Showing posts with label pope francis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pope francis. Show all posts

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Idiot Abroad ~ Trump Fails on World Stage

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Back in 2008 when candidate Mitt Romney went overseas and made one gaffe after another, we thought Romneyshambles was the worst the GOP could do on the world stage.

WRONG!

Donald Trump went overseas last week and continuously acted like the "Ugly American," making a complete jackass of himself and embarassing our country.

















































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Sunday, April 17, 2016

Pope Suggests a Psychiatrist for Bernie Camp

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Previous Related Posts:
Bernie Surrogate Calls Hillary and Supporters "Democratic Whores"
Bernie Brats Need to Stop Dissing the South
Desperation in Bernie Land
Susan Sarandon Likes Trump Over Hillary
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Bernie Sanders and his family took a whirlwind trip to the Vatican in Rome yesterday. Ostensibly he went there to speak at a small conference to spread his message of "moral economics" to a wider audience, giving Bernie more credibility as a world leader. Bernie's spokesperson said he discussed such matters with Pope Francis, head of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and someone Bernie seems to admire.

But the political price of going all that way to make a 15 minute speech struck many as hypocritical - more like a mini-break vacation for Bernie's Catholic wife than a sensible plan.

From the Daily Mail UK


  • Bernie Sanders traveled to Rome for the Vatican conference on Friday



  • He was joined by his wife, ten family members, a group of campaign staff, secret service detail and members of the press



  • The total group of what is believed to be below 50, flew in a chartered Delta 767 for their trip which can seat between 211 and 261 people



  • Sanders's wife, who's Catholic, and four grandchildren came on the trip 



  • A 767 like Sanders' that is flying 4,435 miles from New York to Rome uses approximately 16,596 gallons of fuel







    • But what really happened there in Rome? By the time Bernie and company were headed back home yesterday, confusion reigned. It wasn't as bad as "Romney Shambles" when Mitt went to Israel, but there were questions a-plenty about how the Bernie team were spinning the trip compared to what actually happened.







    From ABC News
    Fresh from Thursday night’s Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders landed in Rome today to speak at a Vatican-hosted conference.
    In his speech to the conference, hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Social Science, the Vermont senator focused on the “urgency of a moral economy.”
    “The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great economic issue of our time, the great political issue of our time, and the great moral issue of our time,” Sanders said. “It is an issue that we must confront in my nation and across the world.”
    . . . During a coffee break, Sanders exited the Vatican walls to address what became a mob scene of supporters and reporters.













    From CBS News
    "When I received the invitation -- I know it's taking me away from the campaign trail for a day. It was so moving to me that it was something I simply could not refuse to attend," he said.
    In reality, Sanders just brought the campaign trail to Rome. In a speech there, he hit many of the same themes, calling for a more just economy, and often using the pope's own words.
    Bishop Marcello Sanchez Sorondo, the man who invited Sanders to a usually obscure conference at an academy advising the Pope on issues like social inequality, says getting involved in political movements "is important."

    But there was confusion over Bernie's invitation from the beginning, with various spokespeople for Bernie at odds with the Vatican, which sought to distance the Pope from American politics. Just like the Kim Davis debacle with the Pope a few months ago, the Vatican's story differed from the way it was being pitched by supporters. And lower-level Vatican officials seemed interested in stirring the political pot much more than the Pope himself.

    For instance, as early as April 8th, the Vatican hinted that Bernie himself had angled for the invitation, which they considered "discourteous."

    From The Hill
    "It was an invitation from the Vatican," Sanders said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I was very moved by the invitation."
    But the senior Vatican official, Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, said it was Sanders who made "the first move" to attend the event.
    . . . “I think in a sense he may be going for the Catholic vote but this is not the Catholic vote and he should remember that and act accordingly — not that he will," Archer added.
    However, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of academy, formally invited Sanders to attend the meeting in a letter dated March 30 and provided to The Hill by Sanders' campaign.
    “We are interested in having him because we have two presidents coming from Latin America, I thought it would be good to have an authoritative voice from North America,” Sanchez Sorondo told Bloomberg, speaking from New York.

    Look at the difference between the way the "meeting with the Pope" was pitched yesterday compared to what the Pope says actually happened. The Pope was getting ready to leave for Greece and sent his regrets to all the members of the conference. But Bernie was determined to have the face time with Pontifex and lurked outside his rooms as he was leaving before receiving a "handshake." That was somehow enlarged into a "meeting" by a spokesperson named Michael Shank, and the Sanders camp in general.

    From USA Today
    "We had an opportunity to meet with him this morning," Sanders told the Associated Press. "It was a real honor for me, for my wife and I to spend some time with him. I think he is one of the extraordinary figures not only in the world today but in modern world history." Sanders, who is Jewish, said he has long been a "big fan" of the pope's teachings on economic justice.

