The American Voter And The Catholic Church Evolve On The LGBTQ Community-- While The GOP Devolves

 

Undue Influence by Nancy Ohanian

A new national survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that "the vast majority of Americans (70%) favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally, compared to 28% of Americans who oppose it. Majorities of Democrats (80%) and independents (76%), as well as half of Republicans (50%), support same-sex marriage."

It will probably surprise no one that white evangelical Protestants are the only major religious group in which a majority opposes allowing gay and lesbian couples marrying (34% favor, 63% oppose). Majorities in every other major religious group support marriage equality, including 90% of the religiously unaffiliated , 79% of white mainline Protestants, 78% of Hispanic Catholics, 72% of members of non-Christian religious groups, 68% of Hispanic Protestants, 67% of white Catholics, 57% of Black Protestants, and 56% of members of other Christian religious groups. Further, "more than eight in ten Americans (83%) favor laws that would protect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodations, and housing, compared to only 16% of Americans who oppose such laws. Majorities of Democrats (94%), independents (85%), and Republicans (68%) favor nondiscrimination laws that protect LGBTQ people."

Trump, as you know, chose a vicious homophobic bigot from a weird Bronze-Age-oriented religious cult for the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett. The Republican-controlled Senate is rushing through her confirmation against the wishes of most Americans.

More in touch with the kind of Christianity that is related to Jesus Christ, Pope Francis, has taken a big step towards ending the systemic homophobia that has helped turn people off to the Catholic Church. Reporting for the Washington Post yesterday, Chico Harlan and Michelle Boorstein wrote that in a new documentary Pope Francis "has called for the creation of civil union laws for same-sex couples, in what amounts to his clearest support to date for the issue... Francis has long expressed an interest in outreach to the church's LGBT followers, but his remarks have often stressed general understanding and welcoming-- rather than substantive policies. Priests in some parts of the world bless same-sex marriage, but that stance-- and Francis's new remarks-- are a departure from official church teaching. The documentary, Francesco, is premiering this week in Rome and then in the United States. The pope gave an interview to the filmmaker, Evgeny Afineevsky, saying that 'homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They're children of God and have a right to a family,' the pope said. 'Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.'"





Biden has evolved from being a homophobic bigot into someone who at least professes to be pro-LGBQT. Trump, meanwhile, has devolved from being someone who didn't care one way or the other to being a vicious transactional homophobe. Yesterday, Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin reported that most voters prefer Biden's positions over Trump's on virtually every major issue. On all other subjects tested in the poll, voters preferred Biden over Trump. Biden is favored over Trump to lead on the coronavirus pandemic by 12 points, and voters trust Biden over Trump to choose Supreme Court justices and to maintain law and order by six-point margins. Americans see Biden as more capable of uniting the country by nearly 20 points.





"Trump," wrote conservative activist George Will in his Washington Post column yesterday, "is as much a mess and a disgrace now as he was when he began his illegitimate, divisive presidency. "As the Donald Trump parenthesis in the republic’s history closes, he is opening the sluices on his reservoir of invectives and self-pity. A practitioner of crybaby conservatism-- no one, he thinks, has suffered so much since Job lost his camels and acquired boils-- and ever a weakling, Trump will end his presidency as he began it: whining.

His first day cloaked in presidential dignity he spent disputing photographic proof that his inauguration crowd was substantially smaller than his immediate predecessor’s. Trump’s day of complaining continued at the CIA headquarters, at the wall commemorating those who died serving the agency. His presidency that began with a wallow in self-pity probably will end in ignominy when he slinks away pouting, trailing clouds of recriminations, without a trace of John McCain’s graciousness on election night 2008." ...Subsequently, the Republican Party has eagerly surrendered its self-respect. And having hitched its wagon to a plummeting cinder, the party is about to have a rendezvous with a surly electorate wielding a truncheon. The party picked a bad year to invite a mugging, a year ending in zero: Approximately 80 percent of state legislative seats will be filled this year, and next year the occupants, many of them Democrats wafted into office by a wave election, will redraw congressional districts based on the 2020 Census.

After Democrats controlled the House for 40 years (1954-1994), control of it changed under four presidents (Bill Clinton in 1994, George W. Bush in 2006, Obama in 2010, Trump in 2018). Trump’s legacy might include a decade of Democratic control of the House.

The Trumpist War Against Pope Francis

Like Hitler, about a third of Germans had been born into Catholism in the 1930s. (Hitler himself had already found a different god by then.) As the Nazis came to power they recognized the Church as an enemy. They banned the Catholic-aligned Centre Party in 1933 and although the Reichskonkordat treaty with the Vatican that year guaranteed religious freedom for Catholics, the Nazis confiscated Church property and closed down Church schools and youth organisations and banned the Catholic press. Pope Pius Xi and, after 1939, Pius XII were the popes during Hitler's rise and fall.Pius XII's obsession with hatred of communism was helpful to the Nazis. He was more inclined to condemn "the evils of modern warfare" than the Nazis.

His silence gave license to Catholic members of the SS to shoot the Jewish men, women and children as they cowered on the edge of the massive graves, to turn on the gas in the concentration camp chambers and then to go to confession with untroubled conscience. It encouraged the Germans in the belief that God was still on their side... The Nazis desperately needed the Pope's silence for that very reason. They knew that any complaint my the Pontiff would damage the war effort and slow the progress of the Final Solution... It gave some Catholics-- including quite a few priests-- the excuse to man the rat-lines to help the SS criminals escape, after the war, to Latin America. The Pope's silence in face of this overwhelming evil was a deliberate choice.

Like Hitler, the Trumpists were alarmed that the Vatican could be a center of opposition to its plans and since Trump occupied the White House, his men have been attacking Pope Francis for not being more like Pius XII. The Trumpists have backed an American fascist cardinal, Raymond Burke in his schemes against Pope Francis. Two years ago the Real News Network started covering this. Sunday MSNBC is running a Richard Engel one-on-one interview with Steve Bannon about his war against Pope Francis. This morning he previewed it on Morning Joe:



Engel also penned a piece about it today for NBC New, Steve Bannon and U.S> ultra-conservatives take aim at Pope Francis. "The populist political consultant has a new target in his crusade against 'globalism'-- Pope Francis," wrote Engel. "'He’s the administrator of the church, and he’s also a politician,' said Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump. 'This is the problem... He’s constantly putting all the faults in the world on the populist nationalist movement.'" To attack the Pope, Bannon and the fascists are trying to pin the Vatican sex abuse scandals on him.

Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has expressed a consistent message on the type of “America First” nationalism championed by Bannon.

Two years ago, the pope cautioned against growing populism in Europe, warning it could lead to the election of leaders like Hitler.

He has called for compassion toward migrants, saying that fearing them "makes us crazy," as well as other marginalized groups including the poor and gay people. He has also defended diversity.

Bannon alleges that Francis has mismanaged numerous sex abuse scandals roiling the church, and says the pope is not treating the issue seriously enough.

"The Catholic Church is heading to a financial crisis that will lead to a bankruptcy," he said. "It could actually bring down, not the theology, not the teachings, not the community of the Catholic Church, but the physical and financial apparatus of this church."

In a speech ending a landmark Vatican conference on the issue of clerical sexual abuse in February, the pope vowed to "decisively confront the phenomenon," adding: "The church will never seek to hush up or not take seriously any case."

But Bannon is not alone in criticizing the pontiff. A raft of conservative Catholics, from bishops to lay theologians to firebrand pundits, have attacked Francis.

They were supporters of Francis’s traditionalist predecessor, Benedict XVI, who unexpectedly resigned in 2013. On Thursday, Benedict published a letter outlining his views on the sex abuse crisis. "The crisis, caused by the many cases of clerical abuse, urges us to regard the church as something almost unacceptable, which we must now take into our own hands and redesign," he wrote.

Bannon has found an ideological ally in conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke, a former archbishop of St. Louis who was demoted by Francis and has supported calls for the pope's resignation.

Burke and Bannon reportedly met at the Vatican in 2014 and are both involved in building an incubator for budding right-wing ideologues in Italy. Bannon described the project as "an academy that brings the best thinkers together" to train "modern gladiators."

Other American theologians have openly attacked Francis for “devaluing the doctrines of the church.”

The center of the anti-Francis backlash is in the U.S., according to Massimo Faggioli, a liberal professor of theology at Villanova University. "There is no question about that," he said.

Francis, the first pope from the Southern Hemisphere, was a trailblazer and an outsider from the start, and the elevation of an Argentine brought a new “geopolitical perspective” and priorities to the papacy, Faggioli said.

While Benedict saw Catholicism’s future squarely within the Western world, Francis has espoused a vision of “global Catholicism” in which issues of social justice are paramount.

He has turned support for the poor and the environment into the key issues of his pontificate, while warning against consumerism and unfettered capitalism.

Francis has set precedents by condemning the death penalty in all cases and signaling that divorced and remarried Catholics should be able to receive Communion.

John Carr, director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown, said this reformist impulse has rankled church traditionalists. Accustomed to favorable treatment from the Vatican, many American Catholics saw themselves sidelined by Francis' progressive agenda.

“If you’re an archbishop living in a big house with a big car and he says you need to have the smell of the sheep, that’s threatening,” Carr added. “He looks at the world from the bottom up and from the outside in. If you’re on top, if you’re an insider in the church, in the economy, in politics, he can threaten you.”

The backlash has been swift. Weeks after Francis’s election, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, a prominent conservative, announced that members of the right wing within the church had “not been really happy.”

Robert Sirico, the founder of the Acton Institute, a Michigan-based think tank, considers Francis to be sympathetic to socialism.

“His dominant understanding of what business is is selfish and doing things to benefit only themselves rather than the poor,” said Sirico, who met Francis in 2013.

The Acton Institute’s mission is to integrate free market principles with Christian theology, and Sirico disagrees with the pope about issues including welfare, taxation and climate change.

While both Sirico and Bannon say they don't believe the pope should step down, others go further.

They have adopted an extremist, “take-no-prisoners” approach unlike any opposition to John Paul II or Benedict, according to Faggioli.

The Vatican’s former ambassador to America, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, wrote a letter last August claiming that Francis had covered up misconduct by Theodore McCarrick, a disgraced ex-cardinal.

“Homosexual networks” within the clergy, Viganò wrote, were responsible for the high incidence of abuse and were “strangling the church.” The Vatican has not commented on Viganò's allegations.

To moderate and liberal Catholics, such weaponization of the sex abuse crisis is aimed at undermining Francis.

His critics want to tarnish “the affection people have for him as pope,” according to Carr.

“The irony is that they don’t have any particular history of standing up for victims and in some cases were allies of those who were involved in the crisis,” added Carr, who is himself a survivor of clerical sexual abuse.

Bernie And The Pope

A few hours ago-- and in the face of rapidly rising nationalism in Europe and America-- Pope Francis described differences of faith, race and ideas as a richness, not a danger, and called for political solutions to end wars in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. He said that without fraternity, "even our best plans and projects risk being soulless and empty."

Last night, in his Christmas Eve homily at St Peter's, he had called on people in developed countries to live a simpler and less materialistic life and condemned the huge divide between the world's rich and poor, saying Jesus's birth in poverty in a stable should make everyone reflect on the meaning of life. Remember what Jesus said about how it would be easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle that for a rich man to get into Heaven? Pope Francis attacked the "insatiable greed" of today’s consumerism, urging people to make "sharing and giving" more a part of their lives. "Mankind became greedy and voracious... In our day, for many people, life’s meaning is found in possessing, in having an excess of material objects. An insatiable greed marks all human history, even today, when, paradoxically, a few dine luxuriantly while all too many go without the daily bread needed to survive." He reminded Catholics that the birth of Christ pointed to a new way to live "not by devouring and hoarding, but by sharing and giving." He told Jesus' followers we "must not lose our footing or slide into worldliness and consumerism" and that we should ask ourselves "Do I really need all these material objects and complicated recipes for living? Can I manage without all these unnecessary extras and live a life of greater simplicity?"

