Christie Honors Betrayal Of The Country

Now that the third GOP presidential debate is over and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are labeled winners, John Ellis Bush is labeled as a loser, and Carly Fiorina has continued on as the most loathsome creature on the planet, it's time to give Chris Christie some attention.   CNBC's Jim Cramer asked

Governor Christie, there has been a lot of political rhetoric that some bank executives should have gone to jail for the 2008 financial crisis.

But General Motors paid more than $1 billion in fines and settlements for its ignition switch defect. One hundred and twenty- four people died as a result of these faulty switches. No one went to jail.

As a former prosecutor, do you believe the people responsible for the switch and the cover-up belong behind bars?

Before switching gears and almost answering the question, the New Jersey governor maintained

You bet they do. And if I were the prosecutor, that is exactly where they would be. The fact is that this Justice Department under this president has been a political Justice Department.

It has been a Justice Department that decided that they want to pick who the winners and losers are. They like General Motors, so they give them a pass. They don’t like somebody else like David Petraeus, they prosecute them and send a decorated general on to disgrace. It’s a political Justice Department.

No Republican- or even Democratic- politician would dare remind Christie that on March 3, 2015 the former Army general and CIA director admitted

that he gave highly-classified journals to his onetime lover and that he lied to the FBI about it. But he only has to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor that will not involve a jail sentence thanks to a deal with federal prosecutors. The deal is yet another example of a senior official treated leniently for the sorts of violations that lower-level officials are punished severely for.

According to the plea deal, Petraeus, while leading American forces in Afghanistan, maintained eight notebooks that he filled with highly-sensitive information about the identities of covert officers, military strategy, intelligence capabilities and his discussions with senior government officials, including President Obama. Rather than handing over these “Black Books,” as the plea agreement calls them, to the Department of Defense when he retired from the military in 2011 to head the CIA, Petraeus retained them at his home and lent them, for several days, to Paula Broadwell, his authorized biographer and girlfriend.

In October 2012, FBI agents interviewed Petraeus as part of an investigation into his affair with Broadwell — Petraeus would resign from the CIA the next month — and Petraeus told them he had not shared classified material with Broadwell. The plea deal notes that “these statements were false” and that Petraeus “then and there knew that he previously shared the Black Books with his biographer.” Lying to FBI agents is a federal crime for which people have received sentences of months or more than a year in jail.

Under his deal with prosecutors, Petraeus pleaded guilty to just one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified information, a misdemeanor that can be punishable by a year in jail, though the deal calls only for probation and a $40,000 fine. As The New York Times noted today, the deal “allows Mr. Petraeus to focus on his lucrative post-government career as a partner in a private equity firm and a worldwide speaker on national security issues.”

That is Chris Christie's proof that the Administration "picks winners and losers."  He's fine with the numerous whistleblowers prosecuted by the Obama Attorney General's office, more than all other presidents combined.  Five of these have gone to prison and Edward Snowden is likely to be sent there if he ever returns from exile in Russia, where he enjoys a modicum of freedom, to the Land of Exceptionalism.

The Obama Administration so viciously pursued David Petraeus that he was sentenced to probation (though with a $100,000 fine, as noted in the video below) and became an adviser to the White House. That's quite "a political Justice Department."  Christie might have mentioned the same Justice Department has sent to jail zero (0) bankers for their role in the mortgage fraud which brought down the economy.

He might have but didn't, because it was Chris Christie, and it was  the Republican Party. And have I mentioned how loathsome Carly Fiorina is?














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Condescension, But Not Where Claimed

Two days after the Democratic presidential debate, Slate's William Saletan recounts,

Clinton brought up the exchange during a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in San Antonio. She promised to stand up to the gun lobby and, dropping her G’s, added: “I’ve been told by some to quit talkin’ about this, to quit shoutin’ about this. Well, I’ll tell you right now, I will not be silenced, and we will not be silenced.” The crowd loved it. The next day in New Hampshire, Clinton tried the same line in a Yankee-friendly accent: “Some people say that we shouldn’t talk about it. Some say we shouldn’t shout about it, that I shouldn’t shout about it. Well, I think we have to keep talking. But more importantly, we have to act.”

