The inconvenience, having to get a majority

 If I told you Florida has 250,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, but that the state Legislature has 73 Republicans and only 47 Democrats, would you be intrigued enough to ask why? Even Chief Justice Roberts thinks you would, but last week he and the four other conservatives in the Supreme Court decided there is nothing they can do about it.

 Fifty years ago I probably would have agreed with them.

 The whole answer is more complicated, but the simple answer is, of course, “gerrymandering.” The Republican lawmakers, being the majority, can draw election districts any way they want, and as long as they can do that, there will never be enough Democratic lawmakers to stop them from putting Democratic voters, in districts that overwhelmingly favor Democrats anyway – and keeping them out of districts where they could make a Republican seat competitive.

 The Chief Justice says gerrymandering is almost as old as the republic (correct) and that the Constitution doesn’t give the courts any license to stop it. (You won’t find anyplace in the Constitution where it says the courts can act if a president suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect decides to ignore Congress and the courts and govern by fiat, either.)

  Anyhow, Justice Elena Kagan, writing for herself and the other liberals, dissented, and in the dissent she nailed a point that: a) the Chief  completely missed, b) is the reason I don’t agree with the Court now as I once might have.  I'll let her make the point in her own words after the break:

Public Art - Updated

Update 7/1/2019: I've added some additional murals at the bottom of the post, all references from commenters.  I'm continuing to look for others.

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I've mentioned before that my wife enjoys spending an occasional summer afternoon walking around quaint downtown areas with "cute shops".  There are several of these tourist traps within a short driving distance of where we live, including in the town of Geneva, IL.  A couple of years back, I agreed to come along on one of these jaunts and supplied my two appointed constructive contributions, i.e. carrying packages and keeping my tart thoughts to myself as we browse among the Christmas ornaments, Irish sweaters, jars of spices we'll use once and then never again, tea services decorated with images of cats, and similar nonessentials.

On this particular outing, I made myself useful a third way: I drove, and managed to parallel-park along the downtown strip.  The parking spot happened to be right in front of the village's tiny downtown post office, and for some reason I no longer recall, it seemed opportune, before plunging into retail purgatory, to duck inside to buy some postage stamps.

As I say, on these outings I'm under strict orders not to offer running commentary, but what I saw inside the post office loosed my tongue.  A large mural adorned one of the walls.  When we saw it, an involuntary "Ooh", or perhaps it was an "Aah", escaped me.  I've pasted a photo of it at the top of the post.

I'm sure yu'all agree! UPDATE

Still like Amy...Impressed with Cory Booker, who I have previously thought a bit of a dud. DeBlasio is an ass. Dellany and Inslee (fake smile) both made their points well, but they're not candidates. Beto was very lame (exhaustion?). Miss Haiwai!!? what's she doing there, pretty and nice smile, but woefully unpresidential. Castro made a splash, but probably unelectable. Ryan definitely unelectable. Warren becomes more likable, but she has that school marm persona that did in Hillary; she is policy-smarter than Hillary but not clear to me she has the political chops to be president.  So imho...nobody last night is likely to be the democratic candidate, booker could be VP... And I like Amy Klobuchar reminding us of foam with no beer.

UPDATE: I'll have to take it back. Night one was the better debate. Cory Booker?  Peter Buttigieg? Both looking like the adults in the platoon.

Waiting for Mueller -- Again

Here is the odd thing: On July 17, if Robert Mueller does what he said he would do – that is, simply repeat what is in the Mueller Report -- it will come as news to most Americans. Let’s face it: The report is on line, naked or annotated, and at least three editions are in print, but hardly anybody read it.

 I started reading on line the day it was released. I ripped off 137 pages out of the starting gate, but it took another two weeks to reach the end. My doctor made it to page 3 and called Amazon. My ex-boss didn’t even try it on-line and waited for a print copy. You can bring Tablets to us old folks, but you can’t make us use them.

 And the young get their news from social media.

 Donald J. Trump understands that. And that is why everybody I run into hasn’t read the Mueller Report but knows that it says No Collusion, No Obstruction, and maybe some other stuff. So if Mueller simply repeats it kinetically, it will be a shock in many quarters.

