier of Amazon’s best-seller list six years after it was published.
Just the latest chapter in the Vatican’s thuggish crusade to push nuns and all Catholic women back into moldy subservience.
Even for a church that moves glacially, this was classic. Just Love: a Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics is written by Sister Margaret Farley, published in 2006. She’s a 77-year-old professor emeritus at Yale’s Divinity School, a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and an award-winning scholar.
The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which seems as hostile to women as the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, spent years pondering it, then censured it March 30 but didn’t publicly release the statement until Monday.
The denunciation of Farley’s book is based on the fact that she deals with the modern world as it is. She refuses to fall in line with a Vatican rigidly clinging to an inbred, illusory world.
One where men rule with no backtalk from women, gays are deviants, the divorced can’t remarry, men and women can’t use contraception, masturbation is a grave disorder and celibacy is enshrined, even as a global pedophilia scandal rages.
In old-fashioned prose steeped in historical and global perspective, Farley’s main argument is that justice needs to govern relationships. In the interest of justice to oneself, she contends that “self-pleasuring” needs “to be moved out of the realm of taboo morality.”
Immanuel Kant, who considered masturbation below the level of animals, must give way to Alfred Kinsey. Sister Margaret Farley writes:
“It is surely the case that many women, following the ‘our bodies our selves’ movement in the fourth quarter of the twentieth century, have found great good in self-pleasuring.
“Perhaps especially in the discovery of their own possibilities for pleasure. Something many had not experienced or even known about in their ordinary sexual relations with husbands or lovers.
“In this way, it could be said that masturbation actually serves relationships rather than hindering them.”
A breath of fresh air in the stultifying church, she makes the case for same-sex relationships and remarriage after divorce.

Views on Homosexuality in The Orthodox Church

When Will The Orthodox Church View Homosexuality Honestly?

One of the main reasons why I eventually came to support gay marriage and gay-rites, wasn't necessarily because of any convincing argument on the part of any gay activists. Rather, it was because the Orthodox Church simply couldn't give me the clear, concise answer that I'd come to expect so often, as to why the Church regards homosexuality as a sin.

In the Orthodox Church, I feel blessed, that I can ask a priest what a specific passage in the Bible means, or I can ask some kind of Theological question, and I can get a clear, consistent answer. Then there is of course, theologumena. My parents left their protestant church because they were tired of the Pastor always saying, "Well what do you think the passage means?" or "What is God telling you it means?" In Protestantism suddenly everyone is a Saint and everyone is a Prophet. You read a passage, and whatever pops into your mind, from, "damn commies" to, "I want a glass of orange juice" it's The Holy Spirit, speaking to you, revealing a previously unknown truth, and it's your job to start a new tax-exempt religion! With the Orthodox Church, you get clear answers to serious questions.

Except when it comes to Homosexuality.

When I began researching the Church's position on homosexuality, there was a consensus that it was sinful, but there was no consensus on how or why it was sinful. Sometimes the answer would be something like, "Well how could it not be?" or "Isn't it obvious?" in some cases you are guilt-tripped as part of a secular conspiracy simply for asking the question.

Other times you are referred to specific Bible verses. I've done as much research as I can into the original Bible verses, and they are vague at best. One passage, often translated in English to be St. Paul condemning homosexuals, actually uses 2 Greek words, the first being the word for, "effeminate" followed by the word, "arsenokoitai" (a word St. Paul seems to have coined himself) whose definition is not explicitly mention by St. Paul, but you may read a lengthy discussion on it, here.
Many English Bible translations, translate this as being something along the lines of, male prostitutes and homosexual offenders.
I consider this to be quiet a far jump from the original terms.




(The two words, "malakos" and "arsenokoitai", used by St. Paul are some of the most hotly debated words in the Bible with regards to understanding the Bible's position on homosexuality. Click the words to learn more about them.)

Then there's the passage in Romans. What can I say? I've read the passage. I've read St. John Chrysostom's homily on said passage, both first and second parts.