A week went by. Clinton prepared for her Oct. 22 testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. When she returned to the campaign trail on Oct. 23, in aspeech to the Democratic National Committee Women’s Leadership Forum, her account of the exchange with Sanders was no longer just about guns. It was about sexism. “You know,” she began—clearing her throat to signal the sound bite ahead—“I’ve been told to stop, and I quote, ‘shouting’ about gun violence. Well, first of all, I’m not shouting. It’s just [that] when women talk, some people think we’re shouting.” The audience hooted, screamed, and cheered. Clinton grinned. “I will not be silenced, because we will not be silenced,” she declared.

On social media, Clinton’s campaign made the new line—“When women talk, some people think we’re shouting”— her message of the day. Her team posted it on her Twitter feed at 8:30 Friday morning, two hours before her speech to the DNC forum, as a rebuke to “those who tell her to ‘stop shouting’ on issues that matter.” The quote also went up on her Facebook page and her campaign website, under the headline, “Hillary Clinton Just Said Something Women Have Been Thinking for Years.” The next day, at a Democratic dinner in Iowa, Clinton repeated the applause line: “I’ve been told to stop shouting about ending gun violence. Well, I haven’t been shouting. But sometimes, when a woman speaks out, some people think it’s shouting. But I won’t be silenced, and I hope you won’t be either.”

Without naming Sanders, Clinton is "using the story to bond with women, to paint Sanders as a patronizing old fart, and to portray herself as a victim."

Salon's Amanda Marcotte believes the Vermont senator directed his complaint about "shouting" to Clinton because she is a woman.   Marcotte, who usually writes convincingly about feminist issues, does not deny Clinton's motivation but

would ask the people who are getting all bent out of shape over this to put yourself in the shoes of the many women who found the exchange between Sanders and Clinton to be annoying. When a man is condescending to you, it’s often hard to tell if that’s just how he is to everyone or if it’s just women he talks down to. It gets even more complicated when you realize that a lot of men who are condescending toeveryone still turn the volume up even more when they’re talking to women.

And that is exactly how the “shouting” exchange felt during the debate. Yes, Sanders used the same general talking point in response to both Clinton and O’Malley. But he was more aggressive about it with Clinton, saying, “All the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want,” whereas he merely told O’Malley, “Here is the point, governor. We can raise our voices.” His tone and the amount of force he put behind this openly condescending talking point was very different. Telling women they’re just imagining things reads, in and of itself, like it’s sexist condescension.

And so, as Warner Wolf would say, let's go to the audiotape of the exchange between Sanders and Clinton::



CLINTON: No, not at all. I think that we have to look at the fact that we lose 90 people a day from gun violence. This has gone on too long and it’s time the entire country stood up against the NRA. The majority of our country...

(APPLAUSE) ... supports background checks, and even the majority of gun owners do. Senator Sanders did vote five times against the Brady bill. Since it was passed, more than 2 million prohibited purchases have been prevented. He also did vote, as he said, for this immunity provision. I voted against it. I was in the Senate at the same time. It wasn’t that complicated to me. It was pretty straightforward to me that he was going to give immunity to the only industry in America. Everybody else has to be accountable, but not the gun manufacturers. And we need to stand up and say: Enough of that. We’re not going to let it continue.

(APPLAUSE)

COOPER: We’re going to bring you all in on this. But, Senator Sanders, you have to give a response.

SANDERS: As a senator from a rural state, what I can tell Secretary Clinton, that all the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want, and that is keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have those guns and end this horrible violence that we are seeing. I believe that there is a consensus in this country. A consensus has said we need to strengthen and expand instant background checks, do away with this gun show loophole, that we have to address the issue of mental health, that we have to deal with the strawman purchasing issue, and that when we develop that consensus, we can finally, finally do something to address this issue.



