Inside the White House

On the news consumption front, Brian Williams looked stiff and awkward - nervous as a suitor? - during NBC's pornful look at the White House under the messiah. To call it a puff piece would be to insult puffs everywhere. It was especially painful to see the fixation on the new White House dog, with Williams playing the part of the jilted beau (no pun intended) of Cap'n von Trapp. Ah well, kids and dogs have their own minds.

But who can blame Obama? He's reacted with gracious modesty to the sycophant and lovelorn media. BHO is far more likable than Bill Clinton if only for the reason Mike Barnicle mentioned - that much of the Clinton hatred was driven by how utterly contrived he was, the whole school uniform ruse and how he had to have a poll to decide even where to go on vacation. It was that uber calculation that was a huge turn-off. Obama may be as calculated but at least the seams don't show. The story may go thusly: with Clinton a competent job was done despite his personal faults, while Obama will ruin the country but with such likability that you hardly notice. A spoonful of sugar makes the decline go down easier.

It sounds like the Cairo speech was a good one. Speeches overseas and meetings with foes sounds like a good idea to me. I'd rather he use his likability towards trying to influencing the Muslim world than in his trying to win Catholic friends and influence Catholic voters as he did at Notre Dame. It's still odd to see such a sublime temperament and personal self-discipline as his write executive orders that fund the murdering of the unborn. Cognitive dissonance, or at least some sort of dissonance.

Fiction for a Thursday

Wyatt was a logophile who saw words as things of beauty and considered their communicatory function as crassly utilitarian.

He sprinkled the finest foreign words into his speech and pleasured himself by making up new ones that he felt were more descriptive and assonant. He was thought by neighbors as eccentric and unintelligible but regarded himself as an Emersonian individualist, not dependent on the Magisterium that is a language.

Before he became completely incomprehensible, he once argued that to re-use words in speech would devalue them, would cause people to take them for granted. Better not make them into mere coinage with which to swap gossip or business talk. He couldn't bear to see his beauties prostituted for such uses, and yet he holed himself up for long hours staring at a Scrabble-like screen of shapely offerings disconnected from their context or etymology or personal virtue. Constantly he left behind old words behind for new ones, treating them as they satisfied him.

The Biggest Danger

It ought go without saying that pro-lifers need not feel blame for the murder of Dr. Tiller. But Bill O'Reilly still felt the need to defend himself on a couple segments on his show. Kudos to Bill for not being cowed by the mau mau'rs. And to Fr. Frank Pavone as well, who says the biggest danger comes from within:

The biggest danger right now to our movement, in the light of the killing of Dr. Tiller, is the enemy within. I'm talking about the fear, the self-doubt, the little voice inside of us that makes us feel guilty now for saying that abortion is murder, that might make some people feel guilty for being too aggressive in the effort to stop the killing of children, maybe make them afraid of going out in front of the abortion facilities to intervene peacefully for the lives of those children. The enemy within that would make some people believe what the other side is trying to say, that somehow we in the pro-life movement are responsible for this violence because of our violent rhetoric and because of our decades of efforts to expose the reality of what abortion is.

But the fact of the matter is, as the Gospel of Life written by Pope John Paul II says, that we have to look evil in the eye and call it by its proper name. Abortion is a holocaust, it is the killing of children, it is murder and it's happening on a massive scale precisely because so many of our fellow citizens are blind to it.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the letter from the Birmingham jail in response to a group of clergy who told him that his tactics were too extreme, and that, in fact, he and his colleagues were responsible for fomenting violence. And he said that's a ridiculous argument; it's like saying the fact that someone possesses money is inciting the robber to commit an act of robbery; or that Jesus preaching that He was God is what provoked the crucifixion, that He is somehow responsible for that.

Brothers and sisters, we are not responsible for the violence that is done. We are a movement of non-violence and as Dr. King and, as Gandhi before him, taught and as we teach: non-violence is neither passivity nor obscurity. It does not sit back in the face of evil and it doesn't try to cover up the face of evil. Non-violence is a force that confronts violence in whatever form it takes. And it does so courageously and boldly and unapologetically.

