FairAndUNbalanced.com

 
From Infidel753:

The world-wide scandal over cover-ups of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is nothing new. Revelations about the clergy in this or that country have been coming in a steady stream for over two decades, and the overall picture has long been clear — predator priests in substantial numbers sexually molesting boys and other victims, while the hierarchy covers up for them by moving them from place to place to avoid exposure, discouraging victims from speaking out, and trying to deal with the problem internally rather than by turning suspected abusers over to the police. It’s that practice of covering up the crimes, which is so widespread and so consistent across time and around the world that it must have long been a systematic policy, that marks the Catholic Church as an evil institution, rather than just an institution that happens to have a lot of evil people working in it.

Over the last month or so a dam seems to have burst, in terms both of public perception of the problem and of the authorities’ willingness to take serious action about it. In the US the trigger was the Pennsylvania grand jury report, which revealed about 300 predator priests and 1,000 victims within just that one state — with the understanding that even so, many further cases doubtless remain unknown. In several other states, Attorneys General are considering investigations of their own. There have been rumors of a possible federal RICO investigation.

Wake-up calls are sounding across the world.

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From Green Eagle:

The endless string of abominations by the Trump administration is so great that this one is essentially going unnoticed, but it is so grotesquely cynical that I cannot resist bringing it to your attention. From the Los Angeles Times, which does as good a job as any mainstream news source I know of in reporting on Latin America:

“A robust anti-corruption agency, seen as a model for Latin America, was created 12 years ago in Guatemala with strong U.S. support, and notched up an enviable record.

The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala has prosecuted and jailed a former president, vice president and hundreds of corrupt police officials, politicians and businessmen.

But Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales announced on Aug. 31 that he was shutting the acclaimed commission, citing vague national security concerns. The panel was investigating Morales for possible campaign fraud.”

A President shutting down a corruption commission which just happened to be investigating him. Anyone want to take any bets on what the response of the Trump White House has been?

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From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

Does God hate people? Liberal and progressive Christians say, ABSOLUTELY NOT! GOD LOVES EVERYONE! Much like their Evangelical brethren, they appeal to the Bible (and personal feelings) to prove their beliefs. In their minds, the essence of God is his love for his creation. Personally, I like this flavor of Christianity. Loving self and others is a good thing. The problem with it and all other peculiar interpretations of the Bible that it is come to by ignoring what other verses say. The Bible is a hopelessly contradictory book, and it can be used to prove almost anything. Take Tim Conway, pastor of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas. I was Tim’s pastor for a time in the 1990s. He is a diehard, fire-breathing Fundamentalist Calvinist. Tim reads the same the Bible as liberals and progressives do and concludes that God not only hates sin, he hates those who do it. I will let Tim share with you his view on the matter. The video is short, so I hope you will take the time to watch it.

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From Iron Knee at Political Irony:

You can’t make this kind of stuff up. Can FEMA look any more incompetent?

With Hurricane Florence causing historically massive flooding on the east coast FEMA decided it was a good time to introduce a “Presidential alert” system, which would allow Donald Trump to send an emergency message to your mobile phone, which you cannot block and would interrupt phone calls and other usage of your phone. They announced that this system would be tested this Thursday, but then suddenly decided to delay that until October. Just what we need, Trump popping up on your phone unannounced and unavoidable. Still to be determined is how long will it take Trump to abuse this system by using it to brag about his beautiful accomplishments and attack people he doesn’t like.

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From Shaun Mullen in The Moderate Voice:

And so, as the end game comes into sight, Kavanaugh’s catagorical denials have become the second biggest lie in Washington after Donald Trump’s protestations of innocence in the Russia scandal.

This is the end game:

• Republicans refuse to order an FBI investigation, Kavanaugh slithers onto the high court and the GOP suffers the consequences in a midterm elections in which Kavanaugh is a lightning rod issue.
• Or, Republicans accede to Ford, the FBI investigates her allegation and confirms it, Kavanaugh is outted as the practice liar we know him to be, and he withdraws his nomination.

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From driftglass:

Back in 1973, Mike Royko, the mighty chronicler of all things Chicago, peered into the the murky bottom of a Billy Goat beer stein and divined the future of the city thus:

Daley has already ruled Chicago for longer than most kings reigned in their countries. At this point, many of his loyal subjects view him as more a monarch than an elected official. It seems obvious that he intends to pass the entire city on to his sons, which is a gesture worthy of a king.

And after an interregnum that spanned the clueless (Bilandic) the hapless (Byrne) and thesaurus (Harold!) that is exactly how history unfolded. And so now the real question is, does the Chicago Machine still have enough functional gears and cams and fuel in the tank to put one more Daley back in charge?

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From author John Scalzi:

Both Kavanaugh and Ford are going to testify about it in front of the Senate on Monday, and one would hope under oath. And won’t that be interesting if it is under oath? Because then, if they both stick to their stories, one or the other of them is, flatly, lying.

Alternately, if one wishes to be extraordinarily generous about it, it’s possible that Kavanaugh isn’t lying, precisely, he simply has no memory of the incident. Ford did describe him as being stumble-down drunk at the time. But the thing about that is, he didn’t say “I have no memory of such an incident ever occurring.” He said it never happened. So we’re back to it being an actual lie, in my book.

And here’s the thing for me: Removing all the political aspects of the incident and focusing on the individuals and the incident itself, who are you more likely to believe has a better memory of the incident: The person who was stumble-down drunk when the incident occurred, or the person who was not, and had the event seared into her brain so significantly that it still came up in therapy, three decades later?

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From Wisconsin Conservative James Wigderson:

Editor’s Note: Goodwin has since called to apologize. – James Wigderson 9/17/18

Just when you thought the Left couldn’t get any lower, they can. A self-described “union thug” reached out to RightWisconsin Editor James Wigderson’s minor daughter to criticize him and her school on social media.

Angela Schissler Goodwin, a Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) school teacher who also describes herself as a “MKE liberal,” tracked down Wigderson’s daughter on Facebook and sent her a unsolicited message about her father.

“We are offended by what was said about MPS. We are an MPS family and those insults are reckless generalizations,” Goodwin wrote to James Wigderson’s daughter. “I can’t imagine why he has such mean ideas about a group of people.”

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From The Onion:

DALLAS—In an effort to make himself more appealing to voters, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) reportedly tried to connect with the audience at a candidate forum Tuesday by wearing the bloody, skinned face of a far more handsome man as a mask. “People are really responding to this new, dapper Ted Cruz,” said campaign manager Jeff Roe, noting that recent internal polls show that since Cruz adopted the new look, voters are twice as likely to describe the expressionless, gore-covered incumbent as “trustworthy,” “affable,” or “charming.”

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From Mock Paper Scissors:

“Come, Watson, Come! The game is afoot!,” as Sherlock Holmes says.

Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and Lisa Murkowski have publicly said that they want to delay to consider the allegations. The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on Kavanaugh on Thursday to move his nomination to the full Senate for a vote.

This is the key: Flake is a member of the Judiciary Committee.

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