I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of Poped out. It’s tempting to point out that there are no other world religious leaders who could attract so much attention by dying, but on the other hand, anyone who can attract two million for his funeral must pack some pretty powerful medicine. John Paul II had the job for over 24 years, so there are millions of people on the planet who’ve never seen this ceremony before, and the Catholic Church is nothing if not ceremonious. Even for non-Catholics, it’s an incredible spectacle–better, even than the Rose Parade.

Being Pope is an elected office. One day your just a guy with a pretty good job in your church, the next day, you’re held in reverence and you possess holiness and saintliness far beyond that of the guys who elected you, even though you were their equal yesterday. Since the Pope is elected, that makes him a politician. By that I mean duplicitous. John Paul traveled the world decrying poverty and hunger, yet no one can begin to calculate the wealth of the Vatican. If they’re ever a little short on cash, they could hock a couple of artworks and keep the lights on for the next couple of centuries.

John Paul denounced homosexuality, but we now know that his church harbored and protected molesters of young boys. He championed the rights of women, but they certainly weren’t qualified to be priests. John Paul, in his travels to visit the poor and hungry around the world and throughout his Papacy staunchly refused to bend or budge on the Church’s position about contraception, even though world opinion and even the opinion of the majority of Catholics was against him. When John Paul visited the poor and hungry, he advised them never to use condoms. If the whole world had taken this man seriously, the world population would be at least double what it is today, and so would starvation and AIDS.

John Paul’s health has been so bad for so long that he probably had no influence on the selection of his successor. The Cardinals, no doubt, have been jockeying for position for years. When that puff of white smoke shows above the Vatican, tfhe guy holding the scepter will be someone who knows how to twist arms and call in favors.

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Last week the Governator announced that he was dropping his proposal to combine juvenile detention facilities with adult prisons. In exchange for that concession, the Democrats in the Legislature agreed to give Arnold everything else he wants in his prison reform bill. I can’t believe they fell for that. It’s the classic negotiating ploy of asking for what you don’t want so you’ve got something to give up in negotiations. A couple of the things the Democrats gave the governor: a $90 million slash in prison education and drug treatment programs, and henceforth, the governor will appoint the prison wardens and Legislature will have no power to reject those appointments.

Is Arnold the first political figure to campaign for office and then just keep right on campaigning. Maybe that’s the whole job to him. I don’t know when the guy finds time to sit down in his office, fire up a stogie and sign a few bills. I not sure he even knows he has an office.

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Some commentators are saying the Bushwhacker’s proposal to hand your Social Security money over to the stock market will be his downfall. We should be so lucky. He’s in his second term; he can’t fall down no matter what he does, unless he steps into it up to his knees and gets impeached. Unlikely. But I was amused to read that our Congressman, John Do Little, showed up in Grass Valley last week and got an earful of boos when he tried to defend Bush’s Social Security plan and the war on terror. Unlike the guy who thinks he’s President, Do Little doesn’t have the resources to hand pick every audience, keep out the riff raff and never speak a spontaneous word. His choices are to hide in his office or go out and get booed. I’m hoping to hear more of this kind of thing. Maybe if there’s enough of it, the Democrats might hear it too

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Here’s something you rarely hear, a monster chain store being forced to pay up for deceiving its customers. Blockbuster Video has been running an ad campaign saying it no longer would charge late fees. What they didn’t tell you was that if you were more than seven days late, you bought it. The state attorney general in Texas went after ‘em. The refunds amounted to less than $1 million plus $630K to the state for legal fees. A bit of a sting, but not much for a company with $6 billion in annual gross sales.

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This isn’t topical; it happened a couple of weeks ago, but it makes a point I like to repeat from time to time. In Berkeley, a couple dozen people were ordered out of an old warehouse which they had turned into lofts. Some of them had been living there over ten years. Initially, they were given just two weeks to get out, but the city backed off and gave them two additional weeks. The reason for this raid, of course, is that the building isn’t up to code. I don’t know if that building is safe or not, but it’s another example of government looking the other way at non-permitted housing year after year, then suddenly swooping down and putting people out. It could happen here, probably will unless people organize to do something about it. Trouble with that is that if you live in a non-permitted house, you’d probably like to keep quiet about it.

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