... another one bites the dust

I just came in to get a cookie and coffee and read some Jane Austen, when I saw on the tablet alert that the NYT says new Chief of Staff John Kelly insisted that Anthony Scaramucci be relieved from duties as communication director.

Apparently, Kelly told everybody he was in charge, and objected to Scaramucci's bragging that he reported directly to the president.

Is some sanity and and discipline in the works? Will Trump's Twitter account die? Is Kelly channeling Al "I'm in charge" Haig?

And what about Jeff Sessions?

Don't blink or you'll miss something.

Time to clean up the stable?

The defenestration of Reince Priebus brings to the fore the survival of the RNC as a political party. Not that it's collapsing today. If Priebus represented the Republican establishment in the Trump Administration, and he's gone, who exactly of the multifarious influences is in charge and what will they do about Trump?

Jennifer Rubin conservative columnist for the Washington Post asks: "Does the Republican Party Deserve to Survive?  "Since President Trump won the Republican presidential nomination a question hangs over the right: Should the GOP survive or is it morally corrupted and politically deformed to such an extent that those of good conscience on the center-right must start anew? Having engaged in the original sin, if you will, of supporting Trump and then defending his aberrant presidency and helping thereby to define political deviancy down... has the GOP in essence forfeited political legitimacy permanently?"

She raises five points:
1. Should it survive and can it survive?
2. A dramatic break is mandatory.
3. Its agenda and values need a redo.
4. The Trump experience requires leaders and center-right voters to "re-define the purpose, foundational beliefs and role of the party."
5. The manner of Trump defenestration "will largely determine whether the 2016 election was the last to produce a Republican president." 

Whistling in the dark? 

Trump's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

Donald Trump doesn't even seem to realize yet what a bad week he had, but he's beginning to. Here's a summary of what went down:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/politics-week-recap_us_597b71b7e4b02a8434b644b6?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
To briefly capsulize, there was his increasing pressure on Jeff Sessions to resign (more on where that could lead in a minute), the Boy Scout fiasco, his transgender ban for the military announced in a couple of Twitters (military brass deny that he consulted with them), his appointment of Anthony Scaramucci as communications director for the White House (my, what a lovely person):  https://infoforyour.com/anthony-scaramuccis-quotes-on-priebus-bannon-leakers/.
But by far the worst parts of the week for Trump were the voting down of the "skinny repeal" of the ACA with the help of Republican senators McCain, Collins, and Murkowski; and the warning by Lindsay Graham: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/27/lindsey-graham-trump-robert-mueller-241027
Graham said there would "...be hell to pay" if Sessions were fired.  The "i word" has actually been said out loud as a possible consequence if Mueller is fired.  Cracks are appearing in the meme which goes something like; "Trump could hit someone in the head with a ball-peen hammer on national television and still not face any consequences." An action line actually exists.

More from Chuck

Sen. Chuck Grassley has been telegraphing the White House about some concerns in his inimitable Twitter style. (I find it fascinating to follow the feeds of other congressional representatives, too, but many of these are done by aides. Grassley's typos are so weird, you know he does them himself.) My guess is that the patience of other GOP lawmakers with Our President grows thin.

Connecting the dots

I've been watching Rachel Maddow on MSNBC a lot lately because she's really good at connecting the dots in the ongoing Russia investigation. In this segment tonight, she discusses links between the guy Trump has chosen to head the criminal division of the Justice Dept., Brian A. Benczkowski (Justice Dept. Nominee Says He Once Represented Russian Bank) and Alfa Bank, the Trump organization, and Trump's snap decision about transgender people serving in the military .....

But somewhere a glory awaits unseen ...

Apropos of Margaret's post about Pres. Trump and the Boy Scouts.

The Walton Reporter

That is one of the local papers in these parts. Snippets are read to me by one of its biggest fans (he is obsessed with their center spread on news from 100 years ago). The local regiment is shipping off to Europe (will keep you posted).

More interesting to me: A letter to the editor vehemently protests Trumplewretch's "address" to the boy scouts, recalling a similar speech by Adolph Hitler to the young men of Germany. Appalling! Dangerous! Those were my thought this morning reading the NYTimes story.  Hitler popped to mind but I said to myself, "that's just you." But out here in greenland, we have a letter to the editor and it was published!

