Politics
Hillary or Barack: For Catholics?
Leon Suprenant looks at an article that claims that Catholics prefer Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. The author of the piece he’s dissecting is Melidna Henneberger, and she says that while it would seem that Catholic should prefer Obama—a dubious claim in itself— Hillary is getting the majority of the “white Catholic” vote. As Leon points out, since Clinton is winning the white vote by a landslide anyway, this is hardly revelatory.
Looking even deeper, Leon discovers that the definition of “Catholic” is pretty muddy, especially since Henneberger calls out “devout Catholics” in her figures, naming them as those who attend Mass weekly. That’s not a “devout” Catholic; that’s simply being Catholic.
What we have in this campaign season is an attempt to “win back” the Catholic vote from the Republicans. After all, the GOP has done little lately to endear itself to pro-life, morally conservative Catholics, i.e. those who believe, accept, and put into practice the Church’s teachings in their lives. But is the Democrat Party a serious alternative? Not so long as it tries to advance every moral evil to come along as being the God-given right of those who crave it.
I really do wish the Democrats offered a real alternative, if only to keep the Republicans honest, but as Mark Shea says, our choice is between the “Evil Party” and the “Stupid Party.” Whee!
I wish I could vote “none of the above” and we could all start with a clean slate next November.
Anti-immigrant, anti-Pope
When Pope Benedict visited the US, he called on Americans to continue our great tradition of welcoming immigrants to our shores: “to share their joys and hopes, to support them in their sorrows and trials and to help them flourish in their new home.”
Unfortunately, some Republicans have let their zeal for enforcement of the rule of law, including in the area of immigration with which I agree, become an unjust, un-Christian, and downright un-American animus against immigrants. Period. To wit, one Rep, Tom Tancredo, R-Colorado, who took the occasion of the Pope’s remarks on hospitality to attack the Church.
The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial, quotes Tancredo’s foolish remark:
Mr. Tancredo’s response was to accuse the pontiff of “faith-based marketing” and claim that “the pope’s immigration comments may have less to do with spreading the gospel than they do about recruiting new members of the church.”
Tancredo is no doubt referring to the Pew Forum study that found that the Catholic Church in the US is growing only because Catholic immigrants are flooding our shores. CNN anchor Lou Dobb’s shares Tancredo’s impulses and also attacked the Pope for “insulting” Americans: “I really don’t appreciate the bad manners of a guest telling me in this country and my fellow citizens what to do.”
The Pope simply lives up to the Gospel message that we are to be welcoming to the stranger in our midst and extols our American credo and history of welcoming the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and that’s bad manners and an insult? No, the bad manners comes from those who let themselves be blinded by ideology, insult a welcomed and honored guest, and twist an American value into something it is not.
To repeat: I agree we need to enforce the immigrations laws to secure our borders, to elevate the rule of law, and to end the exploitation of illegal aliens by criminals and unscrupulous employers that results. But a blanket anti-immigrant ideology harboring a deep well of anti-Catholicism is just unacceptable.
Marriage was the motivator in 2004
In 2004, a number of states had referenda on their ballots for Defense of Marriage resolutions, laws, or amendments. I’ve seen data that suggests that many conservative voters in swing states like Ohio were motivated to go to the polls to vote to protect marriage and, by the way, cast a vote for President Bush. In other words, without those referenda, it’s likely Bush would have lost and Kerry would have been elected.
To my knowledge, there’s no similar broad-based motivator this time around. Will an anti-Hillary or anti-Obama sentiment be enough to motivate conservative voters who are lukewarm about McCain to get them to the polls?
One might take the view that while McCain is not 100 percent reliably pro-life or conservative, no matter what, he’s more pro-life and more conservative than his two possible opponents. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement. Hmm.
“Underperforming” semantics by the Board of Education
What’s more important? That we not feel bad about our failure or that we stop failing? In politically correct Massachusetts, it’s the former. The state Board of Education has decided that it will no longer use the words “failing” or even “underperforming” to describe schools that are failing. (Isn’t “underperforming” already a euphemism?)
To soothe the bruised egos of educators and children in lackluster schools, Massachusetts officials are now pushing for kinder, gentler euphemisms for failure.
