Tom Faranda's Folly

The gov't. "out" on social security payments.

A majority of (young) people have no faith in the social security system.  They may be right.

There's more - lots more - if you hit the link.

Did You Ever Notice the Asterisk on Your Social Security Statement?

At first glance, the statement did not appear menacing. I was told I could expect to receive a benefit of “about $2,136 a month” upon reaching age 70 — which certainly seems like good news. But immediately I thought of a parallel of President Obama’s infamous Obamacare promise: “If you like your Social Security, you can keep your Social Security.” Then, as if on cue, I saw an asterisk with the following message:

 

The law governing benefit amounts may change because, by 2033, the payroll taxes collected will be enough to pay only about 77 percent of scheduled benefits.

******

This impending “benefit rationing,” reducing my future financial “security” by $492 a month, may, in fact, not be the worst of it. Sitting in the back of my Social Security file was an earlier statement dated March 10, 2009. Again, followed by an asterisk was a sentence that read exactly like my 2015 statement except for two major differences:

 

The law governing benefit amounts may change because, by 2041, the payroll taxes collected will be enough to pay only about 78 percent of your scheduled benefits.

Clearly, in 2009, the government’s prediction — that Social Security would have to be cut to 78 percent of benefits come 2041 — was overly optimistic. Now, in 2015, they are projecting 2033, eight years earlier, with one percentage point less of my projected benefits. The projections have steadily worsened over the past few years, helped by a much weaker economy than the federal government expected. Does anyone really expect these numbers to get better?

 

 

 

WSJ: "Planned Parenthood's Harvest"

Good editorial; makes the point. And here's the 4th organ harvesting video. 4th PP video - it just gets worse

Wall Street Journal:

Abortion is legal, but taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for it.

Democrats have been picking fight after fight in the culture wars, believing they have the upper hand with socially liberal younger votes. But that assumption is now being tested in the wake of videos of Planned Parenthood doctors blithely discussing the harvesting of fetal body parts.

The videos, secretly recorded by anti-abortion activists, show the doctors discussing, among other things, the best way to ensure a “less crunchy” aborted fetus. It’s gruesome stuff, especially for anyone who has viewed the sonogram of an unborn child. Planned Parenthood’s defenders are crying foul over the secret taping, but these same folks didn’t object when Mitt Romney was taped in 2012 discussing the “47%.”

******

Planned Parenthood’s 2013-14 annual report lists $1.3 billion in revenues, including $528 million in “government health services grants and reimbursements.”...

But money is fungible, and every dollar in taxpayer funding allows Planned Parenthood to use its other funds to finance abortion. This financial two-step evades the fundamental political bargain that Congress has struck since the Supreme Court made abortion a constitutional right in 1973. That bargain, codified in the Hyde Amendment of 1976 and countless times since, is that while abortion is legal, taxpayers should not have to pay for a practice they find morally objectionable.

This compromise has long been bipartisan, or at least it was until the left concluded it had won the culture war. President Bill Clinton felt obliged to say abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” And even ObamaCare didn’t pass the House in 2010 until Bart Stupak and other pro-life Democrats staged a kabuki drama in which they elicited a promise that mandated health policies wouldn’t finance abortion. We know thanks to the Administration’s arguments in the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby case that this was all a ruse.

Now come the ugly videos, which are reminding Americans that the left brooks no restrictions at all on abortion rights even up to the moment of birth. This includes harvesting fetal organs and financing their delivery for medical research. Planned Parenthood says it doesn’t sell those body parts, which would be illegal, but it doesn’t deny that it accepts payment for getting those parts to researchers.

This is deeply offensive to millions of Americans, and it’s no shock that Republicans are moving to vote on whether taxpayers should underwrite such an operation. The surprise would be if they didn’t....

The bill states that nothing in its language “shall be construed to reduce overall Federal funding available in women’s health.” Instead of going to Planned Parenthood, the money would go to health centers, hospitals and other organizations that provide non-abortion services for women’s health.

The leaders on the cultural left are shouting as usual about limiting health care for women and denying their right to choose. But no such right is in jeopardy. Planned Parenthood can finance all the abortions it wants, but it would have to raise other funds to do it. Surely there are enough rich progressive donors in Greenwich and Silicon Valley.

