[What I wrote —>] Quickie here, caption correction for sake of journalistic objectivity.
President Donald Trump tweeted that the city won’t allow “tough police work” to stop Chicago violence, which he falsely said is at a “record pace.” (Evan Vucci / AP)
Correction: Make “falsely” “inaccurate.”
Fair?
Lady with long and rich history as lawyer for abused and international expert lays Francis out flat. Has the goods on him as devious, untrustworthy. Read it all here, via The Remnant Newspaper
. . . in a study by
Mass school shootings are incredibly rare events. In research publishing later this year, Fox and doctoral student Emma Fridel found that on average, mass murders occur between 20 and 30 times per year, and about one of those incidents on average takes place at a school. . . . .
Their research also finds that shooting incidents involving students have been declining since the 1990s. . . . .
Read more about this at: News @ Northeastern
When I was a kid in the early ’40s, we had Horrors of War gum-wrapper cards. We boys went for the gore, as in the Japanese “rape of Nanking” and German bombing of cities. Arms and legs flying, you know.
Today’s kids could get their kicks out of cards depicting Chinese treatment of upwards of tens of thousands of internees, Muslims, who are put through Edgar Allen Poe-like interrogations and terrorizing.
Makes a body ask (again), what hath Marx and Engels wrought?
Read about it at this riveting, horrifying account by Associated Press.
ChiTrib very good here, dealing with Francis gently enough but making strong points clearly.
Pope Francis’ attacks on capitalism can be fiery. He has railed against “compulsive consumerism” and called the unfettered pursuit of money “the dung of the devil.” We’ve heard his oratory previously, and we respectfully disagreed with the sweeping nature of the criticism. Why? Because the pope brushes aside how capitalism lifts so many of the world’s people out of poverty. Now add to the litany a harsh new Vatican appraisal of western economics personally approved by Pope Francis.
Pay special attention to the reference to how capitalism, a.k.a. free market, raises people out of poverty.
A lengthy document released Thursday by the Roman Catholic Church goes into surprising detail in its takedown of business, competition, deregulation and the shareholder system. Concepts named and vilified in the paper include derivatives (a class of financial instrument that includes futures), credit default swaps and offshore banking. Debt securitization, a complex pool of assets that can be risky for investors, is a “ticking time bomb ready sooner or later to explode,” the paper says.
Gives us an idea of how deeply entrenched the Vatican powers-that-be, headed of course by Francis, are immersed in leftist ideology.
more more at Chicago Tribune
It’s a German thing, says Victor Davis Hanson.
Every 20 to 50 years in Germany, things start unraveling. Germans feel aggrieved. Ideas and movements gyrate wildly between far left and far right extremes. And the Germans finally find consensus in a sense of victimhood paradoxically expressed as national chauvinism. Germany’s neighbors in 1870, 1914, 1939—and increasingly in the present—usually bear the brunt of this national meltdown.
Germany is supposed to be the economic powerhouse of Europe, its financial leader, and its trusted and responsible political center. Often it plays those roles superbly. But recently, it’s been cracking up—in a way that is hauntingly familiar to its European neighbors. On mass immigration, it is beginning to terrify the nearby nations of Eastern Europe. On Brexit, it bullies the British. On finance, it alienates the southern Europeans. On Russia, it irks the Baltic States and makes the Scandinavians uneasy by doing business with the Russian energy interests. And on all matters American, it increasingly seems incensed.
more more more at Hoover Institution
Being a thinker concerned with questions relating to vital life during the positivistic twentieth century had major drawbacks.
Because Hoffer embraced a philosophy of commonsense values that addressed everyday life, the radicalized academic establishment has dismissed him.
Hoffer’s major crime, as it is easy to see today, is that he tried to wrest control of moral values away from nihilistic intellectuals.
By safeguarding basic truths and values—ideas that enable man to flourish in daily life—from becoming the domain of fashionable theories, Hoffer was made persona non grata by radical ideologues and opportunistic intellectuals.
Yet while being shunned by radicalized academics, Hoffer enjoyed tremendous success among his readers in the general public.
The book in question: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classics)
Personal recollection: In the mid-60s at St. Ignatius High, Chicago, I assigned the book to my seniors, most of whom had resisted my pushing racial-justice books.
This one was different. At least one spoke of it with appreciation.
In retrospect, I’d have been better off (they too) if I’d gone with this kind of book. Those who worked at understanding it would have had got something that stayed with them, through thick and thin, you might say.
via an excellent site, by the way: The University Bookman
It’s not about gambling but all about what federal government can do.
“Congress can regulate sports gambling directly, but if it elects not to do so, each State is free to act on its own,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court. “Our job is to interpret the law Congress has enacted and decide whether it is consistent with the Constitution. PASPA is not.”
7-2 vote, by the way. Not even close.
Remember too that the Constitution itself is much about what government cannot do.
via The New Republic
Blithe Spirit 