Il Papa è atterrato!

My favorite moment was orange John Boehner bawling like a baby.

And, no, I didn't forget the blue font; as the occsasionally overly emotional son of Irish Catholics, I can completely empathize with Boehner's welling up when the Pope mentioned his name...I can't imagine he wasn't thinking of his parents at that moment.

 

Sorry, but the only tears from him that are acceptable are one ones of shame if he realized that his politics are contrary to his Pope's theology

 

Found it amusing that both parties claimed the Pope was on "their side." Except for the parts of speech when he clearly wasn't.

 

Is this comment by a guy named John T Reed (the guy I'm pissed off at because he favors taxing everyone, regardless of income, the same dollar amount) as stupid as it sounds?

"Catholicism’s canonization of the poor—all the poor—no matter how they became poor or why the remain poor—is a childlike departure from reality. Their hatred of capitalism while claiming to be for the poor, who have benefited infinitely more from capitalism than they have from Catholicism, is another exaltation of ideology over reality."

Why does it matter how people became poor? I think the guy has a childlike idea that if someone is poor, it's their fault.

 

It is at least sometimes.

 

1). Like when?
and 2). Why should it matter?

 

Seriously? You can't think of a situation where someone's decisions in life resulted in them being poor?

 

Maybe, but to say that they're all slackers is ridiculous. Same is it is to say that the rich are a minority that should not be discriminated against. Quite frankly, they should pay more taxes because they can afford it.
And most of them got rich because they were born rich.

 

So, you're countering their sweeping generalization with one of your own.

 

Being poor is a punishment in itself. The question is whether a person's bad economic decisions deserve additional punishment in addition to that.

There's a strong component of end-zone dancing to the attitude of the economic triumphalists: the poor not only deserve to be poor because of their bad decisions, but they deserve to be pissed on too.

I'm not poor because I'm smart! You're poor because you're stupid! Piss on you!

(The corollary of course is also that wealth level is always a direct result of a person's own economic decisions.)

 

I just don't buy the idea that if you penalize bad luck, you'll have fewer unlucky people.

 

Some people are certainly poor because they lack the mental capability to work and support themselves. Some are poor because of bad decisions or bad luck. Some are poor because they're just evil or lazy and refuse to work to support themselves.

The first two groups deserve all the help we can give them.