Tom and Jerry: Defenders of All Things Right and Good

Noted Musician/Theologian Elton John: "Jesus Was Gay"

2010-02-19T11:36:00.004-05:00

Elton John has never been a big fan of religion. It's so...intolerant.

"Religion promotes hatred and spite against gays," the openly gay performer told the Observer's Music Monthly magazine in 2006. "From my point of view, I would ban religion completely."

Right, Sir Elton. Good thing we have such tolerant people like you to point out how intolerant religion is.

However, the noted musician/theologian is willing to "tolerate" one religious figure – Jesus. Provided that he's gay, of course. In a new interview with Parade magazine, Sir Elton John has said that Jesus "was gay" and that he was a "super-intelligent gay man."

I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems. On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him.

Now, it could be pointed out that gays have neither a monopoly on compassion and forgiveness, nor do they demonstrate it to any greater degree than heterosexuals. But before you get upset with Sir Elton, you must admit that his penetrating insight into the sexuality of the Son of God does offer tremendous help in understanding certain Biblical passages:

Genesis 1:3-4

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was fabulous!

Genesis 13:13

Now the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the LORD; they would sodomize a man and not even give him the courtesy of a reach-around.

Mark 3:17

...James son of Zebedee and his brother John (to them he gave the name Boanerges, which means Loins of Thunder)...

Mark 4:39

...He [Jesus] got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet! Stop it! You're being homophobic!" Then the wind died down and it was completely calm, and it began to attend mandatory sensitivity training.

John 2:1-4

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother looked for Him to tell Him, "They have no more wine." However, Jesus was not there, as He had marched out in protest because gays can't get married.

John 3:17

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to give it better fashion sense.

It all makes sense now. Whatever would we do without the theological insights of pop stars?

I eagerly await Sir Elton's thoughts on Mohammed....

"Alpha"s Without The Omega

2010-02-10T18:21:00.004-05:00

Charlotte Allen has a long piece in The Weekly Standard about the modern "dating scene" and its "winners" and "losers":

The whole point of the sexual and feminist revolutions was to obliterate the sexual double standard that supposedly stood in the way of ultimate female freedom. The twin revolutions obliterated much more, but the double standard has reemerged in a harsher, crueler form: wreaking havoc on beta men and on beta women, too, who, as the declining marriage rate indicates, have trouble finding and securing long-term mates in a supply-saturated short-term sexual marketplace. Gorgeous alpha women fare fine—for a few years until the younger competition comes of age. But no woman, alpha or beta, seems able to escape the atavistic preference of men both alpha and beta for ladylike and virginal wives (the Darwinist explanation is that those traits are predictors of marital fidelity, assuring men that the offspring that their spouses bear are theirs, too). And every aspect of New Paleolithic mating culture discourages the sexual restraint once imposed on both sexes that constituted a firm foundation for both family life and civilization.

Allen’s basic point is that social Darwinism has triumphed in the urban dating scene: the beta men (that is, me) get left behind, while the alpha men (in theory, the embodiment of the Playboy-Maxim vision of a master of women; in reality, those ranging from "serial seducer" to "sexual sociopath") get women and then teach others to do the same, deploying sales methods and psychological assumptions similar to the get-rich-quick movement.

There's a lot that is debatable about Ms. Allen's article - especially her rather uncritical citing of Geoffrey Miller's The Mating Mind about the relationships of Pleistocene era:

Many Pleistocene mothers probably had boyfriends. But each woman’s boyfriend may not have been the father of any of her offspring....

What the actual evidence is for such prehistoric sexual arrangements is not mentioned or even considered. It is merely cited to reinforce Allen's thesis:

That’s a pretty fair description of mating life today in the urban underclass and the meth-lab culture of rural America. Take away the offspring, blocked by the Pill and ready abortion, and it’s also a pretty fair description of today’s prolonged singles scene. In other words, we have met the Stone Age, and it is us.

However, such conjuring of non-evidence-backed prehistoric sexual shenanigans to try to cast light on the depravity of modern sexual shenanigans isn't what really alarmed me about what she writes about. What really got me was the peek she offered into the modern world of male singledom, specifically the "game" theorists whose terminology - alpha and beta males and females - she incorporates into her exploration and explanation of male-female relations.

For me, it wasn't so much "a peek" as a "remembrance of things uncomfortably familiar". Throughout my late teens, twenties and even thirties, I struggled with confidence with women. I received a lot of advice and encouragement from friends (and even friends of friends); almost all of it was helpful, especially from folks like

• Kevin Barth (my honorary older brother), whose blunt observations and cool-as-a-bushel-of-cucumbers masculinity reinforced the backbone I needed to grow

• Sheila Barth (my honorary older sister), who shined light on things I had become willfully blind to

• Blog partner Tom, Kristen Murphy, Matt and Erin Foley, my sis and her hubby, et. al. for listening to me first complain, then gird my loins for another foray into the world of dating.

However, some sources, though they may have meant well, were not so helpful: basically, the ones who offered advice and "strategies" that parallel that of Tucker Maxes, Tyler Durdens, and Roissys of the world.

Funny thing was, a good portion of those offering the aforementioned "advice" were not to-the-bone hedonists, but folks like "Thursday", who commented on the article on the First Things blog:

The work of "game" theorists like Mystery or Tyler Durden isn’t really either science science or pseudo science. It’s more like engineering. Oh, and by the way, it works like gangbusters.

To read Thursday's blog The Man Who Is Thursday (incidently, the title of an early Chesterton work), is, for me, to be reacquainted with the dichotomy of being someone trying to pursue the vision of male-female relations offered by Christ and His Church while being sorely tempted to pursue the vision of male-female relations offered by our sex-saturated society: you want to find a beautiful, virtuous woman to love, honor, and cherish, and in the meantime you also harbor a not-so-veiled desire to screw every attractive and semi-attractive woman within driving distance.

For Thursday, and such characters as Roissy (whom Thursday admires rather extensively), the "alpha vs. beta" serial-seducing philosophy does indeed work, if by "work" you mean "provides encouragement to insecure men to not let a woman walk all over them". Unfortunately, it does not restrain itself there: while the Mystery-Max-Durden-Roissy perspective is quite valuable for its observational insight and honesty, the mindset and behavior they go on to encourage is downright deplorable. If you’re looking for love, a modus operandi in which "works" means "succeed in maneuvering a woman into sex with you as quickly as possible" will not only not get you what you are looking for, but will make attracting the type of woman you are looking for nigh impossible.

A telling indicator of the shallowness of the the approach of Mystery, Durden, Tucker Max, et. al. to female relations is their dogmatism in regards to what constitutes the behavior of an "alpha" male. If you doubt such dogmatism exists, note (for example) the disdain on Roissy’s blog, in both the posts and comments, for those men who hold to some other approach to interacting with women; or towards those who, at the very least, display an inclination to pump the brakes a bit on such a headlong rush into treating women as objectives to be conquered and then discarded at one’s leisure.

Adopting such an approach to male-female relations is a recipe for disaster. As much a disservice it does to any women of quality that cross your path, it involves adopting an even more benighted view of men. Here is a (very) brief sampling of men who, by their words and deeds, would earn from these "alpha" males the dishonorable distinction of being considered a "beta":

George Washington
John Adams
Abraham Lincoln
Teddy Roosevelt
George Patton
G.K. Chesterton
Richard John Neuhaus

Not a single man on this list would find the advice of Mystery or Durden to have the slightest appeal. Though its observations on the "games people play" is insightful, its proposed course of action amounts to little more than post-adolescent vengeance:

"Attractive women can be manipulative, so I’m going to master the art/science of the manipulation and beat them at their own game."

Men under 35 adhering to such a self-demeaning view of men and women have my sympathy and prayers that they’ll move on to something more likely to bear lasting fruit; men over 35 who haven’t figured out what a anemic bill of goods they’ve been sold that such "engineering" is are just damned fools.

What finally "worked" for me, as far as confidence with women was - really - storming the gates of heaven with my prayers. On Christmas Eve of 2004, I decided to go the "Parable of the Unjust Judge" route: I would bug Him until I got what I wanted. I told Him that I would say a rosary every night for the coming year that this year I would finally meet "the one". And so my nightly rosary-nagging began.

For reasons I can't wrap my head around, this gave me a previously unattained level of confidence with the subsequent women I encountered, as my fear of rejection diminished rather markedly. Aren't attracted to me? Next. Not a good match? Next. After a couple of months, I had a brief relationship with former Miss Texas contestant who was both smart and witty, but walked away from her due to her rather negative view of the Catholic Church (she was Episcopalian). We agreed to be "friends" on Feb. 16; on the next day, she somewhat sarcastically forwarded my an article on her favorite topic, the Catholic clergy sexual scandals. That evening, before I went out, in the face of losing the approval of a beautiful, smart woman - my kryptonite - I penned as fine a defense of the Catholic Church - as well as a demolition of the Episcopalian claims to legitimacy - as St. Thomas More could have written himself. I also told her, in as gentlemanly terms as I could, to get bent. The power of my kryptonite dissipated, I went out to dinner with a group from St. Rita's here in Dallas.

That evening, I met Lynda.

We Have Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself. And Sheep Demons.

2010-02-08T16:28:00.011-05:00

In the wake of Scott Brown's Senate win in Massachusetts, conservatives have been feeling the wind in their sails for the first time in a while: all of a sudden, being a "true" conservative has gone from being a liability to an asset. Of course, sensing this shift, it would be tempting for some conservatives to ratchet up the "more conservative than thou" rhetoric in the coming primaries. Carly Fiorina, a Republican candidate for the Senate from California, faced such temptation to go too far, so she naturally saw no reason not to do so.

Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard CEO (who was so spectacular at the company that its stock price jumped 10% the day she resigned) was a shoo-in for the Republican nomination until former Congressman Tom Campbell jumped into the race. Sensing a need to thwart Campbell's momentum, Fiorina's campaign ran the following commercial in an effort to expose Campbell for what he really is:

A sheep demon.

0:00 - 2:26: OK, it's a political attack ad....what's with all the farm animals?

2:27: My eyes must be playing tricks on me...

2:30 - 2:34: What the hell?

End: OK, I get what you were going for here, but still.....what the hell?

What could Campbell's campaign come up with as a response? How about this:

This Is All Kinds Of Awesome

2010-01-26T15:28:00.001-05:00

George Mason University economist and teacher Russ Roberts teamed up with filmmaker and armchair economist John Papola to create this amazing rap-music video, "Fear the Boom and Bust", that features Lord Keynes and F. A. Hayek. In the video, the renowned economists come back to life to attend an economics conference. At Lord Keynes's insistence, they head out for a night on the town and as a result we learn about why there’s a "boom and bust" cycle in modern economies and a good reason to fear it.

Enjoy.

(You can watch it in HD here, and also view the lyrics.)

When Your Research Consists Of Re-Watching "Jesus Camp"

2010-01-14T11:13:00.005-05:00

Those parents who home-school their kids are likely used to the wariness which their endeavor is often greeted with, and are likely used to the rather insulting caricatures of home-schoolers that pop up in the media from time to time as well. However, Robin West of Georgetown University Law Center, writing in the University of Maryland's Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly, has provided the new gold standard by which all future insults of home-schooling will be measured: what First Thing's Joe Carter dubbed "undoubtedly the silliest, most offensive caricature of homeschooling to ever be published in a scholarly journal."

After spending a couple of pages recounting the evolution of home-schooling...

Thus, over the course of the last thirty years, "homeschooling" has gone from illegal – meaning criminal – in all fifty states, to fully legal, and from heavily regulated, when allowed, to either completely unregulated or only lightly regulated, everywhere. That’s quite a revolution, in law and education both. How did that happen? Why haven’t more people noticed? Why don’t more people care?

The short answer to how it happened is simply that in the 1980's, all fifty state legislatures, in response to massive political pressure from religious parents and theirlobbyists, legalized homeschooling.

(Remember that last sentence for later on...)

...she states that she is not attacking "homeschooling", as

Passionately involved and loving parents, whether religious or not, can often better educate their children in small tutorials at home, than can cash-strapped, under-motivated, inadequately supported, and overwhelmed public school teachers with too many students in their classrooms. Results bear this out, as home-school advocates repeatedly point out (and as critics virtually never deny): the home-schooled children who are tested, or who take college boards, whether or not religious, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not, do very well on standardized tests, and on the average, they do better than their public school counterparts (though it must be noted that the parents and children who voluntarily subject themselves to testing are the self-selected educational elite of the homeschooling movement).

(She cites no study, statistical or otherwise, to justify her above claim [in italics].)

...but unregulated homeschooling.

At this point, she could likely make a good case by citing studies, statistics, and legal analysis that show the risk of unregulated home-schooling; that is, she could write a responsible, scholarly article. No such luck. Citing not a single statistic, study, or even case example, she wades into a description of her targets:

The average homeschooling family may have a higher income than the average non-homeschooler, as was recently reported by USA Today. The radically fundamentalist "movement" family, however, is considerably poorer than the population, and it is the participants in these movements – the so-called "patriarchy movement" and its "quiverfull" branch and related groups – that are the hardcore of the homeschooling movement. The husbands and wives in these families feel themselves to be under a religious compulsion to have large families, a homebound and submissive wife and mother who is responsible for the schooling of the children, and only one breadwinner. These families are not living in romantic, rural, self-sufficient farmhouses; they are in trailer parks, 1,000-square-foot homes, houses owned by relatives, and some, on tarps in fields or parking lots. Their lack of job skills, passed from one generation to the next, depresses the community’s overall economic health and their state’s tax base.

A few points here:

1. So the average home-schooler has a higher income than the average non-homeschooler, but within the home-school ranks is a group that is at poverty level. If they're a large percentage, how does the "average home-schooler" have a higher income than the "average non-homeschooler"? If it's not a high percentage, how can they "depresses the community’s overall economic health and their state’s tax base."?

2. The "quiverfull" reference is to the Evangelical "Quiverfull" movement; the "so-called 'patriarchy movement'" refers to....um, the Promise Keepers? The only ones who refer to them as the "patriarchy movement" are feminists like Ms. West.

3. West provides no evidence of these exotic tarp-dwellers. If they actually existed, wouldn’t someone in the national media have noticed by now? Maybe that episode of "60 Minutes" was pre-empted by a Cowboys’ game or something.

4. Love the "...under a religious compulsion to have large families" line. Darn those religious compulsions.....as opposed to societal and personal-interest compulsions to have 0-2 kids and then sneer with disdain at those who have more.

5. Also love the concern over the "community’s overall economic health" coupled with concern about "their state’s tax base". Funny how the collection of taxes is never far from some people’s minds, isn’t it?

Unsourced claims and implausible claims are not Ms. West's only problem; logical consistency seems to be something not entirely prized by Georgetown Law School. By way of example, this passage in the article is astounding:

Fundamentalist Protestant adults who were homeschooled over the last thirty years are not politically disengaged, far from it. They vote in far higher percentages than the rest of the population. They mobilize readily. The "army" in which adult homeschooled citizens are soldiers has enormous clout: homeschoolers were called "Bush's Army" in 2000 and 2004 for good reason. Their capacity for political action is palpable and admirable, although doubly constrained: it is triggered by a call for action by church leaders, and in substance, it is limited to political action the aim of which is to undermine, limit, or destroy state functions that interfere with family and parental rights. Nevertheless, and by their own accountings, these citizen-soldiers in the "homeschooling movement" and the various political campaigns in which they are enlisted have no clout in the army in which they serve. They are as effective as they are, and as successful as they are, because they engage in politics in the same way that soldiers participate in combat. They don’t question authority, and they can’t go AWOL. With little education, few if any job skills, and scant resources, their power either to influence the lines of authority within their own sphere, or to leave that sphere, is virtually nil.

To review:

– In the fifth sentence, Ms. West writes "The 'army' in, which adult homeschooled citizens are soldiers has enormous clout...".

– Two sentences later, however, we are informed that though their "army" has clout, they themselves have no clout within it: "...these citizen-soldiers in the 'homeschooling movement' and the various political campaigns in which they are enlisted have no clout in the army in which they serve."

– Nevertheless, she writes in the next sentence, they are effective and successful in political action. In the reality that we inhabit – but Ms. West apparently does not – this would give this group enormous clout in whatever political movement they were part of.

– However, two sentences later, she again asserts that they are rather useless and have no power among their political allies. Then how did they manage – as she wrote earlier in the piece – to amass "massive political pressure" to legalize and deregulate home-schooling?

– Oh, by the way, "accounts" and "accounting" are words; "accountings" is not a word.

Sweet leaping Moses on buttered toast....How many degrees do I need to acquire before I can write a paragraph as brazenly self-contradictory as this one of Ms. West's? Somewhere in heaven, a fat 13th-century Dominican weeps...

The passage does contain a hint as to what really has Ms. West nervously envisioning the country being diluted by tarp-dwellers: the homeschoolers helped elect George W. Bush. Is this what all this fuss is about? Ms. West declined to illustrate why the homeschoolers' political activity is any different from that of ACORN's 'community organizers'....except for who they supported, of course.

But, hey, she's doing it all for the children, right?

...curricular review would give the state a way to ensure that the academic content is such as to protect the children's interest in both acquiring the necessary skills for active, autonomous, and responsible citizenship in adulthood, and in being exposed to diverse and more liberal ways of life.

Ah, yes, the ever-important exposure to "liberal ways of life". Thus cause-and-effect joins logical consistency in the dustbin of Ms. West's mind, as it's these "liberal ways of life" – Condom Ed, "Billy Has Two Mommies", and a form of a rather non-scientific and non-historical secularism – being pushed in the public schools that likely started the homeschooling movement in the first place. But we can't have a child miss out on all that, can we?

Infallible Predictions for 2010

2009-12-31T12:59:00.002-05:00

General

1. The media tongue bath of Obama will continue. Pieces that criticize Obama will be comprised of 1/6th of Obama's failure du jour and 5/6th of recounting how Bush was much worse.

2. Pope Benedict will author another encyclical; both the politically conservative and politically liberal will seize on the passages they already agree with and ignore the rest.

3. As Obama dithers in Afghanistan, General David Patraeus' name will start to circulate as a potential player in the 2012 elections. You heard it here first.

4. Rachel Maddow of MSNBC will continue to be the first 13 year-old boy to have his own prime-time TV news commentary show.

5. Dissident Iranians, caught between hating their own government and hating the US, will turn their affections to logical alternative: France. Embracing the biggest bunch of sissies on earth will result in the dissidents immediately surrendering. Obama will hail this as a victory of his diplomacy.

Sports

6. The Big Ten conference will announce the eminent addition of a 12th member. They will pursue Notre Dame like my dog pursues me when I have food. Notre Dame will undergo much internal debate over the issue, but in the end will say "no", as to not royally piss off 99% of their alumni. The Big Ten will then go after either U. of Missouri or U. of Pittsburgh, with Pittsburgh being chosen as the new member. Penn State coach Joe Paterno, who bitterly opposed having Pittsburgh join the conference, goes into a fit of rage that would threaten to cause him a heart attack were he not already dead.

7. Tiger Woods' wife will divorce him and get half of his estate, leaving him with only a measly half billion dollars to spend on mistresses and prostitutes.

Entertainment

8. Two of the best movies of 2009, (500) Days of Summer and Up, will not even be nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture, which will be won by Up In The Air.

9. Taylor Swift encounters the first setback of her career when she actually finds a boyfriend whom she really likes and who treats her well, leaving her with nothing to write any more songs about.

Honors

10. As a companion to the Templeton Prize – which acknowledges achievements in furthering the public's understanding of science, reason, and spirituality – an international panel of scientists, philosophers, logicians, theologians, and cosmologists is formed in summer of 2010 for the purpose of naming the first winner of the Dawkins Prize, to acknowledge achievements in making arguments so bereft of knowledge and logical structure that only the most willfully ignorant could accept them. The inaugural "winner" of the Dawkins Prize goes to, naturally, Richard Dawkins himself for his proof of "why there almost certainly is no God" (a proof in which he takes much evident pride), which the committee cited as "possibly the single most incompetent logical argument ever made for or against any proposition in the entire history of the human race."

Bank on it.

Waiting for the White Smoke

2009-12-04T11:06:00.003-05:00

I'm finishing up work on a website that I'm trying to go live within a week to 10 days, so I haven't had much time to blog. However, I've been implored by commenter Joe C to expound upon my thoughts in regards to Notre Dame looking for a new head football coach.

The latest Search For A Notre Dame Head Football Coach extravaganza is a time of both great hope and great exasperation. "Hope" because I have my favorite candidate or two that I'm convinced would return ND to a consistent place in the Top 10; "Exasperation" due to:

• The "be the first to get the scoop" mindset of sportswriters has ramped up exponentially due to the blogsphere, where rumors fly with great volume and alacrity. This has even normally credible news figures claiming that this coach or that coach is definitely/not in negotiations with ND, based on the slightest hint of a rumor or on absolutely nothing at all.

An example of this came from ESPN, starting on Sunday night. Adam Schefert reported that Oklahoma's Bob Stoops was a bit of paperwork away from being ND's coach. Monday morning, he retracted all of it. Sunday night, and again on Monday, ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit opined that Stoops-to-ND was a "fantasy", and that in "reality" ND should look at Cincinnati's Brian Kelly (OK), Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald (Ugh), and Stanford's Jim Harbaugh (triple Ugh). On Tuesday, Herbstreit reversed himself and said that the Stoops-to-ND scenario might happen.

Round and round we go.

• Coaches who have not been contacted or even considered by ND for the job are publicly announcing that they are not interested in the ND job. It's akin to the Pope dying and me calling a press conference to announce that I'm not interested being the next Pontiff.

• The usual phalanx of media pundits who spend entire columns and TV segments informing anyone who will listen that Notre Dame is no longer relevant or capable of competing at a high level. The high point (or, rather, low point) of this type of silliness was on display by ABC's play-by-play and color commentators during Saturday night's televised (shown to most of the country) Notre Dame-Stanford game, which demonstrated rather clearly that neither gentleman has any sense of irony. First they waxed eloquent about how ND was just not nationally relevant anymore....this while they are covering a prime-time matchup between Stanford (their only non-regional or non-cable appearance of the season) and a 6-5 Notre Dame team; ABC sure as hell wasn't there because of 7-4 Stanford. Then they cited ND's "tough academic requirements" as the reason for ND's irrelevance, all the while touting the running back from Stanford for the Heisman Trophy, given to the best (ostensibly) player in college football. Funny how Stanford's tough academic requirements for athletes wasn't much of obstacle for the Cardinal, huh?

These same type of missives appeared in 1958-63, 1981-1986, and again with the demise of ND's last three coaches. When Notre Dame finally gets its act together, hires a good coach (a la Ara Parseghian and Lou Holtz) and returns to elite status, these same pundits will dust off their "Notre Dame has sold its soul for football glory", claiming ND has lowered its academic standards for football players to get better recruits, though the test scores and GPAs of incoming recruits has remained rather uniform for 45 years (since such things have been tracked).

My rule of thumb for following the Notre Dame coaching search is this: When the new head coach is announced by Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick, then we'll know who it is. Until then, anyone who actually knows anything has too much to lose by having it go public before a contract is signed, an therefore is not going to tell anyone what they know.

So, chill.

So Why Do I Do I Do This To Myself?

2009-09-25T15:21:00.004-04:00

As you can see below, my prognosticating skill leaves something to be desired (Michigan 38, Notre Dame 34). Ugh.

A poster on ndnation.com, which has been in high dudgeon for two weeks, asked "Why do we do this to ourselves?" Why do we care so much about a game between guys we don't and probably never will know, who do not care one way or another whether we watch and care or not, in a contest that, all shirt-wearing and game-viewing rituals to the contrary, we have no influence over whatsoever?

Here was my reply:

A Notre Dame win is a victory for all that is right and good in the universe. Those who sought to vanquish the valiant warriors of Our Lady's school have been driven away to wail and gnash their teeth. Peace, Love, Justice, and Mercy reign.

The sun shines brighter, food tastes better, I enjoy other games that day, I don't mind doing household chores on Sunday, and will revel in every word written about the game for hours, letting the glory and goodness of a Notre Dame victory inspire my heart and lift my soul.

At church, I know God is happy. The statue of the Blessed Mother winks at me. Knew the boys would come through, she seems to say. The statue of Jesus (which looks like a crucified Matthew McConaughey) seems to proclaim

Irish win, man....Cool....Just keep livin'...

_______

An ND loss is victory for the pagan and godless, or in the case of Boston College, a victory for a bunch of johnny-come-lately, self-delusional nitwits. The harmony of the universe has been disturbed. Gloom and depression reign.

