Welcome to Sabbath for goyische cats: it’s April 27, 2025 and we’re coming on to May. It’s National Gummi Bear Day, a confection I used to love but no longer hanker for (I discovered them as a teenager in Germany). They were created in Germany in 1922. Here’s how they’re made:
It’s also Babe Ruth Day, the day in 1947 that the Bambino, fatally ill with cancer, was honored at Yankee Stadium. He died the next year. It’s also International Crow and Raven Appreciation Day, World Tapir Day, National Prime Rib Day, and National Devil Dog Day.
Here’s a short video on the Bambino and his day (you can hear his speech here).
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 27 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The WSJ reports that Trump and Zelensky finally met. It was brief, and occasioned by Pope Francis’s funeral, but here’s the latest (archived here):
In their first meeting since a shouting match in the Oval Office, President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sat face-to-face on simple chairs on marble floors near the Baptistery Chapel of St. Peter’s Basilica.
The two leaders were among 54 heads of state and 12 reigning monarchs who gathered in Rome Saturday for the funeral of Pope Francis. For Trump, who is at the center of an escalating global trade conflict and fraught negotiations to end two wars, the trip was bound to lead to some tense encounters.
Zelensky described it as a good meeting. “We discussed a lot one-on-one,” he wrote on X shortly after. Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said the meeting was “very productive.”
The two leaders, looking earnest, sat close together without any staff or interpreters near them and spoke for 15 minutes below a painting of the baptism of Jesus. French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer greeted them briefly.
Zelensky said they discussed a full and unconditional cease-fire as well as conditions for a lasting peace. He added it had the potential to become a “historic” meeting and thanked Trump.
Lord, what could have happened in 15 minutes? I do not have a good feeling about it. But at least Trump continues to criticize Putin, going after him for firing at Kiev.
Trump later criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin in a post on social media, threatening to hit Moscow with further sanctions. “There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently,” he said.
Yes, that sounds about right: Putin, who doesn’t care how many Russian or North Korean soldiers die in the battle for Ukraine, doesn’t want a cease-fire unless it includes a juicy slice of eastern Ukraine. And I can’t imagine the war ending without that happening–unless Putin wants all of Ukraine. Nobody seems able or willing to stop him, and that, of course, will hearten China in its hunger for Taiwan.
*Two more deportation nightmares, including a U.S. citizen, a girl born here, are in play. The bolding is mine, as ICE’s behavior outrages me:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have in recent days deported a Cuban-born mother of a 1-year-old girl, separating them indefinitely, and in another case a 2-year-old girl who is a U.S. citizen along with her Honduran-born mother, their lawyers say.
Both cases raise questions about who is being deported, and why, and come amid a battle in federal courts over whether President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has gone too far and too quickly at the expense of fundamental rights.
Lawyers in the two cases described how their clients were arrested at routine check-ins at ICE offices, given virtually no opportunity to speak with lawyers or their family members and then deported within two or three days.
A federal judge in Louisiana raised questions about the deportation of the 2-year-old girl, saying the government had not proven that it had done so properly.
The American Civil Liberties Union, National Immigration Project and several other allied groups said in a statement that that case and another in New Orleans that involves deporting children who are U.S. citizens are a “shocking – although increasingly common -– abuse of power.”
Lawyers for the girl’s father insisted he wanted the girl to remain with him in the U.S., while ICE contended the mother had wanted the girl to be deported with her to Honduras, claims that weren’t fully vetted by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in Louisiana.
Doughty in a Friday order scheduled a hearing on May 16 “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process,” he wrote.
The Honduran-born mother was arrested Tuesday along with the 2-year-old girl and her 11-year-old Honduran-born sister during a check-in appointment at an ICE office in New Orleans. Both the mother and 11-year-old girl apparently had outstanding deportation orders. The family lived in Baton Rouge.
. . .In Florida, meanwhile, a Cuban-born woman who is the mother of a 1-year-old girl and the wife of a U.S. citizen was detained at a scheduled check-in appointment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Tampa, her lawyer said Saturday.
