Sometimes Joe Scarborough just NAILS  it!

Posted: December 13, 2010 by datechguy in congress, economy
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I’m very hard on Joe Scarborough mostly because I like him (I’m always harder on people I like because I expect more from them) but today he said something that is incredibly important.

He was going on about the hypocrisy of both right and left on deficits and said this:

“There are a couple of tea partiers who care about this (the deficit) Rand Paul and Jim DeMint,that’s it!”

Although Joe likely doesn’t know Porkbusters he has a point. The Tea Party crowd doesn’t actually trust the republicans. I could not find a single person in the crowd at the Washington Freedom Works rally who would say they trusted republicans.

A lot of the newly elected republicans in congress got little or no help from the national GOP. This was due to several factors, they were not professional pols, the party didn’t expect them to win, but also because they are committed controlling spending.

Trent Lott gave the game away in July:

the last thing Lott needs is a bunch of unwashed, Tea-Partying right-wingers coming to Washington on a wave of anti-establishment, free-market populism, and messing up the good thing he has going.

“We don’t need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples,” Lott told the Washington Post, referring to the conservative South Carolina senator who has been a gadfly for party leadership and a champion for upstart conservative candidates. “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.”

But Lott is no longer in the Republican leadership — he resigned from the Senate in December 2007, mid-term, just before a law kicked in that would have required him to wait two years before lobbying the Senate. So who is he talking about when he says “we need to co-opt them”?

“We” means the K Street wing of the Republican Party.

There are an awful lot of republicans who are more interested in chairmanships and favors than controlling spending and lowering taxes (and yes they are connected). That group needs to keep the good will of the Tea Party voters who brought them over the top for now so they will play ball, but if they get the chance they will try to turn the newly elected reps.

This is going to be the fight that will dominate Washington over the next 2 years and will determine the party and the country’s future longterm and will actually have a lot to do with both the presidential elections in 2012 and if we have a tea party 3rd party in 2014.

If Morning Joe follows this story, they will have a jump on the rest of the MSM.

Professor Volokh takes on the “ick factor”

Posted: December 13, 2010 by datechguy in culture, the courts
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Way back in the early days of the Blog I talked about Gay Marriage and Richard Cohen’s self=righteous hit piece:

Personally on a religious level I can’t support gay marriage but this is not a valid argument for a non-religious person. On a non-religious level it seems to me you can not rationally say that gay marriage is ok and should be legal without also allowing either polygamy and incest between consenting adults. Both have a longer and more accepted cultural history worldwide.

And PLEASE don’t give me the “ick” factor argument about these other things being accepted. Ick is just an argument about culture. It is the same argument that one would have heard concerning gay marriage less that 20 years ago. It is particularly galling when gay people are subject to state sponsored murder in places like Iran and ick is invoked beside Islam.

Via Glenn we have Eugene Volokh being a lawyer with some interesting items in the news has expanded on this bigtime:

(1) Should it be illegal, and, if so, exactly why? Is it just because it’s immoral? Because legalizing incest would, by making a future sexual relationship more speakable and legitimate, potentially affect the family relationship even while the child is underage (the view to which I tentatively incline)? Because it involves a heightened risk of birth defects (a view I’m skeptical about, given that we don’t criminalize sex by carriers of genes that make serious hereditary disease much more likely than incest does)?

(2) Given Lawrence v. Texas — and similar pre–Lawrence decisions in several states, applying their state constitutions — what exactly is the basis for outlawing incest? Is it that bans on gay sex are irrational but bans on adult incest are rational, and rationality is all that’s required for regulations of adult sex? Is it that bans on gay sex don’t pass strict scrutiny (or some such demanding test) but bans on adult incest do? Is it that Lawrence rested on the fact that bans on gay sex largely foreclose all personally meaningful sexual relationships for those who are purely homosexual in orientation, whereas incest bans only foreclose a few possible sexual partners?

Go and read his whole point but let me say that a Judge named Antonin Gregory Scalia saw this coming a mile away as did an awful lot of us. When I made the argument saying that you can’t logically ban polygamy while allowing gay marriage in a discussion on Center of Mass podcast this year my host insisted that it was totally different.

I’ve talked about the ick factor in the past. And let me quote myself one more time:

This is a republic. If the people who support gay marriage can move enough of the public in the individual states or on a national level to support it in an actual vote then the more power to them. That is how a republic works. With the media’s help they are well on their way to doing so, but let the people vote for it and if you win, you win. If your argument holds water it should be capable of doing so and you should be able to make that argument stick.

Take out the word gay marriage and enter anything you want instead and the argument holds. The fact that a respected lawyer is actually making the case tells me this is already coming down the pike. And let me leave you with some John Nolte in terms of changing the culture with the help of the media:

And this is how cinematic propaganda works. Whether the filmmaker’s motivations are good or evil, the idea is to get decent and thoughtful people to start second guessing themselves as they’re enveloped in the dark and held captive by the powerful sound and fury of the moving picture. First we’re led to identify and sympathize with a particular character, then that character does something designed to challenge our belief structure

None of this is a bug. It’s a feature.