Instead of calling these schools “underperforming,” the Board of Education is considering labeling them as “Commonwealth priority,” to avoid poisoning teacher and student morale.
Schools in the direst straits, now known as “chronically underperforming,” would get the more urgent but still vague label of “priority one.”
The board has spent parts of more than three meetings in recent months debating the linguistic merits and tone set by the terms after a handful of superintendents from across the state complained that the label underperforming unfairly casts blame on educators, hinders the recruitment of talented teachers, and erodes students’ self-esteem.
Rather than addressing the actual problem—why are schools and students failing?—they’ve spent three meetings discussing what to call it. And in the end, whether you call it “failing”, “underperforming”, or “Commonwealth priority” (there’s Orwellian newspeak if I’ve ever seen it), those who are indeed failing know that they’re really failing.
This is bureaucratic cowardice that fails to address the real issues—incompetent educators, unsupportive parents, students who need extra time or attention—but instead pretends that everything is hunky-dory and would anyone like more taxpayer-funded grants for field trips and computers and Earth Day programs?
Ironically, it’s the token student on the Board of Education who cuts through the baloney:
Zachary Tsetsos, a senior at Oxford High School and the only student on the board, said he finds the debate frivolous.
“Why are we spending time on this?,” said the 17-year-old. “I don’t want to tiptoe around the issue. I’m not concerned about what title we give these schools. Let’s work on fixing them.”
Or John Silber, former president of Boston University, former head of the Board of Education, and former gubernatorial candidate:
“Changing the name doesn’t change the reality. I think Shakespeare had a good line: ‘A rose by another name would smell as sweet.’ A skunk by any other name would stink.”
[…]
“Now here they have schools that are not doing adequately, so they’re changing the name?” he said with dismay. “Why don’t we call them special schools?”
Reminds me of the dialogue from “The Incredibles”, where Elastigirl tells her son, Dash, “Every child is special.” To which he replies, “If everyone is special, then NO ONE is special.” In other words, your words and your reality don’t match up.
Anti-War nuts can’t afford dictionaries
Yes, we’ve all been there: embarrassing spelling errors in our work for all the world to see. Heck, I should be the last person to criticize.
Yet, if you’re Cindy Sheehan, the face of the anti-war movement in the US, in San Francisco, anti-war moonbat central, you’d think you would take extra care before standing in front of this sign:
Brother takes public whack at cop-sister
Something tells me there’s going to be some awkward silence around this family’s Easter dinner table. From the letters to the editor in the Salem Evening News, here in Salem, Mass.:
When a co-worker showed me the edition of The Salem News with the high-paying cops salaries in Salem, I bet him anything my sister, Sgt. Kathleen Makros, was in the top five. When he looked, he said I was right.
I just shook my head. If I was a taxpayer in Salem or the mayor, I would be outraged! People are suffering with bills and cops making salaries like that? Thank God I live in a town where the people were brave enough to stand up to the police and the town administrators and say no to more cops and overtime!
Ouch! For those outside of Massachusetts, state law requires private companies to hire off-duty cops at overtime rates to be present at job sites in public areas, unlike most states that only require a flagman or other regular company employee to direct traffic. That little law tends to inflate payrolls, and even if they don’t come out of taxes, they do come from companies who pass on the costs to consumers anyway.
George Washington: “Mission Accomplished”
Boston Mayor Tom Menino has a column in the local newspaper Boston Post-Gazette. Last week he recalled that March 17 is not just St. Patrick’s Day, but also the Suffolk County holiday of Evacuation Day—Boston City workers get the day off, essentially— which recounts, well, let’s let the mayor tell you.
“On March 17, 1776 the British Army finally left ‘the colonies,’ by way of Boston Harbor after being beaten in the American Revolutionary War.”
I’m not sure what Washington was doing at Yorktown but apparently the British had been gone for years. I wonder if Washington had held up a big billboard after the Battle of Bunker Hill: “Mission Accomplished.” I guess the years between 1776 and 1783 only count as a “quagmire” for the American troops.
