Says a new book not in the hagiographic mode of some of Francis’ biographers — not specifically Peronist but in the mode of a hardball politico.

A common accusation against Father Bergoglio [now Pope Francis] was to be that he was a divisive figure as Provincial.

Given the state of the Province as he found it, with a party of highly political figures who had been dragging it to disaster, one might think that this was inevitable, or even a good thing; but the reports are that his methods were rather in the direction of exacting loyalty to himself and marginalising those who failed to toe the line.

My way or the highway is too common the way of governance in Latin America, especially in Francis’ native Argentina, where near-cultic loyalty to individuals often holds sway.

From Colonna, Marcantonio. The Dictator Pope (Kindle Locations 406-409). Kindle Edition.

It’s typical. He’s a schmoozer from a way back and a salesman. They had a good conversation, says the new man.

via Alabama Democrat Doug Jones: Trump ‘gracious’ in congratulatory call | Chicago Sun-Times

Our state is a very big LOSER!

The Prairie State lost a record $4.75 billion in adjusted gross income to other states in the 2015 tax year, according to recently IRS data released. That’s up from $3.4 billion in the prior year. Many of the migrants were retirees who often flock to balmier climes. But millennials accounted for more than a third of the net outflow in tax returns.

While Florida with zero income tax was the top destination for Illinois expatriates, the Illinois Policy Institute notes that Illinois lost income and people on net to all of its neighbors—Wisconsin (6,000 people based on claimed exemptions), Indiana (8,200), Iowa (1,900), Missouri (2,000) and Kentucky (1,100). What’s the matter with Illinois?

Escaping to Wisconsin has new meaning.

via Illinois Drives People Away – WSJ

Theirs is a deeply religious experience.

Writing last May in FEE (“Trump Defiles the Sanctity of Government, and It Drives the Center-Left Mad“) Jeffrey A. Tucker presented a very interesting and compelling explanation for why Trump has enraged the center-left more than probably any politician or president in history — he has defiled the essential holiness of Big Government, which is the sacred religion of the progressive left. Here’s a condensed version of Jeffrey’s article:

It’s how they fill the emptiness of or  empty cracks in their lives. If the small-gummint party thinks business — job creation, getting on with one’s life — is the nation’s business, the left thinks it’s politics.

For them it’s the air in the football, the water in the rivers, the food in the belly. They hate Trump, who

. . .  is not actually cutting back on the size of the state; he is doing something even more terrifying from the center-left point of view: he is ruining the mystery of the state, and thereby discrediting their holy institutions.

He must be stopped. Hence the Madame Defarge-like refrain, Resist!

They are losing their minds.

[He] is everything that the center-left fears most, a person who works, despite himself, to discredit the thing they love the most. He has demoralized them beyond consoling. Now we are seeing talk of impeachment. This seems to be some people’s last hope for saving the old faith.

via Jeffrey Tucker on Trump enraging the center-left by defiling the sanctity of Big Government, the sacred religion of the progressive left – AEI

True enough, but:

The good news, the Wall Street Journal points out in its editorial this morning, is that Judge Moore won’t be available for Democrats to make an issue of during the battle for control of the Senate.

The GOP has a better chance to expand its majority than it would have had Judge Moore won.

Better still if it gets its jobs-and-growth tax bill passed before [incumbent Republican] Senator [Luther] Strange retires to Alabama.

This glass may be half full.

via After Roy Moore – The New York Sun