******

In its political ascendancy, the cultural left has become even more intolerant of dissenting views. On gay marriage, opponents must be silenced and are obliged to provide services regardless of their religious objections. And the right to have an abortion isn’t enough; opponents must be forced to pay for it. By all means let’s have a vote about taxpayer funding for fetal organ harvesting.

Fr. Barron: Planned Parenthood & Human Dignity

Here is the first of the three (so far) investigative journalism videos on Planned Parenthood selling body parts. PP's medical director, on selling baby parts (no gruesome pictures)  I have seen the other two and may post links to them.

Fr. Barron's Lamborghini reference is to one of the PP doctors in the second video.

 

Buchanan on Sanders & Trump

Pretty insightful piece. hit the link for the whole commentary.

The American political class has failed the country, and should be fired. That is the clearest message from the summer surge of Bernie Sanders and the remarkable rise of Donald Trump.

Sanders’ candidacy can trace it roots back to the 19th-century populist party of Mary Elizabeth Lease who declaimed:

“Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master.”

“Raise less corn and more hell!” Mary admonished the farmers of Kansas.

******

Trump boasts that he will get the job done, as he gets done all other jobs he has undertaken. And his poll ratings are one measure of how far out of touch the Republican establishment is with the Republican heartland.

Kimmel: the killing of Cecil the Lion

Close to my sentiments.

 

Democrat $$$ going to Jeb Bush

Evidently raising lots from rich Dems.

Behind a garden modeled on Monet's, Jeb Bush addressed a lawn-full of chief executives and hedge-fund managers at an East Hampton, New York, estate Saturday morning. While the candidate is no stranger to courting wealthy donors, this time was different: about half the attendees were Democrats.

"This guy sells well," said Kenneth Lipper, the money manager and registered Democrat who hosted the event, after Bush left. Virtually the only one who left without writing a check, Lipper said, was a buck deer that wandered past the group assembled on the wooded grounds.    

******

During a course of the lunch with his girlfriend, Kathy Qian, Sabin passed out copies of a magazine that features him and his 60-foot fishing boat, Above the Ground; said he gave to 256 charities; and mentioned the climate-change center he created at Columbia Law School ("a big one"). An ardent environmentalist, Sabin said he's encouraging Bush to become "the Teddy Roosevelt of this century." He said he's indifferent to the rise of big money in politics.

"I believe in free enterprise," Sabin said. "You earned that money, you can do what you want with it. I don’t have a problem with it at all."

In some ways, the Hamptons are Hillary Clinton territory. The Democratic candidate and her husband have often rented summer homes here, and it's popular with movie stars and entertainers who tilt liberal. Suffolk County favored Democrats in the last three presidential races.

But Lipper estimated that the crowd of about 70 at his event was almost evenly split between the parties, and virtually every one of them donated to Bush. Lipper, 74, said he introduced Bush as the candidate who will "bring unity and civility to the process." He was impressed when Bush started his visit by introducing himself to Lipper's kitchen staff.

CNN: Orangutan with the right stuff.

When I saw this, I realized the Ape was smarter than Planned Parenthood.

A-Rod: Five Facts

Despite his faults, an amazing athlete. Turned 40 yesterday. And celebrated with another home run .

Clinton sexual harrassment accuser Willey starts anti-Hillary website

Bill Clinton sexual-harassment accuser Kathleen Willey has launched an anti-Hillary Clinton website titled “A Scandal A Day.”

Willey, the former volunteer aide to Bill Clinton who says she was sexually harassed by the president in the 1990s, explained the website is part information-oriented and part political activism.

Rugby: New Zealand v. So. Africa - tremendous!

Further UPDATE:Fixed, but with shorter highlights than the original

UPDATE: Bummer! Not sure why they pulled the video. Will try and find another one of this great game.

Meanwhile, here's the pregame haka.

This game was so good. Hit the youtube symbol at the bottom of the vid & watch on large "theatre" screen. New Zealand slightly under-selected to give some players - like the new flyhalf - experience in a huge game before the coming World Cup.

