Ed Koch can’t help lovin’ that guy.

It’s that pipeline:

The Laborers International Union of North America announced today that it is quitting the BlueGreen Alliance, a major coalition group. LIUNA head Terry O’Sullivan did not mince words in explaining why they were leaving in a statement released today.

“AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recently said there was a divide in the labor movement over this project. That is an understatement. That divide is as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon. We’re repulsed by some of our supposed brothers and sisters lining up with job killers like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to destroy the lives of working men and women.”

LIUNA was not the only union upset over the White House’s action. On Wednesday, Edwin Hill, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, asked critics of the pipeline: “What are your plans to replace the 20,000 jobs that are now on hold?” The Teamsters, among other unions, had also supported the project.

BlueGreen [sic] Alliance should have the blues over that, not to mention their maximum leader, O.

It’s a question of filtering.  Readers murder the language, chanter squeaks and over-dramatizes, choir delivers warmed-over pop stuff, people behind you chat, presider (celebrant, mass-sayer, whatever) gives into quirks, offering his own rendition of the words of the mass. 

Somehow have your own private mass, ignoring the minister when necessary, trusting in ex opere operato, that is, the work worked, what makes the mass the mass, rather than opera operantis (the work of the one working), that is, what the priest brings personally to the opus, that is, the mass itself.

Clear as mud?  OK, ignore the nonessentials that bug you, concentrate on what matters.  Amen, brother and sister.

NY Sun applauds Newt’s speech, noting at the end:

The synthesis of ideas Mr. Gingrich unfurled in the Palmetto State suggests we are in for one of the great nominating contests of our time.

Gentlemen, keep your engines running.

You were wondering about Chi Bears and whom to fire?

Chi Trib’s Rosenbloom fingers Coach Smith, the great stone face of coaching, but also by implication Virginia McCaskey.

Which goes with the pregnant thought that she and the rest of the McCaskeys are the ones to fire.

Larry Kudlow finds Newt wanting:

What [Newt’s attacks on Bain Capital] tells me is Newt Gingrich is not a free-market capitalist, he said. I just had Sen. Jon Kyl, who has not made an endorsement. And Kyl however, rapped Gingrich by saying Republicans on the campaign trail that sound like left-wing Democrats are wrong and we need to make a moral case for free-market capitalism. And thats my beef against Gingrich political opportunism Steve Moore, does not in any way, shape or form in my book, just speaking personally political opportunism does not justify Gingrichs attacks on capitalism.

One of the criticisms of the former House speaker has been his willingness to latch on to the new idea of the day, whether it has been supporting global warming activism or his health care initiativeswith Hillary Clinton. Kudlow warned there might not be a boundary to where that could end.

And the hot idea tomorrow might be socialism and hell latch on to that, Kudlow said. Maybe Vladimir Putin takes over Russia and they declare 6.5 percent GDP and Newt Gingrich says, We need to take a look at that. We should take a look at that because its all very interesting. Im not going to concede an inch, not a millimeter on this point. Not a single nanosecond am I going to concede this. I will not forgive him for his attack on Bain Capital.

Uh-oh. Idea du jour, that sort of thing, and willing to dump on what really creates jobs. Newt’s Achilles heel.

On the other hand (from Reader D.):

Since I’m a ditto-head, I quote Rush: Beware the Republican Establishment — they do not want a Conservative to win. In their hearts they don’t think a Conservative can win — and they also don’t think Obama can lose. They’re content to let him have the White House again if they can have the House and Senate and all those delicious committee chairmanships, and money to spend again. Romney is their guy.

