Growing up, there were two men in my Roman Catholic parish who became “permanent deacons.” Typically, being a deacon is a step on the way to becoming a priest. With the drop in vocations to become priests, the Church empowered a group of “lay” deacons (i.e. from the laity, not clergy) to assist a local priest in many ways, including some (but not all) Sacraments and actually preaching from the pulpit. Think of them like physicians’ assistants in areas where doctors are scarce: the PAs of God.

These men could be married, although if their wife died, they would not be free to re-marry. OTOH, at that point they were free to continue their studies and become priests.

As always, these roles were strictly for men, although there were other roles that women could play in the Church, including Lector, a reader of scripture at Mass, and Eucharistic Minister, handing out the Body and Blood that just minutes before had been transubstantiated from mere Bread and Wine, thanks to a miracle that is performable only by men.

As President of my Parish Council, a Lector and former Acolyte (a.k.a. “Altar Server” or “Altar Boy”) I tried my best 25 years ago to broaden the role of women in my Parish by opening up the ranks of servers to young girls. An attorney, former Marine and convert to the Faith (i.e. a triple hardass) consistently blocked us on that score, arguing for tradition and gender roles assigned by yadda yadda yadda.   Our charter specified that we must make all such changes unanimously, so he had me stymied until one day he missed a meeting. One 8-0 vote later, and the ranks of the servers tripled over night. Hello, Altar Girls!

Today, new (old) ground is being broken by Papa Frank, the greatest Pope since God knows when.

The Dream Team: Ebony and Ivory

Pope Francis the First (and best) has formed a “Commission of Study on the Diaconate of Women.” It turns out that my nemesis, Brother Jarhead, Esquire, was a little wrong on his traditions. In the earliest days of the Church, women deaconesses were EVERYWHERE. Fully half this commission is, appropriately, made up of women.

And so, with baby steps and a lot of love and good old common sense (“one cannot make a good and proper decision without listening to women” quoth he) Papa Frank is taking an important step in the evolution of the clergy. Maybe nothing will come of it. Maybe it’s too little, too late. Or maybe it’s the way the Catholic Church evolves to survive into the next century.

Either way, it’s been a loooooong time coming.

We are now in the post-convention portion of our program. Donald Trump received a mild convention bounce, during which Ted Cruz inadvertently brought some fence-sitters in on the Donald’s side by acting like a jerk on principle. This failed miserably, because he has no principles. Rather than fomenting a convention rebellion, permanently crippling the Trump campaign and cementing his status as a front-runner for 2020, Cruz merely proved that the only thing less popular among Republicans than a soulless, blatantly self-promoting demagogue is a soulless, blatantly self-promoting ideologue.

Schrödinger’s Candidate

I once had an astronomy teacher who disliked cats intensely – dead, dying, or imperiled cats often figured in his classroom badinage; his explanation for centripetal / centrifugal force began thus: “Let’s say I’m swinging a dead cat around my head by its tail…” I can only assume he or someone like him invented the term “dead cat bounce.” Usually said of stock trends, it is the term used for a brief, upward blip in a graph that is headed inexorably for the basement. The concept stems from the notion that even a dead cat will bounce if dropped from a great enough height (say, Trump Tower.)

Not only was Trump’s bounce a dead cat bounce, Trump actually threw the cat off the roof. While the Democratic National Convention was winning liberal fence-sitters with a brilliantly conceived and executed program that also reached out to centrists and even (gasp!) Republicans, Comrade Trumpski kept cozying up to Putin, and continued to do so in the wake of the convention, while simultaneously losing a running gun battle with the Khans, a sympathetic Muslim-American Gold Star family, the face of American Melting Pot Exceptionalism.

Trump’s numbers aren’t just headed for the basement. There’s Nine entire Circles of Hell preparing for a dead cat onslaught.

Despite the firming up of his support among the base, Trump is now in as deep a hole as he was pre-convention, and it only appears to be getting deeper, as the man is constitutionally unable (pun intended? Yes, I think so.) to Just. Stop. Digging. So what does this mean to the race?

What race?

