Another Catholic under attack by Obama administration—Paul Ryan

Henninger in today’s WSJ mixes some metaphors, with fortress, ICBMs, carpet-bombing, drinking the Kool-aid,  and encyclicals, but he’s on target—one dare not attack the Democrats at the heart and soul of their beliefs—big government even if it collapses under its own weight  is good for you personally and for the nation. Paul Ryan outrages them into launching the big religious guns:

“What Mr. Ryan actually said is worth quoting, because it should revive the debate over the proper relationship between individual citizens, including the poor, and the national government:

"A person's faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private. So to me, using my Catholic faith, we call it the social magisterium, which is how do you apply the doctrine of your teaching into your everyday life as a lay person?

"To me, the principle of subsidiarity . . . meaning government closest to the people governs best . . . where we, through our civic organizations, through our churches, through our charities, through all of our different groups where we interact with people as a community, that's how we advance the common good. By not having big government crowd out civic society, but by having enough space in our communities so that we can interact with each other, and take care of people who are down and out in our communities.

"Those principles are very, very important, and the preferential option for the poor, which is one of the primary tenants of Catholic social teaching, means don't keep people poor, don't make people dependent on government so that they stay stuck at their station in life. Help people get out of poverty out onto a life of independence." “

Ah, he gutted them and they know it.   “. . . one of the primary tenants of Catholic social teaching, means don't keep people poor, don't make people dependent .”

The Obama administration will have to fight to the death over this one truth. So they have to bring down what formerly was the largest social agency in the country (before the War on Poverty), and is still the largest globally, the Roman Catholic Church.

Tax money sink hole

This is probably not a lot of money considering the national deficit, but there are thousands of programs like this one.  I’d just been reading through a $25 million ArtPlace article when I noticed this one:

“U.S. Department of Justice: Launching a New Place-Based, Community Oriented Crime and Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative

The Department of Justice is looking for a fellow to help support the development and launch of a new place-based, community oriented program that is part of the White House’s Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative (NRI) and is being implemented in collaboration with the Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development. The fellowship will be located in the Bureau of Justice Assistance, whose mission is to provide leadership and services in grant administration and criminal justice policy development to support local, state, and tribal justice strategies to achieve safer communities. The fellow will work on several aspects of this project, including the site selection process for the first round of the Building Neighborhood Capacity program. The fellow will support coordination with the other partners in NRI and assist in other assessment of data and resources to support the program coordination and selection processes.” Link

I have no idea what a place-based community oriented crime and neighborhood revitalization initiative is, but I’m pretty sure justice won't include the arrest or impeachment of Eric Holder for Fast and Furious or looking into arresting the New Black Panthers who are threatening Floridians. This really sounds like an ad for ACORN with fancy gummit talk.

Alternatives to MSM, Cable, Beck, Rush, Fox

Here is Catholic News Roundup for April 11, 2012

You’ll hear news here that won’t be elsewhere, and see sponsors you’ve never heard of. 

I just discovered it, so I don't know how long the daily news stays available, or if it continues to roll backwards for the archives. You only have to google Michael Voris STB to see that many Catholics don't agree with him.

Back in my day. . .

Oh, young people love to hear that one, don't they? My chosen career, librarianship, was and probably still is, at the bottom of the pay scale for an advanced degree (entry level degree is a master’s but many have PhDs).  But I loved it. What could be more fun than buying, organizing, preserving and distributing information, knowledge and wisdom? ("For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage o...f knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it." Eccl. 7:12) I don't envy Bill Gates' wealth or the 3 winners of the Megamillions. In fact, my religion says coveting is very, very bad not only for a society but for me personally. However, my president says it's good. He wants "fairness," which actually means coveting what others have. If you don't believe me, try teaching fairness to 6 year olds--you'll create jealousy as they each eye what the other has and start to whine.

 
The Buffett rule is something for President Obama to talk about during the campaign so he doesn't have to face the huge economic problems he has created and to rail against “rich Republicans” if it fails.  The biggest, wealthiest donors are all contributing to Democrats, but don’t let the facts confuse him—he’s already way off track and it plays well with the unemployed he hasn’t helped.   He wants the government to take more of what you or someone else has, not to use for any particular purpose, but to satisfy a vague belief in "fairness."

The Buffett rule takes money out of the economy and gives it to the government, where it will be spread around the various bureaucracies, revolving door non-profits and unions and you'll never see a dime of it.

