. . . Why so? I cannot imbed a link in anything!!! WordPress wordpress wordpress, what the heck is going on?
Month: January 2015
Gilligan: Abortion facilities the only places Illinois lawmakers refuse to inspect – Illinois Review
Call off your tired old health inspections — of abortion facilities in our great state of Illinois. http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2015/01/gilligan-abortion-facilities-the-only-places-illinois-lawmakers-refuse-to-inspect.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FbYHz+%28Illinois+Review%29
Pat Quinn’s revenge
In one fell swoop, Gov. Bruce Rauner reversed seven 11th-hour executive orders signed by outgoing Gov. Pat Quinn, declaring they were not in the best interest of Illinois residents.
That includes an executive order that called for Rauner to release all of his tax information as well as one that increased the minimum wage for state contracts from $8.25 an hour to $10 an hour. Both of the issues were sticking points in a bruising campaign between the two men in 2014.
It’s (almost) enough to make you feel sorry for the party that made him its standard-bearer. Not quite.
Thank God for abortion?
Loyola U.-Chicago lays an egg:
One day before the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Loyola University Chicago will host a journalist who once thanked God for abortion on television.
Woe is us. Thing is, top- or middle-level Romantic Catholic leaders just want abortion to go away, not so much in real life as in public discourse. It’s an embarrassment, interferes with the business they want to conduct. They just aren’t interested.
Rauner focuses on hiring transparency in executive order
Big deal here, way to flush out the hacks, such as the Sec Trans whom Sen. Don Harmon paraded before an Oak Park audience in the fall of 2013 so as to give Oak Parkers the skinny on Dept. of Trans. plans for Eisenhower X-way and CTA”s Blue Line.
She was shown the door a few months later when discovered to be hiring relatives. Yay Harmon.
Rauner said his order is rooted in the Illinois Department of Transportation hiring scandal during the Quinn administration. An investigation found that IDOT had become a safe haven for many politically hired state employees seeking to quietly slip into jobs protected from politically motivated firings.
Nothing like transparency, which is often claimed, rarely demonstrated.
#PrayforNigeria – Massacre Reportedly Kills Thousands
Adherents of a religon of peace who paid no attention to that part.
Get ready for an all-out hashtag blitz by Mrs. Obama and other distant observers.
Pope Francis announces a truism
Addressing Vatican diplomats, he said: (http://www.cruxnow.com/church/2015/01/12/pope-francis-warns-anew-of-a-piecemeal-world-war/?s_campaign=crux:email:ja)
Peace, Francis said, is the indispensable condition for making progress on other fronts, such as economic development, care of immigrants, and the environment.
Second only to freedom. When was the last time a Pope pushed freedom as a sine qua non?
Well, he did talk about it, saying this:
“Before all else be free persons!” said the Pope. “Freedom means knowing how to reflect on what we do, knowing how to evaluate . which are the behaviors that make us grow. It means always choosing the good…. Being free to always choose the good is challenging, but it will make you persons with a backbone, who know how to face life, [and live as] courageous and patient persons.”
But I mean political freedom, Popes and Catholic writers and preachers have talked a lot about personal freedom, as from the chains of Satan and the like.
Thing is, he’s gotten very political. So political freedom? I’m listening.
Pope Francis’ to-do list: Ditch the NGO, marketing expert image
The media like, even love, him. Is that a good thing?
Among Pope Francis’ challenges for the new year is changing the media’s perception of him. Currently this perception is undoubtedly positive, as is proven by the many polls conducted by several media outlets that rank him among the most beloved and influential people in the world.
But it is also a perception that carries with it somewhat stereotyped images of Church and pope, as if the Church were an NGO or a corporation with the pope serving as a CEO or as a marketing expert hired to revitalize the Church’s disgraced image.
Yes, yes, the devil can quote Scripture to his purpose, but is there a problem making friends with the mammon of iniquity? We can’t love it and God, that much we know. And Popes can be tempted, like the rest of us.
Rauner’s appointments coming up, “major structural reforms”?
”We have a structural problem decades in the making. Illinois government must undergo major structural reforms and implement honest budget practices that together address the long-term problems of the state,” Nuding said.
His operating officers. Bound to make a big difference, if only (we hope) they are neither hacks nor major campaign donors, the bane of good government everywhere.
The Pope strikes again: Cardinals where you don’t expect to find them
Lest anybody forgot, on announcing his first scarlet batch a year ago this week, the Pope issued a public letter to the cardinals-designate warning them that they were to accept the red hat as “neither an honour nor a decoration,” but “simply a service that requires you to broaden your gaze and open your hearts.” The incoming class was likewise urged to greet their elevations in a manner “far from any expression of worldliness or from any form of celebration contrary to the evangelical spirit of austerity, sobriety and poverty.”“The cardinalate,” Francis said, “does not imply promotion.”
But yr Holiness, but-but-but . . . It’s never been that way!
(I love what he does in ecclesiastical matters, where he knows what he’s talking about.)
Blithe Spirit 