Month: August 2008

What would the Daily Worker say?

He’s their guy, apparently:

The Communist Party USA’s newspaper is defending Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama against potential defectors on the left, saying his candidacy represents a “broad multi-class, multicultural movement.”

In a July editorial, “Eye on the Prize,” the People’s Weekly World, the official newspaper of the Communist Party USA, admonished anyone on the left who might consider abandoning Obama.

OK, he’s not one of us, they say, but so what?

“Barack Obama is not a left candidate,” the editorial said. “This fact has seemingly surprised a number of progressive people who are bemoaning Obama’s ‘shift to the center.’ It’s sad that some who seek progressive change are missing the forest for the trees.

It’s called bucking up the troops.

“But they will not dampen the wide and deep enthusiasm for blocking a third Bush term represented by John McCain, or for bringing Obama by a landslide into the White House with a large Democratic congressional majority,” it added.

Now this makes sense.  Liberal Dems have always represented the camel’s nose under the tent flap.

“The struggle to defeat the ultra-right and turn our country on a positive path will not end with Obama’s election,” the editorial said. “But that step will shift the ground for successful struggles going forward.
 
“One thing is clear. None of the people’s struggles — from peace to universal health care to an economy that puts Main Street before Wall Street — will advance if McCain wins in November. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize,” it added.

There they go, sounding like Democrats.

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The $12 million solution

At least resolution:

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago announced Tuesday that it has reached a settlement of more than $12 million with clergy sex-abuse victims, including ones abused by Daniel McCormack, a former priest on the West Side.

The settlement also covers allegations against 10 other archdiocese priests or former priests, according to lawyers for the victims.

The announcement was made at 10 a.m. at the archdiocese headquarters at 155 E. Superior St. by Cardinal Francis George and the archdiocese chancellor, Jimmy Lago.

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Hands off, Father

And if they do it, will they be turned in by alert lay person?

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati has issued a detailed list of inappropriate behaviors for priests, saying they should not kiss, tickle or wrestle children.

The newest version of the archdiocese’s Decree on Child Protection also prohibits bear hugs, lap-sitting and piggyback rides.

But it says priests may still shake children’s hands, pat them on the back and give high-fives.

A Chicago Jesuit in the early ‘60s, studying in Rome, was given to probably innocent displays of affection.  But when a mother saw him hugging a kid in the roadway, she flew out the house and pulled the kid away, spouting fearsome commentary.

He told about it on his return to the States, degreed and ready to teach.  I thought nothing of it except to wonder at Italian parents’ worry about us cassock-wearers.  Doesn’t look so simple now.

The priest later was credibly accused of displaying unwarranted affection to coeds, telling them it wasn’t a sin because he was a priest.  Not simple at all.

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Russian bear growls, U.S. flinches

An unnamed State Dept. individual tells PowerLine Blog how bad things are in Georgia and how badly we are reacting, Asking if we had noticed that “Secretary Rice and President Bush’s responses have virtually mirrored Senator Obama’s recommendations,” he says, “It is heaps of shame on the current administration for letting a close ally dangle like this, and is instructive of just how bad an Obama foreign policy would be.”

He concludes:

In a way, this attack is very similar to the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. Iran terrorized a helpless group of people to humiliate the US. I believe that is what is going on here.

The US is typically slow to respond to shocks like this. We still have time to redeem ourselves. However, it appears that our foreign policy has taken a decisively Carter-esque turn. Iran has witnessed US acquiescence to their proxy Hezbollah taking over Lebanon. We’ve done little about their militias killing Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our enemies are learning that there is virtually nothing that will evoke an American response.

Let’s hope that this brings back some of some of that first-term President Bush. Otherwise, surely bad things will follow. President Bush sees himself as a bold, Trumanesque President. It’s time for a bold response like the Berlin Airlift.

Oh my.

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Big N. on Big O.

“I’ve never seen the media as much entranced by a candidate as they were in my very first campaign, in 1960, when they were for JFK,” Robert Novak told Bill O’Reilly in June, weeks before his retirement after being diagnosed with brain tumor.

