A group of Ecuadorian fishermen survived a US drone strike, were detained at gunpoint, phones wiped, ship blown up, disappeared to El Salvador, then released without charge. “They knew we were fishermen. Even the Salvadorian authorities said things had been handled very badly.”
I think this is my favourite so far. Alice Knox in Blackrock, Co. Dublin who is very glad to be single. #1926census
nationalarchives.ie/collections/...
Correction #2 Punchestown #4 Bromford ( Birmingham)
Just talking about this in the pub earlier. Spot on
“The IRGC always wanting to be the tough guy” pot, kettle, projection even. More bombast from him. Iran embarrassed the narcissist so he has to hit back
Indeed and the world only a spark away from going on fire.
Today is the 251st anniversary of Paul Revere's midnight ride to warn the Minutemen of approaching British troops.
I want to take a moment to share an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence's grievances against King George III.
Remind you of anyone?
He’s mentioned people walking around with no legs a few times now. Mushy brain. You wonder if there is any bottom when Republican’s will say enough. I doubt it
A closed mouth catches no flies
Arthur Holquin • Follow 9h • 0 When the Neophyte Corrects the Vicar of Christ On JD Vance, Theological Hubris, and the Gospel He Has Yet to Learn There is a particular arrogance that takes root in the newly converted - the zeal of the autodidact who, having just discovered the tradition, mistakes enthusiasm for mastery. JD Vance, who received baptism into the Catholic Church in 2019 at the age of thirty-five, has now committed the singular error of instructing the Bishop of Rome to "be careful when he talks about matters of theology!" We should sit with the full weight of that sentence. The Vice President of the United States - seven years a Catholic, formerly an evangelical, before that a self-described atheist - stood before a Turning Point USA audience in Georgia and publicly admonished Pope Leo XIV about theological precision. "If you're going to opine on matters of theology," Vance informed the successor of Peter, "you've got to be careful, you've got to make sure it's anchored in the truth." The audacity is breathtaking. The irony is almost comic.
While Vance was dispensing theological warnings from a stage in Georgia, Pope Leo XIV was standing at the archaeological site of Hippo in Algeria - the episcopal see where St. Augustine served as bishop until his death in 430 A.D. Vance, who claims Augustine as his patron saint and frequently invokes him in speeches, was lecturing on Augustinian just war theology to a political rally audience. The pope he was lecturing - who served as Prior General of the Order of St. Augustine for more than a decade and holds a doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas - was planting an olive tree at the very ground where Augustine lived, prayed, wrote, and died. If God governs history with a sense of irony, this moment surely pleased Him. The occasion for Vance's correction was Pope Leo's statement that "God is never on the side of those who wield the sword." Vance responded by invoking the thousand-year tradition of Just War theory as if the pope were unaware of it. But Leo did not say war is never permissible. He said God is not simply enlisted as a combatant on any nation's side. That is not a negation of Just War doctrine. That is its foundation. The Catechism at §2309 is unambiguous about the conditions that must all be simultaneously met for a war to be just. Archbishop Broglio stated plainly on Easter Sunday that the war against Iran does not meet those criteria. Cardinals Cupich, Mcelroy, and Tobin, along with Archbishop Coakley, have spoken with notable unanimity. Cardinal Tobin put it plainly: Pope Leo "will continue to speak clearly against war and other offenses against human dignity and to call for authentic dialogue, because the Church's witness is grounded in the peace of Christ, not in partisan interests." That is episcopal fidelity. What Vance offered was its precise opposite.
The deeper problem is not merely that Vance is wrong about just war. It is the ecclesiological framework he is importing from American Christian nationalism into a tradition that explicitly rejects it. Vance told Fox News that "in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what's going on in the Catholic Church, and let the president of the United States stick to dictating public policy." Let that formulation stand naked for a moment. The pope — who holds a universal pastoral office precisely because the Gospel speaks to every dimension of human life — is being instructed to confine himself to the sacristy, while the president is assigned the role of "dictating" the political world. This is not a Catholic understanding of faith and public life. Catholic Social Teaching from Rerum Novarum onward has always insisted that the Gospel is not a private spiritual comfort but a public moral claim. When Vance tells the pope to stay in his lane, he is not defending Catholic doctrine. He is betraying it.
JD Vance's forthcoming book on his Catholic faith is titled Communion. Its cover features a United Methodist church. I do not say this merely to mock. Symbolism matters in Catholic theology, and the symbolism here is telling. A book about Catholic unity, bearing Protestant ecclesial architecture on its cover, written by a man who publicly contradicts the pope on Just War doctrine - this is not communion. This is confusion dressed in piety. Archbishop Coakley said it plainly: "The Pope is not Trump's rival, nor is the Pope a politician. He is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls." Communion, in Catholic theology, is not a feeling of spiritual warmth. It is a participation in the Body of Christ that carries radical obligations — to the poor, the stranger, the enemy, to peace. It is a table the powerful do not preside over. They are guests at it, like everyone else. A seven-year Catholic who tells the pope to watch his theology, while defending an administration that posted an Al image of the president as Jesus Christ and refused to apologize, is not in communion with the tradition he claims to be writing about. He is in communion with power. And that, as Augustine himself understood deeply, is a very different thing.
A pretty comprehensive takedown of JD Vance by a Catholic priest, Msgr. Arthur Holquin
open.substack.com/pub/liturgya...
Pretty sure I saw a post and a photograph alleging it was him at a protest
This is a really interesting piece. #SpeirGorm
thank you iranian embassy in ghana for helping summarize & confirm
Read somewhere the Vance going to Budapest to support Orban has cost him support.
It seems to be all talk no action so far from Government
BREAKING: Defence Forces will be deployed and vehicles blocking critical infrastructure removed, Minister for Justice says | Follow latest
these are the stupidest people to ever live
Taco Trump
We remember the Mass Rocks and the Hedge Schools
Amazing. I looked at it earlier and thought what is that.
Having been reared down the road from it U’d say massive Republican
#3 Bangor
There’s no pockets in shrouds.
Fire in the belly but you need ice in the veins
That republicans have consistently taunted AOC for bartending post college, where she double-majored w/ honors in economics & international relations, makes it your patriotic duty to remind them they confirmed a college dropout with a background in plumbing to one of the biggest jobs in the country.
TRUMP: Iran gave me a “very big present”. And it arrived today.
According to a senior officer aboard, in 1588 Spanish Armada sailed “in confident hope of a miracle.”
Love it.