 

BBC: 80 yo hammer thrower sets new age record in UK.

Cool! Hope for us all. And here's another recent posting with the same idea - 90 yo woman decides to start weightlifting and an older posting Feeling strong? 91 year old breaks age 90 & over bench press record.

 

NYT op ed "Looking Away from Abortion"

By Ross Douthat, who is the token, once a week Catholic on the NY Times op ed pages - although I believe Maureen Dowd says she is Catholic.

Douthat's column could also have been titled "Facing Reality" as he writes about the recent Planned Parenthood expose' videos.

IN an essay in his 1976 collection, “Mortal Lessons,” the physician Richard Selzer describes a strange suburban scene. People go outside in the morning in his neighborhood, after the garbage trucks have passed, and find “a foreignness upon the pavement,” a softness underfoot.

Looking down, Selzer first thinks he sees oversize baby birds, then rubber baby dolls, until the realization comes that the street is littered with the tiny, naked, all-too-human bodies of aborted fetuses.

Later, the local hospital director speaks to Selzer, trying to impose order on the grisly scene. It was an accident, of course: The tiny corpses were accidentally “mixed up with the other debris” instead of being incinerated or interred. “It is not an everyday occurrence. Once in a lifetime, he says.”

And Selzer tries to nod along: “Now you see. It is orderly. It is sensible. The world is not mad. This is still a civilized society…

“But just this once, you know it isn’t. You saw, and you know.”

Resolute abortion rights supporters would dismiss that claim of knowledge. Death and viscera are never pretty, they would say, but something can be disgusting without being barbaric. Just because it’s awful to discover fetuses underfoot doesn’t mean the unborn have a right to life.

******

And it’s precisely this argument that’s been marshaled lately in response to a new reminder of the fleshly realities of abortion: The conversations, videotaped covertly by pro-life activists posing as fetal organ buyers, in which officials from Planned Parenthood cheerfully discuss the procedures for extracting those organs intact during an abortion and the prices they command.

******

And the problem these videos create for Planned Parenthood isn’t just a generalized queasiness at surgery and blood.

It’s a very specific disgust, informed by reason and experience — the reasoning that notes that it’s precisely a fetus’s humanity that makes its organs valuable, and the experience of recognizing one’s own children, on the ultrasound monitor and after, as something more than just “products of conception” or tissue for the knife.

Enough excerpts - hit the link - it takes about four minutes to read the whole column.

 

How I spent my birthday

Yes, today, July 26, 2015. 57 again (always subtract seven years).

At the top of North Mt. Beacon, picture by hiking buddy Jeanne Marie. Yes, it was hot and yes that's sweat.

We went across to South Mt. Beacon and Brigid and Jeanne Marie went up the fire tower. But then things got messy. Going south from there, we (I) made two small errors, leading to our taking the wrong path - etc, - etc, and having to be rescued by our friend Karen Riner, who lucky for us only lives ten minutes from where we were.

Here's a picture taken by Mike, as I blow out my birthday candle -

And a fast, lucky selfie with Brigid and moi.

More to follow on our hike.

CNBC: Most expensive Cities for Beer

Vital info! Very sad who's #1 most expensive ...

 

Great: Building a mud hut - 6 minute vid.

Amazing. And no tools, except the "primitive" one's he makes. In the description up on youtube (you can read it and see the video better if you hit the youtube synbol on lower right) he says it took him 27 days to complete, working at a "casual" speed.

I love this sort of stuff.

Joe's birthday yesterday

As Joe turned 22 years old!

Here he is two months ago at Tim's graduation & below it two pictures of him during the day yesterday - surreptitious shots taken by Brigid. We should have but didn't get a picture of Joe lazing around in the hammock. 

Joe is taking the summer off - the first summer off after six years with his summer job working to install computer hardware in schools.

Any bets that he's looking at his phone?

 

 

CNN: Carly Fiorina comments on Clinton's PP support

Here are the two Planned Parenthood videos that have come out. And probably more are coming.

• PP's medical director, on selling baby parts (no gruesome pictures)

 Here's the second one.