Leaving the church because of sex

A blogger I’ve  known only through our shared cyber-space as librarians on discussion lists and as bloggers mentioned at his blog that he has moved over to an Anglican church from the Catholic church due to the Roman Catholic’s position on women clergy, on marriage of gays, and the sexual abuse scandals.

That’s putting a lot of stock into current cultural beliefs in the face of 2,000 years of church history and teaching, plus all the Hebrew/Jewish traditions that came before that.  In fact, it flies in the face of the history of the human race and all religions, not just Catholicism.  There’s virtually no mention of homosexuality in the Old Testament except in veiled references to temple practices of other religions which the Jews were supposed to avoid at all costs.  But dalliances with young men and male temple prostitutes were certainly well known and even accepted in Greek and Roman cultures.  Gracious!  Have you seen some of those murals in collapsing ancient buildings? The Greeks and Romans lived in sex saturated times, male, female, animal, child, multiples—made no difference (if we can believe their art and literature, and why shouldn’t we?). They probably inherited profligate and perverted sex from the civilizations who came before them.  God chose the Jews for a reason—they were the only ones, even in sin who seemed to really get the story of creation. 

That said, even with trips to the temple for sex with young, beautiful temple prostitutes, male and female, when it came to building blocks for the society, it was marriage between a male and female.  Yes, some engaged in polygamy, or polyandry, some had mistresses and concubines and some men may have preferred a male concubine, but the state/monarchy/emperor or tribal elder recognized the marriage.  There was a distant memory and command in the mind of all cultures.

As for women priests, show me a church that is growing under female leadership.  Sure, maybe you support it, but have you joined one?  Have you encouraged your call committee in that direction?  Even men who claim to be “feminists” don’t like sitting under the authority of a woman, often not at work, but certainly not at the church.  They’ll never admit it, but quietly, the numbers begin to drop.

Child abuse?  The Roman Catholic church is a huge target; and it’s rich.  Why sue a school system where the abusers, at least until recently, are just passed from school to school, protected by their unions?  We’re just beginning to hear how many female teachers are predators as the stories are leaked to the papers.  How many Protestant clergy have been caught with their hand in the . . . well, and just quietly moved on to the next small church thinking the problem will go away if we just warn him.  Although many young girls have certainly been molested at the hands of clergy, teachers, babysitters, etc., the number of boys and gay men involved is way out of their proportion (1.5%) in the general population.

But this particular librarian who has left the church, who became a convert to Catholicism and took all the instruction in 1992, now thinks that the profound spiritual wisdom of the 20th and 21st centuries exceeds that of the church he committed himself to just 20 years ago and in which he agreed to raise his children and be faithful to his wife (who has remained Catholic).

Imagine all the stuff a Protestant is exposed to in RCIA which must completely have baffled him—like 7 sacraments, or the teaching about the perpetual virginity of Mary, or all the stages to go through to become a saint, or all the special holidays, seasons and observances he’d never heard of.  Think about undoing all the teaching Christians hear in Baptist or Lutheran or Nazarene churches about evil, unscriptural Catholicism.  That’s a huge leap for gay marriage and the ordination of women priests!

And  he threw it all over for a fad, fable and fantasy.  I’m not a Catholic, but it appears he wasn’t either.

What does the Buffett rule achieve?

Nothing.  Obama calls it “fairness.”  I call it a ploy for more votes for people who don’t understand economics—and a few who do, like nancy g and Lynne W, but will vote for him anyway. What will “fair share” do for you?  Nothing. You’ll never see it, hear it, touch it, taste it. I’m not rich, and I don’t envy anyone, not if they inherited, won it gambling, or worked hard for it.  It doesn’t belong to me.  Three Maryland people have won the Megamillions.  Is that fair to all the others who paid in to it?  Well, the others obviously must have known the risk and the chances. But they got nothing.  Some might call it unfair that they were lured into spending money at impossible odds.  The richest 400 pay 19% every year, their secretaries pay about 16%.  Warren Buffett’s secretary, according to an article in Forbes probably makes about $200,000+ a year.  Is that fair to other secretaries who don’t work for Buffett, but work just as hard?  Why does she/he get so much? Why does she earn more than librarians?

