Tom Faranda's Folly

Supreme Court rules 5-4 in abortion/contraception case, upholding religious freedom

Only 5-4, but as Brigid said "that's a lot better than 4-5."

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that some corporations can hold religious objections that allow them to opt out of the new health law requirement that they cover contraceptives for women.

The contraceptives the plaintiffs objected to, were abortifacients.

10AM: USS Slater (last WW 2 warship) off Yonkers and heading to Albany

I posted about the Slater here Historic WW 2 warship going up Hudson tomorrow (Monday) and people are interested ...

Here are links -

When it's known which tugboats will pull the Slater, it can be followed real-time on www.marinetraffic.com. Check back on lohud.com for updated information. Updates also are available on the group's Facebook page.

If you go to the marine traffic website, you are looking for the tugboats Frances and Margot - the Slater does not register as a ship or icon. With some fiddling with the map, you can get tothe Hudson River and "see" the two tugs (their icons). They are moving at about 8 mph.

Excluding man, the deadliest animal on earth is ...

An interesting question if you're interested in that sort of thing.

The deadliest wild mammal is the hippo (#6) on the list.

Take a guess at the top two or three (leave out humans, who they do list as #1) and then hit the link below. Remember, it's the ENTIRE animal kingdom!

The Top 19 Animals That Kill The Most Humans.

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Recent alumnus article: "Does Notre Dame still off a Viable Catholic Education?"

The answer is a provisional yes. It's evidently not automatic - you have to seek it out while a student there.

If you are interested in the topic of Catholic higher education, this is a worthwhile read.

The question, “Is Notre Dame still a Catholic university?” does not necessarily share the same answer to the question, “Does Notre Dame still offer a viable Catholic education?” But the two questions are tightly-bound together. The sort of education on offer at any university is a function first and foremost of that university’s faculty; here, the “Catholicity” of Notre Dame’s faculty is crucial to answering both questions.

Fr. Barron on Bill Maher and the bible

His continuing commentary - excellent as always.

 

Alysia Montano runs the 800m race in the USA Championships - at eight months pregnant.

Great! When I was 35, I would have finished a few seconds behind her (she came last in her heat, at 2:32. She came fifth in the 2012 Olympics in the 800m).

Video of the race here with the emphasis on who was winning. And here's the two minute story on ABC news.

 

This is a more medically oriented video discussion, also from ABC.

Historic WW 2 warship going up Hudson tomorrow (Monday)

Thanks to Maria for giving me a heads-up on this. Off the Lohud/Journal News website.

... the last World War II destroyer escort afloat in the U.S. will make its way up the Hudson River on Monday. The USS Slater will begin her return voyage to Albany in early morning and should be a spectacular sight.

When it's known which tugboats will pull the Slater, it can be followed real-time on www.marinetraffic.com. Check back on lohud.com for updated information. Updates also are available on the group's Facebook page.

The warship, now a floating museum run by a nonprofit, served in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.

******

The USS Slater will begin her return voyage to Albany in early morning and should be a spectacular sight — this time during daylight hours — for those within view of the river, from Manhattan past Poughkeepsie.

The schedule could change, but the Slater is expected to be:

• Leaving Staten Island at 5 a.m. Monday, then passing by Manhattan shortly after.

• Passing through the Lower Hudson Valley from mid- to late morning Monday.

• Passing West Point about 1 p.m. Monday.

• Passing beneath the Walkway Over the Hudson about 4 p.m. Monday.

• Arriving at its home pier in Albany about 5 a.m. Tuesday.

Will see if can can spot it from Croton Point, or even better, the lookout point on the East side and overlooking of the Hudson, just south of Bear Mountain. 

The most influential Twitter user is ... the Pope

Who'd a thunk it? But he's only #2 in terms of follower (although according to some reports, many of the President's followers are phantom accounts).

 

 

Kimmel: "Old Navy Commercial with Guillermo"

Basically, a one line joke ...

 

100th anniversary of the assassination that set off WW I

A short video of what may have happened if Archduke Franz Ferdinand had not been assassinated 100 years ago tomorrow.