    Sanders, in the thick of the presidential race, had to break off his primary campaigning and fly all night to get to the Vatican, where he addressed a Vatican conference on social justice and spent the night at the Vatican guest house where Francis lives.

    The pope, who made a brief trip to Greece on Saturday to visit a refugee camp, spoke to reporters on the plane home about his encounter with the American politician. "When I came down, I greeted him, I shook his hand and nothing more. This is called good manners and it is not getting involved in politics," the pope said, according to Reuters. "If anyone thinks that greeting someone is getting involved in politics, I recommend that he look for a psychiatrist," he said, laughing.

    From "Bernie's Roman Holiday" by Daniel Schultz
    The whole Bernie-goes-to-Rome thing has been a shambles, to be honest. The campaign got Sanders a back-door invite which surprised and irritated the academy president, not to mention stepping on the roll-out of Amoris Laetitia, the Pope’s new teaching on the family. Then they did it again, taking a private jet to Rome to speak on the idolatry of money in the middle of a make-it-or-break-it primary in New York, and arriving in Rome on a day when the Vatican would much rather be talking about Francis’ meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew in Lesbos about the European refugee crisis.
    As if that weren’t bad enough, Sanders showed up with his family in tow, undercutting the high-minded moral message he was supposed to be delivering, and Oh, sweet Jesus, did they really put his logo on a picture of the Pope?! All this in service of a message that won’t impress or inspire anybody who wasn’t going to vote for Sanders to begin with.
    I suppose that was the goal all along, though: to maintain Sanders’ inspirational image. Either that, or they’re making some kind of bizarre, desperate play for the New York Catholic vote. Or again, maybe they were hoping a bird would land on his podium again, which would do about as much good. At this point, I just don’t know what to think.

    From Reuters Video: It is Crazy
    To See the Sanders Meeting as Political













    The Non-Meeting was turned into a political ad!



























    At least the food on the plane was great!











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    Wednesday, February 24, 2016

    Trump Triumphant So Far

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    Previous Related Posts:
    Palin Endorses Trump
    Trump Misogyny - the Schlong and Short of It
    Trump Jumps the Shark with Facism
    Trump Gives Helicopter Rides at Iowa State Fair
    Trump's Hair and Other Viral Memes
    First #GOP Primary Debate on Fox
    Countdown to Trump Clown Car Debate
    Trump Tosses Univision's Jorge Ramos

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    Donald Trump can't get over himself, and his followers apparently can't get enough of him either. In spite of hopes from both Dems and Republicans that Trump would get tired of parading around as American's next white hope, he has become the nearly undisputed GOP front runner in the Republican Primary for President of the United States. He won the South Carolina Primary last Tuesday, and easily scooped another win in Nevada.

    Meanwhile, little Marco Rubio keeps insisting that his second or third place ties with Ted Cruz are actually wins, and that the longer he stays in the race, the more likely he is to accidentally win something. Or something.

    Cruz is just crestfallen that his God has forgotten to anoint him King of Merica yet.

    Kasich is hanging on by a slim thread of who-knows-what, and doing embarrassing non-Moderate things like banning funding for Planned Parenthood in Ohio, and saying that women "left the kitchen" to vote for him in SC.

    Rebublicans and Fox News are starting to panic at what a train-wreck their Primary Convention is going to be, with low-spending rogue Trump slamming everybody - especially the media - while praising himself to the skies.

    No matter how horrible Trump is, they love him. Super Tuesday is looming on March 1st and he's expected to walk away with it. And the world watches in horror.

    However, let's remember that this is the Primary Season, and in order to win Trump has had to be vicious towards minorities, immigrants and women (not that he minds) and has even attacked the Pope, and they still vote for him. But the fact is, once we pivot to a contest between Trump and Hillary, he just can't win anymore. He will never get the vote from minority groups, LGBT, women, and mainstream liberals. Oh, some ex-Bernie Libertarians may join him since they have vowed to never vote for Hillary, but the rest of us will just need to show up and vote against him, end of story.





















































































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    Friday, October 9, 2015

    Pope Distances Himself from Kim Davis Meeting

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    Previous Related Posts:
    Kim Davis is Back - but for How Long?
    Kim Davis Released from Jail Into Christian Hullabaloo
    Kim Davis Held in Contempt of Court

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    The Pope came to the U.S. and had a great visit, lauded by faithful Catholics and the Democrats as well. As soon as he got back to Rome, something hit the fan that no one expected. Kim Davis and her lawyers from the far-right Liberty Counsel announced that she had met with the Pope when he was in Washington D.C. and he actually encouraged her in her fight against the gays.

    Well, that's what they said. The real story is quite different. A conservative right-to-life bishop who favored the last Pope is behind all this, and he set up Pope Francis. And in the past week, her attorney's group Liberty Counsel has been labeled a "hate group." But what's really offensive is that a low-level American bureaucrat who acts like Dolores Umbridge should command the news cycle on a world scale the way this woman does. She really needs to resign and go away, or Judge Bunning in Kentucky needs to throw her back in jail.