Gospel commentary 3rd week of Advent Matthew 11:2-11

Posted: December 12, 2010 by datechguy in catholic, local stuff
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About once a month Fr. Bob decides to have a seat and Deacon Sal gives the homely at St. Anthony of Padua. Today was that day and he reflected on the Gospel and an interesting question from it.

The full Gospel is here but the relevant part are verses 2 and 3

When John heard in prison of the works of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to him with this question, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”

Deacon Sal talked about how all his life he has been one to ask questions. So the question came to him: “Since John baptized Jesus and saw the Glory of God, why did he need to send his disciples to ask if Jesus was the one to come?”

Sal’s idea was that John’s sent his disciples not for the sake of himself but for their benefit so that they would come to believe.

I’m not so sure myself, I think it is entirely consistent with Biblical precedent, Catholic tradition, and reality for even people who have seen to doubt.

Consider the children of Israel, they saw the plagues, they saw the Red Sea Parted, they saw God come through for them over and over again and what was the result? They doubted and rebelled over and over again.

And of course over and over again they repented and God forgave them. The cycle of faith, falling, repentance and forgiveness is not only repeated but is prophesied.

Consider Peter: He saw a miracle at his first meeting with Christ, He saw Christ walk on water and then lost faith and started to sink himself. After seeing everything that happened he denied Christ three times yet became the leader of the Apostles.

And during the time of persecution as tradition tells us Peter was fleeting and only turning back when he encountered Christ, asking “Domine Quo Vardis?” (Lord where are you going?) and getting the reply “Eo Romam iterum crucifigi.” (I go to Rome to be crucified once again.) Rising, failing and trying again, Peter was in the same boat as the rest of us.

As her diary tells us even Mother Theresa had her doubts on occasion, yet she continued to work through them and even in death reminded the world of the difference between fame and faith.

And of course it reflects the Sacrament of Confession, we fall, we repent, we are forgiven and we rise again.

And so we are back to John the Baptist. John after spending a lifetime serving God and preaching repentance finds himself in jail and destined for death. This is his lowest point, how strange would it be for him to despair (Remember Christ himself asked for the cup to be taken from him if possible). If a disciple like Peter who was with Christ every day could still have doubts, how odd would it be for John to have the same particularly at his lowest point?

And this is where verse 11 comes into play:

Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Why is this true? It’s true because the least in the Kingdom of Heaven has completed the trial of life, they have completed the race and stand before the glory of God.

Our atheistic friends would love to make our doubts define us but for centuries some of the most educated and greatest minds man has seen went through the same circular process only to arrive back home to faith.

John the Baptist was simply doing what we all should, when faced with doubt asking Christ for reassurance. May we always follow his example.

Stacy McCain explains the difference between radical Islam and Catholics in one easy step

Posted: December 12, 2010 by datechguy in catholic, culture, internet/free speech, media, war
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Stacy McCain while writing on the subject of Frank Rich’s column ( a painful task always since it involves reading it) accidentally or on purpose crystallizes the difference between Radical Islam and mainstream religion that Pam Geller made points about yesterday on my show.

Rich decries the pulling of a taxpayer-funded Christmas exhibit that had ants crawling over a crucifix and called those who demanded it be removed bigots and homophobes.

Stacy’s take-down of the self-righteous Mr. Rich should of course be read in full but it is this sentence that is of interest to me.

That article prompted William Donohue of the Catholic League to send suicide-bombers to maim and murder innocent women and children ask Catholics to call the museum and complain.

And herein lies the difference. Roman Catholics call and complain, radical jihadists don’t.

By an odd coincidence an even better example of this difference became apparent yesterday. Another person acting on behalf of a different religion that Mr. Rich doesn’t deign to critique decided to voice his objects to a set of cartoons in a slightly different fashion as reported by Mr. Rich’s own paper:

One man was killed and two other people were injured when two explosions hit the heart of Stockholm’s city-center shopping district on Saturday evening, the police in the Swedish capital said. The country’s foreign minister called the blasts a terrorist attack, and an e-mail to news organizations minutes before the blasts seemed to link them to anger over anti-Islamic cartoons and the war in Afghanistan.

Although many right leaning bloggers decided to condemn this act of barbarous terror Mr. Rich has however decided to courageously spend his time critiquing American citizens who object to their tax dollars being used to offend them and decided to peacefully exercise their 1st amendment rights to make their objections known.

Mr. Rich, as an elite journalist of the left, has the courage to see beyond mere murder to locate the real danger to our society.

Plus he knows Catholics won’t harm him for criticizing them.

Any questions?

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