Rome's Investment in the Americas Hits Pay Dirt

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This week pundits applauded the 118 Vatican Red Hats for selecting Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the 266th pontiff over its billion communicants. While the stilted white-smoke rigmarole is billed as the earthly machinations of the Holy Trinity, it is of course, the most vulgar of politics, calculated to insinuate the greatest pay-off in the global collection plate, commonly known as the Roman Catholic Church.

After a putative 2013 years, the prelates loosed their European bonds, held their collective upturned Holy Roman Empire noses, and anointed a Cardinal from the Americas. But it was a politically safe decision. You see Bergoglio is Italian by family and culture. So the putative leap of faith wasn't, in fact, much of a leap at all:

After a half-millennium investment in Western world human capital, it was was pay dirt time - time to cash in on the stunning demographics of Latin America fecundity. But I get way ahead of myself.

The stunning fecundity of Latin American Catholics has created a sea change in Roman Catholic demographics - and consequently potential cash flow.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Rewind 499 years.

In 1514, at the callow age of 18, Hernando de Soto signed on as cabin boy to 74-year-old Pedro Arias Dávila, who at the behest of close friend and consort to Queen Isabella I of Spain, launched a flotilla of 19 ships and some 1,500 men to present day Columbia — the single largest colonial European expedition ever undertaken to the then-new world. 

Hernando de Soto 1496-1542

From that point, de Soto’s career sustained vertical takeoff. As it turned out, Dávila would become overlord of virtually all Spanish Colonial holdings from Peru to Nicaragua, where he died in splendiferous retirement at the age of 91 (Methuselahan by 16^th century life expectancy), the direct beneficiary of untold riches, unrepentantly plundered from the treasuries of aboriginal societies, under the banner of the cross and the approbation of the Spanish throne.

Upon Dávila’s death in 1531, de Soto threw in as captain with Francisco Pizarro — again some twenty-five years his senior — in perhaps the most horrifically shameless chapter in European colonial annals: the conquest and looting of the Inca Empire, situated in present day Peru.

Upon returning to Spain in 1534, de Soto was accorded procuring credit for the Inca conquest. As honorarium, in addition to a so-called mounted soldier’s share of untold booty across South and Central America, the King of Spain, Charles V, awarded de Soto 724 marks of gold (about 83,000 troy ounces) — worth, give or take, $75 million on today’s market — not a bad net worth for a 38-year-old. But Charles V — titular Holy Roman Emperor and divine attaché to then-reigning Pope Paul III — had other things in mind for young de Soto.

It seems Charles, a Flemish-born prince-king — who never learned to speak fluent Spanish after inheriting the crown as a teenager, on his daddy’s side — had been badly burned by a succession of failed expeditions that had proved a sieve to the royal treasury. The worst of which was a rookie conquistador, Pánfilo de Narváez, who in 1527 managed to lose all but four of his entourage of 600, including troops, officers, spouses of officers, and slaves. 

So it was, in 1539 Hernando de Soto launched his first, and mercifully only, expedition into the present day United States. Inexplicably, he decided to rely on the prior reconnaissance of Narváez. 

After meandering up the Florida west coast and looping inland through present day Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, he wound up hopelessly lost somewhere along the Mississippi-Louisiana border, where he perished in 1542. His failed expedition fell apart and finally made it back to Mexico City. For that clodpoll decision on de Soto's part, providence indeed blessed North America.

For had de Soto succeeded in his mission, we might very well be speaking Spanish today, denizens of a hemispheric Latin America, composed of a shabby patchwork of bled-out, over populated, chronically impoverished, and systemically corrupt tin-pot dictatorships.

Speculative route of Hernando de Soto's final excellent adventure. Having billed himself as an immortal Sun God, his entourage was no doubt chagrined at his earthly passing - probably of malaria. To quell insurrection among the remaining troops, his lieutenants purportedly wrapped his body in a blanket and sank it in the Mississippi River in the dead of night. Those left, beat it to Mexico City, ending the venture.

Nonetheless, the Iberians managed to conquer and subjugate virtually all of Central and South America.

But the conquistadores did not act alone in their crimes against humanity, for they enabled an equally virulent co-conspirator – The Roman Catholic Church. 

Not content with the occasion to proselytize and indenture an estimated 30 million¹ aboriginal recruits in the name of Christ, the merger of the Vatican and the Spanish throne provided ever more license to depredate natives and their own countrymen alike.

The enabling liturgy was the Requerimiento, a burlesque piece of Roman Catholic dogmata asserting that God almighty, through his intercessory the Pope and Vicar of Christ, held authority over the all the earth, and that the Inter Caetera — a Papal Bull of 1493 by Pope Alexander VI —ceded title over the Americas to the Spanish throne.

Now to be perfectly balanced, the Requerimiento was supposed to be delivered aloud to the subject natives, affording them the coveted opportunity of accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. More often it was recited from the bow of a moored ship, empty beachhead, or at best to a gaping uncomprehending assemblage of aboriginals, shall we say, rather unschooled in courtly Castilian Spanish.

To the conquistadores the Requerimiento provided a tidy ecclesiastical – and political – loophole, framing American aboriginals in the godless state of having rejected the Holy Trinity. That the Native Americans were culturally clueless as to their transgression of failing to supplicate Christ did not deter the pious and imperious Spaniards in the slightest. Accordingly, any death, destruction, or pillaging was, de jure, their own fault — the mortal consequence of fiat paganism.

