Month: June 2008

What to do with old ping-pong-ball-eyes?

Tom Roeser tears into “the lay pragmatists” running the church in Chicago as in l’affaire Pfleger, sparing for the sake of Catholic tradition the hapless parsing cardinal who is looking for something or someone else to rid him of or somehow deal with this turbulent/meddlesome priest.  But he digs deep into his faith in Christianity, 2,000 years old and counting:

Once more the archdiocese has kicked the can down the road. Once again its lay leadership has shown it doesn’t have the starch to run a corner grocery much less the Chicago outreach of a Church founded by Christ. But then that it has survived for 2,000-plus years with such earthen vessels indicates it shall endure to the end of time.

Amen, Brother. 

On the other hand, harassment with a thousand ecclesiastical cuts has its merits, as I suggested weeks ago.  If I were the cardinal, after deciding lay pragmatists don’t know everything, I would make and publicize some conditions of St. Sabina employment, beginning with a prohibition of pulpiteering by non-Catholics.

Hell, he’d never do that, would he?  Which brings us back to Roeser and his philippics, which are as painful to read as they are accurate.

Ping-pong eyes?  Roeser:

[K]eeping Fr. Pfleger at St. Sabina’s far too long was sign of a weakness, a caving in to a rambunctious mob, many members of which are not Catholic at all but have flocked there for a good show on Sunday morning to catch the local rabble-rouser flail around putting on his ping-pong balls for eyes routine as he shouts.

Later, from Reader D:

 
Headline: ‘Pattern of behavior’ costs Benson his job:

Embattled running back Cedric Benson was waived by the Bears Monday, just two days after he was arrested for the second time in five weeks. “Cedric displayed a pattern of behavior we will not tolerate,” said general manager Jerry Angelo. “Everyone in this organization is held accountable for their actions. Those who fail to understand the importance of ‘team’ will not play for the Chicago Bears.”
Sounds simple enough, Cardinal George.

 

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I love this movie

What an excellent front-pager for ISI Books’ new “guide to 100 politically incorrect movies”:

Like all effective satires, this film is subtle enough to be misinterpreted by the terminally obtuse. Although it was blasted as an attack on American life by a reviewer for the neoconservative Claremont Review of Books, director Payne is attacking only the more tawdry aspects of our culture from what can only be described as an independent perspective. (In one scene, shrewd observers have even discerned a copy of the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles among Schmidt’s reading matter.)… [more]

The film?  “About Schmidt,” a marvelous movie which in this viewer’s humble opinion shows off Jack Nicholson’s virtuoso versatility.  The man is in a class by himself on today’s silver screen.

The site is eminently searchable and promotes ISI’s new title, God, Man, and Hollywood: Politically Incorrect Cinema from The Birth of a Nation to The Passion of the Christ, by Mark Royden Winchell — a Clemson U. English prof who unfortunately died a few weeks ago, a quick search discovers.  R.I.P.

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Big O. friends online

Here’s a typical Big O. supporter, as I judge from flipping through names at the very sophisticated Obama site.  This one goes by “Swimmer.”  He [there’s a photo, but I’m not sure] has 3,535 “friends,” is a member of the OPRFHS (Oak Park & River Forest High School) Alumni Group, has raised $537 from 10 givers, and has a #8 ranking — among thousands, I’d guess, who are registered on the site:

Location: Rock Island, IL

Why I support Barack Obama: Barack Obama is the ONLY candidate who can unite the country and bring us the international respect that we have lost in the Bush years. Barack will bring hope to our children and the future of America. I have been involved with this campaign since Barack announced he was running! I am SO going to be at the inaugural.

Birth Date: May 16th

Issues: equality / civil rights; civil liberties / privacy; peace & social justice; foreign policy / security; economic fairness / security; environment / conservation; smart energy policy; public infrastructure / transportation; good government / ethics; electoral reform; affordable health care; education
Registered to Vote: Yes

Attack problems, not people!

Note the “can unite the country” and “international respect” references, which are almost universal among supporters who have signed on to the site.  And the list of issues, which is rather long.

And react as you wish to the enthusiasm and slogans.

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More crazy uncles in the attic

Did the Big O. at first approve this message, as run on the Obama ‘08 website from 9:13 Saturday to at least 1:45 Sunday afternoon but was later removed?

All Jewish lobbies and organizations are interconnected and there are hundreds upon hundreds of them. The leaders of the numerous Jewish Lobby Groups go to the same synagogues, country clubs, and share the same Jewish investment bankers. And this inter-connectedness extends to the Jews who run the Federal Reserve Bank, US Homeland Security, and the US State Department.

In other words, “Jews stick together.” Americans must know how extremely powerful the Jewish Lobby is and how it operates to undermine America’s interests both at home and abroad. At home – by corrupting America’s political system, and abroad – by dictating American Foreign Policy against America’s best interests.

It’s from “How the Jewish Lobby Works,” on the site’s Socialists for Obama blog, which

is for those interested in learning how can we change this country from the current capitalist unfair system, into a real socialist, democratic system for all. This capitalist system of Bush and his cronies only benefit the upper classes. USA needs a 21st Century Socialist, Democratic and Participative system for the workers and people of this country, without fascism, without wars, but with peace, equality, socialism and love.

This peace, equality, [S-word], and love is certainly change we can believe in.

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Hell no, we won’t drill!

Not enough oil.  We can fix that.  Environmentalists say no.  We don’t.

Last month, the U.S. Senate’s Appropriations Committee voted 15-14 to kill a bill that would have ended a one-year moratorium on enacting rules for oil shale development on federal lands (which is where the best oil shale is located). Most maddening of all – at least to someone like myself not steeped in the wacky ways of Washington – the swing vote on the appropriations committee, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., voted with the majority even though she actually opposes the moratorium.