• 2nd Planned Parenthood selling baby parts video

And here is Carly Fiorina's discussion with Jake Tapper on CNN from a couple of days ago.

Gallup: Bernie Sanders catching on and up

Although even among Democrats, majority is in the no opinion/Not heard of category.

Sanders Surges, Clinton Sags in U.S. Favorability

 

Today is National Tequila Day!

Yup. July 24th. Go here to learn about it, and then watch two hot-blooded young blades talking tequila, and a complex tequila cocktail!

 

Don't want to meet this guy in a dark alley

Even his name - Ma'a Nonu - is scary.

 

Should Al Gore run for Prez?

This is from Salon, a liberal online publication. Found the article on Ann Althouse' blog.

There's a not very flattering picture of the three of them, at the head of the posting.

It’s time to draft Al Gore: If Democrats want to win, it’s clear neither Hillary nor Sanders is the way

Since announcing her candidacy in April, Clinton’s stature has steadily slipped. Things got even worse this week. We learned, first, that Bernie Sanders eclipsed Clinton in small, individual donations, which is an indicator of popular support among likely voters.

Second, and more problematic, the newest AP poll revealed significant weaknesses among Democrats on a host of issues, including trust, character, and compassion for average Americans.

These numbers are alarming heading into the general election, especially for Democrats. Bernie Sanders is running an important campaign, but it’s very difficult to see the entire party rallying around him.

******

Enter Al Gore: the one person on the left, apart from Clinton and Biden, with the cachet to bridge the establishment and progressive wings of the party. Here are 10 reasons why a Gore candidacy makes sense, both for the Democratic Party and the country.

Yawn. Hit the link for the ten reasons.

 

WaPo on the Chattanooga shooter

It could have been much worse.

Chattanooga shooter methodically moved through naval reserve center

A top general said the Marines, who had just returned from a training mission, had braved gunfire to save their comrades during the attack.

“The legacy that day is one of valor,” said Maj. Gen. Paul Brier, commander of the 4th Marine Division. “I can tell you that our Marines reacted the way you would expect. Some willingly ran back into the fight.”

Rugby: New Zealand vs. Argentina South Hemisphere Championship Series

Played in Christchurch, New Zealand.

 

Bonus! The haka before the game.

Child poverty rate has risen

Dismal.

The 2015 "KIDS COUNT" report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation said that the percentage of children living in poverty jumped from 18 percent in 2008, the year Obama was elected, to 22 percent in 2013. It added that the rate dropped from 2012 to 2013, in line with the improving economy.

Among minority children and in some states, especially the South, however, the situation is dire. The report said, for example:

• The rate of child poverty for 2013 ranged from a low of 10 percent in New Hampshire, to a high of 34 percent in Mississippi.

• The child poverty rate among African Americans (39 percent) was more than double the rate for non-Hispanic whites (14 percent) in 2013.

The report also explained that a lack of jobs or good income above the poverty rate of $23,624 was the reason more children have grown up in poor families.

• In 2013, three in 10 children (22.8 million) lived in families where no parent had full-time, year-round employment. Since 2008, the number of such children climbed by nearly 2.7 million.

Roughly half of all American Indian children (50 percent) and African-American children (48 percent) had no parent with full-time, year-round employment in 2013, compared with 37 percent of Latino children, 24 percent of non-Hispanic white children and 23 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander children."

 

Fr. Robert Barron named Bishop for L.A.

Ahhh that's good for Los Angeles. Barron is excellent. Here's his youtube channel. Fr. Robert Barron.

 

G.K. Chesterton quote

I like it. Here's Chesterton's wiki.

"Each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most."

- G.K. Chesterton

 

Chesterton and his wife Francis.

Rugby: South Hemisphere Province final

Played a couple of weeks ago, the Super Rugby 15 final. Teams from New Zealand, South Africa and Australia are in the Super Rugby 15, but for the final it was two New Zealand teams, the Highlanders and the Hurricanes.

High level match with plenty of Internationals (All Blacks) on both sides.

 

Progressive activists plan new Mt. Rushmore

From my friend Joe.

Nice!