The sky darkens, I am unable to enjoy life's pleasures, I shut off the TV for the rest of the day (who gives a crap about college football if Notre Dame is not at or near the top?), and household chores on Sunday will be done grudgingly, if at all. In the yard, grass and weeds grow defiantly, as they know they will not be cut today. I use up my week's allotment of profanity in a span of 1 hour, as I inquire (to everyone and to no one) as to why ND can't find a g#&d@$n coach who can teach these guys how to f%!k#&g block and tackle. Sunday afternoon will be spent in my study - a veritable den of sadness and despair - as I will dissect every word written about the game for hours to discern why, for the love of God why, such a catastrophic event has occurred.

At church, I know God is irritated. The statue of the Blessed Mother wears a disappointed frown. Barbarians are at the gate, she seems to say. The statue of Jesus (which looks like a crucified Matthew McConaughey) seems to shrug and mutter

What do you want from me, man? There's not much I can do if they don't block or tackle....

It's been this way for 11 or 12 weekends a year, for going on 35 years now. This is my lot in life. It's not a lot, but it's my life.

Guest Blogger S. Kunkbear Responds To My Earlier Post

2009-09-11T17:51:00.006-04:00

As a response to my earlier post, I have offered to a Michigan fan a chance at a rebuttal. I present to you S. Kunkbear and his response:

______________

Man, Michigan is so much better this year, and you guys got sooooo lucky last year when we fumbled 6 times! I mean, this freshman QB Tate Forcier is the REAL DEAL! We can tell by a few plays he made in his one half of college football experience that ND will have a hard time containing him, let alone stopping him! This one play, he pointed to his wide receiver where to go and then threw the ball there. Goddammit, man, you just can't teach that kind of field-generalship! On the other hand, the jury's still out your QB, Jimmy Clausen. Will he ever live up to the hype? I mean, on a couple of the 7 incompletions he's thrown in his last 40 some-odd attempts over his last two full games, the ball was up to 8 inches away from the receiver's hands!

And, hey, former Syracuse coach Greg Robinson is coaching Michigan's defense...you know what that means: it'll be the 2008 Syracuse game (a 24-23 ND loss) all over again for Notre Dame this Saturday....I mean other than that your receiver Floyd is healthy and ND has an offensive line coach who seems to have gotten through to his charges on how to block and not commit stupid penalties and that Jon Tenuta is now ND's defensive coordinator and that ND's players seem to have a completely different mindset from last November....other than that, it's just like last year's Syracuse game!

And Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez OWNS Jon Tenuta! I mean, you see what his experienced and durable West Virginia QB and running back combination did to Tenuta's Georgia Tech defense 3 years ago, right? Good thing Tenuta doesn't have, like, you know, one of them fancy video-watching machines or anything to make some adjustments on how to attack RR's amazing scheme! Nope, Rodriguez's QB will be just like West Virginia's was that day....except white....and a couple of years younger....and with only one half of college experience....and his main running back won't be completely healthy.....but other than that, deja vu for Tenuta, man!!

Oh, man, can't wait to see Forcier - and maybe that other freshman QB who moves faster than an unsubstantiated rumor does through the lips of an ESPN commentator - running Rodriguez's offense against that slow, unathletic Irish defense. You know, that offense that relies on quick reads, decisions, and pitch-outs by the QB, and can result in him getting leveled on a regular basis.....it won't be at all like it was for that Nevada QB you played against last week - that upperclassman who, when he finally got his team inside ND's 10 yard line, made his pitch-out too soon and too far behind his running back in a panic because he didn't want to have his head taken off and his spleen shooting out the back of his ribcage by a hit from some deceptively fast-closing white guy (#22 I believe it was), resulting in an Irish fumble recovery....not at all, man! 'Cause as I said, Forcier's the REAL DEAL! He's got POISE, and I'm sure he took plenty of hits from guys with 21-22 year-old physiques in high school.

Yessiree, Michigan's primed for this one like a Bo Schembechler-coached Rose Bowl** team! This one won't even be close!

S. Kunkbear

______________

** - For those who don’t know, in his 21-year stint as Michigan head coach (1969-89), Schembechler took Michigan to ten Rose Bowls, and UM was favored to win seven of them. They won two.

Getting Their Irish Up

2009-09-11T15:12:00.003-04:00

During Charlie Weis' tenure as head football coach at Notre Dame (2005-present), many fans and alumni have been calling for the Irish to play with more passion and fire. We've cited Charlie's pro football-influenced, business-like approach as the likely culprit of Irish listlessness; I refered to it as "Charlie is not a coach who understands that college ball is about getting 85 guys to buy into a single vision." His mindset, cemented in his years in pro football, was that the players took care of that kind of thing.

This is where the Ty Willingham-imposed two year gap of talent (Mr. Willingham coached ND for three years (2002-04) but only bothered to recruit during one of them), experience, and leadership really hurt ND in '07 and '08. In 2007, the two "lost classes" were juniors and seniors, and the lack of leadership was apparent. There also seemed to be some disconnect between the upperclassmen and the freshmen and sophomores, an prime example of which was 5th-year senior center John Sullivan chewing out freshman QB Jimmy Clausen on the sidelines of the UCLA game after Sullivan had just snapped the ball 2 feet over Clausen's reach. What was he yelling at Clausen for? For not being 8 feet tall? Last year was better, but after the Irish imploded in the second halves against North Carolina (led 17-6; lost 29-24) and Pittsburgh (led 17-3; lost 36-33 in 4 overtimes), neither Weis nor any player provided the necessary leadership to pick the team back up for the remainder of the season.

The post-USC game (a 38-3 Irish loss) players-only meeting, where players (according to reports) adopted a "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore!" attitude, seemed to help pick the team off the floor, and apparently Weis let the players have fun when they went to Hawaii for the Hawaii Bowl, as the Irish team that took the field on Christmas Eve was as loosey-goosey a bunch as any ND squad in recent memory. After the Irish pummeled Hawaii on their home field, many Irish fans and alums, including myself, thought "Great, but can they replicate such an emotional state and performance in something other than a 3rd-tier bowl game?"

From all that I've read since last spring, the bowl performance provided some wind in the Irish offseason sails for the time in a while. However, as I read it, it is not merely enthusiasm; the team, as teams are wont to do, has absorbed some of the personality of their coach.

Now, Charlie is not Ara Parseghian (Irish coach from 1964-74) or Lou Holtz (ND's coach from 1986-96) in the emotion department, but there has been a detectable fire burning in him since the end of last season. This fire is not a raging inferno, nor a flash fire that both ignites and is squelched quickly, but rather a slow burn. With each instance that Weis neglected to make proclamations about the upcoming season or to wax eloquent about the assemblage of talent - instead begging off with a "We'll let our play do the talking" (all very un-Charlie-like) - you could sense that underneath his reticence that he was seething. This seething has not served to consume him, but to focus his efforts in making three early 2009 moves: appointing the aggressive and innovative Jon Tenuta as defensive coordinator, with the talented but inexperienced former coordinator Corwin Brown getting to learn how to hunt at the feet of a wolf; hiring an offensive line coach that he seems to be on the same page with (something that could not be said of previous line coach John Latina); the full-court press in recruitment that lured Manti T'eo, a Hawaiian Mormon who could be the most talented linebacker to wear the blue and gold since a couple of guys named Ned Bolcar (1985-89) and Mike Stonebreaker (1988-90), away from USC and UCLA.

Likewise, the team's emotional level (again, from what I've read/seen/heard) seems to match that of their coach. This is a team on a slow burn, a seething at their status as the college football-covering media's whipping boys over the last 2 seasons. As with Weis, this slow burn is not consuming their energy (thus leaving them flat later) but providing focus. Since I had surgery a couple of weeks ago, aside from attending the Notre Dame Alumni Club of Dallas gamewatch, I spent most of last Thursay thru Monday on the couch with ice bags and pain killers, and watched most or all of 10 games aside from ND's (Lynda last Tuesday: "There had better not be any football on tonight."). A lot of teams turned in good performances, but ND's stood out in a telling way: of the 3 Irish penalties (2 for holding, 1 for grabbing the facemask), none were for illegal procedure, illegal formation, illegal motion, or taking too much time - all staples of a typical college football Game 1 performance. Every team in every other game I watched committed some combination of those infractions, with the added element of an instance here or there of multiple players running on and/or off the field at the last moment prior to the snap, while Notre Dame had none of these. Add in the fact the Irish did not commit a turnover and had only 1 sack (a coverage sack with Clausen outside the pocket), and that all this was done while having a rather lengthy list of players seeing action (more than 10 for the first time), and what you witnessed was a mentally and emotionally focused group - from top to bottom - of Irish.

As for tomorrow's game against our enemy, Michigan**, in addition to the talent advantage that ND enjoys over Michigan at present, I think ND is in a much better place mentally/emotionally than UM. It takes more than one offseason to recover mentally and emotionally from a debacle of a season (3W-9L, much like ND's 2007 season) like UM had last year (the shaky 2008 Irish demonstrated this rather convincingly), while ND is in the best shape roster-wise, mentally/emotionally, and coaching-wise (name a team with a better pair of coordinators than Weis-Tenuta) that they've been in more than 15 years. Michigan's evisceration of Western Michigan last Saturday does not change the fact that they are a team with depth, talent, and confidence issues, not to mention starting a freshman quarterback against one of the most aggressively blitz-and-pressure defensive coordinators in college football; they are ripe to be exposed, and this year's Irish squad is just the type of team to expose them.

Add all this up, and I think that Michigan will be walking into a buzz saw this Saturday.

____________________

** - USC is Notre Dame's rival, Michigan is ND's enemy. What's the difference? Michigan has a long and distinguished history of vile behavior towards ND, while USC does not. So while we Irish fans and alums hope USC wins every game they play when they are not playing Notre Dame - to better help our strength-of-schedule and add luster to the USC-Notre Dame game - we hope that Michigan loses every game they play each and every year by at least 50 points. We further hope that Michigan decisively loses every contest they play in every other sport besides football, each and every year, until they become so distraught that they abandon playing sports entirely, tear down all their athletic facilities (especially that toilet of a football stadium they call "The Big House"; "The Outhouse" would be more accurate), and build over them an effeminate-looking arts studio so that their "athletes" (no need to bother with the "student-" prefix at UM) can all take up modern interpretive dance.

We then hope that they suck at that, too.

Why ObamaCare Is Unjust

2009-08-28T16:08:00.005-04:00

My wife and I have had a PPO private insurance plan that costs us somewhere in the ballpark of 5K a year for 2 years. There are cheaper plans (that offer less coverage), and I'm sure there are more expensive plans that offer better coverage, but we like the one we have. Now let's say that in 18 years (when we are 60 years old) I am diagnosed with something that will cost a bundle health care-wise, and the insurance company says they won't cover it. As I do not possess a huge sense of entitlement, I understand that there is no injustice here: We would have paid a premium (a cumulative 100K over 20 years) to cover a certain amount of coverage (in the last 3 years, we've combined for 4 surgeries and a baby, all covered), and this large new expense exceeds it. Of course, I can appeal this decision in a timely manner, and since the insurance company has market factors such as public perception and competition, if I can make my case well enough, I've got a shot. If this fails, the fact that we can't get the expensive health care treatment may suck for me, but I don’t have the "right" to have an insurance company pick up my health care tab regardless of cost.

Now, before anyone takes to their keyboard to dash off an email or comment to remind me that insurance companies have denied coverage that should be granted under their contracts, have hidden all kinds of exceptions and loopholes in the fine print of their policies, or have engaged in any of a long list of unjust practices, I will concede to any and all of it. However, there is an appeal process, and if that does not work, there is legal action, and most effective of all, the forces of public perception and market competition that encourages companies to offer a fair policy for a fair price – or go out of business. A company which is unreasonable or high-handed in its coverage decisions will find that its unhappy customers soon become its former customers. Furthermore, just because a system is in need of reform or overhaul, it does not logically follow that a centralized, government-operated-and-taxpayer-funded system must be the solution. There are options available - allowing people to purchase insurance across state lines, tort reform, any or all of the options discussed here, etc. – that may not be able to achieve "universal coverage" for every American, but are exponentially preferable to the HR3200 bill that President Obama is championing, as that plan is unjust at its core.

Obama and his supporters claim that I will be able to keep my coverage under his plan, and also claim that the premiums for private plans authorized by the new federal exchange will be lower than they are now for plans with similar benefits, and that no one who applies (regardless of pre-existing condition, age, etc.) for these new plans can be turned away....and then ridicule those who point out that such a mandate placed on private insurance companies places a severe financial strain on those companies, who can neither (via HR3200) adjust premiums or restrict benefits on these new plans. Under this financial strain (there's a reason insurance companies turn away those with pre-existing conditions or who are seen as high-risk - having more than a few of them in the benefits pool will bankrupt the company) the only recourse for a private insurance company is to

a) raise the premiums on the grandfathered-in plans
b) cut benefits on the grandfathered-in plans, or
c) cut back on payouts across the board

If you're a private insurance company, do a) or b) and you gradually strangle to death any customer incentive to stay with your best source of revenue, the grandfathered-in plans, furthering your financial strain; do c) for any length of time and your company will get its behind kicked in the courtroom, the stock exchange, and in the marketplace. For private insurers, HR3200 is an incredibly shitty business plan.

Over time, the inevitable effect of this is that private insurance companies will be driven out of business or (even worse) have to seek government subsidies. As anyone with an ounce of common sense knows, with financial support comes the right of the supporter to tell the supportee what to do; ergo, with government subsidies comes government control (ask American farmers how the subsidy thing worked out for them in the late '70's and early '80's). Either way, Viola! You've got a single payer health care system. It's been marvelous entertainment watching supporters of the bill stating in print or on camera that a single-payer system is their ultimate goal and then turn around and attack those who warn that the bill is a huge step toward a single-payer system.

In the bill, as written, the proposed Health Benefits Advisory Committee's powers include a "comparative-effectiveness review process" to monitor, research, and determine the most cost-effective treatments for which health care dollars (both private and public) should be spent. This Committee and this "process" should look awfully familiar to anyone who has worked in the health care industry, as every health insurance company in existence has such a board (with the same type of make-up of the HBAC) that performs this same process. The bill states that HBAC will "advise" and "make recommendations" to private insurance companies, and says nothing about the HBAC making decisions as regards to payouts. That sounds rather benign, and defenders of the bill are correct in saying that it does not amount to a "death panel" or "rationing board". However, defenders of the bill would be well-advised to remember that the "stated purpose" of a group or action and the "logical effect or outcome" of that group or action are rarely identical, or even in the same ballpark. So while the bill's defenders are correct in stating that stated purpose of the proposed Health Benefits Advisory Committee gives it only limited power in regards to private policy service decisions, they refuse to answer such questions as:

• Is it at all reasonable that a committee to be headed by the Surgeon General himself and made up of a broad range of highly credentialed medical experts, including minimum of 9 and as many as 17 Presidential appointees, will, as HR3200 sets forth, be long limited to making "recommendations", especially if those "recommendations" are ignored?

• Is it at all reasonable that, as private insurance companies are struggling to provide quality benefits under the incredibly shitty business plan that is HR3200, that liberals in government and in all kinds of "advocacy groups" will not call for such a Committee - whose makeup so closely resembles that of a private health insurance company's decision-making board in the first place - to be enabled with further powers, particularly when there are no limitations to the expansion of their powers written into HR3200?

• Are the bill's defenders going to continue to deny to their opponents that the "public option" is a stealthy path to a single-payer system, even as these same defenders continue to talk and write about its ultimate purpose openly when addressing their allies?

• Given that in any health care system, SOMEONE will have to make payout decisions based on SOME CRITERIA, once the nirvana of a single-payer system - which this mammoth bill clearly lays the groundwork for - is achieved, who will be deciding who gets payouts and by what criteria, keeping in mind that the only logical "criteria" left after you've jettisoned "the ability of the individual to pay" is the criteria of "cost vs. benefit of the individual to the government"?

• Lastly, how on earth can you look at this 1,000+ page massive expansion of government's role and authority in American health care and insist that this massive expansion of government's role and authority in health care will stop there when there are no limitations to the expansion of power for either the federal insurance exchange or the HBAC written into the bill? The framers of the Constitution, a document those on the left love in the abstract but in almost every instance ignore in the particular, were wise enough to know that government will expand exponentially, in both size and power, unless limitations on its size and power are explicitly set forth. The framers of HR3200, either by ignorance or design, have displayed no such wisdom.

The bottom line is that HR3200, or "ObamaCare", is a very large step toward single-payer system, in which the federal government is in charge of all health care payments.

Of course, it will take a while for the private insurers to be bled out of existence, so for the purposes of a comparative scenario, let's say that after HR3200 passes, Lynda and I go with a new private option, which gives us a bit more coverage than the public option in exchange for a premium of, oh, let's say $3K a year. Of course, this is already on top of what we will pay in taxes to help fund ObamaCare. Again, if you read the damn bill, you will see that ObamaCare will require $544 billion in new taxes. Last year, Lynda and I (a CPA and a software engineer, respectively) had a gross income of about $185K, and paid $32K in taxes (we live in Texas, so there's no state income tax). There is no way on earth that Obama, with $544 billion in new taxes - plus the taxes that will be required for all his other lavish spending - will be able to keep his promise that those making less than $250K will not have their taxes raised. Given our joint income, we're due for a tax increase; though it will almost certainly be higher, for this scenario, let's say that our taxes increase to $39K, of which (given the portion of our taxes that had been allotted for Medicare and Medicaid but would now go to ObamaCare, due to the $500 billion in cuts to those programs outlined in HR3200), let's guess, $8K goes to fund ObamaCare.

So, in 18 years (when we are 60 years old) I am diagnosed with something that will cost a bundle health care-wise, and I am denied treatment. This IS an injustice:

• Instead of me paying $90K for 18 years to a private company that denied my coverage, I will, for 18 years, have paid $198K in total health care expenditures, $144K of which went to help fund a public option that I did not use. Our health care expenditures would have more than doubled what they would have been without ObamaCare, and we will have received no additional benefits. The 83% of Americans polled that said they are happy with their current health insurance will no doubt share our frustration.

• Um, what happened to "no one who makes under $250K a year will get a tax increase"? Kinda quaint now, isn't it?

• On top of that, the 40%-50% of Americans who pay no income tax (~70 million people) will pay nothing at all in the way of health care expenditures, while Lynda and I (as illustrated by the comparative scenario laid out in this piece) will have paid double what we pay now in health care expenditures for no additional benefit; even if we were to go for the public option from day one, we would still have seen a $50K increase in our health care expenditures over the 18 year period, and received significantly less benefit from those expenditures.

• The situation gets worse once the single-payer system is in place: with each passing year, taxpayers pay into the system, and therefore the money they've contributed to the system will steadily increase; however, with each passing year, both the chances that they will receive payouts, and the amounts of those payouts, will steadily decrease.

Over the last 15 years, I've witnessed Monk Malloy attempt to turn Notre Dame into Duke, and now Obama and his supporters try to turn America into Canada. ObamaCare is the first chapter in an American Animal Farm in which the American taxpayers are cast as Boxer.

My Letter to the Notre Dame Board of Fellows - Part 2

2009-08-24T20:36:00.002-04:00

Here is Part 2 of the letter I sent to each member of the University of Notre Dame's Board of Fellows. Part 1 can be viewed here.

_____________________

While those questions touch on an issue of primary concern for me, there is another concern I would like to bring to your attention. One of Notre Dame’s great gifts to me as undergraduate student was introducing me to G.K. Chesterton. One of my favorite quotes of his was (to paraphrase) that Christ must have been a truly colossal figure for so many to be able to carve "little Christs" out of Him. I mention this particular favorite passage of mine as a way of introducing another concern I have about my beloved alma mater. As a software engineer and web designer, I can often tell a lot about an organization by their website – the effort put into it, the "look and feel" of it, and what it contains and/or does not contain. Notre Dame’s website (www.nd.edu) is a very good site, both technically and artistically, and its use of multimedia is excellent. More importantly, one could hardly visit the site and come away with any other impression than that Notre Dame’s administration is immensely invested in and immensely proud of having its students committed to a wide variety of social justice and human rights issues, all undertaken from a uniquely Catholic perspective. As it states on the "Faith and Service" introductory page, "We invite you to explore the many ways in which Notre Dame fulfills its Catholic mission through faith and service." Taking the time to start there, one can "link-walk" through the various and quite numerous student groups and campus initiatives dedicated to just about every social justice and human rights cause imaginable.

However, as someone who – being the result of an unwanted pregnancy – spent a portion of his early life in an orphanage, whose sister – also being the result of an unwanted pregnancy – was adopted as well, and whose adoptive father – yup, another unwanted pregnancy – had spent his entire pre-adult life bouncing from orphanage to institution to foster home, I could not help but notice that at no time in exploring the entire www.nd.edu site did I encounter a single link to or even mention of a single group or initiative devoted to the protection of the lives of the unborn. This struck me as odd, as during my undergraduate days at Notre Dame, the campus Right To Life group was among the largest and most popular groups on campus; even more odd, and somewhat troubling to me, was that a school that had so much it wanted to advertise in the way of its concern for social justice and human rights had absolutely nothing that it wanted to advertise in the way of a concern that any child conceived today – or for the last 36 years – does not and will not enjoy the protections that ensured that my adoptive father, sister, and I – though unplanned and unwanted – would be allowed to be born.

A little investigating revealed that this omission was not a matter of a web design team with too much content to include and too little time to fit it all in, but rather that the administration of Notre Dame, while publicly stating when challenged that they are "of course" advocates of the protection of unborn human life, offers little in the way of support to those who undertake this cause. The Notre Dame Student "Right To Life" organization did not receive any financial support last year from the university, nor did their sponsoring faculty organization, the Center for Ethics and Culture. Additionally, the Notre Dame Fund for the Protection of Human Life, launched under the auspices of the Center for Ethics and Culture, has also not received any financial support from the University. This past spring, The Sycamore Trust requested the University’s public affairs office to describe all University-sponsored pro-life activities so that they could mention them in a news bulletin. The Trust received only a list of a handful of speeches, most by the aforementioned Notre Dame Fund for Life board members.

I called the Center to inquire why it is that they and the other groups advocating the protection of the unborn had been relegated to the status of the proverbial "red-headed stepchild" of social justice and human rights groups, and the response I received was, in so many words, "they [the ND administration] think we’re all a bunch of right-wing nuts". Perusing the Center’s listing of its Fellows, Advisors, and Staff, I found it hard to believe – unless such figures as Alasdair MacIntyre, Sr. Helen Prejean, and Stanley Hauerwas are heretofore unnoticed Ann Coulter enthusiasts or can be found frequently breaking bread with the likes of Randall Terry – that any serious person could describe this accomplished and diverse group in such dismissive terms.

From the University administration’s attitude towards those organizations dedicated to the protection of the unborn, it is very saddening to me to think that my alma mater has, whether consciously or unconsciously, engaged in the very type of behavior Chesterton wrote about in regards to carving a custom-fit "Christ" out of the real Christ; that out of the fullness of the Church’s witness in calling for justice and human rights for all from conception to natural death, it has, similarly, carved its own little custom- fit "witness" that excludes any public or monetary support, or even acknowledgement, in service to the protection of the unborn. It saddens me further to see that Notre Dame, a university whose leaders provided such strong witness in the cause of civil rights, and whose leaders continue to address many right and good and holy issues pertaining to social justice and human rights, has decided, in the case of advocating for the protection of the unborn, to sit this one out.

I thank you for taking the time to allow me to voice my concerns. I will continue my heartfelt and determined prayers that Notre Dame always strives to be the greatest institution of higher learning that is both truly Catholic and truly a university.

And our hearts forever love thee Notre Dame...

Most Sincerely,

John Gerard Beckett ‘95

My Letter to the Notre Dame Board of Fellows - Part 1

2009-08-19T20:03:00.004-04:00

I wrote this letter earlier this week, and sent it to each of the 12 members of the University of Notre Dame's Board of Fellows, who are meeting on Friday (8/21). The letter was 4 1/2 pages long (in MS Word), so I'll reproduce it here in two installments.

_____________________

Dear ___________,

As you prepare for the meeting of the University of Notre Dame Board of Fellows on August 21, I write to you as a devoted alumnus who, in conjunction with The Sycamore Trust alumni organization, has concerns about the direction the University has been traveling both recently and in the last few decades.

