Personal Aside: Sarah Palin—Call Home…and Put Your Presidential Itch on Hold… Mark Kirk Tells It as it Really Is on Human Stem Cells (Not).

Hold It, Governor Palin.

Dear Governor Palin,

No one was more delighted to see you get the vice presidential nomination last year than I—and my view of your candidacy remains the same notwithstanding assaults from the trendy left and much of the squishy malleable national media.

And no one was angrier than was I at the shamelessly partisan “mainstream” media…or at the media which huckstered your so-called “incompetence” while ignoring two-time Joe Biden’s ecstatic mention of FDR’s speech to the nation on TV right after the crash of `29…which would warrant serious reexamination of his mental health given that he experienced two brain aneurisms. Nothing that has transpired since his election gives me…for one…solace that his gaffes are incidental…but his role as mere sidekick and prop at presidential photo ops is some consolation.

Certainly, seeing John McCain’s initial low registry with grassroots conservatives, I appreciate that your addition to the ticket helped it to run five points ahead of Obama’s until the economic meltdown in late Fall. No one including the true Messiah Himself…not the bogus one… even announcing a cure for cancer…could get elected as a Republican with the baggage of an unpopular war and heavy economic recession. No one. And you assisted nobly to cut McCain’s losses…as well as your campaigning since then for Republican congressional candidates.

Normally your encouraging performance in 2008 should lead you to top consideration for the presidency in 2010. I write this to encourage you NOT to seek it. Your unmarried daughter Bristol’s pregnancy can smite any family at any time no matter how solid their strictures and teachings …but rather spectacular occurrences following the election warrant…in the minds of social conservatives and me personally…that at this crucial time you regard your major duty as your family.

For social conservatives who stress the importance of family stability, there have been three clear-cut examples of chaotic family disruption that deserve your undivided attention. None affecting you personally…but still possibly future erupting eruptions that should be considered.

First, Bristol’s interview on Fox…un-contradicted by you… that abstinence programs won’t work with adolescents reflects an inability to recognize that this is directly opposite to her experience…which could mean that insufficient care was taken to point out the obvious to her. Any one at the age of 17 having gone through this experience should have a soberer and more mature outlook. Criticizing abstinence not only contradicts her own predicament but causes great harm to the social fabric and scandal to teenagers who listen to her.

Second…and this one certainly beyond your control…the drug pusher arrest of Bristol’s once expected mother-in-law…casting doubt on the stability of that family’s background…should have been the final straw to negate any future national candidacy for you—as it sends a scandalous message for anyone who regards family stability as a major national requisite.

Third, the sudden departure of the father of Bristol’s infant requires even more attention from you--her mother-- to this young woman… in the form of counseling that should take priority over any future thought of entering the national political picture with its superhuman demands on time and physical strength.

Personally, on top of these serious disadvantages, it pains me not a little to see any infant…much less a Down syndrome baby…toted like baggage in the arms of family members struggling to get on and off aircraft where the central figure—even as attractive a candidate as you—seeks high office and public approbation.

All these reasons would indicate to me that since you are still a young woman…in your mid-40s…and have done an extraordinary job as governor of a major state…you can easily afford to put candidacy for national office on hold for ten years minimum. A Senate seat might be acceptable but scotch the thought of the presidency, please.

Failure to do so will cause cynicism and severe misgivings among people who would normally wish you great success in the long-run.

And that includes this signatory.

If Kirk Ever Talked Straight.



If Rep. Mark Kirk were honest he would say this about Obama’s signatory on an executive order in behalf of federal dollars spent on embryonic stem cell research…instead of the evasive pap he signed off on with just one sentence: to-wit: “I support the decision of President Obama to back stem cell [sic: no use of the word embryonic] research. His decision will be broadly backed by a bipartisan coalition on Capitol Hill. This policy will accelerate new cures and ensure American leadership in medicine.”

This statement would be totally accurate vis-à-vis Kirk’s position:

Kirk’s Praises Obama for Harvesting and Killing Living Human Embryonic Stem Cells for Research.

WASHINGTON—Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) today issued the following statement praising President Obama’s signing of the executive order overturning ex-President Bush authorizing federal funds for the harvesting and killing of human embryo stem cells:

I unqualifiedly support President Obama’s decision to approve government-funded embryonic stem cell research that uses cells from human embryos because I believe killing the human embryos used to produce the stem cells is justifiable so that others might live. Nancy Reagan does the same because her husband died of Alzheimer’s and she believes he could have snapped out of it…poof!...like that. As does former Senator John Edwards who said if John Kerry and he were elected, “people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again!”

Neither Nancy nor John Edwards are even slightly correct, of course…but that’s immaterial. Of course it’s a scientific fact that the latest scientific breakthroughs have made possible production of cells that are the same as…equivalent to…embryonic stem cells—but fortunately that has been not stated and understated by the president and the media. Both believe the important thing is to allow the harvesting and killing to begin at once in the off-chance they will save more of us…even though other means are at hand…because government should be able to decide death since we are a humanitarian country. For that reason, I proudly call myself pro-choice. Our government should be empowered to make the choice to fund research leading to manufacture the human embryos to die that others will live—and vote.

Also while there has been and continues to be ample funding from private sources for this, I want to be sure private sources are held back so that taxpayers pick up more of the cost. Thus I warmly praise President Obama’s decision to override ex-President Bush’s 2007 executive order that empowered the National Institutes of Health to investigate non-human embryo sources of stem-cells. Non-human embryo stem cells may work but it is far more satisfying to Bush haters to be sure human embryos are killed…thus driving out the blotch of the religious right from our country in behalf of separation of church and state.

In support of this concept, I have enlisted in the “Death to Human Embryos: Republican Division” which is part of the sanctified two-party system. As none other than John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and his brothers wrote in the 1930s: it is better to limit the population so there will be more available for ever fewer people, i.e. us.

Face it, because the embryonic stem cells we will destroy are human, the treatment of patients involving creation of embryonic human beings who share their genes, is known as cloning. I see the president has balanced his statement with opposition to cloning: that is purely the David Axelrod-cloned (pardon me, coined) solution. I believe there is no use shading the word “cloning” with blurry words such as “therapeutic cloning” or “research cloning.” The cloning of an organism always results in asexual reproduction, the difference being that in “therapeutic cloning” the cloned embryo is destroyed in the course of research. Some on my side…including the President…are in denial that we kill human embryos—including the media which always refer to the process of “stem cell research”…not using the terms embryonic or human involved since that would get many people upset.

For that reason, I condemn former President Bush who was urged in 2001 to fund research for “leftover” embryos at fertility clinics. At that time, advocates swore up and down that they would stop at creating embryos for the sole purpose of research. Senators Arlen Specter, Tom Daschle, Chris Dodd, Tom Harkin and Orrin Hatch insisted at the time that they were opposed to creating human embryos for the sole purpose of being killed for research. Well, they changed with the times. I am proud to say I have always been for the killing of human embryos no matter the arguments.

But on the other hand, I can understand the denial of the president and the other squishes. So for bipartisan sake I join them in saying:

We never killed you. You never existed.

Personal Aside: The Lesson of Abraham from Yellowed 1947 Class Notes in Bible History at Old Saint John’s.

In addition to four years of Philosophy and Theology we had four years of Church history at the old Saint John’s where I matriculated in 1950. The lecturer is Fr. Gerald McMahon OSB (one of the very few Irishmen at this Germanic Benedictine monastery). It’s Lent…March 30, 1947.

As all Benedictines did, Fr. Gerald leads a colloquy based on questions he expects the class to answer having read (as its assignment) the story of Abraham beginning in Genesis II…but also a commentary by the then acknowledged great Catholic biblical scholar Msgr. Ronald Knox, himself a convert from Anglicanism. Note: Fr. Gerald, as other professors have, enjoys making sport with a grey-haired old ex-GI (when I say old—he was about 45), Bede Hall. It may seem like he’s picking on Hall but it’s just good fun. Here we go:

Fr. Gerald: Give me some details about Abram, Mr. Roeser. Incidentally when did he live? When? Correct: most place him toward the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age which would be roughly from 1900 to 1800 BC. What was his father’s name? You say what? Yes, Terah. Where did Terah live and bring up his children? Right: Ur near the mouth of the Euphrates in what is now Iraq. Not bad, Mr. Roeser: you read your lesson.

Mr. Dooley—Terry Dooley. It’s nice to have a fellow Irishmen. Mr. Terry Dooley. What sort of a fellow was Abram’s dad, Terah? Yes: an idol worshiper who was named after the moon deity at Ur. Then Terah and his wife delivered three sons…one of whom was named Abram.

What does “Abram” mean? You say—what? Correct. It means “God is exalted.” We skip now to where Abram is 86 years old. What memorable thing happens to this 86 year old man, Mr. Dooley?

Childlessness a Terrible Plight in the Near East.

Right you are, Mr. Dooley. Abram has a son but not with his wife Sari. But before you make a wrong judgment, let me tell you why: as today’s people would be dumbfounded to find out, Abram’s wife, Sari, allowed him to consort with a slave woman. Why? Barrenness was regarded as a terrible plight in the Near East in the early and middle Bronze periods and his wife Sari allowed him to have sexual relations with their slave Hagar—and to them a son was born…his name, Gerald Tooley? [Laughter]. No, his name was not Gerald Tooley…I now call on Gerald Tooley our colleague. Mr. Tooley what was the child born of Abram and the slave girl named?