Marcotte acknowledges

Sanders has been giving this answer for years. He did it in July, after an O’Malley super PAC ad attacked him (“We have been yelling and screaming at each other about guns for decades,” said Sanders). He did it again in August, after a male surrogate for Clinton attacked him (“I can get beyond the noise and all of these arguments and people shouting at each other”). He did it again in October, after the mass shooting in Roseburg, Oregon (“People on both sides of this issue cannot simply continue shouting at each other”). Sanders gives this answer to everyone....

Yes, Sanders used the same general talking point in response to both Clinton and O’Malley. But he was more aggressive about it with Clinton, saying, “All the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want,” whereas he merely told O’Malley, “Here is the point, governor. We can raise our voices.” His tone and the amount of force he put behind this openly condescending talking point was very different. Telling women they’re just imagining things reads, in and of itself, like it’s sexist condescension.




Alert Hillary Clinton. for as Saletan observes, had the former Secretary of State perceived Sanders' "rebuke as sexist"

you’d expect her to have said so in her first accounts of the exchange. She didn’t. She waited more than a week before embellishing the story. She prepared it as a sound bite for social media, and she unveiled it at a women’s forum. And it worked, so she’s still using it.

The impact of rural vs. urban lifestyle as explanation for contrasting approaches to gun control is otherwise largely ignored.  Instead, "gun rights" advocates want few if any restrictions on the ability of anyone to possess firearms no matter where they live. Neither they nor gun safety proponents are willing to acknowledge that firearms represent something far different in northern Maine, Michigan's upper Peninsula, southern Idaho, western Virginia, or west Texas than they do in Philadelphia, Cleveland, St. Louis, Denver, or even Houston.

That is what Senator Sanders was trying to get across when he noted he is "a Senator from a rural state."  Senators have a knack for representing their constituents and as the chart below from Politifact indicates, in the period from  1999 to 2016, six of Hillary Clinton's ten biggest donors were from Wall Street. (The gun industry is conspicuously absent from the parallel Sanders' list.)

So, too, was the Vermont senator speaking of differing perspectives when he referred to "all the shouting in the world"  or when he told O'Malley "We can raise our voices, but I come from a rural state, and the views on gun control in rural states are different than in urban states, whether we like it or not."

Sanders' observation in the debate about "all the shouting in the world" and in July about "yelling and screaming at each other about guns" for decades was description, not prescription, and less opinion than observation, for he recognizes the obstacles to sensible gun regulation.   "Shouting in the world" is little different than "we can raise our voices, but" to a debater inclined to vary his syntax.

In a classic case of forcing someone to prove the negative, we cannot disprove Marcotte's contention that "Clinton’s talking point is also landing because it plays off not-unreasonable fears that a lot of women have that at least some of the Sanders support base is coming from condescending, know-it-all men who have unconscious issues with women in authority." But there is no hard evidence that "Sander's support base is coming from" such "know-it-all men." Clinton does not directly argue that, and Marcotte merely counts it as a legitimate fear, without providing substantiation.

"When women talk, some people think we're shouting," emphasizes the candidate hardly reticent about emphasizing the gender divide. Yet, without suggesting that Mrs. Clinton values women more than men or that her supporters are "man-hating females," Sanders, focusing on economic issues, is smeared as harboring some unconscious prejudice toward women. There is something wrong here, and it's not with Bernie Sanders or his supporters.









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Ryan's New Family

The GOP's circus to come up with a Speaker of the House reveals all we need to know about Paul Ryan- and about the last (nearly) seven years.

