Showing posts with label Greece. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greece. Show all posts

Sunday, March 28, 2021

Sunday Globe School

The problem is you don't learn anything:


They may as well be speaking a foreign language at this point after a year of grit and despair they have pushed over lies has left such a Great Divide.


In one of many small touches, the hotel library features books curated by the Boston Public Library along with a rooftop restaurant and larger guest rooms as the Globe puts on the “Ritz.”

Of course, A.I. will decide in which room you will be incarcerated in your home away from home.

Is that why they are ordering the schools open as variants and cases allegedly surge along with the never-ending jabs?

Better go ask the nur$e:

"They promised to become partners but never truly did. Now, more than 25 years after Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s hospitals joined forces to boost their clout with penny-pinching HMOs, trustees and executives are making their most sweeping attempt yet to set aside old rivalries and work as a unified health care system. The new bid for unity and efficiency spans every corner of the organization, from marketing and IT to medicine and surgery, and it underscores a shift in power from its famed doctors and hospitals to executives at corporate headquarters....."

The ho$pital carries with it a whiff of communi$m, with all due re$pect.

All in all, I would rather not talk about it and will just run along to the next class.

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"As pandemic upends teaching, fewer students want to pursue it" by Emma Goldberg New York Times, March 27, 2021

Few professions have been more upended by the pandemic than teaching, as school districts have vacillated between in-person, remote and hybrid models of learning, leaving teachers concerned for their health and scrambling to do their jobs effectively.

For students considering a profession in turmoil, the disruptions have seeded doubts, which can be seen in declining enrollment numbers. Many program leaders believe enrollment fell because of the perceived hazards posed by in-person teaching and the difficulties of remote learning, combined with long-standing frustrations over low pay compared with professions that require similar levels of education. (The national average for a public school teacher’s salary is roughly $61,000.) Some are hopeful that enrollment will return to its pre-pandemic level as vaccines roll out and schools resume in-person learning, but the challenges in teacher recruitment and retention run deeper.

For some young people, doubts about entering the teaching workforce amid the pandemic are straightforward: They fear that the job now entails increased risk. In some instances, remote teaching has deprived education students of training opportunities altogether. Applications may tick back up as schools return to in-person learning, said Marvin Lynn, dean at Portland State University in Oregon, but the challenges are likely to outlast this year. Educators had been struggling with recruitment to the profession long before the pandemic began.

Not all teacher preparation programs are experiencing a decrease in interest. California State University in Long Beach saw enrollment climb 15% this year, according to the system’s preliminary data. Marquita Grenot-Scheyer, assistant vice chancellor for the university system, attributes this partly to an executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom that temporarily allowed candidates to enter preparation programs without meeting basic skill requirements because of the state’s teacher shortage.....

Meaning your teacher doesn't know anything and is stupid, but can probably read the Marxi$t talking points that emphasize the hard work of miners , and that is when may print paper dismissed class so.....



Te$ting for a nonexistent virus is becoming an indu$try so keep your no$e clean!

Related:

"Authorities in Greece said students and teachers will have to use self-test kits for COVID-19 in order to attend classes when schools reopen. Greece is planning to make the test kits freely available on a weekly basis to every resident of the country with a social security number, starting next month. The program is designed to allow for the reopening of schools as well as restaurants and retail businesses which have remained mostly closed since the lockdown was imposed in early November. Greece is currently grappling with a surge in coronavirus infections which has seen many hospitals run by the state health system reach capacity. The country’s center-right government says it plans to launch the tourism season in mid-May but has not yet given a date for schools and retail businesses to reopen. School children of all ages are currently attending compulsory online classes....."

I wonder if the Greeks will even notice the tyranny after all they went through in the 20th century, and to think that is where the foundations of modern thought and the free exchange of ideas was born.

Of course, they have. The people of Greece really don't take any shit from anybody when their back is to the wall -- especially these guys:

"A year ago, Giordana Grego’s parents spent Passover at home in Israel, alone but grateful that they had escaped the worst of the pandemic in Italy. This year, the whole family will get together to mark the Jewish feast of liberation and deliverance from the pandemic. Israel has vaccinated over half its population of 9.3 million, and as coronavirus infections have plummeted, authorities have allowed restaurants, hotels, museums and theaters to re-open. Up to 20 people can now gather indoors. It’s a stark turnaround from last year, when Israel was in the first of three nationwide lockdowns. “For us in Israel, really celebrating the festivity of freedom definitely has a whole different meaning this year after what we experienced,” said Grego, who immigrated to Israel from Italy. “It’s amazing that this year we’re able to celebrate together.”

Actually, not really and it makes you wonder how Netanyahu could have possibly lost the recent election if that is true.

Meanwhile, as local rabbis reflect on Passover a year into the pandemic with reflection and hope and with the coronavirus pandemic’s end finally in sight, its ancient teachings are taking on new meaning for Massachusetts’ Jewish community. 

That's what the Globe cooked up for you today, along with this column from a Jewi$h mother:

"It has been a grim week, a grim year, a grim half-decade from where I sit. We’re at over half a million deaths from COVID in this country, many of them preventable. Lives and livelihoods have been destroyed. We’ve had a deadly insurrection at the Capitol and attacks on our democracy continuing across the country, designed to thwart those most likely to vote Democratic, and particularly Black voters, and this after a year that further exposed the horrific wages of this nation’s original racist sins. It’s hard to feel sunny in the midst of all of that, but though life here on Earth is in fact hard and tough, even an inveterate downer can acknowledge the value of taking heart wherever you can find it. For example, this season of renewal — spring, Passover, Easter — feels a heck of a lot more uplifting now that vaccines are starting to liberate us....."

The liberation by vaccine makes one want to vomit; however, one wonders what she is complaining about when the bad orange man is gone.



That begs the question of whether people immunized against the coronavirus can still spread it to others(!??!) and a new study will attempt to answer the question by tracking infections in vaccinated college students and their close contacts and the results are likely to be of intense interest because all of the participants will swab their noses daily to check for the virus, provide periodic blood samples to screen for antibodies, and answer questions through an app $cientists will follow for five months.

If you don't have it and are immunized against it, why would you be spreading it?

WTF??

The VAXXEEN IS THE VIRUS!??!

Oh, what an evil $cam!

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Same as the alleged anti-Asian bias in this country, unless it is being fomented by the agenda-pushing, regime-changing pre$$:

"Dozens gunned down in ‘day of shame’ for Myanmar" by Richard C. Paddock New York Times, March 27, 2021

At a military parade Saturday, the general who led the overthrow of Myanmar’s civilian government in February said the army was determined “to protect people from all danger.”

Before the day was over, the security forces under his command had shot and killed a 5-year-old boy, two 13-year-old boys and a 14-year-old girl. A baby girl in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, was struck in the eye with a rubber bullet, although her parents said she was expected to live.

Of course, the same pre$$ organ conveniently passes over a certain chosen tribe when they do it.

The fact that they are waving the children at you here is a huge tell vis-a-vis future war plans.

The slain children were among dozens of people killed Saturday as security forces cracked down on protests across Myanmar in what appeared to be one of the deadliest days since the Feb. 1 coup led by Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, commander of the Tatmadaw, as the military is known. One news outlet, Myanmar Now, put Saturday’s death toll as high as 80.

“Today is a day of shame for the armed forces,” Dr. Sasa, a spokesperson for a group of elected officials who say they represent Myanmar’s government, said in a statement.

The killings took place on Armed Forces Day, a holiday honoring the Tatmadaw, which was the occasion for Min Aung Hlaing’s speech in Naypyitaw, the capital.

The general promised to pave the way for democracy, despite having rejected the results of the country’s Nov. 8 election and arrested many of those who were elected to Parliament that day. He reiterated a pledge to hold new elections but offered no timetable.

Among more than 3,000 people who have been detained by the military since the coup are the ousted civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the president, Win Myint. Their party, the National League for Democracy, won by a landslide in November.

In his speech to the assembled troops, which was broadcast on national television, Min Aung Hlaing noted that the Tatmadaw was founded by Gen. Aung San, a national hero. He did not mention that the general was Suu Kyi’s father.

The Armed Forces Day ceremony, a highlight of the year for the Tatmadaw, is usually attended by a slew of foreign diplomats. This year there were fewer, representing China and several other neighboring countries.

Also present was Russia’s deputy defense minister, Alexander Fomin, who was singled out for praise by Min Aung Hlaing. 

He gave him a medal and a ceremonial sword, and here we see the fulcrum of the situation. Myanmar becomes a huge impediment and stumbling block on any regional or worldwide war.

Russia has been an important supplier of weapons to the Myanmar military, and as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council it can be counted on, along with China, to block any attempt by the international body to impose sanctions on Myanmar.

U.S., Israel.

The United States said Thursday that it was putting its own financial sanctions on two military-owned conglomerates that control a large segment of Myanmar’s economy.