Correct! Ishmael. Correct, Mr. Tooley you were as right with your answer as was Mr. Dooley. You see, we Irish will make it yet in this most Germanic abbey in the United States, located in the most Germanic…and Catholic…county in the United States—Stearns.

Abram was told by God to go to Canaan which is in Palestine. The family packed up but got as far as Haran, Mesopotamia where Terah died. Then Abram was told by God again to go Canaan, God saying “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you.” God promised to make Abram the founder of a new nation in that new land.

Now as you know…or should know…there is talk of a movement afoot to relocate the Jews once again in the land of Canaan to be called Israel: you have probably heard about this in your lecture by Mr. Benvenisti [professor of World Affairs and Ancient History].

So entering Canaan, Abram built an altar…where, Mr.Edward Jordan? Correct: in Shechem and yet another altar in…help us again Mr. Jordan—where? Correct: Bethel. There Abram spoke to the Canaanites and told them of the true God, different from the idols they were worshiping. But a famine hit the land of Canaan and Abram again moved…this time to Egypt.

Abram the Wimp. His Wife a Real Looker.

In Egypt you find the human imperfection of Abram, do you not, Mr. Charles Weishar? And what was that human imperfection? You say—what? Wrong, Mr. Weishar. Read your Genesis and your commentary again. The human imperfection was cowardice…cowardice and lack of faith in God despite the fact that Abram knew God and had visions of Him. Sari was very attractive. In the idiom of Mr. Bede Hall, he would say she was a “looker” would you not, Mr. Hall? [Laughter].

So what did Abram say to his wife, Mr. Hall? He said—what? Yes! He said in effect to Sari—“because you are a `looker’…the Pharaoh will kill me (Abram) in order to get rid of me so he could move you into his harem. So I ask you to go along with me when I say you are my sister, so that my life will be spared.” Nice guy, eh? Meaning they could do with Sari what they wished…put her in the Pharaoh’s harem where she would service him and others who like her looks… just so Abram could live.

Abram was thinking only of himself. What do you think of a man who to save himself would willingly consign his wife to a harem, Mr. Hall? [Hall responds that Abram seems like a worthless, gutless jerk.] Indeed, he did seem so, Mr. Hall but God often uses worthless, gutless jerks for good purposes. He might even have a role for you! [Laughter]. You know I joke, Mr. Hall. [Extended laughter]. You are not worthless, Mr. Hall. Nor are you gutless. [Someone asks: “what about being a jerk?”]. We will see how he behaves for the remainder of this class before we answer that, eh, Mr. Hall? [Extended laughter].

Predictably, the Pharaoh “made a play for Sari” as Mr. Hall would say [laughter] and took her into his house. But the Lord afflicted the Pharaoh and his household with a plague because of what he either did or presumably wanted to do to Sari, so the Pharaoh, discovering she was in fact Abram’s wife, tossed her and Abram out of Egypt.

In fact, Sari was Abram’s half sister but his use of half the truth to conceal the other half was clearly a lie. It was Abram’s moment of weakness before high authority—and it was clearly the intervention of God that kept Sari from being inducted into the royal harem —because God had plans for Abram and Sari: plans that while they were childless and at great old age, they would have a son who would be a forerunner of a great people. And so Abram returned to the land of Canaan and renewed his relationship with God.

Skipping a good deal (but don’t you skip it because the material I omit now may very well be in your examination), skipping a bit, God makes the covenant with Abram ensuring him an heir, a nation and land…and to re-establish that promise is what fills Jews with enthusiasm as they try to reestablish their homeland in Palestine. God ordains that the covenant be sealed with the rite of circumcision. This rite is far older than the Hebrew people. It is seen as an expression of faith that God’s promises would be realized. Why, Mr. Bede Hall, was circumcision used in this way…why not the excising of another part of the body? [Laughter].

Circumcision a Joke? With a Flint Knife?

Ah, Mr. Bede Hall believes it’s funny to think of a man having to cut a small portion of his sex organ as a sign of covenant to God! [Laughter]. But there is deep significance to this, Mr. Hall! A knife is applied to the reproductive organ because it is a sign of the propagation of the race. And to make you wince, Mr. Hall, let me tell you that long before that, circumcision was practiced customarily by the infant’s father using…get this, Mr. Hall…a flint knife…I see you wince, Mr. Hall [laughter]…a flint knife at which time the name is conferred on the baby. Ah, I have had too much sport with Mr. Hall today: sorry, Mr. Hall.

So what happened at the time of circumcision to Abram, Mr. Andrew Cathcart? Yes…God changed the name of Abram to Abraham and the name of Sari to Sarah. Even then, with all he has seen of God…moving to another country at 75…siring a child with a slave girl at 86…now at 99 being told he will be a father again, this time with Sarah who is 90, Abraham cannot believe God. He says in laughter: “Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? Shall Sarah who is ninety years old bear a child?”

Mr. Joseph Mantalbano, what’s the difference between the response of Abraham that he would become a father at 100 and the response of the Blessed Mother that she would become a mother although she knew not man in the biblical sense? You say her response was “Be it done unto me according to Thy word.” Excellent, Mr. Mantalbano.

Hagar and Ishmael Banned.

We move on, gentlemen, beyond the birth of Isaac, which birth ratified the Lord’s prediction. As we have seen, Abraham with Sarah’s approval had earlier…14 years earlier… impregnated the slave girl, Hagar who delivered their child, Ishmael. You would imagine the two women—Sarah who was barren and Hagar who had delivered Abraham’s child,now a teen-ager—would not get along, would you not? That was written in the stars despite the fact that in those times a child born of a surrogate was regarded as a legitimate heir—except that if a child of the progenitor’s wife were to be born, the child of the wife would become the legal heir. Now Sarah delivers Isaac and there are two women with two babies in the same house. Not good. Hagar had every right to expect that Ishmael would be the heir. Now with Sarah at the age of 90 producing a baby, it’s…let us say…a grave disappointment to Hagar.

And then, to make matters worse, the teen-ager Ishmael laughed at the weaning of Isaac. Here the role of the woman is dominant. Sarah, in line with the Lord’s renaming of them both… decided that Hagar and her son would be expelled—even though such expulsion was against the established law. Essentially by doing this, Sarah seconds God’s plan to have Abraham’s true descendent come through their son Isaac. See, gentlemen, once again how the role of woman, this time Sarah, is of vital importance to civilization.

Thus we see how the role of woman is underscored or, as St. Paul writes, the child of Hagar was a covenant of Mount Sinai according to the flesh. The child of Sarah represents the new covenant of Christ which Paul summarizes by writing to the people of Galatia, “So, brethren, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.” But God has mercy on Hagar. What does he do, Mr. John Oberst?

He does what? Correct—He certifies that Ishmael becomes the progenitor of the Arab people…just as Isaac becomes the progenitor of the Jewish people.

We turn now to something that has been gravely misunderstood as long as Judeo-Christianity has endured…the order God gives Abraham to sacrifice, in order words kill…cut to pieces as one would an animal sacrificed to God…his son Isaac—the same son whom God had foretold would begin the lineage of the Jewish people. Why God did this and why Abraham agreed to kill his own son, we will go into next time.

Personal Asides: Why Won’t the “Trib” Come Clean About Fed’s Subpoena?...Bill Daley Plays Dumb but Doesn’t Do it As Convincingly As His Brother.

Come Clean, Tribune!

The Chicago “Tribune” which is determined to find out the inside skinny about politicians in behalf of the people is quite reluctant to do the same with it’s own problems. You remember when the crusading newspaper broke the news about Blair Hull who hit his wife in order to make her stop kicking him? And also when it went to California and blew the court-order secrecy on Jack Ryan’s divorce papers which revealed that he propositioned his wife. The high-and-mighty paper therefore became solely responsible for Hull’s political demise…leading to the nomination of Barack Obama—and also for Ryan’s departure from the campaign which, if anything did, paved the way for Obama’s election.



So the paper has much to answer for. But now we find that the paper’s consultant, Marc Gainis, communicated with John Harris, Blago’s chief of staff regarding the Cubs (which the paper wanted to unload). Gainis emailed the news that Sam Zell was getting ready to call Blago and that Nils Larsen, the paper’s exec vice president, was in the mix as well.

Why then if the paper is so stalwart an advocate of the people’s right to know (important things like Jack Ryan’s sex life and Blair Hull’s hitting his wife in order to get her to stop kicking him)…why is the paper doing a stonewall on an issue which is clearly the people’s right to know? Things like: what does the subpoena say? Did Zell or Larsen place a call to the governor?

If Bruce Dold, chief of the editorial page, is so loftily free of corporate conflict of interest and runs his own shop, why is he so mum? Huh? Com’on Bruce, say something. You were very enthusiastic and mouthy on “Chicago Tonight” after your paper endorsed Obama. Cat got your tongue?

Bill Daley Never Heard of the Guy.

