Category: Blithe Spirit

Jesse Jr. on Obama as black leader

Congr. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D) on Don & Roma this morning (WLS-AM) presents the Obama campaign as engine of black empowerment, citing 400,000 unregistered black voters in S. Carolina and another 400G+ in Florida and counting on black identification with O.  SC, “historically red,” will become blue, he expects, benefiting Dems in process of arousing (coralling) black electorate.  Having his father’s worldview a la 60s activism, he sees this as a movement, even when it’s politics.

He’s still his father’s son in another respect, mangling the language with such solecisms as being careful not to enter “delicate waters” and noting the impulse to “lob Howitzers” at one’s political opponent.  He’s had top-drawer exclusive Eastern prep school education but still uses words as ideograms or Rorschach blots, sounding genteely ignorant as he does it.

Those delicate waters recall the ladies repairing to Bath for bodily restoration in the 19th century.  As for lobbing a Howitzer, that’s Incredible Hulk stuff.  Can’t be done.

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Holy mother the fedl govt., come to our aid

Newsbusters hits Sun-Times hard today, in its editorial spread vs. GW as leaving children behind.  In the process NewsB. shoots down the whole idea of feds running education productively:

The oldest trick in the book in the “news” biz is to take a photo of a politician that makes him look worried, sad, or downcast to offset a story of how things aren’t working so well for that pol’s policies or plans. Well, the Chicago Sun-Times has used that ages old trick to lambast president Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program by giving us the stories of several Illinois students that supposedly slipped through the cracks of the Federal program and using a picture of Bush with furrowed brow with inset pictures of the several students. Of course, their stories are expectedly filled with nonsense, but it is the photo that the Sun-Times really expects to tell the tale. This photo says “failure and he knows it” all over the thing and sets the tone of bias from the start.

The editorial leans heavily on anecdotal argument, a newspaper staple.  Which is why I often discount newspaper arguments.

As for the law itself, the dreadful situation

won’t improve, many in Chicago’s trenches say, unless the law is changed to address what stands in the way: inequitable funding, overcrowding, violence, truancy and the overwhelming effects of poverty.

If only the federal govt. would “address” funding, violence, truancy, etc.  And if it would, then what?

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Being there is what counts

Among “highs” discovered in last night’s debate by Stephen Green was one for

Obama, for looking and sounding presidential. He still hasn’t said much, but more and more Obama knows how to make you feel comfortable with the idea of him as President. He’s fully developed that something that we call “presidential.” It’s not much of a high, but it was all he needed to prove himself tonight’s winner on the Democratic side.

He’s this year’s Chance the Gardener, a David Axelrod presentation.  Peter Sellers never looked so good.

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Behold this Christian, he loves government

Longtime conservative activist Richard A. Viguerie considers Huckabee’s Iowa win “bad news” for Republicans:

“Mike Huckabee is a Christian socialist. He is a good man, but with a Big Government heart,” Viguerie said in a news release late Thursday night. “He is the most liberal of all the Republican presidential candidates on economic issues.”

Viguerie said Huckabee is inclined to solve any problem by passing laws or launching another government program. “If you like President George W. Bush, you’ll love Mike Huckabee,” Viguerie said. “Conservatives in New Hampshire and the other early primary states had better wake up, and make certain the Huckabee victory is confined to the subsidized ethanol fields of Iowa.”

Well, if he finds as many right-wing Christians in New Hampshire, which we hear he won’t, it’s to worry.  Otherwise, not.

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It’s marriage, stupid

In a column remarkably welcoming to Huckabee, David Brooks talks divorce as economic trouble, even devastation:

Democrats talk about wages. But real middle-class families have more to fear economically from divorce than from a free trade pact. A person’s lifetime prospects will be threatened more by single parenting than by outsourcing. Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has.

“More by single parenting than by outsourcing.”  Family values here.

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We like to think the worst?

This is a rather good concise rundown on how things are not as bad as they seem:

Only 36 percent of us approve of our president, and fewer still (18 percent) approve of our Congress. We say our confidence has been shattered, and three out of four think our country is “on the wrong track.” So we tell pollsters, as we slink into the new year.

Surprise: The economy added more than 1 million new jobs last year. It grew at an annual rate of between 3 percent and 4 percent. Share prices rose by over 5 percent, with tech shares up by double digits, these gains being recorded in weeks in which the financial markets are said to be in turmoil.

Exports soared, bringing down the long-standing trade deficit. In November, supposedly traumatized consumers splurged, increasing spending by the largest amount in 3½ years. Final figures for Christmas are not yet in, but my guess is that early pessimistic estimates will prove wrong.

Meanwhile, Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin point out in Commentary that crime is way down; teenage drug use, pregnancies, smoking and drinking are all on the decline; welfare reform is working, bringing down child poverty; and the divorce rate is falling.

There’s more.  In my opinion, we are victims of mass-media doomsaying.

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Fred’s closer

Fred Thompson’s closing argument prompted this from a National Review Online commentator:

While the other contenders are frantically saturating the Iowa airwaves with 30- and 60-second attack ads—Romney is guiltiest, if only because he’s richest—Thompson has sat himself down, looked into a camera, and spoken for a quarter of an hour, calmly and straightforwardly making his case. I myself find this impressive—in a way, moving. Thompson seems to have stepped out of the eighteenth century. He trusts voters to think.

If you have 17 minutes, have a look-and-listen.

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Unhappy Episcopalians, married Romans

Andrew Greeley returned the other day to the married-priest issue, emphasizing priests’ rather than lay people’s happiness, as he has in the past.  We must ask, however, if it would it be better for lay people if the clerical caste were undermined by sowing husbands, wives, and children among the bachelor crops.    . . . .
 
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The American movement

Easing back into this, still standing with full-leg casts at the raised PC, I couldn’t resist this item about a latter-day John Henry Newman heading to Rome from the Episcopal Church.  He is Rev. Alvin F. Kimel Jr., rector of St. Mark’s Church, Pittsburgh, who gave the news to his 200 parishioners in a letter.

“In the name of an ideology of radical inclusivity, the Episcopal Church has moved significantly away from the apostolic and catholic faith of Jesus Christ,” his letter read.

“With the decision made by General Convention two summers ago to approve the ordination of noncelibate homosexuals and the blessing of same-sex unions, it has, in my judgment, become heretical,” he continued.

“I cannot in conscience represent the Episcopal Church to the world, nor can I in conscience summon sinners into its fellowship,” he stated.


He’s the 80th Episcopal priest to take the path to Rome since 1980, when Pope John Paul II gave the go-ahead for married Episcopal priests to become married Catholic priests.  He will have to find a bishop to sponsor him, do an 18–month training (decompression?) program, and acquire his personal papal OK.


In my opinion, Roman Catholics should be pleased but should greet the news with sobriety.  It’s first of all a personal story, as was Newman’s, but of course with ecclesiastical ramifications of the first water.  The tradition-oriented Episcopal priest comes with wife and (four, presumably grown) children to take up duties as a Catholic priest, thus fulfilling a liberal Catholic’s dream.


With sobriety, I say, because Episcopalians are in an unhappy time these days, with the waves of antinomianism lapping at their foundations.  Bloody Queen Bess she may have been, though Belloc tends to give her a pass as caught in a political bind not of her making, but many Episcopalian faithful are holding on for dear life to the church of their fathers.

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