Author: Jim Bowman

Jim Bowman covered religion 1968-78 for the Chicago Daily News, since then has written books, articles, etc., mostly on corporate history but also on religion (Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968), and more recently on politics (Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters -- Lulu.com, Kindle). Longtime Oak Park, Illinois, resident, he lives now on Chicago's North Side, where four of his and Winnie's six children live close by.

This is awful. Francis is all in for the poor, but he presides over a wasteful, dishonest bureaucracy.

And the financial world is watching.

ROME—An international network of financial watchdogs has suspended the Vatican’s access to its information, dealing a major blow to the Vatican’s financial credibility under Pope Francis.

Out you go, we can’t trust you:

The Egmont Group, a Toronto-based network of more than 160 national financial intelligence units around the world, has decided to suspend the Vatican watchdog from access to its secure web system, through which members share information about money laundering, financing of terrorism, tax fraud and other financial crimes, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Vatican  declined to comment. The holy munchkins are too busy preparing the next papal tirade against capitalism.

Ridiculous.

via Vatican Loses Access to International Financial Watchdog Information – WSJ

More alarming details:

News of the Egmont suspension came the day after the Vatican unexpectedly announced that Pope Francis was replacing his top financial regulator, AIF [Vatican’s Financial Information Authority] President René Brülhart, prompting a member of the regulator’s board to resign in protest.

Marc Odendall, a French German banker, resigned on Monday from the board of AIF, saying that the pope’s decision to dismiss Mr. Brülhart showed that the Vatican didn’t intend to address Egmont’s concerns.

“There is no point in staying on the board of an ineffective organization,” Mr. Odendall said.

Etc. etc. Hard reading.

Eat pork or die, the king said. Mother of seven had a response.

A mother’s advice . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

Tomorrow’s first reading, from Second Maccabees 7:

22 She said to them: I know not how you were formed in my womb: for I neither gave you breath, nor soul, nor life, neither did I frame the limbs of every one of you.

23 But the Creator of the world, that formed the nativity of man, and that found out the origin of all, he will restore to you again in his mercy, both breath and life, as now you despise yourselves for the sake of his laws.

The king asked her to talk to him about his refusal. She said she would.

27 So bending herself towards him, mocking the cruel tyrant, she said in her own language: My son, have pity upon me, that bore thee nine months in my womb, and gave thee suck three years, and nourished thee, and brought thee up unto this age.

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Obama Left An Ambassador to Die, But We’re Supposed to be Outraged Over Trump’s Yovanovitch Tweet?

Dems mewl and puke in their show trial’s arms, grabbing at any new charge to make at the president, the columnist writes:

But what really gets me is how it’s been almost seven years since Barack Obama left one of his ambassadors to die in a terrorist attack on a U.S. consulate, and the same people who defended the Obama administration endlessly over that, are feigning outrage over Trump’s tweet expressing his opinion.

Democrats have been crying “impeach!” over everything for years, and now every time Trump expresses an opinion, we’re hearing “intimidation.”

The same party that defended the Obama administration’s failure to protect our consulate in Libya from an attack that claimed four American lives, including that of a U.S. ambassador, are now trying to tell us that we should be outraged over a harmless tweet—a tweet that, regardless of what one thinks of the content, was written after Yovanovitch started testifying, and as far as Trump knew, she wouldn’t have even had an opportunity to see until well after her testimony concluded? A tweet that she’d have been oblivious to had Schiff not brought it up.

And the aggrieved diplomat in this case had the nerve to bring that failure up as if to join the ranks of the abused.

(“Mewl and puke”? Try Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage.”)

The Daily Northwestern Apologizes to Students for Reporting News That Triggered Them

Oh my.

We recognize that we contributed to the harm students experienced, and we wanted to apologize for and address the mistakes that we made that night — along with how we plan to move forward.

Here’s hoping no Medill student contributed to this.

Oops in spades. Sloppy of this one-time news person. The Daily in question is staffed by Medill students. My baaad.

The end is near, its prophet is Drudge

Tale told by a fool, signifying (something?) . . .

Sunday sermons, weekday observations

Do you think the end times are coming?

Find fuel for that expectation in the Drudge Report, where headlines tell the tale:

Exorcisms soar…

‘The true religion of America’: Why one TV mogul going all in on sports…
Horse racing: ‘Conveyor belt for slaughter’…

Violent and drunk monkeys attack tourists in paradise beach…

Smugglers sawing through new sections of wall!

Ebola screening at airport…

Debt surpasses $23 trillion!

Days of terrifying darkness, cold and hunger amid PG&E’s sweeping power blackouts…

Mouth cancer record high. Oral sex to blame?

Inside CA’s black-market nightmare spawned by law gutting shoplifting penalties…

Downtown Hong Kong becomes battleground as night falls…

Planeloads of Cash From Russia Shipped to Venezuela…

Chile’s fiery anger fueled by fears of poverty in old age…

Brazil in ‘civil war,’ says head of Congress’ pro-gun faction…
President’s son suggests using dictatorship-era tactics on leftist foes…

Hillary laughs when asked how…

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The other Oak Park paper, The Oak Leaves, ran an eloquent letter from a well known villager on l’affaire Buchanan . . .

Shut up, she said . . .

Berkeley on the Prairie

. . . which some or many might have missed. 

Matt Baron found the trustee’s “sustained table-pounding, finger-pointing diatribe that occupied the better part of four minutes” “deeply dismaying,” he wrote.

“The irony and hypocrisy [were] thick.” The board was working on a statement affirming “its commitment to, um, a variety of viewpoints, among other lofty aspirations.”

Lofty indeed.

He offered a “broader context.” In his more than “six years of serving on local government boards,” he had “never witnessed anything remotely resembling such a scene.”

Moreover, and more telling, as a newspaper reporter he had covered

hundreds of local government meetings—including some that were wildly dysfunctional—the only close analogy would be the three-ring circus that was the Town of Cicero’s public proceedings. And even by that measure, Trustee Buchanan established a new low for conduct.

I concur, after 40 years of watching boards and meetings, often taking notes, especially…

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