 That is part of the devious plot House Democrats stumbled into.

 The other half is that Trump now has three weeks to make bellyaching comments about Mueller, and maybe three weeks under the Twitter will provoke the stolid Mueller to give some clue to what he really thinks of Trump.

  A bunch of A-list actors gave Book II a dramatic reading Monday in New York. You probably can still see it here. It runs about an hour and 20 minutes. Joel Gray tries a Southern accent as Beauregard Jefferson Sessions II. John Lithgow takes Trump's lines.

  I still say the impeachment action is in Book I, where it says the Russians tried to beat Clinton and elect Trump, and that made Trump happy, and the Russians will do it again. Impeachment hangs on the fact that the president knows all that and has done nothing to prevent it, and some little things to hamper efforts to prevent it.

 But I still think the brain dead Democrats will fumble the opportunity. The Rs understand the new media, and the Ds don't understand much of anything. The better hope is that Trump irks Mueller into responding.

Not Everything in the ME is a mess. Update

Sunday's mayoral election in Istanbul (formerly known as Constantinople!) showed that strong men and populists can be delivered a set-back if enough people go out to vote because they know what they are up against.

Turkey is an amazing place; I visited as a tourist some years ago. Its politics have always been verging on democracy, but have had to struggle against the politics of a secular state established by Ataturk after WW1 run by a string of military leaders. That changed when the AKP party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, took power. He created a Islamist, democratic state, Middle East style. As time passed, he has come to seem more a pasha than a democratic leaders. The AKP's loss of the mayoralty this past spring led him to call for a new election. This one sent him a message.

This NYTimes story is by Carlotta Gall whose writing from the ME going back to the Balkan and Iraq Wars, if not before, I have eagerly read and long admired.

UPDATE: Al Monitor a Middle Eastern blog has this headline, Why Erdogan's historical Istanbul defeat is irreparable, and a short take on what happened in the election. "Erdogan’s setback amounts to a political earthquake. The June 23 result is nothing less than a tectonic shift in Turkish politics, the impact of which was felt in all of Istanbul’s districts. Imamoglu increased his vote in all 39 districts, while Yildirim saw his vote decline across the city, barring only one district."

Unagidon on Insurance

Right.

1. When Commonweal killed the blog, they offered me a job writing two articles a month for the online edition for which they would pay be $200 a month.  But when I was writing for the blog, they paid me $200 a month to write two articles a week.  I burned out.

Background.  From August 2013 to August 2014, I had cancer, a heart attack, depression, got "laid off" by my insurance company (they didn't want a sick executive), and I found out that my wife had been cheating on me through all of this so I also lost my wife, family, house, and almost everything that I owned (the ex blamed me for everything so she kept most of my stuff and discarded it and I ws too poor to stop her).

Bad times.  I was out of work for three years (no one wants to hire an old CFO who had health problems). 

And Trump was elected.

So it's been a rough patch. I am now working night shift as a grocery clerk at a buck and a half above minimum wage.  Despite the cancer and heart attack, I have not been to a doctor since 2015.  Can't afford it. Somehow all of this has had a bad affect on my writing.  I ended up not being able to write for Commonweal anymore.  Or for anyone.  About anything. Too bad,

so sad.

Anyway, to the important stuff.

2. Trump has decided that he wants to run (in part) on health care.  He has no plan, of course, despite saying once again that he has one.  But he is trying to do something.  He wants to sign an executive order requiring providers and insurers to publish all of their discount data.  That is, they are to tell us what kind of discounts all providers receive from insurers.  It won't work  Why?  Here are some points.

Reporting bishops

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) met in Baltimore earlier this month, on June 11-13, for their Spring General Assembly.  Their major business was to take a series of votes on proposed actions to address the problem of bishops who personally commit abuse, or who fail to report abuse committed by others to the appropriate church and civil authorities.  By taking those votes, the bishops have broken from the starting blocks, but haven't crossed the finish line yet.  Below the break, I've used a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) format to try to explain what happened.

Speaker Pelosi ask religious leaders to do their job.

