Tag: Blithe Spirit

Pope Francis’ to-do list: Ditch the NGO, marketing expert image

​The media like, even love, him. Is that a good thing?

​Among Pope Francis’ challenges for the new year is changing the media’s perception of him. Currently this perception is undoubtedly positive, as is proven by the many polls conducted by several media outlets that rank him among the most beloved and influential people in the world.

But it is also a perception that carries with it somewhat stereotyped images of Church and pope, as if the Church were an NGO or a corporation with the pope serving as a CEO or as a marketing expert hired to revitalize the Church’s disgraced image.​

Yes, yes, the devil can quote Scripture to his purpose, but is there a problem making friends with the mammon of iniquity? We can’t love it and God, that much we know. And Popes can be tempted, like the rest of us.

Rauner’s appointments coming up, “major structural reforms”?

​This weekend?

​”We have a structural problem decades in the making. Illinois government must undergo major structural reforms and implement honest budget practices that together address the long-term problems of the state,” Nuding said.​

​His operating officers. Bound to make a big difference, if only (we hope) they are neither hacks nor major campaign donors, the bane of good government everywhere.​

​

The Pope strikes again: Cardinals where you don’t expect to find them

Including mere bishops plucked out of Nowheresville. And with a rather stern, definitely no-nonsense message.

cards10rm.jpg
Lest anybody forgot, on announcing his first scarlet batch a year ago this week, the Pope issued a public letter to the cardinals-designate warning them that they were to accept the red hat as “neither an honour nor a decoration,” but “simply a service that requires you to broaden your gaze and open your hearts.” The incoming class was likewise urged to greet their elevations in a manner “far from any expression of worldliness or from any form of celebration contrary to the evangelical spirit of austerity, sobriety and poverty.”

“The cardinalate,” Francis said, “does not imply promotion.”

But yr Holiness, but-but-but . . . It’s never been that way!

(I love what he does in ecclesiastical matters, where he knows what he’s talking about.)

Republicans in state governments plan juggernaut of conservative legislation – The Washington Post

​Look for big changes.​

​The unprecedented breadth of the Republican majority — the party now controls 31 governorships and 68 of 98 partisan legislative chambers — all but guarantees a new tide of conservative laws. Republicans plan to launch a fresh assault on the Common Core education standards, press abortion regulations, cut personal and corporate income taxes and take up dozens of measures challenging the power of labor unions and the Environmental Protection Agency.​

​Challenge to the Beltway element in American life.​

Look too for increased over-all prosperity in these states and their population growth at expense of other states.

Happy New Year

“Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
— Benjamin Franklin
(1706-1790) US Founding Father

“Alcohol didn’t cause the high crime rates of the ‘20s and ‘30s, Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today’s alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does…. Trying to wage war on 23 million Americans who are obviously very committed to certain recreational activities is not going to be any more successful than Prohibition was.”
— Judge James Paine
U.S. District Court
Source: address to the Florida Bar Association in Miami, November, 1991

“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.”
— Mark Twain
[Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835-1910)

Italian writer stirs a hornet’s nest with doubts about Pope Francis | Crux

​Commenter on John Allen’s as usual excellent discussion/reportage about the Pope as sending mixed signals in multiple statements and comments has a good, if of limited value, point:​

sjme2002

•

a day ago

I guess one question surfaces…are these contradictions deliberate or a mere result of Francis’s mercurial way of communicating, perhaps owing to his personality or cultural upbringing.

If deliberate…he will fail hard. Crafty popes God doesn’t need.

If owing to mere quirkiness, he may fail; or he may have limited success, but more likely his pontificate will be somewhat a disappointing custodial one.​

​If this is overly pessimistic or not, the cultural upbringing factor leaps out. It’s in his genes to talk that way, which is in part charming, in part annoying when you consider his position on the ship of Peter.

Something else: He seems sometimes to be running for president of the united states of the world rather than already elected to a quite different job.​

Jeb Bush Faces a Catholic Question in 2016

​The Pope Francis problem:

​A new poll shows the former governor of Florida — brother of President Bush 43 and son of President Bush 41 — leading the field of potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates. The poll comes just as Pope Francis is moving assertively, and some might say clumsily, on the public policy front, inspiring the deal between Havana and Washington to renew full diplomatic relations and preparing a papal encyclical on climate change.

​Story is about the Pope’s taking positions right and left (or just left, suit yourself) and putting it to Catholic candidates, such as Jeb Bush.

And "clumsily" as to the Pope’s jumping into things seems about right. He’s the quickest draw in the west, this Francis, going too often where angels fear to tread.

Wary NYPD cops letting minor crimes slide | New York Post

​This is sickening. Dumb mayor (and president plus AG) play to leftist and ethnocentric galleries​ with bad results for blacks etc.

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton predicted a long, cold war between Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD’s rank and file Sunday, while admitting that morale among cops was so low, the problem could no longer be denied.

Bratton said cops across the country also “feel under attack,” including from “the federal government at the highest levels.”

​Can you blame the cops?​

Pope’s god of money . . .

"​Pope Francis’s edict on climate change will anger deniers and US churches," says left-wing Guardian of England, quoting him:

"In recent months, the pope has argued for a radical new financial and economic system to avoid human inequality and ecological devastation. In October he told a meeting of Latin American and Asian landless peasants and other social movements: “An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it." ​

​There’s more in this vein.​

​What does he have in mind? something of government control? He’s not big on political freedom, I’d say.
But it’s never been a priority for the Vatican, which has proven it can live with all sorts of autocracies.​