Way to set an example for all those kids in school, Mr. Mayor. Maybe they should administer MCAS to politicians before they can take office.
Religious faith in America fading over the past generation
While the Catholic Church is losing members slower than Protestant churches, that’s only because so many immigrants are themselves Catholic already. That’s one of the conclusions of the “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, as reported in the New York Times.
What’s sad is that self-identified former Catholics make up one of the largest religious groups in the US.
According to their research, over the past generation, 44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliations, either to another religion or denomination or to nothing at all. Of Catholics it says:
To no one’s surprise, “unaffiliated” was the biggest gainer. That the United States is becoming ever more secular and/or hostile to religious faith is fairly evident to anyone living in or near a big city or on the coasts. But it’s a spreading phenomenon.
Of course, the surveyors see it in the context of politics and similar matters. Plus, I’m not sure whether they even understand the categories they’re studying.
The rise of the unaffiliated does not mean that Americans are becoming less religious, however. Contrary to assumptions that most of the unaffiliated are atheists or agnostics, most described their religion “as nothing in particular.”
Which is, you know, what agnostic means. According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, whose definition is as good as any, it means: “A person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.” That’s pretty much someone who believes in “nothing in particular.”
They also claim that people are abandoning large, impersonal churches for more personal, intimate venues. Supposedly, mega-churches succeed not because they are large but because “they have smaller ministries inside.” Or because they offer an experience that is not hostile to the experience that many people seek, which is a religion that doesn’t require too much counter-cultural changing of their lives.
Catholics coming in the front door and out the back
A five-minute argument against single-payer health care
While you’re considering who to vote for this November for president and Congress, keep in mind the current liberal movement toward “single-payer” healthcare, where “single payer” means the government, which is what Canada has. Want to understand why you probably don’t want a Canadian “free” health-care system? Apart from the confiscatory taxes, there’s the specter that when you’re diagnosed with a potential tumor in your brain, you may be told you have to wait four months for an MRI and another four months for a neurosurgeon’s consult.
That’s what happened to this Ontario man who decided instead to cross the border into the US and pay for his lifesaving treatment out of his own pocket and get it done in four weeks.
Also, keep in mind that the original “Hilarycare” proposal back in the Clinton administration would have made even going to another country and buying medical care with your own money illegal.
So while proponents of socialized health care tout it as a great social justice tool that brings medical care to those without, it’s really just a power grab by liberals and bureaucrats to make everyone suffer from the same terrible health care.
Or as I like to say, “Health care, from the same people who brought you the DMV.”
A little detour through the police state
It’s getting to the point that traveling by air between two cities in this great, democratic republic of ours requires a brief detour through a police state called “TSA”.
I don’t mind security rules that prevent terrorists from hijacking planes. In fact, I wish they’d use security measures that actually worked instead of the pseudo-security that gives the appearance of deterrence without providing it.
Today’s example: A Boston family flying from Chicago to Manchester, NH, decides to stock up on baby food for the flight, keeping mind lurid tales of hours trapped in airliners on runways as well as the unpredictability of winter air travel. TSA guidelines allow an exception to the “no liquids” rule and let you to carry on a “reasonable quantity” of baby food, but do not provide any specific limit.
The family has about one-third of their child’s food confiscated by a TSA screener because the screener and his supervisor thought it was “unreasonable.” Unbelievable.
According to Dr. Soni, the T.S.A. officers said they would need a “doctor’s note” to bring on all of the food. He said he pointed out that he and his wife were doctors, and then offered to get a pediatrician colleague on the phone. [This was not acceptable, evidently.]
The sensible thing to do in this kind of situation is to file your complaint and move on to make your flight, which is what Dr. Soni said he and his wife did.
The T.S.A. officers confiscated some of the food. “They divided it up. They took a jar of prunes and one of bananas, and I think a bottle of formula,” he said.
This is what really bugs me. The only security-related reason to set a limit on how much food one can bring on the plane is because the TSA thinks a terrorist might be trying to smuggle a weapon disguised as food. So at the point they’re confiscating the food, they must suspect this is not food but a weapon. So why would you allow any of the food on board?