This is not about the deficit or about taxes, it is about a politician’s idea of “fair” and we know all that money goes into the bureaucracy and not back to the people.  It’s never been any different in any society.  The word “fair” is guaranteed to create jealousy—how many times did you hear your kids whining about “fairness.” Just try it in any classroom of first or second graders, which is about the level the Democrats are right now.  The rich pay most of our taxes.  Is that fair?

I was a librarian.  One of the lowest paid jobs you can have that requires an advanced degree.  Is it fair that lawyers or hospital board members like the Obama couple back in the 90s could have 6 or 7 times my income just because of who they were?

Americans can’t afford her lifestyle either

Am I surprised Michelle couldn’t make things work on Bo’s salary?  Not.

"In 2005, when Obama began serving in the U.S. Senate (and his daughters turned 4 and 7), he and his wife were earning a combined annual income of $479,062. Barack Obama was paid a salary of $162,100 by the U.S. taxpayers, and Michelle Obama was paid $316,962 to handle community affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Center."

What a shocker—Obamacare will cost much more than estimated!

Charles Blahous of Mercatus Center at George Washington University has some news about Obamacare that Republicans already knew and Democrats will deny, and the White House will find a way to blame on Republicans. Realistically, have you ever known a government program that didn't cost way more than estimated or confirmed, whether it be a war or a welfare program? Right now, the WH is hiring thousands of IRS agents which are part of Obamacare. How will that help your health? It's the Full Employment for Government Workers Act.

Let's cut to p. 45 of the report--the conclusion: ". . . despite the fondest hopes of its supporters, the passage of the ACA unambiguously darkens a dim fiscal picture. . . expected to increase federal spending obligations by more than $1.15 trillion. . ."

People—listen up.  This was never, ever ever about saving money on health, or providing better health care, or covering people who currently don’t have health insurance.  It was always about the government taking over a huge segment of the economy.  Period.

http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/publication/The-Fiscal-Consequences-of-the-Affordable-Care-Act_1.pdf

Cost of the IRS agents: Half a billion dollars, paid for off-the-books by taxpayers through a massive $1 billion Health and Human Services slush fund that got tucked into the bill. Investors.com

Obamedia

CNN and msnbc in a ratings battle seem to have their shorts in a knot over someone's racist FB page, and when and where to use the N word and the F word, but are they ignoring a lengthy audio of the new black panthers in Florida threatening a new "red sea" of blood and calling for the deaths of whites and especially Zimmerman, using all sorts of racist terms. You can get the audio on just about any website with Google, but haven't found it on the news.  And Van Jones, the former White House green jobs guy who left to start trouble elsewhere is also calling for race trouble.

Praise the Lord for new believers in Christ

According to a member of the Columbus Chinese Christian Church who is in my exercise class at our church, Upper Arlington Lutheran, they had 26 baptisms on Easter! They serve 1st and 2nd generation Columbus area Chinese Americans and Chinese students at OSU and have services in 3 languages, English, Mandarin and Cantonese.

Communist Mao killed about 70 million of his own people—no one really knows for sure how many—but the result of Communists forcing the people of China to standardize their language (everyone now speaks his dialect, Mandarin), the Gospel has been able to be shared much easier. He meant it for evil, but God has used that evil man to bring the Gospel to the Chinese.

This blogger says Cantonese is a dying language.

All Obama all the time

Even for the children’s egg roll at the White House—it’s not about the kids, or Easter—it’s about Obama.  This man’s narcissism knows no bounds.  Basketball players joined in with a clinic for the kids, and the balls all had Obama campaign images on them.

Look here if you dare.  It’s sickening.

Yearbooks and Annuals

I don't know what generates the ads on the right side of my screen on Facebook, but this morning noticed one for yearbooks. I have my four high school yearbooks, The Mounder, from Mt. Morris High School in Illinois, two Illios from the University of Illinois (I was married by the time I graduated and couldn't afford one for that year), one from Manchester College, The Aurora,  in Indiana, and three from Mt. Morris College, Life, 1929, 1931 and 1932, my uncle Clare's, my mother's and my father's. The college closed in 1932 and merged with Manchester. We also have my husband's yearbooks, The Arsenal Cannon from Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis, a school that was larger than the town of Mt. Morris, and Tech's memorial yearbook for the first 50 years. One of the best things about yearbooks is reading the crazy stuff people wrote in them!

Summer’s coming—do you know where your college student’s brain is?