In a statement, Pelosi said: “Tomorrow is Sunday, and as many people of faith attend religious services, the president has ordered heartless raids. It is my hope that before Sunday, leaders of the faith-based community and other organizations that respect the dignity and worth of people will call upon the president to stop this brutal action, which will tear families apart and inject terror into our communities.”

Sometimes Conservatives Say What Needs to Be Said

Of course, CWL-in-exile has Jim Pauwels writing in this vein, saying what needs to be said.

Today, Bret Stephens of the NYTimes (formerly of the WSJ, and who knows where else) said something that needs to be said to the Democratic circular firing squad and his colleagues at the Times.

He begins by writing of long-ago lunches with an Iranian "diplomat." The  "conversations ... were exceptionally candid. He almost surely sought me out because my pro-Israel stance represented, in the view of the regime he served, the core beliefs of Zionist-occupied Washington. In turn, I got a crisply articulated sense of Iran’s strategic thinking along with invitations to meet with various Iranian leaders...."

Stephens, citing Aristotle, calls this "a friendship of utility," "adventitious, opportunistic and usually short-lived."  He goes on to defend Joe Biden's "friendships" with segregationists Herman Talmidge and James Eastland. Stephens presumably no fan of Biden observes: "He simply dealt with the Congress as he found it and looked for opportunities to be constructive and consequential rather than destructive and obnoxious." The point of Biden's critics: "to rid the party of compromisers of any sort — that is, to purge the Democratic Party of its democratic instincts."

He concludes: "The irony here is that the left’s apocalyptic tendencies have everything in common with the behavior of the Trumpian right: the smash-mouth partisanship; the loathing for moderates on its own side; the conviction that its opponents are unbelievably stupid as well as irredeemably evil...."

Jesuit high school in Indy defies archbishop, refuses to fire teacher in same-sex marriage

The Indianapolis Archdiocese issued a canonical decree on Friday that Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory High School may no longer call itself Catholic.  Michael J O'Loughlin at America reports:

An Indianapolis Jesuit high school is standing by a teacher who the Archdiocese of Indianapolis said should not be rehired after the employee’s same-sex marriage became public. As a result, the archdiocese will prohibit Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School from calling itself “Catholic,” a decision the school plans to appeal.

Marx Laughs

Apparently suggesting that a tax increase of one or two percent on earnings above $50,000,000 now makes one a communist who hates America and is trying to destroy the capitalist system.   Interjecting the word socialist into a discussion now allows one to immediately talk about gulags and mass murder just as interjecting the word fascist allows one to talk about death camps.  In each case, capitalism as it is currently constituted emerges as the default preference immune from any criticism to be praised and venerated as the god it has become.

As part of capturing the Russian state, the Bolsheviks also had to capture Marx in the way that any major political party or religious group will try to represent itself as the true and only exponent of some political theory or theology.  The Bolsheviks did this very well, to a point where Bolshevism is now seen by most people as simply the inevitable outcome of Marxism.   But even in Marx’s life, there were several different strands of socialism (not all Marxist) and even several different strands of Marxism.  Marx himself was long in the grave before Lenin emerged as even a minor force.  The terrible Bolshevik strain looks like the inevitable product of Marxism to us (in part because the Bolsheviks worked so hard to make it that way), but they were unforeseen by Marx himself.

So, what did Marx foresee?

Can He Do That? Updated

That is, can President Trump disappear a federal agency? Apparently that is his intention.
From this article by Lisa Rein:

"WASHINGTON - The Trump administration is threatening to furlough - and possibly lay off - 150 employees at the federal personnel agency if Congress blocks its plan to eliminate the department.

The Office of Personnel Management is preparing to send the career employees home without pay starting on Oct. 1, according to an internal briefing document obtained by The Washington Post. The employees could formally be laid off after 30 days, administration officials confirmed."

Hong Kong's Protest Anthem - Updated

From Verna Yu's article on the America Magazine site
Throughout last week’s mass protests over a controversial extradition law in Hong Kong, one prominent feature stood out: the almost continuous singing of the hymn “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord.”

