"You Can See Everything is a 2026 American metadocumentary film directed by Nathan Fielder (in his feature directorial debut) and Lance Oppenheim. It follows Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the defunct health technology company Theranos, and her partner Billy Evans, who invited a film crew to document them beginning in the weeks before Holmes began serving a United States federal prison sentence for defrauding investors.["
Last Saturday Obama was in Cleveland for a rally. Betty and I spent much of the afternoon watching the whole thing on YouTube beginning with all the Democratic officials and minor candidates then those for Governor and Senator. Kind of like a mini convention. Somewhat boring but at least we still can have political rallies. I went down to the county office building for early voting on Tuesday.
Here is the Obama speech (captioned). From the articles in NYTimes and WAPO looks like this is shaping into a battle between Obama and Trump. Trump is really going to be disturbed if the Republicans lose both races in Ohio. Some of the analysts are saying that while he is campaigning hard, he is likely more concerned about controlling the Republican party into the indefinite future than controlling the House and Senate for the next two years. After all he has been governing by executive order with the blessing of the Supreme Court.
Mr. Obama has engaged heavily with midterm races, taping dozens of ads for candidates. But until Saturday, his time on the trail had been limited to light campaigning in the spring with James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas.
Mr. Obama made late endorsements over the weekend in Florida, backing David Jolly, the Democratic nominee for Florida governor, and Angie Nixon, the left-wing Democratic Senate nominee, who would be Florida’s first Black senator.
Mr. Obama was the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry Ohio, which was once seen as a quintessential swing state but has been drifting toward Republicans for years. Democrats have grown increasingly optimistic about their chances in the midterm elections in Ohio, though, as the state’s agriculture-heavy economy has buckled under the weight of the war in Iran and the president’s tariff policies.
In bluer Michigan, the Democratic Senate nominee, Dr. El-Sayed, has been trying to shore up his support from Black and Jewish voters. Republicans see his race against Mike Rogers, a Republican former congressman, as their best chance to flip a Senate seat.
Democrats emerged divided from a bitter Senate primary race between the progressive Dr. El-Sayed and Representative Haley Stevens, a moderate. Some Jewish Democrats in Michigan say they are concerned by Dr. El-Sayed’s fierce criticism of Israel and are torn about whether to support him. Tensions between Michigan’s Black and Arab American communities have also challenged Dr. El-Sayed.
At his evening rally, Mr. Obama, a more moderate Democrat, acknowledged differences that Dr. El-Sayed had expressed with his presidency in the past.
“You know who else doesn’t agree with everything I do?” he asked the crowd at a high school gymnasium. “Michelle Obama.”
Mr. Obama suggested there would be power in sending Dr. El-Sayed to Washington to join Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a Jewish Democrat who has endorsed Dr. El-Sayed.
“Imagine the power duo of Abdul and Elissa,” Mr. Obama said. “You’ve got a Muslim man, you got a Jewish woman fighting for you in the United States Senate. That’s something, Michigan, you can be proud of.”
The appearances by Mr. Trump and Mr. Obama on Saturday were striking in their contrasting styles: While Mr. Trump’s speech was lengthy and meandering, Mr. Obama’s two speeches were far more scripted. Mr. Trump spoke longer in his one speech than Mr. Obama did across two.
This is my homily for today, the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A. Today's readings are here.
Just a quick note: this homily is considerably shorter than what I would usually give. We were asked to keep the preaching short today in order to leave time for a 'sales pitch' for an archdiocesan fundraising initiative called Generation to Generation.
I also preached to the children today at the mass which is now billed as our Family Mass. I don't post the text here as it was interactive and mostly spontaneous, with me asking the children many questions about what commandments are, and what it means to love our neighbor. What follows is today's "adult homily".
Recently I have begun to have an interest in the agricultural practice of gleaning. In the OT this was the commandment that we are not to totally harvest all of our fields or vineyards but to leave some for the poor (the widow, the orphan, the foreigner) to harvest. Today our food banks are largely gleaning operations where the leftovers from our grocery stores are distributed to the needy.
This interest in gleaning was generated by the fact that this summer we had a huge surplus of tomatoes. After canning more than thirty quarts, we begin delivering the BEST of our remaining tomatoes to the parish food pantry in leftover cartons from last year when we had had to purchase tomatoes from a local farm market. Those cartons have a capacity of ten pounds and we filled seven of them.
Our vicar of deacons sent out a link to a blog post I'd like to highlight in this post. It addresses the imperative instruction given to us at the end of mass: "Go!"
The article on the Commonweal site begins with "Prophetic Words." While both the conference "special statement" last year and many other statements by individual bishops and officers have been critical of government policy and actions, I doubt whether the bishops would appreciate their words and actions being labeled prophetic. I think they see themselves as doing their job as bishops.