$o what?

Who cares anymore? 

Sanction the whole f**king world and isolate yourself, you f**king band of parasites.

On Saturday, the U.S. ambassador to Myanmar, Thomas Vajda, said the security forces were “murdering unarmed civilians, including children,” and he called the bloodshed “horrifying.”

The widespread killings Saturday came a day after military-run television threatened protesters with being “shot in the back and the back of the head” if they persisted in opposing military rule.....

The AmeriKan war machine is the current, decades-long champion of such things so..... sigh.


I will let you in on a little secret: I have never met them and don't want to come hell or high water.

"At the Suez, hoping a rising tide will lift a boat four football fields long" by Vivian Yee New York Times, March 27, 2021

MANSHIYET RUGOLA, Egypt — Hauling cars, oil, livestock, laptops, jet fuel, scrap metal, grain, sweaters, sneakers, appliances, toilet paper, toys, medical equipment and much more, the vessels were supposed to supply much of the world, and the canal was to have been their quickest path from Asia and the Middle East to Europe and the east coast of the United States.

Canal authorities said Saturday that dredgers had managed to dig out the rear of the ship Friday night, freeing its rudder, and that by Saturday afternoon, they had dredged 18 meters down into the canal's eastern bank, where the ship’s bow was stuck solid, but after a salvage team failed once more to dislodge the four-football-field-long leviathan from the sand bank where it ran aground Tuesday, blocking all shipping traffic through the canal, global supply chains churned closer to a full-blown crisis.

Easing the bottleneck depends on the salvagers’ ability to clear away the sand, mud and rock where the Ever Given is stuck and to lighten the ship’s load enough to help it float again, all while tugboats try to push and pull it free. Their best chance may arrive Monday, when a spring tide will raise the canal’s water level by up to about 18 inches, analysts and shipping agents said.

The company that oversees the ship’s operations and crew, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, said 11 tugboats were helping, with two more due Sunday. Much of the work, however, was invisible. The team of eight Dutch salvage experts and naval architects overseeing the operation will need to survey the ship and the seabed and create a computer model that will help it work around the vessel without damaging it, said Capt. Nick Sloane, a South African salvage master who led the operation to right the Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that capsized in 2012 off the coast of Italy.

If the tugboats, dredgers and pumps cannot get the job done, they could be joined by a head-spinning array of specialized vessels and machines requiring perhaps hundreds of workers: small tankers to siphon off the ship’s fuel; the tallest cranes in the world to unload some of its containers one by one; and, if no cranes are tall enough or near enough, heavy-duty helicopters that can pick up containers of up to 20 tons — though no one has said where the cargo would go.

If the ship breaks free by Monday, the shipping industry can absorb the inconvenience, analysts said, but beyond that, supply chains and consumers could start to see major disruptions.....

That is where the print got stuck an I was told it would be at least a week so full astern!!


Related:


Did a jet plane hit it?

I'm not trying to be flip, either, because it appears that Egypt is under attack:


Makes you wonder what which note their dictator has struck wrong.

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Speaking of declining touri$m:


"This has been a year of extreme social deprivation, but the pandemic - like all pandemics before it - eventually will end. Then what? Will we easily transition from isolation back into the real world? For most of us, the answer probably is yes, although it may take time to adapt, according to social scientists who study human behavior; nevertheless, scientists predict that after many more Americans are vaccinated, society might resemble what followed in the aftermath of the 1918 influenza pandemic, a decade known as the Roaring Twenties, an age striking in its excesses. Before the celebrations begin, however, there probably will be some trepidation as people adjust to their newly restored freedom. The desire for physical contact is inherent; however, on the other hand and furthermore, people should prepare themselves for some relationships to end, but children should fare well, in fact, better than many people expect, because "children are designed to be very resilient and bounce back....."

So the absolute criminal hell and everlasting damage they have been put through this year -- those that survived anyway -- is no big deal because kids are resilient and bounce back even after things like beatings and sex abuse. What a sickening attitude.

Of cour$e, the roaring economy covers up a multitude of $ins and and $peaking of children:


My advice to Manchin is get a food taster, add trusted security, and don't fly in any small planes because these guys play for keeps (Tower, Wellstone, Heinz, all opposed central banks, btw).

Makes one wonder if the flights were not cursed:



That's what Biden said during his news conference as the Globe joyously puts a bullseye on the forehead of Fox News by firing off a few missiles in the courageous defense of free $peech.

Once you reach the inevitable crossroads and don't take the shot, you will be exiled to an island in the South Pacific like a leper or relocated in the Brazilian jungle where you can thumb through old photographs provided by the Boston Globe Spotlight Team.

That's the very definition of irrelevant, kids, so I guess you learned something:

"The attorney general’s office has filed a lawsuit against the owner of a North Andover driving school that closed after the owner was arrested last year for trafficking methamphetamine, allegedly leaving 1,500 students without lessons or the more than $1 million they had prepaid, officials said. North Andover Auto School closed in October, when the Registry of Motor Vehicles revoked its licenses after owner Michael Larocque was arrested the previous month, the office of Attorney General Maura Healey said in a statement. State Police said in September that Larocque, 56, of Lawrence, was running a “large-scale methamphetamine” operation and that more than 2 pounds of methamphetamine were seized at Larocque’s home, the Globe reported. Healey’s office filed a lawsuit Thursday in Essex Superior Court against both Larocque and the school, which was also known as MV Auto School, for violating the state’s Consumer Protection Act, according to the statement. The suit seeks more than $1 million in restitution for former students. Prosecutors are also seeking a preliminary injunction to preserve Larocque’s assets to be used to repay students, the statement said. A hearing on that motion is scheduled for Thursday. Larocque is also set to appear for arraignment in his criminal case in Essex Superior Court on April 7, the AG’s office said. He was indicted last month by an Essex grand jury on charges of possession of a class D substance, trafficking 36-100 grams of methamphetamine, possession of a class A controlled substance, and two counts of trafficking in 200 or more grams of methamphetamine, officials said."

He tried to escape on a bike after getting all wired up:

"A Tewksbury man was arrested at Back Bay station Thursday evening after he allegedly stole a bicycle, officials said Saturday. The bike’s owner told MBTA Transit Police that he had secured his bike, worth $500, inside the station earlier in the day before taking the Orange Line, according to a statement from Transit police. When he returned, the bicycle was missing. Jason Ventolieri, 44, was later seen riding what the victim said looked like the stolen bike on Dartmouth Street, Transit police said. Officers pursed Ventolieri down the street and stopped him. Ventolieri had several outstanding warrants for his arrest, including one issued in the Charlestown division of Boston Municipal Court for various motor vehicle violations and larceny from a building and one from Cambridge District Court for receiving stolen property, according to the statement."

He stopped pedaling after getting shot:

"A 19-year-old Cambridge man was fatally shot on Pemberton Street early Saturday morning, according to the Middlesex district attorney’s office. The victim was found outside his vehicle unconscious around 12:40 a.m. by a passerby who called 911, the district attorney’s office said in a statement. Police located the man suffering from gunshot wounds near the Rindge baseball field and the basketball courts on Pemberton Street. The victim was treated on scene and taken to Mount Auburn Hospital where he later died, according to the statement. No further information was immediately available. Authorities ask anyone with information to call Cambridge police....."

Blamed his girlfriend:

"A Bedford man was charged with murder Friday after he allegedly killed his girlfriend in broad daylight on Short Sands Beach in York, Maine, officials said Saturday. The victim was identified as Rhonda Pattelena, 35, also of Bedford, according to a statement from Maine State Police. Her domestic partner, Jeffrey Buchannan, 33, allegedly assaulted Pattelena on the beach around 4 p.m., according to the statement. The couple had one child together. York police found Pattelena dead behind a rock after responding to multiple 911 calls reporting an assault, State Police said. The Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit — South was called to assist the York Police Department with the investigation. An autopsy determined the cause of death to be blunt force injury to the head, State Police said. Her manner of death was ruled a homicide. Maine State Police detectives and crime scene technicians remained at the scene Saturday and were expected to continue the investigation throughout the weekend. Buchannan is expected to make his first court appearance at York County Superior Court in Alfred after the weekend, State Police said."

I guess he just snapped, huh?

"Armed robbery suspect whom State Police shot and killed had troubled past; family believed it was behind him" by Lucas Phillips Globe Correspondent, March 27, 2021

A man who allegedly robbed a Rockland convenience store and stole a police car before State Police fatally shot him in a stand-off Friday had a troubled past that family believed he had put behind him.

Eric M. Leach, 36, allegedly robbed a 7-Eleven at gunpoint, hopped in a Rockland police cruiser, and led law enforcement on a chase through six communities, according to Rockland police and the Norfolk district attorney.

After a standoff in Quincy, Leach allegedly got out of the cruiser with a police patrol rifle and a State Police trooper shot him once, killing him, officials said.