On the other hand, if you’re merely a bureaucrat arbitrarily enforcing a rule, then you are satisfied by the act of bringing them into compliance with the rule, regardless of the ongoing threat. That’s someone else’s problem.
If this little family had in fact been a terror cell in disguise, it looks like the screeners left them with enough “materials” to cause a lot of damage to plane, if not take it down entirely. Happily this family was exactly what it seems and the true victims here are the child whose food was taken, the parents who were embarrassed, and the rest of the flying public who must walk through TSA checkpoints with carefully neutral expressions, carefully watching our step and our words, lest we be singled out for search and/or seizure, maybe making us miss our flights, at best, or in jail on trumped-up charges, at worst.
Ironically, I think this is one area where conservatives, liberals, and libertarians can all agree: Airport security is a danger to our civil liberties, to the airline industry, and to our homeland security. Probably more of a danger than to terrorists themselves.
And now if I end up on a no-fly watch list, it will just be an object lesson in what I’ve just written.
Oh, Yes, we can!
With everything that I’ve been writing about him lately, this seemed to come naturally.
Forget qualifications; I just want to believe
Kelly Clark links to this apologia for why this voter is supporting Obama in the election, and it’s scary.
Normally i’m all over experience, policy opinions, legislation, tax policy, etc. etc. But I’ll be damned if leadership, respectability, intelligence, and good old fashioned charisma….aren’t driving my decisions this time around.
I think Obama might just be the right person at the right time. If this were 2000, or even 2004, I don’t think he has a chance. In 2012, he probably wouldn’t have a chance…..but in 2008, I think a weary public just wants….just wants to BELIEVE in America again.
He’s got the right message and the right deliver. I mean, everytime I hear him speak, i have this guilty suspicion that i’m getting suckered…but I just don’t care. [emphasis added]
Imagine you’re the owner of a company with many employees. The company’s performance and profitability and reputation have suffered in recent years and you’ve decided to replace the chief executive. You bring in a potential president and he has no experience in your industry and offers no concrete ideas for how to turn around your company, but he’s charming, witty, and makes you feel good when you talk to him. Are you going to entrust your company to him? Will you stake your family’s financial security on him? Will you stake all your employee’s jobs and their families’ well-being on him?
So why would you give the biggest job in the entire United States of America and the world to him?
It just doesn’t make sense.
And the irony is that this guy’s instincts are telling him that he’s making a bad decision, but he just doesn’t care. What a country.
Into the (abortion) danger zone
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley—to absolutely no one’s surprise—has declared that wider restrictions of the free speech of pro-lifers in Massachusetts are not, in fact, restrictions on their free speech. Her brief in response to a lawsuit by pro-lifers makes the same argument she made before the Legislature last year when she backed the law that expanded abortion clinic buffer zones from 18 feet to 35 feet.
What the abortion clinics and their pet politicians want is to use the coercive power of the legislature and courts to silence an inconvenient opposition
(The buffer zones prevent pro-lifers from approaching or talking to anyone with that distance from an abortion clinic’s entrance or a 6-foot floating buffer around people going in or out of a clinic. How you’re supposed to guess the intention of someone walking down the sidewalk in the general direction of the clinic is beyond me.)
Of course, Coakley is trying to feed us baloney and tell us it’s prime rib.
The “act does not ban any expressive activity, but instead ‘merely regulates the places where communications may occur’ during clinic business hours,” Coakley wrote in the brief.
Typical political doublespeak. So-called “expressive activity” is being banned within a particular place. And, yes, that’s permissible under the Constitution. No one has the right to say anything at any time. Yelling “Fire” in a crowded theatre is the standard analogy. But let’s not beat around the bush here.
The “suggestion that under the act ‘leafleting and solicitation [are] completely banned from public places’ is incorrect,” the brief said. “… Plaintiffs, and everyone else, may continue to hold signs, pray, sing, chant, leaflet, converse, and engage in any other kind of lawful speech so long as they do so from outside any buffer zone.”
I haven’t seen the original complaint she’s quoting, but this is disingenuous too. At how many feet of buffer zone does our free speech become effectively nullified? 35 feet? 50 feet? 10,000 feet? What if the whole state of Massachusetts were one, big buffer zone? We’d still be allowed to hold signs, prayer, etc., as long as it’s not within the boundaries of the state. Free speech!