Can this be the straw that brings down Trump? Talking as he did to a population of potential jerks and bullies ought to raise the hackles of every parent and Eagle Scout in America! 
 

Trump and Sessions

It's an engineered break-up. You know, like when a man wants to ditch a woman so he can move on to greener pastures, but he doesn't want to take responsibility for that. So instead of being hones and telling the woman he wants to end the relationship, he makes her environment so unpleasant that she herself will finally leave. It's the jerk's way out.

And that is what Trump is now doing to Sessions. He is making Sessions' environment toxic with his constant and disingenuous public criticisms of him, hoping Sessions will decide to resign. In that way, Trump thinks he can pull the wool over the eyes of two groups of people .... the conservative voters who still love Sessions, and all those who believe Trump wants Sessions gone so he can replace him with a puppet who will fire special counsel Robert Mueller for him and end the Russia investigation.

But it won't work because Trump is transparent, not in the sense of being honest, but in the sense that everyone can see right through him. Putz.

Trump's strategy -- troll Sessions to get to Mueller

Big Box Closings: Walmart in Rural West Virginia

Read What happened when Walmart left. We have all read articles on what happens when Walmart comes. This is what happens when it left the county in the US that has the lowest life expectancy. It is not just about jobs and taxes, its about health and social life.

“Socialization. We lost our socialization factor. Now it’s hard to keep track of people, there’s no other place like it where you can stand and chat.”

There used to be 28 churches of her United Methodist denomination in the county, now there are six; there were seven bars in Welch, all but one have closed; there were three cinemas, now it’s down to one; there are no community centers left; many of the corner shops have gone. “There’s nothing here,” McKinney says. McKinney has one other, rather astonishing, reason to regret that the store closed. Walking. Walking?  “I went to Walmart for the walk,”

What part do Big Box stores play in in your part of the country? in your life?

How has that been changing?

K-Mart and Sears Close in Lake County

And now for something completely different ...

I have long been a fan of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) who, decades ago, used to be on an NPR late-night talk show with Sen. Joe Biden. Biden would hog the mike until Grassley sputtered, "Now, my friend Joe's been saying a lotta things, and I wanna say something now." Then Biden would say, "Sure, Chuck, but let me make this one last point ..." And Uncle Joe would talk until the music for a break came up.

It's not that I agree with Sen. Grassley "about a lotta things," but I recognize a decent fellow Midwesterner when I see one. And what came across in those Chuck-and-Joe (but mostly Joe) chats were two regular guys with very different ideas and personalities who sincerely respected each other and often found common sympathies.

So here's my appreciation of Sen. Grassley.

Cardinal Cupich: not a liberal

America Magazine has a post on Cardinal Blase Cupich ... Chicago's Cardinal Cupich: Saying gay, lesbian and L.G.B.T. is a step toward respect. Here's the beginning of it ...

Cardinal Blase Cupich waded into a debate about how the Catholic Church should interact with gays and lesbians, telling a crowd in Chicago that at minimum they should be called by the phrases they use for themselves ...

I do think the church does wield the word" homosexual" like a weapon and that Cupich is right about how important words are. But what's bothering me is Cupich himself and the way he is seen as a liberal in the church. Ever since "reforming" Pope Francis noticed him, Cupich has been touted thus ... Pope Francis names Spokane bishop to Chicago, dashing conservative hopes ... but if Cupich is no liberal.

When Cupich was bishop of Spokane, Washington, and a vote on marriage equality came to his state, he wrote against it in Some Reflections on Referendum 74, warning that if the referendum passed, it could lead to incest marriages and polygamy ...

[...] If there is anything we have come to appreciate and value more fully in this modern age, it is that men and women are not the same. That is true not only biologically, but on so many other levels. Men and women are not interchangeable. They each bring something of their difference to complement each other. In a marriage union, a mutual sharing of each other’s difference creates life, but it also nourishes that life in a family where sons and daughters learn about gender from the way it is lived by their mothers and fathers. The decision to unhinge marriage from its original grounding in our biological life should not be taken lightly for there are some things enacted law is not capable of changing. Thoughtful consideration should be given to the significant consequences such unhinging will mean for children, families, society and the common good .....