Trump is already claiming the results will be illegitimate in November if he loses. He is already trying to get out of at least two debates, perhaps hoping he can bluster, brag and bullshit his way through the one closest to Election Day. He still has yet to build up his air game – his campaign has run virtually no ads – or his ground game – his campaign is relying on the Republican Party. He is getting caught in lie after lie, and they are STUPID lies, I mean, real stinkers that are false on their face and/or easily debunked by videotape of the candidate himself, saying the exact opposite. Or by his running mate, whose job seems to be to walk behind this circus elephant/clown hybrid, shoveling up steaming piles of dung while intoning “What Donald REALLY meant was…”

So, clearly, both Trump and Pence know that Trump/Pence is losing and is likely to keep losing. Trump’s “Mourning in America” convention speech actually lost him votes. Meanwhile, Clinton’s favorability rose and her negatives fell. Her lead is back up around 5 points nationally. The state polling data has yet to catch up with the national polling data, but even that will not be a true measure of how badly Trump is losing.

See, Trump may be polling at a 5-point lead in someplace like Utah, but there is still no way to account for how likely a Trump supporter on the phone is to 1) continue to stick by Trump over the next 3 months 2) continue to stick by Republicans, but vote Johnson come November 8, or 3) just simply stay home out of disgust.

Without a strong GOTV effort in ANY state, the Trump “Campaign” (and I use that word VERY loosely) has no way of solidifying weak support and moving folks to the polls. If he continues to be a complete idiot – very likely, no? – and continues to plumb new depths of whiny, (dead) catty, thin-skinned bullying, traditional Republicans who dislike Hillary and/or Democrats in general are likely to just stay home, or indeed switch to Johnson, putting many more states into play to turn blue on a one-time-only, special circumstances basis.

Democrats could have fielded an actual dead cat, this year, and still won in a landslide.

Y’all, Donald Trump can’t remember if he said that he has the best memory in the world.

Seriously.  I’m not making this up.

In a lawsuit involving Trump University, Trump was asked about sworn testimony he gave.

“Did I say I have a great memory or one of the best in the world?” Trump asked for clarification, to which he was told he’d said he had “one of the best in the world.”

“I don’t remember saying that. As good as my memory is, I don’t remember that, but I have a good memory,” Trump responded.

“So you don’t remember saying that you have one of the best memories in the world?” Forge asked.

“I don’t remember that. I remember you telling me, but I don’t know that I said it,” Trump continued.

He stood by another expression that he had “one of the all-time great memories.”

Well, obviously not.

And they say irony is dead.

Thanks to AlanInAustin for the heads up.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday in his strongest comments yet on Donald Trump said that the Republican nominee is “unfit” to be president, and is “woefully unprepared to do the job.”

Thank you for using your approval rating to do what you can to save this country.

Okay, I am darn near certain that most of you have seen this woman.

She lives in your teevee set.  She pops up when Donald Trump needs defending, which is pretty often now days.

Her name is Katrina Pierson and she’s a real special kind of loser. She is from Texas.  Of. Damn. Course.

In 1997, she was arrested for shoplifting some dresses at J. C. Penny’s.  She says that she used that experience to “turn her life around.”

Okay.  Maybe not 360 degrees.  Okay, okay, maybe not 180 degrees.  Maybe like 45 degrees.  In the wrong damn direction.

On Sunday night, the Quorum Report’s Scott Braddock pointed out that Pierson received some $11,000 in unemployment benefits from the Texas Workforce Commission from January 2012 to November 2013—meaning she was receiving government support during a period in which she consulted for Ted Cruz’s senate campaign and was planning for her own run.

If you ever need a picture of white privilege, grab your camera and take a picture of your teevee screen because it’s likely she’s on there, stealing money and time.

Thanks to Deb for the heads up.

San Antonio is in Bexar County (it’s pronounced Bear because in Texas we mostly just ignore X’s, which kinda explains our next-to-the-bottom educational system).

Bear County is Democratic.  Republicans managed to get one Republican elected to the county commissioners court.  In Texas, commissioners court has nothing to do with real court.  It’s just a panel of 5 people who decide how every single tax dollar is spent in the county.  They also set the tax rate.

Republicans got Kevin Wolff elected to the Bexar County court because there’s one section of San Antonio that’s very rich.  They are plenty proud of electing Wolff because, according to his biography, he describes himself as “Bexar County’s strongest voice for fiscal conservativism and strong Republican principles.”

At 3:00 a.m. last Sunday morning Kevin Wolff was arrested at a WhatABurger after rear ending two vehicles at the drive-thru.  Hey, when a man needs a WhatABurger, he’s willing to knock some people over.

When asked if he had anything to drink earlier in the evening, Wolff said, “Oh yeah, sure.”

Strong Republican principles.  Gotta love that.