If we’re pushed beyond the limits of the human voice (or eye, in the case of signs) such that we can no longer effectively communicate our freedom of speech has become irrelevant.
The question should be: What is harassing about a sign or a prayer or a conversation or any kind of lawful speech.
Speech should be restricted only for a very compelling public safety and order issue. Yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre puts lives at risk because it can cause a panic. Making a false police report puts police and the public in danger as they search for a non-existent criminal. Using “fighting words” puts people in danger because it cold cause violence.
How does a Hail Mary endanger a life? How does a level-headed request for a conversation with a woman about to abort her child risk public order?
If inconvenience and undesirability were to be the guidelines, I’d like them to pass laws against aggressive panhandlers and petition holders and people canvassing for politicians with whom I disagree and so on. But part of living in a free, democratic society is putting up with speech we dislike, disdain, or disagree with.
What the abortion clinics and their pet politicians want is to use the coercive power of the legislature and courts to silence an inconvenient opposition whose success is success at saving lives—and siphoning coins from their coffers—depends on being able to warn these mothers of the truth of what they contemplate.
If they have to ravage the Constitution to accomplish this goal, so be it.
Empty rhetoric defended with yet more
One of the knocks against Barack Obama is that his famously stemwinding speeches are all emotion and no substance, that it’s merely empty rhetoric. Now, he’s responding to those claims with … more empty rhetoric. Obama is lifting the phrasing of Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick, who had himself responded to the accusations of his Republican opponent that he was offering empty rhetoric.
Here is what Patrick said in his speech:
“But her dismissive point, and I hear it a lot from her staff, is that all I have to offer is words — just words. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, [applause and cheers] that all men are created equal.’ [Sustained applause and cheers.] Just words – just words! ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words! ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ Just words! ‘I have a dream.’ Just words!”
Note the construction of a famous quote followed by “just words.” Now here is Obama’s speech:
“Don’t tell me words don’t matter! ‘I have a dream.’ Just words. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ Just words! [Applause.] ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words — just speeches!”
Now, as James Taranto notes, we should not be surprised that politicians would lift or “share” such lines. Politicians, after all, employ speechwriters whose job it is to put words in their mouths. But what strikes us here is that both Obama and Patrick totally miss the point.
Although the other two examples are arguable either way, “We hold these truths …” and “I have a dream” were anything but “just words.” They were words that held enormous meaning because of the historical context in which they were, respectively, written and uttered. Can the same be said of Obamanalities like “Yes, we can,” or “Change we can believe in”?
Obama and Patrick routinely traffic in empty, feel-good phrases that give the illusion of substance and, more importantly, hope and good will, but which in fact mask a lack of substance that hopes to hide the real reason they hope we’ll vote for him: that he plays the part well; that it is a role that fits him.
Clinton confronted by Steubenvile students at rally
At some Catholic colleges, the problem is that they specifically invite pro-abortion politicians to come speak on campus, thus providing them a platform for their evil agenda and violating the US bishops’ guidelines on this.
But at my alma mater, Franciscan University of Steubenville, if the pro-abortion candidate—or her surrogate—shows up in town—off-campus, mind you—they make it a point to go and let them know that their pro-abortion ways are not universally loved by the Roe generation.
John Kerry learned that difficult lesson in 2004 when he held at a rally in Steubenville, and now Bill Clinton has learned it too. When will the DNC learn to avoid Steubenville. As Darwin Catholic says, it’s not a particularly political campus, but the students are passionate for the cause of life.
Darwin also reproduces a press release from Students for Life of America that gives the transcript of the confrontation.
Note how Clinton claims to have reduced abortions during his presidency. For one thing, it’s all in how you define abortion. Most pro-aborts don’t include so-called “emergency contraception” and other non-surgical abortions. Even more, if the abortion rate went down during his eight years in office, it had nothing to do with him. I’ll bet he couldn’t name a single policy that made a concrete reduction in abortions. But leave it to a liberal: they’d take credit for the sun rising.
