Nirvana For Political Junkies
We live in an age of wonders, we truly do. With the internet we have an infinite selection of conspiracy theories, crazed commentary, and almost true facts. To add to this intellectual happy meal, we now have a site I am afraid that I will visit hundreds of time before election day. Continue reading
The Next Great Depression
I was provoked by Tito’s recent post with a great cartoon on the economy. Like him I am greatly concerned about where the U.S. Dollar, our economy and country are headed. This post is related to an earlier post that Christopher Blosser and I co-posted on the Austrian School of Economics. Let me state from the beginning that I am neither an economist nor a certified financial planner. My opinions are worth the value of the cyber ink you are now viewing. It seems clear to me though that our economy is heading into a double-dip recession and possible depression, which is actually calling it what it is. I don’t see how the current policies and actions of the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve are helping the common man. The rate of interest for savings is so minimal now and for the foreseeable future that it can be compared to the sand under the ocean, not the raft-boat on top of the waves. Therefore what can we do to not lose and potentially grow our savings?
Hope and Despair
The above video by Ben Howe neatly encapsulates why the Democrats are going to take a historic beating next month. If a politician runs on a platform of Hope and Change he better deliver plenty of both. Obama has delivered despair and a magnification of the trends that got us into the economic and fiscal morass we are in. No one likes to be the mark of a con, and I think that a majority of voters now are firmly convinced that a massive con was played on the nation in 2008.
Josh Kraushaar at Hotline gives us a peek of the electoral storm that is in the process of being unleashed:
But when you look at the national polling metrics and the race-by-race picture in the House, there’s little evidence of any Democratic comeback. If anything, Republicans are in as strong a position to win back control of the House as they have been this entire election cycle.
Much of the newfound glimmer of hope comes from a misinterpretation of polling data released by Democratic campaigns and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Many of the polls aren’t all that encouraging for Dems, but have been spun to present a misleadingly optimistic picture. Continue reading
Lepanto
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young.
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain–hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.
Open Thread Thursday – Never Let A Serious Crisis Go To Waste
As humorous as this editorial cartoon may be, I still pray each and every day for the economy to improve.
This is the worst recession I’ve ever seen in my short time on earth.
Environmental Culture of Death
In the spirit of the infamous 10-10 video which Tito posted on here. This ad is at Treehugger as part of its display of “coolest environmental advertising”. Continue reading
Twirling, Twirling Towards Freedom
On Monday night there was a debate between Connecticut Senatorial candidates Richard Blumenthal and Linda McMahon. During the debate Linda McMahon asked Mr. Blumenthal, “How do you create a job?” Blumenthal’s answer was, well, see for yourself.
Watching this, I couldn’t help but be reminded of another example of genius on display.
Political Miscellania 10\6\10
A roundup of recent political news.
1. I am not a witch! Christine O’Donnell’s “I am not a witch” opening salvo in her ad campaign. Normally an ad from a candidate denying she is a witch would be the last thing heard from a campaign doomed to defeat and oblivion. However, these are far from normal times. O’Donnell does two things with this ad. First, she shows the public that she is a real person and not the cartoon character created by the mainstream media and the denizens of the Left, and she begins to position herself as what she is: the ultimate outsider. Not a bad strategy in a political year that will be kind to outsiders and cruel to insiders.
2. Gallup Poll-Gallup for some reason has been late this year applying a likely voter screen in their polls. The closer you get to an election the more reliable likely voter polls get, and the less reliable registered voter polls are. In a high turnout election, Gallup predicts a 13 point Republican advantage among likely voters and in a low voter turnout election Gallup predicts an 18 point Republican advantage among likely voters. Go here to read the results of the poll. For comparison’s sake, in the 1994 election when the Republicans took both the House and the Senate, in the Congressional elections the GOP had a six point advantage on election day. Continue reading
A Catholic Ghost Story
What are Catholics to make of supernatural phenomena? and ghosts in particular?
There is little question that the Catholic Church believes in the reality of the spiritual realm — St. Paul in Ephesians speaks of “our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” But it is a realm inhabited by angels, demons, and of course, Satan himself. (And, if you’re an enlightened “post-Vatican II” Catholic like Fr. Richard McBrien, you can scoff at the very mention of the latter).
As far as ghosts are concerned, the prevailing tendency among Catholics is to look askance at the concept of “lost souls”, trapped in this life and waiting to cross over. There is scarce mention of “ghosts” in the Catechism and judging by the absence of clear, definitive teaching — the Church has refrained from adopting a firm position on their existence.
According to Gary Jansen, a contemporary Catholic from Rockville Centre, Long Island, ghosts simply didn’t exist. For him, “heaven, hell, angels were basic tenents of my Catholic faith, but never basic tenents of my life. . . . these topics were never discused during my twelve years of attending parochial school.” While his devout Catholic mother would mention strange occurrences, he prided himself on his rationality.