WaPo: "What Went Wrong with the Deep South"

This is a fascinating - and sad - article in the Washington Post, from

 An opportunity gamed away For a county in the Deep South that reaped millions from casino business, poverty is still its spin of the wheel

In Tunica, Miss.

Despite all the casino money, a county that ranked in the 1980s among the nation’s poorest today had one of Mississippi’s highest unemployment rates. A county lashed 30 years ago in a CBS News “60 Minutes” segment for its “apartheid” schools still had a mostly white private academy and a public school system that was 97 percent black and was given a “D” grade by the state. A county that the Rev. Jesse Jackson once described as “America’s Ethiopia” had changed little in its poorest neighborhoods, even as riverfront casinos and other lavish development had sprouted up along the farmland hugging the Mississippi River.

Tunica’s strike-it-rich narrative is a rarity in the Deep South. But the disappointing way it played out shows how fundamental — and possibly intractable — the problems are in an area that lags behind the rest of the country as the poorest region with the least economic opportunity. A major research study last year on upward mobility, measuring a poor child’s chances of climbing the economic ladder, found that Tunica had less opportunity than all but six other counties in the United States — scattered across Alaska, South Dakota and Virginia. The Deep South itself is home to more than half of the most punishing counties.

 

Scientific brilliance - sharks attack because they're hungry

An insight from MSNBC

 

Fr. Barron: Pope Francis social teaching

Love Fr. Barron.

 

Competitive basketball dunker - this was only good for 2nd place?

Would like to see the first place dunk.

It's just the first 40 seconds -

Why gold price dropped this morning

And a brief discussion of why buy gold?

 

To read: "The Really Big One" (earthquake)

On the west coast. And it's not the San Andreas Fault. It's called the Cascadia Susubduction Zone

A well written, well researched, scary article from the New Yorker. Worth the twenty minutes or so it takes to read the whole thing.

The Really Big One. An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.

By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.”

******

... we now know that the Pacific Northwest has experienced forty-one subduction-zone earthquakes in the past ten thousand years. If you divide ten thousand by forty-one, you get two hundred and forty-three, which is Cascadia’s recurrence interval: the average amount of time that elapses between earthquakes. That timespan is dangerous both because it is too long—long enough for us to unwittingly build an entire civilization on top of our continent’s worst fault line—and because it is not long enough. Counting from the earthquake of 1700, we are now three hundred and fifteen years into a two-hundred-and-forty-three-year cycle.

******

... OSSPAC estimates that in the I-5 corridor it will take between one and three months after the earthquake to restore electricity, a month to a year to restore drinking water and sewer service, six months to a year to restore major highways, and eighteen months to restore health-care facilities. On the coast, those numbers go up. Whoever chooses or has no choice but to stay there will spend three to six months without electricity, one to three years without drinking water and sewage systems, and three or more years without hospitals. Those estimates do not apply to the tsunami-inundation zone, which will remain all but uninhabitable for years.

******

That problem is not specific to earthquakes, of course. The Cascadia situation, a calamity in its own right, is also a parable for this age of ecological reckoning, and the questions it raises are ones that we all now face. How should a society respond to a looming crisis of uncertain timing but of catastrophic proportions? How can it begin to right itself when its entire infrastructure and culture developed in a way that leaves it profoundly vulnerable to natural disaster?

Live TV shark attack on surfer

Australian Mick Fanning, a three time world champion.  "The shark rule come into effect and we're so happy he's ok ...". Event was in South Africa and they cancelled the rest of the day.

 

Here's a longer version. 

Occupy Wall Street & smart phones

Does Bernie Sanders own a smart phone?

Cardinal Pell (Australia) on the Encyclical

I have read the encyclical and will post about it in the future.

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican’s financial chief, Cardinal George Pell, has taken the unusual step of criticizing Pope Francis’ groundbreaking environmental encyclical, arguing the Catholic Church has “no particular expertise in science.”

“It’s got many, many interesting elements. There are parts of it which are beautiful,” he said. “But the church has no particular expertise in science . the church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters. We believe in the autonomy of science,” Pell told the Financial Times on Thursday (July 16).

******

Despite the cardinal’s criticism of the pope’s environmental stance, Pell noted the encyclical had been “very well received” and said Francis had “beautifully set out our obligations to future generations and our obligations to the environment.”

