In Bickerstaff’s home town, sadly enough.
The report with video speaks for itself. See it here.
UPDATE: For an excellent account of this whole sorry mess, head over to For What it’s Worth, both for the commentary and comments.
Thanks to Lorin Hart.
Couldn’t he have just kept his mouth shut?
From Breitbart:
The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life called Italy’s notorious Law 194 legalizing abortion “a pillar of society” this weekend, insisting that no one is looking to overturn it.
Interviewed by Italian state television Rai Tre, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia lauded the 1978 law allowing abortion in Italy, a move that critics called a new ‘ground zero of morality.’
‘I believe that at this point the Law 194 is a pillar of our social life,’ the archbishop stated. ‘In my opinion, and I have written as much, I would like to see more emphasis on the part that is hardly spoken of, namely the right to motherhood, to see our country grow, in the face of the drama of a generational imbalance that is quite dramatic.’
“I would exhort to look with trust upon a country that wishes to live in liberty, in development and progress, and I think that the crisis in natality is a problem on which we have unfortunately not reflected and it is already late,” he said.
So a primate of the Holy Catholic Church, the President of the Pontifical Academy for Life no less, says he’s fine with a law permitting abortion in the state that surrounds the Vatican, that he isn’t interested in seeing it overturned. While the Academy for Life is not officially connected with the Vatican, it certainly is cozy with it. So far, not a word from Pope about the matter.
Words fail. That is a rare occurrence for your Tatler.
UPDATE: The oldest dodge of all: ‘The Pontifical Academy for Life’s spokesman said afterward that the word ‘pillar’ had been taken out of context. In other words: “Yes, he said it, but it doesn’t mean what he said.’
Thanks, maybe, to B. A. Skinner.
They were way ahead of the left.
From George Weigel via Fr George Rutler, with thanks to both.
Former Washington Field Office Special Agent in Charge Tim Thibault was reportedly escorted out of the Bureau’s headquarters on Friday, amid whistleblower allegations that he showed political bias in his handling of politically sensitive investigations.
The Washington Times reported eyewitness accounts that Mr. Thibault was seen exiting the bureau’s elevator last Friday escorted by two or three ‘headquarters-looking types.’
Whistleblowers alleged that Thibault concealed the partisan nature of evidence from FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland to secure their approval to open an investigation into former President Donald Trump. That investigation culminated in the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month.
Some of that evidence included, “information from news articles, including a CBS Miami piece titled “Moving Trucks Spotted At Mar-a-Lago.” In other words, if CBS News suggested moving trucks “spotted” (by whom, we wonder) at Mar-a-Lago implicated Trump was removing documents from his home, by golly that was good enough for Trump hater Special Agent Tim Thibault.
Bickerstaff wonders if Messrs Wray and Merrick believe axing this fellow is sufficient to deflect the heat on them and make Mar-a-Lago go away. If the Republicans make a huge stink, perhaps not, but don’t count on it. The media, if they run the story at all, will play it as if the party responsible for the debacle has been caught. Now that he’s been weeded out and transfered to another office, that’s the end of the matter of Mar-a-Lago, that it’s time to move on.
A continuing series.
The complaint above was an oft-muttered lament by Bickerstaff’s father, who died decades ago. Things have only gotten worse of course and get worser still.
Consider the video above. An elementary truth about driving cars is one doesn’t drive in the rain with bald tires. One would thing the management of NASCAR would be well aware of that truth. One would be wrong.
From Road & Track:
Over the past few years, NASCAR has developed kind of a strange habit. It has become increasingly comfortable waiting to throw a caution for dangerously wet conditions, leading to wrecks that could be attributed entirely to the wet surface at Texas Motor Speedway in 2020, Circuit of the Americas in 2021, and, most notably, New Hampshire Motor Speedway in 2021. Despite all this, NASCAR chose to keep a flat-out pack race at Daytona going as rain approached with less than 30 laps in today’s race. When the field hit a damp track, the predictable happened.
Indeed it did, resulting in an awful lot of wrecked cars. Not that long ago, believe it or not, when a racetrack got wet a timeout was called. The drivers would come to a halt and the drivers’s crews would rush to swap the racing slicks on each car for “rain tires,” with grooves carved into them just like civilian tires. Racing would then resume from the exact spot where each car had stopped.
It shouldn’t be a terribly difficult decision to make, calling a timeout in an auto race when it starts to rain. One might say it requires few brains indeed, but few hardly equals none, does it?
Mon Dieu!
If you’re planning a flight on Air France, you might consider rebooking.
From the Telegraph:
Two Air France pilots have been suspended after coming to blows in the cockpit mid-air.
A dispute between the pilot and co-pilot of the Airbus A320 broke out and became physical during a flight between Geneva and Paris in June, French weekly La Tribune reported.
The fight was the latest in a string of incidents that have raised questions over safety at the French flag carrier, which is one of the world’s largest airlines.
.
The Rocky Mountain Vibes foul out.
From PJ Media we learn the depressing but not surprising decision of the Rocky Mountain Vibes, a minor league baseball team based in Colorado Springs, to cancel its planned Family Night event following the game, this occurring just hours before it was to take place.