From the Telegraph (UK)

 

Washington Post and CNN on Bill Clinton $100 million plus in speaking fee earnings

Nice work if you can get it.

Here's the Washington Post article from this morning:

How the Clintons went from ‘dead broke’ to rich: Bill earned $104.9 million for speeches

And a one minute CNN video:

 

Obama administration has lost 13 Supreme Court cases unanimously since January, 2012

Two of them yesterday.

Did you know the Obama administration’s position has been defeated in at least 13 – thirteen — cases before the Supreme Court since January 2012 that were unanimous decisions? It continued its abysmal record before the Supreme Court today with the announcement of two unanimous opinions against arguments the administration had supported. First, the Court rejected the administration’s power grab on recess appointments by making clear it could not decide when the Senate was in recess. Then it unanimously tossed out a law establishing abortion-clinic “buffer zones” against pro-life protests that the Obama administration argued on behalf of before the Court (though the case was led by Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley).

The tenure of both President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder has been marked by a dangerous push to legitimize a vast expansion of the power of the federal government that endangers the liberty and freedom of Americans. They have taken such extreme position on key issues that the Court has uncharacteristically slapped them down time and time again. Historically, the Justice Department has won about 70 percent of its cases before the high court. But in each of the last three terms, the Court has ruled against the administration a majority of the time. 

So even the liberal justices on the Court, including the two justices appointed by President Barack Obama — Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — have disagreed with the DOJ’s positions. As George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin told the Washington Times last year, “When the administration loses significant cases in unanimous decisions and cannot even hold the votes of its own appointees . . . it is an indication that they adopted such an extreme position on the scope of federal power that even generally sympathetic judges could not even support it.”

And there's more. This from WSJ columnist James Taranto yesterday. Well worth reading th entire column.

They Respectfully Assent A string of high-profile 9-0 Supreme Court decisions.

...In the ensuing two days, the court made the point more strongly than we would have on Tuesday night. It issued three decisions yesterday and two today, of which four were 9-0 and one 6-3. The unanimous decisions included three high-profile constitutional matters.

 

 

As World Cup heats up: Soccer meets Chess

From my friend Joe (a chess player of some note ...)

 

USA advances in World Cup

Despite losing 0-1 to Germany. Who would have believed that Spain, England, and Italy would be out, and USA through to the knockout stage?

 

Ex Bitish leader Tony Blair on the Iraq situation

I suppose I am in the minority these days (but I'm still right!) that we need a proactive foreign policy, doing our best to promote liberal (in the classic sense, not the liberal v. conservative of today's politics) political and social values (democratic elections, the rule of law, respect for minority views; stuff like that). I am sure that in the long run this is in our own best interest and the only way to fight terrorism; terrorists don't stop because we declare the war is over!

Alas, isolationaism is taking root among both political parties ...

Anyway, I agree with almost everything Blair says in this Financial Times (UK) op ed.

If the link doesn't work, google Tony Blair financial times op ed.

Removing Saddam Hussein did not cause this crisis By Tony Blair. The Middle East’s problems lie in the toxic mix of bad politics and bad religion, writes Tony Blair.

The reason we got into such difficulty in Iraq, as in Afghanistan, was precisely because once the dictatorship was removed, extremist Islamist forces then made progress extraordinarily difficult. That is their hideous impact the world over. The fundamental challenge today arises not from the decisions of 2003 or those of 2014. It is the challenge of Islamist extremism and it is global.

******

It is a challenge we cannot avoid. Its outcome will dramatically affect our own security. We may be war weary and want to disengage but the people we are fighting do not share that weariness. Leave aside Iraq or Syria; look at Pakistan today. It has powerful institutions; it has a functioning democracy. Yet be in no doubt, the struggle it is waging is existential. Nigeria was two decades ago a model of religious tolerance. Today it is on the rack of extremism. Even in western societies, there are tensions that are real and dangerous.

The bad news is that this issue is not going away. That is why I am speaking about it. Since leaving office I have spent a large part of my time studying it and through my foundation trying to counter it.

