Tag Archives: francis

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Pope Francis. In a report this week, the Pope has said NATO is responsible for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I’m sure His Holiness is a wise and intelligent churchman, but I have to encourage him to get the fuck directly out of here with that line of thinking. The person directly responsible for the invasion of and subsequent destruction in Ukraine is Vladimir Putin. Period. Full stop. John Paul II took a courageous stand against Soviet repression across Eastern Europe. It seems his successor would rather stand with tyrants… and that heaps nothing but shame on him. 

2. Page views. My page views fell off a damn cliff this week and I have absolutely no idea why. As of this evening, views are down 68% from this time last week. Mercifully I’m not trying to sell anything here, because that’s just abysmal. Is it something I said? Was there a tweak to the algorithm? I’ve got loads of metrics about this page, but not one of them is giving me any particularly helpful insight. I’ll keep plugging away, of course, because more than anything else, this blog exists as a platform to vent my spleen before I get a chance to bottle it up. Past that, the added views are just kind of nice to have. I’d still be doing it even if no on were reading. Which at the rate these views are dropping could be sometime early next week.

3. Politicians. I’ve been looking, among other things, at the varied responses to the draft Supreme Court opinion on abortion, the continued agitation for free money handouts to those who took out student loans, the thus-far lackluster efforts of the January 6th committee, and clear disconnect between what Republican “leaders” said about Trump in private versus what they say for public consumption. The conclusion at which I’ve arrived is that it doesn’t appear that there is one single national-level politician anywhere in the country that I have any interest in voting for… for anything. Except maybe for expulsion to a desolate island in the South Pacific. They’re collectively just about the most uninspiring bunch I can imagine. I’d be hard pressed to think of anything they’ve done that makes me more likely to vote for a single one of them than I am to just throw my damned vote in the sea. They are, to a man and woman, about as useless a bunch as we’ve ever had the misfortune to seat at the highest levels of government.

Conceding defeat…

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE —- OFFICIAL STATEMENT

I come before you this evening with a heavy heart. A few moments ago, I sent a tweet to Pope Francis, congratulating him on his election as your next Pope in Rome. Your support of my candidacy for these past few days has been a source of strength for me, but tonight we must come together behind the victor and accept that my dark horse candidacy was, at best, a long shot.

I have no intention of letting this sound electoral defeat drive me out of the arena… and if asked, I would happily serve as Vice Pope or in any other position that didn’t necessarily require poverty and chastity as conditions of employment. Unfortunately, tonight was simply not my time to step up to the big chair. It’s a fair bet that we’ll get another chance at the job since the Sacred College has once again chosen someone old enough to be my grandfather (and an actual Catholic) for the job. I do, however, find it suspicious that the ballots were all destroyed before they could be independently validated and the formal announcement was made before appeals could be filed with the court, but I digress.

So in conclusion: Congratulations, Your Holiness. We’ll see how things turn out next time around.