Don't be silly, there's no creepy cultish overtones to Obama support at all...
Hat Tip: The Corner
« August 2008 | Main | October 2008 »
September 30, 2008
September 29, 2008
This made me laugh out loud
Sox-Tigers makeup game delayed
For those who don't know the situation, the White Sox finished yesterday a half game behind the Twins for the AL Central Division Championship due to a game with the Tigers that was rained out earlier this month. Since the game could potentially affect who wins the division, it must be replayed. If the White Sox win today, there will be a tie at the top of the division, so the ChiSox and Twins will have to play a tiebreaker game tomorrow to decide who will play Tampa Bay on Wednesday. Who knows what will happen if the game can't be played today.
Although, current forecasts call for the rain to stop around 5 PM. The evil part of me, though, wants a rainout just to see what would happen. And to make Bud Selig's life harder.
Quote-a-palooza
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.” —Thomas Jefferson
“I believe that the people you and I represent are ready to chart a new course. They look to us to meet the great challenge, to reach beyond the commonplace and not fall short for lack of creativity or courage... We can restore our economic strength and build opportunities like none we’ve ever had before. As Carl Sandburg said, all we need to begin with is a dream that we can do better than before. All we need to have is faith, and that dream will come true. All we need to do is act, and the time for action is now.” —Ronald Reagan
“Sometimes bipartisanship is grounds for celebration, but more often it is cause for tears. Last week, congressional leaders from both parties went into a room to hammer out a plan that would put taxpayers on the hook for $700 billion. But they assert that the investment is essential to the health of the economy. And they insist that if we make this investment, we’ll get all or most of it back. This promise would be more believable if the federal government had a long record of using tax dollars responsibly. In fact, it’s the equivalent of the guy who raids his kid’s piggy bank to feed the slots. The most notable impulse of our leaders is spending money the Treasury doesn’t have, piling up bills that future Americans will have to cover.” —Steve Chapman
“This election year has generated a lot of talk about the role of America’s military in the Middle East. Less frequently does the conversation turn to what’s really at the heart of the matter whether we, as Americans, are committed to a world blessed with freedom for all humankind... Our warriors understand that America has a special calling to promote freedom and democracy. In the words of one Marine, ‘the United States is a beacon of light, whether we want to admit it or not.’... Our Declaration of Independence cites freedom as an unalienable right, not just for Americans but for all human beings. Our way of life, our very right to exist, is the ‘everything’ for which our service men and women are willing to give so much of themselves. They fight to defend America’s freedoms, and they fight to grant the gift of freedom worldwide.” —Rebecca Hagelin
“The image of Obama that the press has presented to the public is not a fair approximation of the real man. They consciously have ignored whole years of his life and have shown a lack of curiosity about such gaps, which bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct. Thus, the public image of Obama is of a ‘man who never was.’... The major media simply have not reported on Obama’s two years at New York’s Columbia University, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter-mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers. Later, they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Ayers. Should the media be curious?... Nor have the media paid any serious attention to Obama’s rise in Chicago politics. How did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley?... The public image of Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Obama, his publicist (David Axelrod) and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media. Perhaps that is why the National Journal’s respected correspondent Stuart Taylor wrote, ‘The media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis.’ That conspiracy not only has Photoshopped out all of Obama’s imperfections (and dirtied up his opponent McCain’s image) but also has put most of his questionable history down the memory hole. The public will be voting based on the idealized image of the man who never was. If he wins, however, we will be governed by the sunken, cynical man Obama really is. One can only hope that the senior journalists will be judged as harshly for their professional misconduct as Wall Street’s leaders currently are for their failings.” —Tony Blankley
Science and our Existence
Does God Exist? provides a list of scientific values that if changed in value would result in life on Earth not existing. There's a number I hadn't seen before and a number I don't know enough science to comment.
I find these lists interesting but not dispositive. They really don't prove God's existence the way some people who use them claim. They're still cool, though, since they show how fragile life can be and how our mere existence is a miracle in and of itself.
Hat Tip: Steve Ray
September 28, 2008
The scene that made me a Scrubs addict
I saw this scene and I was hooked.
The Final Play the way God Intended
...with Harry Kalas' play-by-play dubbed over the TV broadcast.
Hat Tip: The 700 Level
September 27, 2008
Celebrate!
PHILLIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I give you the repeat National League East Champions!!!!
Bring on the Dodgers!
September 25, 2008
I want this t-shirt
Hat Tip: The Lair of the Catholic Cavemen
Why I never watch the presidential debates
Here's the fatal flaw of the formal political debate: It has ceased to be an actual debate, and is now a competitive joint press conference. A reporter asks a question, the candidate pivots to his talking point, the opponent recites his most relevant memorized response... and they're ready for the next question. Nothing is ever really discussed, because nothing is spontaneous.
I've been thinking about it...
