HEY HEEVAHAVA! Tell us Scranton's opinion of Barack Obama again; We've heard it before but you just can't tell a good story too many times!


"Are they going to make it the Black House?" Ray McCormick asked, to embarrassed hushing from a half dozen others gathered around the rectory kitchen. Failed hushment furnished by alleged Democrats for McCain.

Your host is due to post the next chapter in the fabulous series dealing with those important newspaper and magazine reporters who scour the country for the salt-of-the-earth wisdom of nuts.

Actually, they don't scour the country. If they did, they'd come to California. But everyone knows McCain/Palin is trounced in Schwarzenegger-land. However, if the electoral college were abolished, and each state weren't a winner-take-all proposition, you'd bet their asses they'd be here in a flash to quiz us soCal heevahavas!

Instead, one gets the sham delivered -- again and again -- that some 'burg in the middle of nowhere in a state where the majority is mostly white and old and poorly educated, is the hinge of history. By circumstance for this election, it's turned out to be Scranton, Pennsyltucky!

Joe Biden's from Scranton! And Sarah Palin, and many others, told us the snooty Obama talked down to Scranton but not to those in San Francisco. Where, you know, all the homos live.

The story chosen for this week's edition of "Ask the Heevahava! (or "Hey Heevahava!) sets down in Scranton, particularly to take the pulse of Scranton Catholics!

"Once a reliable Democratic voting bloc (if you were a Democrat who was a Republican in sheep's clothing -- DD), [Pennsy] Catholics have emerged as a pivotal swing vote in recent presidential races," reported the Times. "Evenly divided in a New York Times-CBS News poll over the summer, Catholics make up about a quarter of the national electorate and about a third in the pivotal battleground states of Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania."

“Whoever wins the Catholic vote will generally win our state and, most of the time, the nation,” G. Terry Madonna, "a political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa" told the newspaper.

Hey, you reading this! Don't even bother to vote. It's all going to be decided by Catholics in Scranton and the Pennsy hinterland.

"And Scranton, a city dominated by the kind of white working-class Catholics who have often defected from the Democrats in presidential elections, is a focus of special attention this year," continued the Times.

"Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, who generally underperformed with Catholics in the Democratic primary, lost the surrounding Lackawanna County by a margin of three-to-one to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who has family in the area. Now, the Obama campaign often highlights Mr. Biden’s local roots — he was baptized and spent his early years in Scranton — in a bid for Pennsylvania voters."

DD was born and raised in Pennsyltucky. And is Catholic, too. And no one ever asks him for his opinion. I couldn't get picked for anything in Pennsyltucky. So I left.

But DD does know that a lot of the talk about cultural issues and Catholics in Pennsy is garbage hand-selected for consumption by idiots.

Growing up, none of the Catholics in Pine Grove, Schuylkill County, were particularly thoughtful in their belief or dogmatic in defense against the infidel and the encroachment of secular values.

Here's the thing: Attending the Catholic church in Tremont, a shire of Pine Grove area, wasn't an exercise in spiritual uplift. It was about hedging your bets, going to church as an exercise attendance, so when the guy at the door to eternity checked his ledger book to see if you'd been a good boy or girl, this is what'd he say: "Oh, you went to church every Sunday and on holy days! Right this way, sir."

"Getting into Augustine and Aquinas — it is just not helpful," babbled someone named Chris Korzen, "executive director of Catholics United, a progressive Catholic group" to the Times reporter.

"It would be wise for them to focus on how policies they are going to implement as leaders are going to move forward the church teachings they say they believe in."

That's real fine-sounding crap. But your standard Catholic in Lackawanna (or Schuylkill) couldn't tell Augustine from Aquinas from Saint Francis of Assisi.

DD remembers Catholic priors and their assistants trying to teach him many things, none of them useful. Since your host was married in the Catholic church, he had to pass a course on married-life basics given to couples wishing the beneficence of the church.

One part of the course was a real howler. Guess what it was!

Birth control.

Roman Catholic-approved birth control methods were taught by a fugleman for the local church. Obviously, the man was not a priest and he had seven children, conceived over the span of eight or nine years. He explained to us rubes that he had successfully implemented the rhythm method of contraception and then proceeded to explain how he'd done it.

If we had laughed out loud, my ex-wife and I probably would not haven been permitted to marry in the church. Perhaps that would have been better because we got divorced anyway. And since the Catholic church does not recognize such things, in the eyes of the God of Roman Catholicism -- spiritually although not legally, we are still married.

Oh, now my head's really twisted around! No wonder I'm such an annoying person.

"Dozens of interviews with Catholics in Scranton underscored the political tumult in the parish pews," explained the Times reporter.

Dozens of interviews, so you know the Times was working hard, getting real thoroughness going in its dig for heevahavas.

"I think that one of the teachings of God is to take care of the less fortunate,” one woman told the Times. The Times described her as an "insurance lawyer who identified herself as 'a folk Catholic, from the guitar-strumming social-justice side' of the church."

DD prefers heevahava. It's shorter and more descriptive.

Since this voter claimed to be aligned with those who take care of the less fortunate and who believe in social justice, naturally she was for McCain. Hey, everyone knows the GOP stands for social justice and helping the less fortunate! Shame on you if you don't think so! That'll be ten Hail Mary's and one Act of Contrition for your penance.

"One parishioner ruled out voting for Mr. Obama explicitly because he is black," reported the Times. "Are they going to make it the Black House?" Ray McCormick said to the newspaper.

The Times reported the man would not be hushed by an embarrassed "half dozen others gathered around the rectory kitchen."

See here. Along with more stink and bullshit about so-called religious values among rank-and-file Catholics in hinter-Pennsy.