May 13, 2009

If God doesn't weep, he should


The Holy State of Iowa spent yesterday ablither and ablather about the  human suffering  of one year ago when ICE busted a few hundred illegals for being illegally hired by a big-time entrepreneur in the kosher meat racket. He's a real jerky sort, but that's another story. (You can learn more than you want to know by googling Postville Raid.)

The lead hand-wringer seemed to be  a Prince of the Church, who thusly spake:

"As proclaimers of God's word, it is our duty to sound a call for justice. It is our privilege to welcome the stranger," Archbishop Jerome Hanus told a packed interfaith service at St. Bridget's Catholic Church. "It is our challenge to bring good news to the poor. This, my friends, is our time. This is our moment. This is our year of favor."

It happens that I have some fairly personal experience with a couple-three bishops. One of the salient facts is that, all by their pious selves,  each scarfs  enough deep red and luxuriously marbled protein a day  to keep two or three third-world families alive.  So one assumes Archbishop Hanus is already routinely exercising his privilege to welcome the stranger. I picture him joyfully sharing his personal table with the sad victims of  The Great Federal Raid .  In fact, I'll just betcha that day and night he strides the back streets and alleys of Postville and Dubuque, filling his limousine several times a day with poor and downtrodden strangers, taking them to his heart, his personal  table, his spare bedrooms. Surely his private  actions are Christ-like as his windy archbishophorical rhetoric.  

Important Note #1:   We have nothing all all against  religion in general  or any of the sane denominations, do we? But we can all identify  pretentious, self-serving, self-righteous, hypocritical  bullshit, can't we?

Important Note #2: Despite being ledeth into temptation, I was very careful to avoid the dropped-letter typo as I pecked out Jerry's name.  

May 5, 2009

The Gentle, Selfless Liberal Tradition

In 1896 William Jennings Bryan declared we would not crucify mankind  on a cross of gold, whateverthehell that actually meant.  Then he went on a victory* tour and by 1899 was commanding huge fees. Interesting that his terms were somewhat illiberal, though not  surprising to those who have made a study of the hypocrisy of the sanctimonious  left.

Never mind that U.S. currency was gold-backed in those days. 

Kum Ba Yah.

* He was celebrating only his personal celebrityhood, a wiser population in those days denying anything more to the demagogic rabble rousers.




 

May 4, 2009

Saddendum on Obama's Latest

 I forgot to castigate the press for the way it  presented this farkheaded attack on several centuries of English Common Law and American Constitutionalism.   The lead AP item contains  15 paragraphs.  In the 13th 'graph it finally mentions Obama's belief that you ought to be guilty until you can prove your innnocence.  A real sense of proportion there, AP. 

Irony: Impossible

His Obamaness  this morning will propose new common-sense tax laws to ensure that businesses make smaller profits and keep a smaller proportion of what they do make.

That seems reasonable enough to me and all of my like-minded colleagues who correctly  understand  business as the natural enemy of the noble poor as well as of decent, compassionate citizens everywhere.

Just one little thing, though. Obama's designated leakers tell AP:

"...Under Obama's proposal, Americans would have to prove they were not breaking U.S. tax laws by sending money to banks that don't cooperate with tax officials. It essentially would reverse the long-held assumption of innocence in U.S. courts."

You may recall the President last week vowed to replace Souter with someone sharing Obama's "core Constitutional values."