As the "Great Obama Kerfluffle of Spring 2009" unfolded, quite a few mentions were made, both by those who were thrilled with and those who were upset by the choice of commencement speaker and honorary doctorate in Law recipient, of the 1968 Land O' Lakes Statement that Notre Dame President Emeritus Fr. Theodore Hesburgh had been a prime figure in drafting. Depending on the writer’s position on the Obama matter, it was, as you may imagine, cited as either the greatest or worst thing ever to happen to Catholic higher education in America. As I believe that both the vision put forth in Land O' Lakes and Notre Dame’s experience over the subsequent 40 years in implementing it are enormously important to Notre Dame’s status and future as a Catholic university that is both truly Catholic and truly a university, and therefore worthy of important discussion and reflection, I’ll begin there.

The Land O' Lakes statement was a very ambitious document with a very ambitious vision for Catholic higher education, and the vision contained therein has borne a lot of good fruit for Notre Dame in particular and Catholic education in general. However, like any ambitious undertaking, the implementation of its vision also resulted in unintended and unforeseen consequences that have served to illuminate any shortcomings and/or overreaches in that vision. The flaw of the document, and therefore the vision, was that successful fruition of such a vision would depend upon three aspects, none of which Notre Dame (or most Catholic universities, for that matter) currently possesses:

1) Strong Leadership At The Top - Having autonomy from the hierarchical Church without having the university veer - drastically or gradually - away from the faith that founded it will only work if you have a strong leader that will keep the whole enterprise (and the various factions within) on course. Father Hesburgh, with his enormous clout and the (extremely underrated, in my opinion) contribution of Father Edmund Joyce, was able to provide such leadership. It is neither novel nor mean-spirited of me to point out that, since the retirement of "Ted and Ned", there has been under the Dome a rather noticeable decline in consistent leadership from the top levels of the administration in regards to maintaining and enhancing Notre Dame’s Catholic identity.

2) The Goodwill and Cooperation of the Faculty in Regards to Catholic Identity - Of course, without strong leadership articulating and reinforcing exactly what the clear definition of "Catholic identity" means, faculty members and groups within the faculty tend to break into factions, each with their own vision or visions. That the Faculty Senate, after a canvass of the faculty in 2008, declared that the University, in the hiring of faculty, should set aside any concerns as to the school’s Catholic identity, seems to indicate that out of this muddle of visions about the Catholic identity of Notre Dame – to even what such a phrase as "Catholic identity" actually means – the faculty’s interest in defining a such a vision in this regard has been shelved in favor of having no vision at all. To think that Notre Dame will continue to provide a full and vibrant Catholic education with a faculty comprised of more and more members that either do not share or do not value (or neither share nor value) the faith the school was founded on is to embrace a hope that is neither logically tenable nor statistically likely.

3) A Student Body Educated in their Faith - At the time of Land O' Lakes, your average Catholic college student entered the hallowed halls of ivy having had their Baltimore Catechism drilled into their heads, and now would take the next step of learning how to examine their faith (and its claims) critically. For such a student well-schooled in the basics of the faith, voices of dissent and even hostility to Church teaching provided a challenge and an opportunity for reflection, growth, and deepening of the understanding of their faith. However, the last 30 some-odd years of Catholic doctrinal education for elementary through high school age has been an unmitigated disaster: your average teenage Catholic, whether he/she has gone to Catholic schools or had to rely on C.C.D. (which was rather markedly reduced during this time from "Confraternity of Christian Doctrine" to "Catechetically Clueless Daycare"), enters the challenge of higher education rather ignorant as to the basic beliefs of their faith. They are thus ill-prepared to subject the claims of the Catholic faith - something they have only a tenuous grasp on to begin with - to higher criticism; for such a student, subjecting something they have only a superficial understanding of to higher criticism will merely overwhelm them, and serve only to reinforce the relativism and unhealthy skepticism (that is, a skepticism that is skeptical of everything except its own presuppositions) that they have absorbed as the default position of modern American culture. The students themselves seemed to have sensed this, as from my days as an undergraduate student through to present time, I have seen an almost yearly call from student representatives for additional class offerings in the fundamentals of the Catholic faith. Therefore, the model for educating the average Catholic college student proposed 40 years ago does not match the reality of the needs of the Catholic college student today.

Given this, is it not possible that Land O' Lakes went too far in its insistence on total autonomy from the institutional Church? Surely, for Notre Dame to be a true university, the institutional Church cannot be the only voice that matters, nor need it even be the primary voice; however, for Notre Dame to be a truly Catholic university, does not the institutional Church deserve to have a place at the table - perhaps, even a privileged one? Could there not be a fertile middle ground between the extreme positions of either a) Notre Dame being governed by Rome or its founding order on one hand or b) total autonomy on the other? Must every suggestion that Notre Dame’s Catholic identity could benefit from a more constructive involvement with the institutional Church be met with outcries that those doing the suggesting are trying to turn Notre Dame into a pseudo-seminary?

_____________________

Tune in later this week for Part 2....

(Belated) Credit Where Credit Is Due

2009-08-12T15:30:00.008-04:00

Like most folks, from time to time I derive a bit of pleasure from mocking various figures in the entertainment industry - mostly for the deep fissure separating them from anything remotely approaching reality, but occasionally for being just plain unintelligent. One of those I had pegged as a permanent member of the colossal-bank-account-accompanied-by-infinitesimal-brain-activity gang was former Van Halen front-man David Lee Roth: he, it seemed, spent his entire adulthood prancing around stages as an oversexed buffoon. His career after Van Halen, whose members finally wearied of him and booted him from the band, consisted of one album that made any impression at all on the music charts, after which he (mercifully) faded from public consciousness.

However, recently I came across a piece on the First Things blog that had me rethinking my assumptions about Mr. Roth:

You’ve probably heard the decades-old tale about how the band Van Halen included a provision in their backstage concert rider that stipulated that brown M&M’s were to be banished from the band’s dressing room.

I had always assumed it was another arbitrary and outlandish demand by spoiled rock stars. But according to Snopes.com, the provision served a practical purpose: to provide an easy way of determining whether the technical specifications of the contract had been thoroughly read and complied with. As Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth explained in his autobiography:
Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors – whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through.

The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function. So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say "Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes…" This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: "There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation."

So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl...well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error. They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.

Roth understood that putting on a a concert required close attention to a broad range of details outlined in the agreement between the band and the venue. Making assumptions about what was in the contract without having read it could get people killed.

The First Things piece then goes on to ask:

Why is it that drugged-out rock stars can understand this concept and yet our own stone-sober legislators can’t quite grasp the fact that they need to read and understand the content of the bills they are voting on?

While this is a relevant question, it wasn't what first crossed my mind when I read the excerpt from Roth's autobiography. No, my first thought was "David Lee Roth wrote a book?" I had never thought of Roth as someone who has ever read a book, let alone written one. This thought was, in rather short order, eclipsed by another one: While there is certainly ample testimony about his involvement with drugs, alcohol, and women, I was impressed with how involved, profoundly cunning and, yes, smart Roth was about the requirements of staging Van Halen's shows. Whatever else can be said about him, he certainly knows an awful lot about his craft, and devised (or, at the very least, had knowledgeable appreciation of) a clever method of ensuring that all the details pertaining to the massive production that is a big-name rock concert were satisfied.

As that sank in, it reminded me of something Arsenio Hall said on this early-90s late-night TV talk show about Sylvester Stallone. Despite a decade-and-a-half Hollywood career marked by numerous box-office successes (the Rocky and Rambo series, both of which he wrote all the screenplays for; Victory; Tango and Cash), Stallone was often dismissed by critics and otherwise intelligent people as "dumb" and/or "stupid". A guest of Hall's one evening mentioned that he had met Stallone recently and was surprised at how smart he was, to which Arsenio replied:

A lot of people think Stallone is unintelligent or stupid, but let me tell you, that man has got some serious bank [millions of dollars], and you don't get that kind of bank by being stupid....

I had long dismissed David Lee Roth as a buffoon, but (paralleling Stallone) I should have realized that one does not get to be the lead vocal for a gazillion-dollar musical act like Van Halen was in the 70s and early 80s without knowing your craft inside and out.

I suppose now I shall have to rethink my opinion about Keanu Reeves......

The Future of Marriage

2009-07-09T12:51:00.002-04:00

As Jeanine Garafolo's character in The Truth About Cats And Dogs,

You can love your pet, but you really don't want to love your pet...

This nugget of wisdom was lost on a certain Ugandan woman:

Woman marries dog

A Ghanaian woman has married her dog because it has qualities she had seen only in her late father.

Emily Mabou, 29, of Aburi, married the 18-month-old dog in a ceremony attended by a traditional priest and local, curious villagers, reports the Daily Dose.

Her younger brother David Mabou said her family boycotted the wedding which they felt was "a stupid step to combat her loneliness".

But Ms Mabou said: "For so long, I've been praying for a life partner who will have all the qualities of my dad. My dad was kind, faithful, and loyal to my mum, and he never let her down.

"I've been in relationships with so many men here in Togo, and they are all the same - skirt-chasers and cheaters. My dog is kind, and loyal to me and he treats me with so much respect."

In the ceremony, the priest warned villagers not to mock the wedding, but to "rejoice with her as she has found happiness at last".

Asked how she intends to raise children with her new husband, Ms Mabou said simply: "We will adopt."

One can only hope that any "secret tape" taken during the wedding night is not forthcoming.

Now, I adore my dog, Tipper, but I can honestly say that the question of whether I would marry her or Lynda was not a dilemma that I encountered. However, consider all that Tipper had to offer:

* Tipper would never yell at me for leaving the toilet seat up.

* After I've just walked in exhausted from a 10-hour workday,Tipper would not demand that we immediately engage in a 2-hour conversation about her 'feelings'.

* Tipper has never used up all the hot water showering in the morning.

* Tipper has never asked me if I think she's getting fat.

* Tipper seems genuinely excited when I come home with the smell of another dog on me.

and the best reason...

* No matter what I've done to upset Tipper, all is forgiven if I simply rub her tummy.

On the other hand, Lynda's breath is considerably better, she is much better with finances than Tipper, and Lynda's dining preferences do not include worms, live grasshoppers, and her own poop.

Of course, my ideal animal mate was my long-ago girlfriend's ferret. Ferrets sleep 16-18 hours a day.

And So It Begins.....

2009-06-25T12:27:00.005-04:00

As President Obama gears up to "reform" health care in America, here is one of his prescriptions for containing costs:

President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.

In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don't unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."

He added: "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."

Since there are those who may not agree that it's time to give granny a little shove towards death's door, their decision is done "unthinkingly". We can't have people making those decisions for themselves, can we?

I'll try to resist the temptation to mention that I told you this was coming. But I did.

Long-Awaited Photo Of Maria

2009-06-19T13:21:00.003-04:00

(Click on photo for larger image)

My favorite song to sing to Maria:

Maria's favorite song for me to sing to her:

There's usually dancing involved in the latter.

Bring on the dancing Bulls...

2009-05-31T15:17:00.002-04:00

The Big East baseball tournament semi-final game between the Connecticut Huskies and South Florida Bulls was interrupted by a 5 hour rain delay. Unable to determine the winner on the field, the two teams chose the next logical mode of competition: a dance-off.

Can't wait to see the Yankees and Red Sox try this....

Some Questions for Father Jenkins

2009-05-17T21:08:00.002-04:00

Last Wednesday, Father Jenkins, the President of the University of Notre Dame, sent an email to students and alumni. Therein, he expressed his congratulations to the graduating class for their accomplishments and emphasized that this commencement is their day. I could not agree more, and it is a shame that Father Jenkins’ decision to offer an honorary degree to the most pro-abortion U.S. President in history will likely overshadow their graduation day.

Father Jenkins reiterated his statement that Notre Dame is honoring Barack Obama for his accomplishments and positions on issues unrelated to abortion. This list of accomplishments somehow escaped the notice of the faculty of Arizona State University who refused to offer Obama an honorary degree precisely because the President has yet to accomplish much this early in his Administration. It seems Notre Dame has lower standards than ASU for awarding honorary degrees. It leads me to question if Notre Dame has any standards at all.

In that vein, I have a few questions for Father Jenkins. Is there any position a Notre Dame Commencement speaker could hold which, despite his or her other laudable accomplishments, would disqualify him or her from receiving an honorary degree? For example, would a proponent of eugenics, a denier of the holocaust, a white supremacist, an advocate of destructive medical experimentation on human beings or a suborder of genocide be denied an honorary degree from Notre Dame?

If there exists some position so diametrically opposed to fundamental Catholic moral teaching so as to disqualify an otherwise worthy candidate from receiving honorary degree, then why is that position worse than ushering in an unprecedented expansion of legal protection and federal funding for the legalized murder of millions of innocent children?

Well, you know: Bull. Horns.

2009-05-15T17:06:00.008-04:00

A good portion of the 2 or 3 readers of this blog may wonder "Why doesn’t Jerry write more often, to better share his insight, brilliance, and humor – not to mention his Christ-like humility – with the world?"

Admit it.  You’ve wondered it.

The answer is that I do a decent amount of writing away from the comfy confines of Tom and Jerry: in emails, but also often in comment threads of other folks’ blogs.  I usually post under the nom de plume GeronimoRumplestiltskin, but occasionally post under my real name.  Such an occurrence happened over the last couple of days, so I thought I would reproduce it here, so that you, dear readers, can see that I don’t spend all of my non-"Writing-For-Tom and Jerry" time at home merely annoying my wife.

In one of the many online articles in regards to the Obama-Notre Dame episode over the last two months, First Things editor Joseph Bottum reflects on what President Obama’s commencement appearance at Notre Dame means in regards to Catholic culture in America.  Georgetown’s Patrick Deneen, the Associate Professor of Government & Founding Director of the Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy, thoughtfully offers his assessment on his blog in the way of reply.  In the comments thread of Deneen’s post was this missive:

Bill Bruehl said...

Your analysis is compelling.  Catholics have melted away into the general secular culture which is not only American but European as well.  The question is "why?"

I will offer two reasons based on my own experience.  When I left 12 years of Catholic school in Chester PA in 1949, I left the church.  I wasn't capable at first of understanding why I left.  It took me years to figure that out.  Now at age 77 I understand why the church ceased to command my respect and loyalty.

The first reason is to be found in the hierarchy, its demand for obedience.  Secondly, the church clings to absurd literalism in its dogma and imagery.  It is patently absurd for educated human beings - or beings being educated as I was - to believe LITERALLY in dogmas like the Assumption or the Resurrection or Transubstantiation.  These are silly supernatural superstitions that contain a numinous power of enormous importance ONLY when understood as metaphors, but no, the hierarchy cannot believe we simple minded foolish humans can deal with anything but silly superstition.

Unchurched spirituality, on the other hand, the search for a meaningful numinous experience is on the rise.  It takes many forms, some as silly as literalism, but others like the thinking of Bishop Spong or Matthew Fox profoundly challenge the ever more conservative orthodoxy now ruling the Roman Church.  A new reformation is needed that will accept the revelations of science in the 21st century.

Such "I'm too educated/intelligent to believe in [insert Catholic dogma here]" musings really get under my skin for some reason; perhaps it is due to the fact that those making them rather unanimously proceed to champion laughably specious alternatives to such belief. I picked up my rhetorical shillelagh and waded into battle:

Jerry Beckett said...

Gee, I don't know, Mr. Bruehl, I find it patently absurd for educated human beings - or beings who are as impressed with their own level of education to the extent that you are - to find either the sloppy thinking and disingenuous exegesis of Bishop Spong, or the loopy 'Creation Spirituality' of Matthew Fox, to be a "profound challenge" to the Roman Catholic Church. Also, I find it patently absurd that such a person could actually believe that 'science' will somehow disprove the historicity of supernatural events: perhaps it is not the Church that needs a better understanding of what modern science has to say.

I considered mentioning that, for a fellow who claims that he has no respect or loyalty for the Church, he can’t seem to keep it out of his mind for very long: on his listing on his webpage of the 8 full length plays he has written, 4 of them feature the ignorant, repressive clergyman as a main character. Though it brought to mind Chesterton’s observation that "The enemies of religion cannot leave it alone. They laboriously attempt to smash religion. They cannot smash religion, but they do smash everything else.", I left it out.

Mr. Bruehl shot back:

Bill Bruehl said...

Jerry, it may seem to some that the only way to defend their faith in the church is to launch ad hominem attacks. I don't think so. I think the Church can and will change. The Magisteria is not unchanging (vide Galileo). So the more Catholics think for themselves and demand that the hierarchy listen, the stronger will be both their faith and their church. The time is past to have the hierarchy think for you. You are not a lamb, a sheep. Can you see that?

Besides invoking Galileo in a manner that signaled he has embraced the Enlightenment myth about the Galileo affair, not to mention his gaffe in equating the judgments of the Inquisition with the teaching office of the Magisterium, Mr. Bruehl commits the common error of assuming that those who hold an orthodox belief do so out of ignorance, laziness, and a lack of intellectual rigor. I took him to task for this thusly:

Jerry Beckett said...

Mr. Bruehl:

Thank you for your humorous reply. I appreciate the irony you displayed when you

1) wrote of my ilk that "the only way to defend their faith in the church is to launch ad hominem attacks"

2) then, a mere 6 sentences later, insinuate that I, in my belief, am a "sheep".

I also see you chose to continue with your "more intellectual than thou" theme in the thrust of your reply: that I let the hierarchy do my thinking for me, while you think for yourself. What evidence do you have for this charge? Oh, right, because I fail to reject the historicity of the Resurrection and Assumption (among other dogma) and be dazzled by the comically specious ramblings of the likes of Spong and Fox, as you have. Refraining to inquire whether my belief could possibly be due to, say, my own 20+ years of reading, questioning, and reflection, you settle right into your comfortable and rather self-flattering conclusion: since I don't think like you, I therefore do not think for myself.

This is what you consider an intellectually sound line of argument?

Good grief.

When I close a comment addressed to someone by quoting the great theologian Charlie Brown, I’ve pretty much decided not to waste any more energy on him. Anyway, I’m sure Mr. Bruehl has more plays starring tiredly stereotypical repressive clergy to write.

Two Weeks In

2009-05-14T15:27:00.006-04:00

As Tom mentioned a couple of posts ago, Lynda gave birth to our daughter, Maria Rosa Guadalupe, at 1:38pm on Thursday, April 30th.  Having Maria born in April makes her birthstone a diamond, which I’m sure she’ll be happy about when she gets older.

Thanks to the wonderfulness that is an epidural, Lynda didn’t experience much pain during the delivery.  I, however, am scarred for life.  Though I knew I was to be in the room for the delivery, I had not intended to actually watch the baby come out of the, um, point of exit.  However, given the setup of the delivery room, it would have been difficult not to, and my first glance at the action going on at the "point of exit" was, unfortunately, followed by many more.  It was like in 2003 when the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out: I didn’t really want to see it, but there I was the day it came out watching the blood-and-bodily-fluids flow.  Through the entire delivery, two thoughts competed for dominance in my mind:

1.  This is pretty amazing.
2.  I am never having sex again.

Maria didn’t cry when she finally came all the way out, nor when I cut the cord, nor when they put her on this little table by Lynda’s bed to clean her off.  However, while the nurse was cleaning her off, Maria opened her eyes for the first time and saw my face smiling down at her.  She then let out a loud cry.  Having spent a lifetime of seeing females cry when they first see my face, my feelings weren’t hurt.

The next day, we brought her home, and the "caring for and raising the child" phase began.  In the months leading up to giving birth, Lynda had amassed a veritable stockpile of books that proclaimed themselves essential for guiding us in giving our child the necessary advantages that will be needed to succeed in this increasingly competitive society.  You’ve probably seen a few of these titles:

The Brightest Kid On The Block

Baby Prodigy: A Guide To Raising A Smarter, Happier Baby

Raising Your Kid To Be Such A !#@$!-ing Genius That People Will Never Believe She’s Yours

It’s all very heady stuff, with the ‘latest’ techniques based on the ‘latest’ research.  You can’t help coming away from reading any or all of these without thinking "Apparently, for 10,000 some odd years, parents must have been colossal morons."  Without these books, how did parents ever raise kids who could think at a level beyond that of a house plant?

During the first week, however, all this knowledge was about as useful as a solar-powered flashlight.  For the first 7 days she was home, I would have been OK with Maria eventually dropping out of community college to spend more time smoking the reefer if she could go one day without wailing like she needs a young priest and an old priest through each and every minute that she doesn’t have a bottle in her mouth.

Luckily, on the 8th day the pediatrician recommended Mylicon, which apparently has reduced the gas that was the major cause of Maria’s discomfort.  The reduction in the decibel level at home has served to soothe the anxiety of both Lynda and I to such a degree that we have decided to name our next child Mylicon.

So into our routine we go.  I’ll post some pictures in the next couple of days.  Unfortunately, early indications are that she will look more like me than Lynda: she has pale skin rather than Lynda’s darker shade, and possibly blue eyes (it’s kind of hard to tell what color her eyes are, actually).  She does have black hair, though, so there’s still hope that she’ll look like her mom.  A lifetime spent looking like me would be too cruel a fate for such a precious daughter.

ND Response

2009-05-10T20:15:00.003-04:00

The students of Notre Dame have organized a response to Father Jenkins' ill-conceived decision to grant Barack Obama an honorary degree. These students love Notre Dame and plan respectful protestest with a goal of steering the University back to a Catholic course. I fully support their efforts.

Congratulations Jerry and Linda

2009-05-03T23:01:00.000-04:00

on the birth of a healthy baby girl!

Notre Dame, My Mother

2009-05-03T22:58:00.001-04:00

Amid the scadal surrounding Notre Dame, First Things posted this moving essay about choosing life. My favorite quote:

Of all women, Our Lady could surely feel pity for an unplanned pregnancy.

Just Enough Of Me, Way Too Much Of You

2009-04-22T11:25:00.009-04:00

Today is Earth Day, which according to Earth Day enthusiasts, is "all about awareness": awareness of the need to be "eco-friendly" and awareness of the need to "save the planet".  Mostly, though, I am aware that if one more person tells me I need to "go green", I'm going to start burning truck tires in my back yard.

What is most unsettling about the current wave of "eco-friendly" enthusiasts is the resurrecting of the late '60's - early '70's phenomena of claims for the need for "population control".  Back then, the idea was that the world's population would soon outgrow the world's resources, resulting in mass starvation and disease.  From 1968 to 1990, the world's population did grow; in fact, it more than doubled, from about 2.8 billion people to about 6.4 billion people.  However, deaths from famine and disease decreased worldwide by 16%.  Furthermore, there has never been a famine in a country with a free press.  This fact left even the most ardent population control advocates with the realization that humanity was more than capable of producing enough food and services to sustain itself, if only allowed the freedom to do so.

However, falsehoods never really die, they just go in search of different justification.  In this case, the impetus behind calls for population control is not "we won't have enough to go around", but "we're killing the planet."  Nice.  Too many people was to have us all starving, which is bad.  We found ways to produce enough to keep us alive...and that is bad, because it hurts the earth.  So instead of "population control" because of the earth not having enough resources, we are called to "population control" because humans are able to extract the resources that we were told we didn't have.

There is quite a bit that disturbs me about this line of thinking.  First of all, I am quite suspicious of folks who employ shifting justifications in the advocation of a plan of action: these are folks with a solution in search of a problem.  In this case, it is folks who desire a radical reduction in population through widespread birth control, abortion, and euthanasia.  They claim it should be "voluntary", but such a claim does not match their rhetoric: the "direness" of the situation as they tout it would quickly and logically lead to enforced birth control, abortion, euthanasia, and in the end, genocide.  A better example of what the late Richard Neuhaus' meant when he coined the phrase "Where orthodoxy is optional, it is sooner or later proscribed" would be difficult to imagine.

Where does such a mindset come from?  As noted by the National Review's Wesley Smith:

...environmentalism itself seems to be evolving from a movement dedicated to conserving resources, preserving pristine areas, and protecting endangered species into an anti-humanistic ideology that increasingly disdains humankind as a scourge that literally threatens the existence of "the planet."

As Smith notes, as this evolution has progressed, this mindset has crept into entertainment.  In the last year, two major films were released touting the "mankind as a virus to be exterminated" message: M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening featured the planet's plants rebelling against their human overlords by releasing pheromones that caused humans to commit mass suicide.  The story for The Day The Earth Stood Still, a remake of a 1951 film of the same name, was reworked from the original's "alien on goodwill mission to earth to help humanity save itself" to last December's "alien on mission to destroy humanity to save the earth".  Gee, great Christmas movie, huh?  "Joy to the world! Now die."  In both films, the clear intent of the filmmakers was for audiences to sympathize with those seeking to wipe out humanity, and though humanity gained a reprieve in both films, it came with the threat that we'd better "go green" or else.

