02.05.10
Who is Silvia? what is she,
That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she…
(William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act IV, Sc. 2)
“Sylvia” is also one of the funniest, wisest, sharpest, and best comic strips in the USA today. It is about to be dropped from the Chicago Tribune on the slow, painful trek towards oblivion of a once fine daily newspaper. Created by Chicago artist and creative genius, Nicole Hollander, Sylvia has brightened my morning for years. Fortunately, those who grieve her departure from the Tribune to make room for a few more mindless, badly drawn, and un-funny strips will be able to find her on-line through various services. Good hunting.
Then to Silvia let us sing,
That Silvia is excelling;
She excels each mortal thing
Upon the dull earth dwelling:
To her let us garlands bring.
01.25.10
Several weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court decided to overturn a century’s worth of precedents and unleash the big spenders of commerce, industry, and giant trade unions on Washington (legally), Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute at Columbia University wrote a thoughtful article on public policy for Scientific American. It may seem quaint and out-of-date after the ruling, but perhaps that is all the more reason to read it. It was called “Fixing the Broken Policy Process,” and appeared in the February 2010 issue.
Here’s the link to the where you can find an extended version of the article:
www.ScientificAmerican.com/feb2010
Come to think of it, this might be a good time to reconsider the old Republican enthusiasm for term limits. Remember term limits?
01.22.10
On Thursday, by a significantly split 5-4 decision, The United States Supreme Court overturned more than a century of campaign finance reform enacted to preserve the independence of the electoral process (and the sanctity of the one-man, one-vote rule) from the domination of financial empires such as those that produced the infamous Teapot Dome Scandal and other nineteenth-century excesses. Oil has always been a handy lubricant for all sorts of things.
Anthony Kennedy’s vote is simply inexplicable. But Justices Scalia and Alito, who tout themselves as originalists, should certainly be alert to the obvious fact that First Amendment “freedom of speech” pertains to speech, not financial contributions from giant corporations, and was devised to protect the rights of citizens, not industries and unions that did not even exist when the Bill of Rights was drawn up. I wonder what Peter Zenger and Tom Paine would say? Teddy Roosevelt and other reformers inaugurated regulations against the buying and selling of votes in Congress to prevent the kind of wholesaling of democracy that our esteemed Republican-appointed justices have now reinstituted. Is there no shame? (Consider that a rhetorical question.)
It must be great relief to the CEOs of phenomenally rich and powerful multinational companies such as Bechtel, Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, and Pfizer that they can now more openly suborn members of Congress, not to say presidential candidates, rather than just dealing under the table as they have done for a good many years. Or will they even need to? It’s perhaps even more likely that the hopeful pols will come looking for them.
01.15.10
As the death toll of Christian missionaries, many of them evangelicals, as well as the native Christians of Haiti continues to rise, the remarks of televangelist and multi-millionaire Pat Robertson are being met with widespread repugnance. Other evangelicals, let it be said, have been quick to respond with assistance, contributions, and prayers.
Robertson seems to think that the people of Haiti made some kind of collective pact with Satan 200 years ago for which, at least by implication, Jehovah has cursed them far beyond the seven generations sanctioned by the Bible. Even the Chicago Tribune’s John Kass, in whose veins the milk of human kindness does not usually bubble merrily, found Robertson’s verdict well over the top. Like Sweeney Todd, the famous preacher seems to worship a dark and vengeful god, one that delights in visiting ancient wrath on the poor and defenseless people of New Orleans, the Indian Ocean, and unwary astronauts. The wealthy evangelist does not seem to sense the irony in declaring that the poorest of the poor are made to bear the weight of the sins of the rich.
The righteous TV mogul ended his tirade by advising the people of Haiti to turn to God. He might well consider practicing what he preaches.
12.25.09
Reports that a first-century burial shroud dug up in Israel differs from the Shroud of Turin has Shroud-skeptics all a-twitter. They don’t match. Funny. The tee-shirts I got from Sears and Penny’s don’t match up either. I guess they didn’t have a Wal-Mart in Nazareth in gospel times.
And that reminded me of the reconstruction a few years ago of the head of a first-century Palestinian on the remains of a skull dug up over there which led “observers” to declare that it must be what Jesus looked like. Funny. A forensic scientist reconstructed a head from a skull found in the woods near home and it doesn’t look at all like me. I thought we all looked alike, the way people did in Jesus’ time. I don’t look like Tiger Woods, either, even though we have the same last name. Strange world.
I wonder if the Republican Congressmen trying to get home to the Midwest for the holidays might have come to believe in climate change. Of course, they should be used to snow-jobs by now given their desperate tactics to derail the Health Reform bills at any cost. Especially to the desperately poor and middle class folks who will mainly benefit.
Four Irish bishops have now resigned in the wake of the devastating report on cover-ups in the Archdiocesan sex-abuse cases in Dublin. Everyone feels better now. Except possibly the hundreds of victims and their families.
The world was shocked when some crazy lady knocked Pope Benedict down as he was processing into Mass at the Vatican on Christmas Eve. As I read history, it seems evident that almost all the popes for the first three hundred years died a martyr’s death, and a number did afterwards, usually at the hands of politicians. It’s a job risk. We can always elect a new pope. We can’t get a new Church.
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happier, Holier New Year!
12.22.09
The jury is coming in on the UN Conference on Climate Change recently concluded in Copenhagen – “jury” in this instance being critical observers from around the world who warn of the worsening worldwide situation especially for poor and “developing” nations. The verdict is mixed – no one is calling the “accord” an unqualified success. Some are calling it a disaster, others a shameful capitulation to the pressure from the developed nations to avoid effective but costly cuts in carbon emissions that are virtually universally agreed to be driving climate change. (Yes, Virginia, “the science is settled.”) If there seems to be a general sense of what was or was not accomplished by a conference that was to take the world “beyond Kyoto” it is disappointment.