"I cannot and will not give up my family time," Paul Ryan claimed, soon before he decided he would lower himself to accept the job of Speaker, a position which would  require him either to give up that precious family time or neglect his responsibility to the Party. As an opponent of family leave, Ryan is, admittedly, a hypocrite, but hypocrisy is common. Instead, as Amanda Marcotte pointed out

this whole incident is a reminder that what is wrong with Ryan’s libertarian-inflected conservatism goes far deeper than mere hypocrisy. In fact, I’d argue that Ryan isn’t really a hypocrite at all, but that this move to preserve his family time is a perfect distillation of the Ayn Rand-constructed worldview he has, where all the goodies are reserved for the elite and the rest of us can go hang. And by “goodies,” I don’t just mean NFL tickets and first class plane tickets every weekend. Increasingly, the Republican worldview is one where even basic things like love, connection, and other basic human needs are being reclassified as privileges that should only be available to the wealthy.

Hypocrite or elitist,or both, the man from Janesville also a crybaby or at least hugely disingenuous (and boldly immodest, as earlier this afternoon, below).   Earlier this week, Speaker John Boehner led congressional leaders in crafting a bipartisan budget deal nearly certain to pass Congress and to be signed by Obama.  "I didn't want him to walk into a dirty barn full of you-know-what," Boehner informed reporters, "so I've done my best to try to clean it up." He cleaned it up for Ryan, a most generous gift,  yet the latter claimed

he hadn't seen the new bipartisan budget deal and that the secretive process used to craft it "stinks," but there's stuff in the bill that should smell good and familiar to him. 

One of its most important provisions makes changes to the Social Security Disability Insurance program, and some of those changes came from the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees Social Security and which Ryan chairs. 

"Paul Ryan's staff was involved in crafting the provision for weeks," a Democratic aide told HuffPost. "His staff signed off on the provision, his staff also signed off on other key provisions" related to tax compliance and Medicare. 

Notwithstanding his dogwhistle to the House members who seem as radical as he himself is, Ryan will vote for the measure because he doesn't need his life to be complicated. But he will complain about it. And if you're looking to market land as "beachfront property in Arizona," give a call to Freedom Caucus member Raul Labrador, who thinks Ryan "shares the frustration that we do and he wants to do better and be different. I think we have to take him at his word and he is being sincere."

Labrador's group also has been unmasked, now that National Review reports that another of its members, Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, has written to Ryan a letter he promised to enter into the congressional record,and which memorializes the concessions made by the presumptive Speaker. National Review reports

I need your assurance that you will not use the Speaker’s position to advance your immigration policies . . . because there is a huge gap between your immigration position and the wishes of the American citizens I represent,” Brooks wrote. “Your words yesterday constitute the needed assurance. “If my portrayal of your words errs in any respect, please deliver to me . . . a written communication correcting my errorrs. 

Brooks delivered it directly to Ryan on the House floor and says Ryan called his office during a staff meeting less than two hours later, confirming the accuracy of his promises as stated in the letter. When reached for comment, Ryan confirms Brooks’ account. “I have long and publicly been opposed to the gang of eight bill, and there will be no comprehensive immigration reform under this president,” he tells National Review. 

"Under this President," the aptly-initialed P.R. (now PDR) maintains. After Barack Obama (A.O.), all bets are off because Obama won't be around  to be given credit. The benefits can go to President Rubio or whomever the Party nominates. Meanwhile, Obama gets no cooperation because it's not about policy, it's about Barack Obama, which is the full story of the last 105 months, full stop.













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Incendiary Charges

In retrospect, it wasn't surprising former Virginia senator Jim Webb dropped out of the Democratic race for President one week after after he uttered the frightening phrase "all lives matter" at a debate.

The candidates were asked "do black lives matter or do all lives matter" and, given the choice of the two, two candidates flatly stated "all lives matter" while Hillary Clinton dodged the question.  (Now one week later, I've gotten an e-mail from John Lewis for "African-Americans for Hillary." Go figure.)

Webb, as he pointed out, has worked for years on criminal justice reform which was, we were led to believe, at  the heart of the "Black Lives Matter" movement.   Sometimes and unfortunately, however, slogans take on a life of their own and thereby overshadow more important words and actions.