The supine news media didn’t hype it but Bill Daley’s name came up at the Al Sanchez trial where the former Streets and San commissioner faces charges that can send him away for a long time…through improper use of his office and city workers in behalf of the Dems. One Roberto Medina said that he was present when Daley, Tim Degnan. Luis Gutierrez and Ben Reyes suggested he get involved in forming the Hispanic Democratic Organization (HDO) which has been linked to many patronage scandals.

Of course Daley denied it, declaring he never heard of Medina. Which is clearly a bare-faced lie but since the Daleys are all immersed in denial, I imagine denial was quite easy to say without regurgitation.

Which leads to the question as to whether the younger brother of Mayor Daley would be a tough-to-beat candidate for the U. S. Senate in 2010. Conventional wisdom says he will be. I think he’ll be a pushover to beat given the soiled linen he brings to the table. But he’s got great chutzpah as for example when, as campaign manager for Al Gore, he lectured against purported Republican vote fraud in the Florida recount in 2000. To be lectured about the need for vote-counting purity by Old Man Daley’s kid…where the dead rose from their graves…(and which I studied as chairman of Project LEAP, the anti-vote fraud organization)…was a real gas.

Personal Aside: Shaun Gayle—Jock Model for African American Youth. Scattering Seed Where He Will. His Teammates

He is disconsolate at being deprived of his unborn child…shot and killed with the baby’s mother, who lived with Gayle in a Deerfield condo…the mother and baby (or, to be politically correct—“fetus”) shot by another woman who was jealous of her for taking Gayle away from her. Of course Gayle had had no sexual involvement with the alleged killer: um-um, nope. The assailant was motivated by, Lake county authorities say, “a jealous rage.” But they hadn’t had any relationship Gayle says—um-um, nope.

In the past, police said Gayle had complained that yet another former girlfriend of his had harassed his current girlfriend…I mean the mother of his unborn child. Lots and lots of girlfriends for an unmarried 47 year old whose life has been spent in these coupling arrangements…like a puppy dog…and as faithful. The papers say Gayle was tearful and that his old teammates stand by him in his hour of need. How touching. Just another story of an embittered girl—who didn’t have any sexual relationship with Gayle, understands…who just went bonkers. Yes, that’s all her fault. And she’ll pay for it while he goes his way. Scattering seed.

All her fault. No summary statement by a newspaper analyst or editorial writer…because nobody has the guts to tell the truth. In this debased culture as in its politics, the truth is in denial. The truth: “The crucial process of civilization is the subordination of male sexual impulses and biology to the long-term horizons of female sexuality.” The truth: “The overall sexual behavior of women in the modern world differs relatively little from the sexual life of women in primitive societies. It is MALE behavior that must be changed to maintain civilized order.” The truth: “In creating civilization, women transform male lust into love. They link men to specific children; rear children into citizens; change hunters into fathers; divert male will to power into a drive to create. Women conceive the future that men tend to flee.”

The truth: “Without marital stability, men lust but lose track of the goal. They fight and compete but they forget the prize. They spread seed but spurn the seasons of growth. They chase power but miss the meaning of life.” The truth: “Once a man marries, he can change. He has to change for his wife will not long have him if he remains in spirit a single man.

The Final Truth: “As a social institution, marriage transcends all individuals. The health of a society, its collective validity, ultimately resides in its concern for the future, its sense of connection with generations to come.”

Of course no one in journalism dare say these things…because they are though timeless, to us they are unpopular, politically incorrect. Instead we all mourn for Shaun Gayle and his baby he will never know. We don’t much care about the slain woman. Why didn’t they marry? Because, obviously, Shaun has other conquests to make.

We have some interest in the accused slayer. But it is Shaun Gayle we are most interested in. Why? WHY? Because, hell, man, he is a former football cornerback/safety in the NFL, playing twelve seasons, eleven for the Chicago Bears, a member of the Bears squad that won Super Bowl XX, a member of the “shuffling crew.” A man women adore...like we all want to be.

He’s a jerk. A coward. One who is concentrating on spending his life in search of further affirmation of his masculinity.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, eh, moderns?

Personal Asides: Pulido’s Candidacy…The Sun-Times Gives the GOP Advice on Limbaugh (Huh?)…Shaun Gayle—Model of Manhood for Young African-American Males…Another Lenten Lesson from Old Saint John’s.

Council of Trent Meeting for Pulido.

With disgust building in Illinois against flagrant liberal Democratic incompetence for …tolerating an arrested potential bribe-solicitor in the governorship who overspent the state to insolvency…blocking the people’s right to vote for a U.S. Senator…cave in to allow Roland Burris, a repudiated alleged perjurer to stay in the Senate…opposing, along with Barack Obama a citizen’s right to use a hand-gun for self-defense after an intruder breaks into a house…endorsing ” the killing of a live baby born after a botched abortion…supporting same-sex marriage…winking at illegal immigration and issuance of drivers’ licenses to the unqualified…giving the go-ahead to Todd Stroger and his crew that has mismanaged Cook county to near bankruptcy…

…Chicagoland now has its first opportunity since last November to send a message to Washington and the liberal news media…which is--

The special congressional election in the Illinois 5th district this April 7.

That’s less than a month away. You should know that although she’s the Republican nominee…and espouses solid conservative values…she has not heard a word from either the RNC or Andy McKenna, the Republican State Chairman. Nada; zilch. That’s why her friends…me included…are mobilizing to help her now.

You don’t have to live in the district to help send the message by turning out a powerful protest vote for the Republican nominee, Rosanna Pulido.

If you represent a group, no matter how small, join us--.

A special “Council of Trent” meeting of movement leaders will be held this Saturday March 14 at noon.

Here are the details: Council of Trent.

Noon, Saturday March 14

Skyline Club

307 N. Michigan

Go to 23rd Floor

Then walk one flight up.

For the un-initiated, a “Council of Trent” is a conclave of conservative movement leaders…anti-tax, pro-life, pro-2nd amendment etc. …to mobilize to send a message. We did with Peter Fitzgerald; we defeated the GOP organization’s favored candidate with Al Salvi. And it can happen again. We are looking for pro-lifers, 2nd amendment people, home schoolers, pro-voucher people, pro-legal immigration people, anti-taxers, pro-capital formation people…anybody who fits into what used to be called the Reagan coalition.

If you represent such a group…more than just yourself…indicate on this email whether or not you want to attend. Make reservations by writing to thomasfroeser@sbcglobal.net. Tell what group you will be representing at the Council of Trent. If you stay home this Saturday, don’t go crying later on that the Congress has become indentured automatons of the socialist state.

Dems’ Siren Call.

The Obama White House’s siren urging to the GOP to ditch Russ Limbaugh as the face of the Republican party fooled no one but Michael Steele who by biting on the hook irremediably botched his tenure as GOP chairman…to whom good riddance. Establishment media focus on two major assaults on Rush Limbaugh.

First they insist it is an outrage that Limbaugh has said he hopes Obama fails. For my part, I know for a certainty that Obama will fail given that he is recycling Roosevelt Redux. I earnestly want the public to understand the magnitude of the failure to come…and not fall into the media trap of maintaining a foolish worshipful séance about another faux hero ala FDR and JFK.

Secondly, establishment media criticize Rush because he said Ted Kennedy’s death will be used in a campaign to pass socialized medicine. That, they say is cynical. The definition of cynical involves publicitors aka “journalists” from the “Boston Globe” (owned by the failing “New York Times”) on the Kennedy death watch, rip-and-read ghouls who have timed their effort to coincide with his imminent death… which, they hope, will hype their sales and make them and their newspaper big bucks.

In truth, Kennedy’s slow death is in a Catholic sense, a blessing, a boon. It has given him the chance to reflect and conduct a serious several hours-long confession fitting for a lifelong skirt-chaser, wife abandoner and boozer who left a live woman gasping for breath in an overturned car in a pond…she pushing forward to gulp the last breaths of air while he abandoned her because he was too concerned about losing his reputation to tell authorities about the accident and that she was dying in his car.

His blessing of a slow death gives him an opportunity to beg for absolution for decades of betrayal of his Church’s principles as he served the cause of abortion. Unfortunately, his trotting around picking up trinkets of adulation…honorary knighthood et al…indicate he’s going to go down without remorse. “Last Lion” indeed.

Sun-Times Gives Us Advice.

Last week it was instructive to note similar advice from an editorial in the “Sun-Times.” Beware Limbaugh, it says, or the GOP will lose what’s left of its acceptance. This from a page that relies on the great ballast of balanced judgment received from Neil Steinberg who while never ceasing to remind us he is Jewish, is also an untiring Catholic baiter…Mary Mitchell who so regularly and with dispassion finds whitey the cause of racial hatred…Richard Roeper whose mid-40s triumph over viscerally stunted adolescence provides so much maturity to exposition of ideas… Mark Brown who towers over all as a gifted prose stylist… and Carol Marin, monopolist purveyor of lofty lefty opinion on NBC-TV and WTTW-TV whose undisputed command of history and analytical sagacity has given her such recognized stature over her late S-T predecessor, columnist and historian Steve Neal.

Fr. Emeric’s Pre-Vatican II Theology. A Lenten Lesson.

It is coming near to the Christmas vacation period, December, 1946, December 15 to be exact, the first semester following victory of World War II. Saint John’s students are packed and ready to go to the Greyhound buses which will take them to the railroad stations (very few fly since the airlines have not yet fully returned to peacetime schedules). Fr. Emeric Lawrence, OSB, begins his lecture thus…as always…with a question.