 "And next, having reproached the women first, he goes on to the men also, and says, And likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman. Which is an evident proof of the last degree of corruptness, when both sexes are abandoned, and both he that was ordained to be the instructor of the woman, and she who was bid to become an helpmate to the man, work the deeds of enemies against one another. And reflect too how significantly he uses his words. For he does not say that they were enamoured of, and lusted after one another, but, they burned in their lust one toward another. You see that the whole of desire comes of an exorbitancy which endures not to abide within its proper limits."

I've never met a gay person who became gay because they worshiped a false idle or because they turned away from God. What the passage implies here is that the sexual lusts and activities engaged in by those people were caused when God left them unto themselves, for turning away from Him. He goes on to say;

And receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. See how he goes again to the fountain head of the evil, namely, the impiety that comes of their doctrines, and this he says is a reward of that lawlessness. For since in speaking of hell and punishment, it seemed he would not at present be credible to the ungodly and deliberate choosers of such a life, but even scorned, he shows that the punishment was in this pleasure itself. (So Plato Theæt. p. 176, 7.) But if they perceive it not, but are still pleased, be not amazed"

Well, I don't perceive the punishment, and I'm not even gay. What is it?
His most prominent point is that the sexual acts committed by the people in Romans were against nature.

"Now not only did it fail to stir up the womb of the earth to the production of fruits, but made it even useless for the reception of seed. For such was also the intercourse of the men, making a body of this sort more worthless than the very land of Sodom. And what is there more detestable than a man who has pandered himself, or what more execrable? Oh, what madness! Oh, what distraction! Whence came this lust lewdly revelling and making man's nature all that enemies could? Or even worse than that, by as much as the soul is better than the body. Oh, you that were more senseless than irrational creatures, and more shameless than dogs! For in no case does such intercourse take place with them, but nature acknowledges her own limits. But you have even made our race dishonored below things irrational, by such indignities inflicted upon and by each other. Whence then were these evils born? Of luxury; of not knowing God. For so soon as any have cast out the fear of Him, all that is good straightway goes to ruin."

There a couple of ways to look at this. One, is that the people St. John is describing were not actually gay. The other... is that St. John simply wasn't aware of the fact that homosexuality occurs among other species within nature thus jeopardizing his entire argument. (See here, here & here)



People who use this passage are only able to do so by remaining willfully ignorant of the fact that many children are born gay into loving, conservative, Christian families. Unless they argue, as some of them do, that the gay child is a punishment, by God, for the sins of the parents, thus raising the gay child becomes a penance.

To wrap this up, ask any Orthodox priest to explain the sinfulness of homosexuality, without using the Bible (the Bible is only a written account of the faith anyway; only Protestantism is Bible-based). Then you see the true nature of the, what I consider a false teaching.
Explanations outside of the Bible, paint of picture of homosexual pedophiles waiting outside of windows to snatch up little boys (sound biased?). Or claim that an opposite-sex couple is better able than a same-sex couple at raising children (no study cited). In more extreme cases they will claim that children from a same-sex household often grow up to be thugs and go to prison (no study cited). Or, in one specific example, when Florida was considering allowing a loving lesbian couple to adopt their 1-year old foster child, a photo was passed around by the, "family research council" of a gay couple with long hair and androgynous features; 'look at them, they can't raise children, they're WEEEEEIIIIRD.' Source

Any study you cite, conducted by any university, showing that gay couples raise children just as well as straight couples, will be dismissed as part of a secular conspiracy.

I once asked someone what the, "gay-agenda" was, their response, "to get us to think that homosexuality is normal." yeah... and... ?

To the Orthodox Churches credit though, they answer has slowly been changing. It's slow, within the context of our time, but in Orthodox terms, from 1980 to now is pretty much worthy of the term, "over night". Remember, it took the Orthodox Church 100 years to form and Ecumenical Council to condemn the (very obvious, I might add) heresy of iconoclasm.

There was a time when the wide-spread opinion of the Church was extremely hostile towards the gay community.

