Saturday, April 26, 2025
D+171/97
1954 Mass trials of Jonas Salk's anti-polio vaccine began
2019 "No religion" topped a survey of American religious identity for the first time at 23.1%, edging out Catholics 23.0% and evangelicals 22.5%, in the General Social Survey
2023 Joe Biden announced his bid for a second term, saying he has a “job to finish”
2023 E. Jean Carroll testified in a NY court that Donald Trump raped her
In bed at 10, awake and up at 6:40, wondering how it is possible for so many parts of my body to ache at the same time, even an ankle. 42°, wind chill is 29°, high of 51°, also wondering whether this is an unusually windy year. It's the windiest I can recall.
Prednisone, day 347; 2 mg., day 9/21; Kevzara, day 12/14; CGM, day 11/15; Trulicity, day 2/7. Prednisone at 7 a.m. Other meds at 10:30 a.m.
Not-so-random-thoughts on Saturday morning.
Third Presidential Debarte, Hilary Clinton and Doanld Trump, Ocober 19, 2016
Trump: Putin has no respect for you or for Barack Hussein Obamaa.
Clinton: We;;. that's bcause he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States.
Trump: No puppwr, no puppwr. You're the puppet. No, you're the puppet.
Cllinton: You encouraged espionage against our people, You are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list: break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do. You continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race.
Peter Baker, "How Trump Plays Into Putin’s Hands, From Ukraine to Slashing U.S. Institutions: Many of President Trump’s actions have been seen as benefiting Russia either directly or indirectly, so much so that Russian officials have celebrated some of his moves., New York Times, October 26, 2025.
If President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia drafted a shopping list of what he wanted from Washington, it would be hard to beat what he was offered in the first 100 days of President Trump’s new term.
Pressure on Ukraine to surrender territory to Russia? Check.
The promise of sanctions relief? Check.
Absolution from invading Ukraine? Check.
Indeed, as Mr. Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff visited Moscow on Friday for more negotiations, the president’s vision for peace appeared notably one-sided, letting Russia keep the regions it had taken by force in violation of international law while forbidding Ukraine from ever joining NATO.
But that is not all that Mr. Putin has gotten out of Mr. Trump’s return to power. Intentionally or not, many of the president’s actions on other fronts also suit Moscow’s interests, including the rifts he has opened with America’s traditional allies and the changes he has made to the U.S. government itself. . . . .
Mr. Trump has been tearing down American institutions that have long aggravated Moscow, such as Voice of America and the National Endowment for Democracy. He has been disarming the nation in its netherworld battle against Russia by halting cyber offensive operations and curbing programs to combat Russian disinformation, election interference, sanctions violations and war crimes.
He spared Russia from the tariffs that he is imposing on imports from nearly every other nation, arguing that it was already under sanctions. Yet he still applied the tariff on Ukraine, the other party he is negotiating with. And in a reversal from his first term, Politico reported that Mr. Trump’s team is reportedly discussing whether to lift sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe, a project he has repeatedly condemned.
The administration has shuttered a task force working to seize assets of Russian oligarchs; gutted an effort to guard against election interference by Russia and other foreign adversaries; halted cyber offensive operations against Russia; withdrawn from an international group investigating leaders responsible for the Ukraine invasion; and frozen funding for a project tracking tens of thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russian forces. The administration also vacated a position meant to collect evidence on Russian atrocities in Ukraine, The Washington Post reported.
The notion that Russia would get to keep the territory it has taken as part of a balanced peace deal is broadly acknowledged as inevitable. But Mr. Trump is taking it further by offering official U.S. recognition of Russia’s control of Crimea, the peninsula it seized from Ukraine in 2014 in violation of international law, an extra step of legitimacy that stunned many in Ukraine as well as its friends in Washington and Europe.
Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons"
Willaim ROPER: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
Thomas MORE: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
ROPER: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
MORE: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down--and you're just the man to do it--d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes. I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
It seems inevitable that we are heading toward a constitutional crisis between Trump and the courts. Trump and Musk are ham-handed in the way they are slashing-and-burning federal workforces, programs, and contracts, and Trump's flood-the-zone, firehose strategy is being stymied by scores of temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions. He is looking like his greatest fear - being seen as a loser - in his big tariff programs and in his Ukraine peace initiative (that he wants to earn him a Nobel Peace Prize, like Obamal's, and his plan to own Gaza, the one conflict area in which he can act unilaterally is in refusing to obey court orders and continuing to pursue his dictatorial impluses. Will his slide in the polls make this more likely or less likely?
In English feudalism after the Norman Conquest, all land was considered ultimately owned by the King. The king distributed the land to vassals who promised always to render him loyalty, often to pay him money and other things of value, and usually to provide troops to him for his wars. The top vassals, barons and earls, subdivided their tenures to subvassals who made similar promises of loyalty, rents, military service, or other ‘incidents of tenure’ in return for protection of their tenures by their immediate overlord. From the king to the barons though layers of ‘subinfeudation’ down to the lowest freeholder there existed a system of reciprocal rights and duties between lords and vassals.This kind of system is still in play in the Catholic Church. The Pope has the role of King or more aptly Emperor, the ultimate owner of the Church’s dominions and principalities (in trust for God, of course.) He has his imperial court or curia. He divides the imperium into geographical and jurisdictional dioceses (much as the Late Roman Empire was divided into dioceses) in which the usual vassal is the local ‘ordinary’ or bishop, who owes fealty, obedience and a share of his revenues from the diocesan holdings to the Pope in return for the Pope’s loyalty and protection (witness the Pope’s cushy treatment of Bernard Cardinal Law after his resignation in disgrace from the Boston archdiocese.) The diocese in turn is subdivided geographically and jurisdictionally into parishes controlled by pastors who owe fealty, obedience and a share of the revenues from their parochial holding to the bishop in return for the bishop’s loyalty and protection (witness, as but one example, the bishops’ disgraceful protection of criminal priests in America, Ireland, Austria, and elsewhere.) It is all very feudal, based on personal power and loyalty relationships between lords and vassals. It is not mere tradition that causes the bishops to kneel before the Pope and kiss his ring or that calls for new priests and deacons to lie prostrate before their bishop during the Litany of Saints in the ordination liturgy in which they vow obedience to him, or that has the Pope addressed as “Your Holiness.” cardinals as “Your Eminence,” archbishops as “Your Grace,” and bishops as “My Lord.” These practices and many more have their roots in the imperial courts of the Roman Empire and in European feudalism. The Church’s feudal power structure was very much in force in the Chicago in which the Clausen children grew up. Our parish priests were accountable to our pastor, our pastor was accountable only to the archbishop who was accountable only to the Vatican.How the Church operated internally, e.g., how it handled its finances and its personnel, was kept secret from the “laity,” a term whose only meaning is negative: those who are not priests. How much money did the parishes provide to the archdiocese? How much did the archdiocese provide to Rome? How were bishops selected? How were pastors and curates selected? How were priests with alcohol or worse problems handled? These were not matters for the ‘laity,’ but rather for ‘the Church,’ i.e., the priestly caste. The Church was the clergy; the role of the laity was to pray, pay and obey. As Pope Pius X wrote in his 1906 encyclical Vehementer Nos:
It follows that the church is by essence an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of persons, the pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful. So distinct are these categories that with the pastoral body only rests the necessary right and authority for promoting the end of the society and directing all its members toward that end; the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the pastors.
No, thanks.
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