If marriage is only about relationships, why limit unions to two people? Why does the new law include the traditional prohibition of close kinship unions for both opposite and same sex couples? The threat of genetic disorders in children is not an issue for same sex couples. Is it not reasonable to assume that a closely related same sex couple will in time successfully challenge this prohibition as an unreasonable imposition? .... In the coming weeks I will provide through the Inland Register, and our websites (dioceseofspokane.org and thewscc.org) materials based on what we believe God has revealed to us about creation, the meaning and value of marriage and family, and the way we are called to live as Christ’s disciples.

I didn't post this just to pick on Cupich, but use him as an example of our false complacency ... to all those moderates who like to think of Francis as a reformer and of themselves as liberals, he isn't and you are not.

The few actual liberals in this church have been silenced like Fr. Tony Flannery or excommunicated/laicized/tossed out like Fr. Roy Bourgeois. Our church is run by someone with grandfatherly charisma, but let's be honest about where we really stand under his conservative banner: gay people can't have their relationships recognized within the church, women will "never" be priests (or deacons), there will be no official change in communion for divorced/remarried people, contraception is still wrong, and sex abuse by priests and the cover-up of that still has not and will not be effectively addressed.

I suppose it is fitting, then, that Cupich, our "liberal" champion, is in the news because of words, not deeds.

Hospitals save themselves, but not their neighborhoods

Apropos of the discussion about Michigan and the role that medical centers may (or may not) play in revitalizing their surroundings, here's a piece about the Cleveland Clinic that questions its high value to the city of Cleveland, but the neglect of the people who actually live within sight of it.  Politico

"There’s an uneasy relationship between the Clinic — the second-biggest employer in Ohio and one of the greatest hospitals in the world — and the community around it. Yes, the hospital is the pride of Cleveland, and its leaders readily tout reports that the Clinic delivers billions of dollars in value to the state. It’s even “attracting companies that will come and grow up around us,” said Toby Cosgrove, the longtime CEO, pointing to IBM’s decision to lease a building on the edge of campus. “That will be great [for] jobs and economic infusion in this area.”

"But it’s also a tax-exempt organization that, like many hospitals, fought to preserve its not-for-profit status in the years leading up to the Affordable Care Act. As a result, it doesn’t have to pay tens of millions of dollars in taxes, but it is supposed to fulfill a loosely defined commitment to reinvest in its community.

"That community is poor, unhealthy and — in the words of one national neighborhood-ranking website — “barely livable.”.....

"It’s the paradox at the heart of the Cleveland Clinic, as it lures wealthy patients and expands into cities like London and Abu Dhabi. Its stated mission is to save lives. But it can’t save the neighborhood that continues to crumble around it."

My California

Margaret's post on Michigan has inspired me to write a post about California for those who have never been .I've lived most of my life in a suburb of the capital of the state, Sacramento, but I've been lucky as a kid and an adult to travel all over California. Here are some of the places I've visited ...

- San Francisco. My grandparents took us kids often to Golden Gate Park and the Steinhart Aquarium and natural history museum in the California Academy of Sciences there. We also visited the San Francisco Zoo, which has a great Dentzel Carousel (see above).

When I was a teen my parents took us there to see the Beatles twice, at Candlestick Park and at the Cow Palace :) We went to many other concerts over the years, as well as visiting museums and shopping in places like Japantown, the Embarcadero, and Ghirardelli Square. Perhaps a little known SF factoid - people can't get buried there. Burials were outlawed in 1900 and most of the dead were relocated to the nearby town of Colma. Now parts of SF are built above the old cemeteries, like the Jesuit University of San Francisco.

- San Diego. I lived for a few months here with my sister and spent my time divided between Balboa Park (home of the San Diego Zoo), and the beach at the Hotel del Coronado (all beaches in CA are free and open to the public), and the Cove in La Jolla ...