?????

How was he “able to enter a Rockland police cruiser?”

Police SWAT teams surrounded a Rockland Police vehicle that was stolen by an armed robbery suspect and was pulled over on the Burgin Parkway near a BJ's gas station in Quincy on Friday.
Police SWAT teams surrounded a Rockland Police vehicle that was stolen by an armed robbery suspect and was pulled over on the Burgin Parkway near a BJ's gas station in Quincy on Friday (David L. Ryan/Globe Staff)

With all due respect, it looks like another drill and the photographer just happened to be there, huh?

So how and why is the guy dead, and where is he?

They shot him in cold blood after surrounding him?

Leach had recently been on probation for shooting an 8-year-old Brockton girl in 2012, according to Plymouth Superior Court documents.

In 2015, Leach pleaded guilty to five charges in the 2012 case, including assault and battery and firearms violations, court documents show. He was sentenced to three to five years in prison, including time he had already served, with three years of probation beginning in 2017, according to court documents.

A family member said he was stunned by Friday’s incident, saying Leach, who was divorced and had two children, had put past troubles behind him.

“Unbelievable,” Leach’s foster brother, Mario Zona, 43, of Saugus, said in a phone interview Saturday. “It’s not something that he would do.”

Despite the criminal record?

This looks like a guy that was known to them was set up in a, you know, take the gun situation, right?

Zona said the 2012 incident was an accident and called previous run-ins with the law “stupid little adolescent stuff.”

In recent years, Leach had grown into a funny, loyal father of two children and worked as a laborer installing pools, but was out of work because of the pandemic, Zona said. Now, his family is struggling to understand what happened.

“We’re just trying to put the pieces together,” Zona said.....

As they get paid off to go along with the $cam?


If the pre$$ account is correct, this guy was desperately trying to get money to put food on the table and is now another uncounted CVD death and part of history.

Turns out they shot him out of an excess of caution:

"Man arrested after allegedly trying to run over police officers" by Andrew Stanton Globe Correspondent, March 14, 2021

A 24-year-old Boston man was arrested Friday night after allegedly trying to run over officers during a traffic stop, police said.

Boston officers pulled over Eugene Parrish near 329 Washington St. at about 9:47 p.m. and learned he did not have a driver’s license, police said in a statement.

As they spoke with Parrish, they saw what looked like the outline of a gun protruding from beneath the sweatshirt of the front-seat passenger, a 16-year-old boy from Boston, the statement said.

Officers tried to remove Parrish from the vehicle, but he allegedly put it in reverse and accelerated toward officers standing behind the vehicle, hitting a cruiser and causing front-end damage, according to the statement.

He then allegedly drove onto the sidewalk at a high speed in an attempt to flee, striking a vehicle and a street sign near 1 Waterlow St. before coming to a stop, the statement said.

Officers approached the vehicle and found the passenger was no longer inside, the statement said.

When they opened the driver’s side door to remove Parrish, a violent struggle ensued, and he allegedly struck the officers several times while they arrested him, the statement said.

The officers found the passenger near 17 School St., the statement said. They retraced his steps looking for discarded weapons but found nothing.

The juvenile, who was not identified due to his age, was released to a guardian after questioning, the statement said. That portion of the investigation is ongoing.

Parrish is scheduled to appear in the Dorchester division of Boston Municipal Court Monday on charges including assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, four counts of assault and battery on a police officer, resisting arrest, and malicious destruction of property, the statement said.


His defense is he was just heading to a juice bar.

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The Globe is of the idea that with the Boston Public Schools are in crisis, Harvard (or BC or MGH) can help to create powerhouse schools given all the talent in Boston in what is literally propaganda (her grandfather practically invented it) so stop sniffling and listen up!

Did you kids know that Mexico actually sparked the US Civil War with its powerful moral authority?

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Time to go in the tent and change with those to die chosen by lottery and seeded accordingly:

I only mention it because I did in fact watch the better part of the game and was most impressed by the local hockey club. They are a top-notch power now and it was exhilarating watching their graceful skill while completely smothering the other team's attack.

Furthermore, I spent two hours watching the longest NCAA hockey tournament game ever this morning that determined their next opponent, the two-time defending champion and tougher-than-nails Minnesota-Duluth team that beat UMass in the final two years ago. Should be quite a match-up next week.

Additionally, I found watching the hockey less stressful for several reasons. One was because the North Dakota site had fans without masks and was about a third full if not more. It wasn't the same as a full arena, but they were already behind glass anyway and have the least impact amongst the four major sports as far as fans go. It was a welcome and unexpected relief, to be honest.

I doubt I will be watching any baseball this year and I see the losses are already piling up.

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Bo$ton Globe Christmas Tree

With all due respect, this Christmas has been an insult right down to the tree (as intended, to demoralize), what with the cruise being cancelled (they should have read the fine print) after the founder died as the Globe remembers those they have lost on Facebook because the coronavirus pandemic has robbed them of mourning in community and for the mourning and loss have to be shared.

One would hope they would learn from what they have wrought in as they honor the century-long partnership with Nova Scotia with a festive tree in Bo$ton, as visits with Santa Claus were different this year, with face shields attached to red caps, masks made specifically for people with bushy beards, plexiglass dividers and social-distancing for children making mall visits, and yes, virtual calls straight from busy “workshops” via Zoom that should make any child even more frightened from the costumed perverts than usual.

Hope you enjoyed the light show at the spot where disabled children were fed radioactive cereal during the Cold War as local families felt the pain of a global pandemic that taught children to set goals. The homeless shelter is making appeals to public for donations as pandemic strains its resources (at least they are being open about it), but you still need to consider the small landlord who is terrified despite the caring heart and a strong desire to help others:

"The Palestinian Health Ministry has recommended strict limits on Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem this year due to the coronavirus outbreak. Celebrations in the biblical town revered by Christians as Jesus’ birthplace are usually attended by thousands of people from around the world, but this year, the ministry has recommended the upcoming Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Manger Square be limited to 50 people, with the lights of the tree and area restaurants closed at 9 p.m. throughout the Christmas season. In its recommendations Saturday, it said religious services on Christmas Eve should also have limited attendance. Bethlehem’s economy, filled with hotels, gift shops and restaurants, relies heavily on the Christmas season. The cancellation or scaling back of the celebrations will deal another blow to an economy that already has been hit hard by the coronavirus crisis this year. Palestinian officials are expected to make a final decision on Christmas celebrations in the coming days. Israel’s international airport — the main entry point for foreign travelers — has been closed to tourists for months, limiting the potential numbers of pilgrims in any case. The West Bank is in the midst of a spike in coronavirus cases, while Israel is only slowly emerging from a lockdown imposed in September to control a raging outbreak. The northern Israeli town of Nazareth, revered by Christians as the place of Jesus’ childhood, has been designated a “restricted” zone by authorities, limiting movement in and out of the area for at least the next few days....."

No sooner had they emerged, than they were locked down again:

"The Israeli government says it will impose its third nationwide lockdown on Sunday to halt the spread of the coronavirus. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet approved the movement restrictions for two weeks. They include the shutdown of most nonessential businesses, limitations on gatherings and movement from people’s homes and reduced public transit, but classes for high school, kindergartens and some grade school students will continue. Israel, a country of 9 million people, started rolling out coronavirus vaccinations this week and has already inoculated over 140,000 people, according to the health ministry. Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel aims to increase vaccinations to 100,000 people per day by next week. Israel has recorded over 385,000 cases of the coronavirus since March, and 3,150 deaths, but the infection rate has shot up in recent weeks after the government started easing restrictions put in place in September." 

They want you waiting at home for the jab. 

That is why the casedemic is being ratcheted up.

God help us all:

"Thousands of people on Sunday attended the funeral of Serbian Patriarch Irinej who died after contracting the coronavirus, many ignoring preventive measures against the pandemic. Many mourners and most priests holding the funeral service in the massive St. Sava Temple in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, didn’t wear masks or adhere to social distancing inside the church, kissing the glass shield covering Irinej’s remains and even using a single spoon during Holy Communion. Irinej, 90, died on Friday, three weeks after attending the funeral of another cleric in neighboring Montenegro in which mourners kissed his remains lying in an open casket although he also died from COVID-19 complications. The Serbian Orthodox Church has asked mourners to keep their distance and wear face masks in line with the anti-virus recommendations, but even priests inside the temple were without masks. Serbian epidemiologists have said there was no way they could ban the traditional funeral prayers....."

