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Reports today indicate that another meeting was held this year--with no or little national coverage or announcement--when Pope Francis granted a short meeting with a transgendered individual from Spain.  
Some suggest that the meetings/greetings with all manner of individuals on this earth may show a compassionate & caring pontiff...to all.  I guess that would be confusing for pigeon-holer types.

Unless, the transgendered person was actively discriminating against other individuals, I honestly don't know how you can conflate the Pope meeting with Kim Davis and with his meeting a transgendered individual.

 When asked who invited the mayor to the Philadelphia mass, the Pope replied "I didn't invite Mayor Marino. Is that clear?"  And, the Pope added judgmentally, " He is a pretend Catholic."

 The pro-gay marriage mayor showed up for the mass, apparently at the invitation of city officials, wearing his red sash of office.  Mayor Marino repeatedly asked for a meeting with the pope, but was not given one--his schedule being crowded. The Mayor is not popular, but it has caused a Roman stir, especially for cooperation with the declared "Mercy Year," celebration.

Meanwhile, the bloom is off the rose in some quarters given the coyly arranged rendezvous with the anti-gay fanatic, Clerk Davis and her husband.  The usual political savvy of the Vatican seems to have faltered jeopardizing the good will generated and dashing hopes--not only those unrealistic hopes of real change, but also, those of improved tone. Important, not just for Church members, but also, for its over-sized influence on government.

After a period of seeming not to know whether to call a synod or a fiat, the Vatican acknowledged the meeting with Clerk Davis, along with a no comment.  Nothing more, so far.  Thereby, allowing Davis and Liberty Counsel to control the message. And, of course, Huckabee.  

"Pope Francis met with several dozen persons who had been invited by the Nunciature to greet him as he prepared to leave Washington for New York City. Such brief greetings occur on all papal visits and are due to the Pope's characteristic kindness and availability. The only real audience granted by the Pope at the Nunciature was with one of his former students and his family."

"US employers cut back sharply on hiring in September and added fewer jobs in July and August than previously thought"

Article in a nut shell, there's a global recession, and we aren't isolated.

"hiring in education and health fell to its lowest level in nearly a year"

"We spend over 1 trillion dollars and pass countless laws and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so," Obama said after the deadly attack at Umpqua Community College. "And yet we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?"

Consider that a good portion of the country is ready to go to war in the ME, we like killing regardless of how many candlelight vigils we have.  A good start would be handguns, something, but that isn't even half the issue, there is a reason people love guns, and that needs to be addressed, as well as this view of killing as something tragic, but not tragic enough to do anything about it, or even to think twice about getting in another war we can't possibly win.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 153,144 people were killed by homicide in which firearms were used between 2001 and 2013, the last year that data are available (that number excludes deaths by "legal intervention").

The Global Terrorism Database -- which uses a criteria to determine terrorist attacks but also includes acts of violence that are more ambiguous in goal -- estimates that 3,046 people in the U.S. died in terrorist or possible terrorist attacks between 2001 and 2014.

The top number doesn't even include suicides and legal police killings (which boost the number to 394,912). Still, just counting homicides alone, 11,780 Americans were killed by guns a year on average, in that time period, while 219 on average were per year killed by terrorism -- although of course the 9/11 attacks are the bulk of the deaths. LINK

That is 50:1 people killed by guns to terrorist, yet here we are ready to go 10,000 miles away to fight the terrorist and not do a GD thing here.

It proves to me how much influence the gun lobby and the military industrial complex have in establishing policy/law.

As I mentioned in another post, we need to fix problems right here before we start fixing other people's problems.  I would say a death count of 50:1, the 50 needs addressing far more than the 1.  

This goes back to my original statement about guns only being part of the problem.  This notion that being killed by a someone else, a terrorist, is infinity worse than being killed by an American citizen, has got to stop.  We changed the Constitution to keep us safe from terrorist, but we can't change it deal with a problem that is 50 times worse, that is insane to me.  Not that I think changing the Constitution is the answer only that we took extremely drastic measures to keep us safe from terrorist, but we ain't doing a GD thing to keep us safe from gun owners, of which I am one.