I once again turn to the often hard-to-understand personage of Jesus Christ. And I begin with this question which I shall direct to…let’s see…Mr. Eugene Sheehy. Mr. Sheehy, let me ask a very simple question: What did He come to this world for? You say—what? Very good. You say “He came to this world to save us from our sins” and that His forerunner, John the Baptizer, gave a hint of what was to follow when John said he would be the Lamb of God: “This is He who takes away the sin of the world.” Foreshadowing His sacrifice. Excellent answer.

But—Mr. Sheehy—as good as your answer is, I am puzzled and I wonder if you could help me de-code the puzzle [laughter]. That laughter comes, Mr. Sheehy, from your wary colleagues who note that since this class began last September I am forever puzzled by answers I get here and persist in following-up with detailed examinations your answers.

I am puzzled, Mr. Sheehy, because if what you say as His purpose is correct, I cannot understand what He meant when He said…as He did in Matthew 10:34 “Do not imagine that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have come to bring a sword, not peace. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and a man’s foes will be those of his own household.” What in the world is this, sir?

Now I have always understood that Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace…that in this feast day we shall observe we are told He will bring “peace to men of good will.” You will note that I use the correct translation. Those who have corrupted it to say “peace, good will to men” have mis-led us. You cannot have peace until and unless you are of good will—quite different. But I digress.

How do you as a potential biblical scholar [laughter] interpret that one, Mr. Sheehy? You say…what? You say it is a paradox. Of course that’s what it is, but how do you interpret it? Enough, Mr. Sheehy, I have put you through enough. Now I am looking for volunteers. Mr. Harry Arth. What say you? You say…what? That He has used this metaphor of a sword to mean that He will combat evil. Not bad, Mr. Arth. Not as good as say Frank Sheed or Msgr. Knox put it—but not bad.

Mr. Vetter, no idea. Mr. Hall, I am not surprised: no idea. Mr. Roeser, the truth is often a very-very dangerous position to hold if we are to stand by it. Think of how unpopular you can be if you were to defend the articles of your faith or the canons of morality at every turn. If you’re like a lot of people…when you’re in a mixed group and there is ridicule and laughter about morality or your faith—as there is wont to be in this often debased world—you decide you’d just better shut up about it, that “now is not the time” to use a popular phrase. But rarely is that a right course of action. I have found literally that “now IS the time.” Mr. Roeser nods in agreement. Easy to do, Mr. Roeser when the professor suggests the answer [laughter].

Fr. Ernest has expostulated gentlemen in philosophy that there is absolute truth…Aristotle and Aquinas have testified to it. Then our job is to testify to that truth. To the Roman Governor Pilate Christ said in John 18.37 “What I was born for, what I came into the world for, is to bear witness to the truth.” And in our own way, that is what we must do, gentlemen. He came to give His life as ransom for many. He came to save a world that was lost, a race in danger of perishing from sin. The least we can do…the least…is to pipe up when our philosophy, our beliefs are challenged—which means tell the truth.

Is it tough? Of course it’s tough. I want to tell you this story. Some years ago a student I had was inflamed with the idea of standing up for the truth as Christ tells us to. It so happened he had a sister…his favorite sister…who left the Church and married a divorced man who belonged to another church. The sister asked my former student to be Best Man. He wanted to go to her wedding: he loved her dearly. She asked their father to “give her away” as it’s referred to…walking her down the aisle in a traditional way. Well the father weakened…in response to the entreaties of his wife who said “you have to do it! Your absence will humiliate her and humiliate us all!’ So he did it.

My old student, I am glad to report turned down his favorite sister and declined being Best Man. I suppose you don’t think he caught the very devil from his mother and the entire family (they were all Catholics). He felt like a dog and the repercussions are with him yet…his sister is cool to him, his mother won’t forget it, his father thinks my ex-student is a religious fanatic. He told me not long ago it was a baptism of fire. As Christ meant it should be. For him to have done what the rest of this…I remind you “Catholic” family did…would have been to agree tacitly that whatever suits the convenient need is what should be done. A baptism of fire is right.

That is why Christ likens truth to fire. He says “It is fire that I have come to spread over the earth”—meaning TRUTH—“and what better wish can I have than it should be kindled” [Luke 12-49].

You are gathering up your books for that long Christmas vacation but the bell has not rung yet. And I have another question. In John 9.39 Christ says, “I have come into this world so that a sentence may fall upon it—that those who are blind should see and those who see should become blind.” Those who see should become blind? I thought He was here to make all of us see…let’s see…Mr. George Borgerding. How do you interpret this. As you know, Frank Sheed has interpreted it. Let’s see how well you do. Mr. Borgerding, you say what? Absolutely correct. Christ had just healed the blind man and caused him to see. The Pharisees were the blind ones, questioning Him. By describing “those who see” He meant the Pharisees learned in the law of Moses. But the persistent obstinacy of the Pharisees deprived them of seeing the truth.

When He pronounced this on the Pharisees, how did they respond, Mr. Borgerding? Right you are! They asked Him “Are we also blind?” And His answer rings through the ages: “Now that you say `we see,’ your guilt remains.” There’s the bell! Have a Holy Christmas.

Personal Aside: State, National GOP Rising Thanks to Dems. Cobb

Saves Burris From Ignominy…Obama Gaffe, Allowing Pelosi to Craft Stimulus Prompts Bayh, Feingold Rebellion.

All of a sudden…quicker than you can imagine…the Republican party is back in the political ballgame—here in Illinois and the nation. But it’s Illinois I’ll tackle first…because with Obama’s roots here, what comes down in this city can be a forerunner to what happens in the nation. The likelihood that Roland Burris will be on the 2010 ticket here thrills Republicans…and the blunt, intrusive presence of Rahm Emanuel who gave the stimulus okay to Nancy Pelosi helped split his party on the issue.

Illinois: Cobb Forces Dem White Oligopoly’s Hand.

In Illinois no sooner did the Democratic party get rid of its corrupt Gov. Rod Blagojevich and start cruising with a somewhat popular governor who succeeded Blago (pro-abort Catholic Dem Pat Quinn) than Roland Burris threatens to divide the party over race… fratricide that begs to become so ugly it could trigger chaos that could elect a Republican senator and a GOP governor in 2010, no matter how blue (Democratic) the state has become. By week’s end Quinn was hastening to repair the damage but by placating blacks about Burris he may alienate the general electorate which feels rightly that Burris doesn’t belong in the Senate.

The story thus far: Burris, appointed to Barack Obama’s Senate seat by Blago, came as close to perjuring himself in denying connections to the ex-governor as is possible to get: utilizing the time-honored political tricks of evading truthful answers and withholding much: including the fact that his son received a $75,000 state job for Blago…that Burris volunteered to raise money for the embattled governor as a quid pro quo… and that he lobbied repeatedly to Blago’s brother and anyone who would listen for the Senate post. After he was sworn in as senator, it became so apparent that his testimony before the state House impeachment committee was dishonest, that a state prosecutor and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald are studying whether or not to indict him.

As result, one of Gov. Quinn’s first acts was to urge Burris to resign, starting a chorus that was joined by Catholic pro-abort Dick Durbin the hustler, the U.S. Senate’s second ranking Democrat. President Obama’s news secretary came very close to joining the chorus. End of synopsis.

But state and national Dems failed to reckon with a brilliant black public relations savant hired by Burris as a lucky stroke, one who is far smarter and more wily than Burris who now is utilizing the race card for him. Like all Dem machine pols, Burris is truth-averse which has enabled him to survive for 35 years, saying with one breath: “I have never, ever, thought about race” and in another “the white boys are out to get me!” For someone of his mediocrity, his pick of a publicist, who plays race antagonism like an ocarina, was a great coup.

She is Del Marie Cobb, an attractive black publicist who talks sweetly for the cameras but who has amassed the equivalent of a Ph.D degree in the art of churning up African American anger at the polls. Before she came on the scene, even many black Illinoisans were either apathetic or apologetic about Burris whom they regarded rightly as an over-age hack. Now they’re boiling mad at the possibility of losing the only black Senator in the chamber.

When Cobb took over as Burris’ political guru he was on the ropes and ready to accept defeat. She shushed that private display of weakness and recruited black ministers, movement leaders and angry black radio talk show hosts on Chicago’s South and West Sides to threaten to pull down the Democratic party house if the only black in the Senate is torpedoed by what she calls “the white oligarchs” in the Dem party.

Last week Cobb took three brilliant major steps. (1) She mobilized the Chicago City Council’s black caucus front and center for the city media, featuring angry Alderwoman Fredenna Lyle who shouted that “white pols are not targeted for wrongdoing but Roland is despite the fact that he’s done nothing whatsoever wrong!” Well, that’s debatable but the way Lyle behaved…standing before a group of headshaking city council black colleagues…frightens the very devil out of the two-member white Dem principals in Illinois—Mayor Richard M. Daley and House Speaker Michael Madigan who are dependent on a machine’s clockwork tsunami of black votes for their election.

