Day: March 11, 2010

Rewarded for failure

Now and then I dip into Steve Sailer’s America’s Half Blood Prince: Barack Obama’s Story of Race and Inheritance for its lucidity and intelligence but mainly to add to my understanding of what makes Barack tick. 

Based on this analysis, he will be due for another promotion if he fails at president:

Obama’s career largely consists of failing upwards. He undertakes careers — community organizer, antidiscrimination lawyer, leftwing charity chairman, South Side politician — to fulfill the dreams from his father, to help “in your people’s struggle,” but doesn’t accomplish much of significance in that overwhelming undertaking.

In fact, he may make things marginally worse — the fundamental flaw in Obama’s career philosophy is that each of his jobs has been intended to help poor blacks get more goodies out of whites, but government handouts undermine black moral fiber, leaving the black community worse off morally than before the Great Society.  . . . .

Yet, Obama is then rewarded by white people with a promotion anyway. They like his style, even if he doesn’t get any results.

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The Medjugorje connection

“The devil inside the Vatican” made a big splash in the UK Times with help from Drudge, a week after it broke in lesser pubs.  It’s a feud between exorcists, per a story by Stephen K. Ryan at ministryValues.com, who says it’s a matter of dueling exorcists.

“Well known Vatican Exorcists” Father Gabriele Armoth and Bishop Andrea Gemma have sharply different views of the scene at Medjugorje, a small village in Bosnia-Herzegovina where many believe the Virgin Mary “has been appearing and giving messages to the world” since 1981.

Amorth,  a renowned exorcist  and vigorous supporter of Medjugorje (He called it a “Fortress against Satan”)  in Rome  released a book of memoirs in which he declares to know of the existence of Satanic sects in the Vatican where participation reaches all the way to the College of Cardinals.

In 1973 he backed up the film “The Exorcist” as “substantially exact.”  In the Medjugorje experience, he sees a remedy now for Satanic influence in the Vatican, concerning which he says Pope Benedict “does what he can,” which apparently is not enough.

Bishop Gemma, on the other hand

one year ago . . .   denounced the alleged visions of Our Lady . . . as the “work of the devil” and a “diabolical deceit” [and] has rejected claims made by the six Bosnian ‘seers’ that they have seen the Virgin Mary “thousands [of] times over the past 27 years.”   

He told an Italian magazine, “In Medjugorje everything happens in function of money: Pilgrimages, lodging houses, sale of trinkets. . . .  It is a scandal.” He predicted a Vatican crackdown on the promoters of the visions.

Indeed, in September, 2008, the Vatican did discipline one of them, Rev. Tomislav Vlasic, a Franciscan priest, “for failing to cooperate with a Vatican inquiry” following his being reported “for the diffusion of dubious doctrine, manipulation of consciences, suspicious mysticism, disobedience toward legitimately issued orders” and charges that he “violated the Sixth Commandment,” Australia-based Cath News reported. 

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Rewarded for failure

Now and then I dip into Steve Sailer’s America’s Half Blood Prince: Barack Obama’s Story of Race and Inheritance for its lucidity and intelligence but mainly to add to my understanding of what makes Barack tick. 

Based on this analysis, he will be due for another promotion if he fails at president:

Obama’s career largely consists of failing upwards. He undertakes careers — community organizer, antidiscrimination lawyer, leftwing charity chairman, South Side politician — to fulfill the dreams from his father, to help “in your people’s struggle,” but doesn’t accomplish much of significance in that overwhelming undertaking.

In fact, he may make things marginally worse — the fundamental flaw in Obama’s career philosophy is that each of his jobs has been intended to help poor blacks get more goodies out of whites, but government handouts undermine black moral fiber, leaving the black community worse off morally than before the Great Society.  . . . .

Yet, Obama is then rewarded by white people with a promotion anyway. They like his style, even if he doesn’t get any results.

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Illinois a toss-up for U.S. senate

This race remains close:

The U.S. Senate race in Illinois is now a virtual toss-up, with Democratic State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias holding a slight 44% to 41% lead over Republican Congressman Mark Kirk.

Tough nut for Repubs to crack, this Illinois.  It’s also blue and heading for fiscal trouble.  Fear not.  The incumbent Dem governor has the answer:

SPRINGFIELD – — Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn pitched a 33 percent income tax increase Wednesday, framing the debate as a choice between finding more money or hurting schoolchildren.

Ah yes, the children.  Teacher unions too, but forget that.

In any case, we have here the marvelous religious-style faith in taking money out of private hands and giving it to our noble, trusted Bureau-Dems.