Obesity & weight loss: long odds

At least in England, where the study was done.

In a given year, the average obese woman has roughly a 1 in 124 chance of returning to a normal weight. And for obese men, the odds are even worse: 1 in 210. As if that weren't bad enough, obese men and women have very low odds attaining even a 5 percent weight loss in a given year: 1 in 10 for women, and 1 in 12 for men.

Those are the main findings of a new study out today in the American Journal of Public Health, which analyzed electronic health records of over 278,000 people living in England over a nine-year period. "For patients with a BMI of 30 or greater kilograms per meters squared, maintaining weight loss was rare and the probability of achieving normal weight was extremely low," the study's authors conclude. "Research to develop new and more effective approaches to obesity management is urgently required."

More if you hit the link.

 

Trump (stupid comment) vs. McCain

I like Trump, but his last comment about is stupid.

 

Whew - quick vid - Jersey Shore waterspout

On the National Geographic youtube channel

Published on Jul 17, 2015

In video captured on June 23, strong winds suddenly form off Long Beach Island's Brant Beach, in New Jersey. Though the videographer refers to a "tornado," the National Weather Service has classified it as a "weak waterspout": a column of cloud-filled wind rotating over a body of water. The rotation can be seen in a close look at the video. The storm caused localized damage and reportedly even picked up a 16-foot boat and then dropped it several blocks away.

 

 

New World Record in the women's 1,500m.

Dibaba of Ethiopia, who i think has other world records.

 

CNN: Plays Reagan to mourn the 4 murdered marines.

A beautiful tribute. Sad they had to go back 30 years to find something fitting.

 

Great pIx! Osprey nest @ Croton train station

Thanks to Maria for sending me the links.

Go here

http://everythingcroton.blogspot.com/2015/05/ospreys-nesting-again-parking-lot.html

And it gets better!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10205788210797589&set=o.124684690934636&type=1&theater

and fantastic! If you hit the previous/next buttons, there are 4 pictures.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=944314722273845&set=o.124684690934636&type=1&theater

Mrs. Clinton's popularity continues going down

As does other politicians (Bush) also.

AP-GfK Poll: Clinton's standing falls among Democrats

Just 39 percent of all Americans have a favorable view of Clinton, compared to nearly half who say they have a negative opinion of her. That's an eight-point increase in her unfavorable rating from an AP-GfK poll conducted at the end of April.

The drop in Clinton's numbers extends into the Democratic Party. Seven in 10 Democrats gave Clinton positive marks, an 11-point drop from the April survey. Nearly a quarter of Democrats now say they see Clinton in an unfavorable light.

"I used to like her, but I don't trust her," said Donald Walters of Louisville, Kentucky. "Ever since she's announced her candidacy for the presidency I just haven't liked the way she's handled things. She doesn't answer questions directly."

Meanwhile, over on the Republican ranch -

Clinton's bad marks weren't unique: Nearly all of the Republican candidates surveyed in the poll shared her underwater approval ratings. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a leading GOP candidate, saw his unfavorable ratings rise to 44 percent from 36 percent in April.

 

Wall Street Journal on Iran Deal

Give Peace a Chance? Or whatever.

Excerpts below the link. If you google some of the text you will be able to get past the Wall Street Journal pay wall.

Tehran’s Nuclear Triumph. The deal leaves Tehran on the cusp of a bomb while sanctions vanish.

President Obama was right on Tuesday to hail his nuclear agreement with Iran as historic, though not because of his claim that it will “prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” The agreement all but guarantees that Tehran will eventually become a nuclear power, while limiting the ability of a future President to prevent it.

We say this after reading the 159-page text, complete with five annexes, which offers a clearer view than the President’s broad and happy description. “We give up nothing by testing whether or not this problem can be solved peacefully,” Mr. Obama said. “If, in a worst-case scenario, Iran violates the deal, the same options will be available to me today will be available to any U.S. President in the future.”

******

The reality is far more complicated and favorable to the Iranians, which explains the celebrations at high levels in Tehran.