Second, she re-orchestrated a familiar sight: a black ministerial convocation of Bible-quoting evangelicals touting Burris’ supposed martyrdom with a lively nodding, amen-chanting chorus as backdrop. Featured performer was U. S. Congressman Bobby Rush, former Black Panther now also a minister declaring “the state constitution worked for Quinn! Let it work for Roland!” After all, said Rush, “Roland hasn’t done anything indict-able!” Don’t talk too soon, Bobby…but for now as a campaign slogan it works with disadvantaged South and West Side blacks…all Cobb is interested in at this point. The ministers even went so far as to note—rightly--that the white media-canonized Teddy Kennedy escaped punishment when his car went over a bridge at Chappaquiddick and killed a woman, implying with painful accuracy that if he were black and without white gilt-edged political connections he’d have gone to jail.

These hot words terrify shaky fledgling governor Quinn who to win support from white liberal reformist protests had called on Burris to resign and who had also endorsed a special election to please the Tribune editorial board—an idea he now finds to his horror is despised by the Dems’ huge black political base. Add to this a leading black alderman, Ed Smith…usually docile where the white-run Dem party is involved…who gave forth this scary statement: “Pat Quinn decided he’s going to dictate to us what should go on in our communities!”

Thus to placate all, Quinn has become a literal wind-sock, reflecting every cross-current of breeze. Cobb’s orchestrated rebellion also scares pro-abort Catholic attorney general Lisa Madigan (who wants to be governor) who had demanded Burris quit and who issued a finding stating a special election is justified by her reading of the U.S. Constitution’s Article XVII. At least for now she ought not to go vote hustling for governor as her step-father’s white dimpled darling on Chicago’s South and West sides.

Third, Cobb sent Burris to thunder out a speech she had written at a black church where to cheering hundreds he endorsed…to no one’s surprise…a Constitutional amendment giving the residents of D. C. full representation but then much more… a brilliant fillip thought-up by Cobb--a resolution memorializing “the black slaves who built the U. S. Capitol from the ground up!” a dash of gasoline tossed on the fire that caused the emotional congregation to exploded to a fever pitch. White liberal news reporters were jeered at the church, worshipers charging Burris is being held to a tougher standard than white senators including Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) who hasn’t yet fully explained his sweetheart deal with Countrywide mortgages. Intriguingly, the crowd accurately called the supine pro-Daley media to account for not subjecting the mayor’s 2016 Olympic bid to scrutiny: an extraordinarily valid point.

Cobb told me that next on her list is Chicago-based Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan who last week spoke for three straight hours at before 14,000 rapt followers at a “Savior’s Day convention where white, blond-haired Fr. Michael Pfleger, the black militants’ token, spared from pastoral term limits by the queasy archdiocese because he’s so heavy with Democrats and Daley, sat applauding in the front row. Odds are she can get Farrakhan to join in her pro-Burris crusade-- which means she’ll get Farrakhan follower Pfleger to get his St. Sabina’s congregation worked up for Burris as well.

Thus in one week the political situation changed drastically to favor Burris thanks to the work of one woman: Del Marie Cobb.

Similar Coddling Threatens National Dems.

Similar danger confronts the Democratic party nationally which like Chicago coddles more than its share of liberal mediocrities: including Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) who said on the floor that “the American people really don’t care” about how much money is wasted on pork…Sen. Chris Dodd who has received sweetheart loans from Countryside because Dodd is Banking chairman. And not to forget good old Charlie Rangel, (D-NY), who writes our tax laws but who has earned rental income from properties he owns in a luxury resort in the Dominican Republic while neglecting to report it on his House ethics form and who has improperly taken advantage of rent-controlled apartments in New York city to house his campaign staff…spared from House probes because of the intercession of Nancy Pelosi.

Back in Chicago the Del Marie Cobb revolution in the state’s USSR-like Dem party could well (a) nominate Burris next year but not elect him…sending into the general election one who is seriously flawed and likely to be defeated by a good Republican candidate…( b) emasculate Gov. Quinn who is hurrying to make peace with the blacks by renouncing his earlier views…(c) wound Lisa Madigan who demanded Burris resign…and (d) destroy the so-called “golden boy” of the Dems, State Treasurer Alexi Gianoullis who has announced an exploratory committee preparatory to running against Burris in the primary—best guess is he’ll change his mind and stay put. If Cobb’s rehab of Burris continues, why would he want to incur animosity from blacks by challenging Burris in the primary: animosity that is sure to linger in the future?

That’s why the political picture looks brighter than it has for years for Illinois Republicans. Now the details of the national picture.

Radical Domestic Policies.

When Barack Obama ran for president, those who knew him (including this writer whose one-hour ABC radio show was the first one he chose after election to the state senate) were divided as to what sort of president he would be. Presidents come in two categories: those who merely want to be somebody (Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter) and those who want to change government (FDR and Ronald Reagan). Because of his ingenious suavity and skillful parsing in the campaign, Obama could have fallen in either category.

But now it is clear he means to lead a socialistic (there’s no reason to mince the words) upheaval as utopian as it’s radical. He is not only committed to a huge outlay of federal “stimulus”…as was Bush’s which didn’t work … but a big government superstructure atop an eye-popping $3.5 trillion budget for fiscal 2010 that will, if enacted, drastically change the United States as we know it forever…in three ways.

First, by producing universal health care as drastic as LBJ’s Medicare which will be paid for by curbing Medicare payments to private providers, cutting income tax deductions to the “better offs,” ending the Bush tax cuts (which means in effect a tax hike in a recession) and straightforwardly raising taxes on those earning $250,000 or more—mostly entrepreneurs from which most economic and employment growth comes…and creating a new National Health Insurance Exchange which eventually will leave people with few options besides government-run health insurance.

Second by moving the feds into education from kindergarten to graduate school with government grants, tax credits and taxpayer-backed guarantees for college education…

And third, by locking the gigantic energy portion of the U.S. economy in a heavily regulated and purportedly “green-forced” sector from which it can never be dislodged, socking it with taxes to produce $80 billion a year from a carbon cap-and-trade system to pay for rebates and subsidies to the “working poor.”

Larded in between are spending projects left behind by Democrats when we were in prosperity…Emanuel’s contribution via Pelosi…tagged as part of “stimulus”: $5.5 billion for renovating federal office-buildings of which only 23% will be spent this year and next and $20.8 billion for “improved health technology” aka electronic record-keeping of which the peak year will be 2014. The result, if not curbed, will be the transfer of the remaining U.S. so-called “free market” system to standard European social democracy which would resemble the highly regulated, bureaucratized sclerotic European Union.

Historians note that Obama is following the FDR-Keynesian record which for all its spending and controls left the jobless figure at 19% in 1939 before he began maneuvering us into World War II. Keynesianism holds that the twin answers to unemployment and economic downturns are massive government deficit spending and cheap money producing an artificial driving down of interest rates to purportedly “free up more credit.” Obama’s goal: end the Bush tax cuts and instead extend unemployment and food stamp benefits as well as issuing short-term tax credits for those who pay no taxes.

Re-Doing the Failed Keynesian System to Look “Strong.”

Why, if Keynesianism was repudiated under FDR, is Obama trying it again? For the same reason Bush did: the dumb media and citizenry believe any action means a so-called “strong presidency.” Bush did it as a last-minute futile gesture to spare history from recording him as another Herbert Hoover. Obama does it for media purposes too—but with the more enduring goal of using the recession to install a European-style social “democracy.” As Rahm Emanuel blurted out not long ago: “One should never let an emergency like this go to waste.”

However Obama’s statist spending is building a gigantic conservative counter-revolution that is brewing a heavy backlash for future election…a counter-revolution with a special place for Catholic voters exceeding the traditional pro-life arguments.

Catholic Physicians, Hospitals Threatened.

Catholic voters were—and are-- lethargic on the abortion issue against Obama partially because liberal bishops and priests fudge their pronouncement against the issue in such a parsing way that no clear-cut view is presented. But increasingly Catholic bishops are interpreting anew Obama’s radical FOCA [“Freedom of Choice Act”]. Lawyers tell them it will override state conscience clause laws that protect Catholic doctors, hospitals and medical professionals. More than one prelate has threatened to close Catholic hospitals rather than conform to the Obama threat.

Shutting down Catholic hospitals would devastate Chicago and most other large urban areas. Not to do so would certainly spur severe criticism from Rome. Giving Catholic hospitals a pass would inflame radical pro-aborts, a key constituency for Obama. Until this is settled, a growing number of Catholics could move from pro-Obama to anti-. Hotly anti.

The Emerging Anti-Obama Coalition.

Catholic outrage would be harnessed to these constituencies movements animated by Obama (with the help of Emanuel):

… investors angered because the GDP is declining at an annual rate of 6.2%, the worst in a quarter-century along with the continued plunge of the stock market (last week the S&P 500 lost 43% of its value); the February employment report showing a decline of 785.000 jobs, the largest one-month decline in more than 60 years;

…Gun-owners because Obama supports criminal prosecution of people who have used firearms in self-defense…a ban on almost all rifle ammunition used for hunting…a complete ban on handgun ownership…and a proposal concocted because of supposed “nearness to schools” that would eliminate almost every gun store in America.