On the small screen, the Discovery, National Geographic, and History channels have all run documentary series detailing various hypotheses about what would happen to the earth if all humanity were to suddenly vanish.  What struck me while watching the History channel's production this week was the note of hopefulness and hint of joy expressed by the narrator and those interviewed, and the idyllic state they imagined for the world if only humanity would disappear: apparently, nothing harmful ever happened to any creature before humans appeared, and all such occurrences would cease once humanity left.  The impression that lingered with me after I had changed the channel was that none of these people seemed to grasp the amount of human suffering that would be required for the earth to return to this (supposedly) idyllic state.  Furthermore, none of these people seemed to grasp that if all this came to pass, it would require their death in particular.

This is a common and, in my view, rather despicable trait amongst population control advocates: when they talk about reducing the number of humans, they are never talking about themselves.  Go up to any activist calling for a reduction in human population, hand them a cyanide capsule, and say "Sounds great.  You go first."  You will likely find no takers.  However, for quite a few of them, such a challenge would not seriously deter their advocacy of the removal of other humans from the planet.  See, they themselves can't be the ones to go, because they are needed to guide and "educate" humanity in its need to restrict its numbers.  And if all, or most, of humanity were to accept these views, wouldn't that then remove the justification for their exclusion from the huge death lottery to follow?  Why no, since it was they who were the ones who spread the gospel of population reduction and saved the earth, they would be entitled to enjoy the (supposed) fruits of a radically depopulated world.  You will never hear an advocate of population reduction champion any course of action that does not contain a provision for their personal survival and autonomy.  Whatever dire situation they cite as justification for the demise of millions, the situation is never so dire that it requires their own demise.

The bottom line is this: the population control crowd's view has shifted from

For the good of humanity, a good portion of you need to cease to exist. I shall supervise the process.

For the good of the Earth, a good portion of you need to cease to exist. I shall supervise the process.

Whatever the justification, I find their views monstrous, and their intent for personal avoidance in sharing the consequences of their views to be despicable.

The Luddite Manifesto

2009-04-15T15:17:00.007-04:00

I do not 'Twitter'.

The very name itself sounds like a synonym for "incessant, meaningless babble".  I cannot imagine anyone, except perhaps my dog, who would find a constant play-by-play of my life, in 140-characters-or-less messages at a time, the least bit compelling.  I have yet to find myself in a situation where I absolutely need to communicate a 140-characters-or-less message to anyone, unless that person was in the room with me, i.e. "My clothes are on fire.  Please put them out."

I do not 'Facebook'.

I am immediately wary of any noun that suddenly attains verb status.  Any one growing up in the ‘70’s remembers this happening with "dialogue", which morphed from a sophisticated way of saying "a conversation" into "using vague terms to dance around important issues, in order to accomplish or decide on absolutely nothing".  Now everyone is "Facebooking", spending hours on their personal Facebook page, much the same as folks used to do on their "personal home page", and it’s not the slightest bit more interesting.  Since I already keep in touch with everyone I care about, I am not in the least interested in maintaining a Facebook page or becoming the "friend" of people I don’t know or haven’t heard from in years, and I certainly have no desire to keep myself informed on the minutia of the daily lives of such "friends".  I received an email through the classmates.com site about a month ago from "Steve".  We were basketball teammates in high school, and though we barely knew each other, he wrote to urge me to "get on Facebook, man!!"  Yeah, I’ll be sure to sign right up.  I have neither heard from nor thought about you in 25 years, but I sure am interested in keeping up with what your favorite breakfast cereal is.

I do not 'Instant Message'.

Want to have a real-time back-and-forth correspondence with me?  Great.  Pick up the damn phone.

I do not 'Text'.

This is largely for the same reasons as my avoidance of Twitter and IM, with the added rationale being that I didn’t pay for texting on my cell phone plan, and every text I receive costs me money.  Also, the texting and IM craze is turning America into a nation of grammatical morons.  Every once in a while, someone tells me, "Jerry, you are such a good writer."  I used to think that this meant "Jerry, you write interesting things in a thoughtful, compelling manner."  Now, I take it to mean "Jerry, in your writing you use elements I rarely see anymore, like words and punctuation."  Yes, it’s true: I prefer my written communication to be in complete thoughts, using actual words.  I don’t want to know WUD, if MWBRL, if you’re CRBT, or DOS.  I have no desire to be LOL, or LMAO.  I think the whole IM, Twitter, and text message thing is a CWOT, and IHBTTDOTTJAFDOSAATUTMAWA**.

[**- I Have Better Things To Do Than To Jabber All Freaking Day One Sentence At A Time Using The Most Asinine Method Available.]

I do not own a Blackberry or iPhone.

My cell phone cannot not play movies, surf the web, or play music.  At home, I have a TV for watching movies, a computer to surf the web, and a stereo for playing music.  If I leave home, it is because I want to do something other than watch a movie, surf the web, or play music.  "OK," you would say, "but what if you have to wait in line or in a waiting area...then what?"  Oh, heavens!  God forbid that I’m not able to watch Braveheart for the 43rd time or retreat into my little world of my music.  I might actually have to talk to someone or read a magazine not tailored to my interests that I otherwise wouldn’t read.  The horror.  If I absolutely must, my cell phone will allow me to access sports scores and movie times, and if I need to go to the bathroom while out shopping, I can play Tetris while sitting on the john.  That’s all a man really needs.

I do not own a Playstation 3, Xbox 360, or a Wii.

Once I got married, and was now living with an adult who spends her time at home either a) doing productive things, or b) watching reasonably intelligent TV programs, I felt like an idiot playing video games in my living room.  I do, however, own a few other "home entertainment systems":  they’re called "books".

I have never played Guitar Hero.

Here’s an idea for all the Guitar Hero aficionados out there:  what if, instead of spending hours mastering the video game, you spent those same hours, you know, learning how to play an actual guitar?  Might be a bit more fulfilling, no?

Hell, for 4 years, I didn’t even have a radio in my car.

It is possible, and even preferable, for me to drive my automobile, alone with my thoughts, and just enjoy letting my mind wander.  I do not recommend this for people under 25 and/or Obama supporters, as their minds are too small to be out wandering alone.

If someone needs to reach me, I have a simple cell phone, an e-mail address, this blog, and a mailbox.  That’s all.  That’s enough.  If something important happens, I know how to get in touch with the people who may care.

Other than my wife, none of these people live close enough to me to do anything other than pray, though in case of my death they may want to know as soon as possible so that they can get a head start on coming up with excuses to skip the funeral.

I eagerly await the development of new technologies, so that I may ignore them too.

So there.

Thank you Irish Rover

2009-04-10T23:24:00.003-04:00

In my letter to Father Jenkins criticizing his decision to bestow upon President Obama an honorary degree, I made this assertion:

The most prominent Catholic university in America honoring the most pro-choice President in history will serve to legitimize pro-choice policies in the eyes of the Catholic faithful. No nuanced explanation about honoring the President for his other accomplishments will mitigate the scandal.

Greer Hannan's article in the Irish Rover explains why that statement is true. (go to page 3 of the PDF) Here is the crux of her argument:

The sophists have hijacked our political culture, so that politicians’ rhetoric has overcome dialogue, and the projection of images has overcome complexity. Honoring Obama at Notre Dame provides an opportunity for the President to make the visual statement that his political life is laudable to the Catholic Church. Such an honor is particularly pernicious because Obama’s rhetoric of hope and change was based on his emphasis on social justice, but he takes an approach the Catholic Church cannot endorse. In a society where the projection of image through modern technology threatens to obliterate the search for truth, Catholics sometimes must call ‘Bullshit’ to particular ideologies in witnessing to the truth.

How can Obama claim to support social justice when he seeks to deny basic human rights to an entire class of human beings simply because they are not wanted?

A ten minute lesson on government

2009-04-07T21:22:00.000-04:00

This is worth the ten minutes it takes to watch.

Vagina Monologues Canceled at Notre Dame

2009-04-07T10:45:00.003-04:00

First the Queer Film Festival was cancelled, and now the Vagina Monologues.

For the first time in eight years, Notre Dame students will not perform The Vagina Monologues at an on- or off-campus location.

Junior Miriam Olsen, a producer of last year's show, said the group of students in charge of organizing the production of "The Vagina Monologues" this year decided not to continue the show.

Instead, Olsen said she, along with several other students, declined to produce the show because they believed the controversy on campus that follows the show is ultimately counterproductive to the show's purpose.

The "show's purpose", as stated by VM creator Eve Ensler and those who champion the production, is (ostensibly) to raise awareness about violence against women. How on earth the contents of the Vagina Monologues serve to "raise awareness about violence against women" is question that I have yet to encounter a coherent answer to.

More News from Notre Dame

2009-04-01T22:42:00.002-04:00

Reported by the American Papist.

Let me make one thing clear. The fact that new Dean of the ND Law school supports Democrats does not bother me one bit. The fact that she supports pro-abortion Catholic politicians really does. I would be just as concerned if she supported Rudy Guiliani or Governor Arnold.

I am not going to jump to conclusions about her views on Catholic morals. I cannot make that determination based on her political contributions. However, this does raise some red flags.

The Notre Dame Law School has a reputation for Catholic Orthodoxy. Let us hope it continues under the new leadership.

Jerry's Letter to Fr. Jenkins

2009-03-31T16:33:00.007-04:00

As you will see, I took a somewhat different approach than you may have expected:
___________________________________________

Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
President of the University of Notre Dame
400 Main Building
Notre Dame, IN 46556

Dear Father Jenkins,

While it is my opinion that Notre Dame’s invitation to President Obama to deliver the commencement address is inappropriate, and its bestowal of an honorary law degree to him - in light of his policies and actions - is completely antithetical to an institution that is devoted to the intrinsic value of human life at all stages, I shall not bore you with arguments in support of my opinion. I’m sure they have been made repeatedly by those far more educated, articulate, and persuasive than myself.

You have stated that your intent in extending the invitation and honor to the President is to “to engage in conversation.” As Hadley Arkes, the Ney Professor of Jurisprudence at Amherst College, noted in an article this week,

President Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, noted that the president had met recently with Francis Cardinal George to discuss matters of interest to the Church. And with that background, he said, the president "looks forward to continuing that dialogue in the lead-up to the commencement" at Notre Dame.

While Professor Arkes continues on in his article to propose a debate between the President and a member of the Notre Dame faculty, I would highly doubt that President Obama would agree to such an event, even if held in private. I am also aware that many demonstrations are being planned by Notre Dame students and alumni; while I appreciate their conviction and passion, I do not think that any such direct confrontation will make much of an impression on the President.

However, Alan Hunt, a former Protestant minister now a Catholic convert, offered a suggestion in an article this week, which I have reworked somewhat to be more practical and applicable. I would humbly suggest the following:

You could invite Obama to a reception hosted by ND students and alumni who were the result of unplanned and/or unwanted pregnancies. As my biological mother was an unwed high-schooler in 1966 Chicago, and I was in an orphanage until after my 1st birthday, I would be happy to attend and/or participate in the organization of the event. The hosts would act as waiters and bussing staff, serving drinks and food to the attendees, and clearing dirty glasses and dishes. However, only a few of the staff would actually be visible and working. After a period of refreshment, I would suggest:

• You thank the President for attending, and reiterate your wish to engage him on issues concerning the dignity of each human person from conception to natural death.

• You thank the wait staff for their service, and mention that each member of the wait staff is a student or alum who was an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy.

• The leader of the wait staff could accept your thanks, and say a few words to reiterate the dignity of each human person from conception to natural death, regardless of whether they are "wanted" or not.

• The leader could then state "Unfortunately, since 1973, over half of unwanted pregnancies have been terminated by abortion**. Had the intrinsic value of each human life not been denied them, here is what our wait staff would be capable of."

• The remaining wait staff, which would slightly outnumber those already visible, would then enter the room. The reception would continue, with the full wait staff clearing dirty glasses and dishes.

**-The best data I could find in my preliminary search was that an average of 2 million pregnancies annually are "unplanned or unwanted", and an average of 1.3 million abortions are performed annually, hence the "more than half" claim. I can find more complete statistics, complete with citations, if you would like me to.

In this way, President Obama would neither be insulted nor be directly confronted, but would be offered a glimpse of void incurred by the failure to recognize and protect the intrinsic dignity of each human person from conception to natural death. As Mr. Hunt wrote of his similar proposal:

This simple reception humanizes the case. The conversation moves beyond theory into reality. What better way to open the eyes of Obama than by greeting him with the joyful smiles of live humans who fortunately were not seen by their mothers as "punishment"....This experience is the embodiment of showing grace to a misguided, sitting president. Confront moral error with the very real presence of children. In accomplishing only this much, Notre Dame will have demonstrated its own faith and also pioneered a new tack in changing the heart of our pro-abortion president.

Imagine the experience George Wallace or Bull Connor might have had if they had been welcomed by the administration and graduates of Morehouse College, say in 1963…..Might that not have been a new humanizing arrow in the non-violent quiver of the civil rights movement?

Whatever course of action you pursue in "engaging" the President on his views on the protection of the intrinsic dignity of each human person, I will be praying for the success of your efforts.

"...And our hearts forever love thee Notre Dame"

In Christ and His Blessed Mother,

John Gerard Beckett
Class of 1995
___________________________________________

I'm sure that there are those that are surprised I did not pursue the "condemn and threaten" route. I'm sure that there are those that think me a fool - or, at the very least, quixotic - for thinking that a) Fr. Jenkins actually intends to engage Obama, b) Obama actually would listen, c) that the suggestion I outlined in my letter will ever reach Jenkins' eyes, and/or d) that he would actually ever consider it. I can already think of a few such people.

It is very likely that you are right. It is also certain that I don't give a damn.

I've already contacted Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture outlining the proposal in my letter to Jenkins. Although I was told that the Center is already considering various methods of "engaging" President Obama, they were intrigued enough to refer me to Professor Elizabeth Kirk, the faculty sponsor for ND's Right To Life group. I can think of a few other groups that might be interested. I will continue my support of and work with the Sycamore Trust. And, of course, my nightly rosary, undertaken with a renewed vigor as Notre Dame's Catholic identity gains a prominent spot in my intentions. As EWTN's Raymond Arroyo remarked in his interview with the Trust's president, William Dempsey, on Friday's World Over program, the breadth and volume of the reaction by Notre Dame students and alumni to Obama's invitation/honor indicates that, as far as Notre Dame's Catholic identity, "there's still a lot of sap in the tree."

Damn right there is.

When it comes to preserving and enhancing Notre Dame's Catholic identity, I am a loyal son of Notre Dame, a Fighting Irishman, and I have only yet begun to fight.

A letter to the President of the University of Notre Dame

2009-03-29T23:34:00.003-04:00

Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
President of the University of Notre Dame
400 Main Building
Notre Dame, IN 46556

Dear Father Jenkins:

Thank you for your loyal service to our Alma Mater. You encouraged me with your January 23^rd, 2006 speech where you emphasized the importance of Catholic character at the University of Notre Dame. I am a loyal alumnus, a donor since 1995, and a member of the Edward Frederick Sorin Society who believes Notre Dame ought to be first and foremost a Catholic university.

It was disappointing to learn of your plan to offer an honorary law degree to President Barack Obama. It appears that gaining prestige in the secular world is more important to the University’s leadership than promoting Catholic values.

You no doubt have heard all of the arguments for and against your proposal to honor President Obama. I will not belabor them here except to say that the operative issue is scandal. The most prominent Catholic university in America honoring the most pro-choice President in history will serve to legitimize pro-choice policies in the eyes of the Catholic faithful. No nuanced explanation about honoring the President for his other accomplishments will mitigate the scandal. The University is sending a clear signal that the right to life of the unborn is secondary to other concerns. If the Fighting Irish will not fight for the most fundamental of human rights, then I can no longer support their efforts.

I am, therefore, halting my undesignated donations to the University and I am dropping my membership in the Sorin Society. Instead, I will donate to pro-life organizations that intend to protest the University’s ill- conceived decision. Please reconsider your decision, reverse the University’s present course, and restore Notre Dame’s Catholic character. You and the University we love will always have my prayers, but, until Catholic character is your top priority, you will not have my financial support.

Sincerely,

Tom
Class of 1995

Sign the Petition

2009-03-27T11:48:00.003-04:00

You may sign a petition to protest Notre Dame's honoring President Obama here.

The petition was initiated by the president of the Sycamore Trust, William Dempsey. He and I have spoken on the phone numerous times in regards to issues raised by the Trust.

Mr. Dempsey is to be interviewed by Raymond Arroyo on his The World Over program on EWTN this evening between 8:00 pm and 9:00 pm EDT (7-8pm CDT).

CNN News reported last night that there are already more than 100,000 signatures on petitions protesting Obama's being honored by Notre Dame. There are also more than a dozen on-campus groups actively protesting this honor.

UPDATE 1:17pm: As of right now, there are over 186,000 signatures on this petition alone.

Some Clarification

2009-03-25T15:44:00.003-04:00

[Note: Much of what follows I originally wrote as a comment in the comment thread of the below post. Since the comments were quite long, I thought it best to reproduce the gist of my response to accusations of "equivocation" in more easily readable post. - JGB]

The 2004 US Bishop’s statement instructs:

The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.

I thought it debatable as to whether Obama, in giving the commencement address, is being given a platform which would suggest support for his actions, especially since he will be sharing the stage and podium with pro-life-to-the-core Mary Ann Glendon (who is receiving a much higher honor, the Laetare medal, than Obama) and Fr. Jenkins. It would be tempting to argue that he is being given such a platform, and should therefore be denied it; in response, one could reply that one has no idea what he is going to say, and follow that by invoking "academic freedom" and "role of dissent" - terms that make debate almost impossible, as you soon find yourself splitting hairs as to what those terms actually mean: Been there, done that, slammed head against wall. It is a debate that would go round and round, and I have no interest whatsoever in engaging in debates that will bear no fruit - it may allow me to feel good and bask in the glow of like-minded individuals, but would only harden the resolve of my opponents and give them plenty of ammunition. So I would hold my tongue, and if I were a student, bring a "I am thankful my unwed teenaged mom didn’t think I was a ‘punishment’" sign to the commencement.

However, it is not debatable at all that Obama, in being awarded an honorary law degree, is being given an honor which would suggest support for his view of law and its application, especially in regards to legally unsound and morally reprehensible Roe decision. Protesting this is a cause I will pursue with great fervor. As such, I...

a) am signing the petition put forward by the Sycamore Trust, a group dedicated to preserving Notre Dame's Catholic identity, of which I am a member.

b) have composed my own letter of concern and protest that will be sent to ND's president, Fr. Jenkins.

c) spent Sunday afternoon compiling a list of addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers of Board of Trustees members at the request of William Dempsey, president of the Sycamore Trust. Each of these folks will receive the letter I am sending Fr. Jenkins.

d) will contact the Law school, to inquire as to what role they played (if any) in the decision to award this honorary degree to Obama. I have a hunch that this was not their initiative, but I'd like to know. If it was, they'll be getting a letter from me also.

As a faithful Catholic, strident pro-lifer, and enthusiastic alumnus of Notre Dame, I am attempting to be faithful to all three while being careful not to play into the hands of those who harbor contempt for any or all of them.

A Step Forward, A Step Back

2009-03-22T17:22:00.004-04:00

I had hoped that with the discontinuation of the Queer Film Festival and with the announcement of the Center of Ethics' new pro-life fund (as covered on the First Things web site) that Notre Dame was traveling the path of convincingly and publicly embracing its mission as a Catholic university. Given Obama's positions and recent actions in regards to abortion and embryonic stem cell research, that ND has chosen to award him an honorary law degree astounds me.

I have no objection at all to Obama being invited to speak at Notre Dame. I do have a rather stringent objection to him being awarded an honorary law degree. While I do not agree with Obama's policies in regards to the economy, taxation, or national defense, I would never cite these differences in opposition to Notre Dame bestowing an honorary degree on him. Indeed, he would be welcome to offer his views. Hell, even if he was somewhat wishy-washy on abortion and embryonic stem cell research, it wouldn't raise my hackles for ND to honor him: if Our Lady's University can stand having a clown like Richard McBrien on its Theology faculty for 30 years, having such a character receive an honorary degree isn't such a big deal. However, Obama's positions on life issues - and his actions as Illinois senator and now as President - are as callous and about as anti-life as one can get. His actions in regards to embryonic stem cell research are, as Charles Krauthammer recently wrote, "morally, ethically, and scientifically bankrupt". The same could easily said about his vote against the Born Alive Infants act and his support for FOCA (which would permanently enshrine the most specious and ill-supported court decision in US history as a fundamental right).

There is simply no logically sound method by which one can claim (as some Catholic writers have attempted to) that Obama's policies are somehow "pro-life". The argument that his economic policies will offer more economic opportunity to the poor (which is a dubious argument in and of itself), thus reducing the demand for abortion, is vitiated by the lengths he is willing to go to ensure that there is no impetus whatsoever for anyone that desires an abortion - at any age, at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason - to obtain one. I could not reasonably be thought of as pro-bank security if, in addition to addressing what I believed was the cause of bank robbery (lack of money), I removed all police, security personnel, and all security measures from banks, and required all bank employees to cooperate with (whatever their personal beliefs about the wrongness of robbery) and assist the robbers. Trying to convince oneself that Obama is really pro-life requires a similar suspension of reason.

Even claiming that Obama is merely "pro-choice" and not "pro-abortion" does not match either his rhetoric or actions. "Pro-choice" would imply that there is a choice to be made between the value of the unborn child's life and the degree to which a woman should have the authority to terminate that life. The death of a child is a greater imposition on the child than the carrying the child to term is on the mother. So unless the mother's life is in eminent danger, the life of the child must be preserved. Others would make exceptions in the case of rape or incest. Still others would weigh the value of the life of the child vs. the woman's autonomy to varying degrees. Obama, however, has given no indication that he thinks there is anything at all of value in regards to the unborn child's life worth weighing; in fact, his callous rhetoric and lack of any recognition that a life is being extinguished (or, in the case of embryonic stem cell research, being created in order to be stripped for parts) should trouble anyone with even an ounce of moral sense, as should his view that each person should be able to decide for themselves whether a human life has intrinsic value. Neither is a mark of a careful thinker, as the logical concluding point of these views is societal suicide.

President Obama speaking at commencement? No problem, and he's most welcome. Him receiving an honorary law degree? Completely inconsistent with an institution that values human life at all its stages.

Another Tough Theological Question

2009-03-04T13:58:00.004-05:00

From various internet sources, there are rumors, postings, and lots of speculation - including "leaks" from "insiders", frame-by-frame video parsing, and even (purported) forwarded email messages between Melissa and Jason - that this season's The Bachelor was not on the up-and-up.

To save you the time it would take to wade through the din of online voices crying "Foul!", here's the compiled version of what "really" happened :

Just prior to the Final Five, Jason informed producers that Molly was the one.

Producers asked Jason who he liked second best and he identified Melissa. They told him to bring her to the Final Two, pick her at the Final Rose Ceremony for drama and that she would get America’s love and attention — to set her up for The Bachelorette. They convinced Jason that he would do no irrevocable harm to Melissa, because she would get the popularity.
However, Melissa really did fall in love with Jason. The host, Chris Harrison, and the show's staff saw it and they were rooting for her, unaware of the "plan". Only Mike Fleiss, another producer, and Jason knew of what was to happen.

Immediately after the Final Rose Ceremony, Harrison and the rest of the staff were informed of the plan and what would go down at the after-show.
After Jason returned to Seattle he got in touch with producers and they put him in touch with Molly. Molly did not know about this plan at the time of the show's taping, but did learn of it from Jason within a couple of weeks.
Melissa was head over heels in love. She saw Jason every other weekend and told Jason she was planning on moving out to Seattle, loved Ty, wanted to start a family. In the meantime, Jason and Molly are seeing each other on weekends that Melissa was not in Seattle. Jason made all of this seem great. He is playing the game, before finally realizing after one of these “heart to heart” talks that Melissa was seriously falling for him.
Jason backed off, called the producers and they hastily arranged the "after-show" that was taped in January and shown on Monday night, where Jason breaks up with Melissa and asks Molly for another chance.

Melissa is asked by the producers to be the next Bachelorette. She turns them down flat. The Bachelor shows that are still in post-production editing are re-edited to portray Jillian (the producers' next choice for the Bachelorette, who accepts) in the best possible light.