As Richard Dawkins flatly observes in The God Delusion, a half millennium later: “What impresses me about Catholic mythology is partly its tasteless kitsch but mostly the airy nonchalance with which [they] make up the details as they go along. It is [all] just shamelessly invented.”

Pope Philip II (1527-1598) would ultimately unleash the legendary atrocities of genocidal maniac Tomás de Torquemada – Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition – on the new world colonies. 

Having presided over some 44,000 heretic trials on the European Continent, with more than 5,000 executions under his belt, in 1569 the first two field offices of El Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición were established in New Spain (Mexico) and Peru.²  By 1610, royal bureaus of the Inquisition were installed in every Spanish colonial diocese, from Hispaniola to the Philippines.

Re-inactment of Spanish Inquisition tribunal

Universal and unrepentant Roman Catholic fealty was the joint papal and royal injunction. The prime transgressors in Spain, Jews and Muslims – hardly a factor in the new world – were summarily held accountable as enemies of Rome and the Spanish crown. 

For that, dragnet kangaroo courts for alleged infidels were conducted by minions of the inquisition, independent of, and unaccountable to, secular authority. Suspects were arrested and relentlessly interrogated without semblance of due process. The antidote for failure to voluntarily confess and repent was torture.

Routinely detainees would be placed naked on a potro, a bedlike frame with straps from side-to-side. Arms and legs were strapped with leather bands and tightened by turns of a wheel, inflicting excruciating pain. Typically, a detainee would confess his or her infidelity upon the first few turns. 

Alternatively, the medieval antecedent to water boarding might be administered by cramming a rag in the detainee’s mouth and saturating it with copious amounts of water. Reflexive swallowing would cause the prisoner's abdomen to become excruciatingly distended.

500 years' later, the George W. Bush Administration popularized waterboarding as a method of torture - no doubt reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition.

Failing that, a makeshift trial and public execution was the final solution for those who manifestly refused to submit to the inquisitors – and there were manifold thousands. For that, native Americans under Spanish conquest were terrorized, en masse, to adopt Roman Catholicism under the most outrageous contrivances of duress.

That Latin America stands preponderantly Roman Catholic today – the rank and file slavishly subservient to the stultifying and impoverishing dogma ­– serves as testimony to the innate depravity of the merger of church and state. 

Such is the atrocious legacy of the Iberians in the new world, indelibly writ in the embarrassing social and economic diametrics between the North and South Americas to this very day. 

But, alas, 500 years' of imposed human misery and servitude finally paid off for the Roman Catholic Church in the installation of Francis I.

As Julius Caesar might have said: Habemus Papam

Shitepoke.com March 16, 2013

Calhoun GA

¹ Estimated number of indigenous peoples in Latin America upon the arrival of Europeans: http://answers.encyclopedia.com/question/many-south-american-natives-were-there-before-coming-europeans-130159.html

² http://www.sefarad.org/publication/lm/037/6.html; http://www.bede.org.uk/inquisition.html

The Second Amendment for Dummies

DISCLAIMER: Shitepoke.com blog attempts to authenticate its content. Disclosure of substantive errors is solicited and will be acknowledged. Accordingly, readers are encouraged to explore and enjoy this content, in its own right, but to always obtain additional sources for historical or academic research.

The radical-right hysteria over Obama and the Second Amendment in the aftermath of the Newtown schoolhouse massacre, is seriously out of touch with history and a dangerous disservice to their children who must govern each other in the twenty-first century. For that, here's a primer for those who slept through eighth grade civics:

When the Constitution was ratified in 1789, certain ornery patriots, called Anti-Federalists, were not fully on board. After throwing one monarchy overboard, they thought the new government gave way too much power to the feds over the states – specifically the president. Sound familiar?

In fact, Massachusetts only ratified the Constitution, provided  that congress spell out so-called natural rights – those rights which could not be voted away by a majority or legislated away by government.

Accordingly, James Madison penned a quick do-over consisting of ten amendments. Dubbed the Bill of Rights, they were enthusiastically ratified in 1791.

Both Washington and Madison hated the idea of a standing army, considering it a subterfuge for war making. Madison famously allowed: “War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

In the Second Amendment, Madison put a fine point on America’s boundary to make war – and the people’s obligation to shed blood for politicians - putting national defense firmly in the hands of civilians, to wit: A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The original intent is unambiguous. The proposition is provisional – the operative words being well-regulated and militia. Well-regulated means just that: under the authority of a commander appointed by the governor of each state. And militia means composed of local citizens, as opposed to a standing army.

For that, George Washington signed the Militia Acts of 1792, mandating the duty of every “free able-bodied white male citizen" between the ages of 18 and 45. Specifically, each recruit had to provide his own musket, bayonet, two spare flints, a cartridge box with 24 bullets, and a knapsack.

The trial run was the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Washington himself rode shotgun with 13,000 militiamen from four states for a overwhelming take-down of a handful of Pennsylvania corn farmers who revolted over the taxation of highly profitable homebrew.  

The take-home message is clear: the Second Amendment armed citizens in the name of the government. That it was intended to arm citizens against the government is utter right-wing mythology propagated by the paranoid fringe.

The very idea of armed civilians going up against today’s military supremacy – including Apache Attack Helicopters, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and surface-to-air missiles – is the stuff of ludicrous fantasy.