    From the Wisconsin Gazette:
    The firestorm began when David and her lawyers from the Liberty Council went all over the national media talking about a "private meeting" with the Pope, his blessing her and telling her to "stay strong," and insinuating that he expressed support for her refusal to do her job.
    The Vatican, to its own detriment, dragged its heels and gave non-committal responses to journalists as Davis and her team continued to wring out every bit of attention they could -- without producing any evidence of a "meeting" -- with any media outlet that expressed interest. Not enough media were responsible to note that just last week another fraud was perpetrated by Davis and her team about a rally that included grossly exaggerated information.
    Finally, official reaction is coming late and only under tremendous pressure, and has made this into a public relations as well as religion and political story. Headlines now scream "Vatican Source: Pope Blindsided By Meeting With Controversial Kentucky Clerk."
    . . . So it turns out that Davis, like so many others during this trip, was able to shake the Pope's had, be blessed and exchange a few words, which I am sure he said to others. Private meeting? Encouraging her for her conviction? I doubt he even knew who she was, frankly, and the whole think stinks of making a mountain of good PR out of a molehill of an interaction.



    From NewNowNext:
    The Pope’s secret meeting with Kim Davis sparked a social media firestorm following his historic first visit to the U.S. last month — people demanded answers to a variety of questions from “Who set this up?” to “Why meet with Kim Davis over more worthy Catholics?”
    Once the Vatican claimed it wasn’t responsible for organizing the meeting, the man who did was quickly identified as Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, an anti-gay crusader whose “rough management style” had him ousted from the Vatican and relocated to the U.S. in 2011.
    Speaking with The New York Times, Matthew D. Staver, an attorney for Kim Davis, confirmed that Viganò extended an invitation to his client, but that everyone assumed the invitation had come directly from the Pope himself.
    Staver and Viganò are apparently old pals, having once met at an anti-gay National Organization for Marriage rally in Washington, D.C. According to Staver, Viganò made a point to “thank me for my message” when the two met.
    The Pope, as indicated by a gay couple who met him on the same day as Davis, was blindsided by the meeting.
























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    Sunday, September 27, 2015

    All Over and Not Crying ~ John Boehner Resigns

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    Previous Related Posts:
    Boehner Re-Elected House Speaker 2015
    GOP Seeks New Oompa-Loompa to Replace Boehner

    The day after the Pope visited Congress, John Boehner turned in his resignation as Speaker of the House. And he suddenly looked like a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders, striding in to his press conference singing "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah."

    What happens now? The far-right conservative jackals such as Ted Cruz are thrilled because they have called Boehner a "traitor" and "RINO" for making deals with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. But let's see if the monstrous Tea Party can do any better without Boehner to kick around anymore. Probably not.

    From CNN:

    Boehner had wanted to end his run last year, but was concerned about destabilizing the House Republican caucus. He was ready to announce his resignation on his birthday this November. But Friday, one day after the emotional, historic visit by Pope Francis to Capitol Hill, Boehner found his moment.
    "I decided today is the day I'm going to do this, simple as that," Boehner said at a Capitol Hill press conference, saying his decision came after a night of sleep and prayers.
    . . . The timing may have been right for Boehner -- but it stunned the House GOP Conference Friday morning, which had been meeting to discuss a way forward on funding legislation. Boehner made the announcement -- and choked up. Others did too.
    "A lot of grown men and women were crying, especially those who know him the most," said Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-New York.





    From New York Times
    Of course Boehner couldn’t last: He’s an adult. And as Donald Trump’s perverse currency and a Republican nominating contest that’s often indistinguishable from a temper tantrum demonstrate, the qualities of maturity, steadiness and prudence aren’t in especially big favor right now with an animated, engaged and frighteningly influential segment of the Republican electorate.
    . . . “He’s somebody who understands that in government — in governance — you don’t get 100 percent of what you want,” President Obama said on Friday at the White House, reflecting on the fresh news that Boehner was leaving. “But you have to work with people who you disagree with, sometimes strongly, in order to do the people’s business.” Obama and Boehner were hardly a study in “Kumbaya” cooperation, but Obama seemed to sense that the song sung by whoever follows Boehner will be sourer and more strident.
    Brace for it.

    From The Hill
    A fired-up House Ethics Committee Chairman Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), speaking not long after Boehner dropped the bombshell at a Friday conference meeting that he’ll leave Congress at the end of next month, ripped into hard-line conservatives.
    He accused them of opposing Boehner at every turn, and noted they have “never had a horse of their own.”
    “Any jackass can kick down a barn door. It takes a carpenter to hang one. We need a few more carpenters around here. Everybody knows it,” Dent said off the House floor.
    Leadership allies are frustrated by what they see as a repeated exercise in futility.
    They argue that the lawmakers who repeatedly tangled with Boehner aren’t team players, and they said a new leadership team shouldn’t cater to them.




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