None of this will come out because ABC makes each contestant (and the bachelor) sign a lifetime agreement stating they will not reveal details of the show. Breaking this agreement would incur a $5 million dollar lawsuit.

OK, fine. Did Molly and Jason have contact between the end of the show and January's "after-show" taping? I would find it hard to believe that they didn't. And contrary to my first impression of the first "after-show", I think Melissa knew that she was going to be dumped - she didn't greet Jason with any warmth at all, and wasn't wearing her engagement ring - but had to go through with it for contractual purposes. I can also readily believe the part about editing the show to portray Jillian in the best light possible once she had agreed to do The Bachelorette.

The rest of it sounds a little too "conspiracy theory"-ish to me. I could investigate further, but quite frankly I am already rather embarrassed that I ever paused a moment to give a damn about the travesty that is The Bachelor, let alone blog about it. The only people who come out of this mess with their dignity intact is Melissa's parents.

So here's my tough theological question:

Is it possible for God to forgive me for

a) watching this crap ?
b) caring about this crap ?
c) wasting the time and effort that it took yesterday to blog about this crap ?
d) wasting the time and effort that it took today to blog about this crap again ?

Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

Because I Ask The Tough Theological Questions

2009-03-03T19:07:00.017-05:00

As the birth of daughter next month, Lynda and I have been busy preparing for the life changing experience of being parents. We’ve

• Chosen a name: Maria Rosa Guadalupe. One of the great things about being married to a woman of Mexican descent is that when naming your child, you don’t have to settle on a first and middle name; you just pick the names you like and string ‘em all together.

• Been rearranging the house: the baby will get what is now the little room where the dog sleeps. We will move from the upstairs master bedroom into what is now the guest bedroom, downstairs right next to the baby’s room. This means the dog will now occupy the master bedroom (which has its own bathroom). Geez. Maybe we should get a little red velvet throne for the dog to sleep on…

• Been buying baby furniture. Lynda changes her mind on what she likes about twice a week. All I know is that I will be putting it all together. Therefore, when she asks me “What type of furniture do you like?”, my answer is “Assembled.”

• Been reading baby books. I’m currently working on The Baby Whisperer. Though I don’t believe the author is any relation to Cesar Milan (The Dog Whisperer), I am prepared to discipline the child by yanking on a leash that I’ve put around her neck.

• Been watching a lot of TV, as we anticipate that this particular activity will become a rare occurrence after next month.

In regards to the last item, Lynda and I have just finished watching this season’s edition of The Bachelor, the first time I have ever watched more than a few minutes of any episode of any season in the long-running franchise. It is from this experience – especially last night’s finale (when he picks the “one”) and the “aftershow” which was taped in mid-January (the finale had actually taken place last November) – that my important theological question arises. I invite anyone with advanced theological training to ponder and respond to my question, as it is of monumental spiritual complexity and importance.

For those who have not been viewers, this season of the show featured Jason Mesnick as The Bachelor. Jason is a single dad of a three year-old boy, Ty, and lives in Seattle. Mr. Mesnick was last seen on his knees last summer in the finale of The Bachelorette, proposing to Deanna Pappas, who turned him down. Jason was a gentleman about it, thanking her for the opportunity “to learn that he could love again.”

Apparently, truckloads of single women all over America and Canada simultaneously went “Awwwwww”, as he had been a very popular contestant. The producers of The Bachelor scooped him up rather quickly, and this season was the most anticipated one ever.*

* - Just getting into the spirit of the show here, folks, where every week is “the most dramatic episode yet!”, every “Rose Ceremony” (where women who don’t get roses are eliminated) is “the most dramatic rose ceremony ever!”, and each season finale is “the most exciting conclusion ever!”

Among the 25 women Jason had to choose from was Melissa Rycroft, a Dallas gal and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader in 2006 and 2007. She appeared prominently on the Country Music Network's The Making of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders in 2006 as a rookie candidate, and was by far one of the most down-to-earth of the group. So Lynda and I were kinda rooting for her. There was also a Canadian lady named Jillian, a restaurant designer, who seemed the most “put together” of the group of 25 – looks, brains, personality, maturity, down-to-earthiness, lack of bitchiness – that Lynda and I were also rooting for.

So, take a fellow who seems like a “good guy”, a couple of women you think would be pretty good choices for him (or pretty much any guy that likes attractive, intelligent women), a host of other gals among whom there also some good choices, and what transpires? Ugh.

• By the end of the second episode, Jason had narrowed it down to 12 women. On the third episode, he made out with (on camera) each and every one of them at one time or another. This would continue for the duration of the season: every woman still on the show would be in passionate lip-lock with him at some point every week. Then he would talk on camera about what a great “connection” he had with whomever he had just French kissed. Later, when he had eliminated her, he would claim “I just didn’t feel that connection.”

• Jason seemed to sense whenever one of the women was “being reserved” or “was putting up a wall”. He would confront her, and the poor girl would feel the need to apologize, as if there was something inherently unnatural about being uncomfortable about “dating” a guy who’s simultaneously “dating” multiple other women, all of whom you are currently sharing living quarters with. Once the girl had reassured him that she possessed the required level of adoration for him, he would ram his tongue down her throat. Ah, romance.

• Jason's three big test questions: Are you ready to settle down? Are you ready to be a stepmom? Are you ready to move to Seattle? Sweet leaping Moses on buttered toast, man, do you really think any of them would even be on this show if their answer was “Nope. Not really.”? (And if they show the slightest bit of hesitance, refer to the above point.)

• Jason showed no reluctance or even hesitation in exploiting his son for TV “moments”. Broadway musicals are less “staged” than Jason’s repeated on-camera time with Ty.

• Any poor soul who participated in a The Bachelor drinking game - in which one had to take a drink every time Jason said the word “amazing” - is now in detox. Jason, go to the bookstore and buy a Thesaurus. “Amazing” is under “A”.

Fast forward to the second to last show: Jillian and Melissa are among the final three, along with Molly, a pretty, intelligent gal who doesn’t seem to have any personality whatsoever. Not that I really fault her for this though, considering the emotional squeegee of living in the artificial world of The Bachelor, where you’re

a) living with other women who are chasing the same man you are
b) aware that he’s making out with and then eliminating one of these women every week,**
c) now halfway around the world in New Zealand (for the remainder of the show), so just in case you are eliminated, the plane ride home will be that much more excruciating.

** - Which, of course, begs the question “Why on earth are you interested in a guy who would make out with you, then turn around and make out with numerous other women?” However, I made a rather generous share of "Why did you pick her?" mistakes in my pre-Lynda lifetime, so I'm not in a position to judge.

As a result, each of these three women is a shell of what they were a few weeks ago. Every time Jillian is on camera without Jason, the most “put together” of the group looks like she’s about to burst into tears. Melissa seems to have regressed a year in age for every week she’s been on the show, and now seems more like an 18 year-old girl than a 25 year-old woman. Whatever personality Molly had has disappeared entirely, along with any sense of identity: whatever answer Jason wants to hear from Molly, she hopes she says it.

On this second-to-last episode, Jason has a date with each woman that includes a steamy make out session in a hot tub and an overnight stay in his bed. The women are not lodging together, so they have no idea that Jason had the need to change the sheets every morning. Jillian’s turn in the hot tub was particularly creepy, as a) describing it as “soft porn” would not be a stretch, b) we had just met her parents in a lengthy and somewhat endearing segment the previous week, and c) Jason eliminated her at the end of the show, claiming he thought of her more of a “best friend”. Needless to say, none of my “best friends” and I ever had evenings in a hot tub that Cinemax would be interested in.

So, I went into viewing last night’s finale knowing that Jason’s tongue would spend a generous portion of the evening massaging both Melissa’s and Molly’s tonsils, that he would yammer on about “being in love with two women” without anyone calling “bulls#&t” on him, he would propose to one of these two and they would accept, and a few “amazing”s later I would call it a night. However, little did I know what was in store; for though the field is crowded and the history of ‘reality’ TV short, Jason Mesnick would secure his claim to the title of “Biggest ‘Reality’ Show Schmuck Of All Time”.

His accomplishments in the finale:

• Both women get to meet his family. Melissa’s parents had declined to meet Jason on camera a couple of weeks ago, saying that “meeting their potential future son-in-law is a private, sacred thing”. Jason continues to harp on this, framing "Melissa's parents don't want a bunch of television cameras in their faces when they meet their potential son-in-law" into "they wouldn't meet with him." Couldn't he have offered to come by on his own? Generally, making the extra effort when meeting the parents is a good idea, isn't it? I mean, that and not being simultaneously involved with numerous other women....

• He continues to attempt to turn every on-camera moment with his son into a freaking Hallmark moment. I spent the entire episode wishing Ty would ask his dad “Daddy, what’s the word for the male version of ‘slut’”?

• Jason repeatedly gets all choked up. Or, more accurately, Jason repeatedly pretends to get all choked up. When I can see a guy checking for camera placement out of the corner of his eye, I’m not really buying it.

• Deanna Pappas, who turned him down as The Bachelorette, shows up to tell him…uh, something. She had broken up with the guy she chose over Jason, she regretted her decision not to pick Jason, that she had followed her heart and her head and it didn’t work out…um, so what on earth is your point here? I couldn’t really figure out what the hell she was trying to say, other than “I want to be on TV again”. Jason takes this as another opportunity to talk about his love for two women, when he should have been asking “You came all the way to New Zealand for this?”

• After telling Molly that he doesn’t “know how I could ever let you go”, he tells Molly that he isn’t choosing her. Molly leaves, and Jason cries his “look how sensitive I am” tears. Jason proposes to Melissa, who reacts like she just got asked to the prom. He tells her he fell from her from the start (which he demonstrated by making out with and groping a dozen other women).

Now comes the After The Final Rose show, in which Jason puts on his lead boots and presses the “I Am A Complete Jackass” pedal to the floor.

Normally on this show, the host, Harrison, would talk to the happy couple and "celebrate their journey to love," he says, but there's no audience here, because what's happened is so "dramatic" and so potentially "emotionally difficult" that they wanted to make things as intimate as possible - as intimate as it can possibly be in front of television cameras recording you for millions of people to watch.

Jason tells Harrison that “since this all ended, things have been different.” Really, genius? You mean after the cameras and stylists and free lodging in exotic locations and free, extravagantly staged ‘romantic’ dates, that the dynamic of your relationship with Melissa……changed? Oh, do tell.

Jason says things have been “different” for him (without explaining what he means by this), and that Melissa senses this. Then comes the moment when he crosses the line from “sleazy, opportunistic jerk”, wanders through “what an a#%h*@” territory, and takes up permanent residency in the land of “Deserves to be eaten by a pack of feral dingos”: he informs Harrison that over the last few weeks he hasn't been able to stop thinking about Molly, and that when Melissa comes out for their ‘couple interview’, completely unbeknownst to her, he’s going to end things with her.

On national f#&*ing television.

Jason says he needs to talk to Melissa first and give her a chance to be mad and hate him and all that. Oh, don't worry about that, big guy - you didn't propose to or dump either myself or Lynda, and we’d like to beat you senseless.

Give it a view:

Part I:

Part II:

Some highlights:

• Part I- Jason tells Melissa, “You have every right to be irritated.” No, Jason, she has every right to punch you in the mouth.

• Part I – Jason repeatedly says “If I could control my heart and my head [in regards to his inability to stop fantasizing about Molly], I would give you the world.” Dude, men who cannot ‘control their heart and head’ - when it comes to thinking about women they are not engaged to - aren’t worth a damn.

• Part I- Melissa starts talking about herself in the third person, though in the context of the conversation it doesn’t come off as pretentious, just angry. She recovers nicely, though, and calls him a bastard. Good for you, honey.

• Part II – Jason starts off by saying “I hate myself for what I’m doing to Melissa.” [You’ve got plenty of company there, dude.] “Nothing matters now except what she’s going through.” Please, dear readers, pardon my language...but this, for me, was the last goddamn straw with this guy. This would have been the opportune time for him to just shut the hell up, and instead he’s still trying to sell Melissa and the viewing public on him really being just a great, sensitive guy.

• Part II – Harrison decides to give them “a moment alone”. Presumably to get some sponges and soap in case he needs to clean Jason’s blood off the walls.

• Part II - When Melissa says, "Don't call me. Don't text me anymore. Leave me alone", I thought the candles and filtered lighting just added to the sense of romance and wonder.

• Part II – The Clincher: After Melissa walks out, Jason goes into his “I’ll shed some tears now to show you how sensitive I am and how hard this is for me.” act. That he thinks he can do this and that anyone on earth is going to a) believe it or b) give a flying fig about he feels at the moment speaks volumes about the depths of his vacuousness.

I thought Melissa held it together pretty well for being ambushed on national TV. The last time I got dumped, it only received some regional media coverage and was just a brief item on CNN a couple of days later, and I was a wreck.

Molly comes on, and Jason hits her with “I just dumped Melissa and would like to try things with you.” Molly is shocked, and judging by the expression on her face for the next couple of minutes, viewers all over the country were offered the briefest hope that she would tell him to go jump in a lake. But she admitted that she had daydreamed that this would happen, and though she can’t quite believe that it is actually taking place, gives him a kiss and tells him that she’s open to “seeing where things go”.

Tonight, there is a “follow-up to the follow-up" show, where we will get updates on the whole drama since the events of last night's show. Hopefully 6 weeks of reflection has given Molly enough time to realize that she would be the 3rd woman Jason will have proposed to within the last year, and that Jason is a jerk for even trying to weasel his way back into her life.

So here’s my important theological question:

Tonight, during the “follow-up to the follow-up" show, would it be theologically permissible to pray that either a) one or both of these women kicks Jason in the balls and tells him to shove his ring up the orifice of their choice, or b) Jason spontaneously bursts into flames?

I admit it's a tough one. Where's St. Thomas Aquinas when you need him?

UPDATE:

Just watched the “follow-up to the follow-up" show. No testicle punting or bachelor flammability exhibited, just a fawning Molly and a host of the eliminated women along with a majority of the interviewed studio audience members commending Jason for "following his heart" and "his courage in making a tough decision". Melissa was not present, ostensibly because (according to the host) "it was just too emotional for her", but more likely because she now has good enough sense to stay as far away as possible from the steaming pile of manure that is The Bachelor. Personally, I would rather watch David Gordon's 1993 field goal that enabled Boston College to beat Notre Dame 41-39 (costing the Irish the national championship) on an endless loop for all eternity than to watch one more minute of this travesty.

Pro-choice means choice only for some

2009-02-28T10:52:00.006-05:00

I am beginning to discorver that most "family planning" organizations (i.e. abortion advocates) are not really "pro-choice." They howl and yell if someone dares to call them "pro-abortion," but their actions often justify that label.

An article in today's Washington Post exposed our President's plan to eliminate legal protection for health care workers who opt out of providing medical treatments they find morally objectionable. Under the Bush Administration, health care facilities that receive federal funding could not punish or sanction health care workers for following their conscience. Obama reveresed that policy.

"Faminily planning" groups jumped for joy in support of the President. They argued that allowing health care workers to opt out of performing abortion could reduce women's access to abortion. No kidding. My answer is, so what? Should a medical professional not have the freedom to follow his or her conscience when it comes to a procedure as controversial as abortion? Aparently, a woman's choice to abort her child is more important than a medical professional's right to refuse to abort her child. The latter is enshrinded in the "free exercise" clause of the First Amendment. The former was imposed on this country by seven unelected judges in the worst U.S. Supreme Court decision in history. When "abortion rights" trump our First Amendment rights, something has gone seriously wrong.

"Pro-choice" advocates cry, "how dare you interfere with a woman's right to choose!" However, they have no problem interferring with a woman's right to choose if that woman is a medical professional who refuses to provide abortion.

The hypocrisy is astounding.

There is some hope. The Administration agreed to take thirty days to review the new regulation. Hopefully, they will do the right thing. I'm not holding my breath.

Jerry, can we bring a collection of ND football highlights on the ark?

My Weekly Inspiration For Ark-Building

2009-02-17T20:02:00.005-05:00

Yes, this is a real website:

( Click on picture to view enlarged image )

There's being tempted into sin and falling into sin, and then there's posting an online profile hoping to attract sin, meet it at a hotel room, and have it ruin your marriage. I wonder if the site includes ads for divorce lawyers.

On the other hand, I received word today that University of Notre Dame will not be holding a 2009 edition of "The Queer Film Festival", which could hold off the deluge a little longer. Gay activists are upset, as they insist that Catholic education on Our Lady's campus can not go on in the total absence of shouts of "Fabulous!".

Quote of the Day

2009-02-07T20:27:00.004-05:00

"Hooking up is like masturbation with a human sex toy."

- MTSS 22: Hooking Up

One has to admire their frankness and honesty. Unfortunately, the producers of the Midwest Teen Sex Show (MTSS) do not see hooking up as a bad thing as long as:

You use a condom
You are not emotionally involved (good luck)
You don't make a baby

MTSS, which is aimed at teen, was brought to my attention by my lovely wife. She heard about it at a Pediatrics lecture about how the media influences kids. The speaker recommended the site as a positive influence.

When using another human being as "a human sex toy" is seen as something positive, our culture has moved far away from Christ's call to love. I've heard it said by Christopher West (I think) that the opposite of love is not hate, but use.

The medical community refuses to make moral judgements about the sacredness of sex. In their view, as long as nobody gets hurt, there is no problem with using human being for pleasure. Unfortunately, far too often, people do get hurt.

For the parents who are reading this, you may want to check out MTSS to see what the Internet media is feeding your kids.

For the teens who may be reading, when you encounter media like the MTSS realize that you are getting an empty view of sex. The Church proposes a far richer view of sex as a sacred gift of complete, fruitful and faithful love between a married man and woman. The Church believe that you were not created to be used, rather you were created to be truly loved. The MTSS is offering you a Twinkie, while Christ has prepared a five course gourmet banquet for you. Don't be duped.

Jerry, do you still have room on the ark?

He Sure Can Pick 'Em

2009-02-06T11:54:00.004-05:00

For those of you who have found Obama's cabinet appointments 'interesting', you're going to love his choice for Deputy Attorney General, David Ogden. A brief review of his career:

* In Hartigan v. Zbaraz, Ogden co-authored a brief for the American Psychological Association arguing that parental notification was an unconstitutional burden on 14-year old adolescent girls seeking an abortion. Excerpt: "There is no question that the right to secure an abortion is fundamental." (p. 10).

* In Rust v. Sullivan, Ogden served as counsel to People for the American Way, the National Education Association, and others supporting petitioner's claim that abortion is a method of family planning that should be eligible for federal funding.

* In United States v. American Library Association, Ogden fought the use of Internet filters used to screen pornographic sites in public libraries.

* In American Library Association v. Thornburgh, Ogden successfully defended the right of pornographers to produce material with underage children.

* In American Council for the Blind v. Boorstin, Ogden sued the federal government in an attempt to force taxpayers to finance a Braille version of Playboy.**

**-Since I don't think it possible to convert airbrushed pictures of naked women into Braille, I guess this would produce a group of people who would purchase Playboy "for the articles".

* Ogden has represented Playboy, Penthouse, and P.H.E. (a mail-order pornography distributor with a nation-wide business) in numerous cases: Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Meese, P.H.E., Inc., v. United States Department of Justice, United States v. P.H.E., Inc., Knox v. United States, Fort Wayne Books, Inc. v. Indiana, Virginia v. American Booksellers Association, Pope v. Illinois, Meese v. Keene.

* In Lawrence v. Texas, Ogden, serving as counsel of record for the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and the National Association of Social Workers filing an amicus brief in support of the defendants, urged the court "to treat traditional definitions of marriage as a social prejudice".

Change we can believe in, indeed.

Folks With A "Solution" In Search Of A Problem

2009-01-28T15:17:00.002-05:00

Tom has, on a couple of occasions, weighed in with his thoughts about the ongoing debate over Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW). Some of you might be thinking "Hmmm. Jerry usually has something to say about everything, whether anyone's interested in hearing it or not. I wonder why he hasn't chimed in here."

The reason is simple. I honestly do not give a damn.

Now, I can hear the tsk-tsking: "Don't you care about what kind of planet you leave your children? Don't you care about your Christian duty to be a good steward of the earth? Aren't you concerned about the health of the environment?"

My answer to all these questions is "Yes". I just do not give a damn about Anthropocentric Global Warming.

Now, I do not count myself among the AGW "deniers", as I have neither the scientific background nor judgment to sift through the arguments of climatologists, researchers, and politicians in regards to what degree of a threat AGW is, if any. However, that the primary evidence cited in favor of Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW) continues to be computer models raises this software engineer's eyebrow. You will struggle to find a group of people less likely to be swayed by computer models than software engineers. Computer models are just too easy to manipulate, and designing a completely thorough and completely reliable one is something that is rarely possible without some form of desired outcome in mind. Still, arguing about the reliability of this specific model or that specific model is something I will happily leave to others, as for even a nerd like me, incessant talk of algorithms and variables makes my head hurt.

However, while I can foresee no certainty coming from computer models, I can say with certainty that the proposed "remedy" for this supposed oncoming catastrophe looks awfully damn familiar: the same tax-heavy, government-involvement-and-spending-heavy, regulation-heavy, environmentally-puritanical, economically-crushing, and, yes, socialistic measures that were the proposed "cure" for the (supposedly) eminent "population bomb" and the coming "ice age" touted in the '70s. Adding to the sense of deja vu is that the proposing is largely being done by the same groups then as now. Neither the "ice age" or "population bomb" came remotely close to being realized, and now the same socialistic measures are being proposed to address AGW. And just like with those eminent threats from the latter days of bell-bottoms, we are being told that not only must the US and world adopt their "solution", we must do it RIGHT NOW OR ELSE, because there is NO TIME TO DEBATE ABOUT IT. I would be thought a fool if I were to be taken in by such tactics from a car salesman, but I should heed to them when considering adopting massive socialistic economic and environmental policies? Why should anyone be cowed by admonitions for adopting radical measures made in such a fashion? Oh, because they say their data "overwhelmingly" supports it. Right. The data largely extrapolated from computer models. Round and round we go.

All that being said, however, I still can't even claim to be a skeptic, as though the question as to what degree of a threat AGW is, if any, had any importance to me, and I was simply withholding judgment. No, I simply do not care. I do not care because I do not believe that the "concern" over AGW has anything whatsoever to do with concern for the environment or humanity. The AGW debate is, at bottom, a political debate between those who wish to implement their vision of a socialistic utopia and those who are not so keen on the idea. If AGW is a real threat, the "remedy" proposed by the AGW crowd will have longer-lasting and more damaging effects than the problem, as socialistic government policy has never failed to take a bad situation and make it exponentially worse. However, proving AGW is not a threat will not offer a reprieve from those wishing to impose these socialistic measures. If AGW is not a real threat, the present-day AGW alarmists will no doubt move on to the next "problem" that they insist requires immediate adoption of their "solution". Wash, rinse, repeat.

Regardless of whatever the supposed "threat" in whose name the call for implementation of socialistic measures is being made, I will continue to oppose, with great fervor, the implementation of said socialistic measures. Therefore, whether AGW is real or not is entirely besides the point.

Oh yeah, this is much better.

2009-01-27T13:34:00.003-05:00

Remember all the hubbub last year when 15 year-old megastar Miley Cyrus posed topless for Vanity Fair with nothing but a sheet covering her breasts? Her fans were outraged, the public was squeamish, her father, Billy Ray, was lambasted in the press, and everyone involved pretty much expressed regret and declared "Lesson Learned!".

Good to hear. As you can see from a recent photoshoot, they've really become sensitive to charges of sexualizing a minor:

Nothing says "We don't want to sexualize a minor" like photographing her riding bareback on a horse with her legs wrapped around it.

Excuse me, but I now feel like I need to resume building my ark.

Abstinence Ed. vs. Contraception Ed.: Getting To The Heart Of The Matter

2009-01-23T14:55:00.004-05:00

The overriding difficulty with the Abstinence Ed vs. Contraception Ed. debate is that both positions stem from opposing moral positions, and these positions are rarely, if ever, acknowledged as the engines which drive the opposing camps.

The debate goes something like this:

Abstinence: We want to prevent our kids from getting pregnant and/or getting STDs. The most effective way of achieving this end is to teach them not to engage in sex.

Contraception: It is naïve to think that teenagers won’t have sex. What happens when they give in to the temptation, as we know they will? They need to know how to protect themselves when they are having sex.

