Let’s hear it for Hayek:
“The history of government management of money has, except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception.”
— Fredrich August von Hayek (1899-1992), Nobel Laureate of Economic Sciences 1974
Here’s Sun-Times giving mucho space to Rick Santelli, whose rant about bailouts set off the tea party movement:
“People ask me if I’m the father of the Tea Party movement,” the CNBC commentator said outside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. “I was the spark …that started it. If being the lightning rod that started the Tea Party is what’s written on my tombstone, I’ll be very happy.
Etc.
That’s the (usual apocalypse-size) page one on S-T. “His ‘rant’ started it all, leading to major pages 4&5 story, right after page 3 on Glenn Beck, “We are 40 days from . . . changing America”:
Five thousand conservative true believers cheered Fox News host Glenn Beck and other right-leaning firebrands at Right Nation 2010 in Hoffman Estates on Saturday night in a call-to-arms 45 days before Election Day.
With his trademark chalkboard behind him, Beck invoked God, the Constitution and Thomas Jefferson.
“We are 40 days from fundamentally changing America,’’ Beck said. “. . . What the Tea Party movement wants is an end to out-of-control spending, an end to the insanity, an end to the growth in government that is gobbling everything up.’’
Now that, by professional newsman Abdon Pallasch, is how a news story is supposed to read.
Chi Trib, on the other hand, has — on page 15 of home-delivery hard copy — an account by a free-lancer (“special to the Tribune”) that is loaded with ambivalence.
Fresh off a week of stunning Republican primary victories, several thousand exuberant and newly-empowered tea party followers descended on the Sears Centre Arena in Hoffman Estates on Saturday for Right Nation 2010 — a carefully choreographed night of conservative political cheerleading, headlined by radio and TV host Glenn Beck.
This guy should sit down with a copy of Ford Madox Ford or Ezra Pound or, best of all, Strunk and White on what his role is and how he should play it.
What means this “carefully choreographed”? Well organized? He doesn’t say, but gives us a hint-hint of something bad.
Also making an appearance was Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady, who used the tea party’s mantra to stir up an enthusiastic and suddenly crucial electorate.
“We’re going to take this state, and this country back, after this election,” he said. “We’ll take back the government. “
Mantra? Come on. Every political rally has a pitch. Every out party promises big changes. Some also promise hope, do they not?
Last month, Beck led a huge and controversial rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Controversial is so generic as to be meaningless, but like the other items here listed, it’s negative. Stirring maybe? No. But some hot quotes will do. The reporter is supposed to find and display them to encapsulate the flavor and fervor of the event.
But worse than this to many, many Chi Trib readers is its inability to tell you in home delivery THE NOTRE DAME SCORE, which is slapped across the Sun-Times main sports page — 34–31 Mich. State — just flip the paper over, and there it is. WHY CAN’T THE TRIB PRINT THE SCORE OF A NIGHT GAME IN EAST LANSING?
In the midst of backhandedly congratulating tea partiers, NYT’s David Brooks has this:
Voters are upset about the economy, the debt and the culture of Washington. The Democrats are the party of government and of the status quo. They have done their best to remind people of that. This week, Democratic voters renominated Charles Rangel, the epitome of Washington scandal. Democratic voters in the District of Columbia ousted Mayor Adrian Fenty, one of the nation’s bravest education reformers, and replaced him with an orthodox pol.
But those are black voters, are they not, for whom blood is thicker than — what? common sense? I’d say so, in view of how harmful economic policy always hurts lower– more than higher-income people.
#2 Son reports on last Sunday’s Chicago Half Marathon, which he and others ran to raise moolah for Heshima Kenya, which speaks for itself as
the first and only organization in Kenya devoted to identifying, protecting and empowering unaccompanied refugee children and youth living in Nairobi
“after 19 years of regional refugee crisis.”
Heshima K can use your moolah, easily donated here.
The report:
Hello Team Heshima supporters!
On Saturday I spent the entire day meditating on the big race. I got a haircut, stretched my muscles, and then walked it out. I thought, I got a pretty good chance of winning this thing. Anne’s folks generously invited the runners over for a large pasta dinner on Saturday night, where I ate my fill. Then I bought a hat to shield my bald head from the sun, which I then forgot when the taxi came at 5:45 the next morning. Luckily my sister Mar had brought an extra. What a gal!
Anne and Mar and I took the taxi to Jackson Park where we met the rest of the red jerseys. Go team! We were few, but mighty. We were a drop in a bucket of 20,000 runners, and it was exciting to be a part of something so massive, but also to be in it together. Minutes before the race everyone scattered for the long lines of the portable washrooms, and then tried to merge into the huddled masses as they moved towards the start line. Then we just ran for 13.1 miles, mostly along Lake Shore Dr., encouraged by bands set up along the way and loud speakers pumping Bruce Springsteen or Rhianna, and lots of volunteers, friends, family and strangers.