Heidy Sánchez was held without any communication and flown to Cuba two days later. She is still breastfeeding her daughter, who suffers from seizures, her lawyer, Claudia Cañizares, said.
Cañizares said she tried to file paperwork with ICE to contest the deportation Thursday morning but ICE refused to accept it, saying Sánchez was already gone, although Cañizares said she doesn’t think that was true.
In the case of the girl/citizen, it needs to be made clear who the girl wants to be with, and really, is a two-year-old competent to make that decision? Nope, so just send her away with her mother. In the Cuban case, it’s not clear why the mother was deported, but separating a mother and 1-year-old child nearly instantly is simply cruel. Both of these cases involve depriving the deported from legal help, and one involves deporting a young U.S. citizen (the father seems to be an undocumented immigrant. The solution to all of these is to have a legal hearing and adhere to the motto: “no deportation with hearings and legal assistance to those who have been detaiined.” The cruelty and illegality of ICE’s behavior is beyond belief. It falls at Trump’s doorstep, and I don’t think this is what the American people wanted when they figured a curb on illegal immigration into their votes last November.
*UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, a beehive of terrorism and anti-Israel propaganda, has been stripped of its legal immunity by the Trump Administration. This means that Americans can now sue it, and they’re doing that already.
The U.S. Department of Justice told the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Thursday that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees has been stripped of its legal immunity.
The decision was taken as part of a case filed last year in which families of victims of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sued UNRWA for its ties to terrorism. Israel has said that at least 18 UNRWA staff members took part directly in the assault across the Gaza border into southern Israel.
The plaintiffs also allege long-term fraud and corruption in handling financial aid routed through UNRWA into the Gaza Strip—$1 billion of which critics say has fallen into the hands of Hamas and other terror groups.
“The complaint in this case alleges atrocious crimes committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, and its factual allegations, taken as true, detail how UNRWA played a significant role in those heinous offenses,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York wrote to the U.S. district judge Analisa Torres.
“Previously, the government expressed the view that certain immunities shielded UNRWA from having to answer those allegations in American courts,” per the filing. “The government has since re-evaluated that position and now concludes that UNRWA is not immune from this litigation. Nor are the bulk of other defendants.”
The claim by the U.S. attorney’s office added that UNRWA is not legally considered an affiliated organ of the United Nations since it was formed and continues to hold its mandate as a result of a resolution by the U.N. General Assembly. The U.S. Justice Department said the General Assembly may have lacked the authority to create the agency.
. . .If found not to have immunity, UNRWA, its leaders and employees—and perhaps the United Nations at large—could be ordered to pay large compensation to victims and their families.
Stripping diplomatic immunity from UNRWA might also call into question the future of U.N. headquarters in New York and could impact the Knesset’s decision, effective this past January, to ban UNRWA from operating within Israeli territory.
The UN disagrees, of course, but I’d be delighted if UNRWA, an organ of hatred and propaganda, were put out of business, and its task bundled in with the other UN refugee organization (Palestine is the only territory to have its own refugee organization, and you’ve probably read my posts on UNRWA’s unsavory activities.
*Andrew Sullivan is a Catholic, of course, and if you’re nonreligious you may find his latest piece, “Why I loved Pope Francis,” a bit cloying (The subtitle is “Yes, love is the right word”) but I read it because I pay for it. I know very little about the man save that he’s the prime purvey of a widespread delusion but was also humble, abstemious, and apparently devoted to uplifting individual humans. I don’t know from Popes, but he seemed to be a decent specimen of the genre. And of course Sullivan loved him. A few quotes:
Now, here was a man who referred to himself as merely a “bishop for the diocesan community of Rome” and who asked us, the faithful, to pray to God for him. He wore simple vestments, eschewing the intricate and fabulous outfits of his predecessor, remarking as he turned them down: “The Carnival is over.” After the flinty Pole and the prissy German, here, at last, was a warm Italian again, like John XXIII — even though he was from Argentina.
His voice was clear but quiet and softly pitched. And then, rather than assert papal authority as Benedict had done so often and so rigidly, he sought a simple moral authority — by embracing the grotesquely disfigured, listening intently to small children, washing the feet of male and female prisoners, eschewing the Papal palace for a simple apartment, and inviting transgender men and women on the streets to lunch with him in the Vatican.