Note: At this point, it would be interesting if the Abstinence Ed. supporters would pursue the option of pointing out the Contraception side’s contradictory premises: that a) teenagers do not possess the self-control to refrain from initiating sexual intercourse 100% of the time, but simultaneously possess the even greater self-control required to, after initiating sexual intercourse, 1) Stop 2) Pull out a condom 3) Apply it correctly, and to do this 100% of the time. However, I have yet to see this in public debate, though it has come up in private conversation.

Abstinence: The message of

"The safest way is to not have sex, but if you do engage in sex, which we’ll be talking about at great length for the rest of this and every presentation, here’s how to reduce the risk."

is akin to the message of

"The safest way to stay out of trouble (with your parents, teachers, authorities, whomever) is to not do something you shouldn’t do. However, if you decide to do something you shouldn’t do, here’s how to avoid the consequences."

Both messages are saying the same thing:

"The safest option is to not [do something you are tempted to do but shouldn’t], but if you [do something you are tempted to do but shouldn’t] here’s how to avoid the consequences."

Anyone with an ounce of experience knows that a teenager (or pretty much anyone, for that matter) will be inclined to opt for the second choice in each of these messages. What parent in their right mind would make such a statement to their child?

Contraception: You’re making a values statement, equating teenagers having sex with them doing something they shouldn’t do. You can’t enforce your values/religious beliefs/morals on everyone!

Abstinence: So you’re saying that teenagers having sex is not something that they should discouraged from doing?

Contraception: It’s up for each person to decide.

While the Abstinence side makes some good points, on the surface the Contraception side seems to have carried the day with "You can’t enforce your values/religious beliefs/morals on everyone!" and "It’s up to each person to decide.", which, in our increasingly relativistic society, tend to serve as debate-enders. However, there are multiple flaws in these statements.

For starters, while the "You can’t enforce your values/religious beliefs/morals on everyone else!" charge has been very effective at cowing folks into silence and even acquiescence, it contains a superfluous and erroneous over-reach: the rightness or wrongness of teenage sex (or any sexual matter) is not a "religious belief", but a moral position. It is true that one’s religious beliefs can and do inform one’s moral position; however, there nothing unconstitutional about one’s religious beliefs informing one’s moral positions, as to prevent such a thing would be nigh impossible. Everyone has religious beliefs - atheism is a religious belief, even "I don’t give a fig about religion" is a religious belief – and these beliefs shape our individual moral outlook whether we acknowledge that fact or not.

So the statement made by contraceptive ed. proponents, if they are concerned with accuracy, should be "You can’t enforce your values/morals on everyone else!" This statement, however, is undermined by two things:

Their response to "So you’re saying that teenagers having sex is not something that they should discouraged from doing?", because "It’s up for each person to decide" is itself a moral position. No one would say that whether to cheat, steal, or harm someone is a moral matter that "It’s up for each person to decide", because those actions are inherently wrong in a moral sense. Therefore, to say that "It’s up for each person to decide" whether teenagers engaging in sex is bad, good, or neutral is to say that it is not inherently wrong. This is a moral position. Therefore, "You can’t enforce your values/morals on everyone else!" amounts to the statement "You can’t enforce your values/morals on everyone else while I’m trying to enforce my values/morals on everyone else!" This statement is either intellectually dishonest or hypocritical, depending on whether one could actually believe such a thing.

As I understand it, Sex Ed. (of either variety) is not optional in public schools, and comes as either Abstinence or Contraception Ed., depending on which way the local school board is leaning. Therefore, students are being force-fed either Abstinence or Contraception Ed. Following on #1, in schools where contraception ed. is taught or being proposed, the contraception ed. folks apparently have no objection to enforcing their values/morals on students, which vitiates both "You can’t enforce your values/morals on everyone else" and "It’s up to each person to decide."

So at the bottom of all this back-and-forth is the reality that the debate is between folks who hold the moral position that teenagers having sex is an inherently wrong act and those who take the moral position that teenagers having sex is not an inherently wrong act. The shriek of the latter group that those of belonging to the former are "pushing their morals/values" on others is hypocritical, self-serving palaver.

I would offer the following solution: If both Abstinence and Contraception Ed. were offered in public schools, which each individual student (and therefore, their parents) given the option of which to attend, there would not be much of a debate. Frankly, I don’t see why this has not been seriously proposed. For religious schools, I would hope (and for any school that hopes to get my tuition money, demand) that sex education be taught from the viewpoint and within the framework of the religion of that institution, which is their moral duty and their constitutional right.

A New Terrorist Threat

2009-01-16T14:42:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, January 15, 2009, will be remembered alongside December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 as a day when America was attacked without warning. Thankfully, there was no loss of American life, unlike those two previous awful days. However, that fact should not detract from us recognizing our latest enemy.

I am, of course, talking about Canada.

Yesterday, a flock of Canadian suicide geese attacked a civilian passenger airplane, knocking out its engines. Their plan was foiled, however, by the pilots skillfully landing the plane in the Hudson River without damaging the aircraft, which stayed afloat long enough to have everyone onboard rescued.

Nevertheless, we must be vigilant against further Canadian suicide geese attacks, but more importantly, we must not allow our own feelings of fear and anger to result in retaliation against Geese-Americans, but to ask why this violence had been directed at us and to take a hard look at what we have done to inspire such an act. Why do Canadian geese hate us?

First of all, Americans have been oppressing geese for centuries: hunting and eating them, not giving them enough bread at the pond, etc. You could almost say we've been waging a Crusade against the Geese. Is it any wonder that a few brave suicide Geese (the Fowliban?) would seek revenge?

Secondly, they were Canadian geese; we are only reaping the rewards of our being condescending and insensitive toward our Northern neighbors:

How arrogant, how rude, how....American! Can we not see the cultural value of adding extra 'u's to words (colour, flavour, etc.) or ending every sentence with "eh?"

Thanks to Bush's ridiculous insistence that the US defend itself, America’s relationship with the world and other species couldn’t be worse. However, Hope and Change are coming. If Obama (Praise Be Upon Him) is willing to negotiate with Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, I am sure that he will be able to find time to sit down with some Canadian geese.

BCS Declares Germany the Winner of World War II US Ranked 4th

2009-01-08T18:20:00.002-05:00

A little humor before the BCS Championship (from a forwarded email):

After determining the Big-12 championship game participants the BCS computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.

"Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and Russia; however considering their entire body of work--including an incredibly tough Strength of Schedule--our computers deemed them worthy of the #1 ranking."

Questioned about the #4 ranking of the United States the BCS commissioner stated "The US only had two major victories--Japan and Germany. The computer models, unlike humans, aren't influenced by head-to-head contests--they consider each contest to be only a single, equally-weighted event."

German Chancellor Adolph Hitler said "Yes, we lost to the US; but we defeated #2 ranked France in only 6 weeks." Herr #### has been criticized for seeking dramatic victories to earn 'style points' to enhance Germany's rankings. #### protested "Our contest with Poland was in doubt until the final day and the conditions in Norway were incredibly challenging and demanded the application of additional forces."

The French ranking has also come under scrutiny. The BCS commented "France had a single loss against Germany and following a preseason #1 ranking they only fell to #2."

Japan was ranked #3 with victories including Manchuria, Borneo and the Philippines.

Update: Fr. Richard John Neuhaus died this morning.

2009-01-08T11:26:00.002-05:00

Tom and I were both devotees of his magazine, First Things. I started reading it in 1997, though I didn't subscribe: I enjoyed going to Barnes and Noble, picking it up, and spending a leisurely couple of hours in their coffee lounge (though I don't drink coffee) digesting it. It was the only magazine that I read where I read the back section first - that was where Fr. Neuhaus' musings were compiled into a section called 'While We're At It'. He was insightful and slyly witty, and writing was a joy to read. His book, Death On A Friday Afternoon, a meditation on the words of Christ from the cross, is one of the few books I've read multiple times (along with Chesterton's The Everlasting Man and Pat Conroy's The Lords of Discipline).

Go on over to the First Things site, and read Fr. Neuhaus' 2000 article on death, which is posted on the home page just underneath the announcement of his passing.

Please pray for Father Richard John Neuhaus

2009-01-07T21:14:00.003-05:00

Kathryn Jean Lopez reports that he is on his death bed. Father Neuhaus' writings have had a profound influence on my life. Among other accomplishments, he is the founding editor-in-chief of First Things.

Merry Christmas

2009-01-01T13:48:00.001-05:00

And have a happy Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.

Jerry......In Pictures

2008-12-22T14:32:00.004-05:00

Our Blog

My Blogging Partner, Tom:

Me:

Hoped-For Reaction To My Posts:

Usual Reaction To My Posts:

What I Aspire To In My Blogging And Online Commenting:

Actual State Of My Blogging And Online Commenting:

Tom And Jerry Comment Policy

If...
Your Comment:

Then....
Us:

What Happens To Your Comment:

My Life

My Personal Body Image:

I Have The Body Of A God

My Actual Body:

My Wife Lynda's Desired Level Of Activity On Any Given Weekend:

My Desired Level Of Activity On Any Given Weekend:

Hey man, Chill Sloth here. Just takin' it easy...

My Reaction To Notre Dame Winning:

My Reaction To Notre Dame Losing:

My Reaction To Notre Dame Not Replacing Charlie Weis:

What I Asked For This Christmas:

Wallet, Heated Socks

What I Really Wanted For Christmas:

Boxing Robots, Xbox 360, Nerf Machine Gun

What I Wish For All Of You:

Book Review: Climatic Cataclysm

2008-12-19T18:04:00.007-05:00

Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change. Edited by Kurt M. Campbell. Brookings Institution Press, 2008, 237 pp., $28.95 (hardcover).

The release of Vice President Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, sparked renewed interest in the national security implications of global climate change. Last year a Center for Naval Analysis report concluded, “climate change poses a serious threat to American national security.”[1] This June, a National Intelligence Assessment on the impact of climate change judged, “the most significant impact for the United States will be indirect and result from climate-driven effects on many other countries and their potential to seriously affect US national security interests.”[2] One recent addition to this chorus of concern is Climatic Cataclysm, an anthology edited by Kurt M. Campbell. Seven of the twelve authors hail from the Center for New American Security or the Center for American Progress. Two others served in the Clinton administration.

The analysis of Dr. Campbell and company depends upon the validity of existing climate models. Dr. Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, provides the scientific foundation for three climate change scenarios: expected, severe and catastrophic.[3] He used climate models to project temperature increases and then extracted the relevant environmental impacts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report.[4] The other authors then applied their considerable national security expertise to create plausible geopolitical scenarios. Dr. Gulledge is careful to point out that the scenarios are not predictions of the future. Rather, they are projections that “[describe] an outcome that is deemed plausible, often subjectively, in the context of current uncertainties” (p. 51).[5] The authors do not associate likelihood with any scenario, yet they describe the first one as expected.[6]

In scenario one, global average temperature rises 1.3ºC above 1990 levels by 2040 and global mean sea-level rises by 0.75 ft.[7] The authors describe a domino effect where water shortages lead to food shortages, which lead to conflicts over these resources, which lead to migrations and new conflicts in adjoining regions.[8] The developing world is most at risk, but wealthy nations are not immune. The authors call on the UN, EU and U.S. to prepare to respond to the expected humanitarian crises.[9] Furthermore, unrest in the developing world leads to disruptions in oil production that put upward pressure on energy prices.[10] Russia is one of the few nations that stands to gain in this scenario since it is an exporter of energy and is likely to see increased crop production from warmer temperatures in higher latitudes.[11] Of greatest concern is that the authors believe this scenario “is to a large extent inevitable” (p. 97).[12]

Scenarios two and three arbitrarily double scenario one’s average temperature rise to 2.6ºC in 2040 (scenario two) and 5.6ºC in 2100 (scenario three).[13] The associated sea-level rises are 1.7 ft and 6.6 ft respectively.[14] The authors consider this increase plausible because existing models do not include feedback mechanisms, such as the release of greenhouse gases from melting permafrost.[15]

The author of scenario two waxes Malthusian in concluding that a reduction of the human population is an inevitable consequence of severe climate change. War and disease cause vulnerable populations to die off. Worse still, a nuclear exchange could decimate the human race.[16] As an alternative, he suggests states may establish reproductive restrictions to control population growth.[17] This is morally repugnant to those who value reproductive freedom, but attitudes may be different in 2040.

Scenario three paints an even worse picture. Large democracies such as India collapse. China’s gains over the last century are completely reversed. Los Angeles, New York, Houston and other U.S. coastal cities become uninhabitable after 2040. The developed world is entirely preoccupied with its own survival and becomes isolationist. Genocide reigns unchecked in Africa. Still, scarcity eventually returns the Earth into balance, but at an extremely high price.[18]

Although the authors’ analysis focuses on the impact rather than the causes of climate change, the solutions they offer are entirely focused on prevention. R. James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, offers the most interesting solutions from a military perspective. Woolsey writes a fictional dialogue between John Muir, founder of the national parks system and first president of the Sierra Club, and General George S. Patton. During the discourse, the two agree on nine policy options that have the dual effect of reducing the CO2 emissions and reducing vulnerability to malignant threats. Providing tax-incentives for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles for example, serves to reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on foreign oil. Promoting micro-power generation using wind turbines and solar panels reduces emissions and diversifies power production making energy infrastructure more resilient to attack.[19]

One point of disagreement between the fictional Patton and Muir is the production of coal-to-liquids (CTL) fuel. Muir dislikes it because of the CO2 it emits, but Patton likes it because it undermines oil.[20] Coal is abundant in the U.S., and CTL fuel is one of the few alternatives to petroleum that can power aircraft. As the leading U.S. government consumer of oil, the Air Force is interested in procuring half of its fuel from synthetic sources by 2016.[21] Although the proposal is not economical when oil trades below $60 a barrel, there is strategic value having alternatives to foreign oil.[22]

The strength of Climatic Cataclysm lies in the authors’ sound geopolitical analysis of the impact of potential climate change. However, they offer little in analyzing the cause. While climate scientists deem the scenarios plausible, they offer no way of evaluating their likelihood. This makes weighing the merits of policies such as the Air Force’s CTL plan difficult. Do the possible long-term consequences of global climate change outweigh the clear near- term benefits of reducing dependence on foreign oil? Climatic Cataclysm offers no answer. However, the authors do provide an imaginative and worthwhile examination of what could turn out to be the greatest threat to our nation’s security.

-----------------------------------------

[1] Center for Naval Analysis, National Security and the Threat of Global Climate Change, (Alexandria, VA: The CNA Corporation, 2007), 6; available from http://www.securityandclimate.cna.org/report/SecurityandClimate_Final.pdf; internet; accessed 19 Dec 2008.

[2] Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Statement for the Record of Dr. Thomas M. Fingar, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming,” 25 June 2008, 4; available from http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20080625_testimony.pdf; internet; accessed 19 Dec 2008.

[3] Kurt M. Campbell and others, Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008), 17.

[4] Jay Gulledge, Climatic Cataclysm, 49.

[5] Ibid., 51.

[6] Ibid., 83.

[7] Ibid., 61.

[8] John Podesta and Peter Ogden, Climatic Cataclysm, 98.

[9] Ibid., 121-123.

[10] Ibid., 115.

[11] Ibid., 117.

[12] Ibid., 97.

[13] Dr. Gulledge admits the doubling of the temperature for scenario three is arbitrary but plausible. Climatic Cataclysm, 57.

[14] Gulledge, 67-68.

[15] Ibid., 56-57.

[16] Leon Furth, Climatic Cataclysm, 144.

[17] Ibid., 152-153.

[18] Sharon Burke, Climatic Cataclysm, 155-167.

[19] James R. Woolsey, Climatic Cataclysm, 181-187.

[20] Ibid., 187.

[21] “Air Force prepares to test synthetic fuel on B-52,” Air Force News, 12 Sep 2006; available from http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123026906; internet; accessed 19 Dec 2008.

[22] “Air Force wants coal for fuel, but will idea fly?” MSNBC.com, 31 March 2008; available from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23811258/page/2/; internet; accessed 19 Dec 2008.

Rest in Peace

2008-12-12T23:17:00.002-05:00

Say a prayer for the late Avery Cardinal Dulles, an amazing American Catholic intellect. May the choirs of angels welcome him into the New Jerusalem. Read about it here, here, here and here.

On A Day That Lives In Infamy....

2008-12-11T16:49:00.009-05:00

....we had a preacher who lives in stupity.

The election behind us, Trinity Church in Chicago welcomed Jeremiah Wright back to the pulpit this past Sunday, December 7, Pearl Harbor Day. The church banned reporters from the service, but some clips have surfaced. In a transcript of his sermon automatically generated by an online video player (which captures perfectly Wright's cadence when speaking), he proceeds to demonstrate his firm grasp on history:

Today. Is December 7. The day that this government killed. Over 80000. Japanese civilians. At Hiroshima in 1941. Two days before giving an additional. 64000. Japanese civilians. At Nagasaki by dropping nuclear bombs on innocent. People.

Wow. News to me. I guess Blutarsky was right after all.....

Does This Count?

2008-12-03T19:46:00.002-05:00

Matthew 18:20

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

(h/t to an email from Dad)

A Once-In-A-Generation Event

2008-11-21T17:52:00.008-05:00

Tomorrow afternoon, there will take place an event of such magnitude that the cosmos can apparently only stand to allow such an event once in a generation, likely out of fear that two such occurrences would irreparably damage every living thing.

I am, of course, speaking of the state of Washington's 2008 edition of The Apple Cup, featuring Washington (0W-10L) vs. Washington State (1W-10L) - a battle between the two worst teams of the 119 that play major college football, and quite possibly the two worst teams in the history of major college athletics.

I was a witness to the last such meeting of suckage of this magnitude: 1987 Kansas vs. Kansas State. Prior to my transferring to ND as a 25 year-old sophomore in 1992, I did my first attempt at college at the U. of Kansas from 1986-88. In the fall of 1987, KU and Kansas State were ranked #1 and #2 in USA Today's 'Bottom Ten' rankings of the worst team in college football.

K-State opened the season by surrounding their first home game (vs. Division 1AA Austin Peay) with weekend-long festival that included a Willie Nelson concert. The football team responded by losing 26-22. They followed that up by losing, also at home, to Army 41-14. Things went even further downhill from there.

KU opened the season at Auburn, who carried a 42-0 lead into halftime. The game was played with a running clock in the second half. The next week, the Jayhawks lost their home opener to Kent State 31-17. They did manage a single win on the season, however, a 16-15 home victory over Division 1AA Illinois State. KU quarterback Mike Orth drove around campus in a shiny new cherry red Corvette and never seemed to be present during class test days, but could not complete a screen pass.

KSU lost to Oklahoma and Nebraska by a combined 115-13. Those two teams routed KU by a combined 125-12.

On Nov. 7, 1987, 1W-7L KU met 0W-8L KSU on State’s cozy little campus in Manhattan, KS. What transpired was possibly the worst-played football game at any level in history. The teams combined for 21 penalties and 11 turnovers. With the score knotted at 17-17 in the final minute of the game, each team had a field goal attempt blocked. I exited the stadium as quickly as I could, as I feared that with the final gun the earth would open up and swallow the stadium and all its inhabitants.

KSU finished 0W-10L-1T and KU finished 1W-9L-1T. USA Today called for a KU-KSU rematch in one of the lower-tier bowls.

KU won the national championship in basketball that spring.

I left KU after the spring semester, worked for a couple of years, went back to school at UCF and got my GPA way up, then fulfilled my dream of attending ND. The first live college football game I attended as a spectator since '87 KU-KSU was the '92 ND home opener featured the #3 Irish against #6 Michigan.

That game also ended in a 17-17 tie.

-----------------------------------------

I used to do game previews for each Notre Dame game from 2005-early 2007, mostly for Lynda but also for anyone else who wanted to read them, and Tom has saved them and provided a link to them to the right. I shall give a small preview of tomorrow’s donnybrook:

Yes, folks, this is the Small One, the battle of the badly-beatens, the movable object meeting the resistible force. There are only tomorrows. When these two teams get together, nothing can happen. This game is for a single marble.

The hosts are the toothless WSU Cougars, whose single win was over Division 1AA Portland State. They have been outscored in their eleven games by a combined 533-139 (avg. 48.4 – 12.6). Some other notable achievements in 2008 Wazzou football:

• Their closest losses were a season-opening 25-point loss to Oklahoma State, a 25 point loss to UCLA (who’s won all of 4 games on the season), and a 28-point loss to Baylor (also only 4 wins).

• They have given up over 60 points in four of their games, and over 50 in two others.

• Prior to the USC game of October 18, the Cougars had not been held scoreless in a game since 1984, a streak of 280 games. USC beat them 69-0. The next week, WSU lost to Stanford 58-0, and last week they lost to Arizona State 31-0. So after a streak of 280 non-scoreless games, the 2008 Cougars have been shut out in 3 of their last 4 games.

The Cougars are “coached” by Paul Wulff, a.k.a. “Skippy”, who is in his first year with WSU, and in his first year coaching in Division 1 football. He is only 41, but he looks like he’s about 25. He yips and yaps up and down the sideline, and is the kind of coach who, after losing to USC 69-0, says he’s excited about how well his team competed.

The visitors are the equally toothless U-Dub Huskies, who have not won a game in more than a calendar year. They have been outscored “only” 399-139. Other notable achievements:

• Only two of the Huskies’ losses have been by less than 20 points - a 35-28 loss to Stanford and a 28-27 loss to BYU.

• The BYU game was notable for the action immediately following the Huskies' scoring of a touchdown with 3 seconds left to pull within one point. Quarterback Jake Locker, who scored the TD, flipped the ball in the air and was penalized for celebrating, which moved the extra-point kick back 15 yards. The extra point was blocked. BYU was penalized for celebrating, which moved the ensuing Huskies kickoff to midfield. Instead of attempting an onside kick, UW coach Ty Willingham stunningly ordered a kick out of the endzone, effectively conceding the game.

• On October 25, UW played a nationally televised night home game against Notre Dame, who at the time had the 75th ranked defense in the country. The Huskies, through 3 ½ quarters, managed only 55 total yards of offense, 4 first downs, and had not crossed midfield. Once the Irish put in their 3rd string, which included two walk-ons playing cornerback, the Huskies were able to score their only touchdown in a 33-7 drubbing. It was after this game that Willingham was informed that his services would be terminated at the season’s end.

The Huskies are “coached” by former Notre Dame head coach (2002-04) Tyrone Willingham, a.k.a. “Paint Dry Ty” and “Chauncey Gardiner” (for the Peter Sellers character in “Being There”, who spoke in nonsensical platitudes that high society took for nuggets of wisdom). After a 2004 Ty-coached Irish team lost 41-16 at home to Purdue, Ty proclaimed that ND had been only "4 or 5 plays away from winning the game". Presumably he meant the plays where Purdue scored touchdowns.

Ty reacted to news of his termination at Washington thusly:

I don’t make any excuses. I never feel sorry for Tyrone Willingham. But the truth of the matter is, everything is not microwave popcorn.

For those of us that have experienced Ty-speak, that can be translated as follows (per ndnation.com’s petendcollin):

To successfully make microwave popcorn, OK, you need to have a number of things go correctly, and executed in the proper fashion when you set out to microwave a bag of popcorn in this matter, which we attempt to do on a daily basis. You've got open the microwave, and you've got to put the bag in. You've also got to close the microwave, and then press up to 4 buttons in the proper sequence to get the thing to work. Does it require excellence? Yes. Do we strive to achieve excellence? Yes.

Yesterday, when we set the kitchen on fire, we came up short of excellence. But we're close, if just a few more of those buttons were pressed at the right time, and if I didn't leave a metal spoon in there, we would have made the popcorn in an excellent and competitive fashion, OK?

But now, once the fire marshal says we can go back inside, we've got to get right back to trying to make that microwave popcorn in the excellent fashion that is our stated objective. We've got to execute in making the popcorn, OK?

Ty was the head coach at Stanford from 1995 through 2001, and his 1999 Cardinal team won the PAC 10, which is cited every time someone wants to claim that he is a good, or even competent, head football coach. What they don’t mention is that Stanford did not have to play the only other PAC 10 team to win more than 7 games that season (Oregon), beat only one team with a winning record (7W-5L Oregon State), lost their opener to Texas 69-17, gave up a whopping 30.3 points a game, and lost at home to woeful San Jose State.

Still he rode that Rose Bowl appearance and his skin pigmentation to a job at ND, where he won the first 8 games of his tenure, for which he is still lauded as a coaching genius by some. However, ND lost 16 of the next 29 under Ty (8 by 20+ points), he recruited all of 2 offensive linemen in three years, signed 2 of the lowest rated recruiting classes in ND history, and was negotiating with Washington prior to the end of the 2004 regular season, after which he was fired. Notre Dame was nevertheless lambasted as racist. Go figure.

