We Illinoisans should be so fortunate.

The bishop calls the Jesuits on it, says they could lose the school’s Catholic designation, arguing his position neatly and coherently.

The Nativity School of Worcester has caught the attention of Bishop Robert McManus. The school is privately run and not part of the diocesan system. It’s students, predominantly African American and Latino, attend tuition-free.

Bishop McManus said the flags could confuse people about the Church’s teaching on civil authority and same-sex civil marriage.“Symbols can mean different things to different people,” Bishop McManus said. “As Bishop of this diocese, I must teach that it is imperative that a Catholic School use imagery and symbols which are reflective of that school’s values and principles so as to be clear with young people who are being spiritually and morally formed for the future.”

That’s getting at the heart of the matter.

“Our role in a school is not to convert those who are not Catholic, nor is it our role to deny our Catholic identity,” he added.

“While the Catholic Church joins with our nation in teaching that all lives are equal before God and all lives demand our respect regardless of race, gender or ethnicity. [But] the flag with the emblem Black Lives Matter has at times been co-opted by some factions which also instill broad-brush distrust of police and those entrusted with enforcing our laws.”

“We do not teach that in our schools,” he said.

No, happily.

“And while we teach that everyone is created in the image and likeness of God, gay pride flags are often used to stand in contrast to consistent Catholic teaching that sacramental marriage is between a man and a woman,” the bishop continued.

These Jesuits not so sure about that? Apparently.

“Is the school committing itself to ideologies which are contrary to Catholic teaching? If so, is it still a Catholic school?” he asked.

The school’s president, Tom McKenney, said the flags “remind our young men, their families and [school] staff that all [the students,
apparently?] are welcome here and that they are valued and safe in this place.”

What has the school done to make them think otherwise?

“It [?] says to them that they, in fact, do matter and deserve to be respected as our Christian values teach us.”

They’ve been accepted in the school, free of charge, and he’s concerned about them being held in disrespect? That’s hard to buy.

“That is the purpose of flying these flags,” he added.

To buck them up?

The excellent 

has this on the subject. (Look up and sign on. )

Democrats Called Out for Creating the Energy Crisis

From the story: As Democrats — who have been waging a war on the oil and gas industry — continue to blame Putin, Americans and some in the media aren’t buying it. In fact, the anti-fracking records of congressional climate activists are being scrutinized. Ahead of the midterm elections, Democrats have backed themselves into a corner (Townhall). Matt Whitlock: Oh man — these Democrats are walking into a buzzsaw of their own making. Just a year ago they were screaming at energy execs to reduce oil production – today they’re going to theatrically accuse them of price gouging (Twitter). Spencer Brown: Oil and gas CEOs aren’t the ones who killed pipeline projects, revoked drilling leases, or promised to “get rid of fossil fuels” (Twitter). Fox News reports: Republicans have been beating the drum that Biden’s policies — including canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and freezing new oil and gas leases on federal lands – started driving up the gas prices prior to the war on Ukraine (Fox News).

Never before had goverments resorted to this method.

From the lepers in the Old Testament to the Plague of Justinian in Ancient Rome to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, Covid represents the first time ever in the history of managing pandemics that we quarantined healthy populations.

While the ancients did not understand the mechanisms of infectious disease—they knew nothing of viruses and bacteria—they nevertheless figured out many ways to mitigate the spread of contagion during epidemics.

These time-tested measures ranged from quarantining the sick to deploying those with natural immunity, who had recovered from illness, to care for them.

Lockdowns?

. . . were never part of conventional public health measures. In 1968 1-4 million people died in the H2N3 influenza pandemic; businesses and schools never closed, and large events were not cancelled. One thing we never did . . . was lock down entire populations. . . . In 2020 we had no empirical evidence that [a
lockdown] would work, only flawed mathematical models whose [predictions] were . . . wildly off by several orders of magnitude.

There followed “devastating economic consequences” and “major societal shifts.”

Our ruling class saw in Covid an opportunity to radically revolutionize society: recall how the phrase “the new normal” emerged almost immediately in the first weeks of the pandemic. In the first month Anthony Fauci made the absurd suggestion that perhaps never again would we go back to shaking hands. Never again?

The idea has a history:

Changes ushered in during lockdowns were signs of a broader social and political experiment “in which a new paradigm of governance over people and things is at play,” as described by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben.

Its “basic features were already sketched” in 2013 . . .

. . . in a book by Patrick Zilberman, professor of the history of health in Paris, Microbial Storms . . . [the book] was remarkably predictive of what emerged during the first year of the pandemic. He showed that biomedical security,. . . previously a marginal part of political life and international relations, had assumed a central place in political strategies and calculations in recent years.

Already in 2005, for example, the WHO grossly over-predicted that the bird flu . . . would kill 2 to 50 million people. To prevent this impending disaster, WHO made recommendations that no nation [was] prepared to accept at the time—including population-wide lockdowns. . . . Zylberman predicted that “sanitary terror” would be used as an instrument of governance.

more more more to come on this grim development . . .

They got nothin’ to tell her. It’s in her written responses to questions from senate committee members.

Her statement that she has no position on whether individuals possess natural rights is on 79th page (in answer to question 16 from Senator Cruz).

Whoosh, there goes the rights business.

I am no baker, though I am quite the man at the microwave and counter-top oven, but I am bowled over by the picture of these muffins and impressed by the narrative. You too, maybe.

. . . gimme a . . . t-i-o-n. Wha’ do you got? You got INFLATION.

It looks like the analytical geniuses over at the San Francisco Fed have finally figured out something that Larry Summers anticipated nearly a year ago: When you pump trillions of dollars of stimulus spending into the economy, it causes inflation to overheat to the highest level in a generation.

Of course, Summers was aggressively poo-poo’d by policy nabobs at Treasury . . . when he first projected that inflation would likely exceed 5% by the end of 2021 thanks to the federal government’s decision to hand out trillions of dollars in stimmies, benefits and PPP loans (combined with the Fed’s ’emergency’ policy posture that involved backstopping corporate debt and slamming interest rates back down to the zero-bound).

Biden did it, or stood by while his people did.

While he has since been vindicated, at the time, Summers was nearly excommunicated by his fellow Democrats for having the audacity to suggest that the federal government shouldn’t have ridden to the rescue of ordinary people during a once-in-a-century pandemic (or, at the very least, it maybe should have considered a more measured approach).

Wha’? And lose all that good will from stimmie recipients?

Now, months after Summers inflationary fears were vindicated, the Fed has finally summoned the courage to acknowledge that maybe the government’s balls-to-the-wall COVID stimulus was responsible for stoking the voracious inflationary spiral that – contrary to Jerome Powell’s assurances – has been anything but “transitory”.

Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?