Until, that is, when he had an unsettling encounter in his son’s bedroom in 2007. Holy Ghosts: Or How a (Not-So) Good Catholic Boy Became a Believer in Things That Go Bump in the Night is an account of one Catholic’s real-life haunting: Continue reading
The Ground Zero Mosque And Religious Freedom, Part Four
I would like to continue our conversation regarding The Ground Zero Mosque, Religious Freedom, and Interfaith Dialog with Islam. Earlier posts on this topic can be found here (Part One, Part Two, & Part Three).
Johan Bonny has written what I consider to be a very helpful article entitled “Christian Witness and Ecumenism in a Society with a Muslim Majority“. (HT Stephen Hand ~ Time Out of Joint) I especially appreciate how he deals with the issue of violence and how he refers folks to the life of Brother Charles de Foucauld. I encourage everyone to read the entire article, but here are some highlights for your reference.
Christian and ecumenical witness is first of all related to the heart of the Gospel, to the example and the commandment of Jesus Christ. How can Christians live and profess together the essence of Christian faith: this is the key question in any ecumenical reflection. This question, however, leads to a deeper one: what is then the essence, the very heart of Christian faith? What is the specific genius of Christianity among the three monotheistic religions, that has Abraham as their common father in faith: Judaism, Christianity and Islam?
…The dialogue between Christianity and Islam will certainly become a major challenge of the new millennium. No dialogue, however, has a chance, unless it is based on friendship and mutual trust. How can personal trust and friendship be improved, where Christians and Muslims are living together, day after day?
Nonsense On Energy Policy
In his recent weekly radio address President Obama discussed energy policy. He made the following statement:
For decades, we’ve talked about the importance of ending our dependence on foreign oil and pursuing new kinds of energy, like wind and solar power. But for just as long, progress had been prevented at every turn by the special interests and their allies in Washington.
So, year after year, our dependence on foreign oil grew. Families have been held hostage to spikes in gas prices. Good manufacturing jobs have gone overseas. And we’ve seen companies produce new energy technologies and high-skilled jobs not in America, but in countries like China, India and Germany.
Rarely has so much nonsense been packed into two paragraphs.
Notre Dame 88
By Charles E. Rice
Fr. Norman Weslin, O.S., at the complaint of Notre Dame, was arrested in May 2009 and charged as a criminal for peacefully entering the Notre Dame campus to offer his prayer of reparation for Notre Dame’s conferral of its highest honor on President Obama, the most relentlessly pro-abortion public official in the world. The University refuses to ask the St. Joseph County prosecutor to drop the charges against Fr. Weslin and the others arrested, still known as the ND 88 although one, Linda Schmidt, died of cancer this past March. Judge Michael P. Scopelitis, of St. Joseph Superior Court, recently issued two important orders in this case.
The first order denied the State’s motion to consolidate the cases of multiple defendants. That motion would have denied each separate defendant his right to a separate jury trial. The order did permit consolidation of the trials of twice-charged defendants on the separate offenses with which that defendant was charged; a defendant charged, for example, with trespass and disorderly conduct would therefore not have to appear for two trials. Judge Scopelitis also denied the prosecution’s attempt to force each defendant to return to South Bend for each proceeding in the case, which would have coerced the defendants to abandon their defense. Instead, the Judge permitted the defendants to participate by telephone in pre-trial conferences.
TAC Pro Football Rankings: Week 4
Is anyone any good? Jeesh, I know Texas is a horrible place to visit, but surely the Superbowl is worth the incursion? After all, Louisiana is right next door.
Last year was year of the Titans, with the Colts, Vikings, and Saints clearly in another league. This year, everyone has significant problems. The Colts have dropped 2 games. Favre wants to go back to Miss. The Saints have a plethora of injuries and the offense hasn’t looked great.
Each team seems to have an inexplicable loss on their record. The Jets opener against the Ravens, the Pack’s loss to the Bears, etc. After Week 4, you have a pretty good sense usually of where everybody stands. Everyone has significant improvements that need to be made; the question is who can make them in time to get into the playoffs, as it seems that unlike last year, once you’re in the playoffs it’s anybody’s game.
To the rankings!
Gracious Loserman
Here’s an update to my post from last week. Doug Hoffman has just announced that he is dropping out of the NY-23 House race and has endorsed the Republican nominee Matt Doheny. His full statement is here.
“It was never my intention to split the Republican vote in the 23rd District. So today, I withdraw as a candidate from this race. Under New York State Election Law my name cannot be removed from the Conservative Party line on the ballot. However, I strongly urge and request that my supporters not vote for me and certainly not vote for the Democrat or Working Families Party candidate.
