Now I am coming out

Since Bruce Jenner declared he was born a girl and Rachel Dolezal, President of the Spokane NAACP chapter, stated she was born black even though her parents are white, it is now acceptable to reveal you were actually born something people think you weren’t.   So I can finally come out and tell you that I was born a genius.

I realize, of course, some people might use other terms to describe me such as “wise guy” or “smart ass,” but I prefer “genius.”   For example I recognized immediately that the eight Benghazi hearings mounted by the Republicans were a trumped up (excuse the pun) excuse to make Hillary Clinton look bad for blatantly political reasons.

If you are a genius you understand that the Republicans have no new ideas about anything so the best they can do is generate endless, meaningless politically motivated attacks, shut down the government, refuse to raise the debt ceiling or vote over 50 times to repeal a law they don’t like without proposing a valid alternative just because they hate Obama.  It takes a genius to recognize that kind of stupidity.

Getting back to the Benghazi hearings, Chairman Gowdy insists that his committee must get to the “bottom of this” so that measures can be taken to ensure that it never happens again.  Now any genius would assume that the C.I.A., the military, the state department and all government agencies involved in the event would have immediately investigated and analyzed what happened and looked for ways to ensure it never happens again and have already taken necessary actions.  They would not wait around two years for Gowdy’s commission to tell them what to do.  But Gowdy never served in the military so he has no idea what happens during unpredictable, fast moving, rapidly changing situations happening half-way around the world nor how to deal with them.

Another demonstration of my genius is that after the horrible, tragic mass killings in the NC church, Jeb Bush declared he was not sure it was a “hate crime.”   As a genius, I knew immediately that it was.  Of course, nobody ever considered either of the Bush brothers as a genius anyway.

Republicans have also been pushing for more restrictive voter registration laws which they claim are specifically intended to reduce voter fraud.    Since there is no evidence that voter fraud is a problem and the Republican laws are specifically intended to restrict voters who typically vote Democratic, it obviously takes a genius to see that this is just another Republican political con job.  Actually, if we were a real democracy, we would encourage voter turnout--which is not that great in America--but that’s too subtle for Republicans to understand.

Now that I have finally come out and revealed that I am a genius, I will be offering, as a public service, my assessments on all the dumb stuff we can expect from the Republicans for the next year and a half until the Presidential elections.

The Pope and Kim Davis

Now that the pageantry, adulation and hoopla over the Pope’s visit have dropped off the news cycle radar, we learn the inconvenient truth that Francis and his church still endorse bigotry against gays and the idea that his god’s law supersedes civil law.

How else can you interpret his secret meeting (revealed after his departure) with an obscure Kentucky county clerk, an elected official who gained national attention by breaking the law because her god (and the Pope’s) hates homosexuals?

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, an advocacy group for gay Catholics was quoted in the New York Times as saying: “The news that Pope Francis met privately in Washington, D.C., with Kim Davis throws a wet blanket on the good will that the pontiff had garnered during his U.S. visit last week.” He’s absolutely right although I might have used a less gentle term than “wet blanket.”

I was almost beginning to buy into that “good will” idea but then, as Yogi said, it was “déjà vu all over again.”  Oh, by the way, wasn’t Francis quoted as saying about gays, “Who am I to judge?”  Evidently, the Pope considers an Evangelical county clerk eminently more capable than he is of judging gays.

 According to news reports, Francis told Davis to “stay strong,” and, “Thank you for your courage.”  That sounds to me like a pretty emphatic endorsement of her denying gay marriage licenses.

Some pundits have opined that after tossing some barbs at conservatives with his views on climate change, capitalism, poverty and immigration in his televised speeches and declarations, he decided to sneak through the backdoor of a secret meeting with Ms. Davis to toss the Evangelicals and the social conservative right a little bone to pick on.

Whatever.   

You’ve probably heard the term “Papal Bull”--an official document or proclamation issued by the Pope.  I have a new definition in mind.