Recently though, it's gotten to the point where the more left-leaning members of the Church, though they still see it as a disorder like alcoholism, are starting to drop the right-wing party line of promoting reparative therapy, because to date, no credible study has ever proved that any organization has ever cured anyone of being homosexual.
It should be mentioned that there was a study done to see if homosexual orientations can change, conducted by a former member of the American Psychological Association (APA). However, it was a phone study, which relied on an, on-your-honor, system to answer survey questions. Multiple conflicting interests, biases & motivations were not accounted for.

I'll close with a brief story told to me by a friend.
He went to visit an Orthodox Monastery in the south, with many of life's questions on his mind. When he got there he had a wonderful talk with the abbot, and he asked the abbot, 'What is so sinful about homosexuality?' The abbot thought for a long time and simply replied, "We should love everybody."

A Religious Look at the Failed Blunt Amendment

The Blunt Amendment has failed, thankfully. It was a bill, sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo), to provide for employers to deny their employees healthcare coverage costs based on religious moral objections.
At first, the bill would have only applied to religious based employers, but Republicans later demanded that it be made to apply to any employer, religious or no, who had a moral objection to paying for any medical costs they found objectionable.

The discussion focused mainly on how the bill would allow an employer to deny a woman access to contraception, which was initially how the entire thing got started, when a Catholic employer had objections to paying its employees' medical costs for contraception. Though, while such a topic was justified, it was also just a little but narrow, because technically, the bill would've allowed any employer to deny any kind of medical coverage to any of its employees for any moral objection.

So, now that the bill has been defeated, we can all breath just a little bit easier.

But for any of you out there with strong moral convictions who may be wondering how to resolve the mental conflict, some words of thought for you,

As an employer it is absolutely none-of-your-business to know what an employees medical expenses are going toward. Nor are you accountable for what an employee pays for with their money/medical insurance. Even if the employee chooses to use their medical insurance for something you find objectionable, you cannot be held responsible for what someone else does in their own private life. Furthermore, once the employee has submitted their labor, all that money is now technically theirs and no longer yours because they've earned it. So, in a way, it is really the employee who is paying for the medical insurance, and not you, because the employee has earned that medical insurance with their labor. Ergo, what they do, with their money, and their insurance, is none-of-your-business.

More reading here,
 Employment-Based Medical Insurance and Ethical Concerns

Conservative Carry Out Assulat on Britian's Working Class

Conservatives Promote "Selfish" Ideology

Morning Star Online UK

In one very real sense, it's redundant to describe the present Conservative assault on Britain's working class as "ideological."

Because all political parties' solutions to problems are by definition ideological, being based on that party's world-view, on the preconceptions and ideas that are at the root of its approach to government.

And, Conservative or Socialist, ideology is at the heart of those approaches. It's just a very different ideology.

But when people refer to the Conservative's position as ideological they mean much more than that it's a coherent set of ideas based on a specific analysis of society.

So let's cut through the confusion and call a spade a spade. The right-wing assault is not merely ideological.

It's an ideology that is utterly selfish, is furiously anti-working class and relies for its moral justification on the morality of the wolf pack, where the alpha male dominates absolutely and the lesser animals cluster around hoping for a bit of "trickle down" benefit.

But there's not just one wolf pack, of course and therefore we are treated to the sight of capitalist alpha males ( and they generally are males) routinely savaging each other for the champion's portion of the kill.

They call it competition and it's as distasteful a sight as one could wish to see. Whatever else capitalism is, even it's most ardent supporters couldn't call it pretty. It's combative, it's vicious and it automatically targets the weak and the vulnerable.

And the Conservative/Liberal coalition attack on the social welfare system is a beautiful example of wolf-pack capitalism at its reddest in tooth and claw. Because it unerringly targets the poor and the disadvantaged at every available chance.

This government is remaking the underclass of poor, disenfranchised, alienated and abused people that the trade union and progressive movement has been fighting to eliminate for over a couple of centuries.

Now whether it is doing it consciously is debatable. Probably not, because, in the main, the Conservative ruling class have swallowed their own lies about socially conscious capitalism - an oxymoron if ever there was one.

But, conscious or not, it's real, it's happening and it has to be fought, because this Con-Dem wolf pack will otherwise drive us back into a condition that our forefathers (and mothers) spent their lives lifting us out of.