Conservatives recognize both the possible backlash in acknowledging "all lives matter" and that no politician ever lost a vote by defending police in principle and in general. So they have taken a different tack than did Webb. "If you look at the Black Lives Matter movement," Ted Cruz maintained last week, "one of the most disturbing things is more than one of their protests have embraced rabid rhetoric, rabid anti-police language, literally suggesting and embracing and celebrating the murder of police officers.”

This isn't the rhetoric and position only of the anti-establishment right. Once misperceived as sane and sober, Chris Christie, appearing on CBS' Face the Nation, claimed President Obama "does not support the police, doesn't back up the police, he justifies Black Lives Matter."  Asked whether Black Lives Matter should be justified, Christie responded "I don't believe that the movement should be justified when they're calling for the murder of police officers, no."

Republican politicians should not alone be called out.  Two days earlier, towering FBI director James Comey had contended (video below) "In today's YouTube world, are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime? Are officers answering 911 calls but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns?"









Three days later and one day after Christie's remarks, Comey tried the "fair and balanced approach," commenting

I actually see an example and demonstration of that arcing through hashtags: the hashtag Black Lives Matter and the hashtag Police Lives Matter. Of course, each of those hashtags and what they represent adds a voice to an important conversation, but each time someone interprets hashtag Black Lives Matter as anti-law enforcement, one line moves away and each time someone interprets hashtag Police Lives Matter as anti-black, the other line moves away.

Good save. But whatever that means, it doesn't mean that Comey doesn't still believe police officers turn their backs on the public because of Black Lives Matter. While pledges differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, that in Hollywood, Alabama (Hollywood, Alabama?) is not atypical. Upon appointment a police officer solemnly swear(s)" she will not "be influenced in the discharge of my duty by fear"and that "I will, to the best of my skill and ability, faithfully discharge all duties required of me and execute the orders of my superior officers and in all cases uphold and enforce the criminal laws and constitution of the State of Alabama, the ordinances of my jurisdiction, and the criminal laws and Constitution of the United States."

James Comey is the nation's chief law enforcement officer.  If police officers are not faithfully discharging their duty, we should know who, where, when, how, and why police officers are violating their oath and/or conducting a slowdown. He owes the country nothing less. And if he does not give us the details nor retracts his statement, he is doing the nation a far greater disservice than a dozen "all lives matter" statements.








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However, He Is A Christian

"That might be the greatest answer all week," observed Joe Scarborough (video below) a week or so ago on Morning Joe. The ex- GOP congressman was responding to Lindsey Graham's reply to Eugene Robinson's question about Ben Carson: "How do you explain his obvious appeal?"

The South Carolina senator answered "I don't think he has a clue about what's going on in the Mideast. So I don't know. I'm doing the best I can."







Good answer, and darned humorous. Again on Morning Joe, on Monday morning Graham was asked (video below) about the same candidate "Have you ever stabbed anyone? Or tried to?" So he ridiculed Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, then quipped "On our side you got the number two guy (who) tried to kill somebody at 14 and the number one guy is high energy and crazy as hell. How am I losing to these people?"










As stand-up this is great stuff, and says a lot about the "deep Republican bench" we kept hearing about until these players became candidates and it became clear what they really were made of.

Nonetheless, Graham answered his own question, "how am I losing to these people?" He's losing in part because they are "crazy as hell" or, rather, remarkably reckless and self-delusional. It is an asset.

Likely Republican caucus attendees in Iowa were asked in a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll “I’m going to mention some things people have said about Ben Carson. Regardless of whether you support him for president, please tell me for each if this is something that you find very attractive about him, mostly attractive, mostly unattractive, or very unattractive."  Salon's Bob Cesca summarizes 

If we couple “very attractive” and “mostly attractive” responses, here’s how the numbers stacked up.