He has done even worse at Washington, winning a total of 12 games in 4 seasons, and his lack of recruiting effort or skill has pretty much emptied the cupboard for whomever UW hires in the offseason. Ty has successfully made himself a multi-millionaire by running two historically strong programs into the ground.

In contrast to WSU’s Wulff, Ty prefers to stand like a cigar store Indian statue (motion- and emotion-less, with a stern but blank look on his face) while his team falls apart around him. Defenders of the Tytantic say it is his ‘steely nerve’, but fans and alumni of Notre Dame and UW know better: it is because he doesn’t have the slightest idea what to do.

Prediction:

Ties are no longer an option since college football implemented overtime in 1996. I’ve seen both teams a couple of times this year: the Cougars look like a high school team and the Huskies look like a dispirited mess. The Cougars are statistically worse, but the Huskies have Ty as coach and his team quit on him more than a month ago.

I predict that the winning team will carry the opposing team’s coach off the field in thanks and celebration.

Latest Instance of ACLU Hypocrisy

2008-11-20T17:51:00.002-05:00

The American Civil Liberties Union is an organization dedicated to protecting the Bill of Rights. They pride themselves in protecting the 1st through 10th Amendments (except the 2nd), the 13th through 15th Amendments and the 19th Amendment. In other words, they believe in protecting individual liberty. Here is first part of the ACLU mission statement:

The mission of the ACLU is to preserve all of these protections and guarantees:
Your First Amendment rights - freedom of speech, association and assembly; freedom of the press, and freedom of religion.
Your right to equal protection under the law - equal treatment regardless of race, sex, religion or national origin.
Your right to due process - fair treatment by the government whenever the loss of your liberty or property is at stake.
Your right to privacy - freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into your personal and private affairs.
[emphasis mine]

The priorities of the ACLU are clear: protect your first amendment rights to free speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion.

Not quite.

The New York chapter of the ACLU testified before the New York city council in support of a bill which would limit the rights of pro-life protesters. Of course, the ACLU claims that the New York bill will not infringe upon the rights of pro-lifers to speak freely and assemble. However, others disagree:

The purpose of the press event — to attempt to silence pro-life prayer and free speech outside abortion facilities by proposing a restrictive 15-foot “buffer zone” around all abortion centers in New York City.

The proposed bill would also allow abortion workers to file harassment charges against pro-lifers as well as “ease the burden of proof” currently necessary to prosecute on harassment charges, according to the press release issued by the New York City Council.

This measure flies in the face of both freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

The 15 foot buffer zone is restriction enough, but the real danger of this bill is the vague language of "harassment." If you read pro-choice websites, these people consider silent prayer outside a clinic "intimidation" and "harassment." Although the authors of this bill claim they do not intend to restrict freedom of expression, it would be easy for a liberal judge to rule that prayer is intimidating and therefore illegal within 15 feet of an abortion clinic.

Many in the pro-life movement are confident that this bill will be overturned because it is unconstitutional. It is ironic, dare I say hypocritical, to see the ACLU arguing for greater restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly.

Really Dumb Songs That I Love, Exhibit A

2008-11-14T20:25:00.012-05:00

While avoiding doing household chores the other night, I was flipping channels on the TV when I came across Country Music Television's "Crossroads". "Crossroads" pairs a rock act and a country act on the same stage doing each other's songs together. Past pair-ups have included Kenny Chesney - John Mellencamp and Bon Jovi - Sugarland, both of which were pretty good.

This night's edition had Taylor Swift onstage with Def Leppard, an odd pairing if there ever was one. Their performances came off pretty well, and it kept me from having to move boxes around the house, but the part that made an impression on me was getting to hear Def Leppard's Hysteria again, from the 1988 album of the same name. Here's the original song and video:

Good Lord, I enjoy listening to that song. What's odd is that most of my favorite songs - Springsteen's Thunder Road or Gordon Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, for example - have great lyrics. Or least have something to say. Or anything at all to say. Hysteria's lyrics, on the other hand, are practically a waste of typing:

Out of touch, out of reach, yeah
You could try to get closer to me
I'm in love
I'm in deep, yeah
Hypnotized, I'm shakin' to my knees

I gotta know tonight, if you're alone tonight
Can't stop this feeling
Can't stop this fire

(chorus)
Oh, I get hysterical, hysteria, oh, can you feel it?
(oh can you feel it? )
Do you believe it?
(do you believe it? )
It's such a magical mysteria when you get that feelin'
(when you get that feelin)
Better start believin'
(better start believin' it's a)
cause it's a miracle, oh say you will
Ooh babe
Hysteria when you're near

Out of me, into you yeah
You could hide, it's just a one way street
Oh, I believe I'm in you, yeah
Open wide, that's right!
Dream me off my feet
Oh, believe in me

Come on
Ooh babe
(oh, can you feel it? )
Ooh baby
(do you believe I get hysterical? )
Oh!
Hysterical
(hysteria)
Hysteria
(when you get that feelin')
You'd better believe it!
(better start believin')
cause it's a miracle, oh, say you will
Oh babe, say you will

(get closer to me)
Get closer baby
(oh)
Baby
(oh)
Closer
(closer)
Closer
(get closer)
Closer to me

"Mysteria"? "Dream me off my feet"?

Now, I know this is not the dumbest song ever. Heck, it's not even the dumbest song on the Hysteria album: that title would go to the will-be-playing-in-Hell-for-all-eternity-should-I-go-there Pour Some Sugar On Me. But Heaven help me, I could listen to this song 10 times in a row and still want to hear it again.

Def Leppard stood out from similar '80's acts: their drummer losing an arm then having a special kit created for him so he could keep playing with the band; the fact that - unlike most 'pop metal' acts of their day - their albums got terrific reviews; that - also unlike most 'pop metal' acts of their day - girls that liked the band were not generally of the trashy / easier-than-a-People-magazine-crossword-puzzle variety.

Their videos for this song and another Hysteria track, Animal, broke from the '80's pop metal template of "performance + lots of slutty-looking chicks in halter tops". Their early '80's attempt at avoiding this template was hide-your-eyes awful. The above video and the Animal video were actually pretty well done and have a certain stylishness about them.

So, forgive my Lord, for I love a really dumb song.

2008-11-12T21:06:00.000-05:00

This is great. All of you expectant parents should visit your local priest.

Vote For a Catholic Blogger to Get a Scholarship

2008-11-11T17:52:00.003-05:00

Thomas Peters at American Papist is asking for your vote. A $10,000 scholarship hangs in the balance. Please consider supporting this Catholic blogger (i.e. follow the link). It only takes a fews clicks. Be sure to vote for Thomas Peters.

Helping the Poor: Avoinding the CCHD Part II

2008-11-11T15:27:00.014-05:00

I recently received this donation envelope from my parish:

At first glance at this envelope, one might think that money donated to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) goes directly to helping the poor. You may have visions in your mind of soup kitchens, homeless shelters and St. Vincent de Paul charities.

Read the envelope closely.

According to the CCHD grant list (pdf), approximately 90% of their grants go to community organizing. As far as I can tell, none of the money went to promote human development between conception and birth. As recently as last year, the CCHD had donated money to left-leaning and partisan organizing groups such as ACORN. A letter on the USCCB website (pdf) claims funding to ACORN has been cut off and that an investigation is underway.

I do not know much about community organizing, but I can appreciate the old saw:

Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for life.

I have no problem with community organizing in theory. Insofar as such projects focus on "teaching men to fish" then I'm in favor of them. Economic development is undoubtedly a good thing. However, I suspect many of the community organizing projects sponsored by CCHD support partisan, predominately leftist causes and candidates. The fact that money went to ACORN is case in point.

You may recall that ACORN is under investigation in Ohio for voter fraud and that they unabashedly supported the Obama campaign. While ACORN's theory of encouraging poor people to vote is good, its practice of encouraging poor people to vote for a specific (pro-choice) candidate is bad.

Until the CCHD finishes its investigation and implements safeguards to ensure no USCCB money will support pro-abortion and/or partisan causes, I would suggest avoiding the CCHD and helping the poor in other ways. Let me recommend Food for the Poor. Their website states,

[Food for the Poor] provide[s] food, housing, health care, education, water projects, micro-enterprise development assistance and emergency relief to the poorest of the poor

According to the CFC, their overhead is just 3.8%. In other words, over 96% of the money they raise goes straight to helping the poor. My beautiful wife and I contribute to them regularly.

Avoid the Campaign for Human Development

2008-11-07T19:09:00.003-05:00

I read an interesting post by Richard John Neuhaus.

Bottom line: This organization raises funds in Catholic churches during the month of November. It has very little to with helping the poor. They support ACORN and other organizations that support the abortion licence. Give your money to the poor instead:

The Campaign for Human Development (CHD) is an annual collection in parishes, usually on one of the last two Sundays in November. It used to be called the Catholic Campaign for Human Development but the Catholic was dropped, which is just as well since it has nothing to do with Catholicism, except that Catholics are asked to pay for it. Some bishops no longer allow the CHD collection in their dioceses, and more should not allow it. In fact, CHD, misbegotten in concept and corrupt in practice, should, at long last, be terminated.

Ten years ago, CHD was exposed as using the Catholic Church as a milk cow to fund organizations that frequently were actively working against the Church’s mission, especially in their support of pro-abortion activities and politicians. Now it turns out that CHD has long been a major funder of ACORN, a national community agitation organization in support of leftist causes, including the abortion license. ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is under criminal investigation in several states. In the last decade CHD gave ACORN well over seven million dollars, including more than a million in the past year. It is acknowledged that ACORN, with which Sen. Obama had a close connection over the years, was a major player in his presidential campaign. The bishops say they are investigating the connection between CHD and ACORN. They say they are worried that it might jeopardize the Church’s tax-exemption. No mention is made of abusing the trust of the Catholic faithful.

What most Catholics don’t know, and what would likely astonish them, is that CHD very explicitly does not fund Catholic institutions and apostolates that work with the poor. Part of the thinking when it was established in the ideological climate of the 1960s is that Catholic concern for the poor would not be perceived as credible if CHD funded Catholic organizations. Yes, that’s bizarre, but the history of CHD is bizarre. The bishops could really help poor people by promptly shutting down CHD and giving any remaining funds to, for instance, Catholic inner-city schools. In any event, if there is a collection at your parish this month, I suggest that you can return the envelope empty—and perhaps with a note of explanation—without the slightest moral hesitation.

So What's Next For Obambots?

2008-11-06T18:49:00.002-05:00

Whatever will they do with their time? I'm sure they'll figure out the next logical step in service to the Obamessiah.....

Congratulations To Senator Obama On Winning The Presidential Election

2008-11-05T18:14:00.009-05:00

The success of his campaign truly illustrates something we've been told as a child about our great nation: That anyone can grow up to be president. All you need is ambition, determination, and the willingness to....

** break your pledge to not accept private donations so that you can outspend your opponent 6 to 1 with money obtained from dubious sources

** have a compliant and subservient national media applying maximum scrutiny to (and even fabricating stories about) your opponent while sweeping any of your skeletons, gaffes, and glaringly ridiculous propositions under the rug

** promise a mathematically impossible tax-and-redistribution plan designed to turn the election into 4 wolves and 1 sheep voting on what's for dinner

** employ an ethically-challenged "grass-roots" organization to sign up voters who might otherwise miss out on the opportunity to vote for you, such as 2nd graders, dead people, cartoon characters, etc.

...and any millionaire with little-to-no experience or accomplishments can pander to enough people to get elected.

Is this a great country, or what?

Gee, Thanks For Clearing That Up

2008-11-04T13:42:00.002-05:00

According to the Wall Street Journal, journalists at the New York Times have discovered that, contrary to being innocents unjustly detained by fascist George Bush, many of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay are actually, you know, guilty as hell:

According to the six-year narrative of the press and political class, the Bush Administration's counterterrorism policies fall somewhere between the Spanish Inquisition and the Ministry of Love in "1984." So it was something of a shock to read a remarkable front-page story in the New York Times yesterday, the abridged version being: Never mind.

In their 1,600-word dispatch "Next President Will Face Test on Detainees," reporters William Glaberson and Margot Williams discover that, gee whiz, many of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay really are dangerous terrorists. The Times reviewed "thousands of pages" of evidence that the government has so far made public and concludes that perhaps the reality is more complicated than the critics claim.

Lo and behold, detainees are implicated in such terror attacks as the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Those with "serious terrorism credentials" include al Qaeda operatives Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and the so-called "Dirty 30," Osama bin Laden's cadre of bodyguards. The Times didn't mention Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, though he's awaiting a war-crimes tribunal at Gitmo too.

It has been joked that the NY Times should change its slogan from "All The News That's Fit To Print" to "All The News That Fits Our Agenda". Perhaps a better one would be "We'll Get Around To Practicing Journalism And Reporting The Truth......Eventually"

Final Thoughts Before Election Day

2008-11-03T19:49:00.005-05:00

From the email transom.

Disclaimer: This should not be interpreted as an indictment of either candidate.

Curiouser and Curiouser

2008-11-03T17:47:00.002-05:00

It is practically beyond dispute that what is refered to as the country's "mainstream media" - ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Newsweek, and Time - have been so far in the tank for Barack Obama that they've grown gills. They have done an absolutely masterful job of keeping their coverage of troubling information about Obama - and, indeed, many of his own more potentially damaging statements - down to blurbs that are quickly followed by their dismissal. As to most of the damaging info about Obama - Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, ACORN, etc. - and his own potentially damaging statements - for instance, his numerous reversals of policy over the last 12 months, not to mention his silly charges of racism against John McCain - they have received wide discussion on Fox News and in the conservative blogsphere, but have mostly been effectively muted by the outlets mentioned above.

This is why I have been very suprised by the info that has gained considerable traction over the last few days: first the LA Times suppression of the Khalidi tape got wide coverage, now an audio interview Obama did with the San Francisco Chronicle back in January was discovered on the Chronicle's own website, in which he promises to bankrupt the coal industry (details that were - surprise! - left out of the original article).

My first reaction to hearing the tape was "I wonder how the folks in Pennsylvania and Ohio feel about this...". My second was "What an incredibly stupid thing for Obama to say."

My question about this latest Obama admission is: Why has there been no pushback by the Obama campaign or from the media outlets listed above? Both parties pushed back ferociously to Obama's Wright and Ayers connections, pushed back ferociously to Obama's "Spread the wealth" reply to Joe the Plummer, pushed back ferociously in defending the LA Times' not releasing the tape...but about this latest potentially damaging statement - nothing.

My suspicion is that Obama and co. think they have the election sown up, so why bother? They've already started celebrating, and his backing out of his pre-presidential campaign agreement to participate in a series of townhall-style debates with McCain and the fact that he had not held a press conference since September seem to indicate that he figured that he is comfortably ahead and need not take chances. The myriad of polls have, for the most part, backed him up on this notion, though they have tightened somewhat in the last week.

I can't escape the feeling, however, that the Obama camp and the press, sensing that a) Obama was a shoo-in for the nomination and b) that there was quite a bit of negative feelings coming their way for their shamefully biased election coverage, have let their guard down a bit in the last few days, and some info poured through the cracks. In doing so, I believe that they have a) vastly underestimated John McCain and Sarah Palin, b) vastly underestimated the resourcefulness of the conservative blogsphere in accessing this info, and c) overestimated the reliability of the pre-election polling.

If my suspicion is correct, I think Obama and his champions in the media might be in for a bit of a surprise come Tuesday night.

We shall see.....

Abortion vs. Healthcare

2008-11-02T21:20:00.008-05:00

During my comment sparring with the writer of Liberal Catholic News, the question came up about whether a Catholic should give up on trying to outlaw abortion in favor of promoting other life issues like health care. A similar question was emailed to me by my friend Lisa.

It was an interesting question, so I decided to do some research. It didn't take long to find this excerpt from paragraph 2273 of the Catechism:

2273 The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation:

"The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority....Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being's right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death."

"The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined....As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child's rights."

That is pretty strong language. It says the state is under a moral obligation to respect the rights of unborn children and to outlaw abortion. In a democracy, it follows that Catholic voters are under a moral obligation to ensure the state does so.

Contrast this with what the Catechism says about health care in paragraph 2288:

2288 Life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God. We must take reasonable care of them, taking into account the needs of others and the common good. Concern for the health of its citizens requires that society help in the attainment of living-conditions that allow them to grow and reach maturity: food and clothing, housing, health care, basic education, employment, and social assistance.

Here the Catechism is less specific. It does not say the state must "provide" health care, nor does it say that health care is a "right." Rather, it says the state should "help in the attainment" of health care and other basic needs.

Respecting human life does not end when the child is born. It involves promoting human dignity throughout life. There are people suffering in our society with inadequate health care and lack of other basic necessities, and we have to do more to help them.

That help can come in several forms. Certainly the state could create a massive state-run health care system. This works well in some countries (Norway) and not so well in other countries (Britain). The larger the population of the country, the less likely it is to work well. The state can also help by promoting a robust economy so that its citizens can afford to purchase health care for themselves. Reasonable Catholics can disagree on the best method.

There are pros and cons of both Obama's and McCain's health plans, and neither of them will survive Congress unchanged. One may better than the other, but both will "help in the attainment" of health care.

Conversely, only one candidate has expressed a desire to respect an unborn child's right to life in law. The other candidate, by supporting FOCA, will further diminish that right. Protecting the rights of the unborn is not the only issue in this campaign, but it hard to imagine a more important issue.

I was very impressed with my local bishop's, Paul Loverde, homily today. He emphasized the importance of supporting human life with our vote because life is the "foundation of our society." Life is fundamental and a prerequisite for all other rights. He also said there could be proportionate reasons to vote against the pro-life candidate. But then he reminded us that 4,000 unborn children are killed every day in this country. In my mind, it would be hard to find any proportional issue that can outweigh that startling statistic.

Pray the rosary for this election. If you do, I'll promise to stop beating this dead horse (until after the election).

UPDATE: Here is Bishop Loverde's pastoral letter on voting Catholic.

Reducing Abortions: Piling on More Evidence (a.k.a. Beating a Dead horse Deader)

2008-11-02T20:57:00.007-05:00

Many pro-choice organizations court the Catholic vote by saying they are in favor of making abortion rare eventhough the want to keep it legal. In fact, you can spot a liberal Catholic if they speak of life issues in terms of "reducing abortion rates," while a pro-life Catholic will speak in terms of "protecting life."

Some have contended that an Obama presidency would reduce abortions more than a McCain presidency. I challanged that contention in an earlier post. Since then I found a Whitherspoon Institute study (hat tip to Dawn) that further supports my view. While pouring over years of CDC data, Dr. New discovered that welfare programs and social safety nets had little effect on abortion rates. But abortion restrictions like informed consent, parental notification and parental consent laws has a significant effect. It is doubtful, therefore, that an Obama presidency would reduce abortions.

Republicans, Democrats and the Economy

2008-11-01T21:35:00.011-04:00

Past performance is no guarantee of future results but....

I know the S&P 500 is only one of many indicators of economic performance, but decided to compare its performance with who has been in power in Washington. Barack Obama likes to trumpet the great economy managed under Bill Clinton while blaming the current economy on the "failed economic policies of George Bush."

Let's see what the numbers say. Here is the change in the S&P 500:

Wow! No wonder Obama likes to trumpet the Clinton years. Maybe I should take back everything I've said about the Democrats and the economy. Well, not so fast. There is another branch of government that has some influence on the economy. Let's not forget about Congress.

Clinton operated with a Democrat controlled Congress for the first two years of his presidency. In 1995, under the leadership of Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America, the Republicans took control of both house of Congress. For the first time in our life time, they balanced the federal budget.

Conversely, George Bush enjoyed a Republican congress for the first six years of his Presidency and has had to compromise with a Democratic congress for the last two. Since the Republicans controlled Congress for roughly three times as long as the Democrats, in order to normalize the data I divided the Republican numbers by three. The actual performance of the S&P500 during the Republican congress is three times higher.

Without further ado, here is the performance of the last two Presidents broken out by which party controlled Congress:

This paints a different picture. There is no doubt that the Clinton years were better for the stock market and the economy than the Bush years. But, the bulk of the Clinton stock market performance happened while the Republicans controlled Congress and all of the Bush stock market losses happened while the Democrats controlled congress. Admittedly, this is rough "back of the envelope" analysis and I know correlation is not necessarily causation, but the data is interesting.

Here is the average performance of the S&P 500 while each party was in the majority in Congress. Once again, in order to normalize the data, I divided stock market performance under the Republican Congress by three:

That fact is, Newt Gingrich's congress cut spending and balanced the budget. Clinton, for his part signed the Republican congress's budget into law. The compromise was good for the economy and the stock market soared. Under the Bush administration the economy sputtered along with slow growth and the Republicans lost their way and went on a spending spree. In his defense, this country was attacked by terrorists during that time. However, the economy didn't really tank until the Democrats took over congress.

In my opinion, putting a Republican spending hawk like McCain in the White House with a Democrat controlled Congress will be a good thing. The Democrats will moderate McCain's proposed tax cuts, and McCain will reign in Congressional spending.

I am going to commit Republican heresy and say that now is not the time to cut taxes. The budget deficit is just too high. However, neither should we raise taxes on the people and corporations that are the engine of this economy. We should keep taxes fairly level and start tightening our belt and cut spending.

Obama and a Democrat congress will raise taxes. If they used that money to pay down the deficit, I would not be too concerned. However, Obama plans to spend all of that money on expanding government entitlement programs. That would be terribly irresponsible when deficits are soaring.

McCain has promised to cut pork and spending. That is exactly what this economy needs.

A Little Political Wisdom Before the Election

2008-11-01T20:52:00.004-04:00

Get off your booty and vote:

Reason number 4,726 I like Notre Dame: Reason 324 I like Charlie Weis

2008-11-01T16:34:00.007-04:00

I just had to pleasure of watching a short video documentary aired during the Notre Dame half time show. It tells the story of Charlie's 13 year old daughter Hannah who suffers from global developmental delay.

Charlie loves his daughter and decided to do something to help her and others like her. So in 2003, he and his wife founded Hannah & Friends which calls itself a "nonprofit organization improving the quality of life for children and adults with special needs."

Their latest project is to build a farm outside of South Bend, IN to serve as a loving community for young adults with special needs. Hannah and people like her will have special place to live and thrive.

I think that is a great idea, so I just donated $100. If all of our readers do the same, then we could raise $400 or so. What do you say?

In any event, this video tells Hannah's story much better than I did:

Halloween Fright Flick

2008-10-31T14:14:00.001-04:00

Dancing with the Stars

2008-10-30T22:13:00.001-04:00

(from an email)

"Increase Taxes On The Rich"

2008-10-30T13:40:00.002-04:00

An interesting analogy found floating in the blogsphere:

U.S. Tax System Explained in Beer

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers", he said, "I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20."

Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers?

How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share"? They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 ( 22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20!" declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "But he got $10!”

"Yeah, that’s right!" exclaimed the fifth man.

"I only saved a dollar, too.. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I did!"

"That’s true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute!" yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man ( the richest) didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill.

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking somewhere else where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

The Meltdown

2008-10-29T22:18:00.003-04:00

I just watched a video lecture that was send to me by the Notre Dame Alumni Association. Professor Christopher Waller, the Gilbert Schaefer Chair of Economics at the University of Notre Dame explained the causes of the recent financial crisis. He started with the history of the Great Depression and explained the chain of events that lead to the present situation.

His lecture was given the day after the bailout was signed, so his take on how the bailout will work is a little dated. For example: he did think the Fed should inject equity into the banks and recapitalize them. However, it turns out that is exactly what the Fed did.

The lecture was enlightening. I recommend it to anyone interested in knowing this crisis came about.

You can read a summary of the presentation or watch the complete video (You Tube).

Which Candidate is Better on Abortion?

2008-10-29T20:58:00.003-04:00

The answer should be obvious, but some Catholics unbelievably say Obama is better. The argument goes something like this:

The "right" to abortion established by Roe v. Wade is the law of the land and there is nothing we can do to change it. So voting for pro-life candidates will have little to no effect on abortion.
Restrictions on abortion such as parental notification, parental consent and the partial birth abortion ban do not reduce abortions.
The social safety nets and universal health care supported by Obama will encourage women to choose life and will reduce the number of abortions
Therefore, the abortion rate will be lower under an Obama presidency than under a McCain presidency

That sounds pretty good. So, I have decided to change my vote and endorse Barak Obama.