Teddy Roosevelt's Militia Act of 1903 - no doubt to Washington's chagrin - closed the loop, replacing militias with the fully militarized National Guard, adjunct to a standing army. Today, domestic armaments and matériel are housed in local armories. Thus, the era of citizen militias and the Second Amendment stand replaced by history, Madison's majestic phrases stranded in time.

For more than a century, gun enthusiasts had been spoiling for Second Amendment vindication of their civilian firepower. Finally, in 2008, the partisan Republican John Roberts' Supreme Court delighted to oblige. In a spectacular act of judicial legislation-from-the-bench - it pulled out of thin air, unsupported by either constitutional law or history, the landmark case, District of Columbia v. Heller: The Second Amendment guarantees an individual's right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm … such as self-defense within the home. 

Yet writing for the majority, conservative icon Justice Scalia - in astonishing judicial contrition - threw cold water in the face of his gun-toting constituency: Like most rights, the Second Amendment is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose … [including] laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

Twelve days before Christmas, Adam Lanza shot his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut armed with a perfectly legal Bushmaster XM-15 semi-automatic rifle, with untold dozens of 30-round clips. Within a breathtaking span of four minutes, he unloaded upward of 100 rounds into two classrooms, before putting a bullet into his own head.

Twenty first graders and six teachers lay massacred – many children so unimaginably mutilated by the .223 caliber military grade firepower that their parents could not identify them.

In 1994, Congress outlawed the human killing machine and high-capacity ammunition clips that Adam Lanza deployed – along with nineteen other categories of assault weapons. When the ban sunsetted in 2004, lawmakers, fueled with blood money from the NRA, purposefully let it expire.

Had Congress renewed the ban, Lanza’s horrific mass murder weapon would have never been manufactured – cold comfort for the precious slain children, their parents, and loved ones of Sandy Hook school.

We hear a lot about mental illness and guns. Well, forget about Lanza’s mental state. There will forever be deranged people capable of unspeakable mayhem. For that, we can, and indeed must, decide what level of military-grade overkill weaponry is available for street purchase.

President Obama has asked Congress - and California Senator Dianne Feinstein has introduced a bill - to permanently restore the 1994 assault weapon ban. Many oppose the legislation on the grounds of Second Amendment rights. They would be wrong.

Shitepoke.com January 26, 2013

Calhoun GA

Update: March 20, 2013

NRA flogs Senate into submission

Sad day for Sandy Hook Kids

On Romney's Veep Gambit

There is so much to opine with Romney's eleventh hour veep pick - here's Shitepoke's in a few quick bursts:

Romney is a narcissistic shape-shifter. In his run for the presidency - as a right-wing Republican - he has had to flee from every aspect of his past: 
  

• Romney-care in Massachusetts was the virtual blueprint for the dreaded Obamacare which he now vows to repeal.

• The ballyhooed Salt Lake City Olympics turns out to be a $1.4 billion earmark boondoggle on the taxpayers' tab - with untold local graft and special interest draw-downs.

• Bain Capital is a rich-man's Ponzi scheme centered around plundering undervalued companies, loading them with debt and management fees, firing the help, and selling off the pieces.

• And his personal finances are unambiguously so fraught with flimflam, money laundering, and off-shore accounts that they'll never see the light of day in terms of disclosure.

While the ABO (anybody-but Obama) crowd will eat glass and vote for Romney, he has failed to convince the Ron Paul-ers, the Teabaggers, and the Christianists who view the election as a Hobson's Choice. AND these are just the Republican BASE, much less Independents.

The Ryan veep pick is a desperate ploy to energize the Push-Granny-Over-the-Cliff voters and the Wall Street royalists who are licking their chops over the final three BIG tranches of public money: Medicare trust fund, Social Security Trust fund, and Federal pensions. 

The up-side is that it will also energize the Dem base at the horror of this preening little fascist NeoCon punk - riding on the coattails of this Mormon oligarch - who has deemed Ryan's budget scheme marvelous - who shills for the 1% and wants to swap Medicare for a discounted coupon-clipping scheme that will let me - at 75 years' old, with diabetes, high blood pressure, and a heart condition - go out and shop the for-profit insurance market for a really keen buy!

And YES it will throw Florida's 29 electoral votes against the wall - where 3.4 million Medicare beneficiaries make up the biggest voting bloc. And Romney's flimsy line to haul in another 4.3 million Hispanic Floridians with a Marco Rubio veep pick (who famously lied about his Cuban credentials) has now snapped in two.

ALL IN ALL - I'd say good news for Obama.

Say What? We're Talking Birth Contol in 2012?

Yeah, I know. We're well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, but this election year has loosed a jaw-dropping Republican attempt to create a partisan wedge issue out of whole cloth. The issue: American women's right and free access to birth control. And Surprise, they're foursquare again' it. Huh? Sound like something out of the 1950's? Well, at least let's get the playing field straight.

When Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) - gratuitously dubbed Obamacare by its opponents who were banking on - and desperately scheming for - its demise, the keystone to its implementation was the so-called national insurance exchange from which employers could purchase coverage for their employees.

