Kathleen Parker: The Pope Is Right

While I reserve any approval of Pope Francis until he conducts a meaningful house cleaning of bishops and cardinals who participated in the global conspiracy to aid, abet and protect predator priests, it has proved to be enjoyable entertainment to watch the far right go into faints and near convulsions over some of Francis' comments that run against their true gods: money and unfetter capitalism and gay bashing (I'd also add fetus worship since children only matter while they remain unborn).  Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker - who seems to be putting a bulls eye on her back of late - has a piece in the Washington Post that condemns the hysteria of the far right over the Pope's remarks.  The column underscores the hypocrisy of so many on the right.  Here are excerpts:

We have reached a new level of political absurdity when the right is mad at the pope and the left wants to anoint his head with oil.

Everyone seems to have his own special version of Pope Francis. Liberals have declared him a crusader for social justice, especially regarding his comments about global inequality. Conservatives fear he just might be a commie.

To briefly recap, Pope Francis has hit two hot buttons: He has questioned the efficacy of “unfettered” free markets and has encouraged de-emphasizing the church’s positions on such divisive issues as gays and abortion. 

The latter message, while loving and refreshing, is more complex than an “I’m okay, you’re okay” platitude. The pope never proposes changing church teachings but merely suggests that the church should be open to all. You can’t minister to people if you won’t let them in the door. And no one follows a wagging finger.

The message relating to the financial world similarly targeted the collateral human damage of “unfettered” markets. This is by-the-book Christianity, hardly the moorings of heresy. Yet these Christian sentiments have sent some conservatives reeling to the fainting couch. 

Upon reading the pope’s words about greed and inequality, Rush Limbaugh threw down the word “Marxist” like an overcooked rib-eye. The pontiff’s words, said the man of many words, was “just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope.”

Next comes Adam Shaw, news editor for FoxNews.com and a Catholic, who wrote that the pope is like Obama — the worst invective a good conservative can hurl this side of “You’re a tool of Satan!”

“Just like President Obama loved apologizing for America, Pope Francis likes to apologize for the Catholic Church, thinking that the Church is at its best when it is passive and not offending anyone’s sensibilities,” Shaw wrote. Both men, he implies, “pander to enemies ” and are “professional grievance mongers.” And so on.

[I]t would appear that Francis is quite willing to offend sensibilities.  It is useful to remember that Jesus wasn’t only a carpenter’s son but also a radical who turned the tables on the status quo. Likewise Francis — a Christian right down to his sensible black leather shoes, the better to walk the walk and sneak out at night to minister to Rome’s homeless.

[T]he pope never mentions redistribution. He is challenging our idolatry of money and obsession with things (I confess!), a cultural fascination that distracts us from the needy. What is the successor to St. Peter supposed to do when he sees so much suffering even in free-market societies? Quote Ayn Rand? 

No one, Christian or otherwise, can escape the mirror he holds up, his eyes doubtless twinkling in anticipation of his next moonlight adventure, searching for souls in need. 

I love the reference to Ayn Rand - did Parker have Paul Ryan in mind?

GOP's Ted Cruz Claims Communist Allegations Are True

I noted in a post yesterday how Texas GOP U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (pictured above) seems to want to reprise the Joseph McCarthy era of the 1950's by brandishing about claims that people who disagree with his far right extremist views are communists.  A piece in the New Yorker looked at Cruz's unfounded allegations.  Now, in a follow up article The New Yorker is reporting that Cruz's office has said that his labeling of Harvard professors and others as communists is true.  Of course, his claims are false, but what else can one expect from today's Republican party.  It's the same mindset that labels women who use contraception as sluts and whores.  Here are excerpts from the latest New Yorker story:

Senator Ted Cruz has responded to The New Yorker’s report that he accused Harvard Law School of having had “twelve” Communists who “believed in the overthrow of the U.S. Government” on its faculty when he attended in the early nineties. Cruz doesn’t deny that he said this; instead, through his spokesman, he says he was right: Harvard Law was full of Communists.

