Tag: Politics

Nancy tries morality, flunks

These prelates know the score:

Now the full weight of the Catholic Church is coming down on Nancy Pelosi. Bravo to Cardinal Rigali and Bishop Lori who join Archbishop Chaput in setting an example for their fellow Church leaders. Now, how about the Bishop of San Francisco? The story:

It’s about Nutty Nancy telling the clue-free Meet the Press man what’s RC teaching and what isn’t, in the cause of her man the Big O., the deucedly clever chap whose pay level doesn’t cover human rights for little people.  She cited Augustine in support of a three-month rule.  The prelates:

In the Middle Ages, uninformed and inadequate theories about embryology led some theologians to speculate that specifically human life capable of receiving an immortal soul may not exist until a few weeks into pregnancy. While in canon law these theories led to a distinction in penalties between very early and later abortions, the Church’s moral teaching never justified or permitted abortion at any stage of development.

Oh.  In other words, Peggy Noonan is right:

We know when life begins. Everyone who ever bought a pack of condoms knows when life begins.

To put it another way, with conception something begins. What do you think it is? A car? A 1948 Buick?

The prelates continued:

These mistaken biological theories became obsolete over 150 years ago when scientists discovered that a new human individual comes into being from the union of sperm and egg at fertilization. In keeping with this modern understanding, the Church has long taught that from the time of conception (fertilization), each member of the human species must be given the full respect due to a human person, beginning with respect for the fundamental right to life.

It is about time someone called her and other Catholics on it who trade on their being Catholic for political gain.

Wall St. Journal’s Market Watch has the Rigali et al. text.  Catholic News Service is working on it.  Rush L. beat them all to it:

[T]his is just embarrassing. As I’ve often wondered, is she genuinely this uneducated, uninformed, silly, stupid, whatever — and I’ve concluded there isn’t a word to describe the status of her brain.  The Catholic Church doesn’t know? The Catholic Church hasn’t stipulated?

Well Rush, you can hit many a Catholic church on Sunday and be unsure in the matter.

Tags: , ,

Beware. Gas pollution coming.

Here’s a stunning summary of what Hugh Hewitt sees as the Veep Choice gaffe:

Talking the talk has been the key to Obama’s success, and in Slow Joe he found an older, far better traveled but equally prolix gas bag… For Obama, it is all about politics and words, elections and poses. Slow Joe is the perfect running mate on a perfect ticket for a party betting on wind to solve the energy crisis.”

Hewitt is found here, among other places.  Stout fella.  He is quoted above at Patriot Post, “the conservative journal of record.”

Tags: , ,

Big O. throws gauntlet with Big B. pick

Catholic wrinkle here, maybe of moment:

“Sadly, Joe Biden’s tenure in the United States Senate has been marked by steadfast support for legal abortion” [said Fidelis president Brian Burch in a news release].

During the recent Democratic primary campaign Biden [called himself] “a long-standing supporter of Roe v Wade and a woman’s right to choose.”

Thing is, will he be refused Communion?

Is O’s pick

of pro-abortion Catholic Joe Biden to be his V.P. running mate “. . . a slap in the face to Catholic voters” and [does it pose] a major challenge for American Catholics[?]

as Burch says, having 

declared that Barack Obama has “re-opened a wound among American Catholics” by picking a pro-abortion Catholic politician like Joe Biden.

He’s a “committed Catholic,” O. said Saturday in Springfield at the unveiling, and there’s a weasel phrase, having multiple meanings in today’s religio-spiritual market. 

For instance, I’m committed, but not to alleged “social justice” teaching as purveyed in papal encyclicals, most of which goes far beyond one’s Christian obligations to do anything and is bad policy to boot. 

Read Thomas E. Woods, Jr.’s The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy — come along with me — for a spirited refutation of various aspects of Rerum Novarum of 1891, Quadragesimo Anno 40 years later, and even JP2’s Laborem Exercens 50 years after QA, all of which veer into statism or least assign considerable blame to employers who don’t pay a “family wage.”

The amount of nonsense sold as Catholic belief in these matters is amazing.  As Woods notes on p. 78,

To be sure, the popes themselves have never claimed that a favorable attitude toward coercive labor unionism [to name one economic issue] constitutes an infallible moral teaching, but it is easy to come away from much popular exposition of Catholic social teaching with that impression.

Direct killing of the innocent is another matter, also to be sure.  A privileged position is assigned anti-abortionism, therefore, in the Catholic hierarchy (of values, not prelates).

In any case, Biden as Catholic pro-choice running mate for the decidedly pro-abortion born-alive-bill-killer Obama is bound to raise hackles on fish-eaters coast to coast who are not stuck in spurious social-justice considerations and can’t get around that protection-of-the-innocent business that undergirds anti-abortionism.

Wait for a very hot story, in any case, when Biden goes for Communion and gets a blessing instead.  On the other hand, don’t wait, because it won’t happen.

============

Reader D:

Yes, you’re right — Biden will pick an open-thinking church where Holy Communion is a right, not a privilege. Remember Kerry went to some “downtown Paulist Church” in Boston, I believe, where all God’s chillun can “take” Communion.

On the other hand, Reader B, who hates to capitalize:

by the guys in missouri for sure….  the same thing that happened to kerry will happen to him, i suspect.

Yes, Archbishop Burke of St. Louis, now in the Pope’s cabinet at Rome, nixed Kerry’s receiving, but K. did not test him, to my knowledge.

Tags: , ,

The B-Man unmasked

Here is Biden without hair!  Telling a questioner how smart he is (Biden, not the questioner) and giving his 1988 version of hope and change.  Garrulous fellow.

But he was fooling people!  The trouble with his outburst was “that [his] insecure academic boasts were almost all bogus,” as Mickey Kaus observes, looking back to 2003, when B. was considering entry into the 2004 race and a spoilsport noted various inconvenient data, part of a previous run:

In 1987, Biden quit the Democratic primary race early after the revelation that he had delivered, without attribution, passages from a speech by British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock.

A barrage of subsidiary revelations by the press also hammered Biden’s image: a serious plagiarism incident from his law-school years, boastful exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event, and the discovery of other quotations in Biden’s speeches pilfered from past Democratic politicians. [Emphasis added]

So what?  So he’s a con man of the first water.  Can’t con men run?  Give the guy a break, OK?

Tags:

The little library that could

Wowie!  The UIC library is unsealing the records in its special collections!

The records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an organization that Obama chaired and that Ayers co-founded, will be made available to the public Tuesday, UIC said in a statement.

The U. says it “now has legal authority to allow public access to the material,” apparently without specifying this, per AP.  It “had fulfilled the terms of the gift” in 2002 of the records, says Sun-Times.  Again sans specification.

Chi Trib’s Mark Silva i-d’s Ayers as “a radical protestor” of the 60s, having looked himself in the mirror and decided the bomb business — “nonfatal,” he says, as does AP — goes like this: Ayers’s

Weatherman group took credit for bombings that included nonfatal blasts at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago.

He reports (as he sees fit), we decide (he’s at best a dork).

Commenter John D on Silva’s piece:

I love how Mark Silva classifies the Weatherman bombings as “nonfatal” as if since they were nonfatal, that means the bombings were OK. Now, UIC spares the Tribune the embarrassment. Four years ago the Tribune sued to get Jack Ryan’s divorce papers exposed so the paper can destroy Ryan and open the doors to Obama. Today, the Tribune had no interest in getting these files opened.

Posted by: John D | August 23, 2008 12:57 AM

 

 

Tags: , ,

White smoke over the guardhouse!

Habemus eum qui stet in vice presidentis!*

The brief text message from the Obama campaign came about 3 a.m., less than three hours after word of the decision had begun leaking out. “Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3pm ET on http://www.BarackObama.com. Spread the word!”

*We got a veep (candidate)

Tags: ,

Meeks vs. unions! We can piously hope.

If Ill. Sen. Rev. Meeks wants to quote Chi Trib as supporting him on school reform, he should do so carefully.  Trib opens craftily:

Illinoisans who fear that state Sen. James Meeks is a dangerous threat may not know the half of it. The Chicago Democrat is a threat, all right—to timid lawmakers who really don’t want to overhaul this state’s school funding formula and to a public education industry that is terrified of being held accountable for its failures. [Emphasis added]

“Nobody’s going to put a dime into this system without demanding some reforms,” Meeks told the editorial writer, who ran with this estimable assessment and implied goal.

Trib does not like his keeping kids out of school for Alinsky-style bus ride to Winnetka — scroll down — but they agree that Illinois pols have not pushed for “better educations for Illinois kids”:

That’s in large part because many of those politicians are hostages to the politically active teachers unions. Most Springfield Democrats would rather have Dick Cheney as their party’s candidate for president than risk alienating those teachers union.

Not Meeks, Trib hopes, citing the op-ed on the next page, which notes that the bus riders will pass “many Chicago public schools—charter schools—that are performing on par with top-notch suburban and downstate schools.”

Oh.  But Meeks took the lawmaker’s equivalent of the 5th amendment last spring, when he “refused to vote on legislation that would have raised the Chicago charter school cap to 100” — effectively condoning the “ghettoizing” of kids in badly performing schools, to use a Trib word.

The problem is that unions have their monopoly and do not like trust-busting and as the huge political action committees they have become, they decide what lawmakers do, including Meeks, who is very cautious not to offend his patrons among the unions.  So he promotes a headline-grabbing cause that will be going nowhere, we assume, namely to force suburbs to take city kids.

[W]hile in Springfield last week, he filed legislation that would force suburban schools to accept any student who applies, regardless of whether the student lives within the district.

This is in the op-ed, by Collin Hitt, of the Illinois Policy Institute, a pro-charter schools operation which Chi Trib does not link, following its pattern and I assume policy of linking nothing but Trib stories. 

So Meeks wants Oak Park to open its schoolroom doors to kids from Austin, Berwyn, and the city north of north?  It is to laugh at the idea that even in ur-liberal OP that idea would gain traction.  Libs did go for Baby Todd Stroger 40% in the last primary, however.  You never know,

In any case, Chi Trib in its editorial would like to see Meeks declare support for charter schools.  We call it newspaper editorial ploy #4550, to assume the impossible best of a run-of-mill grievance-oriented politician.  Nice try!

Tags: , ,

Zorn defends O.

Chi Trib’s Eric Zorn defends Obama in the matter of protecting aborted but born-alive infants, arguing that (a) O. voted against protecting them if it risked abortion rights in general and (b) he did so with fellow Dems as a matter of course.

[Republic Sen.] Winkel asked Obama’s committee to add that same “neutrality language” [that made it palatable to U.S. Senate Democrats] to his bill. In accordance with legislative tradition, the 10 members present voted unanimously to approve Winkel’s amendment. And then, after some discussion, they voted 6-4 along party lines to kill the bill.

“The feeling of the majority was that the bill still created great uncertainty about whether it would compromise abortion rights” in Illinois, said Sen. Jeff Schoenberg of Evanston, one of six Democrats, including Obama, who voted no. [Emphasis added]

Z. would seem to consider it irrelevant that O. acted this way, effectively making safety of the born-alive dispensable for what he sees as the greater good of abortion rights.  Crass pragmatism, that.  Chilling.

And O’s going along to get along in Springfield?  How would that sit with hundreds of thousand undecided voters?  Need we ask?

Tags: , ,

This library knows the score

Chi Trib’s John Kass explains to National Review writer Stanley Kurtz why he can’t have at the Annenberg Challenge files at U. of Ill. at Chicago in order to check on how close Obama was to unrepentant terrorist/school reformer William Ayers.

The Richard J. Daley Library doesn’t want nobody nobody sent. And Richard J.’s son, Shortshanks, is now the mayor.

And nobody sent Kurtz. 

It’s the mayor, stupid, and he defended the non-access to library materials in Chicago’s premier bastion of state-campus learning, where free inquiry reigns and young minds and old rove happily through the groves of truth and beauty.

The Tribune’s City Hall reporter, Dan Mihalopoulos, asked Daley on Wednesday if the Richard J. Daley Library should release the documents. Shortshanks didn’t like that one. He kept insisting he would be “very frank,” a phrase that makes the needles on a polygraph start jumping.