“Sen. Salazar asked me to vote no. I did so at his request,” Landrieu told The Rocky Mountain News. . . . Salazar says he’s simply trying to slow things down in order to ensure environmental considerations don’t get trampled in the rush to turn western Colorado into a new Prudhoe Bay. But, ironically, his bid to extend the moratorium comes at a time when his fellow Senate Democrats have been blasting Big Oil for not reinvesting enough of their profits into developing new sources of energy.

Ironically?  How about the going word for everything bad, “tragically”  No?  Just this one time?  “Catastrophically”?

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Demons afoot, watch out

Mary Mitchell asks about Northwestern U. students objecting to denial of honorary degree to Rev. Jeremiah Wright,

what kind of education would these black students be getting if they stood by and did nothing while the university engages in what looks like a grave injustice[?]

Being students at a highly rated school offering great opportunities for personal and professional advancement, they would be doing very nicely, especially if they also quit their self-segregating organization, “For Members Only, the Black Student Alliance” and concentrated on being assimilated into the greater society eager to have them if only to remove guilt feelings.

They have the chance to make the “gift of innocence” to whites, as Shelby Steele puts it, but instead they muck around in black woundedness and protest. 

They might also learn to ditch this bromidic phrase, applied to America’s most famous black preacher and quoted seriously by Mitchell as aider and abettor of their foolish course

“What is happening is they are demonizing a black man,”

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Change we can expect

Big O. has himself a major-league fixer as a v.p.-candidate selector:

Eric Holder, recently appointed by Barack Obama to his vice presidential search committee, played a leading role in one of the most infamous events of a presidency filled with infamy: the pardon of billionaire fugitive Marc Rich.

So what if he’s got an important role for Obama?  Well, because

the mind reels as to why this person, who participated in a notorious Clinton scandal and himself seemed so oblivious to his own conflict of interest, would be selected to find and vet a VP for Obama. Is this the new politics? Or is it a throwback to the Clinton years, the very years Obama is attempting to turn the page on, to put behind us all?

And now a bit of context for other stuff that’s been hitting the fan in recent months:

Certainly “judgment” is a key consideration for voters in selecting their president. When one looks to the people Obama in turn has selected as mentors (e.g., Reverend Wright, Father Michael Pfleger), friends (e.g., Tony Rezko), and now key advisors (e.g., Eric Holder), voters may begin to question whether Obama possesses the judgment necessary to run an effective and scandal-free administration. If Holder is emblematic of Obama’s personnel decisions and an example of what is to come, the answer is “no.”

Unfortunately.

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Ex-Catholic finds a friend in Rome

Rome kicks butt in Europe, says ex-RC atheist.

What other religion is taking on calmly, intelligently and courageously the scourge of militant secularism afflicting modern Europe?

asks Ruth Dudley Edwards, who “abandoned” Catholicism at 16 “and disliked [it] intensely for decades because of old grievances, but for which [she now has] respect and gratitude.”

It’s happening this way.

in England — a country where the bulk of the established church is in a moral funk — I am thrilled to see Cardinal Murphy O’Connor and his Scottish counterpart, Keith O’Brien, taking on the British secular Establishment on such huge ethical issues as abortion, stem cell research and the right of children to have fathers.

“[T]he belt of a couple of croziers” (I love it)

caused three Catholic Cabinet ministers (Des Browne, Ruth Kelly and Paul Murphy) to put their religious scruples before their ambition and force Gordon Brown to allow a free vote on contentious clauses in the abhorrent Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

Read on in this amazingly sprightly account of Catholics actually in there pitching on moral issues, and as yourself on what meat these British Catholics feed that they should be so great at holding the line.

And get this breath of fresh air from the tight little isle:

As a nation, we’ve been morally dodgy about violent nationalism, but at least, so far, we’ve been protective of the unborn. Well done, Your Holiness. Keep up the good work. The religion-friendly atheists are marching alongside, cheering you on. And those who fear that the vacuum that is rootless secularism will cause Europe to cave into violent Islamism are keeping them company.

Hip, hip hooray.

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Book editors have principles too, you know

Mainstreamers would rather not do this book on Iraq war planning by one who was there — Douglas Feith’s War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism — notes Christopher Hitchens.

As I write this on the first day of June, about a book that was published in the first week of April, the books pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe have not seen fit to give Feith a review.

Yes, they’re busy, not least of all with McClellan’s tell-all, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, which appeals them more.  Fits their narrative, you know.

Not only book pages and sections have been missing in action surrounding Feith’s book, but news pages too: NY Times spiked a James Risen story about it.

“This all might seem less questionable if it were not for the still-ballooning acreage awarded to Scott McClellan,” says Hitchens.

Reader M. heard Feith on Hugh Hewitt, says he sounded “very balanced for a major player,” comments:

The MSM is doing a complete black-out on his book, print, TV, radio. I surmise one will only find it buried behind a copy of “How to parse intransitive verbs” in Border’s, as well. Amazon gives it 3 1/2 stars; Scott McClellan’s book 4 stars. Go figure.

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Like that real cold beer train that flies by . . .

This fellow read carefully where it says Obama “batted down rumors . . .  of a video of his wife using a derogatory term for white people” and picked out a key paragraph:

“We have seen this before. There is [sic] dirt and lies that are circulated in e-mails and they pump them out long enough until finally you, a mainstream reporter, asks [sic] me about it,” Obama said to the McClatchy reporter during a press conference aboard his campaign plane. “That gives legs to the story. If somebody has evidence that myself or Michelle or anybody [else] has said something inappropriate, let them do it.”

Asked whether he knew it not to be true, Obama said he had answered the question.

He did?

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