"Police interrupted a Sunday Mass in a northern Greek village and fined a priest 1,500 euros (US$1,780) for allowing two people to attend the service. They also arrested the priest's 30-year-old son and one of the two worshippers, who they said attacked the police officers. The priest had been urging parishioners to attend, despite a ban, saying, “You're either with Christ or the coronavirus.” The two attendees were from a neighbouring village. Authorities are strictly enforcing a lockdown and nightly curfew after a recent surge in COVID-19 cases. In the northern city of Thessaloniki, where most cases have appeared, an 18-year-old university student was given a 6-month suspended sentence and fined 3,000 euros (US$3,560) for hosting her birthday party, which police raided at 1.30 am Saturday. The six guests were fined 300 euros (US$356) each. Health authorities announced 1,498 new coronavirus cases Sunday, along with 103 deaths, five less than the daily record set Saturday. The number of confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic is 91,619, with 1,630 deaths."

They are also facing criticism from the New York Times as Christmas tree farms were swamped by customers on first day of season in a “day like no other,” complete with maskless high-fives!


The Duchess of Sussex revealed that she had a miscarriage in July, giving a personal account of the traumatic experience in hope of helping others regarding the risks of radiation as families need help from Globe Santa, now more than ever.


The Salvation Army’s Massachusetts Division predicts it will only collect half of the $2.6 million it raised in 2019, and to combat this year’s challenges the group is doubling down on its effort to attract digital donations.


They are struggling to meet fundraising targets and the red kettle hauls are down about 50 percent compared to last year’s collections, but not because of me. I probably donated about the same, a couple of handfuls of loose change and a few dollar bills. But for the grace of God go I, and they need to go where is the money.


All a mother stricken by COVID-19 wanted are some front-row seats to the concert as families told the Globe Santa how deserving their children are as Christians looked for a way to wait out pandemic during Advent and converted the anxiety of awaiting a COVID-19 vaccine months away into “joyful anticipation” in the days leading up to Christmas.

Another mother sought help from Globe Santa as COVID-19 took its toll as her autistic son cannot go to daycare because he doesn't understand why he needs to wear a mask, and does he ever have her on a hamster wheel with “no end in sight.”

The Globe says these six new films will get him into the holiday spirit, and the virtual Boston Comedy Festival will keep the laughs coming even as the medical and economic problems add to COVID-19 woes for Globe Santa families and the battle with COVID-19 pushed more families to the brink of history as the country’s affordable housing plans are woefully inadequate if not coupled with an ambitious long-term plan to build and invest in equitable and affordable housing.

Have no fear, Santa heard the call for help and is only a snowball’s throw away after being cleaned out on this day and as single parents strained to stay afloat amidst the jobs cuts and furloughs. At least there will plenty of movies to stream (can you believe who the host, executive producer, and subject? A real champion she) off the big screen.

I'm not trying to be a Grinch. I've been a good boy in the face of expanding tyranny as I hide out in the suburbs. No one gives a hoot anyway, not in the great outdoors where one can dance and mourns residents lost to COVID-19 and who are now part of history. We will all soon be back together since there are no good choices at this point. A women’s work is never done, and they say they feel powerless to ask for a raise during pandemic.

Yeah, we can “all celebrate together next year” if you are still alive, because chronic medical conditions are making life difficult for many Globe Santa families as the pandemic heightens stress on families in need at the holidays (an anxiety-prone 7-year-old girl was stressed even more when she overheard someone say Santa isn't coming this year because he caught the coronavirus and she won't be getting the high-end winter jacket she had asked for, and might even become homeless because her parents are now unemployed.


What was a pleasant surprise was the snow storm that preceded Christmas despite the hottest year on record. I was so grateful for that day as parents and siblings asked the Globe Santa to help make their Christmas merrier this year as the post office struggled with holiday deluge (the fraudulent ballots must have got in the way).

Of course, COVID-19 troubles were not the only problems facing Globe Santa families this year, although the gaudy Christmas lights were just what 2020 demanded — a tawdry, cheap, and garish antidote to some of our festering national bitterness because we all need the magic of Christmas in the City more than ever (that's blasphemy coming from them).

"Winter may just be getting started, but our long, dark nights are about to turn a bit brighter. Monday is the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year in Earth’s Northern Hemisphere. On Tuesday, we’ll start gaining a few seconds of daylight again. This year’s solstice, which arrives Monday at 5:02 a.m. Eastern, coincides with another special astronomical event: On Monday evening, Jupiter and Saturn will be in a rare planetary alignment, appearing closer together in the evening sky than they have in nearly 800 years. They won’t appear this close again until 2080. The visual proximity of the two giant planets offers a good reason to gaze skyward on the solstice, but if you miss the event (or clouds spoil the show), there’s still plenty to appreciate about the winter solstice in its own right. On the December solstice, the sun appears directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, a line of latitude 23.5 degrees south of Earth’s equator. It’s as far south as the sun ever gets before starting its six-month journey northward again. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we see the sun take its lowest and shortest path across the southern sky, which is why it’s dark for a good portion of the day....."

You might even find a message in bottle as the Globe Santa greeted Medford families from fire truck during Kiwanis Club drive-by parade in honor of a neighborhood icon that is no more, euthanized by state officials after a series of incidents and as a child author writes a book about the murder.

Meanwhile, Cardinal O’Malley detailed Christmas Mass safety plans during COVID-19 pandemic after “significant preparations” to celebrate with a reduced number of parishioners able to attend, and I would like to ask him about the Satanic nativity scene that should be burned down. One wonders if they would even welcome the miracle child at the inn with songs, or try to proselytize the kid before he was born because of the virus rules for Christmas or outright jail him.


The delivery by Hanna Krueger of the Globe Staff says:

"This year, the band of holiday carolers known as the Cardiotonics had to adjust their typical performance to comply with COVID-19 guidelines. Dr. Thomas Michel consulted with the hospital epidemiologist, who gave him the green light to substitute humming for singing, but like nearly every tradition this year, the pandemic forced the so-called Cardiotonics — meaning medicine for the heart — to adjust their typical performance to comply with COVID-19 guidelines. The cheery music is a welcome distraction from the somber circumstances that landed them in the hospital during the holiday season. This year — the deadliest in US history — has strained hospital systems, sapped health care workers, and ravaged hundreds of thousands of lives, so despite the adjustments, Michel saw the Cardiotonics as a much-needed and welcome reprieve. “It’s something that has become a beloved tradition and I’m glad that despite the pandemic we can sustain that because I think we need it now more than ever,” said Michel, who is Jewish. He admits the holiday tunes are not for everyone. Michel, who doubles as a researcher and teacher, returned to the cardiology wards this week after a months-long hiatus. He received his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on Monday. Dr. Julia Jezmir, a third-year internal medicine resident, described a moment last Christmas when a patient sang along with tears flowing from his eyes. The doctor looked around the room and all 20 carolers — a collection of doctors young and old, tie-wearers and antler-wearers — were crying as well. “Caroling is one of the more meaningful moments of my residency,” said Jezmir. “I made sure to work during the Christmas holiday bloc specifically for it. There’s something about the shared humanity of the moment. Something that reminds us we’re all in this journey together.”

Except we are not, and then, before you knew it, Christmas Eve was upon us:

"Christmas will look different for a number of reasons this year. Among them: The potential for some Massachusetts homes to have unlit trees. A storm system is expected to move into the region over the Christmas holiday, bringing the potential for power outages as strong winds topple trees and power lines, forecasters said, as state officials warn residents to be prepared for outages and utility company Eversource cancels some employee vacations to deal with cleanup. Forecasters are warning strong winds could lead to downed trees and widespread power outages on Thursday and Friday for Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, with the worst of it to take place on Christmas morning....."

After a most difficult year, I felt blessed that it all stayed to the east, even if the rain washed way all the snow.



Bags filled with eggs, hams, canned produce, and other food along with laundry baskets stuffed with cleaning supplies were handed out to hundreds of Dorchester families Thursday, replacing the annual holiday toy distribution led by the family of Boston’s late and longest-serving mayor Tom Menino.


With protocols in mind, they turned no one away, according to Gal Tziperman Lotan of the Globe Staff, and the scene was quite different in Bethlehem:

"The Church of the Nativity was closed, and most souvenir shops shuttered. Hotels that are usually sold out months in advance were deserted. Among the few signs of life on the main street in Bethlehem’s Old City last Friday were the chirping of a few birds and stray cats scavenging an overflowing garbage can. Earlier in the month, only a few people attended the tree-lighting ceremony in Manger Square, an event that usually heralds the metamorphosis of the quiet West Bank town of Bethlehem into one of the main seasonal attractions of international Christendom. The coronavirus pandemic has put a damper on Christmas at the place where it is said to have all begun. “Great sadness,” Father Ibrahim Shomali, the chancellor of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said of this year’s celebrations. “We are very frustrated, but what can we do? We need to accept the reality and do the right thing.” Midnight Mass at the Church of the Nativity is usually one of the social events of the year on the occupied West Bank. The ancient limestone church takes on the atmosphere of a glittering movie premiere as diplomats and Palestinian officials emerge from motorcades of shiny BMWs and Mercedes in tailored suits and elegant dresses. This year, the ceremony will be limited to church officials, a handful of European diplomats and Bethlehem’s mayor. The Palestinian Authority imposed tough antivirus restrictions on Bethlehem on Dec. 10, setting up checkpoints around its perimeter, ordering the closing of restaurants, cafes, schools and gyms, and forbidding nearly all large gatherings. Bethlehem has about 1,000 confirmed, active cases of Covid-19, according to official data, although the true number is thought to be much higher. All intensive care beds at hospitals are occupied, the Health Ministry said. During a recent visit, the expansive lobby of the 222-room Bethlehem Hotel was silent. The leather couches and chairs were empty, the lights and heating were turned off, and a fine coating of dust was collecting on coffee tables. Until the pandemic, the tourism industry in the West Bank, which relies heavily on the Christmas-time business in Bethlehem, was anticipating its best year in two decades. The West Bank had more than three million visitors last year, tourism officials said, and despite competition from Israeli tour providers and the challenges of doing business under occupation, Palestinian travel-and-tourism companies were hiring, offering new itineraries and predicting continued growth for 2020. “We went from our highest to lowest point,” said Tony Khashram, the head of the Holy Land Incoming Tour Operators Association. “Everything fell apart in the snap of a finger.”

