Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

Republicans in disarray!

I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!

The choice is between normal and crazy.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Democrats are back in array!

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Open Thread: The Pope, He’s on Everybody’s List!

Open Thread: The Pope, He’s on Everybody’s List!

by | 86 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

From the Bloomberg Politics article:

… “Pope Francis has been a powerful voice for life at a time when life is profoundly threatened in America,” Cruz said. “Pope Francis has been a powerful voice for marriage at a time when five unelected judges are seeking to tear down marriage laws across this country. And Pope Francis has been a powerful voice for religious liberty at a time when the Obama administration is waging a relentless war against religious liberty.”…

The Texas senator, an outspoken critic of illegal immigration, sounded less moved by Pope Francis’ impassioned call to be compassionate toward people who “travel north in search of a better life,” a reference to the recent wave of undocumented immigrants to the U.S., many of whom have fled violence in Central America.

“When we speak of welcoming immigrants, I believe that should refer to legal immigrants,” said Cruz, who noted that he’s the “son of an immigrant who came from Cuba legally.” He added that “we should celebrate legal immigrants” and “show compassion to people across the globe.”

In his long section on immigration, Pope Francis, a son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, said, “We the people of this continent are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners. I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descended from immigrants.”…

***********
Programming note: The ‘below the fold’ cheat-code commentor Robert Waldmann and Betty Cracker kindly shared isn’t working on this fershluginer machine, at least as far as I can tell. Sorry about that!

Reader Interactions

86Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    OOPS: Pope Francis didn’t mention Jesus Christ even a single time in his speech before Congress.

    He mentioned Moses. Must be one of those Jewish popes.

  4. 4.

    Jeffro

    I really want to hear a GOPer say “Religion needs to stay out of politics,” so secularists everywhere can say, “I KNOW, RIGHT?!?!”

    it’s right up there with wanting to see Reince Priebus lead the charge for getting big money out of politics: “Billionaires and unlimited PAC donations need to stay out of politics”, said Mr. Priebus.

    /wish

  5. 5.

    JPL

    Anne, How did you like the speech. I think I’m a tad older than you, but he reminds me of the time where you helped your neighbor, rather than shame them about being different.

  11. 11.

    gene108

    five unelected judges are seeking to tear down

    Clearly, Sen. Cruz, the Senate no longer votes to confirm Supreme Court Justices…

    Reagan, Bush, Sr., Clinton, Bush, Jr. and Obama just appoints people to the Supreme Court willy-nilly without the Senate getting a vote.

    What a fucking moron.

  14. 14.

    dmsilev

    @gene108: No, no, judges who rule the way Ted Cruz likes were properly approved by the Senate, and the ones who don’t rule the way he likes were forced down the throats of the nation by activist Presidents….

    …like Ronald “Anthony Kennedy” Reagan.

  15. 15.

    Morzer

    @gene108:

    Ted Cruz (would have) voted for the four non-tearing-down elected judges. Well, three elected judges and then there’s Clarence Thomas, the erected judge.

  19. 19.

    Chris

    If Pope won’t give your hard RW social agenda vocal support, there’s an easy solution: Lie your ass off & say he did.

    They’ve been doing that for a while. Back when he was first chosen as Pope, I remember an article circulating on Facebook that was actually a (fake) interview of the Pope a few years earlier, in which the man was pretty much verbatim giving the standard neoliberal line (“of course we want to help the poor. Free markets help the poor. Statism is bad.” Etc).

    The only problem is this Pope’s making it a lot harder than your typical Catholic authority figure for people to get away with that.

  20. 20.

    cmorenc

    Senior year in high school, in one class I sat behind a sweet, but not to bright classmate who called the Pope the “Poke” – in all sincerity, not being a smart-ass.

  21. 21.

    dedc79

    @efgoldman: It’s not just lousy teams. It’s these thursday night games. When teams are playing on three days rest, the games will be sloppy, no matter who is playing.

    Not that the NFL cares about quality.

  22. 22.

    Betty Cracker

    @efgoldman: I thought it was just me and the lame-ass teams I watch, but yeah, noticeably substandard lately all around. I know you have a thing about people complaining about the refs, but the officiating has been suckier too, IMO.

  26. 26.

    NotMax

    Football?

    It’s football season again, a time for tailgating, touchdowns, and traumatic brain injuries. Only a few weeks into the National Football League’s season, there have already been 14 concussions.…
     
    To make matters worse, new research on the brains of deceased former football players found high rates of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)—a degenerative disease believed to stem from repetitive brain injury.
     
    Frontline reported on numbers from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University, where researchers studied the brains of 165 people who played football at the high school, college, or professional level. They found evidence of CTE in 131 of them—79 percent. Of the brains studied, 91 of them belonged to former NFL players, and 87 of those 91 (96 percent) had signs of CTE. Source

  28. 28.

    dedc79

    @BruceFromOhio: Phill Simms keeps asking why it’s so quiet at the game. Well, the teams both stink. It’s a thursday night. They knocked down the old stadium that had pretty great acoustics for crowd noise and replaced it with a sterile building designed to maximize box seats. And the Giants and Jets forced all their season ticket holders to shell out thousands of dollars for licenses that give them the right to then pay for season tickets. In the process, they priced a lot of their most loyal, knowledgeable, and loudest fans out of attending games. That’s why it’s so quiet, Phil. Rant over.

  29. 29.

    srv

    This should put an end to the liberal bigotry that the right does not care about the opinions of other religions:

    Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, urged the Senate to block President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of the Army, Eric Fanning, because having an openly gay Army secretary may send the message that the U.S. condones the sexual abuse of children.