Faith for Francis was not rigidity, it was not always certain, and it was not words. It was a way of life, of giving, of loving, of emptying oneself to listen to God without trying to force a conclusion — of discernment, as the Jesuits like to say. . .
. . .The church needs doctrine, it needs an infallible magisterium, and those who want this to suddenly change are guilty of a category error. Francis didn’t change an iota of doctrine, to some “progressive” dismay. But he did something more important. He reminded us that doctrine without love is what Jesus rejected.
And he insisted that faith without doubt was not faith at all:
In this quest to seek and find God in all things there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If one has the answers to all the questions — that is the proof that God is not with him.
For those who seek in Catholicism a psychological, intellectual, and even political anchor, Francis was maddening. He told them not to be so certain. He told them there was room for dialogue, that the clergy were too full of themselves, and that there were no areas where conversation could not happen. There was divine truth and then there was the mess of human existence, and the church was about where the two meet, denying neither, a field-hospital full of groans and blood, not a pristine, distant, well-kept Cathedral. After the authoritarian papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, it felt as if window had opened and the fetid air banished.
Sullivan said he almost left Catholicism because of its pervasive scandals, but stayed for two reasons: “AIDS and his belief in the tenets of Catholicism: “Because I never lost my faith in Jesus or the Gospels or the Church itself, regardless of its all-too-human priesthood. In fact, I had found faith indispensable to surviving the devastating young death I saw all around me in my twenties and thirties and also faced myself.”
Faith needs doctrine, of course. But it also needs doctrinal perspective — and the obsessive focus on relatively minor issues, like communion for faithful but divorced Catholics rather than, say, the far harder commands to love one’s enemy or to renounce all wealth, is more neurosis than religion. In fact, for faith to live in and respond with new language to modernity, it needs the space Francis has created to breathe again, to get away from petty certainties and doctrinal spats, to discern and embrace the unruly freedom of wherever God seems to be leading us.
And the very person of Francis showed to many, far beyond the ranks of Catholics, that in seeking meaning, the weird, strange figure of Jesus of Nazareth still beckons us, is still essential, still there. Francis showed us this meaning, as Jesus did, not by what he said so much as how he lived. Religion, as Oakeshott put it,
Well, I’m sorry to say that Jesus is not essential for me, and I doubt whether he even existed as a person, much less God made Man. It always puzzles me when Sullivan professes to accept all of these unevidenced tenets of a rather rigid faith, and he’s never explicit in what tenets he does believe. The essay shows, as always, that Sullivan is a smart and eloquent man. And this makes me even more puzzled, because the part of his rational faculties that keeps him from committing his life ot what is likely a total falsehood seems to have disappeared.
*The latest in the Spring, 2025 series of Futile Pro-Palestinian demonstrations was at the City College of New York (CCNY) campus in Harlem.
CUNY public safety officers and the NYPD quickly quashed an attempt by students to establish a ‘Liberated Zone’ on the quad of City College of New York on Thursday afternoon.
A group of several dozen pro-Palestinian protesters on the campus announced they’d set up a “liberated zone” around 2 p.m. but were swiftly confronted by CUNY officers who forced them out of the area, dousing some in pepper spray. At least one student was arrested, an NYPD spokesperson later confirmed.
One video posted by a photojournalist Marcos Gabriel Quiñones showed a CUNY officer waving the pepper spray at the crowd, which also appeared to waft onto an adjacent public safety officer who covered his face, backing away from the students.
One CUNY undergraduate student named Aria, who declined to give her name and age because of worries about retaliation from administrators, said she’d hopped a fence to avoid the cloud.
“They began indiscriminately pepper spraying us,” she said.