Whatever for, you may ask? The answer will hardly raise eyebrows in these times. When team management announced the family friendly event, one for which they were seeking sponsors, an organization with the wonderful name of Save the Stork, which is dedicated to assisting pregnant women who chose not have an abortion, stepped up to the plate. By doing so they managed also to sell 3000 tickets to the game beforehand, about double the average per-game sales of this hardly outstanding ball team.
Management, despite the vastly increased ticket sales, decided they would have none of it and dropped the event. Their explanation why (quoted below) is a classic example of mealy-mouthed mush from mediocrities terrified of offending their noisome cultural superiors, none of whom likely have been to a ball game in their lives. (PJ Media points out the singular appropriateness of the Vibes’s mascot: a s’more, i. e., a marshmallow).
While we value all our sponsors and ticket holders, they do not make decisions regarding the nature of our post-game entertainment, or groups that come out to our stadium to raise awareness for their causes. The Vibes made this decision after seeing the proposed assets from the partner in question because they felt that the partner would hinder the team’s mission in providing fun and affordable family entertainment. Any statement placing blame on any outside party for cancelation of tonight’s events is inaccurate. The Vibes made this decision internally and stand by their choice.
Don’t you just love “the proposed assets?” These “assets,” helping women who wish to deliver their babies rather than kill them, apparently “would hinder the team’s mission in providing fun and affordable family entertainment.” In other words, having babies is too controversial and might be upsetting to people.
Your Tatler remembers when aborting babies was controversial, not having them.
Scared of their own shadows, yet they rule over us.
How is it possible such lily-livered wimps like these are somehow still in the ascendency, control all our institutions and are taking over this country and others? It seems to Bickerstaff a small squad armed with squirt guns could force the throwing up their hands in surrender with but one or two discharges. Of course, the answer to the question above is we surrendered to them long ago.
Maybe, one fine day, we’ll withdraw that surrender.
Welcome to Chuck E Cheese.
The only difference between children and grownups here is size and age. Behaviorally, they’re identical.
Two points of view for the price of one, both held by your Tatler.
From the estimable John Solomon:
Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump’s estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-a-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president’s claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News.
…
‘The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, regarding whether or not I should uphold the former President’s purported ‘protective assertion of executive privilege,'” Wall wrote. ‘… I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege.’
Your correspondent holds two points of view regarding the above and what it portends for this country, but not at the same time of course (only modern liberals are capable of that). Which view he favors depends on a variety of factors, one of them quite possibly being the availability of a decent single-malt.
Bickerstaff the pessimist favors this interpretation: the left, having succeeded in its long march through the world’s institutions (even the Holy Catholic Church, or at least the Vatican with our Biden-like Pope) is on the cusp instituting a totalitarian socialist regime in the United States and eventually the world. That being the case, those opposed will have no choice but, essentially, going underground, exercising great caution whenever venturing out in public, paying heed to watch every action and word, lest they be reported to the authorities, rounded up, and disappeared.
Anticipating its seemingly inevitable paradise, the left has thrown caution to the wind, and (mixing metaphors) is rubbing their upcoming victory in the faces of the rest of us, as the recent raid on Donald Trump’s house in Mar-a-Lago illustrates nicely.
Meanwhile, Bickerstaff the optimist, assisted perhaps by a few sips of Glenfarclas (neat, with a splash), has a much different take. Rather than riding the road to victory, the left has realized time is running out for them. Despite wresting control of the schools and universities, the armed forces, cultural institutions and even a good percentage of corporate boards of directors, there is one enormous institution of which the left has not only failed to achieve total control, but day by day lessens, the American public.
The general opinion of pollsters is Americans roughly number 40-percent for each major party, Democrat and Republican, ten-percent, independent and ten-percent apathetic or braindead. Your Tatler (the optimistic one, that is) however suspects those percentages do not tell the whole tale.
According to Forbes,
More Americans still identified as Democrats or said they lean Democratic than as Republicans on average in 2021—with 46% versus 43%—though that’s slightly closer than in 2020, when 48% were Democrats and 43% were Republicans.
But (italics added):
While more Gallup respondents leaned Democratic than Republican on average in 2021, a larger share of respondents also categorized their views as “conservative” rather than “liberal.” A 37% plurality of Americans said they held “moderate” views in 2021, but 36% said they’re either conservative or “very conservative,” while 24% were liberal or “very liberal.” Those numbers are similar to 2020, when Democrats also had an advantage in party affiliation.
And keep in mind this Forbes piece was published back January and there have been more than a few events reflecting poorly on the hapless Biden Administration. Thus it could be the Democrat-liberal-left, realizing Americans are deserting them daily, are panicking that this fall’s elections could be the beginning of the end for them. Hence they are engaging in wild stunts–something, anything–to stop their nemesis Donald Trump from running again, whose winning back the presidency would pretty much consign the Dems to the back bench for a long, long time.
Even if the left is finally beaten back at the polls though, it is still an open question whether or not our institutions can be rescued. They may be too far gone to be saved, which brings to mind that famous quote (though possibly spurious, it’s source was Peter Arnett) from an army officer during the Viet Nam war: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” Something akin to that may be necessary for a good number of our country’s institutions, but will only occur if the left, like that late town in Viet Nam, itself is politically destroyed.
THE TAOS TATLER. 