Tom Faranda's Folly

First Mass at Notre Dame since fire; everyone wearing a hard hat

The Mass was mostly for workers and staff. This is from the Guardian (UK).

Heheh. Father's Day Card I was texted

By Joe, who is in England right now with Brigid.

Bill Clinton: 'I Thought #MeToo Was A Pokemon' (Any Pokemon fan understands...)

When the interviewer asked Clinton about the Lewinsky scandal in the context of the #MeToo movement, it quickly became apparent that the former commander in chief believed the term referred to a fictional character in the Pokemon franchise.

“I had no idea this #MeToo thing was about respect for women and stuff,” the confused president said during the interview, “I thought people were talking about that Pokemon you could catch at the end of the Unkown Dungeon, you know, the one everybody saved the Master Ball for.”

When the host explained to Clinton that women have been raising awareness of sexual harassment and assault through the use of the #MeToo hashtag, the wide-eyed President immediately became apologetic.

“I am so sorry! I would have been the first to voice my support for this movement and apologize for my actions while in office, had I known,” he said, wiping tears out of his eyes. “I just thought people were really excited about catching the legendary psychic Pokemon from Red and Blue.”

“Hoo boy, people probably think I’m a real jerk,” he added, shaking his head.

Going out on a limb: Op Ed by Robert De Niro

Speaking truth to power -

From time to time, fans, interviewers, and other liberal actors will ask me what I think about President Trump. I’ve dodged the question as long as I can, not wanting my extremely unpopular opinion about Trump to alienate my friends, family, and associates. But the time has finally come for me to step out into the sunlight and let you know how I feel about the man.

I know I’m risking my career saying this as someone who works with the liberal elite all day long, but sometimes, you just have to take a stand for what you believe in.

Here goes:

I don’t like President Trump.

There, I said it. It’s out there. There’s no turning back now. I know I’ll be relentlessly maligned, slandered, and crucified for this. But I stand by my incredibly unpopular assertion that President Trump is not a good fit for leader of this country, no matter what my far-left celebrity friends will say about me. The cost to my career and popularity among my progressive associates is a small price to pay for being true to myself and finally saying what no one else was willing to say: that Trump is bad.

Bring on the hate—I won’t be shaken.

CNN: Joe Biden is going to "cure cancer."

That settles it, as a cancer survivor I'm voting for Biden. Didn't Nixon also promise to "win the war" against cancer? Another point - cancer isn't a disease; it's hundreds of diseases.

Great story: "World War II veteran meets family of friend who died on D-Day"

All the sisters, and a brother. What a nice tale.

Reporter tracks down 11 year old who told joke about Pelosi

NEW YORK, NY—A reporter for The Daily Beast tracked down and doxxed an 11-year-old kid who told a joke about Pelosi at school one time.

"Hey, if Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump are stranded on a desert island, who survives?" he asked his classmates earlier this year. "America! America survives!" he said. His classmates didn't really know who Pelosi was but laughed anyway because the joke had the ring of humor to it.

Not so fast, said The Daily Beast reporter Kevin Poulsen. "It was necessary that we track this kid down and try to ruin his life so Americans can see that Russians aren't responsible for all political humor," he said, though it wasn't clear that any Americans actually believed that.

A tearful Smith begged Poulsen not to publish his information and tell the world that he served detention last year for forgetting to do his homework, but it was too late.

"You should have thought about that before you told a joke that kind of made fun of a Democrat," he told the crying boy, shrugging. "Maybe now you'll learn your lesson."

AMA reaffirms opposition to assisted suicide

Good. Would have been VERY bad if they hadn't.

Despite a concerted effort by euthanasia advocates, the American Medical Association has voted to retain its long-standing opposition to assisted suicide. The AMA affirmed CEJA 2, the report which recommended that the AMA retain its opposition to assisted suicide. The vote was 65-35, a huge margin of victory for doctors who want the AMA to continue treating patient, not killing them.

The vote is notable because the AMA is one of the largest medial organizations in the country, and medical societies are influential when it comes to legislators making policy decisions and in shaping public opinion.