“While there is not shortage of good, foundational texts to educate the student interested in America’s economic history, there is a shortage of interested students. This is where parents must play an active role in their children’s education. Sending them off to a four-year institution and assuming that upon graduation they will be economically literate flies in the face of reality. If parents abdicate all responsibility to liberal professors, there’s a good chance the graduate will come home spouting liberal claptrap and looking forward to his or her next Occupy Wall Street rally.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/6/dangers-of-academias-indoctrination-mills/

Class warfare in a graph—the Buffett rule

The tiny, almost invisible smudge at the top is the Buffett reduction of the deficit. This nonsense us purely to create anger and hostility toward successful people and lie about how much they actually do pay in taxes.

Why does Obama pursue class warfare?

This past week from his words and walk-back it seemed that President Obama knew nothing about constitutional law or the history of the country; he also doesn’t know much about taxing and the rich.  His drum beat and direction seem to be class warfare.

“To vilify success and the rewards it garners is an assault not just on capitalism but on liberty itself. As Will and Ariel Durant observed in "The Lessons of History" (1968), "freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies . . . to check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed."

Nowhere is the political debate over income inequality more detached from reality than the call for the top 1% of American income earners to pay their "fair share." The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data on the ratio of the share of income taxes paid by the richest taxpayers relative to their share of income show that the U.S. has the world's most progressive tax burden.

The top 10% of earners in the U.S. pay 35% more of the income tax burden than in Sweden and 22% more than in France. These figures—from the 2008 OECD publication "Growing Unequal?"—include all household taxes imposed on income at the federal, state and local level, including social insurance taxes.” Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2012, The real causes of income inequality.

On reading Luke during Lent

Last year during Lent I read the Gospel of John.  John is an amazing document—no meek and mild Jesus to be found. He’s so confident in his mission and dogmatic in his words with all the “I am” statements.  And Pilate!  What a piece of work—kept trying to pass the buck—and did he really want to know, “What is truth.”  Was he just like people today who question the kingship of Jesus?  But what grabbed me last year I’d never noticed before—only John mentions that the notice fastened to the cross which read JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS, was written in three languages Aramaic (for the Jews, God’s chosen people), Latin (for all the earthly powers for it was the language of the great and mighty Roman empire, the language of commerce and the military), and Greek (for all the educated people, for it was the language of literature and the arts, a linguistic passport to any city and profession that mattered). What perfect symbolism!

This year I read the Gospel of Luke.  This is really a two volume work, with Acts being the second volume.  Several thing pop out to me from Luke.  First, a section many probably passed right over to get to the story is 1:1-4 which explains how the information was passed down from eyewitnesses, investigated by Luke, then written down in an orderly fashion, so it could be passed on to me and you in Lent 2012.

Second, I noticed how many times the words CROWD or CROWDS or a paraphrase like PEOPLE CROWDING AROUND, A LARGE CROWD WAS GATHERING, or ALL THE PEOPLE are used by Luke to describe the huge number of people who were taught by or healed by or followed Jesus.  Luke  mentions that Jesus’ own family couldn’t get near him because of the crowds.  The word/phrase appears so often that I was left to wonder if there were any Jews, Romans or Greeks in that area, the cross roads of the civilized world, who hadn’t either met him, or talked to someone who had.  By the time you count women and children who witness the miracle of the bread and fish, there must have been at least 12,000 in that crowd alone.  Sometimes the crowds were warm and friendly, sometimes they were evil and nasty, like when they drove him out of town and tried to push him over a cliff.  Sometimes Jesus was very blunt: “This is a wicked generation,” he said the the crowd increasing in 11:29.

Educated, religious people don’t look good as Luke records the memories of the followers and crowds.  Pharisees, teachers of the law, experts in the law, synagogue rulers, elders, chief priests, authorities, rulers and even the 12 disciples and the 72 who were sent out who were with him everyday often appear clueless and hapless, some even evil and plotting to kill him.  To the experts he also didn’t have warm words: “You foolish people,” ”Woe to you (6 times in Ch. 11), “You hypocrites,” but he ate with them in their homes just like the other sinners.

Demons, demonic spirits and evil spirits are really big in Luke. Jesus created the world—I think he knew the difference between disease, mental illness and demon possession or demonic influences. The Greek word diamonia is used 60 times in the New Testament, and other forms of the word many more times, and demons or Satan are mentioned by every writer, but the concept, singular or plural just seemed really to jump out as I read Luke, particularly in Chapter 8.  If you care to investigate the language, there is a 42 p. document on demonology on the internet, plus many books.

