The Palinator Pope

Well Pope Bennie has taken his last spin around St. Peters in the Pope mobile. His resignation is official at 8pm Thursday night, clearing the way for that one ring circus, the college of cardinals. The meeting, usually held after a pontiff dies, will take place for the first time with the big guy still alive for the first time in 600 years, tucked away inside a monastic retreat on Vatican grounds, some say to prevent prosecution for any one of a number of scandals rocking the papacy.

You can read his resignation announcement here.

Bennie will get to keep his pope name instead of revert back to Joseph, which is his real name, and he can still wear virgin white vestments. However he's gotta give up those sparkly red Prada loafers. (Wonder if he will sell them on Ebay and donate the money to feed the hungry...nah) Think he probably has to give back the pope ring, too.

And now that good old Ben has been tucked out of sight, the drama swept under the rug, temporarily at least, now comes time for the other men who favor dresses, big high hats and pretty shoes to take over the spotlight and select their new spiritual leader via the smoke, but no mirror method.

By the way, was Ru Paul invited to this shindig? Nevermind, I digress.

Word is that chocolate is the flavor of the month according to all the English bookies. Seems an African cardinal, Peter Terkson is one of the favorites. Cardinal Peter is one of the many religious leaders who has signed off on all the “kill the gays” legislation circulating on the Continent (ya'll do know Africa is a Continent-not a country, right?)

Cardinal Peter has gone so far as to say recently all the child abuse in the church...ALL of that scandal is the work of devious gays trying to take down the church.

And although the mainstream media keeps billing him as maybe the first black pope, history tells us there have been at least two others, which would make 3 total, if it happens. Just look what Barack has started. Next thing you know, they will be talking about the possibility of a female pope. But that can't happen until the Holy See starts “seeing” women as human beings worthy of the priesthood.

With Cardinal Peter of Africa and Cardinal Timmy of New York as the favorites who don't live in Italy, women as priests let alone as pope probable, ain't gonna happen anytime soon. At the rate Bennie was going before he pulled-a-palin, all the nuns in America were close to being kicked out of the church anyway for bucking his papal authority. That would make the church, the old boys club that they all want anyway. They can't even admit that Mary Magdalene might have been Jesus' friend and disciple rather than the local hooker with a heart of gold.

Oh well. Bennie changed the rules so the college of cardinals don't have to wait 15 days to elect a new leader, so let the games begin.

Going to pop some popcorn and kick back in front of the telly to wait for the white smoke (what? You didn't think the signal was going to be black, did you?), which will signal the selection of the Last Pope according to the prophecy of St. Malachi. Read here

I don't believe in the prophecy, unless he selects Peter as his pope name.

 If that happens, I'm going to start partying like it's 1999, because it really will be the end of the world and not as we know it.

Conversations with my Dad

I am still mulling over a very recent conversation with my 84 year old father about guns. He is NRA, a long time member. I am not a supporter, which should be abundantly clear to anyone who reads this blog.  My father on the other hand, is a classic example of the successful marketing done by the National Rifle Association. Dad is just a guy who likes to hunt. He also has guns for home protection. He taught his daughters how to shoot. My mother is a better shot than my dad, if truth be told. He keeps them in a locked safe, which he didn't do when I was a kid, but chose to do when he started having grandchildren. He innately realized that today's kids are different from the kids of yesterday. Yesterday, if we were told not to touch the gun, we didn't, even if we knew where it was, and we did. We just left it there. My first memory of guns in the house dates back to when I was six. It was a handgun that I would come to know later was a 38.  But Dad also tends to believe everything the NRA tells him in the magazine and mass mailings to which he is subjected on a weekly basis.

The message  since  January 2009: Obama is coming to take away all of your guns.

Now my father is an intelligent man. He reads absolutely everything that finds its way into his mailbox along with the books that he buys or articles that he comes across in the newspaper, which he reads daily. My parents are still subscribers. He is skeptical about much of it. He questions a lot of what he reads. In fact our conversation began with him calling me and asking me for the definition of the word “heretic.” The word was used in an article, to refer to Chuck Hagel by republicans during the confirmation hearings last week.

