Sunday, December 22, 2024

That Pope Francis can repeat this joke about himself makes him divine

Pope Francis: There Is Faith in Humor

Pope Francis is the head of the Roman Catholic Church and the bishop of Rome.

And I’ve been told one that concerns me directly, the one about Pope Francis in America. It goes something like this: As soon as he arrives at the airport in New York for his apostolic journey in the United States, Pope Francis finds an enormous limousine waiting for him. He is rather embarrassed by that magnificent splendor, but then thinks that it has been ages since he last drove, and never a vehicle of that kind, and he thinks to himself: OK, when will I get another chance? He looks at the limousine and says to the driver, “You couldn’t let me try it out, could you?” “Look, I’m really sorry, Your Holiness,” replies the driver, “but I really can’t, you know, there are rules and regulations.”

But you know what they say, how the pope is when he gets something into his head — in short, he insists and insists, until the driver gives in. So Pope Francis gets behind the steering wheel, on one of those enormous highways, and he begins to enjoy it, presses down on the accelerator, going 50 miles per hour, 80, 120 … until he hears a siren, and a police car pulls up beside him and stops him. A young policeman comes up to the darkened window. The pope rather nervously lowers it and the policeman turns white. “Excuse me a moment,” he says, and goes back to his vehicle to call headquarters. “Boss, I think I have a problem.

“What problem?” asks the chief.

“Well, I’ve stopped a car for speeding, but there’s a guy in there who’s really important.”

“How important? Is he the mayor?”

“No, no, boss … more than the mayor.”

“And more than the mayor, who is there? The governor?”

“No, no, more.”

“But he can’t be the president?”

“More, I reckon.”

“And who can be more important than the president?”

“Look, boss, I don’t know exactly who he is, all I can tell you is that it’s the pope who is driving him!”










Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Eliminating Jimmy Carter's Departments of Education and Energy is a real positive first step

 

Slash First, Fix Later: How Elon Musk Cuts Costs


Mr. Musk dug into his companies’ budgets, preferring to cut too much rather than too little and to deal with the fallout later. Under Donald Trump, he is set to apply those tactics to the U.S. government.

Saturday, November 16, 2024

The Musk-Ramaswamy Project Could Be Trump’s Best Idea

The duo are convinced they have enough legal authority to pull this off in the executive branch. The legal theory of the case is that the Supreme Court’s West Virginia v. EPAand Loper Bright rulings reining in the administrative state mean that much of what the federal government now does is illegal.

Mr. Trump has set a laudable goal of eliminating 10 regulations for every new one, and there is no shortage of targets. The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Wayne Crews says 217,565 rules have been issued since the Federal Register first began itemizing them in 1976, with 89,368 pages added last year.

DOGE’s first order will be to pause enforcement of overreaching rules while starting the process to roll them back. Mr. Trump and DOGE could direct agencies to settle legal challenges to Biden rules by vacating them. This could ease the laborious process of undoing them by rule-making through the Administrative Procedure Act. A source tells us they’ll do whatever they think they legally can without the APA.

The DOGE duo believe this will provide the legal justification for reducing the federal workforce. As we recently noted, the federal head count has ballooned by 120,800 during the Biden years. Civil service and union protections make it hard to fire workers.

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Nick Jacobs, who worked in Peculiar government from 2005 to 2022, said the town was in need of an industrial project to fund new roads and infrastructure. But he described Peculiar as full of BANANAs: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.

‘Don’t Dump Data on Peculiar’

The saga in Peculiar is playing out in small towns across the country as tech giants look to build hundreds of new data centers — often lured by tax abatements — to house the thousands of computers that would power the booming and energy-intensive artificial intelligence industry.

Reporting from Peculiar, Mo.

 

Iran thinks it can make a deal with the Great Satan?

 

Iran Debates Whether It Could Make a Deal With Trump


Some in Iran’s new, more moderate government think the result of the presidential election provides an opportunity to make a lasting deal with the United States.

Saturday, November 9, 2024

Wow! A second reference to "EL Caudillo" in a day this one after Spain's failing response to Valencia's disaster

 

Natural Disaster Destroyed Part of València. Populism May Take Us All the Way Down.

Mr. Cerdà, a journalist and the author of “Presentes,” wrote from València, Spain.


I understand the appeal of "El Caudillo" having spent much of my early years in Spain

 

‘An Earthquake’ Along the Border: Trump Flipped Hispanic South Texas


Donald J. Trump’s biggest gains were along the Texas border, a Democratic stronghold where most voters are Hispanic. He won 12 of the region’s 14 counties, up from five in 2016.

J. David GoodmanEdgar Sandoval and 

J. David Goodman reported from the Rio Grande Valley in the weeks before the election. Edgar Sandoval reported from Starr County after the vote.

Monday, November 4, 2024

Trump and Evangelicals makes one recall Lenny Bruce's rift on Jesus attending New York's St. Paul's Cathedral

 

How Donald Trump Replaced ‘the Protestant Pope’


Billy Graham towered over American evangelicalism for 50 years. Now the fight is on to own his legacy.

Ruth Graham covers religion in America. She is not related to the Billy Graham family.

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Have I told you how much I enjoy my new Mustang Mach E

 

How Elon Musk Might Use His Pull With Trump to Help Tesla

Although Donald Trump has opposed policies that favor electric cars, if he becomes president he could ease regulatory scrutiny of Tesla or protect lucrative credits and subsidies.