- Napa. When I was in college I visited the wineries many times with my family. We also rode the Skunk train and visited the nearby cheese factory. One place in Napa I'll never forget visiting was the Napa State Hospital (for the mentally ill), which was a field trip for a college psych class. Very depressing place. Perhaps a little known fact about Napa - while there are defunct gold and silver mines all over California, Napa has some old mercury mines - eeek!

- I've also visited Yosemite National Park, Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park, Santa Cruz (home of the famous boardwalk), Carmel, Mendocino (where they filmed Murder She Wrote), Sausalito, Monterey (home of the Monterey Bay Aquarium ...

And also the John Muir Woods, the Sierra Nevada mountains for cross-country skiing, Solvang (a little piece of Denmark :), Lake Tahoe, and of course, LA, with its La Brea Tar Pits, UCLA, Knott's Berry Farm, and Disneyland.

I think sometimes people believe California is really just a giant parking lot in LA but that's not true :)

Can we talk about Michigan again?

Fireflies have probably flamed out. So let's ask Jean about "rust belt" Michigan.

Brookings has a report up, "A Tale of two Rust Belts: Diverging economic paths shaping community politics."   John Austin, the author summarizes and laments the loss of industrial jobs in the Midwest over the last several decades. But he goes on to argue that not everyplace has fallen into desuetude, not all rust belts cities are the same....some aren't rust belts. His focus is on Michigan. He further argues that places that have moved on are also places that voted Democratic in the 2016 presidential race. He cites the following:

...Apart from Wayne county, home of Detroit’s Democratic base and its African American population stronghold—the big blue votes came from the places that are growing and arguably are succeeding in a changed economy—with more optimistic residents. As Table 1 shows, these metros include:

• Washtenaw county, home to the world-class University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University, as well as a growing highly-educated population that includes nearly all the state’s venture investors and innovation community;
• Ingham county, home to the state capitol and Michigan State University, Michigan’s other top-tier research university;
• Kalamazoo county: the Kalamazoo Promise, which pays college tuition for all school graduates, has helped spark a downtown revival, aiding economic development efforts that have worked to replace the loss of big anchors like Pfizer Corporation and has brought middle-class families back to the urban core; and
• Once solidly Republican Oakland County, which surprisingly also went blue. Oakland is home to a well-heeled professional class, a growing middle-class African-American and professional immigrant community, high education levels, and a very diverse economic base.

These communities are growing in population and income, and are attracting and keeping well-educated people. In other words, they are “Rust-Belt” no more.

Jean Raber: What's your view on this?

How Big?

The glacier that broke off Antarctica is:

• Twice the size of Luxembourg and Samoa;
• Approximately the same size as Delaware or Brunei;
• Nine times the size of Singapore;
• Four times the size of London and seven time that of New York City.

In other words, it's pretty big, or as Calvin Trillin might say, bigger than a carrot and a bread box combined.

Vatican Journal Criticizes the American Religious Right UPDATED

One ultraconservative blog describes this article as

two of Francis' closest confidantes attack US,

American conservatives in Pope's own journal 

Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism in the USA: A surprising ecumenism appears in the current issue of La Civiltà Cattolica, a journal whose subtitle “Reflecting the mind of the Vatican since 1850” indicates its control by the Vatican.  The article is by Antonio Spadaro S.J., its  Editor-in-chief who is regarded as very close to Francis, and by Marcelo Figueroa, Presbyterian pastor, Editor-in-chief of the Argentinean edition of L’Osservatore Romano. Remember Francis had extremely good relationships with evangelicals in Argentina.

At times this mingling of politics, morals and religion has taken on a Manichaean language that divides reality between absolute Good and absolute Evil. President George W. Bush spoke in his day about challenging the “axis of evil” and stated it was the USA’s duty to “free the world from evil” Today President Trump steers the fight against a wider, generic collective entity of the “bad” or even the “very bad.” Sometimes the tones used by his supporters in some campaigns take on meanings that we could define as “epic.”

The article traces the “evangelical right” or “theoconservatism” to the years 1910-1915, a South Californian millionaire, Lyman Stewart, and the 12-volume work The Fundamentals

The panorama of threats to their understanding of the American way of life have included modernist spirits, the black civil rights movement, the hippy movement, communism, feminist movements and so on. And now in our day there are the migrants and the Muslims.