Any existing healthcare insurer (Blue Cross, Aetna, Kaiser, etc.) would be required to meet certain minimum coverage requirements in order to qualify for the exchange. The law additionally specified that a range of preventative care be covered with no additional out-of-pocket cost to the insured - the unassailable logic that an ounce of prevention is worth untold millions of dollars in down-stream treatment costs.

Rather than getting deep in to the weeds of administrative minutiae, Congress opted to leave the specifics of these minimum requirements to the Department Health and Human Services to define. In the run-up to the 2014 implementation of Obamacare, these details fell under the purview of Obama appointee, Department Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

For that, Secretary Sebelius proceeded to publish the recommend minimum requirements for preventative coverage. For all: colonoscopies and range of cancer screening; for men: prostate exams and PSA tests; for women: mamograms, pap tests, and birth control pills.

In excruciating umbrage to sectarian institutions under the vaunted First Amendment, churches-proper were exempted from compliance with any-and-all provisions that stuck discord between public policy and private faith. For that, a Jehovah's Witness congregation would not be compelled to cover blood transfusions for its staff, neither would a Catholic parish be required to cover birth control for its direct employees.

The quotidian obviousness of these standards would routinely fly under the radar of any partisan dogfight. But, alas, there was a fly in the ointment: Republicans in alliance with parochial right-wingers would unleash the dogs of partisan war on whom they perceived to be politically vulnerable - one Barack Hussein Obama.

Republican speaker John Boehner (above) uncharacteristically descended from the speaker's dais into the well of the House to deliver perhaps one of the most disingenuous and dishonest partisan diatribes ever uttered.

Piling on was an endless cast of Catholic prelates, denouncing the Obama administration of flagrantly usurping his constitutional mandate to protect the sanctity of religion against secular authority.

And not to miss a chance at grabbing the media spotlight, de facto head of the Republican National Committee trash-talkster Rush Limbaugh piled on heaping helping of his signature hyperbole - memorably dubbing Georgetown co-ed grad student Sandra Fluke a slut for her advocacy of contraceptives in the school's insurance program - further suggesting that she sell porn videos of her sexual indulgences to pay for her recreational coitus - rather than looking to the government for a hand-out. Fluke's 15-minutes' of fame would famously land her a spot on the 2012 Democratic National Convention speaker-roll.

Stripping away all of the partisan and parochial fireworks, It all boils down to the obligations of the Catholic Church as an employer in constitutional democracy. Catholics, under the aegis of a plethora of corporations, have extended their reach into a multitude of extra-curricular activities, including schools, universities, hospitals, charitable outfits - you name it. And no one is dismissing their eleemosynary contributions to our society.

But in doing so, they employ a broad range of private citizens - many of whom have no interest in their religion. Accordingly, they must abide by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, agreeing to not discriminate in hiring practices based on a gamut of constitutionally protected categories, including race, creed, national origin, religion - and soon to come, sexual orientation and gender identity.

The little mentioned caveat is that 28 states already require religiously-affiliated organizations - irrespective of their pulpit preachments - to cover birth control in their employee insurance plans. And notwithstanding that ninety percent of self-identified Catholic women use contraceptives at some point in their lives, the Catholic hierarchy - performing in the role of partisan shills - was itching for a political dust-up with the Obama administration:

Hey, we're run by the Catholics. You know what we say about family planning: ain't no such thing. Anything that interferes with ovulation and sperm implantation is verboten. Hey, the Pope said it; we believe it; that settles it. If you work for us, check your U.S. citizenship and your First Amendment rights at the door. You want birth control benefits in your group policy, tough shit. Shut up; get pregnant; go home; rinse and repeat.

It seems abundantly obvious that the issue is more one of control, than birth control. Do Catholic-run corporations have the right to consider all of their employees communicants - even though they are already required to hire without regard to religion? Constitutionally speaking, the answer is unambiguously - no.

For that, the Roman Catholic Church in the United States finds itself on the horns of a dilemma: get out of businesses that serve and employee at-large citizens or get with the government program. 

And alas, the Obama administration finds itself on a slippery slope to suborning theocracy: capitulate with Rome, tear down the firewall between church-and-state, and leave Thomas Jefferson spinning on a rotisserie in his grave.

OH BUT WAIT: Dateline February 10, 2012, Secretary Sebelius struck a sweet deal with the insurance companies - all based on a little actuarial arithmetic - something insurance companies are quite good with. It seems (surprise) that footing the bills for prenatal and maternity costs are one of the single biggest liabilities insurance companies incur - eating into shareholder profits like a buzz saw. It seems that reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies by a mere fraction would handily pay for the cost of contraceptives for untold hundreds of women.

So here is Sebelius' compromise: Any religiously-affiliated organization that objects to paying for contraceptives in its group policy may opt-out under Obamacare guidelines. The alternative: any insurance company participating on the exchange will agree to pick up the cost of contraceptives for those women - upon request - off-policy - and free of charge.

Done. Problem solved: 

(1) Churches need not fret that a cent of their funds is spent to undermine their sectarian doctrine; 

(2) Insurance companies - and their shareholders - are ensured optimum return on investment by minimizing unplanned pregnancy and maternity claims;

(3) American women receive critical range of family planning and preventative medical care; and

(4) The Constitution is spared - another day - from the ravages of  theocrats whose longing is to institute denominational dogma into public law.

Shitepoke invites those of you, with attention deficit disorder spans sufficient to accommodate a 12-minute vid, to inform yourself in the full PBS NewsHour report of the compromise.