1. “He is not a career politician”: 85 percent
2. “He has no experience in foreign policy”: 42 percent
3. “He was highly successful as a neurosurgeon”: 88 percent
4. “He has said the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is the worst thing since slavery”: 81 percent
5. ”He has an inspirational personal story”: 85 percent
6. “He has raised questions about whether a Muslim should ever be president of the United States”: 73 percent
7. “He has said he would be guided by his faith in God”: 89 percent
8. “He has said that Hitler might not have been as successful if the people had been armed”: 77 percent
9. “He approaches issues with common sense”: 96 percent
10. “He has conducted research on tissue from aborted fetuses”: 31 percent

Steve M. recognizes conservative GOP voters believe the culture is tyrannical and "politically correct" (a catch-all for, roughly speaking, anything not conservative) and that

Carson and Trump actually are striking serious blows against this fascist dictatorship. Congress hasn't found a way to repeal Obamacare or crush Planned Parenthood or permanently block the next debt-ceiling increase or make gay marriage illegal again, and that makes GOP base voters furious at all the party's politicians because, dammit, they ought to be able to do something -- but Ben Carson can say "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi" and get away with it, and Donald Trump can say that undocumented immigrants are feral rapists and get away with that, and that, to Republican voters, is a real blow against the liberal-fascist power structure.

"Republican base voters" Steve M. argues, think of the 'politically correct' culture, in their words -- as a liberal-fascist dictatorship, just like the Obama presidency." Sunday, Carson equated abortion with slavery because

During slavery, a lot of slave-owners thought they had the right to do whatever they wanted to that slave, anything that they chose. And what if the abolitionists had said, 'I don't believe in slavery, but you guys do whatever you want'? Where would we be?" I know that's one of those words you're not supposed to say, but I'm saying it,

Carson has a thing with Hitler.  This past August he saw a "connection (between Planned Parenthood and Nazi Germany) in the sense that Margaret Sanger, their founder, and people like Adolf Hitler … felt there were certain people who were superior and certain people who were inferior. And the way that you strengthen the society was to enhance superior ones and eliminate the inferior ones.”

But it's not limited to abortion/Planned Parenthood. In a 2009 commencement speech he warned graduates “I daresay the vast majority of German people did not believe what Hitler believed. But they didn’t speak up, and you see what the result was. " Last month he suggested those events could come about in the USA because "If you go back and look at the history of the world, tyranny and despotism and how it starts, it has a lot to do with control of thought and control of speech."

In March 2014, again railing against the culture his supporters believe is destroying the nation, Dr. Carson had claimed his beloved country is "very much like Nazi Germany. And I know you’re not supposed to say ‘Nazi Germany,’ but I don’t care about political correctness. You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.”

Probably, individuals are afraid to say what they actually believe because people will think they are stark, raving mad.  Judging by the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Polotics survey and Carson's ascent to the top of the heap of dung in Iowa, they are not crazy but today's Republicans.







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Parochial Perspective

Sixteen months ago, canon lawyer J.D. Flynn, who works for Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput (image below from Google) on the "lowest professional rung of ecclesiastical bureaucracy," wrote for National Review an extraordinarily adoring portrait of his boss.   Though he focused on saintly personal characteristics of the cleric, Flynn wrote

The “archconservative” Chaput, by the way, has railed against the death penalty for years, and partnered with liberal legislators to talk about immigration reform. The “liberal” Pope Francis, by the way, made opposition to abortion a central argument in his encyclical on the environment. Catholic social teaching hardly fits in the narrow strictures of partisan political platforms.

Not impressed. No doubt Chaput has talked about immigration reform, which he might support in principle, but definitely would be a boon to the ranks of membership in the Roman Catholic church. The death penalty is such a pivotal issue that less year it directly affected twenty-two (22) individuals in this nation of 319 million people.

More significantly, Flynn wrote

The real story is that Chaput and Francis have much in common. That they’re allies, and that they’re both working, in partnership with laity, for Christian renewal. The real story is that Francis is committed to the Church’s moral teaching, and that Chaput is committed to the Church’s social outreach.