Nothing’s too good for children and poor people, you see.  But it’s a misplaced faith:

There is a distinct pattern throughout American history: When tax rates are reduced, the economy’s growth rate improves and living standards increase.

Good tax policy has a number of interesting side effects. For instance, history tells us that tax revenues grow and “rich” taxpayers pay more tax when marginal tax rates are slashed.

This means lower income citizens bear a lower share of the tax burden – a consequence that should lead class-warfare politicians to support lower tax rates.

This will never play with Dem netroots, SEIU, IEA and the like.  So?

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Illinois for Brady

Hello, everybody in Illinois and all the ships at sea: Brady is up by 10 over Quinn!

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state finds State Senator Bill Brady leading [Gov.] Quinn 47% to 37%. Six percent (6%) prefer some other candidate, and nine percent (9%) are undecided.

It’s the first week there’s been a Republican candidate.  Brady won by a whopping 193 votes over an opponent who’s on board now with his candidacy.

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Spiritual things

I’m being dragged into things of the spirit, even of the (Holy) Spirit, running across (a) a blog like this [and (b), see below]:

Here are the readings for 3/4/10. [Micah 7, Luke 15]

I have been struggling with this reading for the last couple of days. I thought I had this great post all ready to type up. But then something happened…

Spiritual director

This is his “spiritual director,” and “This is what he look[s] like when I tell him I haven’t been praying,” says the blogger, “Louis,” of “Brooklyn, New York, United States,” a 25–year-old social work student who is “in the middle of applying [for entry into the Jesuits.”  They “can still tell [him] ‘No,’” he says.  (Hat tip, Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit.)

The blog is Momma said . . . What a waste. On it he quotes Joyce Brothers up front:

“Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.”

Not a Brothers fan myself, but the guy presents arresting commentary on Scripture and  bizarre and telling stuff to go with it — photo-shopped, he says — as of that curmudgeonly spiritual director above.

And this to go with the Canaanite woman’s plea to Jesus, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters”:

Dpan743l

What’s (b)?  A facebook fellow who also cites Scripture.  He knows of me through another guy who ran county board president-elect Preckwinkle’s campaign whom I also have not met but with whom I exchanged pleasantries during her campaign, in which I supported her opponent O’Brien. 

I just hope this new “friend” doesn’t cite Scripture to his purpose, a la the devil per Antonio in “Merchant,” because he’s a “progresive” Democrat, it seems, with no purpose I can endorse. 

After all,

An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

Ah, the demands on one living in a pluralistic society.

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What did they hear and when did they hear it?

Here’s how Chi Trib told about three witnesses telling Cicero cops about the Valentine’s Day fire-setters, boldface added:

Two days after the fire, three people reported to Cicero police that they had heard Myers and Comier discuss burning down the building, authorities said. One of the witnesses agreed to wear a wire and record conversations between the two men, according to court documents.

Same thing, Sun-Times:

Two days after the blaze, three people told Cicero police they overheard Myers and Comier talking about their part in the fire. Investigators wired one person up, and that person recorded a series of conversations with the two defendants over five days, . . . .

Me, I read the Trib story first and wondered when they had overheard (more precise than heard, hence better communication) M. & C.  They reported two days after the fire, but they had heard?  When?

Then I read S-T, its overheard and talking about their part in the fire, vs. discuss burning down the building, as if they had yet to do it, and “of course,” I said:  They heard it after the fire.  And I continued with the story, which I found satisfactory if gruesome.

Another difference.  Trib on the perpetrators’ vulgarities:

“Where the (expletive) did you get that I’m going to get you $15,000?” Lacy quoted Myers saying. “At the best you get $5,000.”

and

In one taped conversation, [Comier] explained how he ignited the blaze with a mixture of gas and oil that would mask the accelerant’s smell, according to documents.

“I dumped it on there, threw a match and that was it,” he is accused of saying. “I thought this (expletive) out for too long.”

S-T, offering better detail:

Comier was recorded saying he set the fire “in a different way,” blending oil and gasoline, which he believed would hide the gas smell.

“I thought this s— out for too long, man,” Comier said, according to Lacy.

and

Myers and Comier apparently had different ideas about Comier’s compensation from the insurance money, according to the transcript Lacy read.

“Where the f— did you get that I’m going to get you $15,000?” Myers is caught on tape telling Comier, Lacy said. “At the best you get $5,000. At the least you get $3,000.”

Now.  Why make the reader supply the (fucking) expletive?  It’s a matter of smooth, rapid comprehension, which S-T facilitates.