The Guardian isn't a religious newspaper but I want to bring up a piece by Michael Savage from last spring, Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030. It wasn't just the Pope calling for a halt to extreme materialism. In April world leaders were being "warned that the continued accumulation of wealth at the top will fuel growing distrust and anger over the coming decade unless action is taken to restore the balance." Please say a prayer for Bernie's success here and for Corbyn's success the U.K.

An alarming projection produced by the House of Commons library suggests that if trends seen since the 2008 financial crash were to continue, then the top 1% will hold 64% of the world’s wealth by 2030. Even taking the financial crash into account, and measuring their assets over a longer period, they would still hold more than half of all wealth.

Since 2008, the wealth of the richest 1% has been growing at an average of 6% a year-- much faster than the 3% growth in wealth of the remaining 99% of the world’s population. Should that continue, the top 1% would hold wealth equating to $305tn (£216.5tn)-- up from $140tn today.

Analysts suggest wealth has become concentrated at the top because of recent income inequality, higher rates of saving among the wealthy, and the accumulation of assets. The wealthy also invested a large amount of equity in businesses, stocks and other financial assets, which have handed them disproportionate benefits.

New polling by Opinium suggests that voters perceive a major problem with the influence exerted by the very wealthy. Asked to select a group that would have the most power in 2030, most (34%) said the super-rich, while 28% opted for national governments. In a sign of falling levels of trust, those surveyed said they feared the consequences of wealth inequality would be rising levels of corruption (41%) or the “super-rich enjoying unfair influence on government policy” (43%).

...In a sign of the concern about the accumulation of wealth in the hands of so few, the move has gained support from across the political divide [at least in the U.K.].

George Freeman, the Tory MP and former head of the prime minister’s policy board, said: “While mankind has never seen such income inequality, it is also true that mankind has never experienced such rapid increases in living standards. Around the world billions of people are being lifted out of poverty at a pace never seen before. But the extraordinary concentration of global wealth today-- fuelled by the pace of technological innovation and globalisation-- poses serious challenges.

“If the system of capitalist liberal democracy which has triumphed in the west is to pass the big test of globalisation-- and the assault from radical Islam as well as its own internal pressures from post-crash austerity-- we need some new thinking on ways to widen opportunity, share ownership and philanthropy. Fast.”

Slavery In 2017 Exists In North Africa... Are Republican Party Policies Heading Us Back Towards That Institution Cherished By The Rich And Powerful?

Roland and I were wandering around south-central Mali a few years ago, taking it in, meeting the folks. Alan Grayson had recommended Bandiagara and Sangha as a couple of off-the-beaten-track places east of Mopti and north of the border with Burkina Faso. In one of those towns Roland found a goat and its kid. The mother goat was freaking out because they were separating her from the kid and it looked like she knew the kid was headed for the stew pot. Roland bought the kid and we walked around with it for a few days before giving it to the mother goat's owner-- along with some Impeach Cheney caps, t-shirts and assorted foodstuffs and ephemera to seal an agreement that they wouldn't eat the kid. They seemed like honorable people and I bet the kid is still thriving-- unless the rebels ate him. We never bought a slave to free him though.

After our adventures in Dogon country, we headed north to legendary Timbuktu. We had seen slaves before, in Mali and in southern Morocco beyond the Atlas. It's even worse in Mauritania, which we've avoided. But as we headed north into Tuareg country we realized that the dark-skinned people were slaves of the more Arab-looking Tuaregs. We were at a river crossing one day and it was a noisy, lively place with music and everyone babbling away and little children running around playing. Suddenly the place turned deadly quiet and the only thing you could hear were the birds screaming. The women and children had all disappeared in a second. The place looked like a ghost town with a few surly men selling their goods to no one. And just as suddenly a pick-up truck rolled up to the ferry landing. It was filled with Tuaregs, heavily armed, menacing-looking Tuaregs. Later in the trip, up in the deep Sahara north of Timbuktu, we got to know some Tuaregs and did some bartering with them. There were slaves in their encampment and it was very creepy but they were-- and this is weird to write-- nice to us and polite enough.

So we weren't surprised when CNN reported that there are slaves-- migrants on their way from deep Africa to Europe-- being bought and sold in Libya. I don't expect much from the Trump Regime but France is taking the matter up to the UN. President Emmanuel Macron, terming the practice "a crime against humanity," requested an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss this treatment of migrants in Libya.

The UN in Libya is "dismayed and sickened by the recent video" and is actively pursuing the matter with the Libyan authorities to set up transparent monitoring mechanisms that safeguard migrants against horrific human rights abuses, said Ghassan Salame, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya.

...Secretary-General António Guterres urged the international community to unite on the issue and called on all countries to adopt the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its protocol on human trafficking.

"I abhor these appalling acts and call upon all competent authorities to investigate these activities without delay and to bring the perpetrators to justice," Guterres said. "I have asked the relevant United Nations actors to actively pursue this matter."

Reuters reported that on Friday Pope Francis "excoriated politicians who foment fear of migrants, saying they were sowing violence and racism, and urged them to 'practise the virtue of prudence' to help them integrate. Pope Francis: "Those who, for what may be political reasons, foment fear of migrants instead of building peace are sowing violence, racial discrimination and xenophobia, which are matters of great worry for all those concerned about the safety of every human being." I hope no one accuses me of cultural appropriation for writing about it and condemning it. What's more un-PC, slavery or cultural appropriation? Who can keep up? Watch the CNN report:

Trump Needs To Learn That Revenge Is Sweet, But To A Calm And Considerate Mind, Forgiveness Is Sweeter

No one doubts that Trump is a vengeful asshole. Aren't all authoritarians? It's in their DNA. Interviewed about his own experience with Trump last year on MSNBC, British businessman Richard Branson recalled Trump as "a very vindictive, rather dangerous, rather sad man. I would feel very uncomfortable-- very, very uncomfortable-- with somebody like Donald Trump in the White House.