Powerful Palin

 Palin's detractors strengthen her in conservative's minds.

By Frank Rich

With Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity on her side, Sarah Palin hardly needs the grandees of the so-called Republican establishment. They know it and flail at her constantly.

Unnamed “party elders” were nearly united in wanting to stop her, out of fear that she’d win the nomination and then be crushed by Obama.

Their complaints are seconded daily by Bush White House alumni like Karl Rove, Michael Gerson, and Mark McKinnon, who said recently that Palin’s “stock is falling and pretty rapidly now” and that “if she’s smart, she does not run.”

This is either denial or wishful thinking. The same criticisms that the Bushies fling at Palin were those once aimed at Bush.

Someone with a slender résumé, a lack of intellectual curiosity and foreign travel, a lazy inclination to favor from-the-gut improvisation over cracking the briefing books. These spitballs are no more likely to derail Palin within the G.O.P. than they did him.

As Palin has refused to heed these patrician Republicans, some of them have gotten so testy they sound like Democrats.

Peggy Noonan called her a “nincompoop” last month, and Susan Collins, the senator from Maine, dismissed her as a “celebrity commentator.” Rove tut-tutted Palin’s TV show, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” for undermining her aspirations to “gravitas.”

These insults just play into Palin’s hands, burnishing her image as an exemplar of the “real America” battling the snooty powers-that-be. To serve as an Andrew Jackson or perhaps George Wallace for the 21st century, the last thing she wants or needs is gravitas.

It’s anti-elitism that most defines angry populism in this moment. Populist rage on the right is aimed at the educated, not the wealthy. The Bushies and Noonans and dwindling retro-moderate Republicans are no less loathed by Palinistas and their Tea Party fellow travelers than is Obama’s Ivy League White House.

When Palin mocks her G.O.P. establishment critics as tortured, paranoid, sleazy and a “good-old-boys club,” she pays no penalty for doing so. The more condescending the attacks on her, the more she thrives.

This same dynamic is also working for her daughter Bristol, who week after week has received low scores and patronizing dismissals from the professional judges on “Dancing with the Stars” only to be rescued by populist masses voting at home.

Revealingly, Sarah Palin’s potential rivals for the 2012 nomination have not joined the party establishment in publicly criticizing her. They are afraid of crossing Palin and the 80 percent of the party that admires her.

So how do they stop her? Not by feeding their contempt in blind quotes to the press — as a Romney aide did by telling Time’s Mark Halperin she isn’t “a serious human being.”

Not by hoping against hope that Murdoch might turn off the media oxygen that feeds both Palin’s viability and News Corporation’s bottom line.

Sooner or later Palin’s opponents will instead have to man up — as Palin might say — and actually summon the courage to take her on mano-a-maverick in broad daylight.

Short of that, there’s little reason to believe now that she cannot dance to the top of the Republican ticket when and if she wants to.

Bible Quotes Inscribed on Military Rifle Sights Cause Controversy

Killing in The Name of

American holy war?

Middle East Online

Controversy was aroused Wednesday after it emerged that the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan were using rifle sights inscribed with coded Biblical references.

The company producing the sights, which are also used to train Afghan and Iraqi soldiers under contracts with the US Army and the Marine Corps, said it has inscribed references to the New Testament on the metal casings for over two decades.

The British Ministry of Defense meanwhile announced it had placed an order for 400 of the gunsights with Trijicon but added it had not been aware of the significance of the inscriptions, in a decision criticized by the opposition Liberal Democrat party.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) called on US Defense Secretary Robert Gates to immediately withdraw from combat use equipment found to have inscriptions of Biblical references after it emerged that Trijicon has contracts to supply over 800,000 of the sights to the US military.

The Pentagon sought to defuse the brewing controversy, saying it was "disturbed" by the reports.

"If determined to be true, this is clearly inappropriate and we are looking into possible remedies," Commander Darryn James, a Pentagon spokesman, said.

The codes were used as "part of our faith and our belief in service to our country," Trijicon said.