And lastly, stating the obvious:

"When Americans are killed in mine disasters, we work to make mines safer," the president noted. "When Americans are killed in floods and hurricanes, we make communities safer. When roads are unsafe, we fix them, to reduce auto fatalities. We have seat-belt laws because we know it saves lives.

"The notion that gun violence is somehow different -- that our freedom and our Constitution prohibits any modest regulation of how we use a deadly weapon when there are law-abiding gun owners all across the country who could hunt and do everything they do under such regulations -- it doesn't make sense."

The day before Pope Francis met anti-gay county clerk Kim Davis in Washington last week, he held a private meeting with a longtime friend from Argentina who has been in a same-sex relationship for 19 years.
Yayo Grassi, an openly gay man, brought his partner, Iwan Bagus, as well several other friends to the Vatican Embassy on September 23 for a brief visit with the Pope. A video of the meeting shows Grassi and Francis greeting each other with a warm hug.

In an exclusive interview with CNN, Grassi declined to disclose details about the short visit, but said it was arranged personally with the Pope via email in the weeks ahead of Francis' highly anticipated visit to the United States.

"Three weeks before the trip, he called me on the phone and said he would love to give me a hug," Grassi said.

What is super funny, that isn't even the dumbest thing in that post:

But I'm not concerned with what other nations do.

CaptHowdy: "I got heated in my comments yesterday. This hit very close to home for me.  I suspect just as close as it does for you. Since my constitutional rights are in question and yours is not."

I would suggest that you take a deep breath and get a grip. Your constitutional rights as a gay man are no longer in question by the majority of Americans. Marriage equality is a fact, and that was the big nut which needed cracking here. Now that it's been achieved, opponents have no leg to stand on because the courts ruled that as a matter of course, they have no legal standing to offer a challenge in such matters. (Pun intended.)

But for some reason and further of your own choice, you're giving undue regard to a bombastic but nevertheless rapidly dwindling number of zealots, bigots and blowhards on the right, who've already lost this particular battle rather decisively, even if they're too stupid to realize it yet.

What you're doing here is lowering yourself to the base level of those adversaries, who are morons and idiots. And in the process, you're alienating liberal Catholics such as myself and Christine who are LGBT allies, because you've chosen to attack the spiritual leader of our church over a matter so appallingly trivial that it would be laughable, were your words not so offensive, ignorant and hurtful.

CaptHowdy: "I just have one question. If it was as innocent as we would be led to believe with Davis, why was it secret?  And why will, as you pointed out, the Pope not clarify it."

I can't speak for His Holiness, and can only speculate that perhaps he didn't want to dignify the remarks of Kim Davis and her attorney publicly, and thus get pulled into the muck of a local legal dispute that's presently being handled by the federal court, albeit in front of the entire country. But apparently, he's since reconsidered his initial decision to ignore the controversy.

Through his spokesperson, Pope Francis has now not only categorically denied that he met with Ms. Davis privately, he has also disputed the contention that she was even invited to meet him personally. Rather, he noted that she had managed to include herself as part of a larger group that included the person the Vatican DID invite, His Holiness's former student from Buenos Aires, Yayo Grassi, who also happens to be gay:

"Vatican assistant spokesman Rev. Thomas Rosica said Friday that Francis had not invited Davis to a gathering that included dozens of people and suggested that the meeting may have been manipulated by her and her lawyer. Asked if she had exploited the encounter to promote her beliefs, he replied, 'One could say that.'" (Emphasis is mine.)

I would respectfully suggest that in the future, you first think long and hard about what you want to say, and consider carefully beforehand whether you might in fact be jumping to a premature conclusion, rather than just typing furiously away on your keyboard and then hitting "Post."

You know, and speaking here as a political activist, I've been in this particular struggle for LGBT rights for quite a while myself, because the State of Hawaii was where the fight for marriage equality was first joined in 1993 with our State Supreme Court's ruling in Baehr v. Lewin (Miike).