Shitepoke.com, February 9, 2012

Calhoun GA

Post Script: But make no mistake about it - the unrepentant pandering of the Republican party on this one is an unambiguous assault on women's healthcare. Whether it be the boys in the Party or the boys in the clergy - none of the claimants has a single uterus among them.

Mitt Romeny's Excellent Adventure in Fantasy Taxation

During an interview with Spanish language network UniVision, Mitt Romney was pressed on whether it was fair for him to pay 13 percent of his income in taxes — as he did in 2010, according to his recently released tax returns — when many middle class families pay twice that percentage. Romney proceeded to claim that his actual rate is closer to 45 or 50 percent. Here's how he spun it:

You can pause at 1:15 for the purposes of this blog

Follows is a verbatim transcript of the Romney and UniVision exchange. Shitepoke inserts his dialog as if he had been participating in the interview:

UniVision: You just released your tax returns. In 2010 you only paid 13 percent of taxes while most Americans paid much more than that. Is that fair?

Romney: Well, actually, I released two years of taxes and I think the average is almost 15 percent. And then also, on top of that, I gave another more 15 percent to charity. When you add it together with all of the taxes and the charity, particularly in the last year, I think it reaches almost 40 percent that I gave back to the community. 

Shitepoke: Charity? Whoa Governor. What the hell are you talking about? I'm sure you're familiar with Schedule B on your 1040 Return. On that form, your charitable deductions are deducted from your adjusted gross income before your tax rate is calculated. When you claim a charitable deduction, you disavow that amount of income as being subject to income tax - on the premises that it qualifies as exempt income according to the tax code. You cannot equate charitable contributions with income tax.

And what this "community" you're talking about? Let's put a lot of clarity in this: you're talking about the Mormon Church - in fact $4 million in the last four years alone - $4 million in income for which you have evaded taxes by virtue of the very "charitable" (shall we say) tax code which allows any organization with a 5013C charter to charge its operating costs directly to American taxpayers.

Sorry, but when you say "give this back to the community" you really mean funnel tax exempt income into the coffers of a bunch of thugs in Salt Lake City who - well - spent $30 million to defeat California Proposition 8 - denying marriage equality to gay Americans. Uhh, some community you have there.

Romney: One of the reasons why we have a lower tax rate on capital gains is because capital gains are also being taxed at the corporate level. So as businesses earn profits, that's taxed at 35 percent, then as they distribute those profits as dividends, that's taxed at 15 percent more. So, all total, the tax rate is really closer to 45 or 50 percent.

Shitepoke:  Uhh, Governor. You've got me all discombobulated here. Let's draw the distinction between equity and dividends when it comes to tax liability. Capital gains is the measurement of your gain (or loss) in shareholder equity. It has noting to do with corporate taxation. Shareholder equity is not subject to taxation - either on the corporate balance sheet or on your own tax return. Only the gain or loss in equity is subject to taxation when you sell or trade a corporate equity position (stock). That the current income tax on capital gains is 15% is purely a value judgment on behalf of the Ways and Means Committee.

Dividends are corporate profits distributed to shareholders. Dividends are taxed as ordinary income - to you and all taxpayers. True, corporate dividends are declared after corporate profits are taxed, but so what. When you mix capital gains and dividends you are mixing apples and oranges. But you knew that, didn't you

UniVision: But is it fair what you pay, 13 percent, while most pay much more than that?

Romney: Well, again, I go back to the point that the funds are being taxes twice at two different levels.

Shitepoke: Mitt, you are as full of shit as a Christmas Turkey. Your income is 99% capital gains - or as the IRS calls it unearned income. From that you subtracted - really conned - the taxpayers out of millions in direct subsidy to the Mormon Church. So your effective tax rate was actually LESS than the 13% you paid - not MORE. But your lucky in one respect, no main stream media reporter will dare challenge you on your phony math.

Shitepoke.com, Calhoun GA, January 26, 2012

South Carolina Redux - Thurmond-cum-Gingrich

DISCLAIMER: Shitepoke.com blog attempts to authenticate its content. Disclosure of substantive errors is solicited and will be acknowledged. Accordingly, readers are encouraged to explore and enjoy this content, in its own right, but to always obtain additional sources for historical or academic research.

Not to put too fine a point on yesterday's South Carolina's presidential primary, but reflect that this election represented the essence of rarefied reflexive Southern conservatism:

1. No Democrats were on the ballot; so, presumably the only voters were card-carrying Republicans.


2. The modern Republican party is a product of the South - in reflexive revolt of post World War II socially progressive initiatives.

3. While the South loves Jesus and its women with equal fervor, Republicans, like Baptists, seriously believe that fifty percent of the human race doesn't have the human qualities to weigh in on the really important stuff - whether it be preaching the gospel or electing a president.

For that, this week's electioneering and voting in South Carolina took on a surrealistic aura, tapping into a well spring of antediluvian angst. Not to get too pedantic, but it's therapeutic to rewind sixty-four years to the birth of South Carolina politics as we know it.


James Strom Thurmond (1902-2003) represented South Carolina in the U.S. Senate for virtually a half century (1954-2003). But his unblemished record as a old-school cracker bigot reached its apogee in 1948, when he threw in for president under the States' Rights Democratic (Dixiecrat) Party - the first of the so-called Solid South Democratic factions to peel-off from tissue rejection, owing to their party's postwar progressive initiatives - in this case Truman's executive order to desegregate of the military. Outrage - outrage I tell you! That done it.