"As long as we have men and women in danger, we will continue to do everything we can to provide them with both state-of-the-art technology and the never-ending support and prayers of a grateful nation," a company spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

The move appeared to be a direct violation of a US Central Command general order issued after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that strictly prohibits "proselytizing of any religion, faith or practice."

A whistleblower group that first alerted ABC News to the issue this week warned the practice was putting troops in harm's way by raising fears of Christian proselytizing in Muslim-majority nations home to militants resentful of US military presence.

"This is the worst type of emboldenment of the enemy that you can imagine," Military Religious Freedom Foundation founder and president Michael "Mikey" Weinstein said in an interview.

Weinstein, a former White House legal counsel in Ronald Reagan's administration, said his group would submit a filing in US federal court in Kansas City, Missouri by February 4 in a related case.

"Having Biblical references on military equipment violates the basic ideals and values our country was founded upon," MPAC Washington director Haris Tarin said in a statement.

"Worse still, it provides propaganda ammo to extremists who claim there is a 'Crusader war against Islam' by the United States," he added. ...

Obama The Golfer

'He plays golf while his relations with the public are in free fall'

By David Michael Green

Hey, did you hear about the iconic African-American guy who plays golf, and whose relationship with the public is in a free-fall lately?
No, as a matter of fact – I’m not talking about Tiger Woods.
You know, I’ve really been trying not to write an article every other week about all the things I don’t like about Barack Obama.

But the little prick is making it very hard.

Like any good progressive, I’ve gone from admiration to hope to disappointment to anger when it comes to this president. Now I’m fast getting to rage.

How much rage? I find myself thinking that the thing I want most from the 2010 elections is for his party to get absolutely clobbered, even if that means a repeat of 1994.

And that what I most want from 2012 is for him to be utterly humiliated, even if that means President Palin at the helm. That much rage.

Did this clown really say on national television that “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of you know, fat cat bankers on Wall Street”?

Really, Barack? So, like, my question is: Then why the hell did you help out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street?

Why the hell did you surround yourself with nothing but Robert Rubin proteges in all the key economic positions in your government? Why did you allow them to open a Washington branch of Goldman Sachs in the West Wing?

Why have your policies been tailored to helping Wall Street bankers, rather than the other 300 million of us, who just happen to be suffering badly right now?

Are you freakin’ kidding me? What’s up with the passive president routine, anyhow, Fool? You hold the most powerful position in the world. Or maybe Rahm forgot to mention that to you.

Or maybe the fat cat bankers don’t actually let do that whole decision-making thing often enough that it would actually matter...

But, really, are you going to spend the next three interminable years perfecting your whiney victim persona? I don’t really think I could bear that.

Hearing you complain about how rough it all is, when you have vastly more power than any of us to fix it? Please. Not that.

Are you going to tell us that “I did not run for office to be shovel-feeding the military-industrial complex”? But what – they’re just so darned pushy?

“...I did not run for office to continue George Bush’s valiant effort at shredding the Bill of Rights. It’s just that those government-limiting rules are so darned pesky.”

“...I did not run for office to dump a ton of taxpayer money into the coffers of health insurance companies. It’s just that they asked so nicely.”

“...I did not run for office to block equality for gay Americans. I just never got around to doing anything about it.”

“...I did not run for office to turn Afghanistan into Vietnam. I just didn’t want to say no to all the nice generals asking for more troops.”

Here’s a guy who was supposed to actually do something with his presidency, and he’s turned into the skinny little geek on Cell Block D who gets passed around like a rag doll for the pleasure of all the fellas with the tattoos there. He’s being punked by John Boehner, for chrisakes.

He’s being rolled by the likes of Joe Lieberman. He calls a come-to-Jesus meeting with Wall Street bank CEOs, and half of them literally phone it in. Everyone from Bibi Netanyahu to the Japanese prime minister to sundry Iranian mullahs is stomping all over Mr. Happy.

And he doesn’t even seem to realize it.

Did you see him tell Oprah that he gave himself “a good solid B+” for his first year in office? And that it will be an A, if he gets his healthcare legislation passed?

Somebody please pick me up and set me back on my chair, wouldya?

I am seriously beginning to worry that this cat is delusional. He has lopped off twenty full points from his job approval rating in less than a year’s time, falling now below fifty percent.

