Conservative Donnybrook

The Anglican church has a problem: Dr. Rowan.  Yet he is not the underlying problem, just its very visible face.  For years the church has been split between well intentioned and so-called “conservatives” and the Christian-lite “liberals” led by Dr. Rowan and brought into scrutinizing light by the elevation of bishop Gene Robinson.

Some parishes around the world have responded to the dismantling of orthodox ideals by calling for a conservative Anglican council.  The newly created council will teach seminarians, interpret biblical texts and issue proclamations on dogmatic issues.  Not a break from the Anglicans, but a “church within a church.”  While the desire to resist Dr. Rowan and his company’s brand of liberal theology is understandable, the decision to remain a church within a church fails to correct the root of the Anglican problem. 

When the prodigal son had enough of the world’s wicked ways did he forge a new way, keeping vestiges of a failed philosophy?  No, he returned to that which he first, erroneously, separated himself from: his roots, symbolized by his father.  So too should the prodigal church return to her roots: The Roman Catholic Church.  Much time has passed since the wicked and heretical King Henry VIII seized control of God’s Church on Earth.  The political and theological hegemony once emanating from Rome is no more.  No longer does the Roman Catholic Church rule the land with a shepherd’s crook and a crown and She has no desire to return to those days.  Her focus is now solely on souls.  Created by God for God’s people, it is time the rightly angered Anglicans came home. 

With a cloud of labor disputes starting to grow over the NFL the league’s Commissioner, Roger Goodell, is not afraid to make his position known on controversial labor matters. Speaking earlier today, Commissioner Goodell called the NFL’s current rookie pay scale “ridiculous.” For those of you who are not familiar with this scale, it guarantees rookies who have just been drafted more money than individuals drafted in their same spot the year before. In the end this means that top rookies are getting paid over $50 million, most of which is guaranteed, despite the fact they have never played a down in the league. The fact that Commissioner Goodell acknowledges this problem and is actively seeking to remedy it, warms my heart. I know that the NFL is in good hands for the years to come. Now I only wish the NHL had found a Commissioner with half the ability of Commissioner Goodell.

The Supreme Court has ruled that every American citizen in good standing has the right to keep and bear arms!  The court was split 5-4 thus proving that common sense is just barely common.

The King will not abdicate his throne!  AB has indicated they will reject the invasion of InBev! Yet the war has just begun.  The devilish Belgian beer giant may take their battle to the shareholders.  Resist, citizens of AB, the future may be in your hands! 

After years of delighting even the hippest hip-hopper in the Beltway, the Federal Jazz Commission, or FJC for short, played their last tune.  The band was a staple at my favorite watering hole in DC, Colonel Brook’s Tavern.

Many a days after (sometimes instead of) my law school classes I would head across the street to enjoy a few pints.  On select days the FJC would set up shop and bellow out some of the best jazz that side of the Misssissippi!  Young and old, black and white;  From law students to ex-Watergate scandal perpatrators, everyone loved this band.  But the years have caught up with some of the members (Commissioners, as they call themselves) and they now seek warmer (and safer) pastures in Florida.

Thank you, Commissioners, for all the entertainment and fantastic music you provided over the years!

If you need a reason to steer clear of the Democratic National Convention, here’s one.

It appears the Dems have taken a strong stand against fried food, banning it from their convention. As they pillage the local countryside in search of local-grown organic ingredients for their comestibles, they have mandated a color palette of at least three reds, greens, yellows, blues/purples, and whites in each meal.  Significant for their absence are the blacks and browns, which have been disenfrenchfried.

I was introduced to thie video by a co-worker.  It demonstrates how one state senator’s faith in Obama is baseless and utterly unfounded.

H/T KS

In the wake of Obama’s decision to break a pledge by eschewing public financing, David Brooks demolishes the popular image of Obama-as-starry-eyed-idealist, and argues that, in fact, he is a politician–in fact, a particularly cynical and even ruthless one.

And then on Thursday, Fast Eddie Obama had his finest hour. Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. … In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. …

But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck. In so doing, he probably dealt a death-blow to the cause of campaign-finance reform. And the only thing that changed between Thursday and when he lauded the system is that Obama’s got more money now.

Brooks could have bolstered his argument by adding that Obama’s image as a post-racial healer is just as fraudulent as the idea that he’s a high-minded idealist. On this subject see an eye-opening TNR piece by Cinque Henderson from back in May: Continue Reading »

Six human feet, one left and five right, have washed ashore on British Columbia’s pacific coast over the past year.  All of the wandering soles have been encased in running shoes.  No other body parts have been found.  The disturbing and mystifying recurrences has Canadians whispering of serial killers, mafia hits and tragic accidents. 

DNA evidence has been collected on all of the floating feet but no matches to missing persons or unsolved deaths materialized.  To date, police are stumped.  The FBI has offered to lend the RCMP a hand.  Canadian authorities have refused, citing an already staggering abundance of appendages on the ground!