    In an interview with Gohmert yesterday on his “Washington Watch” radio program, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said that the Senate should refuse to confirm a new Army secretary following a New York Times report alleging that U.S. officials in Afghanistan told service members to look the other way on cases of sex abuse among allied Afghan fighters.
    ..
    “What do you think they will think,” Gohmert wondered, “when they hear that not only did we tolerate what was being done to their boys by people under our authority but we turn around and approve a Secretary of the Army that they as moderate Muslims believe is just an atrocious thing? They’re going to think that that is quite consistent with us approving of what was going on between the older men in authority and these boys.”

  33. 33.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @Baud:

    You know, Catholics don’t spend a lot of time name-checking “Jesus Christ” like he’s the guy who’s going to get them past the velvet rope if they just drop his name enough times. I mean, sure, his name comes up in prayers a lot, but we really don’t spend a lot of time talking about our deep, personal relationship with our good friend, Jesus Christ.

    Feckin’ Protestants.

  36. 36.

    chopper

    The ‘below the fold’ cheat-code commentor Robert Waldmann and Betty Cracker kindly shared isn’t working on this fershluginer machine

    so you’re Jewish now too?

  39. 39.

    Morzer

    http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/24/kanye-west-ben-carson-fan-vanity-fair-interview

    Donald Trump may have declared that he loved Kanye West and that the rapper “loves Trump”, but it seems West may prefer one of his Republican rivals – Ben Carson.

    In a Vanity Fair article published on Thursday, West glowingly endorsed Carson, who is gaining on the Republican frontrunner in the polls, saying: “As soon as I heard [Ben] Carson speak, I tried for three weeks to get on the phone with him. I was like this is the most brilliant guy.”

    Armstrong Williams, Carson’s business manager, confirmed that West had spent three weeks trying to get the Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon-turned-presidential candidate on the phone – and he had been successful, Williams told the Guardian.

    “They spoke for about 45 minutes,” Williams said. “It was a fun conversation. Kanye was singing and rapping on the phone.”

    He said the two talked about politics, about life, and about music, but added that “Kanye mostly talked about himself. He rapped – he was introducing Dr Carson to his lyrics and what he raps about.” He quickly added that “it was clean rap; his lyrics were all clean.”

  41. 41.

    srv

    Angry non-Economist Woman goes on Colbert rants:

    “One hundred percent of income growth in this country since the 1980s has gone to the top ten percent and that’s not only wrong, that is going to destroy our country unless we take our country back!”

    Maybe she should get a Trump hat.

    @Morzer: Kanye is a probably pretty close to a billionaire. I may not like his music, but he’s a smart guy.

  43. 43.

    Ruckus

    @Morzer:
    I was like this is the most brilliant guy
    Them must be some good drugs. Really good. One tab for a 2 week trip good. Funny colors and flying good. The one the guy with a loudspeaker tells you if you took some to get your ass to the red cross tent sooner than immediately good.

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    Filing away this recipe for Southern Indian crab curry as a starting point for possible later use, once I decide on how want to tweak it so as not to overwhelm the delicate flavor of the crab and and also conjure up methods and ingredients to make the finished dish look more appetizing than in the pictures.

  45. 45.

    chopper

    @Morzer:

    Kanye spoke to Dr. Carson of his frustrations with high school algebra.
    Don’t be all like X is 5 if 5 is what you mean/ If 5 is what is on your mind than baby just come clean he allegedly rapped.

    about right.

  47. 47.

    srv

    Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested Thursday that she is done with politics.

    “I’m quite content to spend my life helping young people find themselves, I’ve had my fill of politics,” Rice said at an event in Hong Kong, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
    “I’m a very happy university professor. … The best thing about being a university professor is that you see young people as they’re being shaped and moulded toward their own future and you have a chance to be a part of that,” she said, according to AFP.

    Well, that certainly limits the Cuck’s VP options.

  49. 49.

    Morzer

    @efgoldman:

    read and react

    Introducing the John G Cole Fall Blog Collection, and first on the catwalk is the R & R blog, modeled here for you today by the legendary Notorious EFG………

  51. 51.

    chopper

    @srv:

    “I’m a very happy university professor. … The best thing about being a university professor is that you see young people as they’re being shaped and moulded toward their own future and you have a chance to be a part of that,” she said, according to AFP.

    tell that to an adjunct.

  55. 55.

    forked tongue

    @srv:

    Does the use of “cuck” mean you’re just a flat-out White Supremacist or did I miss something somewhere?

  57. 57.

    redshirt

    I’ve given up potato, pasta, rice, bread, etc.

    And I’m a freaking vegetarian! I’m not even sure anymore what I eat.

    Some kind of fungus, I think.

  59. 59.

    forked tongue

    @Omnes Omnibus: But as I understand it, the idea is that nominal conservatives who don’t hold a strict white-supremacist position are like “cuckolds,” watching their loved ones get raped by the invading hordes of brown and yellow. Am I wrong?

  72. 72.

    redshirt

    I mean that for real too, since what is a worse sin than someone betraying your bed? Sex is our most basic connection, so to cheat that is to cheat the most basic connection between people. Which means WAR for a lot of folks.

  78. 78.

    redshirt

    @Omnes Omnibus: Pretty subtle. Could have made the same point maybe with Ulysses at the end of the Odyssey, to find his house and home filled with dudebros looking to hook up with his wife. Who could blame his rage?

  79. 79.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @redshirt: Subtle? The whole point of the Iliad is Paris stealing another man’s wife. And Penelope fended off all her suitors for years. No comparison at all.

  85. 85.

    the Conster

    @redshirt:

    This is the answer to my struggle of how to eat less animal products. I’m down to some fish and poultry, which I don’t want to eat any more. Where did you find quorn?

Comments are closed.