Start with the inspections. Contrary to Mr. Obama, the IAEA’s enhanced monitoring isn’t permanent but limited to between 15 and 25 years depending on the process. Also contrary to his “where necessary, when necessary” claim, inspectors will only be allowed to ask permission of the Iranians to inspect suspected sites, and “such requests will not be aimed at interfering with Iranian military or other national security activities.”

If Iran objects, as it will, “the Agency may request access” (our emphasis), and Iran can propose “alternative arrangements” to address the concerns. If that fails, as it will, the dispute gets kicked upstairs, first to a “Joint Commission,” then to a Ministerial review, then to an “Advisory Board,” then to the U.N. Security Council—with each stop on the bureaucratic road taking weeks or months.

This is far worse than the U.S.-Soviet arms agreements, in which the U.S. could protest directly to Moscow. Iran now has an international bureaucratic guard to deflect and deter U.S. or IAEA concerns.

There's more if you read the whole thing. Very comprehensive review.

 

Papal Infallibility vs. Papal Punditry

Or, moral vision vs. economic theory.

Pope will study critiques of his economic thinking

He discussed in an interview flying out of South America.

ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT FROM PARAGUAY (CNS) -- Before arriving in the United States in September, Pope Francis said, he will study American criticisms of his critiques of the global economy and finance.

"I have heard that some criticisms were made in the United States -- I've heard that -- but I have not read them and have not had time to study them well," the pope told reporters traveling with him from Paraguay back to Rome July 12.

"If I have not dialogued with the person who made the criticism," he said, "I don't have the right" to comment on what the person is saying.

Good! How many people criticized - or praised his encyclical without reading it? Plenty of people. So the Pope intends to give the critiques a fair hearing.

In the Bolivia speech to grass-roots activists, many of whom work with desperately poor people, the pope described the predominant global economic system as having "the mentality of profit at any price with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature."

Asked if he planned to make similar comments in the United States despite the negative reaction his comments have drawn from some U.S. pundits, politicians and economists, Pope Francis said that now that his trip to South America has concluded, he must begin "studying" for his September trip to Cuba and the United States; the preparation, he said, will include careful reading of criticisms of his remarks about economic life.

 

 

2nd. founder of Franciscan's Feast Day today

St. Bonaventure. Known as the "Seraphic Doctor." In the Middle Ages was considered a co-equal with Thomas Aquinas as a theologian.

I'm on some sort of Feast Day kick lately; here was yesterday's. 1st. Native American & NY'er Saint Kateri Tekakwitha feast day.

Times of Israel on the Iran nuke deal

They aren't happy. Of course to some people the Israeli's are war mongers.

16 reasons nuke deal is an Iranian victory and a Western catastrophe. Has Iran agreed to ‘anywhere, anytime’ inspections, an end to R&D on faster centrifuges, and the dismantling of its key nuclear sites? No, no, and no

1st. Native American & NY'er Saint Kateri Tekakwitha feast day.

Go here for some stuff about her - I took an excerpt from this, and it's below. Nite that Canada also has a claim on her.

Here's the only known portrait of Kateri.

Today’s the feast of Kateri Tekakwitha — holy New Yorker! — and first Native American saint.

1. When Pope Benedict XVI canonized Kateri Tekakwitha in 2012, he said:

Kateri Tekakwitha was born in today’s New York state in 1656 to a Mohawk father and a Christian Algonquin mother who gave to her a sense of the living God. She was baptized at twenty years of age and, to escape persecution, she took refuge in Saint Francis Xavier Mission near Montreal. There she worked, faithful to the traditions of her people, although renouncing their religious convictions until her death at the age of twenty-four. Leading a simple life, Kateri remained faithful to her love for Jesus, to prayer and to daily Mass. Her greatest wish was to know and to do what pleased God. She lived a life radiant with faith and purity.
Kateri impresses us by the action of grace in her life in spite of the absence of external help and by the courage of her vocation, so unusual in her culture. In her, faith and culture enrich each other! May her example help us to live where we are, loving Jesus without denying who we are. Saint Kateri, Protectress of Canada and the first native American saint, we entrust to you the renewal of the faith in the first nations and in all of North America! May God bless the first nations!