…Small business owners angered at Obama’s “Employee Free Choice Act” forcing workplaces to be unionized without private ballots;

…Big business because Obama wants to saddle it in a weak economy with greenhouse gas regulations;

…Grassroots conservatives upset because Obama’s FCC may well quash political dissent on the airwaves;

…Education choicers fuming because teachers’ unions with Obama’s blessing may reverse 18 years of gains in voucher and tax credit programs;

…Home schoolers outraged that Obama’s allies, the teachers’ unions, are seeking to outlaw their rights to teach their own children at home.

In summary, contrary to the media who worships Obama’s speaking style, aside from his superb speaking style, his first month in office was a disaster. Let me briefly count the ways. Item: By allowing Pelosi to draft the stimulus bill and filling it with pork rather than crafting it himself…Item: by referring to U.S. troops returning from Iraq as victims rather than victors…Item: by blinking at tax cheat Tim Geithner who will be overseeing Americans’ taxes and making him treasury secretary (whereupon he announced last week he’s by God going to crack down on tax cheats!) …Item: by allowing Geithner to go before the public with half-formed stimulus details that caused the markets to tank…Item: by foolishly getting into a public dogfight with Rush Limbaugh—allowing one who repeatedly looks like a loose cannon, Emanuel, to build him up to mammoth proportions by castigating him in public, raising suspicions it’s a first step to the administration clamping down on dissent by applying the misnamed “Fairness Doctrine.”

Remember: these errors occurred only in the first month. Believe me, it looks like a whole new ballgame.

Personal Asides: Three Examples of…Well…You’ll Find Out by Reading This! “Now for…(pause)…The… Rest… of,,, the… Story of Paul Harvey.…and Kissinger Slams the Bush Foreign Policy.

The…Rest…of…the…Story: Over the Wall Harvey.

I’ve never been all that hot for Paul Harvey. He always sounded a bit like Bill Stern to me…a dramatic sportscaster who in the `40s would conclude his program with this jingle: “Bill Stern the Colgate Shave Cream man is on his way! Bill Stern the Colgate Shave Cream man had lots to say! He told you tales of sports heroes, the inside dope he really knows…listen in next Friday night! C-o-l-g-a-t-e!” Bill Stern who had one leg (nobody ever heard how he lost it) would liven up his broadcasts with unbelievable fiction.

The very first time I heard the phrase “bullshit” was at the age of 10 when…believe it or not…the phrase was brand new. Oh there were scatological references to lying and duplicity: but not this.

I was 10 in 1938 and with my Dad was listening to Stern on the radio as he breathlessly told the story of how Abner Doubleday invented baseball. Doubleday, he said, was a Union general in the Civil War who fired the first shot in the defense of Fort Sumter. During long periods at camp, he said Doubleday invented baseball. Doubleday’s game was a hit with some of the troops but he wanted to make it national…and so he planned, as soon as his war duties were over, to bring it to the attention of the president of the United States to get him interested. He had a friend who knew Abraham Lincoln well. As soon as the war was concluded, Stern told his radio audience, Doubleday arranged for a leave and went to Washington, D. C. to try to get an appointment with Lincoln. He arrived in Washington on April 14, 1865.

He tried to get an appointment that afternoon but was told Lincoln was busy…that he should come back the next day. That evening after he had dinner, Doubleday noticed…Stern said…a great crowd standing outside Ford’s Theatre. He was told the president was at the theatre. He jostled into the crowd just in time to hear that the president had been shot…and to watch attendants carry the unconscious body of Lincoln across the street to a house owned by the Peterson family. All night Doubleday stood outside, Stern said, but since he was in the uniform of a general, he managed to convince a guard to let him inside. Inside, Stern said, he squeezed his way down a narrow hall to the bedroom where he was admitted.

Just then, Stern said, Lincoln was coming to. And for about 30 seconds Doubleday expressed his sorrow that Lincoln was shot and described the game he had invented. With a gasp Lincoln looked at him…Stern said…and murmured “that’s wonderful, General! It sounds like your game would be good for the country!” Then his jaw dropped open, Stern reported with a catch in his throat, and the life of Abraham Lincoln ended.

This is when my father uttered the immortal words that I had never heard before.

I said: what is that?

He said: A phrase I heard on the farm. Forget it. It means spectacular lying.

Even before Father had said it, I knew…but could not identify it with special language…that Stern not only purveyed b. s. but embodied it. The only thing right about what he said was that Abner Doubleday was the first to fire a Union shot at Sumter. Everything else was scandalously inventedf by Stern. Lincoln, as I knew, never gained consciousness. But in those depression days when audiences cherished fiction as a way to take their minds of reality, Stern got away with it. I am sure thousands of people knew the correct story but Mutual network, of course never tried to clean up or apologize for his flagrant lie.

Just as the network never corrected the time that Stern was doing an excited play-by-play of a Big 10 football game. He was yelling excitedly as a player ran for a touchdown…extolling the player’s name all the while (“There goes Schultz! Brilliant! He’s down to the 30…the 20…the 10 and heading for a touchdown!”). Then he noticed that he had the wrong player running for the touchdown: it wasn’t Schultz at all!…Schultz was far downfield—so on the spot he announced that Schultz just executed a neat lateral to the correct player and with stentorian rhetoric extolled the right guy as he scored.

Over the Wall Harvey.

I never did get over Bill Stern so when Paul Harvey began here…when I was in my early 20s… I was properly suspect. Then…which has not been covered in any of the obits that I’ve seen…when he was trying to build up his audience, Harvey decided to uncover what he hoped would be a national story. Joe McCarthy was on the ascendancy in those days, claiming that our national secrets were being loosely guarded so that they could easily be purloined…in fact, McCarthy said, they WERE BEING PURLOINED…by Soviet spies. Harvey decided to take a long shot and personally demonstrate how lax national security standards were.

The Argonne National Lab in DuPage was involved in early atomic bomb research. One night Harvey drove out there, parked his car, went to what he thought was an obscure place in the wall covering the plant and somehow heisted himself over the wall. He had a crayon in his pocket and he was going to write his name on the wall, then heist himself over the wall again and when he would next be on the radio…the next day…he would break the story of how lax Argonne’s security was…citing for proof his own signature on the wall!

But no sooner had he landed inside Argonne than he was besieged by guards and damn near shot on the spot. He was hauled in, kept there most of the night answering questions and was finally released. He was released to a torrent of publicity making him the butt. He was called Paul “Over the Wall” Harvey and it took him years…literally years…to shake the story. I note he finally did when he died at the age of 90 since nobody reported the story.

Now I have to go and spoil it. But it verified once again my initial impression at age 7…that he was a very good story teller…a sensationalist…but also one who was very careful to move away from conservatism when he feared he was outnumbered. As he did from defending the Vietnam War to becoming a dove. Once a pro-lifer, he switched to the (then) far more popular “pro-choice” side…a switch he credited to his wife Angel.

The only time I met him was at a reception about a decade ago where obligatorily the audience was marshaled up in a line to shake his hand. There he was…then 80…with the expensive toupee colored yellow and a face so pulled up tight from what looked like multiple facelifts that the extra, flabby skin must have been stapled behind his ears.

When I was introduced and Bruce DuMont gave him my name, Harvey said, “Ah, Mr. Roeser and your significant other!”

“No,” Lillian said clearly so as not to accept this concession to modern decadence. “I’m his wife!”

As we walked away, I felt my father’s assessment of Stern was appropriate here. Something…somehow…seemed faux.

This guy they compare to Limbaugh? Not a chance.

Henry the K Raps Bush Foreign Policy.

The news yesterday carried the rather obscure report that speaking somewhere in England, Henry Kissinger rapped the Bush foreign policy as being a disaster for the United States.

Enough stories have circulated about Henry the K’s duplicity and pathological insecurity in office that explain the sudden criticism…never before uttered when Bush was in office. The fact that we have not been attacked by terrorists may not be irrevocable proof that his policy worked—for we’ll never fully know.

But we do know, don’t we, that this nation was mis-led seriously by a statement that echoed around the world and especially with the U. S. electorate on October 26, 1972 when Henry the K appeared before the White House press corps and uttered his immortal words: “Peace is at hand!” …delivered with a smile and typical German mystery just days before the presidential election.

We know now that that was bullshit don’t we? And with duplicity aforethought. It was not a misjudgment: it was purposeful. The war wasn’t close to being concluded. But the election was coming up and nothing better to give it the final tip toward Nixon than to mislead the American people.

The war wasn’t even close to ending. It ended in April, 1975 Sixteen months after Kissinger said “peace is at hand.” And knowing Henry the K’s willingness to please any boss he works for…and anybody else he wishes to court…we know that HE KNEW when he said it that peace was nowhere at hand. A lying little auburn-haired guttersnipe.

This is the same guttersnipe who worked on Nixon to get him to believe that the American people did not have the stomach to endure the war until victory. His theory of foreign policy was that at no time should we take any risks to rupture the “realistic” negotiations for peace…which he specified in his doctoral dissertation on Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich…a very strange Harvard dissertation by the way since it was accepted without footnotes.

Ronald Reagan, with no doctorate but a bachelors in economics from Eureka college, did what Nixon and Kissinger did not have the will to do—pushed the Soviets to the wall by calling them what they were—perpetrators of “an evil empire”…and so built up our defenses that Gorbachev realized he could not compete. And when the USSR collapsed, on the bookshelves was the posthumous book written by Nixon, cooperated in by Kissinger, telling us that our negotiations with the Soviets would last another generation.