The article criticizes Pastor Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001) the father of so-called “Christian reconstructionism” (or “dominionist theology”), the theopolitical vision of Christian fundamentalism, the Council for National Policy and Steve Bannon, currently chief strategist at the White House and supporter of an apocalyptic geopolitics.

Both Evangelical and Catholic Integralists condemn traditional ecumenism and yet promote an ecumenism of conflict that unites them in the nostalgic dream of a theocratic type of state.

However, the most dangerous prospect for this strange ecumenism is attributable to its xenophobic and Islamophobic vision that wants walls and purifying deportations. The word “ecumenism” transforms into a paradox, into an “ecumenism of hate.”

  The article see Francis as the antidote to all the above:

Trump tweets

President Trump tweeted today that the White House is running "perfectly" and that "I have very little time for watching TV."

LOL!

Most of the president's tweets in the past two days have been retweets of stuff  he saw on FOX TV (10 tweets in all) plus four comments about what he saw.

During the same 48 hours, he complained about Democrats three times, commented twice on the appropriateness of Ivanka sitting in his chair at the G20, and offered condolences to the family of Marines killed in a plane crash. He also twice claimed big wins against ISIS, says he is working hard to get the Olympics for LA, and seems to take credit for opening the beef market with China.

There is pitifully little commentary on issues of real interest to the nation. Nothing specific about health care. Nothing about DeVos's move to reneg on student loan relief for students who got ripped off by private colleges. Nothing about the opioid epidemic. Nothing about international concerns with the growing number of cholera cases. Nothing about wildfires out West. Nothing about infrastructure.

Does this man even live in the same country as me?

There is no evidence that Trump is in any way engaged with the political process except at the level of casting aspersions on his enemies and defending himself and his family from criticism.

For those who can stand it, the Fox retweets are after the break.

Trump/Russia investigation, continued

The latest shoe drops ....

It's revealed that Trump Jr., Jared Kishner, and Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer in order to receive damaging information to use against Hillary Clinton during the campaign (The Three Stories of Donald Trump Jr. (So Far)) ...

And the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, explains why this information is so important in the investigation of collusion between Trump and the Russians ...

What About North Korea?

Crazy dictator with a nuke, what could possibly go wrong? Except maybe we shouldn't push the panic button just yet.  Kim Jong Un isn't crazy in the same sense that an ISIS suicide bomber is.  This article http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/north-korea-after-icbm-test-what-does-it-really-want-n779636 makes a good case for the logic of his behavior: 
"...for all its apocalyptic bluster, the country's pursuit of a nuclear weapons program — including its first intercontinental ballistic missile launch Tuesday — is based on what it believes are a rational set of goals. The most important of these is self-preservation."  
 
"They learned their lesson from Libya and Iraq that the sure-fire way to prevent an attack is to have weapons of mass destruction, rather than just bragging about it," said John Nilsson-Wright, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank."

"...developing an intercontinental ballistic missile "is a predictable and rational step for North Korea's military programs," according to Andrea Berger, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, in California.
"Pyongyang believes that holding continental U.S. targets at risk is essential for deterring the United States from initiating regime change, or from joining a conflict that starts in other ways," she said." 

"...some experts, such as Nilsson-Wright, believe that "North Korea has called Trump's bluff."
He believes that, after the U.S. weighs the heavy casualties that would result, war is unlikely. 
"....North Korea, he added, has "probably handled things in a way that's not so much a miscalculation but a calculated cost-and-benefit analysis." 

 The  primary goal for Kim Jong Un is preservation of his own hegemony and the Kim dynasty. As for the US, there are several choices, none of them good.  A surgical strike to take out Kim Jong, or all out war, would endanger our allies S. Korea and Japan more than any other, and a retaliatory strike or an attempted one, on the US is all but inevitable.  Kim Jong has stated that a negotiated end to his nuclear program is off the table.  I believe that is true. The best choice for us is acceptance, because the ship has already sailed as far as preventing N. Korea from having nuclear weapons. What we will be dealing with is a cold war, mutually assured destruction.  Not what we would prefer, but worked for half a century with Russia.