In one of his milder stump diatribes Thurmond allowed: "I wanna' tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches."

Strom would bail out on the race-mixing Dems and switch to the more like-minded Republican Party in his 1956 senatorial race.

In 1948. Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats peeled-off 39 Deep South electoral votes (including one so-called faithless elector in Tennessee) from the reviled turncoat white American Harry Truman - creating one of the closest presidential elections in history.

An implacable racist, Strom Thurmond harangued the Senate with the longest filibuster in history, speaking for a total of 24-hours, 18-minutes, in a failed attempt to derail the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Cots were brought for colleagues to nap on while Thurmond weighed in on - among other things - his grandmother's biscuit recipe.

Thurmond's family life was somewhat of cartoon - as he had a thing for beauty queens. He met his first wife Jean when he was judging a Miss South Carolina pageant in which she was a contestant. While she didn't win, Thurmond hired her - 24-years' his junior - as his personal secretary and proposed to her in an office dictation. Tragically, she succumbed of a brain tumor 13-years' later, childless.

But Strom really sent South Carolina's eyebrows northward in 1968, when he married Nancy Janice Moore, Miss South Carolina of 1965. He was 66 and she was 22. Yep, that's a 44-year margin of error.

Strom's and Nancy's union would produce four lily-white strapping South Carolinians in rapid-fire succession. Above circa 1990 (L-R): James Strom, Jr. (1972-); wife Nancy Janice Moore Thurmond; James Strom, Sr.; Nancy (1971-1993); Juliana (1973-); and Paul (1976-). Tragically, daughter Nancy was killed at the age of 22 by a drunk driver in Columbia, SC. Nancy and Strom separated (when he was 89) about a year after this idyllic portrait. Although they never divorced, Nancy did not attempt to hide her adulterous relationship with Dr. Thomas Rowland, Jr., president of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSA), whom she would quietly marry in 2003 - a matter of weeks after Strom's long overdue demise.

Good ole' Strom suffered from immortality disorder. And apparently South Carolinians were complicit in the deception - not wanting to relinquish their fetish on the 19th century. Accordingly, he ran for Senate in 1996 at the age of 94. Despite unambiguous clinical evidence of advancing dementia, the immobile, doddering, and drooling novogenarian - with signature sprigged hair, dyed the color of Tang - won handily by 9 points. For that, the insentient Strom spent most of his eighth term trundled in-and-out of Walter Reed Army Hospital on the taxpayers' dime, a sort of middle-finger salute to America, courtesy of the dullards of South Carolina.

But Stom's operatives weren't done yet. Intent on defying all odds, they went on to broker his 2002 senatorial prospects, banking on the would-be 100-year-old's unblemished electoral record. When it became obvious that Strom could no longer be propped up alive, they ran the following deal by Jim Hodges, then-governor of South Carolina: Strom would resign his Senate seat, provided the governor would appoint his estranged spouse Nancy to his unexpired term, allowing her to run, in her own right in 2002, as an incumbent. The Democratic governor declined to oblige, thus steering the Thurmond dynasty safely to the curb.

But Strom would not go out without fanfare. In the run-up to his 100th birthday, Republican supplicants lined up en masse to genuflect and offer up incense to the burnt-out effigy of the wrong side of history. Front and center would be Republican Senate Minority Leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi.

On December 5, 2002 at Strom's 100th birthday fete, Lott famously proclaimed - full open-mic: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either." Thurmond nodded - like a bobble-headed nebbish - in nostalgic regret.

Presumably the manifold problems Lott was referring to were ... admit[ting] the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches. While desultory Republican colleagues would awkwardly leap onto the bandwagon in his defense, craven party leadership would throw Lott under the political buss - stripping him of his senate leadership status. 

Strom Thurmond died in his sleep on June 26, 2003, at the age of 100-years and 200-days. But, alas, he would be denied the last word. On July 1, 2003 - only 5-days after his death - Slate Magazine broke the story of then 78-year-old Essie Mae Washington-Williams, Thurmond's eldest child. It seems back in 1925 the randy 22-year-old Strom had bedded a 16-year-old black household servant by the name of Carrie Butler - and in fact, carried on a relationship with her for quite some time. Essie Mae was the mixed-race progeny of that match.

Essie Mae Washington-Williams (1925-), mixed-race eldest child of Sen. Strom Thurmond and 16-year-old black household servant Carrie Butler

As an infant, Essie Mae was sent to Pennsylvania to be raised by her aunt Mary (Carrie Butler's older sister) and her husband John Henry Washington. In 1941, when Essie Mae was 16, Carrie broke the news of her highfalutin white daddy and took her to South Carolina to call on him. For that, it seems Strom had been a walk-on player in Essie Mae's life ever since, supporting her on-and-off at intervals - including paying her tuition at South Carolina State University (SCSU), a historically all-black black institution, where she graduated with a degree in business.

Essie Mae Washington wound up in California, where she earned a masters degree in education at USC. She married an attorney, Julius T. Williams, with whom she had 4 children. She went on to have a 30-year teaching career in the Los Angeles public school system. In 2005 she was awarded an honorary PhD from her undergraduate alma mater SCSU. That same year, she published a memoir, Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond, which  explored her sense of dislocation based on her mixed heritage, as well as going to college in the Jim Crow South after having grown up in the North.

