Category: Current Affairs

You know, I've always thought, even before I was a Catholic, that if
you want to find out what Christians believe and why, you ought to ask
Christians before you take too much to heart what is said about their
beliefs by critics or cranks or even professors.

I have come to
apply that same approach to the beliefs of other groups, as well. So,
for instance, if I want to know what Buddhists believe, I favor asking
Buddhists, rather than some expert in comparative religions who studies
Buddhists like insects pinned to a card.

The same courtesy ought
to be extended to the modern descendants of the Maya, who would like to
make it very clear that they – none of them – are lying awake nights
wondering if the world will end in 2012. Not according to this AP article from Yahoo News, anyway.

The
purveyors of this cash-conjuring nonsense, such as the folks at the
History Channel, are doing to the Maya what Dan Brown did for the
Catholic Church in his ham-fisted conspiracy fiction… spinning tales
out of whole cloth and embroidering them with totally unrelated bits of
archeological and historical "evidence" which are only evidence of their
colossal ignorance.

There's nothing wrong with ignorance, per se.
Ignorance with humility is harmless and curable, but ignorance combined
with pride blossoms into arrogance, and is most often incurable, the
patient being highly resistant to the only antidote.

The Maya
would like to invite us all to shut up about the "mysteries" of the
calendar of their ancestors, and take a moment to consider that no contemporary Mayan has ever considered that the calendar predicts anything like the end of the world in 2012.

I
do predict, however, that the loopy 2012 theories will generate a lot
of book and DVD sales. If you could pile all that bull**** into one
place, it might really shift the poles enough to usher in a new ice
age. The real disaster may be the denuding of forests to print all the
books, or the food shortages caused by hoarders who foolishly threw out
their stockpiles of supplies from the Y2K scare. Should have held onto
those powdered eggs…

(Lovingly cross-posted at Tim Jones' blog Old World Swine)

Former Israeli deputy defense minister says that the Jewish state will attack a Muslim state if sanctions aren't in place by a Christian holiday.

Interesting.

The news this morning was so surreal, it was like something off Saturday Night Live.

So Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

As the church lady would say, "Well. Isn't that special."

The Nobel committee apparently wants to cheapen its brand. I mean, the Nobel committee has made boneheaded, purely partisan awards before, but this one is totally over the top.

In the words of White House correspondent Jennifer Loven:

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Price to President Barack Obama landed with a shock on darkened, still-asleep Washington. He won! For what?

For one of America's youngest presidents, in office less than nine months — and only for 12 days before the Nobel nomination deadline last February — it was an enormous honor.

I mean, you don't typically give such awards to people who have accomplished so little–especially when the mainstream media, which has been totally in the tank for Obama, is finally taking note of his string of non-accomplishments.

Like in this sketch from Saturday Night Live . . .

BTW, SNL seems to have slipped (even further). The guy playing Obama doesn't look or sound like him.

Nevertheless, the Nobel decision is a bigger joke than anything on SNL.

Mickey Kaus argues that Obama should decline the award–which would have the advantages of making him appear humble (not that he is in the slightest) and of insulating him from withering criticism later on, both at the time he accepts the award and in coming years if, as it appears, his presidency continues to go badly.

What the Nobel folks don't realize is that, in their attempt to boost President Obama, they've actually made his job harder.

Unfortunately for the president, it doesn't sound like the president is planning to decline:

"I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments but rather an affirmation of American leadership," he said, speaking in the White House Rose Garden. "I will accept this award as a call to action."

The Times' headline has it right: Absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize.

So what kind of sketch comedy program are we living in?

If it has anything to do with Nobel prizes, I'd rather it be SCTV than SNL.

SCTV was always better, anyway.

It's true!

Or maybe, if he was thinking of the mess of Medicare and Medicate, he's putting LBJ ON NOTICE.

Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) has sent a letter to President Obama about the White House's program to have Americans snitch on fellow citizens who they believe are saying "fishy" things about health care and undermining the administration's position.

The Obama White House may be breaking the Privacy Act of 1974 by asking citizens to report “fishy” political speech.

It turns out, even asking for citizens to report on each other may be illegal. According to the Department of Justice, “the purpose of the Privacy Act is to balance the government’s need to maintain information about individuals with the rights of individuals to be protected against unwarranted invasions of their privacy stemming from federal agencies’ collection, maintenance, use, and disclosure of personal information about them.”

Further, anything is considered a “personal record” if it identifies an individual (an e-mail address would qualify), and “federal agency” specifically includes “the Executive Office of the President.”

SOURCE.

