Today the Church celebrates the feast day of my hero: Carol Joseph Wojtyla, or, as we usually call him, Saint Pope John Paul II. When I arrived at the Vatican as a young Swiss Guard, I had a largely secular understanding of Catholicism. At that point, my faith was my parents’ and not truly my own, an “outsider” view that was both helpful and deceiving. Because of that perspective, I was able to meet and then interact with John Paul without any preconceived notion—meaning his impression on me was not filtered through my perception of his office. During his pontificate, we had an extraordinary example of human greatness, first with his apostolic vigor and then through his witness of faithfulness; even in his suffering and sickness, he pointed the way for us to an authentic human growth, fully human, a growth that was not only cultural but also economic, a growth nourished by spiritual food. John Paul was a special person, gifted with a brilliant intellect and with an enormous ability to communicate. Those of us who had daily contact with him were always struck by the richness of his intuitions, the depth of his spirituality, the example of his prayerfulness, and his immense humility, which was rooted in his intimate union with Christ. It was his utility which permitted him to continue to guide the Church and to give eloquent messages even when his physical strength was failing him. The longer he prayed, the more absorbed in the prayer he became, until he seemed completely taken up in it, as if nothing and no one in the room could pull him back from the place he’d gone. I remember clearly the intensity with which he celebrated the Eucharist, how he remained deeply recollected in prayer at the conclusion of Mass, and the devotion with which he spoke spontaneously of Jesus and Mary.  At the same time, he had an uncommon ability to speak to people, both privately and to a crowd, with a particular magnetism towards young people, many of whom declared themselves far from the Church. One particular image will remain forever impressed in my memory: I opened a side door to make a security check only to find him sitting, still vested for Mass, in a small room adjacent to Michelangelo’s famous Pieta, embracing a large crucifix just as a mother holds her baby, giving and receiving true love. I personally witnessed the Holy Father demonstrate that true joy is not a mere passing emotion but from knowing Jesus as one’s True Joy and True Love. It was through his witness that I was continually exhorted to serve others as Christ did, as one who came not to be served but to serve. John Paul impacted my young life in profound ways, laying the groundwork for my becoming a husband, father, grandfather, businessman, and, most importantly, a practicing Catholic. It was his example that inspired me, his words that gave me hope, and his ideas that provided direction to my life. I miss him very much! Saint Pope John Paul II, pray for us! The post The Man, the Pope, the Saint appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Karine Jean-Pierre's Book Tour Landing With a Thud

The daring strategy would have the beleaguered vehicle slow down by flying through the planet’s atmosphere.

We’ve just received yet another dispatch from the Imaginarium of Dr. Faux-nassus — otherwise known as Paul Krugman — who had the chutzpah to accuse President Trump of lacking a grip on reality. Do you really want to go there?  In one his most oblivious pieces of bloviating word salads to date, Krugman declared to his Substack subscribers October 21 that “Donald Trump Has Lost Touch With Reality.” In Krugman’s 20/200 vision, “it’s getting worse. When will we acknowledge the obvious?” We’re still waiting for him to acknowledge that the detached-from-reality Bidenomics snake-oil he sold to his former New York Times readers was a load of dream world bunk. Krugman retro-fitted his newly-learned term “AI-Sycophancy” to act as a descriptor of the “glutton for sycophancy” that is his arch-nemesis Trump. Krugman continued ranting that Trump is “descending into states of delusion that are as he would say, like nothing anyone has seen before (notwithstanding Nixon’s nighttime drunken tirades).” Oh, we’ve seen massive delusions before, and arguably some of the most notorious of them all came straight from the phony economics savant himself.  One beauty from Krugman occurred right after he left his former newspaper in a huff over its editing practices and huffed in his new Substack blog that “Trump Wants You to Die.” Yeah, okay Paul. How about when Krugman exclaimed that the stock market would “never” recover following Trump’s 2016 electoral victory?  The next one’s a killer. Remember when Krugman positioned himself to be Biden’s unofficial economics adviser by publishing his “rules” for “Bidenomics” for the world to see just before President “Head of Lettuce[’s]” term began in 2021. One of the Krugman “rules,” in retrospect, was so insane one can only point and maniacally laugh at it: “Rule #3: Don’t worry about inflation.” Who's the "glutton for sycophancy" again, Krugman? And let us not forget one of Krugman’s most infamous delusions. In 1998, Krugman snorted in a piece for Red Herring magazine that “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe's law’"--which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants--becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other!” Here’s the best part: “By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's.” That glorious sentence alone was enough to mutate Krugman’s forecasting abilities into a running joke for the foreseeable future.  Even leftist fact-checker Snopes noted that “[t]he quote is so infamous, in fact, that it has turned into a meme often wielded against him by people hoping to discredit other pronouncements Krugman has made.” 

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