“Matt Doheny and I may have differed on some issues during the course of our primary race. Now, we must put those differences aside and do what is best for our nation. So today, I am asking all my supporters to cast their vote for Matt Doheny on Election Day, November 2nd.
Classy move, and I think the right one.
And yes, I need to work on my headline writing.
He Leadeth Me and Paul Krugman
I suppose it may be a symptom of an unbalanced intellectual life, but one question that occurred to me while reading He Leadeth Me (an excellent and moving account of a Catholic priest who was imprisoned for over two decades in the Soviet Union) several months ago was a question about the failure of the Soviet economic system. In the book, Fr. Ciszek recounts year after year of back-breaking labor for 12-14 hours a day in Siberian labor camps. He and his fellow prisoners lived in squalid conditions, and were provided with hardly enough food to keep them alive. This is all horrible, of course, and I’d recommend Fr. Ciszek’s work to anyone who has a tendency to complain about the difficulties of pursuing sanctification in their jobs.
But it seemed to me that, unless the prisoners were basically digging ditches and filling them back up again, this type of coercion would increase economic efficiency, given that the inputs required to organize the prisoners were minimal and the workers were producing a great deal. Certainly, Soviet workers in these mines were producing more than unionized U.S. workers of the time. As it turns out, I am not the only who thought this way. As Paul Krugman helpfully explains, claims about the economic superiority of the Soviet Union were commonplace in the 1950′s and 1960′s, and many prominent economists reluctantly concluded that centrally planned economies had unique efficiency advantages:
Willie Stark and Huey Long
In 1946 Robert Penn Warren wrote the great American political novel, All the King’s Men, which detailed the rise and fall of a Southern politician, Willie Stark. Stark starts out as a political idealist and is utterly corrupted by the political process. Broderick Crawford in the film adaptation in 1949 gives an astonishingly good performance as Willie Stark and delivers speeches in the film that should be carefully studied by all students of oratory.
Over the years it has been alleged that the book is a thinly veiled look at the career of Huey Long, governor, senator and virtual dictator of Depression era Louisiana until he was assassinated by a dentist. Warren rejected the suggestion, and he was correct. Huey Long was always a cheerful crook and never an idealist. Continue reading
TAC College Football Rankings: Week 5
Update: There was a glitch that prevented the rankings from showing. The glitch is fixed and the rankings are up.
You may be wondering why there is a big picture of the Blessed Mother to lead off the post. It’s simple. I and the rest of us clad in purple & gold owe her. Big time. On the 4th down play and the last play of the game (both of them), I was furiously saying the Hail Mary in the LSU student section. If those flags aren’t miraculous intercession, I don’t know what is. I have prayed like that during a game twice-the NFC championship game against the Vikings and the LSU v. Auburn game in 2007 (Byrd’s catch with a second left-the most beautiful pass & catch I’ve seen in Death Valley). These Tigers are going to kill me, and even though they should have slaughtered the Vols, that was a rare and fun experience.
In the rest of the college football world, we now have clear front-runners in the top 2 conferences. Oregon will need a major upset to lose the PAC-10, and Alabama made quite a statement to the rest of the SEC West. In the Big 12, Oklahoma looks to take the Big 12 South with the win in the Red River Rivalry. The Big 10 is still wide open, and the ACC is anyone’s guess.
Why Is This Bad?
Rookie hazing is common to all American professional sports. Normally it amounts to rookies carrying veterans’ bags, being dressed up in women’s clothing for “fashion shoots,” or simply having to buy dinner for the veterans. Well last week Dez Bryant of the Dallas Cowboys was subjected to the latter. Unlike most rookie hazing incidents this caused headline news. Why? Because the bill came out to just under $55,000. That’s a lot of steak.
This has led to all sorts of outrage. I think this nugget from Peter King’s (never-ending) column fairly represents the typical media reaction to the story.
This doesn’t deserve a monumental amount of coverage, but one thing should be said to the Cowboy veterans who delighted in spending about $2,500 per man (one estimate I heard for the 22 to 25 men who attended this dinner) as most of America struggles to pay for weekly groceries: Stop being pigs. It’s disgusting.
This comes from the same column in which Peter King discusses his three-hour meal with Texans running back Arian Foster. People are struggling with the grocery bills and Peter King is out carousing with football players? What a pig.
How Europe Sees America
Click on the above map to be able to read it. The original of the map is here. Tito had a post yesterday here with a map depicting how America views Europe. Ambrose “Bitter” Bierce in the 19th Century said that war was God’s way of teaching Americans geography. Unfortunately, the lessons do not appear to stick. However, the Europeans are often not that better informed about us.
For example, I have always enjoyed reading the English historian Paul Johnson, and have read almost every book he has written. Therefore, I was dismayed when reading his history of the US to encounter quite a few factual errors, including his inability to distinguish between Albert Sydney Johnston and Joseph Johnston in the Civil War, and his apparent belief that it was the Texas Rangers and not Army Rangers who landed at Utah Beach on Normandy.