I found rooting for the Phillies a lot less stressful back when they stunk. Games like the last two rolled right off my back when their main goal for a season was avoiding 100 losses. When you expect your team to lose, you can be pleasantly surprised. When you expect/want/need them to win, it's painful when they don't.
Now, I'm not saying I'm going to stop rooting for or following them. I want them to win and will be following them through every pitch of the postseason. I'll just be very stressed out while it lasts. I'll be like one of those people who watch horror movies through their fingers, especially when Brett Myers pitches, the way he's going right now.
That said, GO PHILS!!!!
September 24, 2008
Doesn't this sum up the differences in the candidates perfectly?
McCain: Scrap Friday Debate for Bailout; Obama Camp: 'The Debate is On'
In a time of need. McCain is ready to put personal interests aside and work to help his country. Obama is focusing on moving himself up the ladder.
Who's the public servant?
Quote-a-palooza
“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” —Thomas Jefferson
“The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.” —Herbert Spencer
“I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.” —William F. Buckley
“So I became a newspaperman. I hated to do it but I couldn’t find honest employment.” —Mark Twain
“Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders. In fact, stockholders have come out worse off after some bailouts. The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not.” —Thomas Sowell
“The credit crunch and foreclosure problems are failures of government policy. In fact, what we see now is a market correction to foolhardy government policy. Congress’ move to bail out lenders and borrowers who made poor decisions will simply create incentives for people to make unwise decisions in the future.” —Walter Williams
“[A]s lawmakers debate buying up hundreds of billions in assets, they should realize that the government’s aggressive meddling in financial decision-making is what got our economy into this mess in the first place. The long-term answer isn’t more federal control, it’s a return to free-market principles.” —Ed Feulner
“Crisis is the friend of the State. The politicians are desperate to be seen as ‘showing leadership,’ so we’re surely in for a new round of government interventions.” —John Stossel “[B]ailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.” —Thomas Sowell
“[T]he federal government announced a massive plan to bail out a number of banking institutions. One expert said it might cost Americans more than a trillion dollars... Where they’ll get this money and how it’s going to be handed out still isn’t clear. All we know for sure is that it’s a trillion dollars and it’s going to be hosted by Howie Mandel.” —Jimmy Kimmel
“Joe Biden says the Wall Street crisis is the result of George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which makes as much sense as blaming the rising price of fairy dust. But as a wise man once asked, Who gives a rat’s patoot what Joe Biden thinks?” —Jonah Goldberg
“Barclays Bank in England purchased bankrupt Lehman Brothers Tuesday along with its Manhattan tower, saving nine thousand jobs. It’s humiliating. The United States of America is 232 years old and we’re having to go to mom for money.” —Argus Hamilton
Jay Leno: Hillary Clinton canceled an appearance at [a] rally [this] week in New York after learning that Sarah Palin would be there. And ironically, Bill Clinton had previously canceled after finding out Hillary would be there. ... The stock market was up 400 points [the other day], or as the Democrats call it, terrible news. ... Barack Obama continues to criticize John McCain’s economic plan. McCain would like to criticize Obama’s plan, but nobody knows what it is yet. ... Barack Obama said again that he wants to raise taxes on the rich—that’s provided by November anyone is still rich. ... That seems to be the theme: Joe Biden said that paying higher taxes is patriotic. The Republican strategy on Joe Biden? Let him keep talking.
September 23, 2008
Looks like the exorcism worked...
Earlier this year, I suggested that Pope Benedict should perform an exorcism while in Yankee Stadium during his visit to the United States. Tonight, the Yankees were officially eliminated from playoff contention for the first time since 1994.
Don't mess with the Pope. He can even overrule the baseball gods.
Today's Mass on the Credit Situation
From today's first reading at Mass (Prv 21:1-6, 10-13):
The plans of the diligent are sure of profit,but all rash haste leads certainly to poverty.
Hat Tip: The Corner
How the Community Reinvestment Act promoted today's financial troubles
The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act, a once-obscure and lightly enforced banking regulation law, into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities—and, as Senate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm memorably put it, a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks. Under its provisions, U.S. banks have committed nearly $1 trillion for inner-city and low-income mortgages and real estate development projects, most of it funneled through a nationwide network of left-wing community groups, intent, in some cases, on teaching their low-income clients that the financial system is their enemy and, implicitly, that government, rather than their own striving, is the key to their well-being.
It doesn't specifically address today's financial troubles, but that's because this article was published when Bill Clinton was still President. Note that $1 trillion figure listed above is much larger than the $700 billion requested by the Bush Administration, even without factoring in inflation.
If you think Christians are unscientific and gullible, check out atheists
While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.
Even among Christians, there were disparities. While 36% of those belonging to the United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama's former denomination, expressed strong beliefs in the paranormal, only 14% of those belonging to the Assemblies of God, Sarah Palin's former denomination, did. In fact, the more traditional and evangelical the respondent, the less likely he was to believe in, for instance, the possibility of communicating with people who are dead.This is not a new finding. In his 1983 book "The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener," skeptic and science writer Martin Gardner cited the decline of traditional religious belief among the better educated as one of the causes for an increase in pseudoscience, cults and superstition. He referenced a 1980 study published in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer that showed irreligious college students to be by far the most likely to embrace paranormal beliefs, while born-again Christian college students were the least likely.
