Cabrini, a film about a Catholic nun who built orphanages and hospitals worldwide, is the best movie I have seen in years.
The storyline is outstanding. In 1850, a small and sickly girl, Francesca Cabrini, was born two months prematurely to a farm family in Italy. In her teens, she decided to give her life to Christ. The Daughters of the Sacred Heart rejected her, considering her too weak to endure convent life. She persisted and became a number in 1877, taking the name Frances Xavier Cabrini.
Years before, while visiting her uncle, Father Don Luigi Oldini, she placed violets into paper boats, dropped them into a stream, and imagined they carried her and other missionaries to China, where the great St. Francis Xavier had journeyed 300 years before.
When she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1880, she told Pope Leo XIII she wanted to travel to Asia with her small group of sisters. However, the pope had another idea and sent her to the United States, where Italian immigrants lived in the harsh streets of New York.
Pope Leo expressed skepticism about that journey and its challenges, given her weakness–a worry compounded when people met her because she was barely five feet tall. But she told him, “We can serve our weakness, or we can serve our purpose. We can’t do both.”
The cinematography and acting are compelling.
Director Alejandro Monteverde provides a jarring, tightly focused tour of the underside of New York, where the poor scavenged for a life.
Mother Cabrini, superbly portrayed by Cristiana Dell’Anna, encountered slums, hunger, disease, and virulent anti-Italian sentiment—even among many Irish Catholics, not least among them Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan, played by David Morse.
The dialogue alternates between Italian and English, but I didn’t find the subtitles as annoying as I often do. Sometimes, the translations were a bit off, but not disturbingly so.
The movie is not a religious hagiography. Despite almost overwhelming odds, it demonstrates what one person can accomplish.
Before she died in 1917, Mother Cabrini helped build 67 schools, orphanages, and hospitals worldwide, including in China.
She was canonized in 1946 and became known in the United States as the patron saint of immigrants.
I’m sorry but I can’t be the only person in the world who can’t handle the irony of watching and listing to the folks of sports radio and talk all beating their breasts over the Ohtani story just before they reveal their bets sponsored by the official sports book of whatever sport they’re covering at the moment.
I wonder if draft kings is the official site for Baseball fans to place a bet on how all this ends?
The coach of the Bruins has come out hard against his team’s laxity after a loss against Philly saying bluntly that they aren’t ready for the playoffs.
Mind you this is a Bruins team that is tied for the most points in the NHL, then again last year they had a record setting regular season only to lose their first round series in seven.
I must confess that it has reached the point that if they have a one goal lead or are tied with under two minutes to go I expect them to give up a goal.
I find it one of the oddest things I’ve ever seen in sports
Yesterday the Celtics put their 10 game winning streak on the line against an Atlanta Hawks team that had a dozen players injured and quickly built up a 30 point lead on the Hawk’s home court.
Then managed to squander that lead by the 4th quarter and lose a game that they were favored to win by 12. It’s why you actually play the games.
Now in fairness games like this are going to happen occasionally particularly after a long winning streak and when facing a team with absolutely nothing to lose, but it highlights the problem with sports gambling because ask yourself how many people who lost what seemed a really safe bet are asking themselves if the fix was in?
Am I the only person in the world who appreciates the irony of after letting Brady go and dumping Belichick the first move for the Pats at QB is to sign a guy who was drafted by Bill and Backed up Brady?
In fairness nobody seems to be talking about the Jacoby Brissette signing because they’ve been too busy commenting on a documentary that seems to be all about hitting Belichick.
It’s as if 2001-2018 never happened and the Krafts want to blame Bill for all that’s ever been wrong in the world even though he was the guy who drafted Brady, who kept four QB’s to keep him on the roster, who designated him as the backup and decided to go with him when Bledsoe had healed up. No Bill, no Brady.
But I understand the sports boys wanted to talk about the old stuff, because the new product is likely not going to be all that interesting to watch.
Finally there seems to be a lot of fuss coming about the impending coming of Caitlin Clark to the WNBA. Clark has been filling arenas all over the country and give the possibility that the WNBA team that has he and their opponents might actually draw enough fans to create a team that could be solvent without NBA subsidies.
It appears however that Clark might not be all that welcome as she is guilty of the twin crimes of being both white and straight in a league that is “98% gay” and the idea that she might draw a bunch straight white fans who might swamp the microscopic numbers that the league currently draws seems to horrify the league as well.
It will be interesting to see what she does to the TV numbers because if they shoot up enough the powers that be might decide to lay down the law to the league that currently only exists on the charity and guilt of others.
Finally off to a 7-2 start for my 1972 league. There is a long way to go but as long as Al Downing (0-2) doesn’t pitch ever day for me it’s looking good.