Slate Magazine's Diana McWhorter puts an exceptionally fine point on the stultifying enigma of Ole' Strom: .... "We need not dwell on the obvious mind-boggling hypocrisies here: that someone who ran for president on an anti-pool-mixin' platform was party to an integrated gene pool. Or that Thurmond's other signature political achievement—the 24-hour-without-bathroom-break filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957—was done in the name of sparing the South from 'mongrelization.' This form of duplicity has been a Southern tradition dating back to those miscegenating slave owners." 

.... "Racial conflict as a diversion from class conflict is nothing new, of course. But somehow Thurmond's subterranean Freudian life—surreptitious relationships with a black daughter and her mother—brings a fresh level of appall to the immorality of his demagoguing. That it was just 'bidness' may account for why Strom Thurmond never felt compelled to ask the forgiveness of a race he devoted so much public capital to making miserable—a race that included members of his own family."

Fast Forward sixty-four years: now come the 2012 Republican wannabes: Mitt Romney, the plastic Mormon Jesus-denying heathen from Massachusetts. Rick Santorum, the sweater-vest wearing Pennsylvania plutocrat who looks down his nose at a little recreational sodomy (hey this is South Carolina). Ron Paul, the perennial whack-job who wants to legalize dope-smokin' and outlaw the Federal Reserve. Or the authentic Newt Gingrich. Why, they didn't know what hit 'em.

Brother Newt - although he hails from Pennsylvania - has spent his political life acquiring perfect pitch when it comes to aggrieved Southern populist rhetoric. For that, he was the hands-down beneficiary of two South Carolina debates - delivering back-to-back grand slams while his opponents looked on in stunned awe.

First came Fox News' Juan Williams - who as a black man has hilariously made a career of pandering to his white betters, embracing conservatism like a Clarence Thomas acolyte. But Newt's "Food Stamp President" epithet was even a bit much for the step-and-fetch-it Williams. Cornering Newt for his unambiguous racist dog whistle rhetoric, Newt doubled down on his attack on minorities and their putative lack of work ethic. The Myrtle Beach crowd erupted in adulation. Juan retreated hang-dog at being upbraided by his fellow Fox News colleague.

Then came CNN's John King - giddy at the prospect of airing out Newt's x-wife's dirty laundry as the lead-off pitch in Charleston's Convention Center. ABC News had only days' before supposedly broken the news of second wife Marianne - the one scorned by third-wife interloper Calista, the one sharing the stage with Newt. (By the way, those even remotely following Newt viewed this as stale news on a slow day - as Marianne had already spilled these beans in an 2010 Esquire Interview - with the same lurid detail.)

Ahh - painted in the corner of bargaining for an "open marriage" with X No. 2 and today's vaunted No. 3 Calista. Newt hammered the offense, blaming the media for the pain he inflicted on three marriages. Once again the room erupted with delight.

The take-home message: "Why, don't every man have an x-old lady out there somewhere ready to make his life miserable? I ask you." Perfect pitch for the self-selected chauvinist audience. Blam. Four hundred feet over the center field fence.

Thus, given the home-court game and the rarefied demographics, Newtie swept the floor with 40% of the South Carolina Republican vote. South Carolina Republican's gambit: buying into the party propaganda that Obama is an ineffectual poseur, incapable of uttering a cogent thought without his TelePrompter, ole' Newt is just the ticket to blow a hole in his cover.


This is not to say that Newt will fare similarly on Super Tuesday - but that his racist, homophobic, xenophobic sentiments are enjoying unbridled fervor among his primary supporters. For that, he will hold many cards in a brokered convention - inspiring and giddy news for Obama and the Democrats.

Shitepoke.com, Calhoun GA, January 22, 2012

Conservative Christmas Repartee

Boxing Day, 2011
Key West


My next door neighbor invited me over for cocktails and hors d'oeuvres Christmas evening. I'm not really big on a house full of strangers, but I decided to be polite and put in an appearance. After makings the obligatory intros and indulging in some excruciating small talk, I seized upon a flute of champagne and took a seat in a corner.

So here comes a couple and plops down next to me. He: about 75-lbs overweight, already with a Christmas snootful; introduces himself as Dave, head of the Key West Homeland Security unit. She: with an opaque German accent; introduces herself as Olga, head of in-house security at the Casa Marina - a local world-class destination resort, now owned by Waldorf-Astoria, built by robber baron Henry Flagler in 1919 as the southern terminus to his spectacularly ill-fated 'overseas railroad.' 

Opened on Christmas Day 1919, Key West's renowned Casa Marina grand hotel and resort was the investment of robber baron Henry Flagler, envisioned as the southern terminus to his Overseas Railroad which connected Key West to the Florida mainland in 1912. Ballyhooed as the Eighth Wonder of the World, Flagler conceived Key West as the nearest shipping port to the Panama Canal - an outlandish scheme that would never materialize. Alas, the railroad met a watery grave in the category five Labor Day Hurricane of 1932 - never to be restored to duty. The surviving viaducts were later sold to the state and provided the roadbed for the Overseas Highway, inaugurated in 1938.