If Archbishop Chaput and Pope Francis are allies- fortunately, a dubious claim- we, Catholics and non-Catholics such as myself alike, should be worried. Joel Mathis of Philadelphia magazine reports that at the annual Synod on the Family in Vatican City, Chaput

gave an interview to the French Catholic magazine Famille Chretienne, reprinted at CatholicPhilly.com, lamenting tiny, two-children families.

"I’ve been surprised by how little the synod text says about the joys of having children, and especially the beauty and heroic witness of large families. Children are the future. They’re a gift from God. They renew the world," Chaput told the magazine.

"It’s sad to see so many couples today cheat themselves out of more love and more joy by having only two children. Life is meant to be an adventure, to be abundant – not to be strangled by worry. God provides. He never abandons hearts that are generous. I have tremendous esteem for large families. I wish we had many more of them. They’re the hope of the Church."

Having been alerted to this revolting statement by reader GDR, I had to check the web to confirm that Philly magazine has not been turned into an East Coast version of The Onion.  Confirmation came in the form of various articles of local interest, sports and otherwise, with nary a piece revealing that Barack Obama has admitted he was born on planet Krypton, where he introduced George Reeves to Islam.

The low-hanging fruit would be to label as a hypocrite the Archbishop, having sworn off intercourse with the opposite sex and starting a family. Having done so, he nevertheless wishes" we had many more" large families.  Hypocrites abound.  Odder is Chaput's theory is that "life is meant to be an adventure" and "not to be strangled by worry" because it runs counter to Genesis 3:14-16, in which Moses writes (NIV translation)

Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

It might be wishful thinking to believe that Chaput would be disturbed to learn the reasons- and they are many, complex, and largely of secular origin- that life is often strangled by worry, marked by randomness and even brutality. By one reckoning, worldwide there are 750 million people with inadequate access to clean drinking water, 805 million with insufficient food, and 1.6 billion without electricity.

And the children, of whom the Archbishop wishes there were far more and for whom "God provides":   two million children a year die because they are too poor to afford the treatment for preventable diseasea while 165 million children under the age of 5 in 2011, it is estimated, "were stunted (reduced rate of growth and development) due to chronic malnutrition." Whatever God's role or lack thereof, there is a tremendous number of children not provided for in the developing world, and even a few here, as most other clerics understand.

Notwithstanding the roughly 800 women globally who in an average day die from causes related to pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period, tens of millions of women each year decide to get pregnant to have a child. Good for them or as Chaput would say, "God bless them." It's their choice, as it ought to be, and as it ought to be not to become pregnant.

Chaput is not for choice (not by a longshot) but he is not insensitive. He is, evidently,concerned about the 20-25 murderers executed each year in the United States.

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Still Naive After All These Years

The Vice-President of the United States has finally bowed out of a race he never completely entered, and Elias Isquith points out

Biden’s words weren’t exactly Churchillian in their grandeur or Lincolnian in their eloquence; but the sentiment he expressed — the firm belief that the American people are not as divided as they seem; that some of the most vexing and bitter policy disputes troubling the country are, “at their core,” deceptively simple — is beautiful.

Included in Joe Biden's sentiment was

I believe we have to end the divisive partisan politics that is ripping this country apart, and I think we can. It’s mean-spirited, it’s petty, and it’s gone on for much too long. I don’t believe, like some do, that’s it naive to talk to Republicans. I don’t think we should look at Republicans as our enemies. They are our opposition, they are not our enemies. And for the sake of the country, we have to work together. As the president said many times, compromise is not a dirty word.