Yes, it’s protest seasons again, and you can get an idea of the scene by watching this tweet:
Once again the Jews at work, Jews in class, Jews studying for exams while the future baristas of America are clogging up the quad playing their drums and singing their songs. In ten years they’ll be posting “the Jews control everything” with zero sense of personal responsibility
— 🇺🇸 the real cuse connection 🇺🇸 (@CuseConnection) April 24, 2025
These are getting boring. It’s always the same: masked, cowardly protestors (it can’t be civil disobedience), megaphones, chants, drums, and kiffeyehs. This is not going to lead to what the protestors want: divestment, and one wonders what they think they’ll accomplish. Of course I didn’t know whether it was useful when I protested during the Vietnam War, but I think the huge crowds helped because the cause was moral (an unjust war), was shared by many Americans, and because Walter Cronkite was on our side.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is waxing philosophical. I have put linke to her references:
Hili: Czy Kasandra znała prawo Murphiego?Ja: To mało prawdopodobne.Hili: A jednak zawsze miała rację.
And a photo of Szaron:
*******************
From Things With Faces, an elephant-shaped strawberry:
From Jesus of the Day: a clothing tag
From Wholesome Memes:
Masih reports a big explosion in an Iranian port, and you can see more about it here (it’s now over 700 injured). It seems as if a fire ignited containers of missile fuel, and also that it was an accident, not an attack by Israel. We’ll know more later, but you can see a short video of the moment of explosion below the tweet.
Massive explosion just destroyed a huge part of Shahid Rajaee Port in Bandar Abbas, Iran.
Iranian people are heartbroken for those killed and injured innocent people paying the price while the regime keeps lying and covering up.
5 killed and over 400 injured so far and the… pic.twitter.com/zXXYH0QJi7
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 26, 2025
The explosion:
From Larry the Cat via Simon: another possible Trupmian gaffe:
"Do you even own a black suit?"
— Larry the Cat (@number10cat.bsky.social) 2025-04-26T11:51:26.839Z
A peeved cat from Malcolm:
No talk me I angy pic.twitter.com/NLRjBtS6pC
— The Cats 𝕏 (@TheCatsX) April 19, 2025
From Luana. Remember, the people who were killed in Kashmir were tourists—all but one of the 26 killed from India. Murder of tourists is not “resistance”, but count on SJP to glorify it. Since both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir, but India controls it at present, it would be “occupied” no matter who was in control. But apparently you can’t say you are on the Palestinian side unless you okay the murder of Indian tourists.
Horrifying: Swarthmore’s Students for Justice in Palestine just posted a glorification of the Islamist terror attack in India—just two days after it happened.
This is what “The West is next” means. These extremists celebrate death and want to bring that violence here. pic.twitter.com/6yvHiBvul6
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) April 24, 2025
From my feed, chickens mimicking mops:
Can everybody just Please look at these Frizzle Polish chickens pic.twitter.com/TYQHqAquAW
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) April 25, 2025
One from the Auschwitz Memorial that I reposted:
A Czech Jewish girl died in Auschwitz; she was seven years old.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-27T10:16:14.390Z
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, I didn’t know that Milwaukee had a famous duck (everyone loves hens and their broods!) I sure wish Honey had a statue like this:
Awesome animal history encounter in Milwaukee:Statues of Gertie the mallard and her ducklings on the Wisconsin Ave bridge over Milwaukee River.She became a sensation in May 1945 for nesting in a piling and having her ducklings there.
— Dolly Jørgensen (@dollyjorgensen.bsky.social) 2025-04-26T15:41:54.861Z
Click to read about Gertie:
I hope they left the prints in the cement:
A modern re-make of a Roman tile makers experiences, in Gaul circa 120 AD.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other. -Ulysses S. Grant, military commander, 18th US President (27 Apr 1822-1885)
I’ve often wondered about patriotism. It depends on how one defines the term, I suppose, but I fail to see any function of patriotism other than motivating people to prepare for and engage in warfare.
Other feelings and attitudes toward one’s country, such as appreciation and affection, seem harmless enough. But patriotism?
Patriotism is fine unless it turns into jingoism.
Imagine if the Ukranians were NOT patriotic.
Imagine if the Russians were not.
And indeed, you’re proving my point. Patriotism is what is called for when it’s time to go to war, whether it’s a matter of aggression or defence.
