Becket and More

 Beloveds, oh, my beloveds. I have tried to watch and live-tweet the vice presidential debate going on as we speak. I couldn't. I was annoyed when Kamala Harris wasted her opportunity to tell America what a Biden/Harris administration  would do about COVID-19 on Day 1 by rehashing the current administration's complete lack of competence thus far. On the other hand, I couldn't look away. It reminds me too much of my days as a rookie teacher in a special ed classroom for emotionally disturbed kids. The first year always sucks, I don't care who you are or how prepared you thought you'd be. It's awful. And I lost control of my classroom on more than one occasion. That's what's happened to Susan Page tonight, and it's what happened to Chris Wallace last week. That's right, I'm gonna stand up for the moderators. Because the Commission on Presidential Debates  (CPD) gives them less power than a substitute teacher gets. The problem is that the CPD gi...

Hey, guess what?! A few weeks ago, the GDP dropped to a new low. Like, a low  low. Like worse than the Great Depression low. What's that? You did't hear about it? Well, I'm not surprised. See, the same day that report came out, Donald Trump first tweeted his suggestion that the election be postponed. A suggestion that, rightfully, took over the news cycle like Godzilla took over Tokyo. This event lead us once again to the eternal question: do these media slights-of-hand reveal 45 to be a political genius, a puppet of diabolical handlers, or a very lucky idiot? Personally I argue some combination of all three, the exact composition changing on a day-to-day basis. Although, I'd never accuse Trump of genius , per se. All political acumen requires a high degree of low animal cunning. That day, the day of the GDP drop and the election mishigas, he was mostly a lucky idiot. Given the economy's  COVID-19-induced free fall, bad economic news is more or less a daily occurren...

Okay, there have been a few things being batted about the media about how weird and/or shocking it is that Protestant Christians and Roman Catholic Christians are diverging. Call the fire department! Clutch your pearls! See, here's the thing, though. It's only in the past thirty-five to forty years that Evangelical Protestants (who are the Protestants who are understood to be the other party here) and Roman Catholics have found common ground. On  anything. Why? I'm glad you asked. Stand back. *ahem* EVANGELICALS DON'T LIKE CATHOLICS. THEY STILL CALL US THE WHORE OF BABYLON. You see, Catholics  happened  to become useful to Evangelical denominations in the 1970s and 1980s, when we provided warm bodies to their right-to-life rallies, and again in the 2000s during the fight against marriage equality. (We were on the wrong side. Big shock.) Other than that, Evangelical and Catholic dogma and theology have about as little in common as pos...