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I wonder how J.D. Vance must be feeling today? – politicalbetting.com
I wonder how J.D. Vance must be feeling today? – politicalbetting.com
A few weeks ago I said I posted that I thought Donald Trump’s successor for the Republican nomination would be someone who he anoints and would likely be a family member and this interview by that Trump reassures me that I am following the correct strategy.
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@richraho.bsky.social
MAJOR BREAKING: Pope Francis has written a letter to US Bishops saying he’s following “major crisis” of “mass deportations;” takes on Vance saying “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan”
I strongly suspect the American Bar Association is playing a losing hand here:
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2025/02/aba-supports-the-rule-of-law/
It's too late.
Maybe.
https://x.com/mrga1872/status/1888271845687701604?s=46&t=fJymV-V84rexmlQMLXHHJQr
Scottish Liberals were very strongly linked with the Free Church of Scotland (formed 1843) because of the war that immediately blew up with the supporters and the landlords who supported the Tories and the established (i know, I know, but as far as wveryone was concerned it was) Church of Scotland and refused the new kirk any sites at all - a real issue in the Highlands and Islands where they owned every bit of land for dozens of miles. So the new kirk had to pray in the middle of the road, or on a boat out in the sea - with resonances of the Conventicles and Jesus in Galilee. Caused huge offence.
That's why ultimately WEG brought in the crofting area reforms in later decades, also because of the other abuses by many of the lairds.
Presumably the Borders reflects the same landlord/tenant tension.
The other component of the SLs was of course the middle and upper artisan working classes of the new expanding cities - plenty of Unitarians, Independent=Congregationalists, Bap[tists as well of course as the Presbyterians - the Free Kirkers, Secession Kirk and Old and New Light Burghers. Factory owners and so on. My Grandpa was a United Presbyterian elder - after several mergers by then. A good example of them is Duncan McLaren MP for Edinburgh - who btw married Priscilla Bright the Rochdale Quaker and IIRC brother of John Bright the Radical;. I think he was a Congregationalist but could be wrong.
But the former lot seems to have survived better ...
"I recognize your valuable efforts, dear brother bishops of the United States, as you work closely with migrants and refugees, proclaiming Jesus Christ and promoting fundamental human rights," he said in a letter to the U.S. bishops published by the Vatican Feb. 11.
Pope Francis said he was writing because of "the major crisis that is taking place in the United States" with the start of President Donald J. Trump's "program of mass deportations."
"The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality," Pope Francis said.
...
"He also applauded the efforts of the U.S. bishops' to assist migrants and refugees and to counter the arguments of the Trump administration."
...
"What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly," the pope warned.
He's specifically assaulting the deliberate callousness / cruelty of the Trump-Vance policy.
https://www.usccb.org/news/2025/pope-us-migration-policies-built-force-not-truth-will-end-badly
Oh, they seem to be a perfectly serious operation. I've just read an account of their experimental archaeology of saltmaking (using the unsaleable small coal - potentially vital contribution to profitability in the C18). Making modern saltpans and boiling the sea water. Some surprising quirks and wrinkles. Very impressive.
They've done a very nice little booklet too. So, again, I see no reason why not.
But use as metaphor for rug rats is known as early as 1690 or perhaps 1627 ...
https://thecatholicobserver.substack.com/p/in-his-own-words-jd-vance-on-why
Seeing a lot of Protesting at the Pope from American Catholics today. Is there a word for what to call those people
I would have been excommunicated because I used confession to not confess but to brag.
He did not much like the sect.
https://www.usccb.org/news/2025/pope-vocation-military-and-police-defend-life-peace-justice
If they are singing "Hymns of Redemption" you know it will be *very* serious !
There's a lovely scene in James Herriott where Herriot's future wife's father has a bottle of whisky displayed on his dresser so that he can always show his indifference to the dreaded drink. Farnon's comment: "Tenacious lot, the evangelicals."
Wiki has a picture of one of their chapels. It says "Peculiar People" on it:
He’s from a poor white Appalachian background and he is now the 2nd most powerful man in the western hemisphere. He’s a best selling writer, very rich, he has a beautiful wife and 3 lovely kids, he gets to hang around the world snubbing the jumped up French president. And he’s still very young with every prospect of going the whole way
There are worse gigs
Of course that may just be the Anglo-Catholic bit.
And does JD Vance shit in the woods?
I’d put Vance equal 2nd with Musk
Musk has all the biz power but he can’t be POTUS. Vance can. Indeed I’d make him favourite right now (tho 2028 is insanely far away)
4 times as many disapprove of Labour than approve !!!!!
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1889332078589751694?t=h_-s8oCJ2EGT7COHtgDssw&s=19
'He had an unhappy childhood. His stepfather Joe Wiggins punished perceived transgressions at the end of the cane – and most things were transgressive in the eyes of the Peculiar People. Cornwell once got a beating for reading Treasure Island. “It was joyless,” says Cornwell. “The great American journalist H L Mencken once described a Puritan as someone who is haunted by the fact that someone somewhere might be happy. The Peculiar People were founding members of the fun prevention league, and it didn’t sit very well with me.” '
(On the other hand - I read The Artist as a Young Man as a schoolboy and I've never forgotten the pandy-bats.)