So pardon me if I accept the Kissinger judgment on Bush with the same grains of salt and the same explective with which I heard Bill Stern the Colgate Shave Cream man on Lincoln and Harvey’s the…rest…of…the…story.

For here I have told you the rest of the story.

Personal Aside: Vrdolyak, Our Crook…Why Rahm Blasted Limbaugh…and Why Michael Steele Shouldn’t Have.

Vrdolyak Our Crook.

Chicago Republicans…at least conservative ones…have been so out of power in Chicago (since Big Bill Thompson in 1931)…that they forgot what it’s like to have a big shot power player in trouble with the Feds—forgot, that is, until the other day. That was when Fast Eddie Vrdolyak…the conservatives’ own who left the Democratic party for the GOP and who epitomized the true neighborhood guy ran into trouble with U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald because of a crooked deal Vrdolyak was ginning up and which was captured by the FBI listening in on his cell phone.

Up to then Vrdolyak had been a white neighborhood hero despite the fact that he is a multi-millionaire and didn’t have to engage in smarmy deals to turn a buck. He did it because he is the eternal moth who likes to fly as close as he can to the flame and not get burned. I know Vrdolyak well. People forget that on his radio show he embodied the worldly wise neighborhood tough guy with no pretense—typically Chicago. They also forget that he topped the ratings when he held forth on that show. And finally they forget that flaws aside…he is indubitably…authentically…and everlastingly white, cynical Chicago—sounding for all the world (and I parsed his cadences) like Frank Sinatra: memorable, not heroic with a touch of sadness but an irreverence that is endearing. On the radio Eddie was the tough guy he always was but with a charming, old-school traditionally conservative approach on family, the wiles of the machine, etc. In that time he became a kind of icon. Had he allowed himself to stay on the air he’d be a true radio institution by now. But no—always he had to move on.

He sort of…I say sort of…started me at WLS after I retired from Quaker Oats by inviting me as a guest and then…when he went on “strike” to protest his show being taken off FM…asking me to sub for him for a week until he came back. The week lasted for months. I was on with his sidekick Ty Wonsley for so long I was in danger of losing some public affairs clients who thought (when they had trouble reaching me between 2 p.m. and 6 every afternoon) I had either a serious drinking problem or was insincere about representing them. After my stint was up I got hired as a part-timer by WLS which has continued to this very day.

When I say Vrdolyak is “our crook,” I don’t excuse him or anything he did including the things I know and will never know. The moth and flame is the only answer I can find for someone that resourceful risking his career. I happened to have been in his office the day before he was indicted—trying to interest him in writing a column for “the Observer.” He seemed moderately interested. The next day when the news came out I called him and wished him well. “Oh, it’ll come out all right,” he said. Actually it did: I don’t know if Eddie knew it would all along or if he was just lucky. I think the latter given his remark, “God is great!” after the sentence was read.

By walking…and infuriating the media… Eddie cheered up a lot of us who have no illusions about his lack of sanctity but have always figured the media and liberaldom inevitably win. He added to his reputation as a survivor…getting a $50,000 fine which for him is chump change…weekly meetings with a probation officer…and 500 hours of “community service.” Also permanently losing his lawyer’s license. The lawyer’s license thing isn’t all that important since Eddie’s propensity at deal-making can’t be found in Blackstone’s “Commentaries.”

To tell the truth, I think Eddie was guilty enough to draw a year’s jail time but certainly not the 41 months Patrick Fitzgerald demanded. But he has foiled the almost perfect record Fitzgerald has. I thought for a time Scooter Libby would give Fitz the finger by getting off—but no (and I still think his conviction was unwarranted) it so happens our own Chicago crook did! Huzza! Fitzgerald is the greatest thing that happened to law enforcement since Melvin Purvis.. but like everyone else he needs a little humbling and who better than by our own version of Nathan Detroit? Eddie humbled him and Fitz is still grousing. That’s fine…but Eddie should have gotten some time. But by not getting any he has embellished his reputation as Fast Eddie, Our…the white neighborhood guys’ variety… crook.

Why Rahm Blasted Limbaugh…and--.

As one who knew Rahm Emanuel from the old days when…after Bruce DuMont’s WBEZ radio stint on Thursday nights…he was very happy to grab dinner on my Quaker expense accout…I think I know why he—as Obama’s chief of staff—has been sailing into Rush Limbaugh.

I’ve criticized Limbaugh myself on occasion…but only because I think he’s too rhetorically perfectionist as a conservative thinker…as someone who has never had to make compromises to get legislation passed. Beyond that, I think Limbaugh is the world’s greatest asset to the conservative movement. And now when I listened to him I think that somehow he has picked up a good deal of practical gamesmanship that only comes to a legislator or lobbyist—so my original critique is outdated. Secondly I’ve never thought his put-on as being endowed by talent from God was all that smart: kind of inventing a hubris his enemies could glom onto. But these are minor points. The fact that 20 million people listen to Limbaugh is an enormously indisputably invaluable resource for conservatism…something I have always felt.

\

The Rahm I know understands this very well. He knows more than he would ever admit the imperishability of Limbaugh’s value in political debate. He has been zinging him for one reason only: hoping his criticism would cause Rush to fly into a rage and blurt out something ala Don Imus that would cause him disaster. Those old enough to remember can recall another vast personality…although not a radio commentator…a national figure who molded opinions on radio and television. His name: Arthur Godfrey. When he fired singer Julius LaRosa on the air without LaRosa knowing it was going to happen, Godfrey instantly ruined himself, portraying himself as unutterably cruel, a tyrant. The national audience turned against him and his time was over.

Emanuel took Limbaugh’s statement that he hopes Obama will fail…used it out of context (Rush always said he hoped for failure because of Obama’s leftwing programs)…on a gamble that Rush’s thin skin would lead him into making an excessive statement ala Imus, ala Godfrey…which would paralyze him and be an entrée to imposition of the misnamed Fairness Doctrine.

Knowing Emanuel well, I can appreciate that as a stratagem it was at least worth a gamble. Rush avoided the pitfall. But all the same, I think Rush should avoid answering twits like Emanuel, thus saving himself from the possibility of human error which can afflict us all. For losing Rush Limbaugh through a wily stratagem such as Emanuel’s would truly be a disaster for conservatism.

…Why Michael Steele, of All People, Should Not Have.

If anyone should know the value of a nuclear arsenal that Rush Limbaugh is in the fight against liberaldom, it should be Michael Steele, the newly elected Republican National Chairman. Steele’s foray into calling Limbaugh an “entertainer” and “sometimes pure ugly” as a commentator is almost…almost…unforgivable. It betrays elitist country-club thinking and contradicts all that Steele purportedly should stand for.

If Steele thought that by saying this he can squeeze next to the Katie Courics of this world…a kind of limp-eyed faux liberalism…he is in the wrong business. I’m all in favor of Steele getting ripped from stem to stern over those remarks. In fact Steele’s remarks betray a phenomenal ignorance of what he should be about.

I’m far more tolerant of Rahm going after Limbaugh than Steele. As a matter of fact, Steele has given Emanuel a weapon to use against Rush.

For the magnitude of his botch, I think Steele should leave his job as soon as practicable.

He is stuck on stupid.

Personal Aside: Possibly a Good Republican State Ticket Abuilding (Cross My Fingers).

The pathetic but viable resurrection of Roland Burris—or at least the re-emergence of Lazarus from the tomb…ala the p. r. magic of Del Marie Cobb…has given the state GOP new life: if it doesn’t blow it (but don’t count on it).

The mobilization by Ms. Cobb of vocal black ministers and the always reliable Black Caucus of the City Council has frightened that political wind-sock Gov. Quinn so he has rushed to the blacks…including the ever-present basso-profundo-voiced (sing me a chorus of “Old Man River”) Rep. Dannuy Davis…and for all practical purposes has veered away from his view that Burris should resign and we should have a special election. Now Windsock Quinn is pulling back to his original position…I guess it was his original one, he has taken so many different tacks he’s hard to follows…of Burris sticks around and runs for Senate in 2010.

Ms. Cobb has richly earned her consultancy fee. What we have now is a seriously flawed specimen of mediocrity for the U.S. Senate, ripe for the pickings if the GOP can run a good candidate (since Roskam is unavailable I’ll grudgingly listen to entreatments for Mark Kirk)…if Kirk can somehow mollify his North Shore Planned Parenthood rant (most of the GOP base is for un-planned parenthood as am I).

So the ticket is a-building. Kirk for Senate (maybe if he changes to reasonable)…a good pro-life candidate (unnamed as yet for governor) who can capitalize on Quinn’s likely income tax hike and his likely suggestion of a progressive income tax for the future (on top of Obama’s taxes, oops!)…a good pro-life candidate for AG…a good pro-life candidate for secretary of state…I’ll even take Judy Baar Topinka who wants to run for her old treasurer job (she has a following and let her mould away in that registry) …a good pro-life candidate for comptroller…and I’ll take Paul Vallas running for president of the Cook county board (once I try to get him to moderate an instinctive but perhaps not indissoluble stand on social values).

That’s coalition building, my friends. And maybe…who knows…a ticket that can win despite all the tugging and hauling within the Republican family! What do you say?