Short term, we have to do what we can to rescue the situation in Iraq and Syria. In Iraq, without inclusive government this will be hard to do. The US is right in demanding political change as the price of its engagement. In Syria, an outright win for either side is no longer sensible; the majority of Syrians just want the torment to end.

Long term, we have to have the right mixture of soft and hard power responses, which fights this extremism wherever it is conducting its terror campaigns. We must deal with the root cause of the problem which lies in the formal and informal systems that educate young people in a closed-minded approach to religion and culture.

The good news is that this extremism does not represent the majority of Muslims. As the recent elections in both Iraq and Afghanistan show, where despite threats, violence and terror, people came out to vote in their millions. These people want to be free: free of dictators and free of terror. We should help them. It is in our interests that they succeed.

The problem: people have short memories-don't understand-don't care-don't want to face a multi-decade issue.

How Cochran won his Mississippi Republican senate primary

I posted about this primary yesterday. In Mississippi, I'd probably vote for the Democrat for Senator

Mississippi allows voters to cross party lines in primaries and vote in another party's primary (Makes no sense to me. Of course I've never voted in a primary since i don't belong to a party).

All the indications from a numbeR of sources are that Senator Cochran squeCked out his win against the tea Party guy by circulating a pretty dispicable flier in African-American precincts.

The Flier That Got Thad Cochran Elected?

Rugby: New Zealand v. England, 3rd match of the series

As New Zealand sweeps the series. The NZ wing is 6'4", 238 lbs. And the All Black scrum half - #9 - is superb.

 

In Mississippi, I'd probably vote for the Democrat for Senator

Too bad the incumbent Cochran beat the Tea party guy in the REpublican run-off primary. Cochran is the epitome of entrenched pork and corporate welfare. And he'll be running for a sixth term.

Cochran beats McDaniel in nail-biter in Mississippi

Yeah, I'd vote for Childers in the general election -

The winner {Cochran} will face Childers, a relatively centrist former Democratic congressman who holds antiabortion views and voted against the Affordable Care Act.

UPDATE: This is off National Review's "Morning Jolt" email (there's no link)

Good morning. Or is it? And what about last night? Yep, that's going to leave a mark. Personally, I think what went on from Biloxi to Yazoo City is going to haunt GOP politics for years (let's hope Jim G shares his reflections when he returns to this very place on Monday). But it's best now that you hear from the brains instead of the suits.

... Check out John Fund's take in The Corner, which concludes "Actually, the message was the antithesis of conservatism — that only an aging 76-year-old incumbent can bring home pork-barrel projects that largely benefit a business elite while the state's voters are saddled with more federal debt."

NY Times says IRS broke the law - only took them a year + to figure it out

But they only concede it was regarding the emails - and it seems nobody is to blame. ...

“In accordance with the Federal Records Act, when an agency becomes aware of an incident of unauthorized destruction, they must report the incident to us,” said David S. Ferriero, the chief archivist at the National Archives.

 

Rugby: USA v. Canada

First win for USA against Canada in years.

Number of refugees worldwide now exceeds the number in the 1940's

... for the first time since the World War II era, the world’s refugee population (including asylum seekers and internally-displaced persons) has passed the 50 million mark. (Of course that is, as a proportion of the global population much less than the level in the 1940s, but as a human tragedy it is quite as terrible.)

“By the end of 2013, an estimated 51.2 million people worldwide were considered to be forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations. These included 16.7 million refugees, 33.3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), and close to 1.2 million individuals whose asylum applications had not yet been adjudicated by the end of the reporting period.” - See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/14275#sthash.2zg34Yaq.dpuf

This is according to the global trends report released by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The press release states that:

“By the end of 2013, an estimated 51.2 million people worldwide were considered to be forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations. These included 16.7 million refugees, 33.3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), and close to 1.2 million individuals whose asylum applications had not yet been adjudicated by the end of the reporting period.”

If you go to the press release, there are a couple of graphs, one of which depicts the number of global refugees, IDPs and asylum seekers over the last twenty years. You can see that the number has hovered in between about 33 million in 1997 and about 48 million (1993 and 1994). What has caused this number to spike to over 50 million is simply the civil war in Syria:

“In August, the one millionth Syrian refugee child was registered; only a few weeks later, UNHCR announced that the number of Syrian refugees had passed two million. ‘The Syrian Arab Republic had moved from being the world’s second largest refugee-hosting country to being its second largest refugee-producing country – within a span of just five years,’ states the report.”

