Back in October Benito Mussolini’s granddaughter won the highest number of votes in elections for Rome’s city council. Rachele Mussolini, who won over 8,200 votes, belongs to the far-right party Brothers of Italy. (The Guardian 7 Oct 2021) My comment: Extremists are popping up in greater numbers, but pose the most immediate danger in the …
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced yet another challenge from within his own Conservative Party when Brexit Minister David Frost resigned effective immediately from Johnson’s cabinet Saturday. Frost, a member of the House of Lords, had planned to resign next month, but moved his timetable up to protest Johnson’s new COVID restrictions. Instead of implementing …
Continue reading ‘Careless of lives or just plain stupid?’ »
A Vatican document released last Saturday imposed further restrictions on the pre-Vatican II liturgy, including a prohibition on listing Latin Masses in parish bulletins. A preference for the old Mass is often associated with political conservatism and with a lack of support for Pope Francis. In his introduction to the document, Archbishop Arthur Roche, the …
Continue reading ‘Vatican announces new restrictions on Latin Mass’ »
Duck recorded speaking to human Scientists have recorded the first known instance of a duck that has learned to mimic human speech. The duck in in Australia – called Ripper – said: “You bloody fool.” Parrots, songbirds and hummingbirds were thought to be the only birds thought to be able to mimic human speech, though …
Not only do billionaires pay lower tax rates than working Americans, they also get to pick and choose when to pay taxes at all. Because they only pay taxes when they sell assets, if they don’t sell their assets, they don’t pay any taxes. That’s how many billionaires ended up with so little annual earnings …
There were fewer than 475 potential cases of voter fraud in the six battleground states that former President Donald Trump disputed, far too few to change the results of the 2020 presidential election, The Associated Press reported Tuesday after a review of every flagged ballot. President Biden beat Trump in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, …
Continue reading ‘Far too few fraudulent votes to change 2020 election’ »
Poetry (when calming and evocative) is very Epicurean. All the more so, I maintain, when it is rhymed. Why is that? Is it personal preference? Poets now despise the rhyme, Or that’s the affectation. But nonsense is as nonsense does And what is worse Than bad blank verse? – Gibberish strung a word a line, …
Opus Dei is an (extreme) organization within the Catholic Church, dedicated to “seeking holiness” in every aspect of the lives of its adherents, especially at work. Its members are supposed to follow a daily two hour ritual of wearing a spiked metal chain on their thighs. This is intended to remind them of the suffering of Jesus. They believe …
Drivers drove their vehicles into protestors at least 139 times between late May 2020 and the end of September 2021, killing three people and injuring at least 100. A nationwide analysis indicates that only 75 of the ramming cases led to any charges, with only 4 drivers convicted of felonies. (The Boston Globe). My comment: …
The Trump administration created a regulation that vastly expanded religious exemptions for taxpayer-funded contractors in two ways: (1) it expanded the type of organization that can claim a religious exemption to even include for-profit businesses, and (2) it expanded who can be discriminated against in hiring. What this means is that a much larger swath …
Continue reading ‘Discrimination under the guise of religion’ »
More than half (57%) of child psychiatrists in England are seeing children and young people distressed by the climate emergency, as experts warn that eco-anxiety is growing among under-25s. Although not yet considered a diagnosable condition,levels of “chronic fear of environmental doom” are likely to be underestimated, while international research has found anxiety is “profoundly …
Tropical storm Wanda was the 21st named storm in the Atlantic season in 2021. All the names on the official storm list were used this year, making it the Atlantic’s third most active year for tropical storms and hurricanes on record. (Bloomberg.com) Comment: Expect more of the same. Every year. (it must be a hard …
“A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused to jolt disagreeably by every pebble over which it runs.”. Henry Ward Beecher, clergyman and abolitionist. (quoted in the Montreal Gazette) My comment: Hard as it surely is to keep a sense of humor in these rather grim and hate-filled …
“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city”. (George Burns, quoted in Goodreads.com) My comment: Witty this is, but Epicurus would have demurred. He coveted his friendships and liked nothing better than to invite friends and acquaintances round for a simple meal and an intelligent discussion (free of party politics).
$25 billion. That’s the cost — as Public Citizen has calculated — of producing enough coronavirus vaccine to end the pandemic *worldwide*. And with the emerging Omicron variant, ending the pandemic remains humanity’s most immediate need. As it happens, $25 billion is also how much Congress could allocate for the military next year over and …
