I'm fascinated to see what happens now with the Catholic church under Pope Francis, the first Jesuit in that office. It's interesting that it was the Rev. Federico Lombardi who was the one to clarify the correct name with no numerals, as we may be hearing a lot more from this priest from now on.

[T]he fact that the new Pope will meet the media before anyone else at a special audience on Saturday morning shows a vivid awareness that prayer may not be enough to deal with the situation facing the Catholic Church at this critical moment in its long history.

The Jesuits are expert communicators and it is significant that one of the first people summoned to meet the new Pope this morning was Father Federico Lombardi, head of Vatican Radio (run for many years by the Jesuits) and the Vatican Press Office.

Under Pope Benedict, Father Lombardi was a mere functionary who had no direct access to the Pope. He could not pick up the phone and talk things through quickly - he just received orders from the Vatican Secretariat of State. That has now changed overnight.

The gunman in Herkimer, NY is now dead. Law enforcement entered the building, he shot the police dog and officers shot him.

Maybe you should look at the best kept secret in the American Media, Mark Makela's report on Reuters's, "Free healthcare in Appalachia", that I got in an European (Portuguese) Newspaper. Maybe that is the Healthcare Model that Paul Ryan and the GOP have in mind for the US.

I know it was generally a proforma question when you asked what we're reading, and I know it's not Friday, but I think I have a contender for your best new thing of the week. Granted it is not particularly new, it is definitely something I think other Americans would enjoy. Buzz feed did an article on a talk show host in Egypt who has a show closely modeled on "The Daily Show with John Stewart".

http://www.buzzfeed.com/justinesharrock/what-its-like-being-the-jon-stewart-of-the-arab-world

I started watching a few episodes because, hey who doesn't enjoy good political satire. Not did I find it entertaining but it really made me think about how the Daily Show must present our domestic news to a foreign audience.

Like I said I ended up watching a few episodes until I saw the last 4 minutes of this episode and now I am hooked. (season 2 episode 5)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1_ZVTN8CjE&feature=share

I don't know how he'll fare with political opposition there or more importantly I don't know how fast they are going to get more of his shows posted with translations, but it was definitely my best new thing this week.

Let me make it clear, first of all, that I am not blaming the Sequester on the President. I understand that, Constitutionally, the House holds the purse strings, but I don't understand why the President didn't veto it when it came across his desk. The Republicans played a kind of "Brer Rabit" talking the fox into throwing him in the briar patch game. In other words, deep spending cuts are what the Republicans want. They knew that they would be able to bring a separate military spending bill and the president would have to sign it and the military spending was the only "feet to the fire" sequester that would keep them from doing the budget. In stead of the cuts, which we know the Republican want anyway, something like the sequester bill, that is one would be so distasteful to both sides that they would vote for a budget to keep it from happening, would have had to contain massive increases to social programs if they didn't come to an agreement. That would have made the Republicans negotiate. This never will!

As to the public utilities link, where I live we have a municipal light a power company. The rates are lower (by around 15%) than the local private companies, the service is better (we rarely have power outages), and they are friendly to work with, having a local office staffed by local people.

I live in Massachusetts, so we have our share of very bad weather, and the local public power company always does a better job at keeping the power up.

The article on utilities neglects to mention energy co-ops, which dominate the geography here in Colorado, if not the population. Co-ops brought electricity to rural areas when investors had no interest in the sparsely populated backcountry.

Most of Colorado's co-ops do a pretty good job, although many have been fighting renewable energy, relying on their charters, which demand providing power to their "members" at the lowest possible cost. Unfortunately, that often means coal power.

The silliness of the McClatchy report on the gun background-check system frustrates me. It makes sense that people who have been convicted of crimes might have their right to purchase weapons limited. However, what kind of government maintains a database of people who have not been convicted of crimes to restrict their rights?

One of four Americans experiences what is labeled "mental illness" each year. Research shows that those of us who have had such experiences are less dangerous than our peers generally. In fact, people with psychosocial disability and "mental illness," like other people with disabilities, are more likely to to be victims of crime than other Americans.

The idea that court records of civil proceedings should be included in a criminal database reflects societal fear of madness and a lack of understanding about the civil proceedings. Most findings of dangerousness in such proceedings are based on a immediate situation rather than any long-term danger. Some of the proceedings that are supposed to be reported to the database are not based upon danger at all and are just blatantly discriminatory against people with disability.

If we are going to talk about disability or "mental illness" and danger, let's base the talk on facts not fear.

Mike

Please encourage Cassie to keep cultivating the monarch butterflies...

I still remember 20-some years ago boating to a small island in Lake Texoma during the fall migration, and watching from that small spot in the middle of the lake as a huge cloud (herd, gaggle?) of monarchs flew directly overhead. They glistened like drops of gold as the sun shone through their wings. It was a moment of transcendent beauty and I will never forget it. Onward, Buttercup and Chaos...