His spokeswoman Catherine Frazier told The Blaze website that the “substantive point” in Cruz’s charge, made in a speech in 2010, was “was absolutely correct.”

She went on to explain that “the Harvard Law School faculty included numerous self-described proponents of ‘critical legal studies’—a school of thought explicitly derived from Marxism—and they far outnumbered Republicans.” As my story noted, the Critical Legal Studies group consisted of left-leaning professors like Duncan Kennedy, who is a social democrat, not a Communist, and has never “believed in the overthrow of the U.S. Government.”

Cruz’s spokesman called it “curious” that The New Yorker would cover Cruz’s speech “three years” after he gave it. But Cruz’s hostile questioning of Obama’s nominee for Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel, and insinuations about Hagel’s loyalties had provided a fresh context for looking more closely at the nature of the accusations he has leveled at political opponents. Observers like Senator Barbara Boxer wondered if they were seeing a revival of McCarthyism. Judging from Cruz’s speech—and, now, his defense of it—it’s a good question.

I noted yesterday that Cruz even looks a bit like McCarthy who is pictured below.  Judge for yourselves:

Is GOP Senator Ted Cruz The New McCarthy?

The descent of the GOP into a political party that knows no shame - or integrity, for that matter - is personified by Senator Ted Cruz (pictured at left) who seems to believe that he is the New Joseph McCarthy.   What's even scarier is that the man even bears a surface physical resemblance to McCarthy at first glance.   With Cruz, lies, innuendo and extremism all go hand in hand.  What is additionally disturbing is that Cruz seemingly thinks the Soviet Union is still in existence and that we are back in the 1950's.  A piece in The New Yorker looks at the latest buffoon/hate merchant out of Texas.  Here are some article highlights:

Last week, Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s prosecutorial style of questioning Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for Defense Secretary, came so close to innuendo that it raised eyebrows in Congress, even among his Republican colleagues. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called Cruz’s inquiry into Hagel’s past associations “out of bounds, quite frankly.” The Times reported that Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, rebuked Cruz for insinuating, without evidence, that Hagel may have collected speaking fees from North Korea. Some Democrats went so far as to liken Cruz, who is a newcomer to the Senate, to a darkly divisive predecessor, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, whose anti-Communist crusades devolved into infamous witch hunts. Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, stopped short of invoking McCarthy’s name, but there was no mistaking her allusion

Boxer’s analogy may have been more apt than she realized. Two and a half years ago, Cruz gave a stem-winder of a speech at a Fourth of July weekend political rally in Austin, Texas, in which he accused the Harvard Law School of harboring a dozen Communists on its faculty when he studied there. Cruz attended Harvard Law School from 1992 until 1995. His spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request to discuss the speech.

Cruz made the accusation while speaking to a rapt ballroom audience during a luncheon at a conference called “Defending the American Dream,” sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a non-profit political organization founded and funded in part by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch.

He then went on to assert that Obama, who attended Harvard Law School four years ahead of him, “would have made a perfect president of Harvard Law School.” The reason, said Cruz, was that, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”

“We are puzzled by the Senator’s assertions, as we are unaware of any basis for them,” Robb London, a spokesman for Harvard Law School, told me.  .  .  .  .  Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried, a Republican who served as Ronald Reagan’s Solicitor General from 1985 to 1989, and who subsequently taught Cruz at the law school, suggests that his former student has his facts wrong.“I can right offhand count four “out” Republicans (including myself) and I don’t know how many closeted Republicans

Fried acknowledged that “there were a certain number (twelve seems to me too high) who were quite radical, but I doubt if any had allegiance or sympathy with anything called ‘the Communists,’ who at that time (unlike the thirties and forties) were in quite bad odor among radical intellectuals.”

Sounding like a disappointed professor, Fried said that Cruz’s willingness to label the faculty Communist “lacks nuance.” He said he remembered Cruz well, as “very bright, very hard-working and very conservative, in a well-mannered, agreeable way.” So he said, “This surprises me. It suggests he’s changed.”  So too, perhaps, has the U.S. Senate.

As I have said so often, ignorance and lies now predominate just as in the Christian Right and Tea Party which now control the GOP.