During the Obama years when his administration was young I pointed out repeatedly that he was basically a cheap Chicago Machine Pol.
It’s apparently much worse in the sense that his administration and the Biden admin that his people control have basically brought Chicago politics to the national level, where every part of government is used to quell & destroy opposition on one hand and the levers of power simply exist to enrich friends and perpetuate the machine, even down to the lowest civil service level.
They have remade the courts, the civil service and even the military in their image and the consequences of this are likely to destroy America or drive it toward Civil War and worst of all they’ve done it at the behest of our enemies.
I really don’t have words to describe what I think of the people who have allowed it to happen for the sake of power, status and greed but that’s a post Christian society for you.
A couple of days ago I saw it theorized that the reason Gallagher is resigning in a way to prevent his +15 GOP seat from being filled is to help the Democrats get the House long enough to declare Trump an “insurrectionist” and try to disqualify him per the SCOTUS ruling that killed the cases in Colorado etc.
There was a time when I would have laughed such a theory out the door but the incredible irrational fear and obsession the deep state and the left has of Trump has demonstrated that no tactic is beyond them.
This type of fear suggests that however bad and whatever illegalities and unconstitutional acts I might suspect have been going on during the Biden/Obama years, it’s much worse and they’re totally afraid of being exposed.
I must confess that I’m completely confused by how some people react to events in Ukraine and Russia
They are at war with each other and now have been for over two years. During war both sides try to attack the other, try to destroy infrastructure and target the other side. This tends to lead to death and destruction the scale of which depends on the size of the parties involved and the state of their military. This is how war actually works. It’s why it’s something to be avoided if at all possible.
So will people PLEASE stop having fits when Ukraine hits Russia and when Russia hits Ukraine and acting all shocked when it happens and concentrate on finding ways of ending the war instead. Surely there are easier ways of acquiring graft then this and frankly for those worried about the Russian Bear the lessons of this war would seem to be that the bear is not what people think it is.
Speaking of Military Confusion I’m a tad confused by Israel’s delay in moving into that final big Hamas City. I understand there might be logistical issues that they may be working out and given what we’ve seen there is plenty of mopping up to do farther north but I suspect if anything is going to move Hamas to made a deal for those hostages it’s the impending fall of that final safe haven.
Of course I’m still shocked they haven’t gone all General Sherman or more General Lemay on Gaza but that’s their call not mine.
Finally day one of up at five off to work at 6am, mass at 6 pm and home maybe 7-8 has gone without incident. It’s been 20 years since I’ve done 10 hour days so the real test isn’t the easy Sunday, it will be the Monday facing rush hour traffic and the Wednesday when I’ve done four straight.
Given the Biden economy & and the debt it’s helped me accrue combined with the empty tip jar I’m thinking of picking up a part time job on that now free day I have but I’m going to wait till I’ve done this a month or so to see how this sixty something body handles 10 hour days over the long haul first.
“Let me tell you about Florida politicians. I make them. I make them out of whole cloth, just like a tailor makes a suit. I get their name in the newspaper. I get them some publicity and get them on the ballot. Then after the election, we count the votes. And if they don’t turn out right, we recount them. And recount them again. Until they do.” Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) in Key Largo.
“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Johnny Rotten, at the end of the last Sex Pistols concert of their 1978 tour.
Last night a bombshell broke as votes are still being counted in from last week’s Illinois Primary in Cook County. Cook, where I live, is Chicago and its inner suburbs. It’s as Democratic as Manhattan. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden collected nearly 75 percent of the vote.
As I noted in my DTG post two weeks ago, the Cook County state’s attorney race was collecting most of the attention of voters. Jussie Smollett’s protector, the pro-criminal and George Soros-funded Democratic incumbent, Kim Foxx, after two tumultuous–for law-abiding citizens–terms in office, is retiring. Running on non-specifics, Clayton Harris III–Rod Blagojevich’s last chief-of-staff–received the endorsement of the extreme-left Chicago Teachers Union. The CTU is arguably the most powerful political force in Chicago. It placed Chicago’s leftist mayor, Brandon Johnson, one of their former organizers, in office. If CTU is behind Harris, you can assume he’ll continue the failed legacy of Foxx.
The other candidate, who I endorsed, is a traditional Democrat Eileen O’Neill Burke, who has promised to dial back some of the extreme pro-criminal polices of Foxx. Violent crime, theft and more has soared under her misrule
On the morning after Election Day, O’Neill Burke was leading Harris by 51-49 percent–about 10,000 votes–with votes from a few stray precincts and many mail-in ballots uncounted. Per Illinois law, any ballot postmarked on Election Day or earlier that is received at the local board of elections by April 2 must be counted. It’s believed that most of the mail-in ballots have been received and already counted, and not surprisingly, O’Neill Burke’s lead has shrunk to 4,000 votes. The far-left has embraced alternative forms of voting.