**************

“We applaud the American Medical Association for maintaining their longstanding opposition to physician-assisted suicide. In doing so, the AMA sides with patients and people with disabilities who would be at risk for deadly harm through mistakes, coercion, and abuse, all the while carefully guarding the trust upon which the patient-physician relationship is based,” he said.

Vallière added: “Patients deserve care and protection, not a prescription for death. We trust that this decision will encourage states considering legislation to continue to reject assisted suicide.”

The AMA policy states:

It is understandable, though tragic, that some patients in extreme duress–such as those suffering from a terminal, painful, debilitating illness–may come to decide that death is preferable to life. However, allowing physicians to participate in assisted suicide would cause more harm than good. Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.

In the past year, CEJA has deliberated twice and concluded both times that the current AMA policy on assisted suicide should be maintained.

Who knew? German U-Boat in Central Park!

Interesting - if you're into this kind of stuff. This youtube channel has all sorts of similar items.

CNBC: "Generational Boom Lead to Market Boom?"

Ellen Zentner, Morgan Stanley Chief U.S. Economist on demographics. Interesting - #1 age in the US is 27. That's young compared to other countries.

Alec Baldwin quits SNL; tired of playing Trump

Of course a great spoofing imitation - but all good things must end.

St. Peter's Basilica - restoration of it's oldest Crucifix

From the 14th century.

Bloomberg: Socialist Paradise of Venezuela - where you can't even get a shower.

Unless of course you are President Maduro - I'm sure he smells wonderful.

On Thursday, Juan Guaido woke up and doused himself with a bucket of water. It was his shower. Like millions of Venezuelans, the man who dozens of countries recognize as the legitimate leader of his broken country can’t rely on the taps to run. “It’s one of the things I hate most,” the 35-year-old lawmaker said in an interview. “It’s a symbol of poverty, and during much of my life I had to do it.”

And yet, he was for the most part characteristically upbeat, exuding that can-do spirit that his followers love and his detractors find naive, as he talked about how Venezuela would have to tolerate much more suffering in order to topple Nicolas Maduro’s autocratic regime. Despite the pain, he said, the U.S. shouldn’t ease up on the sanctions that are deepening the worst economic crisis in the country’s history.

“It’s going to get worse” before things turn, he warned.

Ultimately, he insisted, the opposition movement, rekindled after he became leader of the National Assembly in January, would succeed. New elections could be held in six or nine months because the pressure simply won’t let up on Maduro’s closest collaborators to break ranks, he said.

 

Fr. Rutler on the "Catholic" Senator Gillibrand

Rutler's weekly email column that came out Saturday afternoon.

While experience cautions theologians against the quicksand of politics, politicians not infrequently rush in to theological matters where angels fear to tread. So it was on May 29 when our junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, announced on National Public Radio that the Church is wrong about abortion, homosexuality, and the male priesthood. This puts her at odds with all the saints and doctors of the Church, and with Jesus Christ. The latter sent his Holy Spirit on Pentecost to lead the Church into all truth, and it is hard to believe that he has reversed himself in our Republic’s recent years. Since it is “impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18), he would be at a disadvantage were he to run for the Senate from New York. This would be a trifling matter were it not for the fact that Senator Gillibrand tells Catholics that she is a Catholic.

   On various issues, Gillibrand has boasted about her “flexibility.” This was evident when, as a Congresswoman representing a district populated by hunters, she enjoyed a 100% approval rating from the National Rifle Association, but when she became a senator, she got an “F” rating from that same NRA, which she has since theatrically described as “the worst organization in this country.” Such flexibility reminds one of Ramsay MacDonald, whom Churchill likened to the Boneless Wonder of Barnum’s circus, a spectacle that his parents judged “would be too revolting and demoralising for my youthful eyes.”