Yet another thing, same exchanges.  S-T account is richer in detail and directness, which if you don’t see, I’m not going to bother to explain.  Composition by committee at Trib?  Could be.  Three bylines there are, plus two more acknowledgments at the end:

Stacy St. Clair and Gerry Smith are Tribune reporters. Victoria Pierce is a freelance reporter. Tribune reporter Ray Gibson and freelancer Joseph Ruzich also contributed to this report.

S-T?  Either somebody on rewrite is being overlooked or “KARA SPAK Staff Reporter” is Da Woman on this one, all alone, tapping out something readable. 

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Notre Dame paper to law prof: “You’re out!”

You’re a law prof emeritus and still teaching at ND and think that gets you into the student newspaper?  Think again, Bud:

Notre Dame Paper Snubs Prof’s Column Upholding Church Teaching on Homosexuality

 blares LifeSiteNews.

The editor of the University of Notre Dame’s campus newspaper has refused to publish an installment of a former ND professor’s biweekly column because he said the column, which defended the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality, required a “differing viewpoint” as a counterbalance.

Charles_Rice

Charles Rice resigned as columnist for The Observer.  He’d been one since 1992.  The editor, Matt Gamber, “personally had some concerns with the content of the column,” he had told Rice in an email.  He had no problems with Rice’s data, which he told him were “factually correct” — as opposed to how else correct?

But  he “did not feel it lent itself to creating a productive discussion, all things considered, and “was a bit concerned with certain language as well.”

Now that’s what I call giving it to him straight from the shoulder.

“In the future, if you would like to examine this topic, we thought it might be beneficial to do so in a point-counterpoint format, perhaps with an author of an opposing or differing viewpoint. That way, each ‘side,’ to speak, would have the opportunity to present relevant facts, evidence and analysis to define its position.”

Hey, give one “side,” you ought to give the other.  This is a newspaper editor?  Does he give a damn about circulation?  What the damn fool ought to do is put Rice’s column on P-1, across the top, for cri-iy, letting chips fall and awaiting a deluge which becomes another huge P-1 play next week full of excoriation and contumely.  Does he want this stuff discussed, or doesn’t he?  What’s he afraid of, rocks through his dormitory window?

This is not an editor but a wuss.

The column is here.  Decide if I’m right or not.

In any case, Rice was having none of it:

“In a university that claims to be Catholic, I am not willing to restrict my presentation of Catholic teaching to a format that treats the authoritative teaching of the Church as merely one viewpoint or ‘side’ among many.” 

Hell, that’s another issue that ought to be joined, not swept under the rug.  It’s a Catholic university, which means it’s also a university, where issues are joined, hot buttons are pushed, and debate ensues.  Where did this kid get his earlier training, at a School for Diplomats (who hate hot buttons).  He’s not a diplomat in this case, more a dip.

That is to say, Gamber should welcome Rice’s apparently controversial assertion that RC authority trumps all and ask for comments, beginning with the presumably RC university officials.  Here is a hotter button than homosexuality as promotable, privileged, whatever.

Rice says the Catechism considers

homosexual conduct to be “acts of grave depravity,” and that while the inclination to homosexual acts is not a sin, it is also intrinsically disordered.

Open this up for discussion and see what happens.  Maybe it’s been done in the Observer.  If so, do it again.  I do not think the matter is closed.  It’s not global warming, is it?

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Rahm v. Barack’s altar servers

Jonah Goldberg in Chi Trib discusses the clash of idealism and realism in the Obama White House, where the true believers clash with Rahm Emanuel. Obama

wants to be “transformative” like Ronald Reagan. But such a transformation requires an electorate willing and capable of being transformed. Obama and his acolytes misread the public, thinking voters were as worshipful as they were.

Some of us never were, but lots were. Trouble is for the true B’s,

Emanuel’s understanding of the political landscape puts him in the reality-based community. And that is a community the Obama cult refuses to join.

It’s just as well.  Either way, it’s bad for the U.S., whether more or less socialism.  The former is not passing, as we know.  The latter might, and that would be very bad.

Changing the Eric Zorn subject

‘Swipe fees’ a hidden tax on the poor, most of all,

says Eric Zorn in Chi Trib, according to his columnar headline, which engages me not, mainly because I find myself distracted by a theme that pops uncontrolled into my head, namely that so many things are hidden taxes on poor and rich and us in between that I cannot count them. Start with inflationary spending and money-making, that is, printing of it, by federal govt. 

It’s such an old issue that I hesitate to raise it in such august company as Eric Z., but inflation cheapens the money we have and we lose buying power, which I can safely aver is what the economy is all about. I surely missed Z’s earlier column about inflation and when I get a minute or two I will find it . . . .