"Hong Kong has been rocked by mass protests that began on June 9 when an estimated one million people marched to urge Hong Kong authorities to scrap an amendment to an extradition bill that would allow suspects to be sent for trial in China’s Communist Party-controlled judiciary. In China’s courts, the conviction rate is often as high as 99 percent."

Sex and marriage

I've been scratching my head all day over this article that appeared in the New York Times, misleadingly (and presumably click-baiting-ly) entitled, "How Should Christians Have Sex?"  Upon seeing the headline, my immediate reaction was, "Er, just like everyone else?"

But the article, it turns out, isn't about how to do the famous deed, but rather when.

True lives

This is my homily for the weekend that just ended, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Cycle C.  The readings for the weekend are here.

Time for a Jolly, Little War? UPDATE 2 UNBELIEVABLE also

What could be more promising for a Trump presidential 2020 run than a tidy little war to distract attention from....well, you name your favorite hi-jinks. Such a war would give the commander-in-chief golden opportunities for meeting planes at Dover Air Force Base where U.S. military are brought home for burial, for bestowing medals on the walking-wounded, and for bragging that his war finally will bring peace to the Middle East--unlike all other presidents' wars.

Paul Pillar has a run down for a run-up to war between the U.S. and Iran. He questions Secretary Pompeo's claims that Iran attacked the two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, and that the U.S. has evidence to prove it. What if Saudi Arabia and Israel are stirring the pot?

Pilar goes on to argue that even if Iran is responsible for the attacks, it has good reason given U.S. policy. The Trump Administration's attacks on Iran include rescinding the U.S. participation in the JCPOA, increased sanctions on Iran, and threats to nations that continue to trade with Iran. This is called the Maximum Pressure Campaign--for what end? Trump may claim he wants to negotiate, but Pompeo and Bolton don't.

Read Pilar's judicious analysis at LobLog (no paywall!)

Update:  NYTimes has an opinion piece up looking at the claims about the attack on the two ships.  Certainly not conclusive according to the author, managing director of "the investigative collective Bellingcat". Instructive about data and info from open sources.
More Updates: WSJ 6/17 (pay wall). Reuel Gerecht and Ray Takeyh have an op-ed arguing that Iran is fragile and that the U.S. could bring down the regime. No mention of who would take over.
And More: Perhaps the MEK, an Iranian exile group with various terrorist actions in its record (You may remember them from the U.S. war in Iraq). Or maybe ISIS, now in search of a new caliphate. LobeLog has a run-down on MEK's current activities along with a claim that a fake news article was behind Trump's cancellation of the JPCOA.
Unbelievable: Patrick Shanahan has withdrawn as nominee for Secretary of Defense. Will Pompeo get the nod? He seems to be consulting today with the Centcom and Socom. 
Not the Secy of State's job. Increasingly Unbelievable: Mark Esper, the new acting secretary of defense, West Point classmate of Pompeo, and former lobbyist for military  contractor Raytheon and staff of Heritage Foundation. NYTimes profile.
COMMONWEAL: "A war with Iran is entirely avoidable."

My 15 minutes of obscurity

The Chicago Archdiocese runs a schedule of radio shows.  Until recently, those programs appeared on Relevant Radio's Chicago outlet.  For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, the Archdiocese no longer is on Relevant Radio.  Instead, it leases airtime (or some similar arrangement) on a local AM radio station, WNDZ 750 AM, the existence of which I confess I was previously unaware.  There are a number of parishioners who listen to Relevant Radio (which, for those of you who may not know, is a network of radio stations that carries Catholic content.  I hesitate to describe it as "EWTN on the radio", in part because I don't think that's strictly accurate, and in part because, inasmuch as I've never actually listened to it, I'm not entirely sure).  Until last Sunday, I had never heard of anyone listening to WNDZ.  What I learned last Sunday is that there are at least two people in the world who listen to it, because they both told me they heard me on it.