There's a new sheriff in town

My most recent rental from Netflix is The Young Pope, a 2016 HBO tv series starring Jude Law and Diane Keaton.

The plot has Law play an orphan (Lenny Belardo) raised by Sister Mary (Keaton), who eventually becomes a New York archbishop and then, out of the blue, the pope. The guys in the curia believe he will be naive and easily manipulated. What they get instead with their vote is a ruthless and damaged sociopath who doesn't even believe in God.

I signed up for this because I like Jude Law (Gattaca, Enemy at the Gates) but I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with it. The Vatican sets are really great and the cinematography is very good, as is the acting, but there's a certain cynicism to the story and, being HBO, there's the nudity factor (Why I'm sick and tired of seeing naked women on HBO). I've just seen one episode so far - maybe it will improve.

There were quite a few articles at Commonweal by Matthew Sitman and Dominic Preziosi about the show when it first came out. I haven't read any of them but they might be more helpful on deciding if it's worth a watch. Here's a bit from their first article: Comparing Notes on 'The Young Pope': Episodes 1 through 4 ...

[N]o matter how compelling the idea of Jude Law as a pontiff who takes the name Pius XIII; who chain smokes, curses, and expresses contempt for the many faithful; who exhibits an undeniable swagger—all of which there’s a lot to be said for—I’m trying to figure out just who this is supposed to appeal to and where it’s supposed to land. I’m an adherent of the very conventional wisdom that all “quality TV” as now defined descends for better and worse from The Sopranos, and indeed we get some of that ground-breaker’s by-now familiar devices: pathologized protagonist; out-of-body episodes (panic attacks for Tony S., trance-like fugue states for Pius XIII); mundane workplace maneuvering punctuated by moments of scheming and interpersonal hostilities; troubling, unsettling narrative passages that may or may not be dreams. So far what’s missing is the food (and in Rome at that) ....

And here's a trailer ...

Summer reading

There is a terrific bookstore a few blocks from our house. It carries most new books, many used books (from college students), and piles of remaindered books (usually hardcover with prices slashed to the irresistible).  A week ago I saw on the remaindered pile Notes on a Century by Bernard Lewis. I am not a fan of Professor Lewis, neo-con and big supporter of Bush II's war in Iraq. The sub-title Reflections of a Middle East Historian, and the index suggested a collection of autobiographical essays. I hesitated. Fortunately my recent promise "Know thy Enemies," prompted a look at the price, "$5.98." Hard to resist. 

Notes on a Century went from the pile at the bookstore to the pile on my desk. On July 4, I started in.  Lewis, like Tony Judt and Oliver Sachs, comes from an English Jewish family settled there early in the 20th century. Judt and Sachs, (both now deceased) were distinguished writers and thinkers. Lewis is not as  punchy or as analytic as they, but he is a story teller fluent in Middle Eastern history and languages, to wit:

In 1952, Turkey joined NATO to the delight and pride of the Turkish people. Invited to a dinner party, Lewis reports that a Turkish general asked about Turkey joining NATO replied, "The real problem with having the Americans as your allies is you never know when they will turn around and stab themselves in the back."

Still true!  And Turkey, having learned from the U.S., is doing a solid job of stabbing its own self in the back.

Bernie Sanders the 2020 Front Runner!

Bernie Sanders is the Democrats’ real 2020 frontrunner. I could not resist the headline. It has nothing to do with the fact that some people think I look like Bernie Sanders. After all, we are about the same age.

Most of the political class is ignoring the elephant in the room. Bernie Sanders is, by some measures the most popular politician in America, by far Democrats’ most in-demand public speaker, and the most prolific grassroots fundraiser in American history.

Sanders is building his team, is quietly moderating, has a clear message is the point of the article.

His primary season demands to break up large banks, ban hydraulic fracturing nationwide, and impose a carbon tax are gone from the agenda. In the wake of the success of “Bernie Would Have Won” as a slogan, Sanders has deeply engaged his base using Medicare-for-all while reconfiguring other elements of his platform into something more moderate than the one he actually ran on and for which a much stronger electability argument can be made.