Ann Coulter has a good take on the issue as well:

In the wake of the shooting of late-term abortionist George Tiller, President Barack Obama sent out a welcome message that this nation would not tolerate attacks on pro-lifers or any other Americans because of their religion or beliefs.

Ha ha! Just kidding. That was the lead sentence -- with minor edits -- of a New York Times editorial warning about theoretical hate crimes against Muslims published eight months after 9/11. Can pro-lifers get a hate crimes bill passed and oceans of ink devoted to assuring Americans that "most pro-lifers are peaceful"?

Since I'm quoting the Intemperate One, she also makes a good point in Human Events about how different this imaginary right to abortion found in the Constitution is from other rights actually in the document:

The right to bear arms is honored in 21-gun salutes, turkey shoots, Civil War re-enactments, firearms demonstrations and, occasionally, at Phil Spector's house.

The right to petition the government for redress of grievances is celebrated at political rallies, tea parties, marches, protests and whenever Keith Olbermann has a fight with his cat.

The free exercise clause is observed in church services, missionary work, peyote-smoking Indian rituals, and for a few days after every time Bill Clinton gets caught having an extramarital affair.

So instead of inviting a constitutional lawyer to yammer on about this purported constitutional right, why not show it being practiced?

Thoughts 'n Quotes

I once relayed, approvingly, an anecdote to a family member about how one ex-Nazi - Rudolf Hess was it? - who confessed his crimes to a priest just before his death and how presumably he is on his way to Heaven now. This relative was not impressed with mercy here but provoked and even repulsed by it. Hess in Heaven? I like stories of mercy, selfishly figuring it gives me a better chance to go to Heaven, while my interlocuter favors justice. People are different.

Pope Benedict in Spe Salvi asserts that justice will happen: "In the end evildoers will not sit at table in the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction, as if nothing happened."

Richard J. Neuhaus comments in American Babylon on the Pope's thought:

That would be another injustice, an intolerable one. And yet, the God of justice is also a God of love and mercy. It is not as though justice is "balanced" or "tempered" by mercy, as might be the case in a human court. Rather, the judgment of God - which infinitely surpasses but does not contradict our understanding of justice and mercy - does not only include both justice and mercy, but is both justice and mercy.

Admittedly this explanation does not answer all our questions. But that is the way it is with realities that surpass our human understanding. Despite centuries of arduous effort by the greatest of minds, there is finally no intellectually satisfying answer to the question of theodicy - the question of how to justify to man the ways of God.

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I'm really, really liking "Morning Joe", the MSNBC show. And Scarborough's really, really tired of presidents not making choices and how they are driven "by ideology and not arithmetic." They don't believe in math. Specifically, Bush & Obama have earned the ire of Joe S. by their failure to create a credible budget. Of course there are things I would like to say, such as "since when is out-year accounting ever a great yarn". But then aren't we entitled to a little truth-in-budgeting? Why should we be consistently lied to? I think it was Cheney who said that deficits don't matter, which I agree with up to a point. I often carry a small balance on my VISA as a (mostly imaginary) curb against further spending. The balance is small enough that it doesn't matter. But, as we all know, large balances matter. Big time. And anytime that merely paying the interest on a debt is a significant expense well, Houston we have a problem.

Jim Cramer said the GM takeover is a jobs program, something straight out of FDR's make-work New Deal. Mike Barnicle buys it. Someone else said that unions are all about collecting dues and not protecting workers. The government will choose inflation over high unemployment because the latter is more politically poisonous. "Name one successful unionized company," said Jim Cramer, and the crowd was silent. Which is disturbing since how can we recognize the legitimate value of unions when they end up routinely killing companies? Pope Paul VI once wrote (printed it off, forgot to save the link!):

The important role of union organizations must be admitted....Their activity, however, is not without its difficulties. Here and there the temptation can arise of profiting from a position of force to impose, particularly by strikes - the right to which as a final means of defense remains certainly recognized - conditions which are too burdensome for the overall economy and for the social body, or to desire to obtain in this way demands of a directly political nature.