But that means there must be some level of patriotism present to begin with, otherwise it cannot easily be created from nothing when an enemy threatens to invade. That is why it is arguably needed even when there is no immediate threat – because some day there might be.
I’m not denying it is needed. But what is it needed for? War. No other reason. I need patriotism in case you come to kill me, and you need patriotism in case I come to kill you. (And of course I need all my buddies to be patriotic if we all want to come kill you, and vice versa.) Would be better if we were all just not patriotic. A pipe dream, I know.
Do you have a source for that?
Pope Francis developed Liberation Theology (the gnostic doctrine from Latin America that Paulo Freire promoted in Pedagogy of the Oppressed) and as such did more to globally subvert and transform the Catholic Church since Kirchenkampf in Nazi Germany and infiltration of the Church by Communists in Russia in the early 20th century.
This is classic press language to imply that something didn’t happen, but clearly means that it did. The Left is desperate to find their poster child for illegal immigration. They have been manipulating the public for weeks by presenting only part of any story for whichever “Maryland man” or other illegal they think will provoke a reaction. The influx of over ten million illegals under Joe Biden is his legacy. The Left views this as a positive one.
Millions entered this country without proper documentation. Or let’s call them “illegals”, a properly charged word. Now they should not have been allowed in, but they are here. So we have a choice, we could transition these people into properly documented residents or we could be as cruel to them as possible. Obviously, being a Christian country, we have chosen the latter.
I agree Mr. Elsken – I’m glad the deluge has stopped but it is pointless and cruel to throw out those we (sorta) let in (criminals and Algerian terrorists excepted, throw those bums out).
Plus… any inflation and economic woes we had would have been worse were it not for their cheap labor over the last 5 years. They came b/c our growing economy had a huge “We’re hiring!” sign up.
D.A.
NYC
I agree with Kevin & David that these deportations of young citizens with their undocumented parents are horrible. But what I think these kinds of comments miss is the depth of feeling about the bad consequences of mass illegal immigration (housing, wages, health care, crime). It seems that tens of millions of Americans aren’t willing to just shrug and get over it, and last November they voted for this deportation policy. Calling them cruel and un-Christian doesn’t address the reasons why they did so, or acknowledge that this resentment of the social and economic and political consequences of mass illegal immigration is widespread and not unique to the USA.
[edit to add: In my country there’s very little illegal immigration; it has lots of benefits and I favour it; but newcomers are concentrated in three cities where it has driven housing costs very high.]
Thinking more about Judge Dugan since yesterday. The illegal was in her court for a pre-trial hearing for an assault charge. Dugan took him and helped him flee, not only from arrest by ICE, but also from the charge against him in her court.
Yes, she (and the people supporting her actions) support an abuser from another country over the victim of violent crime.
Supporters of illegal immigrants seem to think that these people have no agency, that they are the true victims, and deserve sympathy and empathy no matter what. They are mindless children who need our protection. Those supporters ignore the fact that they physically came here on their own accord.
I’ve noticed a similar progressive-mind opinion of transpersons, blacks, Palestinian / Hamas, and other fashionable groups of people.
I see you caught that “virtually no opportunity…” phrasing too. Exactly – this is a semantic trick. Interesting how the media is manipulating the coverage using emotional wording and obfuscating phrasing. Then there are the countless hero-pose photographs.
The FrizzleChicks are looking to mentor under Big Bird, and join The Muppets.
😍
I was thinking more in terms of Dr. Seuss…
Bandar Abbas is the biggest port in Iran, a country with already very creaky infrastructure. This explosion is a large own goal for them. 🙂
Grok said the explosion was ammonium nitrate (the yellow smoke). I don’t care what it was but it is great.
A few months ago the Israelis almost destroyed Yemen’s Hobeda port, which is further than Bandar Abbas, in part to show the Iranians how far Israel’s reach was.
Turns out they didn’t need to.
D.A.
NYC
For a US catastrophic port explosion, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster . It was much larger and deadlier than the Bandar Abbas one. Texas City’s definitely was ammonium nitrate; I have read other accounts that attribute Bandar Abbas’ to solid-fuel rocket propellant, dangerous stuff indeed.