Why Is Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral In Al Qaeda's Crosshairs?
The target of the Notre Dame Cathedral seemed a bit out of place. Every other Al Qaeda target listed by the captured Ahmed Sadiqui was secular in origin, be the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Brandenburg Gate and Alexander Platz TV tower in Berlin, or the United Kingdom movements of the British Royal family. Why Notre Dame (which means Our Lady in French i.e. the Blessed Virgin Mary) and why not any other churches like St Paul’s in London or St Peter’s or St Michael’s in Munich make the list which has caused world governments to issue terror warnings and travel updates? To understand this question one has to understand the mindset of Al Qaeda. To the tried and true jihadist, Western Europe was almost under their control until two critical events occurred; the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and the Siege of Vienna in 1683, when Our Lady intervened and stopped the Islamic armies in their tracks.
Now some would falsely point out that the Crusades of the 11th and 12th centuries were western victories and thus Islamic sore points, this is far from the truth. The Crusades actually were seen as a great victory in the Islamic World. Though we are now told by those in the mainstream media that the Crusades were a heinous act, they were in fact a small defensive action taken by the west to defend themselves against the Islamic armies who had been invading historical Christian lands for centuries. Long before they were Islamic lands, the Middle East and North Africa were filled with vibrant Christian centers and revelatory figures like Saint Augustine. The very argument that Christianity was not appealing to the masses was left empty by the need of the Islamic armies to have a military conquest. Now my colleague Joe Hargrave has written a great piece on the Crusades which I highly encourage you to read. It is not my intention to go into any further detail about the Crusades for this article. I would again refer to the above link for Joe’s article or a similar article I wrote entitled; A Review of Al Qaeda’s Little Reported On War Against The Catholic Church.
Getting back to the 1571 Naval Battle of Lepanto and the land battle outside the Gates of Vienna in 1683; they were the turning point for Islamic military conquest and military failure. Islamic armies would never again threaten the heart of Europe. The hoped for world Caliphate did not come to fruition. To the militant jihadist it must have seemed as if defeat was snatched out of the jaws of victory. For the faithful Christian, especially the faithful Catholic the Islamic defeats were miraculous seen as the Hand of God working through His Son Jesus Christ and specifically His mother Mary.
The Infallibility of the Pope and the Magisterium
In discourse in the Catholic blogosphere in the last two years, it has become increasingly evident that Catholics grossly misunderstand the infallibility of our holy ecumenical Pontiff, presently, Benedict XVI, pope of Rome, and the universal Magisterium. This point of clarification is, to be honest, in response to a dispute on another column that began with the claim that “an encyclical is not dogma.”
Following the First Vatican Council, a number of Catholic theologians oversimplified the dogma of papal infallibility due to Orthodox and Protestant criticisms. The unfortunate result is that it has given rise to a flawed understanding of the dogma promulgated by the Council. The most prevalent, profoundly erroneous practice has been to view the dogma of papal infallibility as a formula, which severely misunderstands the teaching of Vatican I.
This is most obvious in a number of myths surrounding the dogma that are unfortunately still taught to some Catholics. For example, to exercise papal infallibility, the Holy Father does not have to be actually seated on the Papal Throne, nor does the ecumenical Pontiff have to explicitly cite the fact that he is invoking infallibility, and neither does the Bishop of Rome have to be issuing a dogma or doctrinal definition for his words to be infallible and therefore binding on all the faithful.
A Map Of How Americans View Europe
This is a somewhat humorous map of how Americans view Europe.
A Geography of Prejudice is one way of calling what Yanko Tsvetkov created.
Comedians Poking Fun At Rahm Emanuel
On October 1 President Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, announced that he will be leaving his position to a possible campaign run for Mayor of Chicago.
Rahm Emanuel is known as a feisty politician with an amiable personality. He has also been known to be fond of four letter words.
The following is Saturday Night Live’s spoof of the White House announcement of said event:
The Modern World is Going to Hell: A Continuing Series: The Texting Vermin of the Apocalypse
The fourth in my series of posts in which I give rants against trends that have developed in society since the days of my youth, the halcyon days of the seventies, when leisure suits and disco were sure signs that society was ready to be engulfed in a tide of ignorance, bad taste and general buffoonery.
We have started off the series with a look at seven developments that I view as intensely annoying and proof that many people lack the sense that God granted a goose. I like to refer to these as The Seven Hamsters of the Apocalypse, minor evils that collectively illustrate a society that has entered a slough of extreme stupidity. Each of the Seven Hamsters will have a separate post. We have already discussed here the Tattooed Vermin, here the Pierced Vermin and here the F-Bomb Vermin. The fourth of the Hamsters is the Texting Vermin.
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