‘Americans Can and Will Die from This’: USAID Worker Details Dangers, Chaos
The sudden scapegoating of the once-bipartisan agency has left front-line workers in foreign countries stunned and abandoned, without even a contact in Washington.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/09/usaid-worker-details-dangers-chaos-00203104
An example is people who go expat to the USA often join a church because that is the only social life in the area aprt from sports clubs, which then leads on to invitations, visits and BBQs, unless perhaps they are parents with children at school.
I find Rory Stewart more interesting than Vance, due to his far wider range of experience, and had a somewhat parallel return to the church. But I have not read anything by him yet, and I don't even know the name or even tradition of the church where he is a member.
Hopefully.
Mostly Vance is a human chameleon, and an ambitious one. As a youth he was part Hillbilly then he went native in the Marines, then at Harvard. It was there he wanted to blend in with the preppy types, who were rather more established, and who were Episcopelian or Catholic. Hence he became a Catholic. He then was an anyone but Trumper while that was the established position, before flipping MAGA when that became the dominant tribe.
Think of him as the Talented Mr Ripley, or Oliver in Saltburn.
That is the government approval rating, Starmer has his own ratings.
At the moment I would put Musk ahead of Vance. Musk might even be more important than Trump in terms of what he is doing, but that might change of course, and that is Trump's decision to make, so sort of makes my statement an oxymoron really, but hopefully you get my drift.
This Trump administration is very active, unlike the last one, so it makes you wonder who else is directing stuff in the administration, who is/are a backroom player(s).
Where would you put Li Qiang if the list was for the whole world? Where would you put Putin, or anyone else?
I don't think his conscience troubles him much.
Honestly though, I have no truck with this pope. He might be right on this topic but he’s been consistently naive or borderline offensive on Russia-Ukraine. He and JD are welcome to argue the toss over US domestic issues but I’ll not be paying much attention.
It is clear that Electoral Calculus has changed its algorithm and now shows Con + Reform with an overall majority with little change in the shares over the last week.
But there has always been 'individual conscience'. We can consider that it may be a vehicle for casuistry, or an opt-out or escape, or a practical way to give flexibility in a diverse community.
And he’s a young VP to a 2nd term POTUS
Even at this early stage he’s surely the fave to win in ‘28
Latest YouGov Feb 6th: Favorable 45% Unfavorable 50%.
This was a Microsoft contract worth 20bn plus.
Anduril is taking over the @USArmy's Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) program pending @DeptofDefense approval.
We are now fully responsible for production, hardware, software, and integrating Lattice to greatly expand warfighter capabilities..
https://x.com/anduriltech/status/1889347525297180696
CEO Luckey is of course the guy who originally developed the Oculus headset.
Now he really is a self-made man.
I wouldn’t take those odds, nowhere near. But favourite? Yes
The person he reminds me of is the Matthew Macfadyen character in Succession.
Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.bsky.social
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4m
Dismantling election security also comes straight out of the authoritarian playbook
https://bsky.app/profile/anneapplebaum.bsky.social/post/3lhw2ovoqrs27
eg Hillbilly Elegy is a genuinely good and compelling book
How many other successful politicians anywhere on earth have been good writers BEFORE entering politics
What's beyond question* is the utterly irresponsible manner the administration is going about sabotaging it. "Shutting it down" would be an unduly generous description.
*Except by apologists like yourself.
Something up with Electoral Calculus.
Lab down from 270 to 201 in a week!
I can absolutely imagine most people in this Trump regime ordering members of the public to be shot down in the street if it was necessary to preserve them in power.
We are a long way from JP the Second
But Vance is bold. Writing and publishing that book at a young age was brave
The wacky, wacky world of Ultra Catholicism (No One More Catholic Than Us)….
Mind you, someone once counted up how many of Luther’s points have been implemented by the Catholic Church. Quite a few, IIRC.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/normalise-indian-hate-row-why-jd-vance-cant-stand-up-for-his-own-wife-and-kids/articleshow/118067537.cms
IIRC, of course; it was a long, long time ago!
Basically John-Paul II was an antipope because of Catholic ruling in the 60s and it didn’t matter if the film was antisemitic because Jews are Christ killers.
*I was interested in the film because of the use of Aramaic.
Edit : and the star Jim Caviezel has gone Hyper Catholic *and* QAnon?
I thought there had been a bit of argy-bargy before. He had previously had a go at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (which is the RC Bishops' corporate body) when they talked about concern for refugees. It's quite passive aggressive, and as also with Trump vs Bishop Budde when she mentioned mercy, made a personal attack rather than try to defend a position. The latest is the Pope putting an oar in:
“I think that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million * to help resettle illegal immigrants—are they worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?” the vice president said.
Vance went on, suggesting that the bishops should be more concerned about the “children who have been sex trafficked” over the open border. “I think the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has, frankly, not been a good partner in common sense immigration enforcement that the American people voted for, and I hope, again, as a devout Catholic, that they’ll do better,” he scolded.
https://thedispatch.com/article/jd-vance-catholic-church/
A contract exists for the Roman Catholics to provide services to homeless etc, but they actually spend about $5 million of their own money on it extra. I guess this may be one of the ones up "for review".
Normally I can distinguish between an artist/actors performances and their political views, same with Mutya Buena of the Sugababes.
It’s not a great set of seats for the Dems.