According to Wikipedia Kashmir is currently split between India, Pakistan and China. Pakistan wants the part controlled by India.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir
Even Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has condemned the attack in Kashmir, calling it a “heinous act.” Don’t tell the SJP.
Yep, it was pretty bad.
re – Kasmir.
Don’t forget under Islam ANY place that was once Islamic must — MUST be returned to Islam ASAP; Spain, Israel, Kashmir, East Timor, India.
That is first order of business. Next is turning the never Islamic world (Dar al Harb – House of War) into Islamic (Dar al Islam/House of Islam). The world is divided thusly, for now. Everywhere Islam has invaded it has done by the sword.
This can be our future if we let it.
Onwards Israeli heroes.
D.A.
NYC
Regarding immigration, in Heather Cox Richardson’s latest newsletter she ends her post as follows:
On the last day of his presidency, in his last speech, President Ronald Reagan recalled what someone had once written to him: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”
He continued: “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”
Back in those days the Repubs were the party of business interests and open borders in the name of lower wages. Meanwhile Ceasar Chavez and his United Farm Workers protested in opposition to illegal immigration and were heroes to the left. My how times have changed.
Sullivan: “Faith needs doctrine, of course. But it also needs doctrinal perspective — and the obsessive focus on relatively minor issues, like communion for faithful but divorced Catholics rather than, say, the far harder commands to love one’s enemy or to renounce all wealth, is more neurosis than religion.”
But when Jesus made the whip of cords to drive out of the temple the people selling doves — needed by the poor to make the offering — was he focusing in a major or a minor issue?
Definitely major. Mainly the hypocrisy and grift of the religious leaders who ran the temple (Matthew ch 23). And indeed that is where he also is reported to have told them about their fastidiously straining out gnats (unclean to eat) but swallowing camels (ditto).
The money changers and animal sellers at the temple were low-level beneficiaries of this system; no doubt the holy capos got a significant cut. (“Pharisee” literally means “set apart”, like “holy” and “sacred”).
FWIW, modern versions of this religious extortion are the high fees charged for getting certification for kosher and halal products. No doubt similar grifts can be found in other religions.
Thus endeth the lesson 🙂. (True confession: I used to lead bible studies.)
Seems pretty minor to me. Kosher fees: minor issue. Tariffs on China: major issue.
Hili reminded me to give a listen to one of my favorite ABBA songs.
As for hens getting all the love, I don’t know about that. While I can name at least two cities that have erected statues to beloved ducks, I can’t think of even one that has enstatued a beloved chicken.
Nice!
With all the fawning attention given the dead Pope Francis, here’s Mr. Deity on this “icon” giving his justification, and tacit approval to the Islamists who murdered satirists at the French weekly Charlie Hebdo. Francis drew an analogy between someone insulting his mother, who he would punch in the face and people making fun of religion that should expect a violent response. Here’s “The Way of the Mister: Fuck the Pope” from 10 years ago. This Pope also claimed to oppose global warming, but the single most effective thing any single person can do is to have fewer children. Francis yammered on opposing abortion, and contraception. Environmental hero, my ass. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xDnxv6eFNg
Got a link that does not require signing in?
Here’s a WEIT link that works for me. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2015/01/16/mr-deity-calls-out-the-pope/
There is (in my opinion) zero chance that the leaders of Pakistan will attack India. The is (in my opinion) zero chance that the leaders of India will attack Pakistan. Both sides (the leaders) want peace. China wants peace in the region. The US wants peace in the region. So far, so good. The problem is that Islamic radicals don’t want peace and they could trigger a war with vast and devastating consequences. Forget global warming. How about global crop failures from the ‘limited’ nuclear war between India and Pakistan?
Consider this to be an overture or rehearsal for the exchange of nukes that will plausibly result from the melting Himalayan glaciers causing an intractable non-negotiable water famine.
Regarding the Polish Frizzles, I feel very sorry for animals that are bred to be ‘cute’ but by any other name are deformed. We have a pair of silkie chickens, who, it seems, to me, from their behaviour, live in continuous trepidation because their vision is so occluded by the masses of feathers around their eyes. I give them regular hair-cuts.