Some years ago, Mr Trump invited me to lunch for a one-to-one meeting at his apartment in Manhattan. We had not met before and I accepted. Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people... I left the lunch feeling disturbed and saddened by what I’d heard. There are a lot of frightening things about this election; not least that policy has been pushed so far down the agenda. What concerns me most, based upon my personal experiences with Donald Trump, is his vindictive streak, which could be so dangerous if he got into the White House. For somebody who is running to be the leader of the free world to be so wrapped up in himself, rather than concerned with global issues, is very worrying.

And now members of Congress-- on both sides of the aisle-- wonder if Trump plans to come after them... and what it will mean it their careers. There is, after all, a lot of opposition to his ambitious legislative agenda-- from the wall and eliminating Obamacare to his expensive infrastructure program. Republicans seem to live in fear of his mighty twitter account. And everyone senses he's likely to hold rallies-- he enjoys them more than governing-- against Democrats in states where he's popular to threaten their reelection chances-- Tester in Montana, Heitkamp in North Dakota, McCaskill in Montana, Donnelly in Indiana... states he won with, respectively, 56.5%, 64.1%, 57.1% and 57.2%. He could even start in relation to his horribly flawed Supreme Court nominee. If Republicans like Dean Heller (NV) or Jeff Flake (AZ) their states could see the Trump Show live again too.

Mark Sanford (R-SC), who hasn't always towed the line, told The Hill's Scott Wong yesterday that "He's going to take names. He’s going to look at the people who are supportive and who aren’t. I suspect he will be rigorous in calling attention to those he believes are hampering his legislative efforts."

[S]everal Republicans said it’s only a matter of time before Trump cracks the whip on Capitol Hill.

He’s already given rank-and-file lawmakers a taste of what could be coming if they don’t fall in line. Last month, a series of tweets from Trump derailed House Republicans’ plans to gut an independent congressional ethics office.

And just last week, Trump launched a blistering attack on Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), tweeting that they’re “weak on immigration” and “always looking to start World War III” after the senators slammed his executive order on refugees.

Those types of personal attacks from Trump are certain to fire up his loyalists and could inspire primary challenges to his GOP targets.

“He could whip votes from Twitter,” said Rep. David Joyce (R-OH), who saw Trump personally get involved in his state’s GOP chairmanship race to defeat the handpicked candidate of rival Gov. John Kasich (R), a onetime presidential rival. “He’s definitely got an agenda and he wants to push it through. He’s going to use every arrow in his quiver to get those things accomplished."

“When he gets focused on something and he wants to get it done, he gets after it. That’s definitely a lesson I learned,” Joyce continued. “An enraged Twitter finger could really hurt somebody.”

...GOP fissures are forming that could complicate or delay several top Trump priorities. Freedom Caucus leaders are aggressively calling for the repeal and wholesale replacement of ObamaCare, while GOP chairmen have argued a more measured “repair” of the healthcare law is the right approach.

Writing for The Atlantic, McKay Coppins speculates that #NeverTrump Republicans are bracing for Revenge of the Asshole that Branson described. "Trump," he reiterated, "has never made a secret of his penchant for personal vengeance. He boasts about it, tweets about it, tells long, rambling stories about it on the transcontinental speaking circuit. When, last year, he was asked to identify a favorite Bible passage, he cited 'an eye for an eye.' And in his 2007 book, Think Big and Kick Ass, he devoted an entire chapter to the joys of exacting revenge. 'My motto is: Always get even,' he wrote. 'When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.' For those who have crossed Trump, then, these are understandably anxious times. As he enters the White House and takes the reins of the most powerful government in the world, a small cadre of high-profile conservatives-- the haters, the losers, the Never-Trumpers who never fell in line-- has found itself wondering whether their party’s president will use his new powers to settle old scores."

“The question is not whether he’s vengeful,” conservative columnist Ben Shapiro told me. “The question is how willing he is to use the levers of government to exact that revenge.”

This is no idle question for Shapiro. The California-based commentator emerged in 2016 as one of Trump’s most vociferous-- and most frequently targeted-- critics in the conservative movement. He spent months relentlessly prosecuting the candidate on TV and Twitter, and in March set off a media frenzy when he abruptly quit his job at Breitbart and blasted the company’s then-CEO Steve Bannon for being a “bully” who had turned the site into “Trump’s personal Pravda.”

Now that Trump and Bannon are both in the White House, Shapiro says he has no intention of trying to make amends-- but can’t help but worry about his standing with them. “Trump has an extremely long shit list...I don’t want to flatter myself and say I’m top 10, but I’m certainly top 50,” he told me. “I’ve been half-joking for almost a year that my IRS audit is already being drawn up.”

In fact, he’s taking the threat of retaliation from Trump and his allies quite seriously. A favorite target of the alt-right troll army that Breitbart helps marshal, Shapiro told me he’s already purchased a shotgun and installed a high-end security system in his home. When we spoke the night before the inauguration, he was deliberating over whether to delete his entire personal email archive before spies or Russian hackers could infiltrate his inbox.

He knows all this may sound a little paranoid, but he doesn’t want to take any chances. “They can fight very ugly and very nasty,” he said of Trump and Bannon. “And they do have power now, where if they feel like destroying you, they can.”

For Glenn Beck, there’s nothing new about the fear of payback from a power-crazed president and his minions. The right-wing talk radio host spent much of the past decade preaching against the tyrannical terrors of the Obama administration, and twitchily looking over his shoulder as a result. Now, it looks as if Beck-- who spent the 2016 election bitterly feuding with Trump-- is consigned to repeating that experience for at least another four years. He believes the new president is “dangerously unhinged,” and he travels with two bodyguards by his side, fearing the death threats he’s received from Trump supporters.

“It is not fun,” Beck told me. “I don’t cherish it, but I value the truth more than I’m afraid of retribution.”

...Last month, the Washington Post reported that more than 100 national-security veterans in the GOP establishment are said to be “blacklisted” from administration jobs because they signed a public letter during the campaign opposing Trump’s candidacy. In another episode, the president-elect aggressively campaigned behind the scenes to unseat a state party chairman in Ohio who had fought him during the election.

Trump also spent weeks during the transition publicly weighing two of his most stubborn 2016 foes-- Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney-- for top cabinet posts, only to unceremoniously dump them once they’d been seen cozying up to the president-elect. Transition officials insisted these meetings were all in good faith; Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone claimed otherwise.