“But I’m telling you right now, the enchantment with Obama beats the JFK syndrome,” he said. “It is just such a feel-good atmosphere of my colleagues, my senior colleagues, people I’ve known for years. And I get it from some of the young people, too. They just feel this is such a wonderful thing, in the first place to have an African-American candidate, nominee, but also one that makes them feel so wonderful.”

John Fund, Novak’s first hire as a young reporter, comments:

Bob Novak rarely felt “wonderful” about any candidate, acknowledging to me at a dinner just last month that the only president he ever covered who proved to be a success was Ronald Reagan. “Put not your faith in princes,” he told me, paraphrasing the Bible. “Principles and ideas do matter a lot in the world, but politicians usually just use them on the way to disappointing you.”

It’s in WSJ.com’s Political Diary for last Tuesday, 8/5.

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If nobody sent them, who wants them?

What works in East Orange is one thing, Chicago another.  It can’t happen here:

The NYPD Diaspora: Former New York cops bring cutting-edge, effective policing to beleaguered communities.

Is the super sharp Heather Mac Donald’s story about scientific policing New York-style.  In Chicago we have headlines that scold and demonstrations calling for new gun laws.  Nothing to really upset things, you know.

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Kool it maybe? Perk up readers?

Chi Trib reporter-on-fellowship Tim Dechant has apparently drunk the global-warming Kool-Aid, to judge by his earnest, detailed treatment of measuring and lessening one’s “carbon footprint.”

In his 973 words — roughly 2/3 the size of a major-takeout “Insight” feature at the old Chicago Daily News — he has not a word of any controversy in the question whether what we do will change global cycles of warming and cooling.

Not a hint.

And to think that one quote could have perked up somnolent Trib readers, who have refused to support retention of various editors and reporters, namely this:

[W]ater in the form of oceans, snow, ice cover, clouds and vapor “is overwhelming in the radiative and energy balance between the Earth and the sun. … Carbon dioxide and the greenhouse gases are, by comparison, the equivalent of a few farts in a hurricane.”

That’s from one Martin Hertzberg, a retired combustion research scientist who as a Navy meteorologist acquired “a lifelong mistrust of climate modeling” — the bread and butter of climate worriers.

He is quoted in a Heartland Institute paper engagingly titled, “Is Global Warming a Sin?”

Even in pre-telephone and -digital messaging age, the institute, conveniently located at 19 S. LaSalle, would have been accessible to Dechant, were he and his editors — including the bought-out Gratteau? — willing to entertain any but popular certainties about science.

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John Edwards and his family

Paul of PowerLine Blog quotes Elizabeth Edwards:

I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John’s conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time.

And adds:

I am in complete sympathy with this statement and do not intend to write anything additional about the affair.

Yes, but Edwards used his family for political gain while campaigning, as much as if he had bragged about nonexistent military service or legislative record. 

His stated or implied “Trust me” on the campaign trail has been falsified, and he has contributed to public cynicism.

Families are routinely and to varying degrees brought into play by vote-seekers.  In Oak Park, on the other hand, ten or so years ago, a white candidate for the high school board left it generally unknown that he had a black wife, when that might have been a factor in a race in which he went against the black-preferential grain and was once shushed by a black candidate for daring to speak of being color-blind.

She herself was a genuine charmer who nonetheless embraced the liberal black-preferential line.  They both lost in a 12–person race, for what it’s worth, to better qualified people — all of them white as I recall, but to be honest, I’m not sure.

Later: Let us add this to the mix, from Instapundit:

SO NOW THAT WE KNOW THAT THE PRESS COVERED FOR EDWARDS — just as, pre-invasion, they covered for Saddam — that raises a question: What else are they not telling us for fear it will hurt the Democrats’ prospects?

Yet more, from an indignant former supporter:

[The Edwardses] made a conscious decision to make their relationship a focus throughout the campaign. That emotional goodwill you feel for them? They not only let you feel, they took actions and made statements specifically so you would feel it.

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