You can see the rapid change that can happen in just a few years – who would have thought a few years ago that Syria would end up as it is today. Of course, the recent trouble in neighbouring Iraq is only adding to the number of displaced persons in the region.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/14275#sthash.2zg34Yaq.dpuf

This is according to the global trends report released by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The press release states that:

“By the end of 2013, an estimated 51.2 million people worldwide were considered to be forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations. These included 16.7 million refugees, 33.3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), and close to 1.2 million individuals whose asylum applications had not yet been adjudicated by the end of the reporting period.”

If you go to the press release, there are a couple of graphs, one of which depicts the number of global refugees, IDPs and asylum seekers over the last twenty years. You can see that the number has hovered in between about 33 million in 1997 and about 48 million (1993 and 1994). What has caused this number to spike to over 50 million is simply the civil war in Syria:

“In August, the one millionth Syrian refugee child was registered; only a few weeks later, UNHCR announced that the number of Syrian refugees had passed two million. ‘The Syrian Arab Republic had moved from being the world’s second largest refugee-hosting country to being its second largest refugee-producing country – within a span of just five years,’ states the report.”

You can see the rapid change that can happen in just a few years – who would have thought a few years ago that Syria would end up as it is today. Of course, the recent trouble in neighbouring Iraq is only adding to the number of displaced persons in the region.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/14275#sthash.2zg34Yaq.dpuf

35th anniversary

Here's a dual portrait selfie at the Croton Landing at 8:15 this evening.

YIKES. To paraphrase Don Imus "35th anniversary. That's a great 17 years. ..."

Sunday Brigid thought our anniversary was the 24th, not the 23rd. I thought making an anniversary mistake was a guy thing?

Croton's 2nd annual St. Anthony's procession (and meal!)

Sponsored by the K of C and an old standby in Italian parishes. I love this kind of public event, which seems to be coming back.

Maria Cuduquest has some very good pictures up online here

http://everythingcroton.blogspot.com/2014/06/part-1-photos-from-kofc-feast-of-st.html

and here

http://everythingcroton.blogspot.com/2014/06/part-2-photos-from-kofc-feast-of-st.html

and below are a few I  took -

As St. Anthony is out the door and heading down the street.

About 70 participants in the procession and 120 or so at the post-procession nosh.

The signature stop light island of Croton on Hudson!

Past Black Cow

And around the corner

Fr. Nelson

Food time - here's the "bar". At the same time there was some babysitting and a wiffle ball match for children at the dinner.

Can you spot Brigid?

It wouldn't be a Knights of Columbus event if there weren't a 50-50. ...

Thanks to all who made this such a good event and enjoyable time!

Global Warming Update: Fiddling the temperature #'s

From the Telegraph (UK). I haven't done a GWU in ages!

When future generations try to understand how the world got carried away around the end of the 20th century by the panic over global warming, few things will amaze them more than the part played in stoking up the scare by the fiddling of official temperature data. There was already much evidence of this seven years ago, when I was writing my history of the scare, The Real Global Warming Disaster. But now another damning example has been uncovered by Steven Goddard’s US blog Real Science, showing how shamelessly manipulated has been one of the world’s most influential climate records, the graph of US surface temperature records published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Goddard shows how, in recent years, NOAA’s US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been “adjusting” its record by replacing real temperatures with data “fabricated” by computer models. The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data. In several posts headed “Data tampering at USHCN/GISS”, Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time. These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on “fabricated” data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century.

Baseball, a boy, and his hot dog

A dilemma. 1:45 minute video prefaced by a short commercial.

Cute.

What's a boy to do?

 

Top ten most corrupt states - and neither New York or New Jersey are on the list!

The measure is by the number of state official convictions. They then try to figure out how that impacted the various state finances - which would be a stretch to calculate.