And with that, bells rang out around Bethlehem as the traditional birthplace of Jesus celebrated, but the closure of Israel’s international airport to foreign tourists, along with Palestinian restrictions banning intercity travel in the areas they administer in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, kept visitors away, while in Beijing, official churches abruptly canceled Mass after China’s capital was put on high alert following two confirmed COVID-19 cases last week after two new asymptomatic cases were reported Friday. 

I'm told that with economies reeling around the world, it wasn’t a year of lavish gifts and look at what the Globe found at the White House gift shop:

"With attitudes and laws about the plant rapidly changing, cannabis is increasingly a part — and an increasingly open part — of American holidays. Legal marijuana sales typically spike before Christmas, and interviews with a wide array of Massachusetts consumers found that products infused with hemp-derived cannabidiol, or CBD, are high (no pun intended) on many gift lists this Christmas season. Meanwhile, people said that marijuana’s fading stigma means they’re more likely than ever to be swapping joints, marijuana flower, and edibles as gifts with friends and colleagues, especially those under 40. The interviews also revealed that many people feel less pressure than ever to hide from their families marijuana-related holiday traditions, such as the annual “walk in the woods” to smoke a joint with the cousins before a family meal, even as the pandemic has forced somewhat unsatisfying adaptations of those cherished rituals....." 

Take it outside, will ya'?

"After two dismal seasons that saw the market for their crop sharply curtailed by conflicting regulations, Massachusetts hemp farmers and their supporters are cheering a new state budget amendment that would extend a lifeline to the promising agricultural sector. The provision would allow hemp farmers to sell their plants to legal marijuana dispensaries. It was introduced by Republican state Senator Ryan Fattman of Webster and is headed to Governor Charlie Baker’s desk after a successful vote in the Legislature Friday. Proponents hope it will create a lucrative new market for hemp farmers, who have been hamstrung by state rules banning them from the most profitable segment of the industry: edible products containing cannabidiol, or CBD, a popular cannabis-derived compound that doesn’t get users high and may have health benefits. At the same time, it should provide marijuana dispensaries and their suppliers with a cheaper source of CBD, lowering prices for consumers. “It literally changes everything for small hemp farmers like myself,” said Linda Noel, a longtime advocate who grows hemp at Terrapin Farm in Franklin. “It’s a big win,” said David Torrisi, president of the Commonwealth Dispensary Association, who said his industry group is strongly encouraging the governor to sign it in time for farmers to make decisions about next year’s growing season, which starts in late spring. “There’s no downside to it at all, and it helps out a lot of folks, especially farmers who had the rug pulled out from underneath them last year.”

Hope that gave you some holiday joy despite the pandemic.


The consensus was "stay home, it’s not worth it," and what are they doing alive?

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

A Supremely Catholic Court

Thank God.

"Senate confirms Barrett, delivering for Trump and reshaping the court" by Nicholas Fandos New York Times, October 26, 2020

WASHINGTON — Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative appeals court judge and protégée of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, was confirmed on Monday to the Supreme Court, capping a lightning-fast Senate approval that handed President Donald Trump a victory ahead of the election and promised to tip the court to the right for years to come.

Inside a Capitol mostly emptied by the resurgent coronavirus pandemic and an election looming in eight days, Republicans overcame unanimous opposition by Democrats to make Barrett the 115th justice of the Supreme Court and the fifth woman ever to sit on its bench.

It was the first time in 151 years that a justice was confirmed without a single vote from the minority party, a sign of how bitter Washington’s decades-old war over judicial nominations has become. The vote concluded a brazen drive by Republicans, who moved to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just six weeks before the election. They shredded their own past pronouncements and bypassed rules in the process, even as they stared down the potential loss of the White House and the Senate.

Democrats called it a hypocritical power grab by Republicans who should have waited for voters to have their say on Election Day. They warned of a disastrous precedent that would draw retaliation should they win power, and in a last-ditch act of protest, they unsuccessfully tried to force the Senate to adjourn. 

I can't think of a better reason to go vote Republican, can you?

Republicans said it was their right as the majority party and exulted in their win.

With Barrett’s elevation in place of Ginsburg, a liberal icon, the court is expected to tilt decisively to the right. It is gaining a conservative who could sway cases in every area of American life, including abortion rights, gay rights, business regulation and the environment.

Her impact could be felt right away. There are major election disputes awaiting immediate action by the Supreme Court from the battleground states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Both concern the date by which absentee ballots may be accepted.

Soon after, Barrett will quickly confront a docket studded with major cases on Trump’s programs and policies, not to mention a potential challenge to the election results that the president had cited as a reason he needed a full complement of justices before Nov. 3. Coming up quickly are challenges related to the Affordable Care Act, signature Trump administration immigration plans, the rights of same-sex couples and the census.


The court is also slated to act soon on a last-ditch attempt from Trump’s personal lawyers to block the release of his financial records to a grand jury in Manhattan.

No Supreme Court justice is a certain vote, and Barrett pledged during her confirmation hearings to be an independent mind, but she is widely viewed by both parties as a judge in the mold of Scalia, her mentor, who would rule consistently in favor of conservative positions.

We pray she does hold true to his ideals.

Neither her academic writing nor her relatively brief three-year stint on a federal appeals court provides strong evidence of how she would approach the wide array of cases that will come before her. She gave little hint during her hearings of how she regards any major issue, but she has criticized Chief Justice John Roberts for voting to uphold the Affordable Care Act, and she once signed onto an ad calling for overturning Roe v. Wade and its “barbaric legacy.” It is a good bet that she will be among the court’s most conservative justices, probably to the right of Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Roberts is actually part of the liberal wing now after his name surfaced in the flight logs of the Lolita Express. 

What we are hopefully looking at is a solid core of Alito, Thomas, and Barrett with Gorsuch and Kavanaugh now considered the moderates.

A jubilant White House planned to hold a swearing-in event shortly after the vote on Monday night to try to bolster to the president’s flagging reelection campaign. Justice Clarence Thomas was expected to administer the oath of office. To hold the event at all was a remarkable choice after a similar one announcing the nominee one month ago to the day turned into a coronavirus superspreader event.

It was a confirmation saga that might never have materialized had Ginsburg, 87, who had been determined to stay on the court rather than be replaced with a justice of Trump’s choosing, not died. Before she did, she had told her granddaughter she wanted a new president to install her successor — a deathbed wish that Republicans made clear they had no intention of honoring.

Yes, they ignored her last wishes, the callous brutes.

On Monday, Republicans had profound reasons to celebrate. Barrett, 48, was Trump’s third nominee to the Supreme Court, but arrayed beneath her were 162 new district court judges and 53 appeals court judges who have been installed by Republicans over the past four years, roughly a third of the entire federal appellate bench. Together, they could hold broad sway over American law and policy long after Trump leaves office. 

The courts will hopefully be the last wall of defense for freedom and liberty as they were for liberals years ago.

“The reason this outcome came about is because we had a series of successful elections,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Senate majority leader, who was the architect of the strategy. “What this administration and this Republican Senate has done is exercise the power that was given to us by the American people in a manner that is entirely within the rules of the Senate and the Constitution of the United States.”

The fix is already in, huh, and everybody knows it?

Democrats sought to churn up a storm of outrage that they hoped would help sweep Republicans out of power and could set the stage for their own majority should it come to be.

Citing Barrett’s academic writings and decisions from the appeals court bench, they argued that she would pose an immediate threat to the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a national health crisis, and that she would upend abortion rights and other popular freedoms enjoyed by Americans.

Taking aim directly at Republican senators, they warned that the decision to rush ahead with the election-season confirmation four years after denying a vote to Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, under similar circumstances would come to haunt them.