It was a beautiful day. My sister Mar really kept pace for me along the way. And when my sister Mag jumped in at mile 11, Mar checked to see if I was okay, then ran up ahead of us. Mag brought me up the last couple miles, just a little more, and then [Heshima Kenya
co-founder] Anne ran the home stretch with me, straight through to the finish line, arms up. 2 hours and 25 minutes, 9,628th place! They even had a medal for me. I was wobbly, sort of numb, and very happy to be done.
Thanks very much for contributing to Heshima Kenya and encouraging me on my run! And thanks to my family and friends for coming out to witness! And thanks to the Team; I’m very proud to have run with them. The community is strong, even half-way across the world.
Love,
Pete.
P.S. I’ve attached a picture of my sister Mar and me at the end of the race, stretching it out. It sums it all up: she’s tough, I’m about to cry.
Another from Mike Fahy, on top of RINO problems:
Lisa Murkowski (RINO loser in Alaska) apparently will launch a write-in candidacy thus giving Democrats an excellent possibility of having two U.S. Senators from Alaska. Bush’s Justice Dep’t gave Dems the other Alaskan senate seat two years ago by unethically prosecuting the incumbent Republican.
This is still further evidence that RINOs are more comfortable electing a Liberal Democrat than electing a Palin-endorsed Conservative Republican.
Murkowski’s announcement is scheduled for 8:00 o’clock tonight Chicago time. See Rich Lowry in National Review, and Anchorage Daily News, and Los Angeles Times.
RJ Stove asks, “Should Catholics blog?” noting three ethical potholes on the blogospheric highway:
i. Addiction, with all its dangers;
ii. Pseudonymity, with all its dangers;
iii. Encouraging smart-aleck soundbites rather than hard, detailed, historically scrupulous reasoning;
iv. Related to (iii), a general degrading of language, and of the writers role as languages custodian (not to say as breadwinner);
v. De facto anticlericalism.
For instance:
The Internets capacity for creating addicts is something that even the stupidest Panglossian social worker no longer attempts to deny. Every conscientious priest is aware of it; many a priest worries about it; some priests actually issue warnings to their flock about it. More priests should do so.
Etc.
But “many a priest worries about it”? Hell, most of them don’t know what it is or look on it with — shall we say — clerical condescension. For one thing, blogging has built into an interactivity that’s not in many priests’ vocabulary either.
Nonetheless, Stove has a good examination-of-conscience checklist here.
Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit gives us a few ‘graphs of Fr. James Martin SJ on liberation theology, including this misleading item:
In its heyday, liberation theology was not without controversy: some in the church, and some in the Vatican, thought it skirted too close to Marxism–including Pope John Paul II. On the other hand, John Paul didnt shy away from personally involving himself in direct political activism in Poland.
Activism specifically to counter communism, to which threat Martin gives no attention, using “liberation” and announced intention to help poor people as if they were celebrated in a political vacuum, which they were not, as Bill McIlhany argues here.
Bp J. Peter Sartain of Joliet off to Seattle to be youngest U.S. archbishop.
Sartain said dealing with the clergy sexual abuse scandal will be one of his challenges in Western Washington.
The Seattle archdiocese has paid about $42 million in settlements, counseling and attorneys fees to about 300 victims over the past 23 years, with about 70 percent of the money paid by insurance companies.
On Thursday, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) criticized Sartain for ordaining a priest last year who[m] Catholic officials allegedly caught with pornography on his computer a few months earlier. In January, Sartain removed the priest as parochial vicar at a parish after a boy accused the priest of sexually abusing him. The priest pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and was sentenced this month to four years in prison.
Sartain said Thursday he couldnt comment on the case.
What I have tried to do and will continue to try to do is to be very vigilant in the preparation of our priests and likewise very open to the suffering of victims, whether theyre recent or many, many years ago, he said. I will be available to meet with victims and their families because thats, I think, a very important, direct part of the process of healing that needs to take place.
Good luck.
Eleanor Holmes Norton putting the arm on a lobbyist.
Reader D:
I heard this tape of Eleanor Holmes Norton on Rush’s show, or Glenn Beck’s yesterday. Blago should feel put upon that he’s in the stocks while other pols are able to do this thing and get by with it.
Don’t know how much to make of this, but in view of various reports of declining Wheeling (WV) Jesuit U. enrollment in the wake of its precipitate firing of a popular president 13 months ago, this is interesting:
NEWS9 checked in with every college in the Valley. Both Wheeling Jesuit and Franciscan universities report stable enrollment. But six other schools are seeing a significant increase in students. That includes Belmont Technical College, Bethany College, Eastern Gateway Community College, Ohio University Eastern, West Liberty University and WVNCC.
Stable is not bad, and same is true of nearby Franciscan U. (of Steubenville OH), which would seem to be in the same market, vs. the other six, which are not Catholic schools.
Blithe Spirit 