   This mendacity became more egregious in a Fox News town hall televised on June 2 when she said that “infanticide doesn’t exist.” The senator’s comments, aired by numerous media outlets across the political spectrum, ignored the “late-term” abortion bill signed by Governor Cuomo on January 22, as he sat next to Sarah Weddington, the attorney who lied before the Supreme Court during the Roe v Wade case. Gillibrand then defended the “right to make a life and death decision.” But if there is no infanticide, there is no death. This is not a mistake the Holy Spirit would have made, but it does reek of the Father of Lies. The senator’s rant was the rhetorical equivalent of a clumsy saboteur, like Claudius in Hamlet, fatally “hoist with his own petard.”

   Last Sunday in Romania, Pope Francis beatified seven bishops who were martyred after unspeakable tortures during the Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu. They died in defense of the same Faith that Senator Gillibrand has said is flawed. During the beatification ceremony, the Pope warned against “new ideologies” that threaten to uproot people from their “richest cultural and religious traditions.” He said that there are “forms of ideological colonization that devalue the person, life, marriage and the family” and the faithful must “resist these new ideologies now springing up.” Because of their obedience to the Spirit of Truth, those beatified martyrs will never be known in history as Boneless Wonders.

Here is an extended version of his column.

https://www.crisismagazine.com/2019/the-mendacity-of-public-officials

Why people ask for assisted suicide/euthanasia (and it's not for pain)

This is off the Mercatornet website - based in Australia and New Zealand. I'm sure this is true.

There is one fact about euthanasia which ought to be front and centre in debates, wherever they take place. Nearly everyone who requests it is not suffering from unbearable pain.

As one of the leading bioethicists in the United States, Ezekiel Emanuel, points out, existential angst is the main reason. “We should end the focus on the media frenzy about euthanasia and PAS [physician-assisted suicide] as if it were the panacea to improving end-of-life care,” he says. And Dr Emanuel, the brother of President Obama’s one-time chief-of-staff, is not in the pro-life camp.

This finding has been confirmed again and again. As Xavier Symons reports in today’s issue of MercatorNet, most of the victims of Canada’s new euthanasia legislation are affluent and educated and dread losing their autonomy.

If euthanasia is “needed” because people are lonely and dependent, surely the solution is solidarity and companionship, rather than a lethal injection.

‘Existential distress’, not pain, drives euthanasia. Euthanasia victims in Canada tend to be white and relatively affluent

 

Sebastian Maniscalco - funny 45 seconds - from "Stay Hungry"

About contractors

D-Day, Omaha Beach First Waves ashore; amazing essay from "The Atlantic" in 1960

This is so powerful. Pretty much just leaving the link - if you are interested, takes 15-20 minutes to read.

"Photograph of American troops approaching Omaha Beach, Normandy, on D-Day."

First Wave at Omaha Beach An account of the “epic human tragedy” that unfolded when Allied troops landed on the shores of Normandy on D-Day

Unlike what happens to other great battles, the passing of the years and the retelling of the story have softened the horror of Omaha Beach on D Day.

This fluke of history is doubly ironic since no other decisive battle has ever been so thoroughly reported for the official record. While the troops were still fighting in Normandy, what had happened to each unit in the landing had become known through the eyewitness testimony of all survivors. It was this research by the field historians which first determined where each company had hit the beach and by what route it had moved inland. Owing to the fact that every unit save one had been mislanded, it took this work to show the troops where they had fought.

 

Surprise! Tucker Carlson lauds Elizabeth Warren's economic goals and plans

The first five minutes of this are really interesting. Stick with it.

Latest Read (re-read actually): "The Longest Day"

The classic about the 24 hours of D-Day, June 6th, 1944. A great narrative. Of course it was made into a justly famous movie. But the book is so worth reading. The title comes from something the German General Erwin Rommel said to his staff months before the invasion; that the day of the invasion "Would be The Longest Day" both for the Allies and Germany.

If you do read it, google  "Normandy D-Day map" because the one thing the book lacks is a clear understanding of the geography; it's a narrative about the people. But one of the simple maps that pops up on a search is helpful .

 

 

Never Gets Old - Essex RFC: "The Story of '76"

Third Fourth year in a row I've posted this. It never gets old! Now 42 43 years ago...