The survivors of Benghazi haven't suffered enough? Now they have to put up with the lunacy of Senate Republicans?

And by all means, let's hold up the appointment of a new ambassador to Libya. It's not like it's important that we have someone on the ground there while the country rebuilds ...

Rachel, I am a huge fan of you and your show, but your pieces on Detroit and the EFM have been increasingly troubling me. I was born and raisedin the city of Detroit. My parents moved to the suburbs in my senior year as part of the white flight out of the city (which was in full swing before 1967.) I have followed your pieces on the EFM on other MI cities, and when it became clear, that Snyder was going to appoint an emergency manager for Detroit, I tried to read everything. I am politically against the idea, as you have pressed on your show, that this is anti-democratic and taking power away from the people who elected the mayor and city council, but on the other hand, Detroit has been such a mess and the city council reflexively has refused to deal with the problems. I think Mayor Bing's means well, but the city council is recalcitrant and I have therefore come to the conclusion that thing can't go on the way it has, and we need to give the EFM a chance.

It has been very hard for me to come to this conclusion, but my heart aches for Detroit. I haven't lived there since I graduated high school, but I still have family there (in the suburbs.) I hope that you and your staff will pay close attention to what people in Detroit are saying about this. I urge you to read the Free Press online, especially Rochelle Riley's columns to get an understanding on how some people have come to decide to give the EFM a chance, because, if Detroit continues to go the way it's has, it is doomed.

"Detroit is struggling, but what are we doing? Fighting about a democracy that some of us care about only when it's convenient -- or when the cameras are rolling. Oh, we can make speeches about it. We can preach about it. But when it's time to vote, one out of four people actually does.

And when an entire city is in dire straits, do you pull out civics guides and a history of American democracy?

Or do you solve the problem?"

http://www.freep.com/article/20130315/COL10/303150160/Rochelle-Riley-This-man-offers-a-realistic-hope-of-getting-Detroit-on-track

We the people would not be in this God awful mess if the Church had been doing its job in the first place. Today Beef is being reported by many different countries as being loaded with other animals DNA because the Church did not obey Gods word of
"Trust In Me". They used vaccines contaminated with gene sharing spirochetal disease to infect us all now being carried generations and in all vectors of disease so even those that never got any vaccine can still get theirs. Autism alone is at 1 in 29 caused by the infections.
So now we have hundreds of syndromes caused by vaccines, that could have all been treated to cure. So you might want to ask all those countries reporting the truth, how much of that other DNA being reported in Cattle is Male or Female, and once again because of people being born attracted to same sex they again go against Jesus' words---Love One Another.
Never bothering to ask why or look at the research that says 90% of the pop.s are infected with gene sharing spirochetal disease.
http://www.rndsystems.com/cb_detail_objectnam...

Further supporting this notion, a recent study by Xie et al. provides strong evidence

that B cell progenitors, and

even some mature B cells,

can be induced to adopt the gene expression patterns,

morphology, and

functional activities of macrophages.

1956 VIDEO OF HeLa CELL CULTURES... SPIROCHETAL INFECTED CELL LINES USED IN MOST VACCINES COS' THEY LIKED YOU SO MUCH!!!
http://vimeo.com/9581140

THOSE CELLS WERE ALIVE AND TEAMING WITH SPIROCHETAL PRION PROTEINS.
And the only diff. between ANY of the syndromes/psych/cancers is the infections they have, how many, and the immune system they are in.

The Church is no better than the criminals who infected us all.
For profit war mongers who snuggle up to the first offer to suit their cause.
God did not approve same sex marriage, but after man started murdering us for profits over 35yrs. ago after infecting us with God only knows how much animal, insect, human, bacterial junk DNA that all recombine in prion synergy of spirochetes to cause all syndromes, psych disease and cancers---Jesus gave us backup instructions to just Love one another and they can't even do that.

http://gaia-health.com/gaia-blog/2013-03-11/locked-down-autistic-boy-update-is-he-dying/
Do you think these babies have any idea why their hormones don't work?

No and the church don't care...They think vaccines are great, when they could have stopped this pandemic in 1985 when they KNEW what caused it. Multiple infections in the real AIDS immune suppression they gave everyone. The infections reside in the neurons, where the hormones must also transverse in those same electrical currents, so the hormones cannot get to their destined locations that is the great circle of life of the hormones.

They had much rather write you off to God's Will and keep same sex couples from having the same rights as anyone else.
What ever floats their boat to the riches of corp. profits that is who they are for.
When every syndrome, every psych case, every cancer could have all been treated for the real cause which is the only way the pandemic will be stopped. In the 22 US soldiers killing themselves in lies of PTSD, in the masses suffering lies of MS, ALS, Parkinson's, Lupus, Arthritis, Diabetes, GWS, Alzheimers, and hundreds of other lies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yOno_2m_8LY