Friday, June 18, 2021

It’s the end of the week, so let’s wrap this mess up. Before we get good and started, let’s make sure we’re all on board for this weekend’s weather. Yep, more rain is coming to the Deep South because we just haven’t had enough. This time, however, we got the added bonus of the 2021 Hurricane Season starting in earnest. Some heavy wing is building in the Gulf of Mexico and should form into a Tropical Storm sometime tonight or early Saturday morning.

We’ve already had a couple of named storms that didn’t make it out of the Atlantic and next up is Claudette, which always makes me think of Roy Orbison. Things are still too far out for any solid prognostication by the weather wizards, but if you’re on the coast between Destin, Florida, and Central Louisiana it’s a good idea to be light on your feet through the weekend.

All righty, then. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops went forward on plans to further define the meaning of Eucharist, and what this means to the rest of is it’s setting up an opportunity to rebuke President Joe Biden. Why? Well, he’s pro-choice in his politics as well as being the most openly religious president in the past fifty years this side of George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. This, obviously, gets up the nose of the USCCB, a notoriously right-wing group.

The vote passed by a vote of 168-55 with six abstentions, and should they go through with it all, the report will be ready come November. That being said, it has to be passed by the Vatican and that might stumble things. While the Holy See hasn’t lightened up on the matter of a woman’s autonomy on her body, Pope Francis has been a “let’s all get along regardless” sort of cat. Best I can tell, that’ll probably scuttle whatever the U.S. bishops are trying to accomplish but the point has already been proved.

Back in 2019, Biden – a regular churchgoer – was denied Communion at a church in South Carolina and has had to square his faith with his pro-choice politics. It should be noted the USCCB doesn’t have this problem with politicians who are pro-death penalty or against helping the poor or anything like that, and Biden hasn’t let it bother him. Interestingly, polls say more than half of American Catholics are not only pro-choice but two-thirds also don’t really think the country’s bishops should be acting that awful towards Biden for purely political reasons.

As we noted earlier, Biden’s not making a big deal out of it, saying it’s more his personal life rather than anything to do with being president. He says he’s pro-life in his personal life but doesn’t feel like he has the right to impose the Catholic Church’s proclaimed “pro-life” on other Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc.

Finally, 2024 Republican Nominee for President Greg Abbott, in his side hustle as governor of Texas, followed through on his plans to punish Democrats in the State Senate. He did this by vetoing part of the budget bill that would make sure the senator along with their staff and aides would all get paid. This is in revenger for them walking out of the end of the year’s session, foiling a quorum before the state could pass the draconic voting restrictions because that’s the new hotness for Republicans.

This, and the desperate thirst for the wall Trump never finished, is the most important thing in Texas, according to Abbott, and not the complete mess that is the state’s electric power grid. Run by the amusingly named Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the fine folks of the Lone Star State are being asked to turn off their air conditioners to take some of the stress off the battered power system. Recall this past February when the grid – its own thing and not connected to the rest of the country – collapsed due to historical cold weather and left many of them in the dark without power.

The grid is still a mess, after all, that and, facing record-breaking heat because it’s summertime, you damn fools, people dealt with occasional power outages this week. Even more obnoxious, people with smart thermostats are reporting that they’re being remotely adjusted. ERCOT officials say they doubt this summer will see more outages, but no one really believes that. Abbott, of course, is on the side of the privately-owned ERCOT so not much will be done.

Have a nice weekend.