Newt in high school: Awards/Activities: Football, Debate Team, Thespian Society, National Merit finalist, Time Current Events Award winner / Voted: Most Intellectual
Mitt in high school: Awards/Activities: Cross Country, Hockey, Glee Club, Pre-med Club, Church Cabinet, The Forum, Pep Club, Blue Key Club, American Field Service, World Affairs Seminar, Speculator’s Club, Homecoming Committee Chairmen, Assistant Editor of the yearbook, Inter-house council representative

I used to love Jon Kyl but he waffled on the debt ceiling and of course he stands with fellow Arizonian John McCain. Why is it OK for Kyl to say Newt sounds like a “left-wing Democrat” any more than when Newt took a jab at Paul Ryan for “social-engineering is wrong from the right or the left” — the man with the gusto to turn around the ship of state, make the unpopular big decisions and sell them to the people isn’t wanted by his party because they want a nice guy who’ll go along and not rock the ship of state. Newt might only last for 1 term — but if he puts enough stuff back in place, it will be worth the ruckus.
Personally, my man was Mike Pence of Indiana. But he doesn’t want a street fight. Newt could win an alley fight against Obama and the media.

When they made a fuss about the Chicago fire fighters who were drinking beer on camera and acting foolish my thinking was: These are guys who run into burning buildings — they aren’t in the church choir. Mitt Romney IS in the church choir. The Republican elites want the rich white guy they can work with and schmooze with, not the guy who’s nuts enough to run into a burning building. I wish they’d wake up and smell the country burning.
D.

OK!  All right already!

Hate crimes argue need for gun ownership?

FBI statistics, cited by the National Rifle Association, show that “right-to-carry” states have 22 percent lower total violent crime rates, 30 percent lower murder rates, 46 percent lower robbery rates, and 12 percent lower aggravated assault rates, as compared to the rest of the country. I wonder what would be the effect on hate crimes.

Stats (I mean statistics) that don’t fly in major media. [HT: the indispensable Instapundit]

With whom he schmoozes.

Voter’s choice:

* Roller-coaster with tough, smart, go-his-own-way Newt, who aims with devastating effect at media eager to destroy Republican candidates, or

* Cruise with Mitt, the super-organized, smooth as silk, cautious-in-a-desperate-time, quick-to-smile when being trashed when he should be grim and tight-lipped, overall less a national leader than a manager.

Assuming not Santorum, the growingly insufferable choir boy from Pennsylvania who at best exaggerates the usefulness of big government.

Newt’s kids are on his side in the Marianne war: big point here in his favor. 

Another very big point, mentioned above: he is prepared to take the mediums head-on.  Very important to marginalize them. 

Another: he also marginalized the indignant don’t-criticize-bad-habits crowd who take his food-stamp-president and get-a-job-kid remarks as racist.  Very important to shoot down phony racism accusations, which are at the heart of many bad policy decisions and call for a stake in their black hearts — as as dictionary-dot-com’s “without any moral quality or goodness; evil; wicked: His black heart has concocted yet another black deed.”

“A book is a machine to think with,” said the critic I.A. Richards.  Useful notion, that.  A book as sacrament, leading you on.  My confessor assigns my penance as an Our Father and three times making people smile.  Not laugh.  Smile.

I do that anyway.  It gives me pleasure.  Walking along, I search out the one coming at me, and half the time find recognition of a sort, and a smile.  (Except when I’m grumpy, of course.)  The two of us, young, old, male, female, handsome, nondescript, fetching, ordinary.  The look does it, prepped by the gait, the carriage, the whole here-I-am-what-do-you-make-of-me coming down the street.  (We give off signals, do we not?)

Penance (now Reconciliation) sacramentalizes this, gives me a two-fer.  Smile as establishing familiarity, smile as sanctifying grace. 

Sanctifying grace!  What the heck is that?  It’s old-church talk, and quite useful.  Are you right with God, as far as you know?  You’re in or you have sanctifying grace.  On the way to getting and staying there you use actual grace, which comes in all sorts of ways, from saying your prayers to exchanging smiles with a stranger.

Get it?  Like I.A. Richards’s note on a book, a machine to think with, these are very useful concepts, almost never mentioned, having been washed away in the waves of new-style Catholicism since Vatican II. 

Yes, Virginia and all you ships at sea, there is grace, and you can call on God to supply it when you’re in trouble.  Not how we talk these days, but is that so bad?