His party, once dominant in generic congressional election poll questions, is today almost even with hated Republicans in the public mind.

Last month, Obama’s inverted coattails (don’t even ask where those go) got two Democrats clobbered running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia.

The otherwise obnoxious George F. Will (very) rightly points out that in Kentucky, “a Republican candidate succeeded in nationalizing a state Senate race.

Hugely outspent in a district in which Democrats have a lopsided registration advantage, the Republican won by 12 points a seat in Frankfort by running against Washington”.

Wow. Obama is now wrecking state senate races! What’s next? Will local Republican candidates for sheriff win office just by opposing the embarrassment in the White House who chooses abysmal policies and then refuses to fight for them, lest he should ruffle any feathers?

“For Democrats, the red flags are flying at full mast," said Democratic pollster Peter Hart in a recent AP article. "What we don't know for certain is: Have we reached a bottoming-out point?”

Au contraire, Peter. Au contraire. I think anyone more sentient than a newborn amoeba can answer that question. The first thing to note is that the economy is not coming back anytime soon, if it comes back at all. Unless, of course, you’re a fat cat Wall Street banker.

Then you’re just fine, because the Bush-Obama administration took care of you quite nicely, thanks very much. The rest of us poor slobs out here in real-world land, on the other hand, got a “jobs summit”.

I can’t even begin to describe how insulting Obama conducting a “jobs summit” is to me, or what an unbelievably ham-fisted piece of public relations that was for the White House, which is increasingly showing itself not just to be sickeningly regressive, but also fully inept.

I think I speak for a whole lot of Americans when I say that, one year into his stewardship over a destroyed economy that was actually atomizing for at least six months before inauguration day, I don’t want my president sitting around a table, running a dog-and-pony show, pretending to kick around ideas on how to generate jobs.

I wanted him to have those ideas, himself, before he was inaugurated. I wanted those to be real ideas, that produce real jobs for real Americans who are really hurting.

I wanted that to be, and still be, the be-all and end-all of his presidency, not some distant fourth-place priority, behind healthcare and the White House dog selection process. And, especially not some fourth-place priority behind jive healthcare reform.

Which brings us to the second answer to Mr. Hart’s question. If Democrats think they’ll be screwed next November because of unemployment, wait till Congress passes this healthcare monstrosity. Or doesn’t. At this point, either way they’re gonna get slammed for it, and rightly so.

If they don’t pass anything, they will be seen as unable to govern. This perception will be quite true because they will have failed to pass a major piece of legislation, despite having 60-40 majorities in both houses of Congress and control of the presidency.

It doesn’t get much better than that for a governing party in the American system. But it will be true in an even more profound sense, because the whole priority structure of the Democratic agenda is wrong.

Sure, people want healthcare reform right now (especially if it were to miraculously also have the virtue of being authentic healthcare reform), but what they really want, overwhelmingly, is jobs.

This choice of priorities is the equivalent of, say, invading Iraq when you’ve been attacked by people in Afghanistan. Surely no president would be that stupid, right? Surely any political party would realize the costs of having priorities so divorced from those of the voters, right?

On the other hand, the Democrats and their hapless president are probably in worse shape if they actually pass this legislation.

Especially now that it’s been stripped of nearly every real progressive reform imaginable, it has become an incredibly stupid bill, from the political perspective.

It will force people who can’t afford it to spend a giant amount of money on lousy insurance, without any real choice to hold down costs, and it will fund this by hacking away at the Medicare budget.

No wonder an insurance industry lobbyist broadcast an email last week declaring: “We WIN. Administered by private insurance companies. No government funding. No government insurance competitor.”

But here’s a little riddle that any sixth-grader can easily figure out, although it seems to have eluded the brain trust at the White House: If insurance companies are winning big-time, then who is doing the losing?

Something tells me that if Democrats are dumb enough to pass their own legislation, voters will provide them the answer to that puzzle in November of 2010, and then again two years later.

What could be stupider than saddling thirty-five million Americans with a new monthly bill that will probably represent the second or third biggest item in their budget.