My new hometown in Northwestern Illinois is right on the Mississippi River. With the amount of rain we have been getting the river has risen up and drowned almost all riverfront property. Fortunately, there is a steep incline from the river into town and no further flooding has occurred yet. The good people of Ceder Rapids, Iowa have not been so fortunate. Thank goodness no one has died since the residents had the good sense to evacuate when told to do so. I wonder though, when will the Federal government start being blamed for property damage and not stepping in sooner to stop the flooding?

The host of Meet the Press died suddenly today of a heart attack at age 58.
May he rest in peace.

WAC

Well, maybe its just ABC’s viewer ratings.  In September, the American Broadcasting Company will begin airing a propaganda series titled “Earth 2100.”  The series will chronicle how the destruction of the world, particularly America, will unfold over the next 90 years. 

From man-made climate change (which appears to be no more than a myth) to devastating wars (we are currently in an unparallel period of a global lull in wars); ABC seeks to convince YOU that the sky is falling.  Unless we convert to solar power, eat wheat grass and make our clothes out of renewable hemp the world is doomed.

This sort of Chicken Little mentality does nothing to help the true problem; humanity has lost its way.  We have little left to conquer of this planet; we are convinced we know everything there is to know about life on Earth.  This, not the fallacy of certain doom, is our problem.  The false pretense of absolute knowledge is public and personal enemy number one.  Overcome the belief that Man is the end-all be-all of the entire universe and we will find that mysteries and knowledge we have yet to imagine await our species for eternity. 

Or, if you believe ABC, wear hemp, eat all organic, drink wheat grass and only use solar power and MAYBE you will survive for the next 90 years.  I say smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em

The Irish have voted to retain their sovereignty.  The vast majority of the working class and farmers on the Emerald Isle flocked to precincts to lodge their dissatisfaction with the breadth of the Lisbon accord.  Fearing a loss of control in the areas of taxes, immigration, social and moral laws, the EU juggernaut was defeated.

Way to go Ireland!  Maintain your sovereignty.  By all means, engage in free trade but don’t sell your soul for a pittance.

A Belgian brewer has made an audacious solicitation to buy out the King of Beers, his royal highness, Budweiser (ala Anheuser-Busch)!  Executives at the Saint Louis based brewer of dreams and delights are considering the bid of over $65.00 per share.

Could it be?  Will the King forsake his people?  Will my beer become (gulp) Euro Trash?   Oh Lord, say it ain’t so!

Via Dreher, I’d like to call attention to the blog that asks, “Is Barack Obama the Messiah?” It highlights to the media’s most loopily venerative prose, artwork, design, and photography regarding the good St. Obama. It’s frequently hilarious but always troubling. Samples follow:

The above is an unaltered photograph, and here’s a snippet from a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle:

Here’s where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment.

And his midichlorian levels are through the freakin’ roof! But how will these people react if Obama, you know… loses? One assumes that anti-McCain feeling couldn’t approach the ecstasies of Bush-hatred we’ve seen over the last eight years, but how would these Obama supporters feel about the guy who defeated the Messiah? Anyway, should I choose choose to support one of these two, which I won’t, the decision would be almost entirely based on schadenfreude: which candidate’s supporters’ election-day despair would bring me more pleasure: the latte-sipping, insufferable urban-hipster MacBook Pro-sporting Obama kool-aid drinkers? Or smug, cynical, Beltway Republican hack McCain supporters? Right now, it’s too close to call.

So I leave work tonight shortly after midnight (big appellate brief due on Monday that I hadn’t yet started), and walked out to my car. Because of all the storms in Indy this weekend, I had the radio set to a station I don’t normally listen to. The first words I heard when the car started were “law school.” Being narcissistic, like most Americans, I paused to find out what the random talk radio commenter was saying about law school.

It turns out he wasn’t talking about law school at all, but rather the Cornell School of Law’s online compilation of federal statutes. In particular, he was talking about this one.

Now, I listen almost exclusively to talk radio these days. And, I’ve pretty much heard almost every national radio program in existence. It didn’t take me long to realize that I was listening to Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM (or whatever his show is called these days). Knowing the caliber and mentality of listener to that show, I thought to myself, “This ought to be interesting.” So, I continued to listen.