 “Donald Trump was interviewing Mitt Romney for secretary of state in order to torture him. To toy with him,” Stone said on the Alex Jones Show. “And given the history, that’s completely understandable. Mitt Romney crossed a line.”

...For many Republican politicos who were critical of Trump during the campaign, the fear of personal retribution from the leader of the free world is softened somewhat by their unwavering conviction of his incompetence. Several consultants and operatives, who requested anonymity so as not to provoke the president’s wrath, said Trump would likely be too overwhelmed and disorganized in office to keep working his way down the enemies list.

“I don’t think anybody’s too worried about Trump death-starring their business, because he’s still struggling to even make the Death Star operational,” cracked one strategist.

“When you’re really dealing with Putin and Turkey and Syria, is that county chair in Iowa who turned on you gonna get the attention of the president of the United States?” asked another. He paused and then added with a laugh, “Of course, that’s what staff is for.”

Indeed, Trump’s administration is not lacking for enforcers who share his instincts. Reince Priebus, now the White House Chief of Staff, publicly threatened Republicans who were withholding their support from the nominee in the final weeks of the election. And according to two knowledgeable sources, White House press secretary Sean Spicer used to maintain a “bad reporters” folder in his inbox to keep track of journalists he believed had treated him or the RNC unfairly.

But if consultants are worried about their contracts, and party officials about their positions, some of Trump’s opponents harbor deeper and more serious concerns. For Evan McMullin-- who quit his job as policy director for House Republicans to launch a long-shot indie bid in 2016 under the #NeverTrump banner-- the question of how President Trump plans to get even from the Oval Office is a singularly important one. Petty partisan punishments are one thing, McMullin told me. But as a former CIA officer, he has witnessed firsthand the rise of despotic regimes abroad. “If Trump uses state power to exact revenge on political opponents, that will be a very clear sign that he is a true authoritarian."

During the election, McMullin’s candidacy unexpectedly threw his native Utah into contention, sending the Trump campaign on a frantic last-minute scramble to lock down the deep-red state. By the end, Trump managed to eke out a plurality win there, but he was left seething at McMullin’s meddling. The future president lashed out repeatedly at McMullin in the final days of the race, calling him a “puppet” for moneyed establishment interests. And the attacks only intensified once Trump won and embarked on his post-election victory tour.

McMullin told me that watching the president-elect rail against him at raucous rallies was a “chilling” experience. “I remember at one of his rallies when he was attacking me, he said something like, ‘He’s sort of a bad guy, this guy.’ I immediately recognized that as something I’d seen before overseas in places where authoritarians takes power. They try to criminalize their political opposition. They tried to do it with Hillary Clinton… and they could do it with more of us.”

McMullin made clear that it’s still too early to know whether Trump will cross that line. “Despite my concerns, I genuinely still have hope that he will not govern in the way that he said he would during the campaign,” he told me. “At least, I hope that’s the case, because it would certainly make my life a lot easier.”

Clearly, though, neither Trump nor #PresidentBannon has ever thought about Martin Luther King's aphorism: "Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love." This morning's NY Times carries an explosive piece by Jason Horowitz about Bannon's intrigues against Pope Francis with, among others, crackpot Raymond Cardinal Burke. The anti-Pope Francis forces have rallied around the Trump Regime. "While Mr. Trump, a twice-divorced president who has boasted of groping women," wrote Horowitz, "may seem an unlikely ally of traditionalists in the Vatican, many of them regard his election and the ascendance of Mr. Bannon as potentially game-changing breakthroughs. Just as Mr. Bannon has connected with far-right parties threatening to topple governments throughout Western Europe, he has also made common cause with elements in the Roman Catholic Church who oppose the direction Francis is taking them. Many share Mr. Bannon’s suspicion of Pope Francis as a dangerously misguided, and probably socialist, pontiff... [I]n Mr. Trump, and more directly in Mr. Bannon, some self-described '“Rad Trads'-- or radical traditionalists-- see an alternate leader who will stand up for traditional Christian values and against Muslim interlopers."

Are You Going To Remember Who Tried To Help The Refugees In November, 2018?

The last time I drank a Coke (or Pepsi) I was barely 20; it was in 1970. There was no social media then (aside from postcards) and international telephone calls were way too expensive for someone like me. So, while I was making my way by land across the world I depended on letters from home for news. If you read the comments here at DWT, you've no doubt run across someone calling herself "Hone." She was a friend of mine in college and she sent me a letter-- to poste restante (I think in Kabul) which came to me months after the massacre at Kent State. Although she doesn't remember it today, her letter included a call to arms: American students would topple Coca Coca and Pepsi, two iconic American brands, as a response to the murders of the peaceful protestors. Foolishly I had been depending on Coke for hydration because the water was so dangerous to drink in countries like Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in those days. The U.S. consulates in Iran and Afghanistan would warn American travelers to boil water for several minutes, let it cool down and then boil it again before drinking it. So it was a great sacrifice for me to give up consuming soft drinks. But I did and never touched one again. Yesterday I deleted my Uber app and I'll never get in another Uber. It'll be taxis and Lyft for me from now on.

OK, how about a few words from Pope Francis? This is what he told a group of Catholic and Lutheran pilgrims yesterday: "[T]he sickness or, you can say the sin, that Jesus condemns most is hypocrisy... You cannot be a Christian without living like a Christian. You cannot be a Christian without practicing the Beatitudes. You cannot be a Christian without doing what Jesus teaches us in Matthew 25," a reference to Christ’s injunction to help the needy by such works of mercy as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and welcoming the stranger. It’s hypocrisy to call yourself a Christian and chase away a refugee or someone seeking help, someone who is hungry or thirsty, toss out someone who is in need of my help. If I say I am Christian, but do these things, I’m a hypocrite.