Mississippi Named Most Corrupt State in the Nation

#2 is Louisiana

If you go here What Corrupt States Spend Their Money On   you'll see that  NY was in the second tier (second group of ten most corrupt, "the second circle of hell" as Ed Mechmann wrote in an email) while New Jersey rated as average among the sttes in terms of corruption.

I'm surprised that NY and NJ were not in the top ten.

Secret to a long marriage - an Italian man's wisdom

Sent to me by my friend Regina -

At St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in The North End of Boston they conduct weekly marriage seminars for husbands and men who are engaged to wed.  At the session last week the priest asked Giuseppe for the secret to his marriage of almost fifty years.  “Perhaps you can share some insight with us as to how you stayed married so long,” the priest implored.

Giuseppe stood up, “”Wella, I’va tried to treat her nicea, spenda da money on her, but best of all is I tooka her to Italy for the twenty-fifth anniversary!”

“Wonderful, Giuseppe,” exclaimed the priest.  “Please tell us what you are planning for your upcoming fiftieth wedding anniversary.”

Giuseppe beamed, “I gonna go pick her up.”

Yanks win with two out ninth inning rally

Down 3-1, McCann singles in a run, and then Beltran -

You can see the video here -

Beltran rips thrilling walk-off blast to beat O's. Yankees slugger caps ninth-inning rally with two-out three-run homer

NYT on author difficulties: "I Was a Digital Best Seller"

I occasionally wondered how many copies of those amazon digital-only books were sold and now I (we) know.

FIVE months ago I published a short book called “Boom.” Commercially it was a bust. No news in that: Most books lose money and are quickly forgotten by all but their wounded authors.

But this experience wasn’t just a predictable blow to what’s left of my self-esteem. It’s also a cautionary farce about the new media and technology we’re so often told is the bright shining future for writers and readers.

Last fall a new online publication called The Global Mail asked me to write about the Keystone XL pipeline, which may carry oil to the United States from the tar sands of Canada. The Global Mail promoted itself as a purveyor of independent long-form journalism, lavishly funded by a philanthropic entrepreneur in Australia. I was offered an initial fee of $15,000, plus $5,000 for expenses, to write at whatever length I felt the subject merited.

And it goes on. Quite interesting and a bit eye-opening.

 

Hero and heroine: A love story in pictures

Picked up on this off Ann Althouse' blog.

Taylor Morris and Danielle

And here's his website - http://taylormorris.org/

Clinton v. Palin on first week book sales

"Not even close." Only conclusion - conservatives read more than liberals. This is because liberals are already so smart they don't have to read (that's the expected spin ...).

Hillary Clinton's first week of book sales versus Sarah Palin's is not even close

Palin's book, which was released the same year President Obama moved into the White House, sold approximately 496,000 copies in its first week of release, according to figures cited by the New York Times.

That’s almost half a million copies in one week.

In contrast, Clinton, with all her softball interviews and a massive amount of free publicity from an excited press, sold only 100,000 copies from its Tuesday release through Saturday, Politico reported.

Angela Lansbury on acting

Angela Lansbury talks about how difficult it is for an actor/actress to make a living ...

 

Rugby: England v. New Zealand, 2nd match of the series

Played in Dunedin, NZ.

Miracle attributed to Fulton Sheen receives approval

A stillborn baby. Approved by doctors and theologians; now going to Rome for final approval.

 

The Clintons: True 1%er's

LOL. Only if you can afford high priced lawyers are you allowed to escape!

Wealthy Clintons Use Trusts to Limit Estate Tax They Back

To reduce the tax pinch, the Clintons are using financial planning strategies befitting the top 1 percent of U.S. households in wealth. These moves, common among multimillionaires, will help shield some of their estate from the tax that now tops out at 40 percent of assets upon death.

******

At the end of 2012, the Clintons were worth $5.2 million to $25.5 million, according to financial disclosures that Hillary Clinton filed in 2013 as she was leaving her position as secretary of state.

That total excludes the value of their homes in Washington and in Chappaqua, New York, any savings since 2012 and gifts already made to their daughter, Chelsea, who is expecting their first grandchild later this year.

Meanwhile her book isn't selling very well, even though Simon & Schuster gave her a $14 million advance. Someone at S & S is re-writing their resume?