And yet without unions how do workers protect their rights?
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Came across this private revelation passage in Mary of Agreda's "City of God" concerning the fifth Joyful mystery:

In order that thou mayest understand better this sacrament of the Lord, remember, that the Infinite Wisdom made men capable of His Eternal Felicity and placed them on the way to this happiness, but left them in doubt of its attainment, as long as they have not yet acquired it and thus filled them with joyful hope and sorrowful fear of its final acquisition. This anxiety engenders in men a lifelong fear and abhorrence of sin, by which alone they can be deprived of beatitude and thus prevent them from being ensnared and misled by the corporeal and visible things of this earth. This anxiety the Creator assists by adding to the natural reasoning powers, faith and hope, which are the spurs of their love toward seeking and finding their last end.

WAU Meditation

Found here:

Discouraged about my lack of focus, I asked Gloria for advice. She suggested I begin my hour on my knees, praising Jesus. “Praise him both for the good things in your life and for the trials. Then sit and wait in silence for him to speak. Try leaving the rosary for your home prayers.”...

And so, the following Tuesday, I knelt before the monstrance and began praising God. I praised him for my husband and four children and all our material blessings— autos, a beautiful house, clothes in our closets, and food in our pantry.

Then I praised him for my husband’s unemployment and the cloud of uncertainty that hung over the family. I praised him for bringing us from our safe Canadian province of Nova Scotia to the strange new land of Texas. I praised him for the insanely huge and terrifying Texas bugs and for the fire ants that were all over our lawn. I praised him for the leaking water heater in our attic, for the resulting water damage throughout the three levels of the house, and for the cost of drying out the floors and walls before black mold set in.

I praised God for the frightening tornado warnings that beeped regularly on our television screen and caused anxiety in the children. I praised him for the cost of medical care in the U.S. and for my children’s health issues. I praised him for my dad’s recent death from cancer, after having survived a five-bypass heart operation.

And then I cried.

And when I was finished, too drained to have another thought in my head, Jesus whispered to my heart and filled it with his peace. I placed all my worries and fears at the foot of his cross and left that chapel feeling lighter than I had felt in a long time.

THE BUMPERSTICKER

"Someone I Love Was Murdered," it read
I said a quick prayer only to discover
that Someone I love was murdered too.

Had to laugh...

...at my wife's latest set-up to discourage the grackles and starlings from eating what is supposed to be for woodpeckers and goldfinches or other more worthy birds.

She was working from home at the kitchen table and was constantly getting up to shoo away the bad birds but then came up with the idea to string a rope through the window:

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Meanwhile, the "BW Garden" (i.e. 'before weeds'):

It won't last but is nice while it does.

Rodak Does Roethke

The picture on this post is the sort of view I get from the pool looking up during H20 aerobics. The instructor is a fit, lean young women who despite her leanness has trouble keep the lower curve of her butt cheeks in her shorts. Could happen to anybody.

I haven't previously written about this experience since frankly I don't have the tools to write it up in such a literary and allusive way as Rodak did.

A fellow blogger in New York
the pictures make me drop my fork,
for rather I would go there now
than eat the meat of well-done cow.

I'd like to go there every year
if cash and wife not bid me here
Just claim a chair upon the Square
and people-watch away my care.

Well, the Title Fits...

PBS travel star Rick Steves has written a provocatively titled book Travel as a Political Act. Beautifully produced with lavish color photographs, Steves delivers what the title promised, although perhaps Travel as a Progressive Political Act might be even more accurate. He makes no bones about his progressive politics which he says he "picked up largely from people overseas," but elsewhere describes himself at one point in the '70s as a "25-year old hippie" which implies he picked up his politics early at the very least. (It would likely undermine the book's thesis to point out that many of his fellow hippies didn't have to go overseas to pick up their politics.)

