The U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Anti-Biden Project is Backfiring

Sadly, a full three quarters of the U.S. Catholic bishops appear obsessed with fetus worship - when not insisting on living as if they were feudal lords - ahead of Christ's larger gospel message.  With the Catholic Church already hemorrhaging membership (something only masked by the influx of Hispanic Catholic immigrants) the bishops appear to be following the tactics of many evangelicals who have embraced far right extremism and help cause 40% of younger generations to walk away from religion entirely.  How else to explain the bishops' effort to bar abortion rights supporting Democrat politicians - think Joe Biden in particular - from receiving communion.  The move, from which there appears to be some backtracking, flies in the face of directives of Pope Francis and is further evidence of the bishops becoming more and more of an adjunct to the Trump GOP.   A column in the Washington Post looks at the bishops' shortsightedness and hypocrisy given their lack of true concern for children and youths raped by Catholic clergy.  Here are excerpts: 

A majority of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops didn’t seem concerned that by uncritically fusing the vicious culture wars of our secular politics with the church’s sacrament of the Eucharist, they will drive more people away from faith and a transcendent sense of life.

The decision of right-wing Catholic bishops to begin drafting a statement that many of them said was aimed at President Biden and his reception of communion was not just a rebuke to him and to other Catholic Democrats. It was also an attack on Pope Francis, who had made clear that he did not want them to go down this divisive road. And it reinforced the suspicions of the church among progressive-leaning young people already alienated from Christian institutions that champion extreme forms of conservative politics.

A group of angry men (they are all men) seemed to want nothing to do with their brothers and sisters who believe that social justice and a radical concern for “the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged,” as Francis put it in 2018, should be at the heart of Catholic teaching.

No, they would relegate all this to an inferior status in comparison with opposition to abortion.

It’s the anti-Francis majority of American bishops, not liberals or Francis defenders, who would put politics ahead of faith, ideology ahead of theology, and partisanship ahead of fellowship. The 75 percent of bishops who voted on June 17 to prepare the statement are importing the worst aspects of American politics into the life of the church.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) seemed to have second thoughts about how all this was coming across, so it issued a statement last week, four days after the vote, insisting that “there will be no national policy on withholding Communion from politicians” and that the document would not be “targeted at any one individual or class of persons.”

But much harm had already been done, as pro-Francis bishops pointed out during the debate. “The Eucharist itself will be a tool in vicious partisan turmoil,” Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego warned. “It will be impossible to prevent its weaponization, even if everyone wants to do so.”

Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, added: “The choice before us at this moment is either we pursue a path of strengthening unity or settle for a document that will not bring unity but will very well further damage it.”

That’s especially true in light of a Pew Research Center survey this spring finding that given Biden’s views on abortion, 67 percent of U.S. Catholics still said that he should be allowed to receive communion; only 29 percent said he should not. Even among Catholics who are Republican or lean that way, only a bare majority (55 percent) said Biden should not be allowed to receive communion. Fully 44 percent of them thought Biden should be permitted. Thus bishops who would block Biden from the Eucharist found themselves allied with the most conservative wing of the Republican Party.

Whatever the bishops decide in the coming months, Biden is unlikely to be denied communion, as the USCCB’s subsequent statement effectively conceded — at least when he’s close to home. The Vatican may step in, and the leaders of the dioceses where Biden typically attends Mass, including Gregory, have, to their credit, allowed the faithfully churchgoing president to receive.

That this is even an issue shows how the viruses of the political right have infected the U.S. church leadership. It stands almost alone in the Catholic world in its singular focus on abortion, . . . It’s a useful warning to a church that aspires to scripture’s call to “speak the truth in love,” and to expand rather than contract the reach of religious faith and the Gospel.

Reduced Posting - Family Vacation

Since our family cruise set for later this year was cancelled due to Covid-19, my husband and I opted to rent a beach house for a week in Nags Head, North Carolina where we will be staying with our daughters, son-in-law, and five grand children.  Between beach going, hanging by the pool - the house has its own pool - and keeping up with work email and client matters (I never have a complete vacation), posting frequency may be reduced.  A view of the sun coming up this morning is above. Photos from walking on the beach last evening are below.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

 

KKK Distributes Anti-LGBTQ Fliers in Virginia

Yesterday's post focused on the hate and calls for violence being disseminated by the right wing media and, of course Der Trumpenfuhrer.  Events in Leesburg, Virginia, demonstrate that white supremist and homophobes are heeding the calls depicting others as "enemies."  The focus of their hate?  Nonexistent  school curriculum on race and school policies supportive of LGBT students, especially transgender students.  Some of the demented protesters clearly subscribed to the white supremacist lie of white genocide.  A piece in LGBTQ Nation looks at the dangerous lunacy.  Here are excerpts: 

Police in the town of Leesburg, Virginia have recovered about 35 flyers distributed locally by a white supremacist group. Their appearance follows Tuesday’s chaotic Loudoun County school board meeting that ended early due to transphobic, religious-right protesters.

The fliers came from the Loyal White Knights, otherwise known as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a long-running anti-Black domestic terrorist organization. The fliers appeared at homes in a Loudoun County neighborhood. The fliers were sealed in plastic sandwich bags and weighted down with rocks and birdseed.

The fliers read: “LOUDON COUNTY, VA- OPPOSE QUEER-LOVING, CRT-CRAZY SCHOOL BOARD! CITIZENS, WORK TOGETHER WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT- WE’LL NEED EACH OTHER TO STOP THE COMMUNISTS!!! … 100% AMERICANISM – PRAY FOR WHITE AMERICANS”

The flier also contained a web address, a phone number, a brief podcast ad, and the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment (with spelling errors).

The Leesburg Police Department’s deputy chief of police and acting public information officer, Major Vanessa Grigsby, told LGBTQ Nation that the KKK has left fliers locally before. But it usually happens around the mid-January Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, she said. The fliers have never before mentioned the school board, she added.

The flier’s reference to “CRT” alludes to Critical Race Theory, an academic field exploring the social and historic consequences of race and racism taught in law schools. In Tuesday’s school board meeting, protestors demanded that the board ban its teaching in district schools, even though the K-12 district’s schools don’t teach it.

At Tuesday’s school board meeting, two local anti-CRT groups—Parents Against Critical Theory (P.A.C.T.) and Fight for Schools—spoke against CRT. They also opposed a draft policy that would require teachers to address students by their proper pronouns and names. The policy would also put the district’s standards for transgender bathroom access in line with state and federal law.

During the meeting, a woman looked directly at a police officer who was trying to remove her fellow protesters.

“You know they’re trying to replace you, right? Trying to replace you in the police force?” she told the officer. Another woman pointed her finger at the policeman’s face while accusing him of “not protecting our rights.”

“You are fascist and the county taxpayer pays your salary, shame on you!” another woman yelled at the seated members of the school board. “The parents have a duty to defend their children!”

Former President Donald Trump repeatedly tried to ban CRT, diversity training, and transgender civil rights. His administration believed that CRT teaches that white people are evil and that citizens should “hate our country.” His policies repeatedly tried to ban trans people from joining the military, playing sports, receiving medical care, using bathrooms and more.

Trump’s former Justice Department spokesman, Ian Prior, runs Fight for Schools, one of the aforementioned right-wing groups that took over the Tuesday board meeting.

Saturday Morning Male Beauty

 

The Right-Wing Media's Calls for Violence Grow Louder

It's summer time and most Americans are focused on vacation and/or returning to more normalcy in their lives after a year of Covid-19 related restrictions.   Indeed, the husband and I will be doing some beach vacationing with my daughters and the grandchildren this coming week.  Thus, it is easy to fail to focus on the growing menace on the far right  that is being whipped up by the right wing media, including Fox News, a/k/a Faux News. The lies and agitation being promoted increasingly are setting the stage for violence by white supremacists and Christian extremists (the two are more or less interchangeable) who continue to embrace lies and the depiction of non-whites and those who support racial equality as enemies push a white genocide agenda. Doing many residential real estate closings in the current superheated housing market, I daily see buyers and sellers of all races - thanks to the military in particular, Hampton Roads is increasingly racially diverse - all of whom are hard working individuals seeking homes for their families, trading up to a larger home or are young service members looking to purchase their first home.  Many are non-white and it is frightening that the right wing media depicts these individuals as some sort of existential threat to white Americans.  A piece in Salon looks at the hate mongering and extremism that is being fueled.  Here are highlights:

For months now, experts in violent extremism have openly worried that the January 6 insurrection was not the end of the right's Donald Trump-fueled violence, but actually a blueprint for those who are still interested in some old-fashioned authoritarian blood-letting. That Trump himself longed to use — and occasionally did use — violence to silence his political opponents is no secret. It was reconfirmed this week with reports that he reacted to last summer's protests by demanding that federal authorities "crack their skulls" and "just shoot them." His departure from office, however, doesn't seem to have turned the temperature down.

Trump and his allies keep pushing conspiracy theories, like one that claims he will be "reinstated" in August, that work to keep the violent insurrectionist sentiments churning among his base. This poses a heightened threat as the summer heats up and the moment when the Trumpers realize that their beloved orange savior is not actually getting the White House back nears. Unfortunately, right-wing media outlets are handling this situation by adding more fuel to the simmering flame of Republican paranoia.

In just the past week, two prominent conservative TV hosts were caught overtly layering in justifications for lashing out violently against Democrats, progressives, and anyone else viewed as getting in the way of MAGA power. A recent rant from the One America News Network host Pearson Sharp is getting a lot of media attention because the call for violence was so explicit that it's hard even for the most dedicated gaslighter to deny it. In a segment devoted to hyping Trump's Big Lie that Joe Biden stole the election, Sharp declared that . . . . "in the past, America had a very good solution for dealing with such traitors: execution."

The call for red hats to start the executions is barely subtext anymore. The justifications are all there: The lie about a stolen election, the claim of moral authority to murder, and the implication that, because the American government won't do its duty, ordinary Americans must step up.

In particular, the OAN segment was explicitly about the fake "audit" of the Arizona vote that MyPillow salesman Mike Lindell and Trump himself have been using as an anchor for false claims that the "fraud" is about to be exposed and Trump will be reinstalled as president in August. This supposed "audit" has been going on for a couple of months now, and, as the Washington Post reports, an entire infrastructure of right-wing media has been hyping it this entire time. When Trump's grand reinstatement inevitably fails to happen, there are going to be thousands of right-wingers who are furious and drunk on this rhetoric suggesting that violence is the only appropriate response. 

Over on Fox News, Tucker Carlson's Thursday night show is also getting a lot of media attention for his attack on Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who testified about the January 6 insurrection this week before the House Armed Services Committee. Milley correctly identified the cause of the Capitol riot as "white rage," which he clearly and correctly sees as rooted in a belief in white supremacy. Of course, right-wing media exploded in predictable outrage, suggesting that the military be defunded for this insult to the honor of racists.

Milley is "not just a pig," Carlson told his audience about the top military general, "he's stupid." . . . . But even more concerning might be something else Carlson said in his Thursday night program, in which he suggested that white people are in imminent danger of being the target of genocide. 

As he often does, Carlson plays this rhetorical trick where he equates simply being white with holding an ideology of white supremacy, and suggests that any criticism of racists is, therefore, an attack on white people for their race. The invocation of Rwanda, of course, is a reference to the Rwandan genocide, when members of the Tutsi minority in that country were hunted down and mass-murdered.

This is, in part, Carlson doing his usual thing, where he takes ideas from literal neo-Nazis, cleans them up and presents them as "common sense conservativism" on his show. In this case, the idea he's laundering is "white genocide," the white nationalist belief that valuing racial diversity is equivalent to the genocide of white people. . . . . Carlson is positioning white violence as mere self-defense. Recasting aggression as self-defense is a classic fascist move, and Carlson doesn't need to be explicit here for his audience to pick up what he's putting down. 

The atttacks on the military, the FBI and any police who are caught defending democracy are even more subtle, but part of the same alarming push towards violence in right-wing media. These are the authorities who are most likely to be involved in shutting down fascist insurrection, after all, especially now that Trump's no longer in the White House.

It's easy to dismiss the whole conspiracy theory as just more of Trump wanting attention and gorging himself on any bit of flatterry. Hopefully, that will be the case, especially as there are so far no signs of something like the "Stop the Steal" rally being organized — yet. 

Still, it's deeply concerning that the rhetoric of justified violence is increasing, and not just in fringe social media circles, but on cable news networks being projected into millions of American homes.

The fire may not spark, but there can be no mistaking the immense amount of fuel that right-wing media is gleefully pouring over the kindling.

Be very afraid and vote a straight Democrat in every election.

Friday Morning Male Beauty

 

Republicans Want You (Not the Rich) to Pay for Infrastructure

One of the worse things the last Republican governor of Virginia and the then GOP controlled Virginia General Assembly was to authorize so-called "public-private" financing schemes for two tunnels between the cities of Portsmouth and Norfolk as well as to replace a much used bridge.  The bridge before replacement had been free and the tolls on the tunnels had been lower before private interests took over management.  What the phase "public-private" turned out to mean was the public got royally screwed while the wealthy private interests got very rich at public expense.  Worse yet, through for unpaid tolls, because of late fees and "administrative fees" a few dollar toll could become $60.00 in little over 30 days and soon many of the poorest local residents faced thousands of dollars in fees to the truly rapacious private interests and risked having their vehicle registrations not being renewed.  Why do I relate this history?  Because, if Republicans have their way, the entire country may soon face a similar predatory scheme for financing much needed infrastructure improvements.  Rather than increase taxes on the super wealthy and corporations, the average citizen will be screwed over in yet another example of the GOP's reverse Robin Hood agenda.  The GOP must be stopped.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this horrible means of screwing average citizens to protect the very wealthy.  Here are highlights:

Twenty-one senators, led by Rob Portman of Ohio, a Republican, announced a new outline agreement for an infrastructure package last week. Disagreement over tax changes derailed previous talks, but this bipartisan group claimed to have identified a set of proposed financing sources that could pay for new spending “without raising taxes.” Reportedly, the largest among those was $315 billion from alternative financing schemes known as public-private partnerships.

The legislators are jumping through these hoops in the first place because for the past three decades, the Republican Party has organized its agenda around an absolutist principle: no new taxes, ever. But despite the senators’ insistence, these arrangements do not actually avoid extractive charges on residents. They just launder the new fees through private investors.

Rather than the government financing the rebuilding of roads and bridges that get you across town, you pay a private company operating in contract with the government — while policymakers pretend that they have avoided imposing new costs.

Chief among these schemes that Republicans have identified are so-called user fees, like road tolls and a new fee on vehicle miles traveled. The White House rejected such proposals as violating its own tax pledge: a promise not to increase taxes on families earning under $400,000 annually. As President Biden observed, “If everything is paid for by a user fee, the burden falls on working-class folks, who are having trouble.”

[U]nlike progressive taxes, user fees — whether assessed by public entities or by private firms contracted with the state — are not generally varied by ability to pay. They are imposed at a flat rate, on the poorest and wealthiest alike, assessed in proportion to their use of public infrastructure. These extractive revenue models condition access to critical goods and services on families’ available resources. And unlike with consumer goods, people often have no choice but to use these spaces.

In 2008, to avoid raising property taxes, Chicago famously leased its parking meter infrastructure to a group of private investors. Shortly after the asset sale, residents parking downtown were paying more than double the prior rates.

The lesson is clear: Flat-rate user-funded structures privatize social risks while shielding wealth from productive public use. This underlying dynamic does not change when such fees are imposed by unaccountable private investors rather than the state.

As negotiations continue, we can learn from the harmful consequences brought about by the privatization of local public goods — and opt instead for an inclusive public infrastructure that is available, and affordable, to everyone.

More Thursday Male Beauty

 

Giuliani's Lies on Behalf of Trump Disgraced His Profession and America

Like I suspect countless attorneys who strive to provide diligent yet ethical legal services to their clients  - often despite client demands to cross ethical limits - I am most pleased that Rudi Giuliana has had his law license suspended by New York State's highest court for making "demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former president Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign."   Sadly, other attorneys who engaged in similar conduct have yet to have their licenses suspended or, more appropriately, permanently disbarred.  Giuliani seemingly knowingly put forth falsehood seemingly only so he could receive payments to the malignant narcissist who once occupied the White House. If Giuliani believed his own lies, then he also needs to be place in a mental institution for much needed care.  Others, including members of Congress who hold law licenses - think Josh Hawley - likewise engaged in knowing lies and need to be similarly stripped of their law licenses.   A column in the Washington Post looks at the harm Giuliani did to the legal profession and the nation at large.  Here are column highlights:

Attorneys are supposed to — they are ethically bound to — zealously represent their clients, however unpopular. As a general matter, we should salute this zealousness, not punish it, for fear of chilling representation of those who need it most.

But advocacy has its limits, and Rudy Giuliani, it is safe to say, is no John Adams. One man defended the defenseless in the greater service of the rule of law; the other asserted the indefensible in the service of overturning the results of an election. And so, on Thursday, New York State Bar authorities took the extraordinary step of ordering Giuliani, once the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, immediately suspended from the practice of law as he faces the prospect of being permanently disbarred.

“We conclude that there is uncontroverted evidence that [Giuliani] communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former president Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020,” the judges overseeing the disciplinary proceedings wrote in a 33-page ruling. “These false statements were made to improperly bolster respondent’s narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client. We conclude that respondent’s conduct immediately threatens the public interest.”

It ordinarily takes quite a bit — stealing client money, or obstructing justice — to get yourself disbarred, and even more to have your license to practice law suspended pending resolution of the proceedings. As a practical matter, Giuliani doesn’t have a booming legal practice; at this point, any client would be a fool to have him for a lawyer. And he has bigger problems than losing a law license he doesn’t really use, including a criminal investigation into his activities by the office he used to oversee.

Still, this is a welcome and entirely justified development. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Giuliani wasn’t the only Trump lawyer to make unsupportable claims about voter fraud, but he was the most prominent. Both in and out of court, Giuliani made repeated false statements . . . .

The disciplinary panel found that these statements violated ethics rules that prohibit lawyers from knowingly making false claims to courts or third parties, and from engaging in conduct “involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” or “that adversely reflects on the lawyer’s fitness as a lawyer.”

As the panel concluded, “this disciplinary proceeding concerns the professional restrictions imposed on respondent as an attorney to not knowingly misrepresent facts and make false statements in connection with his representation of a client.” The First Amendment doesn’t protect that.

Giuliani says his license shouldn’t be suspended while the proceedings continue because he poses no continuing threat — the election litigation is over and “he has and will continue to exercise personal discipline to forbear from discussing these matters in public anymore.” As the panel recognized, this is no more trustworthy than the rest of Giuliani’s false claims — “persistent and pervasive” statements that he kept making even after disciplinary proceedings were underway.

“False statements intended to foment a loss of confidence in our elections and resulting loss of confidence in government generally damage the proper functioning of a free society.” Coming from Giuliani, “acting with the authority of being an attorney, and using his large megaphone, the harm is magnified.”

Giuliani’s lawyers predicted that he “will be reinstated as a valued member of the legal profession that he has served so well in his many capacities for so many years.” Let’s hope not. He hasn’t suffered obloquy enough.

What should be Giuliani’s final chapter as a lawyer was a disservice to his profession. But unlike the case of John Adams, it was a disservice to his country.

I hope Giuliana is but the first of the Trump attorneys to lose their license for promoting deliberate lies.