Illinois has drop boxes for ballots too.
Yep, just like in the Dinesh D’Souza movie, 2,000 Mules. Yep, Mark Zuckerberg boxes.
Last night, Alderman Brian Hopkins, who represents downtown Chicago, dropped a bombshell on X. His original post was deleted, here’s what he had to say last night:
Correction: after counting what was stated as most of the remaining mail-in & dropbox ballots, EOB [Eileen O’Neill Burke] holds a 4,000+ lead. BUT…election staff told me they misstated the total number of remaining ballots, and 14,710 more (most are dropbox, so not postmarked) still must be counted.
Correction: after counting what was stated as most of the remaining mail-in & dropbox ballots, EOB holds a 4,000+ lead. BUT…election staff told me they misstated the total number of remaining ballots, and 14,710 more (most are dropbox, so not postmarked) still must be counted.
It gets worse. Because the Chicago Board of Elections may have had these ballots since last Monday.
Why weren’t these votes counted Tuesday night? Or heck, Wednesday morning even? By the way, decades ago, when I was a Little Marathon Pundit, even in the closest elections, we knew who won an election a day to two later after polls closed–at the latest. We’re declining as a society even as technology has greatly progressed.
It gets worse. Here are a couple posts from Max Bever of the CBOE earlier than Hopkins’ second X post last night. Bever apparently found some ballots he “mistakenly left out.” If you call his move a “Bever hunt,” then shame on you. Anyway, to refresh your memory, the alderman said the “found” ballots are drop box votes.
Statement from Max Bever, Director of Public Information, Chicago Board of Elections: “In adding up the total number of Vote By Mail ballots the Board had received back so far, I mistakenly left out additional ballots that had been received back via USPS the evening of Mon, 3/18.
I traded speed for accuracy in reporting out numbers this week as quickly as I could. I truly regret this error on my part and for the confusion that it has caused the voters of Chicago. I will share updated numbers only when they are accurate and verified.
I traded speed for accuracy in reporting out numbers this week as quickly as I could. I truly regret this error on my part and for the confusion that it has caused the voters of Chicago. I will share updated numbers only when they are accurate and verified.
— Chicago Board of Elections (@ChicagoElection) March 23, 2024
The vote counting continues this afternoon.
I am crossing my fingers and praying that EOB holds on to her lead. With the crime high rates in the Chicago area, my life may depend on it. For real. I’m at vulnerable age that thugs view as a target.
At the very least, you call what is happening in the Cook County vote count irregular and incompetent.
Except for verifiable reasons, such as a military deployments and temporary out-of-state work assignments, absentee and early voting should be abolished. Drop boxes should be unconditionally dropped.
Whatever happens in the state’s attorney race, supporters of both candidates are probably going to cry “foul.”
And if there is credible evidence of a stolen election in the Cook County state’s attorney race, then we have an even more serious problem. Because if large numbers of citizens don’t trust the election results, it calls into question the legitimacy of government–and of American society.
There were lot of “irregularities” and then some in the 2020 presidential election. But Democrats were silent four years ago because they liked the result.
Yes, there were certainly many Republican crossover voters, but about half of Cook County voters backed O’Neill Burke in last week’s primary. Many Democrats, at least in Cook County, might soon have a different opinion on mail-in voting and drop box ballots soon.
It’s quite likely that updates to this post are coming.
Oh, for the days when we only had Election Day, not Election Season. Oh, for the days when votes were counted in one night–not for a whole week.
UPDATE 7:40pm EDT:
Election Week County continues, as NBC Chicago’s Mary Ann Ahern tells us. Oh, some background. The Cook County Clerk counts suburban votes, the Chicago Board of Elections tallies city votes. Why not just one agency? The public sector is rotten to the core. Ahern in the first X post appears to be referring here to suburban votes.
The Cook County Board of Elections tonight says it will count the remaining Vote by Mail votes on Monday. There are a little more than 1 thousand County votes not yet counted. The bulk of their VBM ballots, 7 thousand were added to the County totals on Thursday. #StatesAtty
The Cook County Board of Elections tonight says it will count the remaining Vote by Mail votes on Monday. There are a little more than 1 thousand County votes not yet counted. The bulk of their VBM ballots, 7 thousand were added to the County totals on Thursday. #StatesAtty
After ten days–yes, ten days–of vote counting in Crook County, Clayton Harris III, the Kim Foxx candidate, has conceded, about an hour after AP called the race for Eileen O’Neill Burke and after EOB declared victory. The retired judge won by 1,500 votes out of over 500,000 cast.
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