Alternative history and more: Weak America with Mexico as a Catholic superpower

• Fr. Ray Blake: Ship of Fools, tired, joyless, and dull. An old church-gossip online forum, mostly liberal high church and partly British so it's very Anglican. Narcissism, so liturgy as consumer product/entertainment, a temptation if you love the church's culture. A few conservatives know how to get along there. Haven't been in years; lasted about six months but basically was done when I posted conservative American stuff after Reagan died. Facebook's all of the pluses of a message board with less of the bad stuff. If you stay off the topical pages (basically message boards), none of it. Lessons from topical pages: online Byzantine Christianity is anti-Catholic and nasty wherever you go, and most "Mad Men" fans are liberals looking down on the era but into the soap opera and (here nostalgic, letting the cat out of the bag?) with the girls lusting after Jon Hamm. (It only had a few viewers but influential ones, of a certain class up.)
• SSPX: Nothing new under the sun. Basically the latest status report. I'm glad the SSPX exists too.
• The U.S. team wins the Women's World Cup. Figures since Americans of a certain class up have been playing soccer for a couple of generations. The rest of the world is crazy about the sport; it's of the people, which will probably never happen here for some reason. I don't follow any sports but it strikes me that there is no market for women's sports; they aren't the obsession men's sports are. Probably innate. Not to take away from what these girls did. And men's sports, while fun, are a racket, a distraction from real things. "Mickey Mantle don't care about you" as A Bronx Tale says.
• LRC: Progressives break down church-state separation. American Progressives have made the state the final arbiter of the purity of Christian doctrine, and whether or not the state is willing to permit such doctrines to remain legal. Sure. Progressivism is a Christian heresy that's becoming the new state church. Still has opposition in the form of, officially, the Catholics, the Methodists, and, probably not riddled with dissent, the Southern Baptist Convention; nothing to sniff at. Is what's left of the old Middle America up for a civil war? (Beaten and captive since 1973.) Fr. Longenecker's pointed out that Obergefell's a Rubicon, hastening the sifting of the church. More and more, like with the Southern Baptists, Catholics who don't agree don't waste their time trying to change the church anymore; like Jimmy Carter with the SBC, they just leave.
• Patrick Sheridan: The kids are not "alright" as you can imagine. They're being brainwashed.
• "A red pill a day keeps the divorce lawyers away." That's MGTOW Sandman's slogan. What about all the men who don't have the right stuff to be alphas, either in Rob Fedders' true sense (nature's patriarchs, building society; of course there are more followers than leaders) or Roissy's jerkboy one (have fun with the ladies but eventually destroy them, yourself, and society)? Betas are just normal; even Roissy has said it takes all kinds and traditional society's better for them. The red pill isn't necessarily pickup skill; just awareness, knowledge, that will help men of any kind to survive and even thrive. (To keep your marriage or stay out of a bad one.) Roissy isn't selling snake oil; learn game and you'll go from no sex life to a plain girlfriend or affair, for example, on up.
• Alternative history if there were no American Revolution (which was wrong): America would be Canada, essentially, but hugging the Eastern seaboard, not a continental republic. Mexico would be bigger, likely incorporating not just the Southwest but also the American Midwest. In fact, Mexico would probably be the dominant power in North America, with the wealth of California and the American heartland at its disposal. Mexico would also have been aided by the millions upon millions of Catholic immigrants who would have flooded into its northern territories in the mid-19th century, bringing with them their industriousness and commitment to building a better life in the New World. Irish, Germans, Italians, Poles, living in El Norte, teaching their children Spanish instead of English. Since the American heartland was part of Spain until re-seized by Napoleon before being sold to the US in the (unconstitutional but hey that never stopped Thomas Jefferson!) Louisiana Purchase. Assuming that Napoleon wouldn't have seized it unless he thought he could sell it off if things didn't work out for his vision of an invigorated French Empire, it would have stayed with Spain, and been part of what became Mexico. And Mexico would have only faced a weak and constrained American colonial presence in the east, with no Texas, no belligerent Southern states demanding war between America and Mexico to expand slavery, no anti-clerical Mexican autocracies arising from the failure of Mexican government in the 19th century to withstand constant American meddling. Instead a Catholic Mexico stretching north-south across the continent, filled with Catholic immigrants from Germany, Italy, Ireland and Eastern Europe, farming and creating a vibrant and energized culture building off the European heritage of Mexico but also bringing with it the strengths and ambitions and insights of the new immigrants, their drive and their desire to succeed. Meanwhile, the poor English colonies languish under misrule from the Mother Country, denied expansion and resources, plagued by corruption, anti-religious bigotry and the ambitions of their more powerful neighbors. Eventually, America just becomes a backwater, with a couple of touristy border cities and a thriving marijuana industry. But did the mother country really misrule? My and others' contention is the revolution was really groundless (George III meddled in your life far less than the government now) and had no legal right.
• "Financial crisis": Ron Paul's warning video advertised on TV.
• Political cartoon: Greek mythology. As Margaret Thatcher said, the trouble with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money.