There were a small number of us who stood up to the right-wing Christian political backlash when the State Supreme Court initially ruled for the plaintiffs, and I have the tire tread marks on my front side to prove it.

It's not something I enjoy talking about even today because it was a very stressful and painful time for me, and we ultimately took it on the chin politically. Do you remember a right-wing whackjob named Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue and the Society for Truth and Justice? Well, he came to the Hawaii Legislature during our 1996 session to denounce gay marriage, and he literally spit in my face when I refused to allow him entry into my boss's office.

I even lost my job as a legislative staffer in Nov. 1996 when my boss, who openly opposed the then-proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, was defeated for re-election by a homophobic Republican preacher by a mere 87 votes. (Granted, I was quickly hired by the House Majority Leader, but still ...)

So your stated assumption that the effects and ramifications of this issue were somehow exclusive only to you and other LGBT persons, and not to me as a straight person, is simply bullschitt.

While I'll admit that at the time, gay marriage was not necessarily the issue over which I'd have drawn a line in the sand were it up to me, nevertheless I was out there on the front lines once that issue was forced upon us by others. I stood up to be counted and worked very hard to stop what was happening back then, even though we ultimately lost the Amendment 2 vote in 1998 by over a 2-1 margin, 70-30%.

For that matter, what exactly were you doing back in 1996-98 when liberal Democrats were under assault over this matter, not only in Hawaii but all across the country, and when elected officials like my boss proved willing to fall on their swords and lose an election over what they considered a matter of human rights and fundamental principle? Where were you?

There was a time when I would agree that the LGBT community were freely victimized and regularly scapegoated by larger elements of our society in misguided response to our own shortcomings as heterosexuals. Well, we've obviously turned a corner and those times are rapidly changing, even if we haven't quite arrived at our destination and likely still have a ways to go.

Nevertheless, those who persist in indulging their own irrational homophobia in public now run a serious risk of becoming social pariahs themselves. That should not mean that as a gay man, you are now free to avenge yourself upon others for any past slights and injuries you may have suffered at the hands of straight people -- which includes lashing out mindlessly at anyone you perceive to be standing in your way, as you did in this thread yesterday.

You only empower misguided jackwagons like Kim Davis when you react emotionally like that, because when you gauge your own statements and actions in response to whatever it is that they're doing at the time, you are effectively letting them jerk your chain at will.

I'm sure you've heard me oft-quote my favorite Persian proverb, "Dogs bark, and the caravan passes." Well, in your case, it's entirely appropriate. Let the dogs bark, Cap'n, lest the caravan moves on and passes YOU by, as well.

But I'm not concerned with what other nations do. If If I remember correctly many did not and many could not oppose either the Nazis or the Soviets... And then they don't have our constitution.

Scott, yes your comment is. And "many" is neither instructive or demonstrative.

And yes, the goal is taking away all guns. If you think otherwise then look in the mirror and repeat your insult.

What exact point are you making.  I don't think it was answered before but answer it or stfu.

Are you suggesting that a random LGBT person is the equivalent of a person who is the figurehead for bigotry in this country?  That a person who was sent to jail and likely will be again for actively working to deny the constitutional rights of others is the literal equal of me or any other LGBT person?Really?

Link

[caution: autoplay video of Grassley]

A bipartisan group of influential senators on Thursday proposed a far-reaching plan to cut mandatory prison sentences for nonviolent offenders and promote more early release from federal prisons in what they described as the most important criminal justice reform effort in a generation.

"This is truly landmark legislation," said Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who leads the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Grassley's support was essential to advancing a measure its sponsors hope will reduce the financial and societal costs of mass incarceration, which has hit minority communities particularly hard.

The measure has benefited from an unusual convergence of interests in an otherwise polarized Washington and has become a singular issue that usually warring groups have rallied around. Progressive advocacy groups have embraced the possibility of less jail time and better preparation for offenders when they are released; conservatives have championed the potential savings in reducing prison populations and spending on the strained criminal justice system. President Obama is also a strong advocate of criminal justice reform and would like to see legislation enacted before he leaves office.