"Unfortunately," observes Isquith, Biden's beautiful words "are also not true."  Clearly, naivete is something Joseph Robinette Biden is very, very familiar with because he maintained

... at their core, every one of these things is about the same thing — it’s about equality, it’s about fairness, it’s about respect. As my dad used to say, it’s about affording every single person dignity. It’s not complicated. Every single one of these issues is about dignity and the ugly forces of hate and division. They won’t let up, but they do not represent the American people. They do not represent the heart of this country. They represent a small fraction of the political elite; and the next president is going to have to take [them] on.

Joe Biden has worked under, and with, President Obama for nearly seven years and appears really, truly, to believe this. He has forgotten or disregarded the words of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy:

Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.

Elijah Cummings of Maryland, Ranking Democrat on both the Benghazi and Oversight committees in the House, has responded to McCarthy:

He did not mention the four Americans killed in service of their country, raise any questions that were not answered by multiple previous investigations or offer any concrete proposals to enhance security for our diplomats overseas.

His stunning confession revealed the truth that Republicans never dared admit in public—that their core goal in establishing the Benghazi Committee was to use taxpayer funds for a political campaign against Hillary Clinton.

The Benghazi Committee has now spent more than $4.5 million in one of the longest and least productive congressional investigations in history. It has held no hearings of any kind since January, and Republicans have completely abandoned their plans to hear public testimony from top defense and intelligence officials so they can focus almost exclusively on Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps Biden believes Hillary Clinton is particularly divisive.  However, opposition to anything Obama has been the hallmark (Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury of 5/24/15) of Republicans in Congress and in the media for the past seven years- and the previous Democratic president was impeached over sex. And the current GOP outrage is not only over the likely next Democratic nominee, as Cummings describes when continuing

Now House Republicans want to use this same model to attack the Constitutional rights of women—rights which have been affirmed by the Supreme Court—to determine their own healthcare decisions in consultation with their doctors.

Republicans have threatened to shut down the government, they have ousted their own House speaker and now they want to set up a new select committee to attack Planned Parenthood.

This week, Cecile Richards, the head of Planned Parenthood, testified before the Oversight Committee. She had already provided tens of thousands of pages of documents, so even Republicans had to admit that she has been extremely cooperative. Ms. Richards came armed with the facts, she was assertive and strong in her defense of the rights of women, and she was compelling.

She explained the critical services—such as breast exams, pap tests, cancer screenings, and contraceptive services—that Planned Parenthood affiliates across the country provide to millions of women who are often uninsured, poor, or living in medically underserved areas. She also highlighted the fact that, after four congressional hearings by three standing House committees, Republicans have failed to identify any credible evidence to support their repeated claims that Planned Parenthood sold fetal tissue for profit in violation of federal law.

Tellingly, Republicans refused to invite David Daleiden, the radical extremist whose group engaged in a host of potentially illegal activities during his failed three-year crusade of deception to try to entrap Planned Parenthood. (Daleiden’s lawyers have indicated in separate litigation that he plans to take the Fifth.)

Recognizing this failure, Republicans changed course during the hearing and actually tried to attack Ms. Richards’ salary, as if it were somehow inappropriate for a woman who leads a renowned national organization to make six figures.

The attack on Planned Parenthood is especially evocative of the GOP's impulse to block and obstruct, given that the birth control services provided by the organization decrease the rate of abortion, a procedure against which Republicans rage.  Ms. Richards' substantial salary may have been the only thing about her testimony, or about Planned Parenthood, congressional Republicans actually liked. They've never had a problem with exorbitant CEO salaries.

Cummings believes Republicans "should join Democrats to investigate issues that actually need attention, such as the skyrocketing prices of prescription drugs." As he no doubt is aware, there is a fat chance and a slim chance of that occurring, and slim is on its way out of town.

So with a rhetorical flourish and mostly good intentions, Joe Biden has declined to seek the top spot on the Democratic ticket.    That's good for the Party- and for himself. When Hillary Clinton was asked at the recent debate "which enemy are you most proud of?" she wisely replied "well, in addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians. Probably the Republicans."  If Joe Biden had announced he would run, he would have participated, and may have been stumped for an answer.







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