“You may win this vote, and Amy Coney Barrett may become the next associate justice of the Supreme Court,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, “but you will never, never get your credibility back, and the next time the American people give Democrats a majority in this chamber, you will have forfeited the right to tell us how to run that majority.” 

Sounds like a threat and the whining of a loser.

Republicans claimed the circumstances were different this time because they control both the White House and the Senate, but if Democrats did reclaim power, the right-tilting courts could prove a powerful and frustrating check on their legislative agenda. 

Just as the founders brilliantly intended.

That prospect, and Democrats' fury over Republicans' hardball tactics since 2016, were fueling a drive by the party’s left flank to seriously consider eliminating the last remaining vestige of minority rights in the Senate, the legislative filibuster. They could then proceed to expand the size of the Supreme Court to install liberal justices. 

Just as the founders did not intend, and there is something offensive about a party that wants to change the rules if they don't win.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, and leaders in the Senate have declined to discuss plans that could amount to a significant and potentially destabilizing escalation in the fight over the judicial branch, but on Monday, even some more moderate senators hinted that the path was open before them if they needed to take it.

“They expect that they’re going to be able to break the rules with impunity, and when the shoe maybe is on the other foot, nothing’s going to happen,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who votes with Democrats, said of the Republicans. “One of the things that’s amazed me since I’ve come here is how people feel they can do things to one another and never have it have any consequences, never have it come back on them.” 

Yeah, give them a good kick, hypocrite!

Go tell it to Clinton, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Obama, Strzok, and all the other swamp creatures.

Where are the consequences for ruling elite $cum anyway, because there seems to be no accountability at all in this age of COVID hoax!

The battle to replace Ginsburg, a champion of women’s rights and a heroine of the progressive left, always promised to be combustible in a Senate worn raw by earlier fights, but the timing turned up the heat considerably: Never before in American history had a justice been confirmed so soon before a presidential election.

The contest loomed over — and at times eclipsed — the nomination, as both sides sought to eke out an advantage from the struggle over the court seat. A handful of Republicans, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, were hoping their roles in achieving a major conservative victory would be enough to pull them across the finish line of competitive races, but for all of the partisan fighting, the confirmation process played out with remarkably little drama. Republicans quickly coalesced around filling the seat, regardless of whom Trump nominated, and that left Democrats with very little to do but turn to dilatory tactics and make their case to voters. So rich was the prize that Republicans quickly reversed statements from 2016 and 2020 pledging not to fill an election-year seat until the voters had a say.

Barrett’s qualifications were really never in question, though she had less experience than some of her recent predecessors, but in three days of confirmation hearings, she managed to reveal vanishingly little about how she might look at or rule on matters of public interest before the court.

“Judge Barrett may have established herself as the Babe Ruth of saying pretty much nothing,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Monday.

Like five other justices, Barrett is Catholic. She has said her faith is central to her identity, but in other ways, she breaks the court’s mold. A Notre Dame alumna, she will be the only justice who did not graduate from Harvard or Yale. She also has seven children, two of whom were adopted.

After playing down its implications during the hearings, some Republicans openly celebrated her anti-abortion rights stance on Monday.

“The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett is truly historic,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. “This is the most openly pro-life judicial nominee to the Supreme Court in my lifetime. This is an individual who has been open in her criticism of that illegitimate decision, Roe v. Wade.”

By the time senators gathered Monday night for the final vote, many were exhausted from a debate that had lasted through Sunday night into Monday and from jetting back and forth between Washington and the campaign trail.

Vice President Mike Pence had planned to preside over the vote, but after five of his close aides tested positive for the coronavirus, senators pleaded with him to steer clear of the chamber, which he did....

--more--"

Related: 


That was supposed to be a death sentence for her.

{@@##$$%%^^&&}

"Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination highlights the rise of Catholics on the Supreme Court" by Jazmine Ulloa Globe Staff, October 10, 2020

WASHINGTON — When Amy Coney Barrett emerged as President Trump’s likely nominee to the Supreme Court, a video clip of a tense exchange between her and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California circulated widely in conservative media.

“You are controversial. Let’s start with that,” said Feinstein, a Democrat, during Barrett’s 2017 confirmation hearing for the seat she now holds on the US Court of Appeals in Chicago. Then, Feinstein focused in on Barrett’s faith, questioning whether it could influence her rulings.

Barrett, 48, a former Notre Dame law professor, called herself a devout Roman Catholic but contended she could separate her religious beliefs from her legal decisions, yet, Feinstein said she and other Democrats felt “uncomfortable.”

“I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma,” said Feinstein, who is Jewish. “In your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.”

So do political parties, and she is a fine one to talk!

What chutzpah, and why did Barr drop the inside stock trade investigation she and her husband made just before the COVID cra$h?!

Related:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., hugged ranking member Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., after the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, on Capitol Hill Thursday.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., hugged ranking member Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., after the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, on Capitol Hill Thursday (J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press).

It's all BIG SHOW, folks, and never mind that neither senator was wearing a face mask.

As for Barr, his job is to cover up the crimes of the previous administration, so Trump is making mistake by leaning on him for a lift and should fire him.

That sort of pointed questioning, which some fear will resume as Barrett is vetted by the Senate judiciary committee, has been decried by congressional Republicans as the kind of antireligious bias and anti-Catholic bigotry that they believe is tearing at the fabric of American society, but, if it is tearing at the fabric, it certainly hasn’t held back the rise of Catholic judges. If Barrett is confirmed after Senate hearings set to begin Monday, Catholics would hold a 6-3 majority on the nation’s high court — just the second time that’s ever happened — and it would be an extremely conservative majority. 

It's actually 5-4 since Roberts turned his coat.

Barrett, a mother of seven children, including two adopted from Haiti, is undoubtedly serious in her faith, and served on the pastoral council of her local Catholic church in South Bend, Ind. A former clerk for the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, she has garnered the adoration of conservative Christians and antiabortion activists for not just her religious convictions but also her skepticism, in speeches and rulings, of broad interpretations of a woman’s right to abortion. 

I wonder if they are aware of Bill Clinton's pedo ring down there.

She is widely viewed as a likely vote to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion, and her connections to the Federalist Society, a conservative and libertarian legal group once on the fringe but now a powerhouse, and to People of Praise, a tight-knit faith community based on charismatic Catholicism that former members say teaches that wives should submit to the will of their husbands, have drawn concern among Democrats and women’s groups opposing her nomination.

The rise of Catholics on the Supreme Court, which long had been dominated by white men of mainline Protestant faith, is striking for a denomination that only includes about a fifth of US adults and was once so stigmatized that many Americans worried that Catholic politicians would be more loyal to the pope than to the nation. Still, historians said it’s difficult to unravel just how much religion rather than ideology has factored into a solid Supreme Court majority and whether, or how, the faith of those justices affects their rulings.

“I think the question is — and I am not sure of the answer — are they conservative judges who happen to be Catholic?” asked Margaret McGuinness, a religion professor at La Salle University in Philadelphia.

The five Catholics on the court are Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, and Brett Kavanaugh. Justice Neil Gorsuch was raised Catholic but now attends a Protestant church. The other justices, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, are Jewish, as was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose seat Barrett would take.

Most of the 13 Catholic justices who have served on the Supreme Court have been nominated by Republican presidents amid a decline of anti-Catholic discrimination, a rise in the number of Catholic lawyers, and an unlikely alliance between conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians that formed in backlash to the progress of the civil rights movements of the 1960s. They now sit on a court that has become a heavy cudgel in the culture wars, increasingly using the Constitution’s free exercise of religion clause to rule for churches over other interests, and issuing decisions that critics said often work to the detriment of women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community.

That clause is misunderstood and often disingenuously presented as separation of church and state. What it actually says is the state may not establish a religion, nor may it prohibit the exercise thereof. People think it means no religion.

As with any religion, believers in Catholicism span the political spectrum. Catholic registered voters are evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, according to polls by the Pew Research Center, and Catholics, liberal and conservative, hold varying views on matters like abortion and immigration that track less with doctrine than with their core political beliefs, according to Pew.

Sotomayor, nominated by Barack Obama, has emerged as the liberal conscience on the Supreme Court, an ardent defender of immigrants, people of color, and criminal defendants. She is the first and only justice of Latin American descent, and Sotomayor’s ideology underscores a split among Catholics more broadly: 68 percent of Latino Catholic registered voters are or lean Democratic, Pew polling shows, while 57 percent of white Catholic registered voters are or lean Republican. 

That is a massive amount of Latinos for Trump to scoop up!

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who would be the second Catholic president should he win, has often leaned on his faith. During the first presidential debate, he highlighted his working-class upbringing in Pennsylvania and took a jab at Trump, saying “guys” like him and his friends would “look down their nose on people like Irish Catholics, like me, who grew up in Scranton.” 

Petto Joe is like the priests.