If the Democrats win the House and Senate in November, their rebuke of administration policy on immigration will become just a part of a broader rebuke by the American people rather than the words of some dissenting or marginal prophets.
As I point out in my comments, as the public becomes more aware during the lead up to the 2028 elections that reducing immigration is reducing our population growth, one will no longer have to evoke "sympathy" or "Catholic social teaching" when it becomes evident that increasing rather than decreasing immigration is in our rational best interests as a nation. Indeed, it might become evident that immigration might make America great in the future as it has in the past. A complete repudiation of Trump.
Introducing The First Word: Heidi Schlumpf’s weekly guide to Catholic news and commentary
Dear Commonweal reader,
This is an exciting moment in the Church—and that means it’s a busy time for us at Commonweal. Interest in Roman Catholicism is on the rise, especially among young people. Catholic social teaching is having a moment, with many looking to Rome for guidance on the AI threat. A U.S.-born pope is changing U.S. Catholicism and the American bishops seem increasingly willing to stand up to MAGA nativism.
To make sense of these trends and developments, it’s wise to consult an experienced guide. That’s why we’re launching The First Word, a weekly newsletter from Commonweal senior correspondent Heidi Schlumpf.
When the news becomes disorienting, Heidi Schlumpf helps put things back into perspective. With more than three decades of reporting experience and commenting on the issues of the day, Heidi knows how to separate the news from the noise, helping you interpret this unique moment in our Church, politics, culture, and beyond.
In each edition of The First Word, Heidi will give you a behind-the-scenes look at her reporting process and tell you what she’ll be following in the days ahead. She’ll also share some of the things that keep her hopeful when hope can seem hard to find.
As one who feels closest to God in nature and silence, I am firmly in Annie Dillard’s camp. It’s probably 30 years since I last read one of her books. I think it’s time to reread— now with a 79 year old mind. This is an excerpt from an article in the WaPo today. https://wapo.st/4hPY6iA
“Dillard’s great project, through her nonfiction books, essays, poems, novels, unpublished notebooks, watercolor paintings and live-wire conversation — not to mention her voracious reading, long walks, beachcombing, enthusiastic dancing and spirited sing-alongs — was to learn as much as she could about God. Unlike those metaphysical seekers who content themselves with the study of scriptures and other secondhand sources, Dillard examined God through the world he made, the way it does and does not work, the things revealed and the things left mysterious. She concluded, among other things,.that most of us are not serious when we talk about God and, bless our hearts, don’t realize how unserious we are. In perhaps her most-quoted summation of this insight, from her essay collection “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” she wrote: “It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” Religions profess to believe in an infinite, all-powerful God, omniscient, beyond time — and in the same breath reduce him to the pages of a book, an inscription on marble tablets, a hired gun to train on one’s enemies, a genie summoned to grant wishes.
Religions profess to believe in an infinite, all-powerful God, omniscient, beyond time — and in the same breath reduce him to the pages of a book, an inscription on marble tablets, a hired gun to train on one’s enemies, a genie summoned to grant wishes. Bakker’s formative years were immersed in the Assemblies of God, which taught of an unbridled, immanent, miraculous deity, an unpredictable God who might ignite a believer’s heart or bestow the gift of tongues without warning. But by the time he and his wife, Tammy Faye, came to prominence under the auspices of broadcaster Pat Robertson, Bakker had become an exponent of the so-called prosperity gospel, with its modest God of tollbooth transactions”
This great graphic confirms my long held theory that voters vote against the greater of two evils. I formulated that view when Lyndon Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater. The pundits said that the Republican party would never recover. I simply saw them repudiating the Republican Party represented by Goldwater.
Essentially in the midterms we almost always repudiated the party in power as the greater of two evils. We have absorbed the need for checks and balance into our voting for political parties even when we are skeptical of both parties. Those who are not rigid party voters do the work for us.
If I were campaigning door to door I would carry copies of this post, tell people about my theory of voting, and ask for their thoughts, and then carefully listen to them.
As seen in presidential approval ratings, Obama was a more popular president, achieving 51 percent approval at the end of his term. Both Biden and Trump proved less popular, at annual average approval ratings between 39 percent and 44 percent.
Note that Republican maximized their affiliation during the Biden term at 46%, and that the Democratic affiliation has always been between 44 and 49%. That means the Democrats problem is their failure to mobilize their base, while Trump has done a good job of mobilizing the Republican base.
The affiliation measure for each party is a combination of those who affiliate with the party and those who lean. Essentially the Democratic party lost people during the Biden administration.
