All the news I can digest with laxatives
By Merlyn Thomas of the BBC News on Thursday:
Pope Francis has warned priests and nuns about the dangers of watching pornography online, saying it "weakens the priestly heart".
The Pope, 86, was responding to a question about how digital and social media should be best used, at a session in the Vatican.
Pornography, he said, was "a vice that so many people have... even priests and nuns".
"The devil enters from there," the Pope told priests and seminarians.
As to how to navigate social media and the digital world, he said that they should be used but told them not to waste too much time on it.
"The pure heart, the one that Jesus receives every day, cannot receive this pornographic information," he said.
He advised the group to "delete this from your phone, so you will not have temptation in hand".
Church teaching sees pornography as an offence against chastity.
Your biology isn't proper enough for the God that made you with that biology.
Meanwhile, back to the wannabe- and- ex-billionaires …
From Friday’s news, here’s a quiz: One guy ended a marriage at 13 years and another began a marriage with a 13 year old. Which one died? Which one lost to the Ravens? Which one’s balls have seen more fire?
A: Pour yourself a Tom & Jerry if you can name both their wives.
And the actual billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter, fired a ton of people and is creating a group of people with diverse views to determine where content moderation parameters will be set. He tweeted: ‘The bird is free.’
He then posted a conspiracy theory from a trash source about the attempted assassination of Nancy Pelosi. After criticism, he deleted his rude, childish tweet.
In response many people raised their birds in his honor.
The aviary is still free. But he plans to charge users soon for luggage when they fly on his platform. He’s just like Stuart on MadTV: “look at what I can do!”
The election beat goes on
Fontes, the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State for Arizona welcomes the chance to debate the most batshit election denier in the country.
“It’s comeuppance for the country,” he said. “It’s definitely an inflection point for democracy in America, and it’s a real political challenge for our citizenry across the board… Are we going to devolve away from the rule of law? Are we going to shove our way backwards?”
Debate night for the two Arizona Secretary of State candidates:
That night, Finchem had a platform—but Fontes had one, too, and he said leveraging it was crucial to “identify a very bright difference between the two of us” to Arizona voters. Onstage, the Democrat executed his plan to the letter, calmly taking apart Finchem’s conspiratorial claims, and putting him on the defensive.
“He was crazier than I expected him to be, earlier than I expected him to be,” Fontes said. “We wanted to get him to tighten up his voice, get shrill, start acting crazy, which is what we know he’s got a penchant for doing… He went like a rocket right off the bat.”
“From that point on, all I had to do was show the contrast between maturity, cool-headed, calm, collected, knowledgeable leadership, versus his erratic, loud, screeching showmanship,” Fontes added.
The Onion asks Pennsylvanians why they plan to vote for Doctor Mehmet Oz:
10/25/2020 Washington Post:
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said Tuesday that the leak of his draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade made his colleagues in the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court “targets for assassination.”
The leak last spring before the court eliminated the nationwide right to abortion was a “grave betrayal of trust by somebody, and it was a shock,” he said. The threat to the justices, he added, was not theoretical because it “gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us.”
He noted that a man has been charged in an alleged attempt to kill Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who was in the majority to overturn Roe. The California man, arrested near the justice’s home before the final opinion was released, was upset by the leaked draft, authorities said.
Well Sammy, I disagree that there’s a ‘rational reason’ for assassinating a judge based on a news leak, or for any other precipitating event. Had the leak not occurred, when the decision became public, wouldn’t the same rationale exist?
Or are you saying the liberty has to be refreshed with the blood of tyrants on occasion and judges can be every bit the tyrant as a president, prime minister or king?
And after you clarify that, when you refer to a ‘grave betrayal of trust’ what about a court that takes away the rights of more than 167,000,000 women to make decisions about who or what goes into their bodies and when it’s appropriate to put their bodies through the rigors and demands of pregnancy (and parenthood)?
Though the Roe v Wade decision may have been constitutionally unsound, taking away that right after 49 years isn’t like fixing a clerical error in the name of adherence to an ‘originalism’ devoid of science or the acknowledgment that women are legit people too.
How many women will die, ‘assassinated’ by that ruling? They are not theoretical beings. Also, that judicial assassin wannabe concluded he wasn’t thinking rationally, called a suicide hotline and quit his assassination plan. Even he concluded there was no rational reason. His thinking makes more sense than your own.
What, you never thought your ‘dispassionate’ judgment could destroy human lives before? Or was your expectation that you could do so without somebody hating you enough to rob you of your breath?
You imposed a religious belief on hundreds of millions of women, a belief made popular since women have had easy access to contraceptives, as there is no scripture to define abortion as immoral. How originalistic is that?
When asked about criticism that the court has strayed too far from public sentiment and risks appearing partisan when it overturns precedent, Alito said he has no problem with the public, the media and academics criticizing the court’s legal reasoning in its rulings. But he took issue with those who have questioned the legitimacy of the court.
“To say that the court is exhibiting a lack of integrity is something quite different. That goes to character, not to a disagreement with the result or the reasoning. It goes to character,” Alito said.
The justice did not refer to any colleague by name nor did the interviewer, John G. Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation, but both were clearly referring to comments from Justice Elena Kagan, who dissented when the court overturned the landmark Roe decision. Kagan said during a legal conference in July that the court’s legitimacy is threatened when long-standing precedent is discarded and the court’s actions are seen as motivated by personnel changes among the justices.
“Someone also crosses an important line when they say that the court is acting in a way that is illegitimate. I don’t think anybody in a position of authority should make that claim lightly,” Alito said. “That’s not just ordinary criticism. That’s something very different.”
Yes, it’s different, because it’s happening to you. You’re taking Kagan’s words personally because your legitimacy is being questioned. She didn’t advocate the assassination of anyone. She didn’t make that claim lightly and she crossed no line in doing so. Or did the Founders draw a line visible only to you?
You and your 5 peers acted in a way that is not neutral, seeks no balance of competing rights and settles nothing beyond these very visible lines: a) women are not equal to men, b) only men get to define what lines are uncrossable, and c) precisely at a time when the country is so polarized that more than a third support the idea of having another Civil War, you’ve chosen to invoke state’s rights to determine what rights - if any - women possess because, obviously, you welcome the idea of another civil war. So long as nobody kills any judges or calls them illegitimate.
I’m sorry. Gotta cut short here. I had written two humor articles for the weekend but then the Pelosi attack occurred and I lost my sense of humor and thought it not appropriate to joke about much at all.
I’ll get all the stuff sent out soon. Just have to get my brain and emotions in synch again.