On archdiocesan radio, the Vicar of Deacons for the Archdiocese, Deacon Richard Hudzik, and the Associate Director, Deacon Dave Brencic, host a half-hour talk show once a month, on Thursday mornings.  Last Thursday, having previously run through their entire list of interesting guests, they interviewed me.  If you feel your life wouldn't be complete without hearing what my voice sounds like, and you have a media player on your smartphone or computer, you can go to this link and select the program entitled Rest in His Arms.  You can choose either Stream or Download.  I chose Stream, selected Windows Media Player, and it worked.

Rest in His Arms is the name of a ministry I'm affiliated with.  Its website is here.  But if you are so inclined, you can also learn about it by listening to the radio interview. 

Illinois Catholic legislators who voted for abortion bill banned from communion in Springfield Diocese

One other note to today's signing of an abortion bill by the Illinois governor: the bishop of the Springfield, IL diocese, Thomas Paprocki, issued a decree earlier this month that bans Illinois Catholic legislators from receiving communion in the diocese if they voted for the new bill.

Illinois gets a new abortion law

Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois signed legislation today that changes Illinois' abortion laws in some significant ways.  Here is the Chicago Tribune's story (the byline of which is "Chicago Tribune staff"):

"The clean energy revolution is on the verge of a tipping point"

A CNN story indicates that the United States is making significant progress in transforming our energy sector to renewables.

Of Gender and Biology

There is a new  article on the America Magazine site discussing a document on the subject of gender theory, issued by the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education,  "...which, while containing no new doctrinal elements or developments, seeks to present the Catholic Church’s position on the question in a non-polemical manner and expresses the need to dialogue on the subject."
From the article:

In memoriam

This photo is from my high school yearbook, senior year.  I know it's not very good - as I mentioned recently, I don't have any photographic skills,  But truth to tell, it doesn't look much better in the book.

I'm in the picture, sixth from the left.  I have considerably more body fat and considerably less hair now than I did in 1979.  But the person to whom I want to call your attention, at least in the first part of this post, is the young woman fifth from the left, the one with her back up against mine.

Biden blows it UPDATE

Joe Biden has led the pack of Democratic presidential hopefuls. He may not be the best candidate to become president in 2020. But a lot of people thought he could beat Trump. Now he has given Trump and the Republicans his head on a platter.

Biden has supported the Hyde Amendment forever and said so earlier this week. But under attack from his fellow guy and gal candidates, Biden flip-flopped Thursday saying he could no longer support the Hyde Amendment. It bars federal funds for abortion, except in the case of rape, incest, or the life of the mother. Abortion proponents say the Hyde Amendment is unjust because it keeps poor women from getting an abortion. Abortion opponents say using tax dollars to pay for abortion make them complicit in killing the unborn... til now the courts have agreed with them (the federal government can neither prohibit nor support abortion) and so have Congressional votes.

Yes, the Hyde Amendment.

     "For opponents of abortion, the Hyde Amendment is an obvious corollary: If abortion is wrong, then so is government funding for it. Anti-abortion activists began pursuing the amendment soon after the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973.

     "But some people who generally support abortion rights also support the amendment because they don’t believe providing access to abortion is an appropriate use of government funds, or because they are “uncomfortable with being complicit in the procedure through their taxpayer dollars,” said Mallory Quigley, a spokeswoman for the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was not unusual for Democratic politicians to make this argument.

     "Mr. Biden, as a senator from Delaware, made a similar case in 1986, telling U.P.I., “If it’s not government’s business, then you have to accept the whole of that concept, which means you don’t proscribe your right to have an abortion and you don’t take your money to assist someone else to have an abortion.” NYTimes, June 8, 2019.

The Washington Post gives a rundown of the Hyde Amendment and its part in the Democratic Party's "big tent."  

The "Big Tent Party" has resumed its traditional position: circular firing squad.

UPDATE:  Michael Gerson at the Wash Post give a brief history of the Dems and abortion (they weren't always so gung-ho) and agrees that Biden's decision plays into Trump and Republican hands.

Pope Francis and "walking together" as christians

There were two stories today about comments Francis made while and after returning from Romania.  The stories are quite different, and I was especially intrigued by the different coverage of the saying of the Lord's Prayer.   Thoughts?