Appearing on the White House blog creatively titled "The Blog" yesterday was a post that said the following (EXCERPTS):

I can understand the desire on the part of people in the White House to keep a handle on the claims and arguments being used in a policy debate, but . . . isn't it their job to keep track of those?

I mean, just yesterday there was that video of the former totally objective ABC reporter turned Democratic White House staffer Linda Douglass explaining that that was one of her jobs (along with, no doubt, others at the White House). She even showed us her computer, which was using the lame program Microsoft Internet Explorer to connect to the Internet, so we know she can read blogs with the best of them.

But the White House seems concerned that it doesn't have the resources to monitor everything that goes on in America "below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation." So they're asking citizens to report "fishy" statements made by other American citizens to the White House.

Color me skeptical, but creating a program to "flag" e-mails and web sites that take a contrary position to the White House's–a program that relies on citizens reporting their fellow citizens when they send or post something that "seems fishy" (meaning: contrary to the message the White House wants to get out)–strikes me as a misstep.

I imagine whoever is monitoring the e-mail address will get a lot of protests in addition to whatever tips come in. And there will be negative coverage of this on the Internet.

On the other hand, the folks at ReasonTV are taking a constructive attitude . . .

I really don't understand why President Obama is so interested in passing the type of health care bill he and his colleagues have been trying to ram through Congress. 

While I confess that I wasn't pleased that the first video has as many cuts in it as it did, I don't find Ms. Douglass's video to be anything other than handwaving.

That won't do. 

It's just a slimy political tactic to claim you've been taken out of context and then not provide the original context and demonstrate it.

What she does provide is some recent clips of the president talking about health care, saying reassurring things like if you like your insurance plan or your doctor then you can keep them–clips she says people on the other side of the debate aren't likely to show you. (I did.)

The "out of context" charge also suffered a blow when Breitbart and Drudge linked another video of the 2003 Obama event without a cut in it:

This is more handwaving.

What the President is saying (present tense) about health care isn't sufficient. 

The fact is that Obama's previous statements about health care do shed light on his desires and intentions.

And the impression that he is being disingenuous with his present statements is reinforced by his Pinocchio-like style of government, his repeated bait and switch tactics, and his ram-it-through-Congress-before-anyone-including-Congressmen-can-read-and-digest-it behavior.

Ms. Douglass's efforts notwithstanding, there is just no reason to see the President's desire for a "public option" as anything other than a deliberate attempt to get the government into compe
tition with private health insurance companies so it can drive them out of the market and lead to a single payer system.

That is clearly his and his allies' intent, as quotations in the first video show. (The same quotations also disprove the President's assertion that "nobody is talking some government takeover of healthcare"–which is what single payer is.)

It's a disgrace.

Hey, Tim Jones here.

The Beer Summit is upon us, and much as I have tried to avoid
reading very much into this hastily manufactured CYA photo-op (where's
Rodney King? Can't we all just get along?), I can't help but notice the
deep and sobering fractures in our society that are revealed in the
beer choices of President Obama, Professor Gates and Sgt. Crowley.

Let me elucidate:

Is it a surprise to find the President choosing Bud Light, the most popular beer in America?
On the contrary, it would have been a shock had he chosen anything
else. Undoubtedly the product of fevered consultation and nail-biting
among the president's advisers, and bolstered by some last-minute focus
group data. To choose a beer with any real, determinate character might
have been to risk alienating some other beer demographic… so, as he
has done since the earliest days of his candidacy, Mr. Obama has chosen
the path that is the safest politically, and that reveals the least
about himself. As I have said before, Bud Light tastes as much like nothing as beer can.

Professor Gates, on the other hand, has boldly chosen Red Stripe, the beer of Liberation from White Oppressors. Think I'm exaggerating? The Red Stripe web site trumpets;

Take
that, Christopher Columbus! I tried Red Stripe a year ago, or so, and
found it remarkably unremarkable (it tastes a lot like any American
mass-market brew) and a good deal too expensive, to boot. Cool bottle,
though.

Sergeant Crowley, of the Cambridge Police Department, has
chosen Blue Moon, a mass-market brew from Coors, coyly and carefully
marketed as a "craft" brew. The third best-selling "craft beer" in
America, right below Sam Adams Boston Lager (which is getting into some
big numbers).