 The following repartee is obviously paraphrased:

First words out of Dave's mouth: "You know Obama is the first president NOT to visit the troops on Christmas. News said he called one service member from each of the branches from Hawaii. Couldn't be bothered to interfere with his $7 million vacation. Just disgraceful."

Olga: "Ahhh, agleed; youst deesglaceful."

Shitepoke: (Thinking to myself this could be interesting; I'll probably never see these people again) "Well, I see we obviously have a couple of Republicans, huh? " (I chortle lightly.)

Dave: "Nope. I'm an INDEPENDENT," he lied.

Shitepoke: "Come'on, Dave. You know in communism, you get one party. In American democracy, you get two. You have to pick one. An 'independent' is just a loaded term for a low-information voter. I don't perceive you to be that," I lied.

Dave: "We don't live in a democracy, you know," he sort of snapped and then caught himself.

Olga: (nods with adoration)

Shitepoke: "Ah, the old constitutional republic. Just a habit of mine, referring to a political system where you actually get to vote on your representatives. As to Obama and the troops. I seem to recall he spent the better part of a day up at Fort Bragg last week, declaring the end of the Iraq War - where we spent a trillion dollars and lost 4,500 American lives - where he elaborately decorated and profusely thanked several heroes. I'd think that'd be a tad more important. WE don't like to use our troops for political props," bearing down on WE, our respective political identities firmly established.

Dave: "Yeah it's a damn shame Obama just cut and run. That Iraqi government will disintegrate in no time. Mark my word, grave mistake."

Shitepoke: "Oh I see; the only thing wrong with the Iraq War is we didn't stay there long enough. How much more borrowed money would you like to see us spend on that project? And by the way, tell me about this $7 million dollars Obama is spending in Hawaii. That sounds like a fine vacation, doesn't it? Where did you get that price tag. Don't think I've heard that one."

Dave: "Heard it on the news today. Disgraceful, what with the deficit and all."

Shitepoke: "What 'news,' Dave?"

Dave: "Fox News." (of course!)

Shitepoke: "Well you might want to check a less overtly politically biased source,  just for kicks."

Dave: "I'll have to say, Fox is the best overall source for unbiased news we have. A far cry from the Communist News Network. And that liberal cesspool MSNBC."

Shitepoke: "Dave. Dave. Have you really convinced yourself that Rupert Murdock's News Corp, at the helm of Roger Ailes, is really a source of unfiltered, un-propagandized news. By the way, what did Ailes do before Fox News?

Dave: (long ignorant pause) "Can't recall offhand. Who is he, now?"

Shitepoke: "Roger Ailes, president of Fox New cable network - campaign consultant to Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43 - and former vice chairman of the Republican National Committee."

Dave: "Well, I'm sure the Communist News Network has more conflicting management than that," he nervously rejoined.

Shitepoke: "Well, Ken Jautz (CNN president) has hard career credentials - Cornell School of Journalism I believe -  with no overt political affiliations that I am aware of. Does it bother you that News Corp gave a million dollars to the Republican Governors Association and another million to the Republican National Committee? Does that sound like the source of an unbiased point of view?"

Dave: "I don't see how that affects the integrity of Fox."

Shitepoke: "Really? That's an interesting point of view, I'll have to say. Are you aware that according to at least two independent university surveys, Fox News viewers know less than those who don't watch any news at all?"

Dave: "I don't believe that," getting clearly testy now.

Shitepoke: "Give me your email and I'll forward the links."

Dave: "No thanks."

Olga: (as if on cue to change the subject and rescue Dave) "Vhat about dat see-tuation veed Obama's aunt - da vone veed no paasport?"

Shitepoke: (contemplating the suffocating irony of this stunt double for Brünnhilde in The Ring of the Nibelung - nattering about the status of someone else's - any one else's - U.S. residency.)

Dave: "Yeah. anyone else would have been deported. She's got a green card now and is up for citizenship in a couple of years. Nepotism of the worst kind. If she showed up on my watch list, I would have her deported in a minute, Obama be damned."

Shitepoke: "Oh you mean the aunt from Kenya - the half-sister of Obama's father? If I recall she came on a temporary visa around 2000 and applied for asylum shortly after. As I recall, her application is still under appeal - or at least it was. I would expect Obama would know her status, wouldn't you? Frankly, I haven't heard anything about her since the 2008 campaign - where it got practically no political traction. I'm glad she's a legal resident now. Ten or twelve years is a long time to work within the system. I'm sure you wish all undocumented immigrants were so respectful of the law."

Dave and Olga: (uncomfortably silent. Dave takes a king-sized gulp of his drink.)

Shitepoke: (changing the subject) "By the way, have you met Janet Napolitano?"

Dave: "No," he emphasizes, "I don't care for her at all."

Shitepoke: (sensing I was pushing the conversation to its testy limit) "Well that's not a very complimentary thing to say about your boss," I opined slightly sarcastically.

Dave: "She's NOT my boss."

Shitepoke: "Oh, I assumed you reported directly to her," as sarcastically as I could, realizing that I had hit paydirt in this exchange, "If I remember, she sailed through her confirmation hearings with practically no opposition. And look what you got in exchange: Governor Jan Brewer and the toughest immigration laws in the country. Sounds like a Republican twofer to me."

Dave: "What's your take on this 'Fast and Furious' scandal?"

Shitepoke: "I don't think I'm familiar with it," I lied, "Please excuse me while I mix a little. So good to meet you all. Merry Christmas."