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.

Burisma ‘Clearly’ Paid Hunter Biden to Sell Influence, Says CNN Contributor

Jolting Joe the swindler oh.

Joe Biden’s family ties to an influence peddling scheme at a Ukrainian gas company could hurt the former vice president’s 2020 campaign, political scientist Ian Bremmer told CNN on Tuesday.

“[Joe] Biden does have a problem here. I have to say $50,000 a month for Hunter Biden???clearly to be selling influence because otherwise, no one would ever pay him that kind of money???for a company that, frankly, was pretty corrupt and has been before and has been since under investigation,” Bremmer said.

Cash on the barrelhead and you got a deal, Mr. Ukrainian.

Glad-handing in the middle of Mass, first of a series

Interruptions . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

Reader: “I am most put off by glad-handing. The other day I shook hands with the same woman twice. The ushers even shake hands of those with aisle seats during the Agnus Dei.”

Sometimes feverishly. People wave all over the church, seeking waves back, like a Facebooker looking for likes.

Great for ball games and other sports, but possibly eliminating or weakening any spirit of devotion that one has even momentarily been blessed with.

Shake rattle and roll? Hardly.

Shake hands with all your neighbors, and kiss the colleens all, as in the Donegal song? No.

Shake with fear for the judgment to come, you unrepentant sinner? No.

SHAKE AND SAY, “THE PEACE OF CHRIST BE WITH YOU”? YES!

It happens at mass after the Our Father, during which you may have held hands in a show of solidarity against Satan or watched others do so.

It’s SHAKE…

View original post 69 more words

DONALD TRUMP’S APPROVAL RATING SURPASSES OBAMA’S, NOT JUST ON RASMUSSEN REPORTS

Newsweek has it:

President Donald Trump’s job approval rating this week averaged across major polls surpassed that of his predecessor President Barack Obama at the same time eight years ago, giving some actual good news to Trump who is known to cite only conservative-leaning polls to bolster his image.

Trump’s approval rating on Wednesday was 44.3 percent, according to a Real Clear Politics average of more than a half-dozen major polls. That is higher than Obama’s average approval rating of 43.9 percent on September 18, 2011, by the same measure.

Nice. On his way . . .

‘Extraordinary and appalling’ handling of sexual violence cases in Chicago Public Schools leads to federal oversight

CPS on hotseat.

In what federal officials called a historic enforcement action to protect students from sexual violence, Chicago Public Schools has entered into a legally binding agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and pledged extensive reforms in its handling of abuse and assault cases.

“This is one of the deepest dives that we have done” of a major urban public school district, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kenneth Marcus said of his office’s yearslong investigation.

“This is an extraordinary and appalling case,” Marcus added. “It is one of the worst that we have seen in the elementary, secondary school context.”

He said the civil rights office is now holding the district accountable.

More here . . .

Plus:

“We’re not talking about minor tweaks to policy. We’re talking about a substantial overhaul,” Marcus said. It was not immediately clear if the resolution would affect a pending federal lawsuit over more than $4 million in withheld grant funding for magnet programs at three elementary schools.

Epidemic issue apparently.

The Case Against Single Payer: How ‘Medicare for All’ Will Wreck America’s Health Care System―And Its Economy

Hot topic dissected:

Long thought of as an idealistic but unrealistic proposition promoted by far-left activists, single-payer health care has become a major discussion point across the political landscape.

Bernie Sanders made it a central focus of his insurgent 2016 run for the Democratic presidential nomination against Hillary Clinton. House Democrats’ messaging on health care in the 2018 midterm elections, and the burgeoning campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, have elevated single-payer even further, bringing the issue to the center of American politics.

Surprisingly, however, few books have examined the impact of a single-payer health care system in depth—and most of those that have done so come from a leftist perspective supporting this dramatic change.

This vacuum in the current literature cries out for a work making the case against single payer—one which educates the American people about the damaging effects of this proposed health care takeover.

Written for a broad audience ranging from interested citizens to leaders in the conservative movement, The Case Against Single Payer will explain the harmful implications of giving the federal government unfettered control of the health care system.

A book to buy, is my guess.

via Amazon.com: Chris Jacobs: Books

On Hong Kong the Pope Is Silent. Obedient to Beijing

Oh what a web we weave, when we shake hands with — the devil? (What devil? What you talkin’ ’bout?)

Silence on everything that could irritate the Beijing authorities is certainly one of the many prices that the Holy See has agreed to pay, to keep from breaking up the fragile accord on the appointment of bishops that it sealed on September 22 2018 with China.

It is a silence to which the first to submit is Pope Francis, usually extremely talkative about everyone and everything, but who on the popular protests that have been raging in Hong Kong for three months has not said word one.

And yet from the beginning the protests have seen in the front ranks Christians, and above all Catholics, who are only 8 percent of the city’s population but are very active and influential, starting with their highest authorities: . . .

Realpolitik.

Read more at Settimo Cielo – Blog – L’Espresso

criminal justice reform

I asked Bing, or punched the question per a Bing prompt, “Is the criminal justice system a crime in itself?” and got this from a site called socialworkhelper.com:

What has become clear by crime statistics is that money is the center of most crime even if you are reluctant to apply the biblical teachings of Timothy, where he states that the love of money is the root of all evil.

Well, I tell you, social work helper, even if  you are reluctant to do a little more research into who said what about money and evil, you might do it anyhow and find that Paul, not his friend Timothy, said it, in a letter to Timothy. Just sayin’.

And why the heck are some social workers reluctant to apply Paul’s teachings (presumably endorsed by Timothy) in the first place? Just askin’.

via Bing