Travel is broadening but seems at times self-selectively so. For example, Steves makes mention of talking to Palestinians and watching Al Jazeera but presents the Israel case not through the eyes of Israelis but through the disclaimer that America has the solemn commitment to protect Israel's security. It sounds as though his heart is with the Palestinians and Israel's case is dryly doctrinal. (My own disclaimer is that I haven't finished the book yet so there's possibly a different view in a later chapter.)

Steves argues that we should look at the view others have of us, which is fine. I think there is an aspect that we can't see ourselves nearly as clearly as others do and D'Tocqueville, to name but one, did us a wonderful service.

But it has to come from a trusted source. The turning point for me was seeing the world reaction to the America's attempt to enforce the conditions of the Gulf War ceasefire. The level of bitterness and anti-Americanism was far beyond what was warranted given Hussein's history. The Iraq War taught me was that what the world thinks of the United States is corrupted through a biased prism of media, of both a news and entertainment variety, and thus can't be the standard by which we measure ourselves.

Steves, a very likable guy, sometimes seems an apostle of relativism. A particularly egregious example is this: "While a U.S. Christian may be more concerned about abortion than economic injustice, a Nambian Christian would likely flip-flop those priorities." Which goes to my point about listening to a "trusted source" (such as the Magisterium). Since the theme of the book is for Americans to be more self-critical I'm sure he's not arguing for the primacy of the life issue. He's asking, unwittingly of course, for a universal, catholic church.

Anyway you can't say I wasn't warned. Now the trick is to finish the book since none of us should live in our own media echo chamber. How can I complain about his short shrift of the Israeli point-of-view while I do the same to him? (See my blog title.)

Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

The more blogs I read, the more news articles, I am confirmed that God is in very clear and direct communication with his children. I would even say that God provides a sort of theme of the week--ideas that come to me independently from various sources, a conversation here, an article there, and then I read a few blogs and find out that other people are thinking about the same things. - Betty Duffy

[I] learned... just how important John Wesley was to the formation of American Christianity. I had always wondered, for instance, why churches are filled with small groups, and try from the outset to steer you into one. Turns out Wesley started that. - Camassia

I was struck by a similar example of war's power to make us long for peace in Ian McEwan's Atonement where he has something along the lines of (quoting from several years memory, since I don't have the book at hand): How many thousands of children were conceived in mind on the roads to Dunkirk, as countless men offered God their bargains: "I'll marry her as soon as I get home. And buy a cottage, and take care of her, and stay home at nights, and we'll have three children and take them to church every Sunday, if only you'll let me reach the sea alive." - Darwin Catholic

Selective sympathy.- Peggy Noonan on what liberals actually mean when they say 'empathy'

With respect to abortion, the liberal can empathize with the pregnant mother who desires to further her education before having a baby. But there is no empathy for the unborn child simply because the liberal cannot imagine a baby having “desires” of any kind. Perhaps the liberal thinks it is desire which makes us human. - Jeff of "Stony Creek Digest"

The Internet is basically a Skinner box engineered to tap right into our deepest mechanisms of addiction. - Sam Anderson

The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect. - Esther Dyson

With the modern divorce between art and tradition running parallel to the modern divorce between the unitive and procreative goods of sex, fewer and fewer artists and whores may make the necessary connections to reach the ultimate good. - Sancta Sanctis

The economist F.A. Hayek wrote a book titled The Fatal Conceit which, among other things, attempted to explain why intellectuals tend to be socialists. In a nutshell, the reason is that intellectuals tend to overvalue intelligence, preferring to err on the side of infinite perfectibility. No system is too large or complex to be managed and perfected by human intelligence. The intellectual has experienced the power of high intelligence, but he tends to disregard its limits and to deny that intelligence is unequally distributed. He disregards its limits, because if intelligence can be used to solve all problems, the intellectual is always in demand. He denies that intelligence is unequally distributed – against all evidence – because that violates his egalitarian dogma. Therefore the intellectual tends to favor “equality of outcome” scenarios. - Jeff of Stoney Creek Digest