Surprisingly, while increased church attendance and membership in a conservative denomination has a powerful negative effect on paranormal beliefs, higher education doesn't. Two years ago two professors published another study in Skeptical Inquirer showing that, while less than one-quarter of college freshmen surveyed expressed a general belief in such superstitions as ghosts, psychic healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance and witches, the figure jumped to 31% of college seniors and 34% of graduate students.
Of course, for full disclosure, I believe in demonic possession. But the "rationalist" point of view that colleges are theoretically teaching should be undermining, rather than promoting beliefs such as those listed in the last paragraph above.
Self-described atheists don't even seem to have the courage of their own convictions:
We can't even count on self-described atheists to be strict rationalists. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's monumental "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey" that was issued in June, 21% of self-proclaimed atheists believe in either a personal God or an impersonal force. Ten percent of atheists pray at least weekly and 12% believe in heaven.
Make sure to read the whole thing, as there's a good focus on Bill Maher who likes to claim that religious believers are irrational and unthinking even as he denies germ theory, believes aspirin is lethal and denies that the Salk vaccine prevents polio.
Hat Tip: First Things
Why Cafeteria Catholicism (or any type of choose your own Christianity) was unthinkable in the early Church
At the time of the apostles a Christian was bound to take without doubting all that the Apostles declared to be revealed; if the Apostles spoke, he had to yield to an internal assent of his mind...immediate, implicit submission of the mind was the only necessary token of faith. No one could say, “I will choose my religion for myself, I will believe this, I will not believe that; I will pledge myself to nothing. I will believe just as long as I please and no longer; what I believe today I will reject tomorrow if I choose, I will believe what the Apostles have as yet said, but I will not believe what they say in the time to come.” No, either the apostles were from God or they were not, if they were, everything they preached was to believed..if they were not, there was nothing for their hearers to believe. To believe a little, or to believe more or less was impossible. It contradicted the very notion of believing.”
By convert from Anglicanism Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman
Hat Tip: Standing on My Head (written by a former Anglican minister who converted to the Catholic Church)
Quote of the Day
"The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities impressed with it."
-- James Madison (letter to Frederick Beasley, 20 November 1825)
Reference: Writings of Madison, Hunt, ed., vol. 9 (230)
September 22, 2008
So does this mean Democrats oppose Sarah Palin because she's black?
"I'm hearing a lot of people saying, 'He's too young, he's too inexperienced,' " said Philadelphia AFL-CIO President Pat Eiding. "What they're really saying is, 'He's black.'"
Hat Tip: Best of the Web Today
Bigotry can be in the eye of the beholder
Quote-a-palooza
“Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences; a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens.” —Federalist No. 62, likely James Madison
“[T]he House of Representatives approved a bill to allow offshore oil drilling, but nearly all the Republicans voted against it... It isn’t a drilling bill, it’s an anti-drilling bill. If it becomes law, nearly all the oil and gas in the Outer Continental Shelf would be off-limits forever... This bill permanently bans all drilling within 50 miles of the US coast, which just happens to be where most of the recoverable oil and gas reserves are. It permits drilling between 50 and 100 miles out only if the adjoining states agree - which they won’t, since the bill denies them any share in the royalties the oil companies would have to pay, thereby eliminating any financial incentive for a state to say yes. Virtually all the oil off the California coast and beneath the Eastern Gulf of Mexico would be locked up for good. Don’t be fooled: The only offshore drilling this bill really opens the door to would have to be 100 miles or more out to sea, where the oil companies have no infrastructure... According to the Interior Department, the offshore areas where drilling is restricted contain more than 19 billion barrels—that’s equal to 30 years of current imports from Saudi Arabia. The bill would deny Americans access to as much as nine-tenths of that oil. A good deal? I don’t think so.” —Jeff Jacoby
“The configuration of the financial hurricane will become clear soon enough. The sad thing is that the free market will likely get a disproportionate share of the blame, finding its wrists more tightly shackled if the bloodthirsty critics of free enterprise gain enough power in Washington. Whenever markets mess up, control freaks blame it on too much freedom, on undue latitude for plungers and gamblers and similar riff-raff, when the blame properly rests with the gambling instinct itself, which is a part of human nature. If it weren’t, and thanks goodness it is, the first man to peek outside the cave and see the possibilities of a home on the hillside would never have tried it. ‘Too much risk!’ he would have muttered (in caveman-ese). Nothing ever gets done without risk. Risk entails the possibility of failure, but also of growth and gain. If you don’t want growth, you shun risk. Fortunately, capitalists and entrepreneurs constantly seek growth. They gamble. They stick out their necks, sometimes fatally.” —William Murchison
“With freedom comes responsibility. Those who would have self-government must, by definition, govern themselves. Self-government only works when people act responsibly and fulfill their obligations. When people abuse these freedoms to enrich themselves at the expense of others, then the public will demand the government to step in. That is how government grows, and how freedom is diminished. The prospect of government intervention should be terrifying to corporate leaders. For too long many of them viewed it as a safety net. ...[A]fter the recent federal bailouts, some corporate officers are likely considering seeking the same bailout. As my grandmother was fond of saying, if you reward bad behavior all you are going to get is more bad behavior. Reckless and irresponsible individuals like those at the companies mentioned above give decent corporate managers a bad name. When financial meltdowns occur, the public’s outrage drives government to take over part of the private sector. When the government does so, it replaces irresponsible executives with unaccountable bureaucrats. That takes us out of the frying pan and into the fire.” —Ken Blackwell
“One has to wonder just how much more Democrats will milk class-warfare politics before people wake up to their deception. No matter what economic problems we face, Democrats always find a way to blame them on the ‘rich’ and the Bush tax cuts. Why? Because it rallies their base and—they hope—will alienate enough others against evil Bush Republicans to give Democrats a prohibitive advantage on domestic issues. Joe Biden even blamed the current mortgage crisis on the Bush tax cuts. He said: ‘We should try to correct the problems that caused this... [which are] the profligate tax cuts to the very, very wealthy that John [McCain] wants to continue.’ Never mind that low- and middle-income earners received greater tax rate reductions than the highest-income earners; that doesn’t fit within the Democrats’ class-envy template. Forget the reckless legislation forcing financial institutions to lend money to people who probably couldn’t pay it back—to satisfy the liberals’ obsession with looking compassionate and pandering to minorities. Forget that Obama was the second-highest recipient of campaign cash from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (according to the Center for Responsive Politics), cash aimed at keeping congressional regulators off their backs... Despite the Democrats’ destructive practice of blaming every economic woe—from Enron to rising oil prices—on the Bush tax cuts, the tax cuts had nothing to do with those problems, including the mortgage crisis.” —David Limbaugh
“During decades of researching racial and ethnic groups in countries around the world—with special attention to those who began in poverty and then rose to prosperity—I have yet to find one so preoccupied with tribalistic identity as to want to maintain solidarity with all members of their group, regardless of what they do or how they do it. Any group that rises has to have norms, and that means repudiating those who violate those norms, if you are serious. Blind tribalism means letting the lowest common denominator determine the norms and the fate of the whole group. There was a time when most blacks, like most of the Irish or the Jews, understood this common sense. But that was before the romanticizing of identity took over, beginning in the 1960s... The unanswered question is why an approach with a proven track record, not only in American society but in various other countries around the world, has been superseded by a philosophy of tribal identity overriding issues of behavior and performance. Part of the problem is the ‘multicultural’ ideology that says all cultures are equally valid. It is hard even to know what that means, much less take it seriously as a guide to living in the real world.” —Thomas Sowell
“The character that takes command in moments of crucial choices has already been determined by a thousand other choices made earlier in seemingly unimportant moments. It has been determined by all the ‘little’ choices of years past—by all those times when the voice of conscience was at war with the voice of temptation, [which was] whispering the lie that ‘it really doesn’t matter.’ It has been determined by all the day-to-day decisions made when life seemed easy and crises seemed far away—the decision that, piece by piece, bit by bit, developed habits of discipline or of laziness; habits of self-sacrifice or self-indulgence; habits of duty and honor and integrity—or dishonor and shame.” —Ronald Reagan
Question for Hube
Q. I am a venture capitalist with several hundred million dollars and need your opinion: In these troubled times, which is a better long-term investment, Lehman Brothers or the St. Louis Rams? (Michael Becker; St. Louis)
Things I've learned as I've grown up
- It's not worth getting upset about
- No matter how stupid or useless a person seems, there's something he's (or she's) better at than you are, and you should respect them in that area (no matter how little you respect them in other areas)
- It's less frustrating to assume that people are basically well-intentioned, rather than assuming selfishness, laziness, corruption or carnality in their motives.
- Most political disagreements aren't over logic or conclusions, but exist at a much more fundamental level with underlying premises
- Whatever can go wrong for a Philadelphia sports team, will
September 21, 2008
Quote of the Day
"On the New York Mets, they're ALL Rudy Seanez and Clay Condrey." -- A member of the Phillies e-mail list
September 20, 2008
Delaware Baseball.com
Nice Site. Covers Delawareans who have played in the major leagues.
And, surprisingly, it's not run by a Delawarean.
September 19, 2008
Quote of the Day
"The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy."
-- Benjamin Franklin (Emblematical Representations, Circa 1774)
Reference: The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Sparks, ed. (457)
September 18, 2008
Liberals really don't pay attention to history
Obama's campaign sent out an email claiming gas prices are at an all-time high.
Except, you know, for two months ago. Apparently that's prehistoric to some.
The Democrats just can't leave Bill Clinton behind
Callers dialing for N.J. Democrats get sex chat offer instead
A misprint in a telephone book has led to some callers dialing a phone sex service while trying to reach a New Jersey political organization.
A listing for the Sussex County Democratic Committee in Embarq's white pages sent people to a sultry female voice inviting them to pay for sex chat.
I don't know why, but Bill Clinton jokes never get old...
September 17, 2008
Quote-a-palooza
“I trust that the proposed Constitution afford a genuine specimen of representative government and republican government; and that it will answer, in an eminent degree, all the beneficial purposes of society.” —Alexander Hamilton
“If the government gets into business on any large scale, we soon find that the beneficiaries attempt to play a large part in the control. While in theory it is to serve the public, in practice it will be very largely serving private interests.” —Calvin Coolidge
“There are no persons capable of stooping so low as those who desire to rise in the world.” —Lady Marguerite Blessington
“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against its government.” —Edward Abbey
“If you are desirous to prevent the overrunning of a state by any sect, show it toleration.” —Voltaire
“The credit crunch and foreclosure problems are failures of government policy. In fact, what we see now is a market correction to foolhardy government policy. Congress’ move to bailout lenders and borrowers who made poor decisions will simply create incentives for people to make unwise decisions in the future.” —Walter Williams
“Congress is back. If, upon reading those words, your hand shoots reflexively to your wallet or purse to make sure it’s still there, then you know what comes next: A Gang of 16 in the Senate is pushing an energy bill that would spend billions of dollars, raise taxes, and do nothing to lower the price of gasoline.” —National Review
“At 35%, the United States has a higher corporate tax rate than France (34.4%), the United Kingdom (28%), Japan (30%), Germany (15.83%) and even that Scandinavian welfare state deluxe, Sweden (28%). And Barack Obama intends to keep it that way—competitiveness be damned!” —Don Feder
“If elected, President Obama, arm in arm with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, would be in a position to do serious damage to the country on a number of fronts. His convention speech removed any doubt that he is an orthodox, big—no, huge—government liberal.” —Mona Charen
“Obama’s reaction to this sudden turn in his fortunes has been nothing less that sheer and visible disorientation. It’s obvious that he simply doesn’t know which way to turn, and his confusion has led him to launch a sleazy campaign to destroy Gov. Palin’s reputation—no matter what it takes—before she destroys his presidential hopes.” —Michael Reagan
“Right now only Mrs. Palin can hurt Mrs. Palin. Messrs. Obama and Biden can’t do it and shouldn’t try. And the media can’t, because more than half the country won’t listen to them on this subject now, and for a while. The media could get videotape of Mrs. Palin saying, ‘We should invade Mars and it will be easy because Mars is hidden inside my hair!’ and people would say, ‘Stop sliming Sarah!”’ —Peggy Noonan
“More facts surfacing about Sarah Palin’s background every day. Sarah Palin’s father says that they shoot 90 percent of the meat their family eats. The other 10 percent they hit with their pick-up truck.” —Conan O’Brien
“It’s funny. The left has been whining about having their patriotism questioned for so long it feels like they started griping in the Mesozoic era. Feminists have argued for decades that womanhood is an existential and metaphysical state of enlightenment. But they have no problem questioning whether women they hate are really women at all.” —Jonah Goldberg
“Barack Obama was asked if he wished Hillary Clinton was his running mate in the wake of the Sarah Palin mania. He should have passed up Hillary for another woman. Bill Clinton did that all the time and enjoyed eight years in the White House.” —Argus Hamilton
Jay Leno: Here’s the latest word from Wall Street: “Ahhhh!” ... Well, if you saw the big interview with Gibson, Sarah Palin quoted Abraham Lincoln, when Lincoln said, “Let us not pray that God is on our side in any war, or at any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.” And here’s the amazing part: You know who Abraham Lincoln said that to? John McCain. ... Despite all the animosity in this campaign, John McCain and Joe Biden are actually old friends from the Senate. They’ve been friends for years. In fact, they go back so far that when they first met, McCain had hair and Joe Biden didn’t. ... The other day while talking to a group of supporters, Joe Biden said that Hillary Clinton might have been a better pick for vice president than him. Well, that’s one thing to get the base fired up—tell them they picked the wrong person! Yeah! That’ll get them fired up!
If Only... (Quote of the Day)
"[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes - rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments."
-- Alexander Hamilton (letter to James Bayard, April 1802)
Reference: Selected Writings and Speeches of Alexander Hamilton, Frisch, ed. (511)
September 15, 2008
My Personal DNA
Star Trek as the A-Team
Awesome.