From that jumping off point, we got onto gun control.

We talked about the NRA position. I told him about the NRA lies to its membership. I talked about what the President has really said. My father admitted reading about Obama's positions. I told him about how the NRA stood with Ronald Reagan against blacks and specifically the Black Panther Party carrying guns according to the Second Amendment, back in the day. How it's apparently okay for white people to own guns but not blacks. I explained the assault weapons ban that Bush allowed to expire, while Obama refused to put it back in place. Because in fact, Obama is as big a hindrance on gun control as the GOP and the NRA, regardless of how many tears he sheds in public.

I talked about how and why the NRA buys congressmen in order to get their laws passed instead of laws that would better the people and society. My Dad admitted reading articles on the subject, and recently, too.

We talked for a long time, but in the end, all my father could or would say despite all that I told him was:

“But Obama is coming to take my guns and make me register the ones he lets me keep!”

NRA, mission accomplished...

Nigga with a Gun! Duck! Oh, It's Just Obama...

Considering all the crap that's gone on since Obama was elected to the White House, one would think his apparent discomfort with firearms would bring peace to white America.

But no. As soon as he admits to skeet shooting once in a while at Camp David, to demonstrate his regular guy-ness, everybody wants to see the pictures. White women line up to challenge him, betting they are better shots than the brown man who leads.

White men haven't challenged, apparently self checking into the Dick Cheney “I shot my friend in the face” column, assuming they are more manly than our current mocha prez. It's the same, tired old shit. Any white man is better than the best black one, at anything. Really?

Because that's all this crap is, another way of implying that President Obama is soft. That he is not ever up to the task of being the President of the United States again. For a second landslide term, another four years as voted by “we the people” of the United States.

And who gives a damn, anyway? The gun control debate is not about how well, or even if Obama can shoot. It's about all the fools running around with weapons of war in an alleged civilized society. That's all it's ever been. Except when it turns racial, like now, when the focus is on Obama's “manliness” or when Black Panthers were legally carrying weapons in public, back in the day. Talk about about faces, the NRA nearly gave itself whiplash back peddling on guns in public when black men took to the streets peacefully inside their own neighborhoods. The panthers didn't kill anybody, but the government declared open season and killed them.

Today, the Tea Party has been doing the same thing within the past four or five years and nobody bats an eye. GOP legislators can't change the laws quick enough to allow this blatant guns in public, anti social/racist behavior, yet all anyone can talk about is whether or not our president can shoot a gun.

Any fool can shoot a gun, just ask Dick Cheney's buddy with the shot off face.

Let's get serious. The United States Constitution allows citizens to own a gun. Second Amendment. Fine. This law also means that no one is a criminal until they pull the trigger and or kill someone. Therefore, in order to protect society from criminals, all citizens have to be regulated, because criminals will only reveal themselves through their illegal actions.

You can't just say “keep the guns away from the crazy and the criminal,” because there is no way to know them before the fact, unless there is a screening procedure and or background checks for past behavior.

And considering what happened at Sandy Hook and Columbine and all the other schools and workplace shootings, these shooters, most of them, would have passed the background checks as well as the screenings, because they are to the manor born, white guys with access to money.

Face it, the masters of the universe do not want to deal with the fact that they are raising crazy violent children. But they must if we are to survive as a civilized society.

Then again, maybe that is the issue, shrink the US until it's small enough to be drowned in a bathtub.

Is that the game being played right now? We can't have it so we're going to make sure that you don't? Really?

And don't for one minute, one second, think that I am letting Black America off the hook. There is no fucking reason on the face of this earth that justifies all the Black kids dying in Chicago, in my neighborhood and all the other urban neighborhoods in the US.

This is not a white man's problem...this is US, period. White people aren't killing US. WE are killing each other and it's got to stop.

When will the so called leaders, so called civil rights groups, so called Black religious organizations, churches wake the fuck up?

Black on black violence is not about the number of guns. It's facilitated by the abundance of weaponry, but not precipitated by it.

Our kids have been dying for a long time. Do we need a Black Sandy Hook before WE wake up, too?

Inquiring minds want to know....