Is he too old? "Is Pope Francis too old?" would be my response.

If not him, who? NCR had an interesting article that might help us think about this

New Orleans Confederate Monuments Are Coming Down Under Mayor Landrieu. I was attracted to this article mainly because it was by Jason Berry.  You might call it a "profile in courage" article to borrow Kennedy's book title. Could Landrieu be another "take on the establishment" candidate?

July 4th

Still afternoon on the west coast, and Tuesday. I'm dreading the coming fireworks - I'd so rather listen to music. Here are the Moody Blues at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, Justin Hayward singing Tuesday Afternoon ...

Martin on Patriotic Songs at Mass

Over at America, Father James Martin comes out against patriotic songs at Mass.. His argument rests on the first commandment,  worship is due to God alone. Hard to quarrel with that. We cannot put anything else in the place of God, not money, our parents, or our country. That would be idolatry.

However Martin neglects that we do honor our parents, the saints, and a lot of other holy things. The real problem is that often our honor of Mary, the saints, the church, and our country looks far too much like the worship due to God alone

I liked Martin's quote from John Baldovin, S.J., professor of historical and liturgical theology at Boston College as a practical solution:

Frankly, I do not favor patriotic songs like ‘America the Beautiful’ at liturgy. My reason is that they are addressed to the nation and not to God. There are patriotic hymns, e.g., ‘God of Our Fathers,’ ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save,’ ‘This is My Song’—all of these are addressed to God.

I like Baldovin’s solution. “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” paraphrases the ideas in the litany for protection for people who travel by land, sea, and air. I think it is an appropriate entrance or preparation hymn. “America the Beautiful” although it contains invocations to God, seems to address the nation more than God. I would give it a pass only for the recessional, and then only because the recessional is not technically a part of the Mass.

What are your thoughts?

Freedom of the Press Under Attack

I have noticed a pattern in three articles I have read in the past two days.  The first concerns Qatar:
Saudi Arabia has given Qatar 48 hours to meet a list of 13 demands.
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/7/3/15914610/qatar-saudi-arabia-48-deadline-demands 
From the article:  "....there’s a whole lot of stuff in there that has nothing to do with terrorism — and everything to do with stomping out Qatar’s regional aspirations and forcing it to fall in line with Saudi Arabia’s preferred policies."  Of particular interest are demands 3 and 4:

" Shut down Al Jazeera and its affiliate stations. 
 Shut down news outlets that Qatar funds, directly and indirectly, including Arabi21, Rassd, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, and Middle East Eye."
And by now everyone has heard of Donald Trump's fake wrestling video targeting CNN:
http://radiotvtalk.blog.ajc.com/2017/07/02/donald-trump-ups-ante-against-cnn-with-wrestling-video-which-cnn-dubs-juvenile/
Of course Trump spins it as a joke.

What it's like to be Muslim in Trump country

The Washington Post has a fascinating article about a Muslim doctor in rural Minnesota coming to terms with living in Trump country.

What's left out of the story that could shed light on our increasingly dysfunctional nation are the voices of the townspeople in Dawson, Minn., responding to Dr. Ayaz Virji.

God loves fidget spinners ...

Double down time for Donald

The day after many in his own party condemned President Trump's comments about the hosts of "Morning Joe," our president woke up this morning and shot off three more rounds at TV news media, including this gem:

Crazy Joe Scarborough and dumb as a rock Mika are not bad people, but their low rated show is dominated by their NBC bosses. Too bad!

This isn't just a continuing and misguided attempt at trying to sink "Morning Joe," the ratings of which are bound to jump after this debacle. Trump is telegraphing his own party that he's not going to rein it in. "Hell, no! You wanna see crazy? I'll give you crazy like you've never seen crazy!" (This is my fake news made-up quote to illustrate what might be going on in Mr. Trump's head.)

Trump also continued to gloat over CNN and to start rumors that Greta van Susteren was fired by her "out of control bosses" for refusing to hate on Trump.

Our president is also in high dudgeon over the fact that many states are refusing his request for voter info for his election integrity committee. "What have they got to hide?"

How long will Republicans put up with this man at the helm of their party? Raber says, "As long as he's got a pen."