Quote-a-palooza
“National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman.” —John Adams
“Charlie Gibson got it wrong. There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration—and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different. He asked Palin, ‘Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?’ She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, ‘In what respect, Charlie?’ Sensing his ‘gotcha’ moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine ‘is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense.’ Wrong. I know something about the subject because... I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, ‘The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism,’ I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush doctrine. Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to the joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush declared: ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.’ This ‘with us or against us’ policy regarding terror... became the essence of the Bush doctrine. Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq war was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of preemptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine. It’s not. It’s the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world... Yes, Sarah Palin didn’t know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least she didn’t pretend to know—while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and ‘sounding like an impatient teacher,’ as the [New York] Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes’ reaction to the mother of five who presumes to play on their stage.” —Charles Krauthammer
“Only once in modern times has a vice presidential candidate swung an election. Lyndon Johnson brought Texas and Alabama to John F. Kennedy in 1960, states that otherwise would have been suspicious of a Catholic liberal from New England. I think Sarah Palin will be the second. She has changed the nature of this race in ways ominous for Mr. Obama. First, this race is no longer between a candidate who advocates change and the status quo, as Democrats would like to frame it. It’s between two different visions of change, and between a ticket that’s actually delivered reform, and a ticket that just talks about it.” —Jack Kelly
“Ultimately, the choice before the American people is the choice between two visions: on the one hand, the policies of limited government, economic growth, a strong defense, and a firm foreign policy; and on the other hand, policies of tax and spend, economic stagnation, international weakness and accommodation, and always, always, from them, ‘Blame America first.’ It’s the choice between the policies of liberalism or the policies of America’s political mainstream.” —Ronald Reagan
“One of the greater ironies of our time is that the post-convention bounce—and it may be more than a mere bounce—is a gift from the correspondents, pundits and other howling bloviators who set upon Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, snarling, snapping and scrapping like a pack of ravenous wolves. You can read and hear them now consoling each other with speculations that the National Enquirer, once the scourge of ‘respectable’ journalism, will turn up something from the garbage cans of Wasilla and the trash bins of Juneau and Anchorage. Barack Obama accuses John McCain of not ‘getting it.’ Sarah Palin says it’s Sen. Obama who doesn’t ‘get it.’ They’re all wrong. It’s the bloggers, the reporters, the pundits and the rest of the far-flung media that doesn’t ‘get it.’ It’s not the media’s fault. There is no media conspiracy, vast or otherwise. The average reporter, correspondent, columnist, pundit or editor couldn’t conspire with the entire Harvard Law School faculty to change the oil in his wife’s car. It’s worse than a conspiracy. It’s a consensus. The newsrooms of the agenda-setting newspapers, the television networks and the newsmagazines have become strongholds of the elites that Barack Obama, he of Harvard Law, insists he is not one of. The young men and women in the newsrooms of flyover country emulate the elites and sometimes dream of one day being one of them.” —Wesley Pruden
“Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has a great twofer pitch: ‘green jobs.’... Governments create no wealth. They only move it around while taking a cut for their trouble. So any jobs created over here come at the expense of jobs that would have been created over there... One reason decentralized markets are preferable to government central planning is that human beings are fallible. Mistakes are inevitable. Some investments will be errors. Mistakes in the market tend to be on a comparatively small scale. If one company invests in plug-in hybrids and it goes bust, only a relatively few people suffer. The assets of the bankrupt firm pass into more capable hands. But decisions by government, especially the federal government, affect all of us. When government makes a mistake, the bureaucracy can’t go bankrupt. Instead, it will use its failure to justify increased appropriations in the next budget. If ‘green jobs’ make so much sense, the market will create them. They will be created by private entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who are eager to profit from winning investments. The best ideas will rise to the top, and green energy will gradually replace coal and oil. If politicians were serious about creating jobs and cleaner technologies, they would step aside and let the free market go to work.” —John Stossel
“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.” —Calvin Coolidge
“On Sept. 8, Fox News broadcast an interview between Obama and Bill O’Reilly that focused on taxation and the economy. Obama repeated his pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, while raising taxes on the tiny fraction who earn more than $250,000... His tax proposal, he explained, was a matter of civility: ‘If I am sitting pretty and you’ve got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can’t, what’s the big deal for me to say, I’m going to pay a little bit more? That’s neighborliness.’ If that is Obama’s rationale for making the tax code even more steeply progressive than it already is, it’s no wonder voters are having second thoughts about his economic aptitude. ‘Neighborliness.’ Perhaps that word has a nonstandard meaning to someone whose home adjoined the property of convicted swindler Tony Rezko, but extracting money by force from someone who earned it in order to give it to someone who didn’t is not usually spoken of as neighborly. If Citizen Obama, ‘sitting pretty,’ reaches into his own pocket and helps out the waitress with a large tip, he has shown a neighborly spirit. But there is nothing neighborly about using the tax code to compel someone else to pay the waitress that tip. Taxation is not generosity, it is confiscation at gunpoint. Does Obama not understand the difference? Perhaps he doesn’t. Eager though he may be to compel ‘neighborliness’ in others, he has not been nearly so avid about demonstrating it himself. Barack and Michelle Obama’s tax returns show that from 2000 through 2004, when their adjusted gross income averaged nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year, their annual charitable donations amounted to just $2,154—less than nine-tenths of 1 percent. Not until he entered the US Senate in 2005 and began to be spoken of as a presidential possibility did the Obamas’ ‘neighborliness’ become more evident. (In 2005-2007, they gave 5.5 percent of their income to charity.)” —Jeff Jacoby
September 14, 2008
Two ways to respond to the Looney left
Get Biblical on them:
The fool takes no delight in understanding, but rather in displaying what he thinks. (Prov. 18:2)
Hat Tip: IMAO
The Billy Madison Treatment:
Another reason to like Sarah Palin
When asked to reveal something about Palin that no one knows, one woman offered, "She doesn't care for cats very much,"
September 13, 2008
Why It's Appropriate to bar pro-abortion politicians (and other grave sinners) from the Eucharist
With the Democrats nominating pro-abortion Catholic politicians for national office in each of the last two election cycles, the topic of whether or not such politicians should be barred from receiving the Eucharist has been hotly debated. So intense was the debate that even the mainstream secular media picked up on it, and some even attempted to understand the issue before printing articles about it. I've mentioned before that the resulting conversation about the issue likely harms the Democrats as the wide gap between their claimed faith and actions is made apparent, but let's focus this time on the effect of such a stance on the souls of the politicians in question.