Randian fake-Christian Paul Ryan, who can be eliminated, politically, in 2018, is still pissing off God by swearing that Trump's executive order is not a Muslim ban. He's lying. And most of the Republicans in Congress are right there with him. The relatively new congressman from Staten Island, Dan Donovan said the same thing a;most all the GOP members are saying, namely that "President Trump's decision is in America's best interest." Even the Republicans criticizing Trump-- so far Senators Susan Collins (ME), Jeff Flake (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC), Lamar Alexander (TN) and Ben Sasse (NE) plus House members Mike Coffman (CO), Carlos Curbelo (FL), Elise Stefanik (NY), Will Hurd (TX), Mike Fitzpatrick (PA), Charlie Dent (PA), Justin Amash (MI), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL) and Barbara Comstock (Va), all from blue-leaning or swing districts-- are bing very circumspect. Barbara Comstock, for example, one of the most electorally vulnerable Republicans in Congress, issued a tepid statement saying, "As I consistently have said, I don't believe it is constitutional to ban people from our country on the basis pf religion. However, I do support-- and the House of Representatives has supported on a bipartisan basis-- increased vetting based on national security concerns. The president’s executive order yesterday went beyond the increased vetting actions that Congress has supported on a bipartisan basis and inexplicably applied to Green Card holders, people who are legally within our country who have followed the rules. Green Card holders go through a detailed legal process and are vetted. They are required to register with the selective service-- many serve in the military. They pay taxes. I find it hard to believe that green card holders-- legal permanent residents-- were intended to be included in this Executive Order. This should be addressed and corrected expeditiously."

It was addressed expeditiously, thought not corrected. When Department of Homeland Security officials asked the White House for a clarification, the neo-Nazi who Trump has put in charge of this whole mess, psychopathic right-wing blogger Steve Bannon, said Green Card holders were very much meant to be included. No comment on that report from Ryan or Comstock or any of the other Republicanos enabling Trump and Bannon. The only Republican who seems sincere and principled in his opposition to Trump's unconstitutional mayhem is Justin Amash, noting Trump's executive order "overreaches and undermines our constitutional system... The president's denial of entry to lawful permanent residents of the United States (green card holders) is particularly troubling. Green card holders live in the United States as our neighbors and serve in our Armed Forces. They deserve better... Ultimately, the executive order appears to be more about politics than safety. If the concern is radicalism and terrorism, then what about Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others? Finally, we can't effectively fight homegrown Islamic radicalism by perpetuating the 'us vs. them' mindset that terrorists use to recruit. We must ensure that the United States remains dedicated to the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and liberty."

Politically, Democrats better follow the lead of resisters like Ted Lieu and Jerry Nadler and let their own base know they are fighting-- and for real-- and not let the story become a false narrative about a few"brave Republicans" standing unto Trump. But what Comstock and other Republicans are talking about when they refer to "bipartisan support" is the 289-137 approval of an ugly, bigoted anti-refugee bill by Texas' Michael McCaul. 47 Democrats-- mostly from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- joined forces with 242 Republicans to pass it. 135 Democrats and just 2 Republicans voted against it-- and one of the Republicans, Iowa extremist Steve King, voted NO because he didn't feel the bill was draconian enough. Over the weekend into today many of the 47 Democrats who voted with the Republicans are trying desperately to distance themselves from their own votes.

Take right-wing Blue Dog Jim Cooper, who represents (badly) a safe blue seat in Nashville. Yesterday he was trying to hide his bigotry with a tweet. Steve Israel, one of the leaders of the move to get Democrats to vote with the GOP against refugees, was practically rending his clothing today in sympathy for the immigrants. Here's a list of the worst of the traitors who are still in Congress:

• Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA)
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
• Julia Brownley (worthless coward-CA)
• Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL)
• Gerry Connolly (New Dem-VA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)

• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)
• Tulsi Gabbard (LOL-HI)
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)
• Steve Israel (Blue Dog-NY)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Ann Kuster (New Dem-NH)
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Donald Norcross (Corrupt-NJ)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Kathleen Rice (New Dem-NY)
• Tim Ryan (Would-be Leader-OH)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Filemon Vela (Blue Dog-TX)

There's only one group that has been working consistently to drive Blue Dogs and New Dems out of Congress for over a decade-- Blue America. No one else has dared. Want to help? You can here.

Since Mike decided to delete this tweet over the weekend, we decided to decorate it for him

Bernie And Pope Francis

I inadvertently stumbled onto Fox & Friends when I woke up at 4 am Sunday. The producers seemed to have invited some random right-wing priest on to paint a weird picture of Bernie's quick visit to the Vatican. Fox has been asserting all week, Bernie had invited himself to the Vatican-- even as they reported on how a "left-wing bishop," Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, who happens to be a close aide to Pope Francis and the Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, had invited him. According to this random dude with a clerical collar, Bernie was staying-- was staying with an implication he chose where to stay-- in the same guest house where the Pope lives. If Bernie and Jane were placed in a room near the Pope, that was something carefully thought out by the Vatican, not by Bernie or his campaign. Dude with collar then claimed Bernie was waiting for the Pope-- waiting as in waylaid-- in the hallway when the Pope was leaving for Lesbos. The absurdity of what Fox was trying to get across, that somehow Bernie ambushed the Pope was as silly as Fox's overall world view. If Bernie and Jane were in the hall when the Pope was passing by, it's because the Vatican summoned him, not because Jeff Weaver, Tad Devine and Michael Briggs plotted out a strategy to bring the two men into physical proximity. In fact, on Friday night while Bernie was having dinner, he was told that the Pope would like to talk with him personally the following morning.

Despite the picture Fox was trying to portray, Pope Francis had a 5-10 minute meeting in the foyer of the Domus of Santa Marta that included Bernie and Jane along with Bernie advisor Jeffrey Sachs and his wife and, translating, Bishop Sánchez Sorondo.

[F]inal word, it seemed, came Friday afternoon in the form of a handwritten letter from the pope apologizing to conference attendees for his absence.

“I will keep them all in my prayers and good wishes, and send them my heartfelt thanks for their participation,” he wrote. “May the Lord bless you. Fraternally, Franciscus.”

Around 5:30 p.m. Friday, the conference’s business ended and Mr. Sanders made an appointment for dinner at the Casa Santa Marta with his foreign policy adviser, Jeffrey D. Sachs, the economist and a fellow conference participant.

Mr. Sanders and his wife, Jane, sat with Mr. Sachs and his wife, Sonia, for a soup and buffet dinner, where they were joined by Bishop Sánchez Sorondo and Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, the pope’s right-hand man and one of the Vatican’s top power players.

“It was a wide-ranging conversation,” Mr. Sachs said. “It was about issues of the church and its history, about Honduras and foreign policy.”

But the most important words occurred in the middle of dinner, when a personal secretary for Francis arrived with the news Mr. Sanders had been hoping for, Mr. Sachs said.

If Mr. Sanders were in the foyer of the Casa Santa Marta at 6 a.m. the next day, he would be able to speak briefly with Francis as the pope headed to the airport for his Saturday trip to Greece, where the pope would be addressing the migrant crisis.

So early Saturday morning, Mr. Sanders stood in the marble foyer, which looks out onto a large cobblestone drive just inside the Vatican walls. Joining him were his wife, Mr. Sachs and his wife and Bishop Sánchez Sorondo, the senator’s de facto Vatican fixer.

The pope, speaking to reporters on his plane later in the day, described the meeting. “This morning when I was leaving, Senator Sanders was there,” he said, adding, “He knew I was leaving at that time, and he had the courtesy to greet me.”

No photos of the encounter were permitted, but Mr. Sachs said the senator was delighted all the same. He was beaming as he left the guesthouse, and celebrated the informal audience with a victory lap of sorts in St. Peter’s Basilica along with Mr. Sachs and the bishop, passing Bernini’s Baldacchino, a monumental bronze canopy over the papal altar, and Michelangelo’s Pietà.

Aware that his every statement is parsed for deeper meaning, Francis said he was simply being polite, not political.

“I shook his hand and nothing more,” he said. “If someone thinks that greeting someone means getting involved in politics,” he added, laughing, “I recommend that he find a psychiatrist!”

But the candidate was excited to talk about his coveted souvenir.

“I conveyed to him my great admiration for the extraordinary work that he is doing all over the world in demanding that morality be part of our economy,” Mr. Sanders told reporters aboard the plane as it rushed him back to the campaign in New York.

Bernie and Pope Francis share a progressive vision around the dignity of mankind that includes peace and economic opportunity that is not shared by anyone else running for president. Bernie has been singing Pope Francis' praises since he became Pope in March of 2013 and chose to be named for St Francis of Assisi, best known as an advocate for the poor and down-trodden. Before he declared Pope he had said of St. Francis that "He brought to Christianity an idea of poverty against the luxury, pride, vanity of the civil and ecclesiastical powers of the time," a message that would be taken as a full on attack against the Republicans and the Clintons, all of whom are living on that low evolutionary plane of luxury, pride and vanity and none of whom are remotely fit for leadership roles.

The paragraphs below are from the speech Bernie delivered at the Vatican, the transcript of which he released even though Clinton is still doggedly refusing to release the transcripts of the speeches she gave to the worshippers of the golden calf, 12 of which netted her a cool $2.9 million. Ask yourself why Bernie was happy to release the transcript of his speech, while Clinton is still tightly guarding the contents of hers. What is she hiding? New Yorkers can force her to release her speeches by refusing to vote for her Tuesday. Bernie:

The Church’s social teachings, stretching back to the first modern encyclical about the industrial economy, Rerum Novarum in 1891, to Centesimus Annus, to Pope Francis’s inspiring encyclical Laudato Si’ this past year, have grappled with the challenges of the market economy. There are few places in modern thought that rival the depth and insight of the Church’s moral teachings on the market economy.

Over a century ago, Pope Leo XIII highlighted economic issues and challenges in Rerum Novarum that continue to haunt us today, such as what he called “the enormous wealth of a few as opposed to the poverty of the many.”

And let us be clear. That situation is worse today. In the year 2016, the top one percent of the people on this planet own more wealth than the bottom 99 percent, while the wealthiest 60 people-- 60 people-- own more than the bottom half-- 3 1/2 billion people. At a time when so few have so much, and so many have so little, we must reject the foundations of this contemporary economy as immoral and unsustainable.

...We are now twenty-five years after the fall of Communist rule in Eastern Europe. Yet we have to acknowledge that Pope John Paul’s warnings about the excesses of untrammeled finance were deeply prescient. Twenty-five years after Centesimus Annus, speculation, illicit financial flows, environmental destruction, and the weakening of the rights of workers is far more severe than it was a quarter century ago. Financial excesses, indeed widespread financial criminality on Wall Street, played a direct role in causing the world’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

We need a political analysis as well as a moral and anthropological analysis to understand what has happened since 1991. We can say that with unregulated globalization, a world market economy built on speculative finance burst through the legal, political, and moral constraints that had once served to protect the common good. In my country, home of the world’s largest financial markets, globalization was used as a pretext to deregulate the banks, ending decades of legal protections for working people and small businesses. Politicians joined hands with the leading bankers to allow the banks to become “too big to fail.” The result: eight years ago the American economy and much of the world was plunged into the worst economic decline since the 1930s. Working people lost their jobs, their homes and their savings, while the government bailed out the banks.

Inexplicably, the United States political system doubled down on this reckless financial deregulation, when the U.S. Supreme Court in a series of deeply misguided decisions, unleashed an unprecedented flow of money into American politics. These decisions culminated in the infamous Citizen United case, which opened the financial spigots for huge campaign donations by billionaires and large corporations to turn the U.S. political system to their narrow and greedy advantage. It has established a system in which billionaires can buy elections. Rather than an economy aimed at the common good, we have been left with an economy operated for the top 1 percent, who get richer and richer as the working class, the young and the poor fall further and further behind. And the billionaires and banks have reaped the returns of their campaign investments, in the form of special tax privileges, imbalanced trade agreements that favor investors over workers, and that even give multinational companies extra-judicial power over governments that are trying to regulate them.

But as both Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis have warned us and the world, the consequences have been even direr than the disastrous effects of financial bubbles and falling living standards of working-class families. Our very soul as a nation has suffered as the public lost faith in political and social institutions. As Pope Francis has stated: “Man is not in charge today, money is in charge, money rules.” And the Pope has also stated: “We have created new idols. The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.”

And further: “While the income of a minority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling. This imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good.”

Pope Francis has called on the world to say: “No to a financial system that rules rather than serves” in Evangeli Gaudium. And he called upon financial executives and political leaders to pursue financial reform that is informed by ethical considerations. He stated plainly and powerfully that the role of wealth and resources in a moral economy must be that of servant, not master.

The widening gaps between the rich and poor, the desperation of the marginalized, the power of corporations over politics, is not a phenomenon of the United States alone. The excesses of the unregulated global economy have caused even more damage in the developing countries. They suffer not only from the boom-bust cycles on Wall Street, but from a world economy that puts profits over pollution, oil companies over climate safety, and arms trade over peace. And as an increasing share of new wealth and income goes to a small fraction of those at the top, fixing this gross inequality has become a central challenge. The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great economic issue of our time, the great political issue of our time, and the great moral issue of our time. It is an issue that we must confront in my nation and across the world.

Pope Francis has given the most powerful name to the predicament of modern society: the Globalization of Indifference. “Almost without being aware of it,” he noted, “we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own.” We have seen on Wall Street that financial fraud became not only the norm but in many ways the new business model. Top bankers have shown no shame for their bad behavior and have made no apologies to the public. The billions and billions of dollars of fines they have paid for financial fraud are just another cost of doing business, another short cut to unjust profits.

Some might feel that it is hopeless to fight the economic juggernaut, that once the market economy escaped the boundaries of morality it would be impossible to bring the economy back under the dictates of morality and the common good. I am told time and time again by the rich and powerful, and the mainstream media that represent them, that we should be “practical,” that we should accept the status quo; that a truly moral economy is beyond our reach. Yet Pope Francis himself is surely the world’s greatest demonstration against such a surrender to despair and cynicism. He has opened the eyes of the world once again to the claims of mercy, justice and the possibilities of a better world. He is inspiring the world to find a new global consensus for our common home.

I see that hope and sense of possibility every day among America’s young people. Our youth are no longer satisfied with corrupt and broken politics and an economy of stark inequality and injustice. They are not satisfied with the destruction of our environment by a fossil fuel industry whose greed has put short term profits ahead of climate change and the future of our planet. They want to live in harmony with nature, not destroy it. They are calling out for a return to fairness; for an economy that defends the common good by ensuring that every person, rich or poor, has access to quality health care, nutrition and education.

As Pope Francis made powerfully clear last year in Laudato Si’, we have the technology and know-how to solve our problems-- from poverty to climate change to health care to protection of biodiversity. We also have the vast wealth to do so, especially if the rich pay their way in fair taxes rather than hiding their funds in the world’s tax and secrecy havens-- as the Panama Papers have shown.

The challenges facing our planet are not mainly technological or even financial, because as a world we are rich enough to increase our investments in skills, infrastructure, and technological know-how to meet our needs and to protect the planet. Our challenge is mostly a moral one, to redirect our efforts and vision to the common good. Centesimus Annus, which we celebrate and reflect on today, and Laudato Si’, are powerful, eloquent and hopeful messages of this possibility. It is up to us to learn from them, and to move boldly toward the common good in our time.

Margaret Archer-- Nasty, Nasty

I woke up yesterday at around 4am and fumbled around for the TV remote to get some light on in the room. And who should come up on my TV but BERNIE! What a happy surprise! He was chatting with the Morning Joe crew, most of whom were making an attempt to act like humans for a change. All nice! And then they started talking about how Bernie had been invited to speak at the Vatican on the morality of economics or something like that and I was thinking, "Oh, this is going to be a good day!"

That didn't last long. Once I got downstairs to my computer, there was already a budding scandal, set off by an academic, Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Does she ever sound like the worst sadistic nun I ever heard of from my Catholic friends when I was a kid, the one who took great joy in inflicting pain and drawing blood.

It has also inserted Sanders into a dispute among Vatican officials. The president of the academy said Friday that Sanders didn’t follow proper protocol by failing to contact her office, and that his presence threatens to make the event political. The academy’s chancellor said he arranged the invitation and defended the Vermont senator.

“Sanders made the first move, for the obvious reasons,” Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which is hosting the conference, said in a telephone interview. “I think in a sense he may be going for the Catholic vote but this is not the Catholic vote and he should remember that and act accordingly-- not that he will.”

"Not that he will?" Is she a soothsayer as well as a professor who can't express an idea in a way that anyone can understand? "'The president of the academy organizing this event has not been contacted with monumental discourtesy,' she said, referring to herself" and continuing her incredible nastiness. Sounds like David Brock gave her 30 silver coins.

Bernie's spokesperson said Archer had it wrong and that he had been invited. The Chancellor of the Academy, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, a close aide to Pope Francis, didn't specifically call her a lying sack of shit or anything like that but he did mention to the media that he had extended the invitation to Bernie. Now that Hillary characters have started a whispering campaign that Bernie invited himself, the Bishop felt he needed to set the record straight. "I deny that, he said flatly. "It was not that way. He said it was his idea to invite Sanders. "This is not true and she knows it. I invited him with her consensus," said Sorondo, who is senior to Archer.

Sanchez Sorondo: "We are interested in having him because we have two presidents coming from Latin America, I thought it would be good to have an authoritative voice from North America."

A copy of the invitation to Sanders provided by the chancellor’s office is dated March 30 and signed by Sanchez Sorondo. The letter says he’s inviting the senator “on behalf of” Archer and the conference organizers. An announcement about Sanders’s participation, also under Sanchez Sorondo’s name, was released early Friday.

...The conference Sanders will attend marks the 25th anniversary of an encyclical by Pope John Paul II that criticized excesses of unfettered capitalism.

Archer, 73, is now laying low and won't respond to phone calls and e-mail requests from the media for a response to Sanchez Sorondo’s remarks, that seem to indicate she's off her rocker. Or maybe she just hates Jews. Or is violently anti-something Bernie stands for (like Choice or marriage equality)... who knows. But, as far as I know, she still hasn't apologized for her ugly, rude boorish remarks to the press. What a pitiful creature!