This is in exchange for crappy private sector health insurance that is unlikely to pay out when needed, and wastes a third of the dollars paid in premiums on bureaucracy and profits anyhow?

Slapping big fines on them if they don’t pony up for the insurance, perhaps? Yep, that’s in there too.

This bill alone could mobilize legions of people to go to the polls and vote for whichever party didn’t do it, and I’m pretty sure the GOP won’t be shy about reminding Americans who that is.

I mean, if Democrats were searching for legislation less likely to win them votes, why didn’t they just bring back slavery or the debtor’s prison? Why not come out for pedophilia?

It would have been so much more efficient. At least they wouldn’t have spent the last year looking like idiotic bunglers who, in addition to sponsoring really unpopular ideas, also inadvertently left their testicles at the coat check and have spent the last thirty years trying to find their way back to the gala.

Ah, but wait! If you order now, there’s more!

As I understand it, the bill doesn’t even actually force insurance companies to cover people, at least in the sense that they can charge prohibitive amounts to those with whatever they define as pre-existing conditions.

You know, like the young woman who had a policy but died when she was denied cancer treatment because she had a bad case of acne as a teenager.

This will be a total train wreck for the Democratic Party. Already, the public opposes the plan by a ratio of 47 to 32 percent. And they haven’t even been handed the bill for it yet. And they haven’t even had their premiums skyrocket yet.

And they haven’t even seen insurance corporation executives buy small countries for use as second homes with the increased compensation they will be floating in.

And they haven’t even found out what this does to their Medicare yet. And they haven’t even seen the impact on the national debt yet. And they haven’t even realized that the ‘good’ parts of the bill don’t go into effect until FOUR YEARS from now.

You know, elite Republicans may be sociopaths, and they may be lower on the moral totem pole than your basic cannibal, but they’re not stupid. I bet they’re salivating at the idea that this thing passes.

I bet they’d even have Olympia Snowe vote for it if necessary, just to put it over the top. They must be laughing their asses off at this gift.

All they have to do is oppose it right down the line, then say “Told ya so!” at the next election, squashing the pathetic Demognats, one after the next.

Hey, even if worse comes to worse and the thing eventually becomes popular, they can always wait a decade or two and become champions of the new publically beloved healthcare system – just like they did for Medicare, Social Security, civil rights, etc.

This is President Nothingburger’s great gift to America, along with doing nothing about jobs, doing nothing about the Middle East, nothing about civil liberties, nothing about civil rights, and now doing nothing at Copenhagen.

Regarding the latter, the world is literally on fire, and he jets in, gives a speech haranguing the delegates that “Now is not the time for talk, now is the time for action”, then splits even before the vote in order to beat the snowstorm headed to the east coast that might delay him getting home to his comfy bed. I’m not kidding. You can’t make this shit up, man.

This guy is killing me, though at the same time I still can’t quite figure him out.

Here’s what I get: This president is a corporate hack. Like Bush or Clinton, he has constituents, alright – but you and I are not on that particular list.

Here’s what I don’t get: He is radically tanking, at a moment when people no longer have patience for those kind of politics anymore.

Here’s what I get: This president has his fingers in many pies, as he needs to, ranging from global warming to economic implosion to two wars abroad to massive federal debt.

Here’s what I don’t get: Why does he bother to do these things in a way that pleases no one, and only dramatically undercuts his own political standing? Why does he refuse to make anyone his enemy, thus making everyone his enemy?

Is he just massively deluded? I wouldn’t have thought so, but watching the guy give himself a very good grade for 2009 – straight face and all – during the same year he’s lost twenty points off his job approval rating, and at a moment when even blacks and gays are deserting him, you know, you have to wonder.

Is he happy just to be a one-term president – just to say he’s been there and done that, and then sell some more books – even if he is reviled as one of the worst in history?

Maybe. But what about the rest of us?

The rest of us, indeed. It’s been quite some time since anyone in the White House ever cared about that sorry pack of rabble.

Obama looked like he could’ve been something different. He ain’t.

So this is it, folks.

Change you can believe in?

More like bullshit you can take a bath in, if you ask me.