Sotomayor might be a fine jurist but a horrible dresser. Give her some "girl time" with Mrs. Messiah, for cryin' out loud! - tweet from pcstokell

Politically she's like a beautiful doll containing a canister of poison gas: Break her and you die. - Peggy Noonan on Sotomayor

Some people hate big cities, but I find them necessary to my spiritual life - a vivid, throbbing reminder that my world is not the only world and that God's view takes it all in - not from a distance, as the silly song says - but from the inside, loving it, shaping it, being reflected in the unending diversity of people who live, thrive, fail, struggle, die and are reborn in the midst of it.- Amy Welborn in NYC

Everything—the world, history, other people and myself—can be a source of revelation, because through everything we can discern like a watermark, the face of the Risen Christ, the friend who secretly shares with each of us the bread of affliction and the wine of mirth.” - Olivier Clement via Betty Duffy

So Many Satellite Radio Talk Shows...

...but none compare Al's Kresta in the Afternoon on good old AM radio...1580 on the dial if you're in the Central Ohio area.

Orwellian

"It is simply inhumane and barbaric to withdrawal food and water. Just because Terri Schiavo is not conscious doesn’t mean she doesn’t have dignity."

Sounds spot on, right? Well switch it around and you have Michael Schiavo's lawyer's assertion:

"It is simply inhumane and barbaric to interrupt her death process. Just because Terri Schiavo is not conscious doesn’t mean she doesn’t have dignity." (George Felos)

Unreal.

Lake Effect Sun

I am listening to Dorothy Moore on the car radio sing "Misty Blue" on the way to the blue lake. If suns were like wines this one would be of finest vintage, held in winter's interminable cask but now cracked open and spilt into the goblet of a Sunday.

I settle down on a bench and read a Louis L'Amour novel, the words as crystalline as the setting, but soon I walk down towards the translucent water as if involuntarily. I think if I were designing a lake it'd be a lot like this one, full of inlets and coves, nooks and crannies.

I hike beyond the park limit down a nearby road, almost get attacked by unleashed dogs, cross a bridge and come to another lake, a jeweled beauty with an island in the center that screams "heave ho, land the canoe and claim the isle for America!" "...One small step for man," I'd say, after breaking out the lunch meat & beer.

The lakes, fifteen minutes from my house, taste like travel. From the trail's rim I can see the parking lot and the gleaming cars arriving and departing, as audibly impotent as '70s Matchboxes and hence for that reason an enjoyable sight. Off to the right there are happy cries of dogs along the canine beach, black labs frolicking with the swift changes of direction so natural to the young. Two black men stand like sentries, fishing at separate inlets, reminding me of the iconically bucolic scene of the Haitian fisherman in the distance as our cruise ship sailed away.

I want to slip into that glove of water and glide. Instead I run - I realize now why I always lose weight in the summer: my metabolism gets a boost. Instead of reading long from the virtual trail in "Westward the Tide", a real-life trail calls me to an unscheduled run.

Greedily I carry my suddenly weightless burden of excess fat over hill and dale, under sunshine and shadow. I haven't quite gotten over the James Fixxian trust in the elixir of exercise despite seeing first hand how little it's doing for our 11-year old dog. Not to mention what happened to Fixx.

The car tastes like travel too, what with the satellite radio and its strange and wondrous offerings like blues song "You Gotta Move" by Cassandra Wilson. Not unwelcome too is this indoor/outdoor aspect, the sun-roof well-named for the burst of sun through the previously opaque ceiling.

City of God v. City of Man

Interesting juxtaposition of images, from my Yahoo! inbox: