Sullivan asks, "What if the Pope came to Britain and not even the Catholics showed up?"
ONLY 65,000 Catholics are now expected to take part in the papal mass in Scotland tomorrow – one third fewer than originally expected and a mere fraction of the total number in the country.
The figure falls far short of the 100,000 pilgrims it was originally hoped would flock to see Pope Benedict XVI at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow.
The Catholic Church denied that the controversy over the Pope's handling of the Church's child abuse scandal has undermined his imminent arrival.
But critics of the visit claimed the figures revealed the extent of indifference towards the first visit by a Pope to Scotland for 28 years.
The Catholic Church says more than 250,000 attended the mass in Bellahouston Park when Pope John Paul II visited in 1982.
I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more, just to be the man who walked 1,000 miles away from Ratzinger.
Josh Marshall: "Who could have predicted that an orchestrated campaign anti-Muslim hate speech on the part of many of the country's most prominent politicians and the country's biggest news network could have led to this unfortunate situation in Florida?"
Indeed.
The Economist has picked up on Daley's departure:
After Mr Daley privatised the city’s parking meters, drivers filled coin slots with glue and docile aldermen briefly located their spines. Last year Mr Daley struggled to close a budget gap. This summer just 31% of Chicagoans thought he should seek re-election.
So who will succeed Mr Daley? The most promising contender may be Mr Emanuel. Whoever the replacement, he is unlikely to bring the dramatic changes that characterised the Daley era. But a new leader is overdue. “Simply put,” Mr Daley said, “it’s time.”
And the Guardian:
Speculation in Chicago and Washington DC quickly turned to [President Obama's chief of staff Rahm] Emanuel, who has long made public his interest in the job – while the timing could not be better from the White House's point of view. With a crushing defeat in the US midterm elections looming, the need for Obama to reshuffle his senior staff after November was growing.
Emanuel refused to comment on the speculation, saying in a statement: "While Mayor Daley surprised me today with his decision to not run for re-election, I have never been surprised by his leadership, dedication and tireless work on behalf of the city and the people of Chicago."
Note that Emanuel was my Congressman until being named Obama's chief of staff in November 2008, and he maintains a permanent residence in the city.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley will not run for re-election next spring:
Daley's public approval rating had dipped recently, with a Tribune poll earlier this summer showing that more than half of Chicago voters said they don't want to see him re-elected.
The poll found only 37 percent of city voters approve of the job Daley is doing as mayor, compared with 47 percent who disapprove. Moreover, a record-low 31 percent said they want to see Daley re-elected, compared with 53 percent who don't want him to win another term.
The mayor's administration has been buffeted by a spate of summer violence, a weak economy and a high-profile failure to land the 2016 Olympics. Dissatisfaction abounds, the survey found, over Daley's handling of the crime problem, his efforts to rein in government corruption and his backing of a controversial long-term parking meter system lease.
This isn't a big surprise, as President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has hinted he wants the job—which he would never do without knowing for sure Daley was stepping down.
(Morton's Steakhouse, the best in Chicago, has portraits of the city's mayors going back to Daley's father.)
Paul Krugman noticed this poll from 1938, in which most Americans got completely wrong what the U.S. needed to get out of the depression:
Do you think government spending should be increased to help get business out of its present slump?
Gallup Poll, Mar, 1938
37% Yes
63% No
Of course, it was massive government spending from 1942 to 1945 that actually ended the Great Depression.
Dilbert creator Scott Adams raises an interesting point in his blog today:
I'm fascinated by the degree to which brains have evolved to become more powerful than guns. Society's founding geniuses engineered a social system that encourages the young people who have guns to shoot at each other instead of robbing old people. Forgive me for calling that awesome.
In other news, my total working hours for August was 275.5, so I'm actually looking forward to the Term 6 residency for a respite. We've only got four full classes this term, so, you know, it's easier.
Only 102 days left...
I'm always so pleased at the way Americans want everything for free, and how bad we are at doing the basic math of transport costs, especially when a British newspaper reports on the total collapse of New York railroads today:
The fire at [the Long Island Railroad] Jamaica [station] was out, but the LIRR was still running well below capacity when an electrical problem in Maryland shut down power to trains up and down the Northeast corridor. Commuters in Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington (Delaware), and throughout New Jersey were affected by the outage, which hit at the height of rush hour.
As the New York Times and the Infrastructurist both note, this is yet another example of how America's outdated and fragile infrastructure continues to cause problems—especially in the Northeast corridor. The solution is simple: if Americans want better infrastructure, they have to invest the money to pay for it.
Oy. Trains are worth more than we pay for them, people. Get your heads out of your asses and your asses out of your cars.
More data for my analysis:
We're in the thick of what one sociologist calls "the changing timetable for adulthood." Sociologists traditionally define the "transition to adulthood" as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early '70s.
The whole idea of milestones, of course, is something of an anachronism; it implies a lockstep march toward adulthood that is rare these days. Kids don’t shuffle along in unison on the road to maturity. They slouch toward adulthood at an uneven, highly individual pace. ...
Even if some traditional milestones are never reached, one thing is clear: Getting to what we would generally call adulthood is happening later than ever. But why? ... To some, what we're seeing is a transient epiphenomenon, the byproduct of cultural and economic forces. To others, the longer road to adulthood signifies something deep, durable and maybe better-suited to our neurological hard-wiring. What we’re seeing, they insist, is the dawning of a new life stage — a stage that all of us need to adjust to.
I'm trying to work up a theory about people born after 1980, which seems to be the cut-off for a host of behaviors and attitudes that are alien to me and my contemporaries. I'm not sure how on-point this article is, but I'm thinking about it.
India became independent from the U.K. on 15 August 1947. Happy birthday!
.gif)
And because blogs are traditionally self-absorbed, I'll point out India has hot, sticky weather much like what we've had in Chicago this summer. We've had 35 consecutive days with dewpoints over 22°C. Bleah.
I got an odd bit of mail today, in an official USPS envelope with a handwritten address. It was a check. A check I wrote. To the State Department.
Apparently, my passport renewal check got swept up in a pile of bills and other envelopes I dropped into the local mailbox. I didn't even realize I'd mailed the check without an envelope. And I remember thinking, as I reprinted the check a couple days later, "crap, another one fell behind my desk. I'll get it later."
Thank you, anonymous Chicago postal worker, for sending my check back.
Even better, I got an email from the State Department today saying they've completed my passport renewal already. I mailed it in on the 29th, without requesting expedited service. They sent me an email when they received it on the 3rd, and now, only one week later, they're done. Huh.
Let's review. (This is especially important to you ignorant starve-the-beast neo-Hobbsians out there.) Two public-service agencies, one quasi-public and the other a de facto (and, actually, de jure) part of the U.S. Government, apparently have conscientious, hard-working employees who do their jobs better than expected.
That they do this in the face of deliberate, malicious actions by elected officials only underscores how wrong the myth of "government bureaucracy" really is. In fact, government (and postal!) workers, like any others, come in many varieties, but mostly they just want to do their jobs well.
So here's a challenge to the right-wingers who read The Daily Parker—especially the one running for public office: can you tell me how your life would, on balance, be better without government?
...
Keep thinking. I've got time. And I've got my check back, and I'll have my passport Tuesday.