Flashback: A 1946 Lenten Special with Fr. Emeric Lawrence OSB.

As a Lenten special I give you yet another lecture excerpt from Fr. Emeric Lawrence, OSB, my theology prof back in the dark, dusty ages before Vatican II… the theology current though not often taught with such (justifiable to me) Catholic chauvinism. Here goes…October 8, 1946: Truman is president, the Cold War is hot but the lecture…staid, stately but evocative of full audience participation …is cool.

Fr. Emeric: “All right, take your seats…and that means you, Bede Hall as well as you Mr. Fred Eisenzimmer. Mr. Eisenzimmer are you one of the Eisenzimmers from Cold Spring? You are not: no matter…except that the Eizenzimmers of Cold Spring are brewers of the delicious 3.2% beer, called naturally “Cold Spring Beer” which I know as a devout tee-totaler you have not sampled. When you finally get settled down…there you are…I have a question for Mr. Orville Hesch.

“Mr. Hesch: Why did Jesus Christ make a mystery about his being God? He was God so why didn’t he say so in plain words? You will note as you read the New Testament that he seemed to quite deliberately obscure who He was. The Jews wondered about it—some of them indignantly. We find them in John 10:24 asking `How long wilt thou go on keeping us in suspense? If thou art the Christ, tell us openly!’ Did they not have a point, Mr. Hesch? You say what? You say they did. Good answer.

“Now remain standing, Mr. Hesch: I am not finished with you yet. Did Christ ever give a hint…or even more than that…of His being God? You say yes. Where did He give that, Mr. Hesch? Your reading of the New Testament is key here. You say…you say…EXCELLENT, MR. HESCH! Mr. Hesch has drunk deeply from the New Testament…and I am sure this is all…aside from our pure Lake Sagatagan well water…that he has drunk during the past week [class laughter]. Can you give us a précis…that means a cogent summary…Mr. Hesch? No? Well anyhow you have done well. One more question, Mr. Hesch. Where did he say so? [Hesch answers: at Caesarea].

“Very-very good, Mr. Hesch. Now you may sit down to well-deserved applause. Class!” [Class applause with some muttered groans of jealousy which always occurred when one of their number was singled out for lavish praise.]

“Who Do You Say I Am?”

“Mr. Hesch has named the place and I will set the scene. It WAS at Caesarea Philippi. Christ asks the apostles, `Who do you say I am?’ And Peter responds and says, `Thou are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!’ Jesus answers this declaration: ‘Blessed art thou, Simon, son of Jonah; it is not flesh and blood, it is My Father Who is in Heaven that has revealed this to thee. And I tell thee this in my turn: that thou art Peter and it is upon this rock that I will build My Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.’

So now we come to the great question: These apostles had been close to him for a long time and still He had not revealed Himself until now when Peter draws his conclusion…so why not…Mr. Cornelius Whalen? Why did He not just up and tell them?

“You say He wanted to let them work it out for themselves. EXCELLENT ANSWER! Excellent answer. But why did He want them to work it out for themselves? Why did He not just come out with it? Try again, Mr. Whalen. You don’t know: an honest answer. Mr. Charles Baron. Ah, you have a glimmer of the answer—that they…the apostles…were Jews. So they were Jews: so what? Explain please.

“Excellent, Mr. Baron! You have read the commentary by Msgr. Ronald Knox assigned at the last class. You’re right: All Jews of that day…sinners, reprobates, all… believed in God. So…where are we going with this realization? (You may sit down, Mr. Baron). We are going to this point: all Jews, no matter how sinful, were in AWE OF GOD. So if Christ Our Lord had begun with the announcement like this the way we ex-GIs used to hear official military announcements at mess or on board ship: `NOW HEAR THIS!” [class roaring laughter, especially from the ex-military] what would be the reaction, Mr. Harry Arth?”

“Right you are, Mr. Arth: They would have fallen flat on their faces! Their understanding of the majesty of God…the realization that Christ was God…had to come a little bit at a time. Indeed as you read the New Testament, you see that Christ led them slowly, gradually to the understanding, bringing them to the point where THEY WOULD TELL HIM, as Peter did. What little hints? Things that only God has a right to do: like Him conferring forgiveness for sin…adding to the law that God handed down on Sinai…moving on and on to deeper stuff: `I and the Father are One.’…then `No one knows the Son but the Father but no one knows the Father but the Son.’

“He had to let it sink in, just as Mr. William Augustine who reads his lesson from the New Testament every night as is required [dubious laughter], eventually enjoys the fact that it is sinking in. Mr. Augustine: You know from your reading that Peter was not alone in making this declaration—that Nathaniel did in John 1:49. What was the nature of Nathaniel’s declaration to Christ, Mr. Augustine?

Nathaniel’s Declaration.

“It was…what? No, not exactly a duplicate of Peter’s, Mr. William Augustine. Tonight go back and read John 1:49 again. And read Msgr. Knox again. Nathaniel said: `Thou, Master, art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel.’ What, Mr. Augustine? Mr. Augustine wishes to protest my summary statement that Nathaniel’s statement was NOT identical to Peter’s. And yet I still maintain it was NOT. How many agree with Mr. Augustine? Hands! I see none but Mr. Augustine’s! How many agree with me? I see many. I suppose this is the wily way students think they shall please the professor in such a way that the word `pandering’ comes to mind [class rueful laughter]…but Mr. Augustine has a very good point by challenging my declaration, and I shall remember him for it…shall long remember him for it.

“The answer is…anyone? No one has the answer yet they agree with me: aha, pragmatic, aren’t you? Duplicitous more likely! [Class murmurs guilty laughter]. Never mind, I did this myself when I was confronted by my professor with the same problem, good old Fr. Ernest whom you call, behind his back, “Ernie” [class laughter]. As I did when I was a student [extended class laughter]. You think Ernie…er, Father Ernest [continued laughter]…does not know you call him “Ernie”? He does but you know, don’t you, that you are not to call him fondly even `Father Ernie’ in his presence. Fr. Abbot does not call him `Ernie’ in or out of his presence. I shudder to think of what would happen to you or any one of us if any anyone absent-mindedly called him that. Well, but I digress. Now the question: What happened before Nathaniel made his declaration which is called his confession?

Nathaniel’s Confession and Peter’s.

“Again: What happened before Nathaniel made his confession? Mr. Bede Hall who at last has stopped doodling [laughter]. Mr. Hall, stand up if you can disengage yourself from your cartooning—what is the answer: what happened before Nathaniel made his confession to Christ? And Mr. Hall is correct! Christ had made that stunning revelation that He had seen Nathaniel under a fig tree…which Nathaniel thought only he was aware of. So Nathaniel’s confession is…what? His confession is of HUMAN REASON, therefore he reasoned Christ was more than man. Also the apostles moved slowly to that conclusion when they saw Him calming the storm with one word—and they said to each other: `Who is this who is obeyed even by the winds and the sea?” [Mark 4-40].

“But of the two…Nathaniel and Peter…whose testimony was more profound? Mr. James Ebert. Which was more meaningful? You say Peter’s! Yes, it was. Peter’s testimony is a true act of faith, made under the effect of grace of God witness Christ’s statement in recognition of this: “It is not flesh and blood but My Father Who is in heaven that has revealed this to thee.”

“Let me say there is a dramatic difference between how Catholics view the apostles and how non-Catholics do. In Catholic belief, the unique mark is that you can a real function for the Apostles—not as mere bystanders. You can see the function of their working it out so they come to the realization. That is because the apostles (excepting Judas, of course) become the hierarchy of Christ’s Church and we are truly an hierarchal Church. In non-Catholic belief we find the apostles are bit players for the most part, making of themselves fools for the Master. Very much like that of Nigel Bruce to Basil Rathbone. Who are these men, Nigel Bruce and Basil Rathbone, Mr. John Oberst?

“ Yes, you know your films well . Rathbone plays Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce the always baffled, bumbling Dr. Watson. In non-Catholic interpretation where the role of the apostles as members of the divinely structure hierarchal Church is ignored, the apostles seem always to be playing the Dr. Watson role. Not in the Catholic version where the Lord’s statement `You have not chosen me; I have chosen you’ comes to mind.

“Had they known Christ was God from the outset, they would have been thrown into fear—possibly panic. Fear and panic bars any further resolution. It would have barred any movement toward intimacy. And what is the moral for us? In our approach to God we are aided greatly in seeing Him in our nature whereby the mind embarks on a continuous study of Him. As with enduring friendships, we begin timidly, then get to know, then get to love…in a manly way…our deepest friends. And so the experience of Christ for the apostles started with their own personal experience…and from there it grew into intimacy. Which is how we…as we approach perfection—approach it, not completely attain it—grow slowly into intimacy with Our Lord because the evangelists allow it by not encouraging their own personalities to enter.

“In summary, the poet Francis Thompson has written that no pagan ever saw a tree as did Wordsworth…by which I say that no pagan ever saw the same infinity, the same eternity, the same immensity as Catholics true to their faith as I will strive that you become…Catholics who little by little have become closer, ever closer to God and thus to men—and to ourselves. That is called sanctity, gentlemen. And you will launch a beginning to it or I will answer for it…for it is my task to make this a reality.”