NOT!

Unfortunately, many catholics buy into this line of reasoning. Let me show you where it breaks down point by point.

1. The pro-life movement has a very good chance of reversing the current law of the land. Roe v. Wade is on the ropes. Go to Planned Parenthood's website and you'd think a woman's "right" to chose is on the verge of being lost. Yet, the pro-choice movement is right to be concerned. The Supreme Court has four justices who has consistently vote pro-life, one justice who is a swing vote and four justices who vote pro-choice. The two oldest justices on the Supreme Court are pro-choice. One of them is in his late eighties. He probably won't last another four years.

That means the next President of the United States will likely have the opportunity to replace one or two pro-choice justices. McCain has promised to appoint strict constructionist justices. These judges tend to vote pro-life. Obama will certainly appoint pro-choice justices. With a majority of Supreme Court voting pro-life, we would see as a minimum a gradual chipping away of Roe v. Wade. We could even see an outright reversal of Roe. The Court tends to respect precedent, but it has reversed itself before. This election represents a tremendous opportunity to overthrow the regime of Roe v. Wade.

2. The Heritage Foundation conducted a study which demonstrates that restrictions on abortion do indeed reduce the number of abortions. Right now, most states require parental notification and/or consent before a minor can get an abortion and they do not allow tax dollars to pay for abortion.

Obama has promised to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). According to USCCB legal analysis (pdf), this bill will wipe off the books the following state laws:

parental notification laws
parental consent laws
abortion clinic regulations, even those designed to make abortion more safe
law that protect the conscience of doctors who chose not to perform abortion. In other words, catholic doctors could be required to perform abortions or lose their jobs.
laws preventing partial birth abortion

FOCA could also require states to use tax payers dollars to pay for abortion.

Barak Obama advocates using federal tax dollars to pay for abortions at home and overseas. It stretches credulity to think Obama will reduce abortions.

3. Social safety nets and universal health care will reduce abortion. I do not know if this is true, but it is certainly plausible. Economics can certainly be a factor in a woman's choice to get an abortion. How big a factor is unclear. I do know that crisis pregnancy centers out number abortion clinics and these charities offer women financial, emotional and medical assistance in order to encourage them to choose life.

One component of Barak Obama's health plan is to mandate that all children have health insurance. Parents could be fined for not buying health care for their kids. A woman who is not sure if she can afford health insurance may choose to abort her child instead of facing the prospect of being fined by the federal government. I laud Obama's desire to ensure every child has health insurance, but his method of doing so could encourage abortion.

Here's an idea. Why don't we give all families a $5000 tax credit so they can buy insurance for their kids? That could help achieve the goal of full coverage for children without encouraging abortion.

4. There is ample reason to believe an Obama presidency will lead to an increase in abortion, not a decrease. But, to be fair, I do not have a crystal ball and cannot predict the future. It is possible (but I don't think likely) that Obama's social welfare plan will reduce abortion more than FOCA will increase it. Is that a good enough reason to vote Obama?

Hardly.

Life is the most basic, most fundamental and most important of all human rights. Without life, all other rights become meaningless. What good is freedom of speech if you are dead? All unborn children have been endowed by their creator with the unalienable right to life. A just society has a moral obligation to recognize that right in law.

A legal recognition of a child's right to be born is not only the right thing to do. But, it will inevitably lead to a decrease in abortions. People are influenced by laws. Sure there are people who break the law, but most people are law abiding.

The first step to such legal recognition is to overturn, or at least diminish the scope of Roe v. Wade. As I argued above, we are close to having the Supreme Court majority required to do that.

FOCA will do the opposite. It goes beyond Roe v. Wade and expands abortion "rights" at the expense of unborn life.

There are two major candidates for President. One of them has voted consitently to establish in law an unborn child's right to life. He voted for unborn victims of violence, partial birth abortion ban, born alive infant protection act, Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito. The other candidate has either opposed or voted against all of those measures.

McCain will protect the rights of the unborn. Obama will not.

So I Lathered Him With Me Shillelagh...

2008-10-28T16:38:00.006-04:00

As I announced in the headline of my last post, I had intended to refrain from any more political posts, at least for the remainder of the year. I had outlined my position as clearly as I could, and felt that any more ruminations on the wrecking ball that an Obama presidency promises to be would only be an exercise in this:

However, Tom sent me (and a few others) this email on Sunday:

Subject: Can Pro-Life Catholics Vote for Obama and Other Democrats?

This guy says you can:

http://liberalcatholicnews.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html#1350747276112668280

I may be wasting my time arguing with these guys, but it is helping me understand my position more clearly. Feel free to weigh in.

Echoing Michael Corleone in Godfather III, "I got out, but they pulled me back in..." My response:

Howdy,

Ugh. He even brought out the ol' "Seamless Garment" line.

A brief fisking of one paragraph will illustrate the fault(s) in his position:
____________________________________________

All of this said, there may be non-restrictive means of reducing abortion rates. [There also may be non-law-enforcement ways of stopping homicide. I don't know of any that have actually worked]. One of the conditions for the possibility of building a pro-life consensus in a pluralistic democracy would be to reduce the demand for abortion. [Putting the cart before the horse here. First he wants to reduce the demand for abortion, which he then claims will cause a change in people's beliefs. Would not a more sensible argument be that a change in beliefs would trigger a demand for abortion? To assert such backward reasoning as a premise statement does not bode well for the rest of his argument]. Barack Obama promises to try to reduce abortion rates by non-restrictive means. ['Promise' is certainly a stretch. In the face of criticism about his opposition to the Born Alive Infants Act and concern over his promise to remove any and all restrictions against abortion, he has hypothesized that his policies will nevertheless cause a decrease in abortions, a hypothesis that this article is attempting to flesh out]. Some statistics indicate that up to seventy percent of abortions are driven by economic decisions. [Yes, and some statistics show that global temperatures have increased as the numbers of pirates worldwide has decreased. It may be true, but no one with any amount of common sense would say a dwindling number of pirates is driving worldwide temperatures. Likewise, nobody with any amount of life experience would buy that '70% of abortions are driven by economic concerns'. More likely, THE primary reason for a woman choosing abortion is "I don't really want this baby", and any economic concerns are voiced primarily in justification and/or support of their decision. I would further venture that there is a percentage of women who, when learning they're pregnant, think to themselves "I would really love to have this baby, but I can't afford to raise it. My only option is abortion.", but that it is extremely less than 70%]. Might a combination of economic justice initiatives [Pardon me if the term 'economic justice' makes my blood run cold. 'Economic justice' from the mouth of the Obamessiah, according to his own words, means using the progressive tax system as an engine for wealth redistribution, which is about as economically unjust and un-American as one can get] and better education efforts (including abstinence training) decrease abortion rates? Might the late Cardinal Bernadine's "seamless garment" argument for a consistent ethic of life be more persuasive in forming a culture of life? [Ah yes, the 'seamless garment' argument. Nevermind that Obama takes a set of fabric shears to the 'conception-to-birth' swath of fabric, shreds the 'don't create life to destroy it' section of cloth with his planned support for the as-yet unsuccessful and completely unneccessary embrionic stem cell research, with a likely scissoring of the 'natural death' end of the fabric in the future. Nevermind that his proposed tax increases on "big corporations" will include pharaceutical companies, which will only drive up the cost of pre- and post-natal care. The garment you have left might be seamless, but it is in tatters] Might this ethic be more consistent with the whole of Catholic social justice teaching? Isn’t the consistent ethic of life implied in Pope John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae? [Sure, if you conveniently ignore that the right to life is not merely "one life issue among many" but is the foundation of all other human rights. More accurately, he is simply invoking the squishy term 'social justice' to justify supporting a candidate who advocates abortion-on-demand, tolerates infanticide, and eagerly advances a purely socialistic tax policy].
________________________________________________

I could do the above with any paragraph in the article, especially his forays into what certain saints may or may not have thought about the moment of ensoulment and his laughable (and thankfully brief, as to not further embarrass himself) defense of recent words on the abortion subject from Pelosi and Biden. However, I can only deal with so much disingenuousness on any given day.

Love and kisses,

Jerry

Horse thoroughly beaten.

An Amazing Story

2008-10-22T21:38:00.002-04:00

A few months ago I had the pleasure of attending a talk by a former POW. Air Force Captain Guy Gruters was shot down over north Vietnam and ended up spending years in the Hanoi Hilton. His story of grace is amazing. The description he gave of life in prison is horrifying. He listened to Lance Sijan get beaten slowly to death over the course of a month. He talks about living in raw sewage and being infested with parasites. He speaks of an environment that can only be described as pure hell.

However, through it all he found grace. At first he was full of pride which led to anger and hatred. Later he started to find humility. Finally, he discovered the power of prayer. He said he prayed for his captors over the course of months "without really meaning it." I loved that description, because I find myself doing the same thing sometimes.

Then, after months, he started to really mean what he was praying. Then he learned to forgive his torturers and finally learned to love them. After that, although he was still living in the most horrible conditions, he discovered the sovereignty of God and received a tremendous sense of peace.

It was an amazing talk and you can download it from here (76 mb mp3 - recommend right-clicking and selecting "save target as"). You can find more great talks at the Theology on Tap website.

I strongly recommend Capt. Gruters' talk. God bless.

The VP for 2012

2008-10-13T17:15:00.005-04:00

I'm not a huge Palin fan, but I'll add a VP to Jerry's ticket:

Sizing Up The Field II: My Final Politics Post For 2008

2008-10-08T15:00:00.003-04:00

Dear America (and the 3 or 4 people who read this blog),

Here is a summary of your two candidates for president:

Political Foundation and Record
McCain: Son and grandson of US Navy admirals; US Navy pilot; seven years prisoner of war; combat unit commander; twenty two years US Senator authoring and sponsoring significant legislation.
Obama: Protege of Marxist/Leninist ideologues and “Bash America First” lunatics; product of Chicago Democratic political machine, one of the most corrupt in the nation; Two years in Senate, where he was absent or voted “Present” 50% of the time; no accomplishments or achievements, honors or awards;

Foreign Policy Approach
McCain: America’s interests first
Obama: Make sure everyone likes us

Energy
McCain: Domestic drilling for oil and gas, nuclear energy, invest in alternative energy programs. Basically, try everything.
Obama: Same as McCain, except no drilling for oil or gas. Why our own natural resources should not be utilized has not been explained. Also was against nuclear power, but may have changed his mind.

Government Spending And Taxes
McCain: Reduce domestic government spending; tax relief for corporations (who, you know, employ a lot of the middle class and make the stuff the middle class buys)
Obama: Trillion dollar Marxist wealth redistribution social welfare spending programs, which will be paid for by taxing corporations and the “top 5% income earners”. Exactly how taxing corporations will not trigger layoffs and higher prices for goods and services has not been explained. Exactly why it’s fair to apply a high tax rate to the top 5% income earners (who already account for more than 50% of tax revenue), while 50% of Americans pay no taxes at all, has not been explained, either. States that the role of government is to help everyone pay their bills; however, the Constitution of the US - a document 'progressives' love in the abstract but in every instance ignore in the particular - says nothing to the effect of it being the government’s responsibility to help everyone pay their bills, and nothing at all about the higher income earners being required to shoulder almost all the tax burden required to have the government help pay everyone's bills.

Health Care
McCain: Promotes choice and personal responsibility. Believes that putting market incentives in place will encourage and reward efficient behavior. How will he be able to provide enough assistance to those who are now uninsured by simply redistributing the tax breaks now only enjoyed by those currently covered? No idea. But his plan does not call for the government to "solve" everyone's health care needs.
Obama: Socialized medicine, anyone? His "right" to "free" health care will cost over $100 billion a year. Would the Obama health care system work? It would clearly get almost everyone covered sooner rather than later. The real question is how would it be sustained. Are their cost containment strategies going to support a system that is affordable in the long run? No. More likely, a $100 billion infusion of new health care spending by the Obama plan would actually increase the rate of health care inflation and ultimately create an imperative for more draconian government intervention in the health care markets.

Abortion
McCain: Has stated that he is pro-life. Don’t know how serious he is about it.
Obama: Stated that 1st action will be to sign “Freedom of Choice Act”, which will wipe out any and all state restrictions on abortion, including parental notification; Judging by his defense of his opposition to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, he’s cool with infanticide, too.

As Potential Commander In Chief
McCain: Distinguished military record; seems to grasp (at the very least) basic military strategy
Obama: Gave an anti-Iraq war speech to a crowd of anti-Iraq war demonstrators; almost visited wounded troops in Germany, but decided to go shopping in Berlin instead; does not know the difference between a strategy and a tactic

War On Al Queda Strategy
McCain: Finish job in Iraq. Provides rough sketches of how to completely wipe out Al Queda, but is smart enough not to tell everyone what the next move is.
Obama: Screw Iraq. Save Darfur. Says he plans to invade Pakistan, though he does not seem to have much faith in US military leaders.

Voting Record
McCain: Sided with George W. Bush 96% of the time, whose approval rating is about 18%.
Obama: When he bothered to vote, sided with far left, the same far left in control of present Congress whose approval rating is about 9%.

Bi-Partisanship
McCain: Has co-sponsored bi-partisan legislation.
Obama: Talks about bipartisanship, but has never co-sponsored bi-partisan legislation.
_______________________________________________________

Judging by the polls, it seems that more of you prefer Obama. Fine. You want him, you've got him. Enjoy Jimmy Carter, Installment II. Sorry I won't be joining the party. Socialism and infanticide are not my thing. Instead, I'll be gearing up for 2012:

Jerry, over and out.

All Hail, Dear Leader

2008-09-30T18:08:00.008-04:00

Update: The original video disappeared from YouTube. It surfaced again briefly in another location on YouTube, then disappeared again. A google search revealed that a website named No-Libs.com had saved a copy, and added their own commentary to the beginning. -- Jerry

Hard to pick out which part of this video creeps me out the most:

Is it the part where the kiddies sing that Obama is going to spread happiness? I thought the government was supposed to protect the country's shores, provide infrastructure, and otherwise get the hell out of my way. Apparently, it now wants to provide happiness for each and every person. This is scary.

The fact that, despite the website's claim that "At the heart of the project were 22 children and their music" and that the kids and their music teacher did this on their own, Jeff Zucker (President of NBC Universal), Holly Schiffer, Peter Rosenfeld, Darin Moran, Jean Martin, Andy Blumenthal, and Nick Phoenix rearranged schedules to participate?

Where the kiddies sing about how Obama is going to bring 'unity'? Does an "or else" come along with it?

Where the kiddies promise that they, led by Obama, are going to "change it" and "rearrange it", 'it' being America? That Obama plans to rearrange America according to his vision is probably the first honest thing that's been said by his followers in weeks.

The part where the song ends, and after showing the beaming faces of the adults, the camera goes back to the kids, all of whom have an "I did that just the way you wanted me to, right?" look on their face?

Now that the Obama campaign has entered the "exploit children" phase of leading the US on the march toward socialism, I eagerly await their next strategy, "threaten animals":

Breaking News

2008-09-27T14:58:00.006-04:00

In response to the recent financial crisis, the U.S. Mint has created a new dollar bill.

In other news, the Air Force has announced that it will start an experimental program to have non-rated* officers fly Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), like the MQ-1 Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper. Shortly thereafter, the Air Force released a new recruiting video (2mb wmv).

* non-rated: Air Force speak for someone who has not graduated from flight school.

Another Palin Moment

2008-09-25T21:25:00.002-04:00

This is a neat human interest story about a family with a child who has Downs Syndrome.

(source: Rush Limbaugh's website of all places).

The Compassion of Socialized Medicine

2008-09-19T14:24:00.008-04:00

Every person has a right to health care!* We need socialized medicine!** It's free!*** It's for everyone!****

* It is a basic human right that one may not be gratuitously denied health care. However, it is not a basic human right that anyone (doctor, hospital) must provide a service to anyone else free of charge.
** like a sharp blow to the skull
*** except for the monumental tax hike it would require
**** who survives

If any of the above sounds appealing to you, and you would like to see Britain's and Canada's socialized health care systems tried out in the US, allow me to pass on this little nugget of wisdom from Baroness Warnock, a former headmistress who went on to become Britain's leading moral philosopher and a veteran British government adviser, on the duty of elderly British citizens in mental decline:

...dementia sufferers should consider ending their lives through euthanasia because of the strain they put on their families and public services.

Lady Warnock said: "If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives – your family's lives – and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service.

"Actually I've just written an article called 'A Duty to Die?' for a Norwegian periodical. I wrote it really suggesting that there's nothing wrong with feeling you ought to do so for the sake of others as well as yourself."

The 84-year-old added that she hoped people will soon be "licensed to put others down" if they are unable to look after themselves.

Ah yes, "the right to die", which in practice quickly morphs into "the duty to die" - to save resources for others, to prevent family burden (or in countries with socialized medicine, taxpayer burden), for the common good.

Legalized abortion and euthanasia not only end a life, they shape the culture to marginalize those who choose not to pursue them in difficult situations: witness the reaction of many "progressives" to Sarah Palin having 5 kids (one with Down Syndrome) and Bristol Palin's decision not to abort her unplanned pregnancy - it's been downright vicious. With legalized euthanasia, the same vitriol will eventually be directed toward the elderly and those afflicted with debilitating conditions who do not wish to be put to death.

A brave new world, indeed.

Vote Catholic

2008-09-14T20:45:00.001-04:00

www.CatholicVote.com

Point - Counter Point

2008-09-11T13:05:00.003-04:00

Enviro-wackos: "We weep for the trees!!!"

Scotch Elm: "Why? We don't give a [bleep] about you..."

Little Known Facts About Barack Obama

2008-09-10T13:06:00.002-04:00

Since I alerted you, dear readers, to some little known facts about Sarah Palin, I thought that in the interest of fairness, I should offer some equally interesting little known facts about Barack Obama:

> Obama can calculate your guilt just by looking at the numbers in your checkbook.

> Obama's famous stare once converted 15 Islamic fundamentalists into secular progressives, all of whom are currently employed by Countrywide Home Loans.

> Our universe is held together by the force of Michelle Obama's benevolent willpower, but her patience is running thin.

> US Mail Service published Obama's resume on a new first class stamp.

> Obama can inflate a hot air balloon in one blow. He does it for the children.

> Any sentence containing the name "Obama" and ending in a question mark has been determined to be racist. The only exceptions are rhetorical sentences such as "Is there any way that Obama could be more perfect?"

> In Portland, Oregon, Obama fed a multitude of 75 thousand with five government subsidy forms and two rolls of red tape.

> When the people learn to vote themselves money from the public trough, Obama will appear.

> Obama once had a chance to save 10% on car insurance by switching to Geico, but he said "no" because that would mean a sellout to corporate interests.

> Obama cast the first, and only, stone.

Don't let it be said that I'm not bipartisan.

Little Known Facts About Sarah Palin

2008-09-04T14:07:00.005-04:00

Beginning with John McCain's surprising pick of Sarah Palin for V.P. last Friday, a number of little known facts about Mrs. Palin have been surfacing all over the web, and have been gathered together on one site. Here are some of the more interesting ones:

> Sarah Palin will give birth to the man who will lead humanity’s war against the machines.

> Sarah Palin knows how old the Chinese gymnasts are.

> Sarah Palin’s son is going to Iraq after the Surge, because a Palin during the Surge would have been unfair.

> Sarah Palin’s presence in the lower 48 states means the Arctic ice cap can finally return.

> Sarah Palin is awarded first dibs on Alaskan wolfpack kills.

> Sarah Palin will send Biden a pre-debate cheat sheet. The sheet will have tips on defending against Kung Fu Death Grip.

> NFL teams may draft Sarah Palin, if they forfeit all their other players forever, to maintain league parity.

> If placed into Schroedinger’s experiment, both Sarah Palins remain alive.

> Sarah Palin would have just had an eagle drop the Ring into Mount Doom.

> Sarah Palin fishes salmon by convincing them it’s in their interest to jump into the boat.

> The Northern Lights are really just the reflection from Sarah Palin’s eyes.

> The diamonds in Sarah Palin’s earrings were crushed with her very hands.

> If Sarah Palin and Chuck Norris mated, they would spawn a whole new universe.

> When Sarah Palin was 5, she cooked a whole turkey in her EasyBake oven.

and finally....

> It’s not over until Sarah Palin says it’s over.

In light of her performance last night, I am prepared to believe at least half of these.....

Palin Power

2008-09-03T23:55:00.003-04:00

I have to give it up to Sarah Palin. She brought down the house at the RNC. Katie, my beautiful wife, was sold when Palin said she would be an advocate for special needs children. I loved how Palin humorously took the Obama platform apart. There will be plenty of blog and media coverage to give you the rundown of the speech.

I want to highlight one portion of Palin's remarks that struck me personally. She quoted Colonel Thomas Moe, who was a POW with John McCain. Col Moe was also my Professor of Aerospace Studies at Notre Dame. For you non-military types, he was the Air Force ROTC commander in charge of all of the cadets. Before I left for pilot training, he gave me a "remove before flight" streamer. He told me to remove my ego and my pride before stepping into the cockpit. He is an outstanding exemplar of professionalism and humility. His story of courage is truly inspiring. To learn more about Col Moe's, check out his autobiographical article in Notre Dame magazine. I still have a printed copy of the original issue. It is well worth the read.

God, Country, Notre Dame.

Am I The Only One Who….

2008-09-03T14:28:00.004-04:00

....can’t stand to listen to the music of either Justin Timberlake or Tim McGraw, but think that they’re both pretty good actors?

....will only wear Levi’s jeans?

....reacts to hearing a "Bahsten" accent in the same manner as I would hearing fingernails dragged across a chalkboard?

....has ever prayed for God to help Notre Dame win a football game, then felt guilty about praying for such a thing, and then brought it up in confession only to have the priest say "Don’t worry about it - I was too."?

....would happily pay $5 a gallon for gas if it meant that the US could tell Saudi Arabia to go to hell?

....doesn’t hate women’s basketball with a white-hot burning passion of a thousand suns (as does – it seems – every other male sports fan on the planet)?

....will wear Nike shoes, but refuses to buy any of their apparel?

....thinks that an interesting "reality" show would be to have Donald Trump, Diddy (or whatever he calls himself these days), Janice Dickenson, and Jim Rome live in a modest apartment for a year and call it World’s Biggest Megalomaniac?

....thinks that the Olympics should drop tennis, soccer, and any other sport that doesn’t consider an Olympic gold medal the pinnacle of achievement in that sport?

....wishes that the whole "athletic-shorts-below-the-knee" style would go away forever? (mid- to lower-thigh is long enough, thank you)

....thinks that, if my wife thinks "Rosemary Guadalupe" is a desirable name should we ever have a daughter, that it would be OK to name a son "Eusebius Polycrates"?

....thinks that, while I am a huge fan of John Wayne and director John Ford, The Searchers is not only not the Best Western Ever but not even one of Ford’s or Wayne’s Top 5?

....thinks that Raging Bull, far from deserving the awed reverence it receives in film aficionado circles, is a self-indulgent, practically unwatchable movie?

....every time upon leaving the bathroom, thinks to himself "It’s a good thing mirrors exist, otherwise I might forget how unbelievably handsome I truly am."?

....wonders, aside from being incredibly good-looking, how on earth my wife puts up with me, let alone why she married me in the first place?

....thinks that the following rationalization for opposing abstinence-only sex-ed:

It’s unrealistic to think that teenagers won’t be having sex. We need to show them how to use condoms.

is insulting to the intelligence of a) anyone who has ever had sex and b) anyone who hasn’t? First of all, I’m supposed to believe that said teenagers cannot possibly restrain themselves from having sex. Given that premise, which of the two scenarios below is more likely?

In the midst of passion, when the hormone train is chugging faster and faster, when those teenage impulses are racing as the young man gazes upon the naked flesh and forbidden pleasures of young nubile womanhood,

a) they're going to stop..........pull out a condom..........remove it from its wrapper..........patiently put it on the male....................then resume sexual activity

b) initiate and complete the sexual act, with both knowing that they’ve skipped the condom thing but are unable/unwilling/too caught up in the moment to break away from the passion until it’s too late.

Anyone who has ever had sex knows the answer to that question. Those that haven’t can probably guess.

Second of all, anyone in 21st century modern Western culture who does not know how to put on a condom is such an imbecilic, paste-eating moron that they should not be having sex in the first place. So, please, sex-ed enthusiasts, stop using "We need to show teenagers how to use condoms" as an excuse to encourage sexual activity among teenagers. You’re full of crap.

Feel free to add your own "Am I The Only One Who..." question in the comments.