The Pope's Visit: What it Means Beyond the Church | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: Sadly, no effect is possible unless Francis were to speak of immigration in right to life terms and pressure the bishops to pressure the movement to take the issue on as a must pass. Of course, after the ACA debacle by the USCCB, they can't be seen as having the juice to do anything. Their romance with the GOP seems to be one-way.
On registering Latinos, I do not trust some of the bishops to not insist on Republican voting, as they mostly do in their pre-election sermons. I would not even want them to register as pro-life Democrats, is the issue is still an electoral scam. I would have them be social justice Democrats and trust that real economic justice will reduce the abortion far more than criminalizing doctors.
The 20 week issue should lead to anasthesia for the doomed fetus, but nothing more unless Congress wants to explicitly make all feti persons at 20 weeks. Of course, that would probably be so much of a compromise to end the volatility of the issue, which the RTL movement would not want because it would kill their fundraising. Its also why PR is going to be left hanging as if it were the Pope's own Argentina, because Congressmen like bankers more than Puerto Ricans, who don't have any voting members.
Congrats to Steve Schneck on joining the White House Staff. This is the kind of appointment you make to get things done after you don't have an election to win. If Steve is going, could Michael be far behind? If so, I want this column.
While it is fashionable to look for consensus solutions by calling out extremes and possibly seeking a moderate party, which we saw in the aborted attempts for a bipartisan ticked (worked so well for Lincoln-Johnson) in Unity*08 and Americans Elect (which I was a candidate in), the reality is that a different issue space that is essentially cooperative socialist or libertarian socialist is where the missing voters are hiding. Also, the GOP seems determined to go down in flames in 2016 - and 2020 will not be kind to them either. Its time to look for a new majority party. If it is more like Francis, that would be nice, but its not essential.
The problem for the Church being thwarted is not politics. It's the constitutional rights paradigm that says certain issues should be out of politics unless there is an overwhelming reason not to. Gay marriage, birth control and abortion were politically accomplished in most cases, as the right die will be mostly outside of politics. While the Church would love an issue space to wield the political power of the Catholic vote on these issues, its not going to happen and the Church needs to face that part of American politics. Maybe Steve and Barack can explain it to them using small words, although its not fact based, its about a different view of authority. In America, by the way, the Church is wrong. As far as crawling out of gridlock, fix redistrciting and the extremist GOP will scatter.
The Holy Father is right to seek peace, however the major dust ups in Palestine, Syria and Iraq are all civil wars and different rules exist. Obama's desire to find non-ISIL forces to unset Assad was naive, al Queda fights better. We either reverse course and let Putin prop up Assad or end up helping ISIL. The Arab Spring was a shot in the dark by a Google millionaire who thought a Facebook revolution would find some silent majority. He was wrong for the moment and we are stuck with undoing the damage. Let Putin have the thing. If we do it quietly there will be no Soviet resurgence. We know too much about how bad their economy is to ever be sold on a cold war by our defense industry again, although a GOP President might try to sell that. The real moral compass decision is stability or no and letting defense spending go back to a less prominent place in the budget and economy. And don't let abortion be the reason to send us back into the morass of a cold war.
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