“People tend to think we all march to the beat of the same drummer,” said Thomas H. Groome, professor in theology and religious education at Boston College, who wrote the book of “Faith of the Heart.” “There is no lockstep Catholic vote; there is no lockstep position. All the Catholics don’t agree.”

The first Catholic justice, Roger Taney, joined the bench in 1836. A man of faith and a lawyer who defended an abolitionist preacher, calling slavery a “blot on our national character,” he nonetheless wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery, demeaned Black people as unfit for citizenship, and fueled the tensions that led to the American Civil War.

It took nearly 60 years for another Catholic to join the court.

The waves of Irish, German, and Polish immigrants from Central Europe, who arrived in the United States beginning in the mid-19th century, hugely increased the numbers and influence of Catholics in America, but those newcomers also often encountered harassment, nativism, and raw prejudice, driven in part by fear of their belief in the doctrinal infallibility of the pope.

“People had the idea that there was a Romanist conspiracy, that Catholics couldn’t be real Americans because their allegiance would be to the pope and not the US Constitution,” said Rebecca Brückmann, an assistant professor of North American history at Ruhr-University, Germany.

For much of the 20th century, there was an informal tradition, not consistently followed by presidents making court nominations, that there would be a Catholic seat and a Jewish seat on the court. No two Catholics served together until the 1980s. Catholics gained the majority for the first time with the swearing in of Alito in January 2006, and have held it ever since. The number increased to six when Sotomayor joined the court in 2009, but dropped back down to five after Scalia died in 2016.

“From the Puritans to the Framers and beyond, anti-'popery' was thick in the cultural air breathed by the early Americans,” Richard Garnett, a Notre Dame law professor, wrote that year in a newsletter for the university’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. Still, he said the new religious majority on the court indicated “that Catholicism is no longer regarded — or, at least, may not publicly be regarded — as particularly anti-American.”

The ascension of Catholics on the court has come amid a political realignment after World War II, when anti-communists, social traditionalists, and other conservatives began to forge new alliances. The so-called religious right movement in politics was fueled in large measure by opposition to changes pushed by civil rights activists in the 1960s. Disdain was especially directed at Chief Justice Earl Warren, who led the court as it handed down landmark rulings that banned racial segregation in public schools, expanded rights for women, and provided equal access to justice for criminal defendants who could not afford lawyers. 

The implication is religious conservatives are racist.

Conservative Catholics and evangelicals found common ground, forming an influential part of the base of the Republican Party, despite some fundamental disagreements over doctrine.

“Praying to the Virgin Mary, believing the bread and blood of Christ is literal bread and blood of Christ ... some evangelicals don’t believe Catholics are a true Christian faith because of these things,” said Stephanie Martin, an associate professor of political communication at Southern Methodist University, and, for some Catholics, the reverse has been true.

Still, it has been Catholics, not evangelicals, who have been able to climb the fastest through the legal ranks. Earlier discrimination pushed Catholics to create their own parochial schools and universities, institutions such as Notre Dame and Boston College that sought to provide a broad curriculum, teaching divine and natural law.

Interest in the legal profession grew as Catholic families saw law and medicine as paths to the middle class. Catholic education also has been an impetus for many Catholics to enter public life; the Jesuits, in particular, often encourage people to live out their faith in the service of God and society. By contrast, evangelical schools are newer, and evangelical communities, which range from small Southern Baptists congregations to nondenominational megachurches, are more insular and lack cultural cohesion.

As Republicans have sought religious conservatives for the bench, the pool of Catholics has offered more options.

“It’s basically supply and demand,” Brückmann said, “and so they are not chosen for their religion, they are chosen for their politics.”

Overturning Roe v. Wade, opposing LGBTQ rights, and protecting the nuclear heterosexual family have been the most tangible goals for this wing of conservative jurists, scholars said, but the dispute between the conservative and progressive approach to jurisprudence also often rests on how much power the federal government has to compel states to protect individual rights and individual identities at the expense at what they regard to be traditional values, Martin said.

“It often gets distilled into the question over reproductive rights, but it is about much more than that,” she said.

Despite their rise to power and influence, religious conservatives — mainly white evangelicals — have continued to see themselves under attack, and so, for some, Feinstein’s questioning of Barrett evoked similar probing of Thomas and Roberts over their ability to decide cases independent of the tenets of their faith, and it is being brought up again now, as the confirmation process for Barrett begins at a double-time pace. 

Same with the Jews!

Feelings remain raw. Speaking to group of Catholic lawyers in New Jersey in 2017, Alito recalled staying up to watch John F. Kennedy’s 1960 election as the first Roman Catholic president, feeling “it had lifted me up from the status of second-class American.”

Pointing to a Democratic lawmaker’s objection to his own nomination in 2005 because he’d make “too many Catholics on the court,” Alito declared the nation’s commitment to religious liberty was under fire, but civil rights activists and public interest groups said they don’t object to the justices’ religion but to their records and remarks on and off the bench. Some 150 organizations have urged the Senate to block Barrett’s nomination, pointing to her stances on the Affordable Care Act’s guarantee of birth control, abortion access, LGBTQ rights, and criminal justice.

“It is really Democrats who are mobilized when thinking about the future of the court,” said Janelle Wong, government and politics professor at the University of Maryland, and Barrett’s potential to galvanize the left comes as fissures in the religious right alliance that made the Supreme Court’s conservative majority possible are starting to widen along class and racial lines, as many Black, Latino, and Asian Catholics and evangelicals have long been moving away from the broader political agenda, she and others said.

Concerns flared up again Monday when Thomas and Alito blasted the landmark decision granting marriage rights to same-sex couples, as the Supreme Court declined to take up the appeal of a former county clerk in Kentucky who was jailed after refusing to issue marriage licenses out of a religious objection to same-sex marriage.

Will that 2015 decision survive a court with six conservative justices? There is well-founded fear among liberals that, as with Roe, it will not.

--more--"

If nothing else, Barrett has shattered stereotypes while not getting bogged down in the hearings.

Related: 

Politics has way of finding Supreme Court eager to avoid it 

The touchy issue is being directed there by someone who has an unattractively condescending quality to her -- unlike this woman, who has an air of humility about her:

Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett (Doug Mills/NYT).

Parties offer divergent portraits of Barrett ahead of today’s Senate hearings

I'm not saying she is perfect, but who is?

The transformation of Lindsey Graham

Jess Bidgood of the Globe Staff says he is a political chameleon in the mold of Joe Tynan.

Ex-members of religious group mixed on Barrett nomination

Baker, Sununu do not sign GOP governors’ letter supporting Coney Barrett nomination to Supreme Court"

To be honest with you, that can only help her cause.

The battle is upon us.

Parties offer dueling views of Barrett as confirmation fight enters into Tuesday

Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett was sworn into her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett was sworn into her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill (Patrick Semansky/Pool/AFP via Getty Images).

A slim majority of voters oppose Barrett hearings

So says a Washington Compost-ABC poll as 21 protesters were arrested on first day of Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

Barrett, declining to detail legal views, says she will not be ‘a pawn’ of Trump

That is as she is haunted by Trump’s demands, and the consensus of analysis from the New York Times is that her testimony is a deft mix of expertise and evasion as the Supreme Court, without comment, refused Tuesday to revive an attempt by Democratic members of Congress to sue President Trump over his private businesses accepting payments from foreign governments, while the Boston Globe says it should be a clarion call for lawmakers to act to protect health care, reproductive rights, and our elections amidst the changing deadlines and accuracy concerns in a Supreme Court decision that could ripple through the years.

Barrett, Revealing Little, Suggests She Might Preserve Health Law

It's a female privilege to change one's mind despite the track record.

The Affordable Care Act and coverage for Massachusetts residents is at risk 

Over 375,000 Massachusetts residents could lose their health coverage and the state stands to lose up to $2.4 billion in federal funds if the ACA is overturned by the Supreme Court, according to Elizabeth Warren, Amy Rosenthal, and Kate Walsh, and Warren also criticized Walt Disney Co. for laying off thousands of workers as a result of the pandemic, saying its spending on share buybacks and executive pay enriched bosses and investors.

Her colleague, Edward J. Markey, says an accurate census ensures equity is under threat with the Supreme Court ruling this week that allows the Trump administration to end the census count early, and he is joined by Iván Espinoza-Madrigal and Martin J. Walsh, who says ending census early will leave parts of Boston uncounted, possibly resulting in less aid because it is not just women’s rights at stake with Amy Coney Barrett on the bench.

Supreme Court to review two of Trump’s major immigration policies

Meanwhile, a coalition of prosecutors and attorneys general across U.S. are vowing to defy the Court and not to enforce antiabortion laws as the issue is correctly sent back to the states as the Democrats decry the sham of the cardboard-cutout proceedings and shifting lines in the sand.

What they fail to recognize is the legacy she leaves for women after living an amazing and transformative life that was propelled by the sudden resurgence of the conservative legal movement.

