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Pro Tip on the Catholic Faith

Posted: May 9, 2025 by datechguy in catholic, Church doctrine
Tags: ,

Let’s be very blunt. I have no idea how Pope Leo XIV is going to work out, I can make a guess or two but that’s all it is, a guess.

If he wanted to be a Francis clone he could have taken the name Francis II, he didn’t.

If he wanted to be another John Paul II he could have taken the name John Paul III, he didn’t.

Until he actually does something we don’t know how the spirit will work in him, what his past will say about him or anything else.

At the age of 69 we’ll likely have many many years to judge how good a job he does, it’s also very possible that he will be the last pope I see in my lifetime.

He could be a saint, he could be a disaster, he could be an ordinary average pope (we haven’t really had one of those in my lifetime) or he could have a huge footprint on the world and the church for good or ill. I don’t know which it will be. Nor do I know how much his experiences as an Augustinian & a Canon Lawyer (both positives to me) will effect how he does things.

What I do know is this:

He’s the Pope, the head of the church elected by the college of cardinals per the laws of the church. He can trace a direct line from his pontificate to St. Peter. He’s the man in charge and if you’re going to start attacking & condemning the new Pope less than three hours after he’s been proclaimed, you’re doing the faith wrong.

There is a word for a Catholic that doesn’t respect the decision of the college of cardinals: “Protestant”.

Let’s not fall into the spiritual pride trap that the enemy wants, instead let’s both pray that we avoid it and pray for the new pope because if you think the enemy has you in his sights that goes 1000 times for any pope.

For the record it’s my belief that a Pope has two primary functions:

  1. Keep the faithful on the right track toward Christ
  2. Nudge the unfaithful or the non-Catholic on the right Track toward Christ

That’s the job.

What’s our job as the faithful? This:

Be a good catholic, pray, go to mass, receive the sacraments regularly and love your neighbor as Christ commands. Keep being and doing that and you’ll be fine no matter who the pope is.

That’s the secret.

I’m Old Enough to Remember When the Idea of Mississippi Schools Being Top Notch Would Be a Joke

Posted: May 8, 2025 by datechguy in education
Tags: ,

Not anymore:

Mississippi has become the fastest improving school system in the country.

You read that right. Mississippi is taking names.

In 2003, only the District of Columbia had more fourth graders in the lowest achievement level on our national reading test (NAEP) than Mississippi.1 By 2024, only four states had fewer.

When the Urban Institute adjusted national test results2 for student demographics, this is where Mississippi ranked:

  • Fourth grade math: 1st
  • Fourth grade reading: 1st
  • Eighth grade math: 1st
  • Eighth grade reading: 4th

And they’re not alone:

Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama climbed the charts because they focused on core academic instruction when much of the country used ESSA as an excuse to focus on anything and everything else. It paid off.

So how did this happen?

How did Mississippi go from 49th in the country a decade ago to near the top today? And what can other states learn from it? 

According to a recent piece by Grace Brazeale, a policy associate with the advocacy group Mississippi First, the state implemented a series of changes starting with the 2013 Literacy-Based Promotion Act. That law funded the state department of education to hire, train and deploy literacy coaches to the 50 lowest-performing schools. It also required schools to administer universal screenings to identify students with reading deficiencies early and to communicate those results to parents, and it required schools to hold back students who were not reaching a certain threshold by third grade. 

Remember for all my life Mississippi was a punchline now it’s a success story for education. Amazing what can happen when you don’t focus on being woke and deal with reading and writing. I’ll give Glenn Reynolds the last word:

To be fair, for nearly all those years when Mississippi was a joke, it was ruled by Democrats.

Five Quick Thoughts Under the Fedora Trump Completely Unafraid, Unexpectedly again, Anti Catholics Upset, A Minority View and A Big Baseball Surprise

Posted: May 4, 2025 by datechguy in baseball, dynasty baseball, economy, fun, under the fedora
Tags: , , ,

It’s amazing watching Donald Trump constantly owning the MSM during hostile interviews.

