From time to time we ask the Gen AI engine ChatGPT to reflect on a spiritual topic. Today, I asked it to write a Catholic homily on the excesses of the Trump administration's immigration policy. While I'm not certain the result is exactly a homily, it's concise and it's good - in fact, more than good. What do you think?
There is a good discussion of the recent Munich Security Conference on the Bulwark site:
An American Blunder in Munich - The Bulwark
The podcast hosts are Eric Edelman and Elliot Cohen. the podcast is a bit long but worth listening to. However there is a transcript, if you just want to skim and not listen to the whole thing. I will have a few comments, and a quote or two from the transcript.
Following is the print summary on Bulwark.
"Eliot and Eric discuss the Munich Security Conference including its background and history. They review the contradictory signals sent by the many Trump officials who have been in different parts of Europe in the run-up to and aftermath of the Munich conference. They discuss Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's comments, Vice President J.D. Vance's lamentable, off-key speech to the conference, the predatory agreement for the US to colonize Ukraine's raw materials that Secretary of the Treasury Bessent presented to Zelensky in Kyiv and the announcement of US-Russian talks (excluding Ukraine and Europe) to be held this week in Saudi Arabia. They discuss the dangers of a foreign policy carried out by Presidential whim and whether the potential Ukraine War ceasefire will be a bad deal or a catastrophic one and the knock on consequences in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and for the global nuclear non-proliferation order. They focus on the human consequences of the rampage through government that Elon Musk and his "muskovites" are conducting. They praise the conservative prosecutors in the Southern District of New York who have resigned rather than carry out instructions that they considered corrupt and offer advice to those in government struggling with the moral dilemmas created by the current Trumpian chaos."
This bit is from the transcript, speaking about Vice President JD Vance's speech:
Update 19-Feb-2025 1:41 pm CST: NCR reports that Francis shows "slight improvement" today:
"The Holy Father's clinical conditions appear to be stable," said a Vatican statement released at just after 7p.m. local time on Wednesday evening, Feb 19. "Blood tests, evaluated by the medical staff, show a slight improvement, particularly in inflammatory markers."
The NCR article also notes that Georgia Meloni, the Prime Minister of Italy, visited Francis for about 20 minutes. And JD Vance asked on social media for prayers for Francis.
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I am sure many of us have seen the news that Pope Francis has been hospitalized for the last few days with severe bronchitis. In my personal opinion, the Holy See has not been especially forthcoming on his condition.
Now Politico is reporting that Francis's condition is grave. Headline: "Pope Francis, sensing he is close to death, moves to protect his legacy".
According to two people familiar with the matter, Francis has been suffering from intense pain and has privately expressed certainty he won’t make it this time. On Sunday, doctors at Gemelli distressed the pope by barring him from delivering his regular morning Angelus sermon, which he has rarely missed, even when hospitalized, said one of the people and a third person. He is now acting entirely on “doctors’ orders,” said one of them.
The pope initially resisted going to hospital but was told in no uncertain terms that he was at risk of dying if he stayed in his room in the Vatican, the second person added.
We can assume Francis is receiving excellent care in the hospital. He has made it through serious health problems before and may do so again. Still, he is 88 years old. He had part of one lung removed many years ago, which presumably would increase the level of concern for a bronchitis patient.
Politico suggests that the recent flurry of activity on Francis's part (including his letter to the US bishops on American immigration policy and rhetoric) may be an attempt to get things done while he is able.
Let us pray for him, and for the church. He has been the right man for this moment of the church, and I pray that this moment continue for some time yet.
Just adapting a post that I shared with my cancer group about the excellent Netflix limited series "Apple Cider Vinegar." Cuz at this point--and I say this as a cancer patient--cancer is a welcome relief from politics.
The show is a really engaging dramatization of the Belle Gibson cancer fraud case in Australia. Briefly, Gibson claimed to control/cure her brain cancer with diet, which she leveraged into a cookbook deal and Apple app and pledged to donate money to cancer causes. Except that she never had cancer, and none of the causes she pledged to received money.
Pope Francis has written an extraordinary public letter to the US bishops criticizing the Trump Administration's declared intent to deport immigrants who are in the United States illegally.
The letter, which is quite brief, can be read here.
Interesting article on The Bulwark site today:
Follow the Money - by Jonathan V. Last - The Bulwark
"When the New York Stock Exchange opens on Monday at 9:30 a.m. we will see just how seriously the world takes the assault Elon Musk and Donald Trump launched on the American system of government.
What follows is a guide for interpreting the drop."
"First, some ground rules. The securities markets have a system of circuit breakers to halt massive declines. There are three circuit breakers that are measured by calculating a percentage decline in the S&P 500 from the close of the previous day: Level 1 (7 percent), Level 2 (13 percent), and Level 3 (20 percent). If Levels 1 or 2 are tripped before 3:25 p.m., all trading is halted for 15 minutes. If Level 3 is tripped at any point in the day, trading is halted for the remainder of the day."
"Last Friday the S&P closed at 6,041. Trading ended at 4:00 p.m., per the norm, but at 1:15 p.m. a selloff started when reports of Trump’s proposed tariffs against Canada and Mexico hit the wires. In less than three hours,
Here are the S&P’s circuit breaker numbers for Monday:"
Level 1: 5,617
Level 2: 5,255
Level 3: 4,832
"For context, since 2008 we have only had seven S&P drops greater than 7.6 percent in a single day:
"The two worst of these were in March 2020 as the markets began to grasp the full ramifications of COVID. The other drops all took place at the opening of the 2008 financial crisis.
So those are the kinds of events that trigger large-scale panic in the markets: global pandemics and global financial meltdowns.
Will Monday’s pullback register on those magnitudes? Or will it be more modest and hold under 7 percent?"
"The answer to that question will tell us what the markets believe about Musk’s and Trump’s intentions. Here are four scenarios:
(1) Drop is < 5 percent: The markets do not believe that Trump’s tariffs on Mexico and Canada are likely to remain in place. Nor are they especially concerned by the reports of turmoil in Washington over the weekend. They basically believe everything is normal and that Trump will quickly revert to par, allowing the broader economy to continue more or less as normal.
(2) Drop is 5 percent to 7 percent: The markets are concerned that Trump’s tariffs will impact the American economy in the near term and that this movement could trigger broader recessionary risks. They believe that Trump might be responsive to market pressure, but they aren’t sold on this hope.
The markets are focusing all of their attention on the tariffs—trying to divine how long they’ll be in place and what the magnitude of the damage will be. They haven’t begun to process what went down at Treasury over the weekend.
3) Drop is 7 percent to 9 percent: The markets are spooked. It’s not a full-blown panic, but no one knows which end is up or what the exit strategy might be. The fear is that tariffs have opened a Pandora’s box that, combined with instability in Europe and the increased potential for instability in Asia, raises the possibility that things could get bad.
Though no one is ready to start speculating on just what this land of bad might look like."
(4) Drop is > 9 percent: A selloff of this magnitude would suggest absolute panic at the worst level in living memory. (Other than COVID and the 2008 financial crisis, you’d have to go back to the crash of 1987 to find an analogue.)
"At this level, the market is signaling that it has no confidence in the near-to-medium-term American economy and cannot even begin to price the tail risk."
The author makes the point that,