Side note: I realize that that is a VERY long way to go to alert our kind readers that I am not a regular listener to UFO/contrails/government conspiracy/remote viewing/paranormal-type shows. Although, the fact that I can string together the programming list I just did may say otherwise. But, please trust me, I don’t listen to it often. For the record, I got hooked on the Midnight Trucking Radio Network for my late-night, after-the-bars-close, talk radio when I lived in Ann Arbor (but, I can’t find it on any station in Indy). But, when your choice is Art Bell v. Alan Colmes, what are you supposed to do? I suppose I could have shoved a CD in the slot. But, he said “law school”…

As I listened, I realized that he was talking about a real-life, no kidding, this is no Bravo Sierra thing. He was talking about a federal statute that is actually verifiable. I arrived home and looked up the statute. I’ve linked to it above, but I’ll reproduce it here because I know there’s a certain population of people (I am often one) who will not click on the links in a blog post, but rather will try to ferret out what the link says from the context. If you are one of those people, don’t bother clicking the link, because here is what it says: Continue Reading »

The beautiful baby boy depicted above is named Finley Crampton. Last spring, Finley’s parents were told that Finley had problems with his kidneys. Unfortunately, this was not the first time they had heard that news from doctors. The beaming woman in the picture is Finley’s mother, Jodie Percival, who carries a gene which triggers multicystic dysplastic kidney – a condition which causes cysts to grow on the kidneys of an unborn baby. Her first son, Thane, lived only 20 minutes when he was delivered prematurely due to developing this condition. A second son was also born with a similar kidney condition and survives today on one kidney.

Faced with the prospect of yet another troubled pregnancy with the possibility of heartbreak at its conclusion, Jodie and her fiance, opted to abort Finley. Miraculously, he survived. He may be forced to undergo surgery to address a problem with one of his kidneys, but doctors expect Finley to lead a normal life. And, as for the outcome, Jodie “wouldn’t change it for the world.”

I have said before:

I take the moral of this story to be two-fold. First, life is indomitable. It has a will to continue and even the sickliest tend to cling to the gift of life. When doctors say that all hope is lost, they often lose track of this truth. Second, doctors are not always right about these life-and-death decisions. When they advise pulling the plug, or removing the feeding tube, or aborting one child because it is “in his best interests,” we should err on the side of life.

The most expensive truck-producing plant on earth has been slated for closure by General Motors and the Canadian Auto Workers Union is threatening dire consequences if GM follows through. The move was determined to be in General Motors’ best interest given the sudden collapse of the truck and SUV market due to rising oil prices. After the announcement, the CAW reacted angrily, “This decision is unfair, it’s unjust, it’s unwarranted, it’s illegal, it violates our collective agreement and we’re going to do everything in our power – and we have power,” Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz Hargrove declared at a news conference. “This is not going to happen without a fight.”

Hargrove said the union wasn’t ruling out anything and “will explore all options.” He declined to be specific, but when asked whether the options included a wildcat strike or legal action against the company, the union leader said “everything is on the table.”

GM is not alone in cutting vehicle production in Canada and the United States. All of the major American auto makers have recently announced cuts. Meanwhile, their main rivals, Toyota and Honda, have been expanding their North American production capacity. The main difference: the Japanese plants have managed to avoid unionization.

The CAW’s threat to stage wildcat strikes and take legal action against GM is a direct threat to the viability of the company itself and reveals a short-sightedness that is alarming. In essence, the union is demanding that the company continue to produce vehicles that it cannot sell – in short, they are demanding the company eat the losses which would result from bad business out of “moral obligation to its workers and their families.”

I agree that General Motors has a moral obligation to its workers and their families. It is for this very reason that it must close unprofitable plants so that other plants, which are viable, survive. The issue, to the union, is clearly not the corporation’s workers or the union would understand that sometimes plants have to be closed in order to keep the company viable (and therefore provide income to at least some workers). And if GM Charley Wilson’s old quotable is correct, “What’s good for America is good for General Motors, and vice versa,” then the union’s demand is a direct attack on America itself.

The latest round of contract negotiations reveals how disingenuous the “workers and families” argument is. While the American union agreed to cuts of $25-$30 per hour from their compensation and benefits package, the Canadian union took only $5 per hour in reductions. Plainly, the Canadian union is in it to get theirs and do not have the good of the corporation (and, by extension, their brother workers throughout the organization) at heart. Ironically, the Canadian union’s intransigence at the negotiating table is now costing its members dearly.

I used to work with a guy, Willie, who would always tell me, “It’s better to get a little piece of the pie than to get no pie at all.” The workers at the Oshawa plant can attest to Willie’s wisdom. Of course, I think Willie was actually talking about pie.

I only wish I’d written this.

For some time a minority of fans and general managers have clamored for instant replay in baseball.  A minority, that is, until the ‘07 off season.  during the winter meetings a majority of GMs voted to review the possibility of imposing instant replay on America’s pastime.  The horror and disgust I feel at the very thought on instant replay  is not unlike the feelings I have concerning all the talk some years back about stationing U.N. guards at our national parks and turning them into “World Heritage Sites.”  Both concepts eviscerate the grandeurand original intent behind them, be it baseball or OUR (read American’s) national parks.

Lisa Fabrizio has an excellent article on The American Spectator website concerning the deconstruction of the umpire.  I join with Ms. Fabrizio in her call to “Save the Umpires.”