But oh the women!  They followed, they listened, they were healed, they served Jesus food, they brought their children for him to bless, and there’s no record of them doubting.  Since women are big talkers, I think they held on to the stories until Luke interviewed them and recorded their memories.  The big reward for the most loyal women who had followed him first in life, stayed with him at the cross and and then went to the tomb, was they were the first to know about the resurrection, the first post-crucifixion group told to go and tell the called disciples, the cowering fumblers and deniers who thought all was lost.

Stevie Nicks is 63

Sigh. Looks good (just watched a video I won’t post from 1987), but says they have to do the lighting just right.  Doesn't want to look 20 something, just 40 something. Still has hot flashes, but no children to worry about. . . her. I know she's had a 4 decade career and is a multi-millionaire, but she always sounds off key to me.  Don't think she's made it to Lakeside yet. We get them on their way up and on their way down.

http://youtu.be/ri-euoXzpIA

Interview

Behind every powerful man. . . is a smart woman

                              

Some might call La Malinche a traitor, but if you were a slave, and slaves were destined for sacrifice to the gods when the winners changed in ritual wars, who would you side with?  Pretty it up as much as you want with cultural anthropological chit chat, but the woman may have been ahead of her time.  She is the mother of the mixed races of Mexico. And God only knows what the radical feminists do to this story.

“Before the Spanish conquest, the Aztec civilization controlled trade routes from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico and as far south as Guatemala.  Its rich and populous empire was helld together by marriage alliances and ritualized battles in which large numbers of enemy warriors were captured and sacrificed to honor and sustain the gods.  When Hernan Cortes sailed from Cuba to claim the Mexican mainland for Spain in 1519, he could not have anticipated the odds against him and his small force of 600 foot soldiers and 15 horsemen.

His ultimate success in subduing the Aztecs was in large part due to the help of a Nahua slave woman called La Malinche, who became his chief interpreter, advisor, and the mother of his firstborn child.  She advised Cortes on the weakness of Aztec alliances with other indigenous groups, their respect for ruthlessness, and their preference for capturing rather than killing their enemies in battle.  Cortes used his information to defeat an army that was better supplied and much larger than his own.  After God, he said, La Malinche was his most important ally.” 

Thomas B. Cole, MD, MPH, JAMA March 28, 2012 describing the cover of the journal named for La Malinche.

Trayvon Martin, what we know for sure

“What we know is that two families and a community are suffering and being ripped apart because of the incident. It is also a fact that race mongers and the anti-gun cabals will attempt to use this tragic situation as currency to further their disastrous agendas.”

Sharpton and Obama Prostituting Martin Shooting

"If Trayvon Martin was a victim of white racism (hard to conceive since the shooter is apparently Hispanic), his murder would be an anomaly, not a commonplace. It would be a bizarre exception to the way so many young black males are murdered today. If there must be a generalization in all this—a call "to turn the moment into a movement"—it would have to be a movement against blacks who kill other blacks. The absurdity of Messrs. Jackson and Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites."
Shelby Steele, WSJ, April 4

CBS, Consistently Biased Source

I watched the “balanced” story on billionaires supporting super PACs on CBS last night.  95% of the content was based on an interview with appropriate snarky and straw man questions for Julian Robertson, father of hedge funds and founder of a Mitt Romney PAC.  He’s given $1.25 million to get Romney elected, the man he says is the best in the history of the presidency in terms of qualifications.  At the tail end, almost as an after thought, the reporter included a reference to an e-mail (we don’t see it) from Hollywood’s Jeffry Katzenberg who has contributed to Obama’s campaign $2 million and  justifies his donation as fighting the right wing.  He had no tough questions and no face to face on camera time—just a throw away paraphrase of an e-mail. Katzenberg said nothing about Obama’s qualifications and accomplishments, at least not for this report. Nor was he asked if he would seek special favors.

I’m not sure the reporter even mentions how mad Obama was at the Supreme Court over PACs, and then decided to get one for his own campaign.  Nor did he note what a big supporter of environmental issues Robertson is—usually a cause to make the MSM swoon.  The point of this interview was to cut down on Romney who is starting to look like the guy to go after.  Don’t believe me when I tell you that if you watch only broadcast news you only get news for Democrats slanted to make the GOP look bad?  Watch the video.