WSJ op ed - A Plan to Save Iraq

According to this, there are viable options without USA combat troops.

A Plan to Save Iraq From ISIS and Iran

After outlining their plan, they make these very valid points -

The Syrians and the Iraqis have made their own beds—so why stick our noses in now? The answer is that al Qaeda, ISIS and others will not stop at Iraq and Syria. Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and others will be next.

Think subcontracting the job to Iran is the right call? Surely, no one wishes a Middle East managed by the ayatollahs in Tehran. Don't care? Remember the admonition of the 9/11 Commission: "The most important failure was one of imagination." Imagine what controlling vast areas of the Middle East will do for extremists of all stripes.

Yes, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has failed dismally to include Sunnis in Iraq's government, military and economy—with disastrous effects. Nonetheless, President Obama's formulation—that the U.S. will provide assistance only if Mr. Maliki makes necessary reforms—assumes that we have some leverage over Baghdad. To the contrary, Washington will earn far more leverage if it is willing to step in and provide the kind of support that should have been there in the years after victory. ...

Are these prescriptions a guarantee of victory? No. Are Iraqis and Syrians and all their neighbors worthy of another American investment? That's not the right question. This is not just about them. This is about the security of the U.S., our allies and our vital interests. If we do nothing—if our imagination fails us once again—it is the American people who again will pay a terrible price. Weighed against the limited requirements to help Iraqis and Syrians fight for themselves, that is well worth the effort.

Rugby: Australia v. France, first of their series

Good heavens! The French touring Australia and playing the Matador defense! This match was June 7th.

 

"Grandma Gatewood" - 1st woman to solo thru-hike the Appalachian Trail

A nice book review/article on the Backpacking Light website.

Emma Gatewood had 11 children.

Grandma Gatewood was the first woman to solo-thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. Her journey saved the trail and her legacy continues to shape the ultralight backpacking movement.

What could inspire a 67-year old woman to leave her family behind and solo hike the Appalachian Trail? The answer to this question has for long remained a mystery. In his book “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail”, author Ben Montgomery seeks to answer this question as he explores the life of the first woman to solo-thru-hike the entire Appalachian Trail. She carried no tent, sleeping bag, or map and didn’t have the comforts of contemporary ultralight backpacks and sleeping pads and nevertheless she is etched into ultralight lore as one of the founders of the ultralight backpacking movement. She would go back to hike the trail for a total of three times becoming the first to do so and her efforts later inducted her into the Appalachian Trail Hall of Fame.

She died in 1973. Here's the wikipedia about her -

Grandma Gatewood

Gatewood was born in Guyan Township, Gallia County, Ohio. She was a farmer's wife who had 11 children and 24 grandchildren, 30 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild living at the time of her death at 85.^[1]

The whole  wiki entry is short and sweet.

 

My (Fantasy) workout routine

Yeah that's me. Picture stolen off Fitocracy website (I'm a member).

Rugby: England v. New Zealand, 1st of their series

Played in Auckland on June 7th.; the first of a three game series.

 

And here are two brief commentaries

(1) by the England scrum half

(2) several New Zealand "boys".

Excellent NY Times column on Cantor v. Brat; how the press missed it

David Carr, who does a media column for the Times Business section. Well worth the five minutes it takes to read the whole thing.

Eric Cantor’s Defeat Exposed a Beltway Journalism Blind Spot

It’s now clear why the primary defeat of the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, came so completely out of the blue last week: Beltway blindness that put a focus on fund-raising, power-brokering and partisan back-and-forth created a reality distortion field that obscured the will of the people.

But that affliction was not Mr. Cantor’s alone; it is shared by the political press. Reporters and commentators might want to pause and wipe the egg off their faces before they go on camera to cluck-cluck about how Mr. Cantor, Republican of Virginia, missed signs of the insurgency that took him out. There was a lot of that going around, and the big miss by much of the political news media demonstrates that news organizations are no less a prisoner of Washington’s tunnel vision than the people who run for office.