Ahhh, 40 years ago - June fifth, 1976. In Downing Stadium, a Rugby Festival with four games. After three New York teams all get steamrolled by English sides, the England Champions Gosforth take on the NY champions - and my club - Essex. Along with Colin Kiley, I was co-captain of the team - in those days there were two captains, one for the backs and one for the forwards. We had won the NY Championship by going 5-0 in the first division.

The final score, Gosforth 17, Essex 8.

The following is excerpted from the Essex Rugby Club 1978 brochure - thanks to Brigid for scanning in the pictures and for my friend and business associate Judy for typing in the text.

 

The Story of ‘76

Training for the Spring, 1976 Season was hampered by late winter snow. The March 13^th opener against Manhattan was delayed one hour while players waited out a fierce hailstorm which left the field wet in some spots and ice-covered in others. This was not the type of weather in which to take on the seasoned Manhattan Pack. To make matters worse, U.S. Eagle Tom Selfridge had been installed in the back row by Manhattan and both experienced Essex fly-halves were unavailable for the match. Both sides felt each other out until the fifteenth minute when Mike Kenefick and newcomer Bill Gardner combined for a try in the corner. Early in the second-half Bruce Corrigan stole an errant Manhattan pass and raced fifty yards to score under the posts with Krenn converting for a 10-0 lead. From that point Essex held on for a 10-8 victory and the club’s first ever “big game” win.

Essex continued to improve as the season progressed to the point where it had won eight of its first nine matches and was looking ahead toward a showdown with Old Blue to determine the Met Union Championship. The new, young players were providing speed and enthusiasm and were meshing nicely with several of the more experienced originals who by now had developed some sense of what the game was all about. As the match which would determine the championship drew near, Essex was thinking and playing confidently.

Prior to May 8, 1976 Essex had never beaten Old Blue’s first XV. No sooner had the game begun than Essex spotted the opposition to a 0-6 lead and it looked as though they might never beat them. Winger Bob Piazza dummied two defenders and went in for a try from the weak side to get Essex rolling and the ever present Peter Cozens blocked a kick, scooped up the loose ball and turned it into four points as Essex rolled up 17 points before Old Blue was able to strike again. The 17-14 final victory assured the Essex Rugby Club of the 1976 Metropolitan New York Rugby Union Championship and some long awaited recognition. It also won for Essex the right to be the final opponent for England’s touring John Player Cup Champions, the Gosforth Football Club.

With one week to prepare for England’s finest club side, severe anxiety set in. Reports of the rugged Gosforth pack anchored by Irish and British Lion prop Ray McLoughlin filtered down from Boston where the tourists were manhandling some of the finest American club and select sides. In addition to hosting the party loving Englishmen for two days prior to the match, Essex had to witness a Fylde massacre of Old Maroon only minutes before taking the field. The eighty minutes that followed have to be considered the club’s finest hour. The Essex forwards contested the much heavier, veteran Gosforth pack at every turn. Tom Faranda was nothing less than outstanding in checking his opposite number, Steve Smith of Sale and England. Corrigan, Kiley, McDonough and Cozens covered by field. Mike Kenefick and Tom Crowley in the centers stopped every Gosforth rush, often well behind the line and penetrated the English defenses on any number of occasions. Bill Gardner and Peter Ferrara scored unconverted trys, the latter of which saw at least nine Essex players handling the ball. The 8-17 victory for Gosforth was the closest call that they had on their tour and unquestionably a victory for the Essex Rugby Club and the 2,000 or so New York area spectators.

Forty years later, thinking about why we didn't get blown out:

1. We were motivated to do well
2. We had good players at every position and a good bench - no weaknesses
3. Gosforth had been on tour for almost two weeks and this was their last game - and it was hot out!

My recollection is that the post-match party was pretty good!

D-Day 75th Anniversary - Medic on Omaha Beach

Another very young man in a terrible situation. And there is this - A Black Medic Saved Hundreds on D-Day. Was He Deprived of a Medal of Honor?