An unfiltered, multi-grain Belgian style beer,
lightly flavored with orange and coriander, it is a tolerable brew,
more substantial than Red Stripe, but still tame enough to be welcome
at any back yard barbecue. Your craft beer friends will still respect
you, and your Lite-weight friends – unaccustomed to beers with a
distinct flavor and color -  will (mostly) not make cringe-y faces and
say things like, "Thanks… now, do you have any beer? This tastes like
swamp water and Earl Grey filtered through a gym sock.". It walks the
line between two worlds, that of the Trousered Ape and the Craft Beer
Snob. The choice doesn't exactly peg Sergeant Crowley as a Complex Man,
but he has chosen the best beer of the three, for my money.

Meanwhile,
we all sit by as the fate of the free world hangs in the balance. What
if there are fisticuffs? Will professor Gates pound his shoe on the
table? What if it is just an awkward and embarrassing twenty minutes of
forced smalltalk? Will Obama have some (carefully planned and
professionally written) one-liners on hand to break the ice? If all
goes well, will they stand together out by the fence in the back alley
behind the White House and say "Yup" in turn, like they do on King of the Hill?

That would be sweet.

(Lovingly cross-posted, for double your blogging pleasure at Tim Jones' blog, Old World Swine)

Proverbs 18:17 is a verse that every apologist ought to know by heart, because it describes a phenomenon that often occurs in apologetics. Here is how it goes:

"He who states his case first seems right,

until the other comes and examines him."

It's another way of saying that first impressions aren't always accurate. There can be more to a situation.

The greatest tourist attraction in Central America has always been politics. Diplomats stop by every few years, take a couple of snapshots of what's going on at the presidential palace, and then profoundly declare their opinions, devoid of context or history. This week's favorite diplotourism destination is Honduras, where the army Sunday arrested President Manuel Zelaya and booted him across the border to Costa Rica. In the Polaroid analysis, it's pretty clear what happened: ''A return to barbarism in our hemisphere,'' as Argentina's president Cristina Fernández put it.

She had plenty of company. ''The action taken against Honduran President Mel Zelaya violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and thus should be condemned by all,'' said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “We call on all parties in Honduras to respect the constitutional order and the rule of law.''

The OAS Permanent Council voted ''to condemn vehemently the coup d'etat staged this morning against the constitutionally established government of Honduras.'' U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanded “the reinstatement of the democratically elected representatives of the country and full respect for human rights.''

Here's a question for all these new-found defenders of Honduran democracy: Where were you last week?

GET THE STORY.

It's like they're all just waiting for us…

Hey, Tim Jones, here.

I
think my grandfather's death was the first that really affected me as
it happened, though I understood the concept of death, having seen a
lot of T.V. westerns, along with media coverage of the Vietnam War, the
Kennedy assassination, the Munich Olympics and other deadly events.

I've
seen a number of deaths, since, and taken note of many more, but the
tight grouping of celebrity deaths in the last week has made me look
back over my experiences of death, and I have begun to sense a pattern.

Stay with me, here. I'm no conspiracy nut, but it begins to appear that no one
is safe, and that the chances of death for any one of us – by my rough
figures – approaches 100%. For instance, the older I get, the more
people in my general age group pop up on the news, having died in one
way or another and it is most often treated as a surprise, if not a
shock.

But the shock, to me, may be unjustified. I don't want to start a panic, but it looks to me like we may all be headed for the cemetery.

Last
week we heard first, of course, of Ed McMahon, then Farrah Fawcett,
then Michael Jackson… next, Billy Mays and this morning I read that
Fred Travalena and Gale Storm passed away.

I have no great
observations to make, except to say that the only genuine shock for me
would have been if Michael Jackson had somehow lived to a ripe old age.
I did not see how he could manage much longer. Over the past few years
he appeared to be a shell.

I have good memories of Fred Travalena, who often appeared on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, was all over the variety show circuit, and also starred with Rich Little, Frank Gorshin and other master impressionists on The Kopycats
– a comedy show (which I never missed if I could help it) built around
impressions. He was also an extremely prolific and successful voice
actor.

Most people may not know anything much about Gale Storm, but my wife will remember My Little Margie (which was old already when we watched it) from our days as college students, when we could count our TV channels on one hand.

For
a long time, when driving by a cemetery, I have had the distinct
and unshakable sense that those dwelling under the tombstones are
watching and waiting and maybe chuckling a little… laughing at the
living and their frantic and petty preoccupations. Sometimes, I can't
help but laugh, too.

This idea of the connectedness of the living
and the dead runs deep in the human heart, and is confirmed in the
doctrine of the Communion of Saints… which is just the Church
expounding on the teaching of the Lord that "He is not the God of the
dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive."  (Luke 20:38).

(This post has been carefully cross-posted by hand at Tim Jones' blog Old World Swine, for double your blogging pleasure)