All politics is local, which may explain why The Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Chesterfield Observer both took David Brat’s Tea Party challenge to Mr. Cantor seriously, but few of the publications inside the District that follow the majority leader’s every wiggle and wobble sensed that he was leaving the home fires dangerously unattended.

Soccer v. Rugby explained in one picture

Sent to me by my friend Nancy ! And I love it...

 

The Pope on the global economy

From last week.

Pope Francis said the global economic system is at risk of breaking down because of inequality and rising youth unemployment

“We’re excluding an entire generation to sustain a system that is not good,” La Vanguardia cited the Pope as saying. “Our global economic system can’t take any more.”

The pope said the difficulty with the global economy is that it puts “the god of money” at the center, rather than men and women, the newspaper reported. He said that globalization works when it brings together different ways of thinking, rather than eliminating them,...

Here's the full text of his interview -

Full text of Pope Francis’ Interview with ‘La Vanguardia’

The Pope's Father's Day Message

The picture is off the email that the Magnificat prayer book folks sent around for Father's Day.

"Best wishes, best wishes to you on your day!

I ask for you the grace to be ever closer to your children, allow them to grow, but be close, close!

They need you, your presence, your closeness, your love....

As Joseph was for Jesus, [be] the example and the teacher of the wisdom that is nourished by the Word of God."   

 

(Pope Francis - Father's Day Message 2014)

For the full text of Pope Francis's Father's Day message 

click here

 

Saint Joseph, Pietro Annigoni (1910-1988), Florence, San Lorenzo, Italy.

 

WSJ: "The IRS Loses Lerner's Emails"

Subtitle:

And other news that the Beltway press corps won't cover.

The IRS—remember those jaunty folks?—announced Friday that it can't find two years of emails from Lois Lerner to the Departments of Justice or Treasury. And none to the White House or Democrats on Capitol Hill. An agency spokesman blames a computer crash.

Never underestimate government incompetence, but how convenient. ... Now we'll never know whose orders she was following, or what directions she was giving. If the Reagan White House had ever offered up this excuse, John Dingell would have held the entire government in contempt.

The suspicion that this is willful obstruction of Congress is all the more warranted because this week we also learned that the IRS, days before the 2010 election, shipped a 1.1 million page database about tax-exempt groups to the FBI. Why? New emails turned up by Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee show Department of Justice officials worked with Ms. Lerner to investigate groups critical of President Obama.

Speechless. And they'll get away with it.

Nice short interview with Sophia Loren

Almost 80 years old.

WSJ: "Brat Republicans. In Virginia, a vote for smaller government."

According to this analysis the upstart beating Eric Cantor was about more than immigration.

It's true that Mr. Brat attacked Mr. Cantor for pursuing bipartisan immigration reform. But a survey from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling finds that roughly 70% of Republicans in Virginia's 7th Congressional district favor such reform.

So how did Mr. Brat, a relative unknown who raised around $200,000, defeat the Washington power broker who raised more than $5 million? The Brat insurgency was based on a broad critique of the nexus between big business and big government, and Mr. Cantor's role in expanding it.

As a Journal editorial notes, Mr. Brat "ran against Fannie Mae FNMA -1.58% and Freddie Mac, FMCC -1.38% which is the Lord's work, as well as the farm and flood insurance bills that Mr. Cantor guided through the House this year. To the extent his victory warns the GOP to disavow crony capitalism, Mr. Brat has done a public service." Mr. Brat also attacked the Majority Leader for his support of the TARP bank bailouts, Medicare expansion and various spending bills.

Three more paragraphs if you hit the link.

George H. W. Bush parachutes on 90th birthday

A tandem jump. Love the wheelchair at the end. He jumped on his 75th, 80th, and 85th also.

 

Great short vid: "Alcohol Use in the Early Republic", off C-Span

Explains why we kept admitting states to the union, and where the term "eye-opener" comes from.

 

In Chile, take the stairs, not the elevator.

In Santiago, as the elevator takes off 31 floors and slams into the roof. Not sure what happened to the rider!

The Chilean newspaper, El Mercurio, reports that Mr Acevedo suffered head and leg injuries and was immediately rushed to hospital after being rescued by firefighters.