Louisiana Democrat Governor signs heartbeat bill into law

Here is a press release from Democrats for Life of America

Governor Edwards is a Real Democrat Who Courageously Stands Up for Women and Children

(From left to right pictured above, Executive Director Kristen Day, State Representative Katrina Jackson, Donna Edwards. Governor John Bel Edwards and DFLA Board Chair Janet Robert)

PRO-LIFE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR JOHN BEL EDWARDS SIGNS HEARTBEAT BILL INTO LAW   STATEMENT OF KRISTEN DAY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF DEMOCRATS FOR LIFE OF AMERICA   Democrats for Life of America congratulates Governor John Bel Edwards for his integrity and courage by signing Louisiana’s legislation to prohibit abortion once a heartbeat is detected.    Governor Edwards is a leader for the “pro-life-for-the-whole-life” movement by advocating for life in the womb, women with unplanned pregnancies, and support for families and for any person who needs assistance. We commend his consistent approach to governing.   In his first official act after his election in 2015, Governor Edwards signed an executive order to expand Medicaid, providing more than 450,000 of the state’s working poor with health-care coverage. As a result, new mothers have better access to prenatal and postnatal care, and Louisianans have better access to preventive and primary health care. Medicaid expansion has also been linked to more economic stability for families.   Governor Edwards has prioritized finding homes for children in foster care and children in need of loving homes. As a result, Louisiana set a record for the number of children adopted from foster care, increased the number of adoptions overall, and decreased the number of children in need of adoption; and abortions have dropped by 15 percent – from 10,211 in 2014 to 8,049 in 2018. The governor’s whole-life support includes funding for early childhood education, which was drastically cut by his Republican predecessor, and a living wage for families to support themselves.   Democrats for Life of America supports legislation to recognize the fact that life begins in the womb and the fact that a fetal heartbeat can be seen and heard at six weeks. However, we must continue to address the difficulty of our struggle to make the long-term commitment to that new life and the reality of the challenges that many women face, including poverty, pressure to abort their children, and news of a prenatal diagnosis. We urge states that passed, or are considering, reasonable abortion regulations to follow the lead of Governor John Bel Edwards by looking for opportunities and implementing meaningful support for economically vulnerable women and families.   The Republican Party’s efforts to pass abortion regulations that are unaccompanied by strong social supports will only cement the idea that "pro-life" people don’t care about the children after birth or about their mothers. The Democratic Party’s efforts to move away from the goal of making abortion “safe, legal, and rare” – the goal set by President Clinton –  along with an increased effort to exclude pro-life Democrats from the party, are only playing into the Republicans’ hands to reduce the effectiveness of the Democrats’ ability to protect both women and children.

30 years ago today: The Tiananmen Square massacre

Yes the man in front of the tank. What happened to him? Nobody can say.

Here is a really excellent article from NR online. Excerpts below but worth hitting the link for the whole story.

America’s Bad China Policy Since Tiananmen Square

On June 4, 1989 — 30 years ago today — the Chinese government decided it had been patient enough with the 50,000 to 100,000 demonstrators occupying Tiananmen Square. The protesters had called for democracy and liberty, but also denounced corruption and cronyism. What began as the Tiananmen Square protests became remembered as the Tiananmen Square massacre. Anywhere from hundreds to 2,600 Chinese protesters were killed, thousands more were wounded, and while many nations condemned the crackdown at the time, China and the world quickly moved on. The iconic “tank man” was never identified and his fate will probably forever remain unknown.

This morning Jonah shared a Twitter thread from a Chinese scholar, detailing how many of the protesters of that era adapted after the crackdown. The short version is that many who participated in the protest came to accept the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. The fight was unwinnable, those who went into exile were forgotten, and state-managed prosperity was arriving. He contends that most Chinese know exactly what happened at Tiananmen Square, but they see even acknowledging it to a foreign journalist as extraordinarily risky.

Helen Raleigh writes on NRO today:

While outside of China the world will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre that took place on June 4th, 1989, inside the country President Xi Jinping’s regime will continue its campaign of silence: not acknowledging the massacre ever took place; not apologizing to victims and their families; strongly condemning any commemorative activities outside China; and deploying its massive cyber-security force to vigorously scrub any mention of the incident from the domestic Internet.