So where do Globe women stand?

Even with Roe v. Wade still intact, reproductive rights took a hit under Trump as the president’s impact has exceeded the expectations of abortion opponents, who doubted the sincerity of his commitment to their cause when he was a candidate.

"Over Democratic fury, Republicans push Barrett to brink of confirmation" by Nicholas Fandos New York Times, October 25, 2020

WASHINGTON — A sharply divisive drive to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court before Election Day wound Sunday toward its expected end as Senate Republicans overcame Democratic protests to limit debate and set up a final confirmation vote for Monday.

Two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, joined united Democrats in an attempt to filibuster President Trump’s nominee, and Democrats once again planned a flurry of parliamentary tactics to protest a vote that they say should wait until after the election, but Republicans had the simple majority they needed to blow past them, setting up the vote to confirm Barrett just eight days before the election and a month to the day after she was chosen.

Republicans, who have been on a mad dash to fill the vacancy caused by the death last month of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, planned to keep the Senate in session overnight to speed things up further. Thirty hours must elapse between the vote to limit debate and final confirmation. For an aging body that prefers light working hours, the unusual all-nighter only underscored what was at stake. Barrett’s ascension would lock in a 6-3 conservative majority on the court.

Try 5-4.

Democrats took unusual steps to try to color the confirmation process as an illegitimate power grab by Republicans, who had blockaded a Supreme Court nominee from President Obama in 2016, citing the coming election that year. Democrats insisted a quorum be present to conduct any business, unusually drawing most senators into the chamber at once, but with the election at hand, their goal was not so much to stop the confirmation as to use it as a rallying cry for their voter base. 

The "illegitimate power grab" was completely constitutional!

Partisan fights over the direction of the federal courts have escalated rapidly in recent years, as Congress has ceased to regularly legislate and both parties have increasingly looked to the courts to enact their visions for the country, but the confirmation wars appeared to be headed to a new, bitter low Monday. For the first time in recent memory, not a single member of the minority party — in this case, the Democrats — was expected to vote for confirmation. A single Democrat, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, had supported Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.

Democrats oppose Barrett ideologically, but their opposition has little to do with the nominee herself. With more than 50 million votes already cast, Democrats have insisted the winner of the election should be allowed to fill the seat. They have accused Republicans of rank hypocrisy for rushing to fill it despite prior assurances by several senior Republicans that they would not do so if a vacancy opened in an election year and despite Republicans’ insistence in 2016 that voters be given a say in who fills the seat.

Collins and Murkowski, two moderates who have frequently bucked their party, have shared those concerns, warning that to fill the seat now would erode the legitimacy of the court and the Senate.

At 48, Barrett would be the youngest justice on the bench, poised to put an imprint on the law for decades to come. An appeals court judge in Chicago and a Notre Dame law professor, she has been presented as an heir to former Justice Antonin Scalia, a towering figure of the court’s conservative wing for decades. Barrett clerked for Scalia and shares his strict judicial philosophy.

In her confirmation hearings this month, Barrett repeatedly described herself as a true independent with “no agenda.” Neither party in the Senate, though, appears to believe she will be anything but a reliably conservative vote based on her academic writing and appeals court rulings. If that bears out, Barrett would be the ideological opposite of her predecessor, Ginsburg, who was the leader of the court’s now-diminished liberal wing.

Democrats have used that prospect to fire up their liberal base before Election Day. Trump has promised to appoint justices who would chip away at or overturn abortion rights enshrined in Roe v. Wade, and Democrats have spent weeks warning that Barrett would do just that. They also say she would rule against the Affordable Care Act when the court hears a challenge to Democrats’ signature health care law just a week after the election.

Sunday’s anticipated parliamentary tactics from Democrats were nothing new. For weeks now, they have deployed the few tools at the minority party’s disposal to try to highlight their case, including boycotting a vote on the nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday, another first, but inside the chamber, the outcome has not been in doubt. Republicans, compelled by the chance to install a third Trump-nominated justice, had already lined up 51 of their members in support of confirmation. Then on Saturday, Murkowski said she would be a 52nd. Despite her opposition to moving forward Sunday, Murkowski had already conceded that she had lost the procedural argument and said she would vote Monday to elevate Barrett.....

--more--"

"Women in red cloaks march on State House, advocate for reproductive freedom" by Lucas Phillips Globe Correspondent, October 25, 2020

More than a dozen cloaked figures slowly marched toward the State House Sunday morning with a simple message: “Ruth sent us.”

With proceedings to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underway and a bill that would ease access to abortion in Massachusetts before the Legislature, advocates rallied at the steps for abortion rights.

“We’re all mad as hell and we’re rising up to show we won’t go peacefully into this dystopian world of actual handmaids,” said Lora Venesy, who dressed as the late justice and led the group to the State House steps. 

Fight the Great Re$et instead!

The group of about two dozen were dressed as justices, suffragettes, and the Statue of Liberty, with the majority clad in red cloaks and white bonnets, a nod to Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which depicts a misogynistic dystopia. A television show based on the book is set in the Boston area.

“It’s a terrifying novel that should stay fiction,” Venesy told the roughly 40 who gathered to watch the group, who joined other “red cloak” protests around the country. 

They are correct; however, it is the very people they think are on their side that are behind what they fear.

Advocates at the event decried what they said was an “imminent” threat to abortion access across the country as a Republican majority in the US Senate swiftly moves Amy Coney Barrett toward confirmation to fill Ginsburg’s seat on the court, but although the judge’s confirmation is probably a foregone conclusion, speakers said there is more to be done in the Bay State as well, beginning with the passage of a bill that has languished in the Legislature.

“The need for the ROE Act existed in full force long before Trump became president, long before Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, long before Amy Coney Barrett got nominated,” said state Senator Rebecca L. Rausch, a co-sponsor of the bill.

She criticized the legislators who passed the current abortion legislation in the state in the 1970s in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which established women’s legal right to abortions.

“I don’t know about you, but I am not comfortable letting legislators from the ’70s decide for my constituents, for me, for our children, and for their children to come, whether, when, and how to parent,” she said. 

Or not.

“If — and every day seeming more likely when — we lose Roe V. Wade at the federal level either by outright overturning or by gutting it so extensively that it does not exist anymore functionally, it will be up to the states to figure out how to ensure reproductive freedom for every person in this nation,” Rausch said.

Which is where it should be.

A group of about two dozen were dressed as justices, suffragettes, and the Statue of Liberty, with the majority clad in red cloaks and white bonnets, a nod to Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale," which depicts a misogynistic dystopia.

--more--"

Related: 

Wellington appoints its first female CEO

In Atwood's book, she is one of the mean and nasty elites that can't bear children after the storm of Islamic Law as the birth is now in God's hands even with the sedatives.

{@@##$$%%^^&&}

Now I lay me down to sleep.....

Pope Francis appoints first Black American cardinal 

He has zero-tolerance for sexual abuse.

Pope Francis voices support for same-sex civil unions 

It's a significant break from his predecessors that staked out new ground for the church in its recognition of gay people as the plot thickens over the origins of the pope’s civil union endorsement that is not an endorsement of homosexual activity but which does drag the Catholic Church into the 20th century with advocates cautiously optimistic:

"For the first time, a clergy sex abuse trial opened Wednesday in the Vatican’s criminal tribunal, with one priest accused of molesting an altar boy in the Vatican’s youth seminary and another priest accused of covering it up. The case concerns the closed world of the St. Pius X youth seminary, a palazzo inside the Vatican walls just across the street from where Pope Francis lives and the criminal tribunal itself. The seminary, which is run by a Como, Italy-based association of priests, serves as a residence for boys aged 12 to 18, who serve as altar boys at papal Masses in St. Peter’s Basilica....."

Also see:

"A day after donning a face mask for the first time during a liturgical service, Pope Francis was back to his mask-less old ways Wednesday despite surging coronavirus infections across Europe and growing criticism of his behavior and the example he is setting. Francis shunned a face mask again during his Wednesday general audience in the Vatican auditorium, and didn’t wear one when he greeted a half-dozen mask-less bishops at the end. He shook hands and leaned in to chat privately with each one. While the clerics wore masks while seated during the audience, all but one took his mask off to speak to the pope. Only one kept it on, and by the end of his tete-a-tete with Francis, had lowered it under his chin....." 

By the grace of God goes he -- along with the Dutch King:

"The Dutch king issued a video message Wednesday saying he had “regret in the heart” and he shouldn’t have flown to Greece for a family vacation last week, a trip that was quickly broken off amid public uproar back home where people are being urged to stay home as much as possible to battle the coronavirus. “It hurts to have betrayed your faith in us,” a somber King Willem-Alexander said in the video, which shows him sitting next to his wife, Queen Maxima, at their palace in a forest in The Hague....." 

That's why they are laughing:

Yeah, BYE!