First, despite the recent claims by Senator Biden and Speaker Pelosi, the Church's teaching against abortion has been consistent. As I write, 13 bishops have corrected Biden and 26 have corrected Pelosi on their false claim that the Church's teaching on abortion is a recent development. In fact, the teaching against abortion goes back as far as the Didache (or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles), which contains the teaching "you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is begotten." (chapter 2, verse 1) This document is thought to have originally been written as early as AD 70. (The Church likely left it out of the Bible because its apostolic origin could not be confirmed, although some accepted it as inspired.)
So, the consistent teaching of the Church throughout its two millennia has been that abortion is in fact a grave sin. Why should grave sinners then be denied participating in reception of Communion? Well, for this we can turn to the Bible. Saint Paul write "Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord." (1 Cor 11:27) Why would this be?
Early Christians drew a parallel between the Eucharist and the Tree of Life in the story of the Garden of Eden. (Hang on, it makes sense eventually.)
In John 6 (my personal favorite exposition of the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist), Jesus tells us that He is the Bread of Life and in order to have eternal life, we must eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. A few samplings:
Early Christians immediately saw the parallels between Christ's Body and the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, which also promised eternal life. After Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God banished them from the Garden, saying, "See! The man has become like one of us, knowing what is good and what is bad! Therefore, he must not be allowed to put out his hand to take fruit from the tree of life also, and thus eat of it and live forever." (Gen 3:22) Remember, too, the definition of "knowing" in the Biblical sense; by "knowing" evil, Adam and Eve have in some way become intimate with it. Now that Adam and Eve have the stain of evil on them, eating of the Tree of Life will trap them in that state of sinfulness eternally. So, in order to protect us from permanent sinfulness, God expelled our parents from the Garden until such time as He would send a Savior.
Given the parallels between the Tree of Life and the Bread of Life, we can see why those in manifest sin, whether private or public, should abstain from receiving the Eucharist: to receive unworthily "traps" us in our sinfulness. So, those who are knowingly unworthy of reception should not present themselves. (This was former Wilmington Bishop Saltarelli's approach, to remind those in such a state that they should not receive Communion until they are reconciled with the Church.) In the case of those whose sins are public, the response should be different. As Cardinal Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments at the Vatican has said , ''If they should not receive, then they should not be given.'' The public nature of some sins require a public response, lest more of the faithful be drawn into that same sin. To pick on a Republican, Rudy Giuliani shouldn't be allowed to receive Communion not only due to his stance on abortion, but also due to the fact he's not validly married and quite publicly guilty of (as far as we can tell) unrepented adultery.
So, despite the assumptions of many on both sides of this debate, barring pro-abortion politicians from reception of Holy Communion isn't a punishment, but a protective measure, in many ways:
1) it protects the sinner in question from falling deeper into sin
2) serves as a wake-up call to the sinner that they need to mend their ways
3) it alerts others that the behavior in question is not acceptable and therefore not to emulated
The policy of the Diocese of Wilmington has been that we should pursue "gentle persuasion" in order to attempt to win the conversion of these politicians' hearts. Unfortunately, it's not working. Can anyone name a Catholic politician who has undergone such a conversion? If anything, the situation has gotten worse since the 1970s. When first elected, Biden was pro-life and disagreed with Roe v. Wade and believed "the right of abortion was not secured by the Constitution." (Source) To pick another prominent example, Ted Kennedy was also pro-life at the time. We're going backwards and losing ground.
The scandal of allowing pro-abortion politicians to receive Communion and portray themselves as "devout" Catholics has misled the people of Christ's Church and the politicians themselves into believing such stances are acceptable. The price isn't just the millions of lives lost to abortion, but also potentially the eternal souls of the politicians in questions. The stakes are literally eternal; we need to take a more serious approach to conversion of hearts and acknowledge that the current approach has failed.