The censorship will be so thorough that Chinese people won’t even be able to send a text message that contains any one of the numbers eight, nine, six, and four.

How overwhelming is Chinese censorship? They just banned 40 percent of numerals. If you lived in China, you wouldn’t be able to text the sentence preceding this one because of the “4.”

***********

The American government’s reaction to the Chinese government since the Tiananmen Square massacre was pretty underwhelming; some would call it a betrayal of our values. ... In the 1990s and 2000, both Bill Clinton and some prominent GOP Congressional leaders assured us that greater trade with China would bring them closer to democracy, freedom of expression, and respect for human rights. That argument was either wildly naïve, willful blindness, or ruthlessly cynical in its dishonesty.

...Year by year, American attitudes shift around about China, at least according to Pew Research, but Americans worry about debt to China, cyberattacks, China’s impact on the environment, loss of jobs to China, the trade deficit, China’s policies on human rights and aggression to its neighbors. It’s likely most Americans found the “one child policy” morally unacceptable. When there’s a dispute between a dictator and free people somewhere in the globe, China’s usually stepping in to help out the dictator. Oh, and the regime has put 2 million Uyghurs into concentration camps, complete with torture, squalid living conditions, and constant indoctrination. Modern minds look back at the genocidal regimes of the 20th Century and wonder how anyone could stand by as such brutality reigned. Then they shrug as every major country and government on the planet continues to do business with a government running concentration camps.

******************

Now the Chinese government is establishing some of the most explicitly Orwellian policies imaginable — massive facial-recognition databases that allow the government to monitor anyone walking down the street, connecting them with the extensive government file kept on their activities. Who’s financing these enormous projects to expand the Chinese government’s control over their citizens? In some cases, Americans, as BuzzFeed found.

Chinese authorities have detained more than a million Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in political-reeducation camps in the country’s northwest region of Xinjiang, identifying them, in part, with facial recognition software created by two companies: SenseTime, based in Hong Kong, and Beijing’s Megvii. A BuzzFeed investigation has found that U.S. universities, private foundations, and retirement funds entrusted their money to investors that, in turn, plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into these two startups over the last three years. ...

Also among the diverse group of institutions helping to finance China’s surveillance state: the Alaska Retirement Management Board, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Rockefeller Foundation all of which are “limited partners” in private equity funds that invested in SenseTime or Megvii. And even as congressional leaders, such as Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, have championed a bill to condemn human rights abuses in Xinjiang, their own states’ public employee pension funds are invested in companies building out the Chinese government’s system for tracking Uyghurs.

Google refuses to work with the U.S. Department of Defense, but it worked with the Chinese government to develop a censored version of its web search. There are a lot of elites who seem to see the U.S. government, and in particular our military and intelligence agencies, as untrustworthy, dangerous, abusive, and a malevolent force in the world. But they’re completely cool with working with the Chinese government.

*****************

Amazingly, we still have lawmakers and potential presidents who don’t see any of this, and cling to some wildly outdated and naïve perspective that China is a still-emerging technologically challenged rising power that will play nice with just a little more trade and U.S. concessions.

Joe Biden’s full quote, about a month ago:

China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean in the west. They can’t figure out how they are going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they’re not competition for us.”

If Biden gets the Democratic nomination, let’s put China policy front and center in the 2020 election. Donald Trump is a man of copious sins and flaws and problems. But his reflexive protectionism has led him to see the leadership of China more clearly than a generation of elites going back to Tiananmen Square.

 

 

 

Great - Trump & Queen Elizabeth Commemoration at Buckingham Palace

"Dignity, Duty and Patriotism"

D-Day 75th anniversary in two days: "Landing on Omaha Beach"

Less than two minutes - another 19 year old - enough to make you weep.

 

Sadiq Khan, London Mayor, rages about Trump

As you can tell from the video his anger is mostly because Trump is (no longer) pro-choice. Odd for a Muslim, since Islam is against abortion. This is from the Guardian (UK) channel.

 

A 19 year old Medic on D-Day - first wave onto Omaha Beach

A Penobscot indian from Maine.