Our transparently left-wing pope.

Pope Francis has reportedly refused to meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during his visit to Rome over a dispute between the Vatican and China.

Mr Pompeo plans to visit the Vatican this week to protest the imminent renewal of a two-year-old deal between the Catholic church and China, which the secretary of state has claimed would endanger the church’s moral authority.

He is slated to meet with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the foreign minister for the Vatican. But Pope Francis, whom Mr Pompeo met with last October, would not be meeting with him.

Well, any good Peronista would do the same. Plus, he’s stubborn and has a churlish attitude when he considers himself provoked.

Ready to deal with Chi Coms, however. Still fuming over gringos north of the border.

Too bad. PRAY FOR HIM!!

Let us now read another chapter in the long, dreary tale of media dissolution in our time, by the shrewd, major-media veteran Taibbi.

The New York Times published a massive expose about Donald Trump’s taxes on Sunday, starting the world on yet another trip up the Trump delirium coaster. The stages of the morality play are burned in our brains. Pundits scream bombshell, rush up a ladder of indignation, jump squealing into an abyss of apocalyptic predictions, dust off and do it again.

How many of these stories have there been? A hundred? Five hundred? A thousand? I tried physically counting and gave up. Our heads are packed with years of half-told stories that were discarded the instant they stopped having commercial or political utility. Some involved Trump, some not, who can remember them all? From sonic weapons in Cuba to spies gone dark to a secret bank server to hacker huddles in Prague to probable cause for an “agent of a foreign power” to Mike Flynn’s mistress to the Manafort-Assange confab to the exfiltrated agent with a home on Realtor.com to Putin’s niece and treason in Helsinki and North Korea and the Oval Office, we remember beginnings and not ends.

Etc.

A grim tale.