What a difference when you don’t need them for exposure.

During the Biden years it was constant that various figures kept coming in lower than “expert” expectations, and then were revised down months later.

We’re only 3 months into Trump and already we’ve had two months of Trump beating “expert” expectations.

And no I’m not sick of winning.

The funniest thing about the Trump as Pope thing isn’t JD. Vance’s excellent response to Bill Kristol.

The funniest thing about the Trump as Pope thing is the people acting the most insulted are those who hate the church the most.

Not any outrage over Washington state passing a law to violate the seal of confession but a Trump as Pope image, vapors!

I might be in the minority here but I think this season of Doctor Who has been surprisingly good.

There hasn’t been a lot of preaching or woke just stories and when Davies team decides they want to tell a good story they are certainly capable of doing so.

Let’s hope this continues.

Finally I haven’t written much about my 1973 baseball league but with 57 games to go I find myself two games up leading my division thanks to a 7-3 run by me and a 1-9 run by the team that was ahead of me.

In the 5 years of our league no team has ever repeated as a division winner although a few have managed to make the playoffs in multiple years in a row. This difficulty is by design is VERY unusual for a team to repeat in this league

Mind you every other division winner has a better record than me as do 2 wild card teams so if I hold on I don’t know if I’ll get anywhere but still, not bad at all!

The Media Has Been Reduced to Lying to Themselves

Posted: April 27, 2025 by datechguy in media

Count Rugen: Come, Sir, we must get you to your ship.

Westley: [smiles] We are men of action. Lies do not become us.

Count Rugen: Well spoken, Sir

The Princess Bride 1987

If you look anywhere in the media you repeatedly see the MSM selling the idea that Trump’s first 100 days were a failure, that Pete Hegseth is getting ready to resign, that the trade deals are all failing and that Trump voters are deserting him in droves.

Alas none of this is true and more importantly Trump voters who can be confirmed as Trump voters and not as nameless trolls on twitter are all in:

Luntz focus group of Trump voters to a man were still with him and Luntz couldn’t believe it.

The media narrative has long since reached its sell by date to conservatives and are instead trying to convince voters of the left that the Trump administration is about to fall and to convince themselves that they are on the winning path.

They should instead take this advice from Robert Stacy McCain on covering stories:

To be truly objective, you have to be able to get enough distance from your personal feelings in order to concentrate on the Three Rules of Journalism: Accuracy, accuracy and accuracy.

In recent months, we’ve witnessed a parade of big-time journalists trying to explain how they somehow overlooked a rather important fact, namely that Joe Biden was far gone in a state of senile dementia. Oh, these journalists tell us now, they were deceived — victims of a conspiratorial cover-up in the White House — even while many millions of ordinary Americans were pointing to the obvious evidence of Biden’s senility and shouting the truth on Twitter, Facebook, etc. These same big-time journalists who, since the election, have freely admitted the truth about Biden’s decayed mental condition, had previously denounced the truth-tellers as agents of a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. We were told that videos of Biden’s bumbling and stumbling were “cheap fakes,” and yet now — when the election is over, and there is no longer any advantage to the Democratic Party lost by admitting that Biden’s was unfit to serve as president — these journalists expect us to take them seriously when they claim they had no idea about it, back when the truth mattered most.

They have sold their souls to the Democratic Party, and whatever the Devil paid them, it was more than their filthy souls were worth.

Have I digressed into another pointless tangent? Perhaps so, but my point is that too many journalists got into this business for the wrong reason. They think of themselves as secular missionaries with a pious duty to “make a difference.” Well, hey, sweetheart, how about you just try to get the facts right, collect your paycheck and go have a beer?

If you’re not out to report the facts, you’re not reporting you’re selling something and that why Scott Jennings can beat a room full of CNN psychopaths’ every time, because he doesn’t have to sell anything, all he needs to do is tell the truth.

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