Bishops Behaving Badly

W.Va. Bishop gave powerful cardinals and other priests $350,000 in cash gifts before his ouster, church records show

For people who still wonder how McCarrick could have gotten away with so much for so long, we now have the details of how a W.Va. Bishop abused seminarians, all the while giving gifts to influence as many people as he could.  It is really stunning how many people in the diocese knew about the bishop. And, of course, the bishop was busy buying friends elsewhere in the church just in case one of the those who knew decided to do something about it.

The source of the bishop's power :

The roots of the West Virginia diocese’s unusual wealth date back to the late 1800s, to a friendship struck on a transatlantic cruise ship between a bishop from Wheeling and a New York heiress. When she died in 1904, Sara Catherine Aloysia Tracy left the majority of her estate to the diocese, including a large tract of land in west Texas. Oil was discovered there decades later.

The income from the mineral rights generates annual revenue averaging nearly $15 million in recent years and has funded an endowment now valued at $230 million, according to financial documents. As a result, West Virginia’s parishes are largely supported by the diocese — unlike across the rest of the country, where dioceses must be supported by local parishes.

What has the former Bishop of Wheeling in common with McCarrick and the former head of the Legionnaires?  They were able to thrown money around to pave their way through life.. Money may talk but it also appears to shut people up when it comes to sexual abuse.

The Burden of Suffering (updated)

In the latest issue of Commonweal, B.D. McClay discusses Francis Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites, which was recently revived at the Metropolitan Opera for a three-night run.
From the article:
"Dialogues tells the story of the (fictional) Blanche de la Force, an intensely fearful French aristocrat who joins a Carmelite community as a way of hiding from the world....Mother Marie of the Incarnation, the sub-prioress, convinces all the nuns to take a vow of martyrdom, from which Blanche recoils and then flees. This vow is fulfilled when the sisters (except, painfully, Marie) are caught by the police secretly meeting together. Blanche returns at the eleventh hour, joining her sisters as they go singing to the guillotine."

No Headline, but an accounting! (Update)

I found this photo pretty hilarious (on the Guardian with other Trumphotos)
What came to mind for a headline, I decided might be taken to be anti-Semitic and anti-English so I forbore.  The whole photo shoot at the Guardian is here.   Amuse yourselves.





UPDate:  And it hasn't been cheap:
"Contracts placed by the state department show US taxpayers have spent $1,223,230 (£965,921) on VIP accommodation at the InterContinental hotel on Park Lane in Mayfair, a hotel linked to members of the Qatari royal family.

"A further $339,386 (£267,994) has been spent on “hotel rooms in support of a visit” at the Hilton on Park Lane, one of London’s most exclusive addresses, and also on “passenger car rental”.   The Guardian counts it up.

A National Security Threat?

OR: How the Rich Get Really Rich: "A Bridge to China, and Her Family's Business in the Trump Cabinet."

Not being a fan of the NYTimes's zillion-page coverage of Big Topics, I was surprised and impressed today with the two-page (plus above-the-fold start on Page 1) report on the comings and goings of Elaine Chao, Secretary of Transportation and wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.,-KY).

Ms Chao, as she is know to the Times, is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Chao, Chinese immigrants and fabulously wealthy shipping magnets with close ties to the Chinese Government. Mr. Chao is a former classmate and friend of the current president of China.

As Secretary of Transportation in the Trump Administration, Ms. Chao has a lot to say about the U.S. Maritime Industry, ship-building, and the training of U.S. seaman, etc. If Trump thinks the crowd at the southern border is a national security threat, he should take a look at Ms. Chao's comings and goings reported in the Times's story.

My political junky mind, however, immediately turns to the possibility that Mitch McConnell's Democratic opponent in the 2020 Kentucky Senate races is not a complete dolt and will call the economically depressed people of Kentucky's attention to this amazing story of Chao family largess to the majority leader and the dubious activities of his wife, Ms. Chao.

P.S. Perhaps Katherine Nielsen can supply a link if the story appears in her favorite go-to substitute for the New York Times. It's worth a read. It will make your blood boil! And raise the hope that McConnell can be defeated in 2020.