“Bill Ayers—I’ve said this—his father [top dog at Commonwealth Edison] was a great friend of my father,” the mayor said. “I’ll be very frank. Vietnam divided families, divided people. It was a terrible time of [sic] our country. People didn’t know one another. Since then, I’ll be very frank, [Ayers] has been in the forefront of a lot of education issues and helping us in public schools and things like that.”

The mayor expressed his frustrations with outside agitators like Kurtz.

“People keep trying to align himself [sic] with Barack Obama,” Daley said. “It’s really unfortunate. They’re friends. So what? People do make mistakes in the past. You move on. This is a new century, a new time. He reflects back and he’s been making a strong contribution to our community.”

Point is, somebody sent Ayers.

UIC faculty and staff, understandably eager to keep bread and butter on table, are certain not to object to this thwarting of inquiry.  Sure, retired dean Stanley Fish, outspoken in liberal causes, could raise a stink from his now-Florida base, say in a NY Times op-ed.  . . . .  I said he could, ok?

My own Society of Midland Authors, hoary with antiquity by virtue of its founding by Chicago literary greats, could protest by withdrawing its archives from this very special collection which doesn’t want nobody nobody sent.  . . . .  It could, ok?

Meanwhile, what’s this Shortshanks business that the redoubtable Kass tosses into the journalistic hopper?  Well, make it Longshanks, and you have the English king Edward I, a big guy, who among other things in a long life of beating people up and taking over countries, expelled the Jews in 1290 — he needed the money.

The present Mayor Daley is not very tall, nor was his father, hence Shortshanks, with a nod to the powers of a medieval king.  It works for me, but still Kass might want to rethink the ‘Shanks part, or explain it better than I just did,

==============

Reader D: Mayor Daley in this instance may remind John Kass of Long or Shortshanks, but he reminds me of Chief Clancy Wiggum in The Simpson’s, who’s wont to say: “Okay folks, show’s over. Nothing to see here, show’s over, move on ….”

Tags: , ,

Librarians, stay on alert!

The AP is on the story of apparent U. of Ill.-Chicago coverup of documents showing Obama and terrorist Bill Ayers working together to save Chicago schools:

University won’t open Obama-related records now

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer Tue Aug 19, 6:48 PM ET

WASHINGTON – The University of Illinois on Tuesday refused to release records relating to Barack Obama’s service to a nonprofit group linked to former 1960s radical activist William Ayers.

The university’s Chicago campus said the donor of the records that document the work of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge has not yet turned over ownership rights to the material.

The U. didn’t know that, now it does, so records are closed.

The owner [donor of the docs] notified the university about the absence of a signed ownership agreement last week.

“The donor’s only concerns regarding the collection are due to personnel information that could include names, confidential salary information and even Social Security numbers,” said the university spokesman.

They are being vetted?

Nothing in Chi newspapers yet (8:50 am 8/20).  They’re working on it.  Give them time.

The Annenberg Challenge was $50 million.  Ayers got himself put in charge of it.  Mayordaley II, that old radical, loves A. for it. 

Question: Who gave the $50 mill?  Answer: the Annenbergs — The Honorable Leonore Annenberg, President and Chairman [of their foundation]; Wallis Annenberg, Vice President, Lauren Bon, Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, Charles Annenberg Weingarten.

Who put Ayers in charge?  These five signed off on it, presumably with guidance from staff:

Headquarters Office
Gail C. Levin, Executive Director
Joanne Cemini-Visintin, Assistant to the Executive Director
Linda Dunn, Operations and Accounting Administrator
Rachel Goldbaum, Grants Administrator
. . . . etc.

I’d start with Gail C. Levin, but for the heck of it, I’d go also to Walter Annenberg and his father Moses (Moe) Annenberg, to get the flavor of things, with special attention to the murderous Chicago newspaper circulation wars of the 1920s and Moe’s affiliation with mobsters and illegal gambling and his and Walter’s prosecution in 1939 in “one of the biggest tax-evasion cases in U.S. history” and Moe’s subsequent imprisonment after taking a guilty plea for fraud. 

Hey, this family has more going for it than the Joe Kennedy’s!  And now they give money to reform schools!  [”To reform” here as infinitive, not “reform” as adjective, though that might be something they should consider.] 

Is this a great country, or what?

Tags: , , , , , ,