Compassion and empathy are now seen as bad things. The first time I heard about this understanding of these traits that is rapidly spreading in MAGA circles was a quote from Elon Musk—“ "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy“. This idea is now even supported by none other than Robert Barron.
Hannah Arendt warned “ The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism. I think we’re pretty close to barbarism right now.
By now everyone has heard of Christa Pike's botched execution in Tennessee. I think it is nightmarish that they tried to kill her twice, and she is still alive, barely.
I have been against capital punishment since 1959. I was 8 years old then. How the subject even got on my radar was the Charles Starkweather story. Charles Starkweather - Wikipedia
"Charles Raymond Starkweather (November 24, 1938 – June 25, 1959)[2] was an American spree killer who murdered eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming between December 1957 and January 1958, when he was nineteen years old."
This was the first major news story I can remember. I won't go into all the details here, if you want you can read the Wikipedia article. I actually didn't know the details, most of the news went over my head. I did know that Starkweather was "on the lam", everyone did. His path went through our area on his way to Wyoming, where he was apprehended. It was a scary time. My parents usually didn't lock our doors, or take the keys out of our vehicles. But during this time they locked up. However Dad left his keys in his pickup, saying he didn't want Starkweather coming to the door asking for them.
I can say that I sorta knew a saint; well, I saw him on tv is closer to the truth. My mom liked his program, we watched it sometimes in the 1960s. I think by that time some of the episodes were reruns. But they were short; I think 30 minutes. To the extent that I was paying attention as a kid, I thought he was somewhat entertaining, once in a while he'd crack a joke. I still would find him preferable to present day televangelists.
I see in the comments to a recent post a short conversation about children's liturgies. As it happens, we've recently restarted a Liturgy of the Word for Children (LWC) at our parish that had gone dormant during COVID. There is a special Lectionary for LWC; it strikes me as considerably easier to understand than what we use in church.
The eminent moral philosopher Susan Neiman shows how naming and confronting evil is essential for preserving democracy in an age of demagogues.
"Possibly the best book title of 2026, I couldn’t agree more with philosopher Susan Neiman’s rehabilitation of the word evil, a very useful and necessary descriptor for the times we are living through. Setting millennia of moral philosophy against the livestreamed degradations of the 21st century, Neiman calls it as she sees it, and in so doing traces the dark path that has led us to this evil moment in history." —Jonny Diamond, Literary Hub
Call It Evil is a bold reckoning with one of the most fraught words in our vocabulary. Far from being a religious or outdated concept, evil is a vital lens, Susan Neiman argues, through which to understand the threats we face today.
Neiman is one of our most important philosophers, and one of the world’s leading thinkers on the nature and question of evil. She opens this sharp, revelatory work with the idea that the reelection of Donald Trump is the outcome not simply of political and economic forces but the erosion of values that have been subject to derision for more than a century. She goes on to show how we have been quietly bombarded from all sides with messages that undermine basic moral principles. Misreadings of Adam Smith and Charles Darwin have led to a view of human nature we now accept as common sense: ideals are for losers, or for politicians who wish to deceive them. Neiman then explores how that ancient view, first formulated by pre-Socratic philosophers, has been steadily promoted by corporate interests and (pseudo) scientists in the modern era. Drawing on history—from European fascism to the moral failures of recent U.S. leaders—she demonstrates how the normalization of evil corrodes trust, destroys justice, and endangers our future.
This is a book for readers who refuse to accept moral confusion as the price of political life, and who believe that confronting evil is the first step toward renewing it.
“He won’t shut up about having traditional Christian values makes you a bigot, and I got to say, a guy that age who is so obsessed and focused on transgender children — I don’t know about you, but I never want to see that guy’s web browser history.”
Political Issue: should we have clear signs and policies about behavior on public land. Recently I went down to Headlands Beach which has an annual sand sculpture display. This year there was a sign warning that defacing public artwork was a 5th degree felony and could face a $2500. In all the previous years the art displays had been almost totally destroyed probably by kids who think that half the fun of building sand sculpture is destroying them after wards.
We need to have clear signs and policies about things like camping and hiking on public land. They probably need to have some legal consequences if people are going to pay attention to them. Otherwise, many people may assume that getting into trouble doing these things is all part of the fun of doing them.
And of course, we also need to have clear signs and policies about the use of AI. Otherwise blaming misadventures on AI will also become a part of the whole experience.
Legal Issue: How do people go about finding out about their legal responsibilities before doing things? Especially given the myriad of possibilities: situations, laws, policies, etc.
I hadn't been paying a super amount of attention to the Lindsay Clancy trial. I just thought it was a tragic situation. But it had been going on for nearly six weeks, so impossible not to read some things about it. I thought this article on the America site was good. The title sums it up :