What will they do?
With the Yankees a near lock not to make the playoffs this year, what will Fox do without Derek Jeter to rhapsodize over? Will Tim McCarver be able to form sentences without the word "Jeter" in them?
Oh no, a thought just occurred to me: they might invite Jeter to be in the booth with them. What do you think the over/under is in games (or innings) before McCarver tries to shove his tongue down Jeter's throat?
The Office is coming back September 25th
Watch Jim teach Dwight how to play slapface:
September 12, 2008
Mom (allegedly) steals daughter's identity to return to high school and be a cheerleader
A 33-year-old woman was charged with stealing her daughter's identity to attend high school and join the cheerleading team.
Wendy Brown, of Green Bay, was charged with felony identity theft after enrolling in Ashwaubenon High School as her daughter, who lives in Nevada with Brown's mother.
Remember back in the good old days of the '90s, when mothers who wanted to be cheerleaders would simply use magic to switch bodies with their daughters?
I don't understand what the father did wrong
...other than let the kid off easy:
An angry Deltona father whacked his teenage daughter's boyfriend with a metal pipe after finding the boy naked in his daughter's room. Authorities say the father, 45, didn't even know his daughter had a boyfriend or that the youngster had been sneaking into the home for more than a year.
When he heard noises coming from his daughter's bedroom Thursday morning and saw a stranger standing naked on the girl's bed, he swung a metal pipe. He then chased the teen out the front door and called police.The boy was taken to the hospital where doctors closed a head wound with staples.
The father was charged with aggravated battery on a child and bonded out on $10,000.
September 11, 2008
Bishops Correct "Devout Catholic" Biden
Cardinal Justin F. Rigali, chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Bishop William E. Lori, chairman, U.S. Bishops Committee on Doctrine, issued the following statement:
Recently we had a duty to clarify the Catholic Church’s constant teaching against abortion, to correct misrepresentations of that teaching by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on “Meet the Press” (see www.usccb.org/prolife/whatsnew.shtml). On September 7, again on “Meet the Press,” Senator Joseph Biden made some statements about that teaching that also deserve a response.Senator Biden did not claim that Catholic teaching allows or has ever allowed abortion. He said rightly that human life begins “at the moment of conception,” and that Catholics and others who recognize this should not be required by others to pay for abortions with their taxes.
However, the Senator’s claim that the beginning of human life is a “personal and private” matter of religious faith, one which cannot be “imposed” on others, does not reflect the truth of the matter. The Church recognizes that the obligation to protect unborn human life rests on the answer to two questions, neither of which is private or specifically religious.
The first is a biological question: When does a new human life begin? When is there a new living organism of the human species, distinct from mother and father and ready to develop and mature if given a nurturing environment? While ancient thinkers had little verifiable knowledge to help them answer this question, today embryology textbooks confirm that a new human life begins at conception (see www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/bioethic/fact298.shtml). The Catholic Church does not teach this as a matter of faith; it acknowledges it as a matter of objective fact.
The second is a moral question, with legal and political consequences: Which living members of the human species should be seen as having fundamental human rights, such as a right not to be killed? The Catholic Church’s answer is: Everybody. No human being should be treated as lacking human rights, and we have no business dividing humanity into those who are valuable enough to warrant protection and those who are not. This is not solely a Catholic teaching, but a principle of natural law accessible to all people of good will. The framers of the Declaration of Independence pointed to the same basic truth by speaking of inalienable rights, bestowed on all members of the human race not by any human power, but by their Creator. Those who hold a narrower and more exclusionary view have the burden of explaining why we should divide humanity into those who have moral value and those who do not and why their particular choice of where to draw that line can be sustained in a pluralistic society. Such views pose a serious threat to the dignity and rights of other poor and vulnerable members of the human family who need and deserve our respect and protection.
While in past centuries biological knowledge was often inaccurate, modern science leaves no excuse for anyone to deny the humanity of the unborn child. Protection of innocent human life is not an imposition of personal religious conviction but a demand of justice.
First Pelosi and now Biden. I guess Democrats haven't internalized the concept yet that the Catholic Bishops will no longer carry water for them.
Posnanski on the Royals
I love Joe Posnanski's writing style, and today he has a great article on the follies of the Royals over the past few years in the context of his love for Carlos Beltran. This story made me laugh out loud:
The astonishing Kerry Robinson, in one of only 18 games he would play with the Kansas City Royals raced back on a long fly ball by Joe Crede, used his great athleticism to climb the ball, reached up his glove … and watched the ball bounce 10 feet in front of him on the warning track and then skip over the fence. The umpires were so faked out they called it a home run, leaving poor Buddy Bell in the unenviable position of having to argue that, no, it was not a home run, he just happened to have a centerfielder who climbs walls on ground rule doubles.