... climbing into the pickup truck close to the Oregon border cheerfully acknowledged they were about to break federal law. But they won't be doing it for much longer.

Anthony, Daniel and Chris bustled out of a marijuana shop in Vancouver, Washington, clutching bags of weed as they headed home a short drive over the bridge to Portland, Oregon.

Crossing state lines with drugs is a federal offence but that has not discouraged the steady stream of customers from Portland taking advantage of Washington's legalisation of recreational marijuana sales last year.

But starting on Thursday, Oregon joins Washington in permitting the sale of marijuana for recreational use to anyone over the age of 21.

LINK

News to me and good for Oregon.

The open sale of recreational marijuana has come more swiftly to Portland than many expected. Legalisation was only approved in a ballot measure last November whereas Washington state took 18 months to open its first shops.

To speed up the process, Oregon has approved recreational sales through existing medical marijuana dispensaries, bypassing lengthy background checks which have slowed the roll-out across the state line.

But it caught off-guard many of the dispensary owners who did not expect open sales to begin until the middle of next year.

Blaming Congress for its failure to reauthorize the U.S. Export-Import Bank, an institution that finances sales of U.S. industrial equipment to overseas customers, General Electric Co. says it will stop manufacturing engines in Waukesha and move that work to Canada.

About 350 jobs will be lost at the Waukesha plant, where GE Power & Water, a division of Fairfield, Conn.-based GE, builds engines used in the petroleum industry.

The company says it will move the production to a new $265 million engine factory to be built in Canada during the next 20 months.

GE and other companies have pleaded with Congress to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, which provides loans, credit guarantees and insurance to aid sales by U.S. companies to customers abroad. But many Republicans say the bank amounts to corporate welfare, benefiting large corporations that don't need government assistance.

The bank's charter expired June 30 when Republican members of the House blocked a reauthorization vote.

GE says it is currently bidding on $11 billion in projects that require export financing, and emphasizes that Canada has a strong export bank.

"We believe in American manufacturing, but our customers in many cases require Export Credit Agencies financing for us to bid on projects. Without it, we cannot compete, and our customers may be forced to select other providers," GE Vice Chairman John Rice said in a statement.

But we can breathe easy...not busted, just brusied, Terry Collins he should be back for the weekend regular season finale against the Nats.  Praise the baseball gods!!!

The day before Pope Francis met anti-gay county clerk Kim Davis in Washington last week, he held a private meeting with a longtime friend from Argentina who has been in a same-sex relationship for 19 years.

Yayo Grassi, an openly gay man, brought his partner, Iwan Bagus, as well several other friends to the Vatican Embassy on September 23 for a brief visit with the Pope. A video of the meeting shows Grassi and Francis greeting each other with a warm hug.

But not only was UCC not a gun free zone by law, there were also people who brought guns onto campus at the time of the massacre.

John Parker Jr., a veteran and student at UCC, spoke with MSNBC and revealed that he was in a campus building with a concealed handgun when the shooting started. He suggested other students with him at the time were also carrying concealed handguns.
...
Parker's interview revealed the practical difficulties of armed civilians trying to stop a mass shooting. By the time he became aware of the shooting, a SWAT team had already responded. He was concerned that police would view him as a "bad guy" and target him, so he quickly retreated into the classroom. link

The land of "let's fling a big handful of horse sh*t and hope some of it sticks" apparently..

Crazed killers with easy access to guns and ammo are going to succeed in killing people 99% of the time because they know what they're going to do and no one else does. Hence, they always have the drop on everyone.

What is your point.   I don't expect it from the other one but you love to hear yourself talk

My reference was to gun control. I don't pay much attention to what they do. They aren't us and they don't have our constitution,

And I don't pay attention to what they did/didn't do in respect to the Nazis/Soviets. They either didn't want to or couldn't. We had to respond ourselves. And all that is history.

However, when it comes to the ME we have a real time threat to which we need to pay close attention.