China, it would appear, has been identified or designated the villain of the piece, for vetoing the imposition of legally binding cuts in carbon emissions. But China is not alone in resisting the strenuous measures that are now necessary to prevent further environmental deterioration on a global scale. The rich and powerful nations of the world all seem loathe to restrict industrial production effectively in view of inevitable long-term environmental harm given the short-term demands of a global economy in tatters. China is engaged in particularly harrowing effort to achieve social and economic progress while simultaneously forestalling massive environmental deterioration. With a population larger than that of the United States and Europe combined, that is no small challenge. Hindsight may well reveal that it was also not a reasonable excuse for scuttling Copenhagen.
President Obama’s timely but disappointing appearance at the conference only underscored the consequences of US indebtedness to China, our major trade partner whose monetary investments alone are a central pillar supporting a still-fragile American economy. Despite his strenuous efforts to hammer out an acceptable deal, not even Barack Obama is likely to bite the hand that feeds us.
Another UN climate change summit is scheduled for next year in Mexico. It is possible, if now unlikely, that it will be able to enact a balanced, legally-binding accord which will commit developed nations to greenhouse gas reductions of at least 40% by 2020 – based on 1990, not 2009 levels. But without such an accord, and without greatly increased funding to assist poor and emerging countries develop green technologies and protect themselves from the worst impacts of climate change, the future health of the world – environmentally and economically – will be dire indeed.
As with the US health reform bill that is creeping like a whipped dog between the House and Senate, politics is the art of compromise. But compromise is also the bane as well as the art of politics. The freakish weather plaguing Europe and the eastern seaboard of the United States in mid-December may serve as a timely warning. The window of opportunity to achieve needed reform (both in environmental policies and health care) is inexorably closing.
12.14.09
The weekend news media continued to dwell to my mind somewhat obsessively on the serial adulteries of Tiger Woods, arguably the world’s greatest golfer and now a celebrated sinner along with a bevy of politicians, government officials, and men of the cloth
It is not clear how long the Scarlet A will be emblazoned on the doublets of Messrs Woods, Sanford, Spitzer, et al. Given the recovery of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and other sports figures, and the political rallies of Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Silvio Berlusconi, Rudi Giuliani, and other outed adulterers, we might expect a short stay in the electronic pillory. Woods, after all, was a billion-dollar property. His share alone from the year’s prize winnings is said to be around $275 million, not to mention his annual take from endorsements. Not bad. The weeping and gnashing of corporate teeth over his “fall from grace,” as one commentator put it, apparently has less to do with family values than the prospect of diminishing his allure to consumers who might be put off from purchasing the hundreds of products hawked under the Tiger’s toothy smile.
The case of Governor Mark Sanford is somewhat different. It lacks glitz. Americans will tolerate some marital malfeasance among public servants and, in the case of Jimmy Swaggert, Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, Bishop Eamon Casey (if you’re Irish enough to remember), and as far back as Aimee Semple McPherson, the clergy – so long as they are sufficiently glamorous. But when adultery becomes a political or financial liability, the path to the dust-bin of history can be short and not very sweet. Even so recovery and forgiveness seem to emerge after the tsunamis of scandalized media voyeurism have calmed. (Not so for clerical child-molesters, however, for whom forgiveness seems beyond reach even when repentance is at least as sincere as that of holy adulterers. Perhaps it’s because many also suffer from a recognized personality disorder. Sin is easier to forgive than illness.)
In the meantime, there’s the matter of the Copenhagen Conference, during which the fate of the planet is being hotly debated, to coin a phrase, not to mention the unpleasantness in Afghanistan, both of which received about half the “news space” devoted to the familial woes of the Tiger. And to be fair, the Health Care Reform bills wandering back and forth from House to Senate merited a few moments of commentary.
That being said, it’s fascinating to see members of the Republican Party carping and whining over the alleged trillion-dollar cost of the attempt to stave off disaster in the health-care “business,” or even sweating bullets over the projected costs of curbing greenhouse gas emissions before the climate changes inexorably for the worse. When their own party was in power, and the trillion-dollar cost of the most needless and wasteful war in modern history was managed by the largest-scale borrowing in history, they did not seem to mind nearly as much. Nor did they much complain when newly elected President Bush quickly turned a $237 billion budget surplus into the biggest deficit in history. That was “then,” of course. Still, I wonder what is it about providing health care for the neediest of America’s citizens that they find so frightening?
11.19.09
That’s “tear” as in “rend,” as in “rending garments.” Or in this instance, episcopal robes. I was alerted late last night to the closed session called for the U.S. bishops meeting in Baltimore to work out a plan to reassert control over the nation’s Catholic colleges and universities in the wake, so to speak, of some bishops’ fury over Notre Dame’s invitation to the President of the United States and now Nobel Peace Laureate, to speak on campus last May.
Mr. Obama was the sixth sitting president to speak at a Notre Dame commencement ceremony and the ninth to receive an honorary degree. Before him, George W. Bush spoke and received an honorary doctor of laws degree in the fateful year 2001. He was the seventh such president to be so honored and the fifth to be the commencement speaker. Other presidents to be honored included Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, Dwight Eisenhower in 1960, John F. Kennedy in 1961, Gerald Ford in 1975, Jimmy Carter in 1977, Ronald Reagan in 1981, and George H. W. Bush in 1992. Later that year Bill Clinton also spoke at Notre Dame during the presidential campaign.
Of recent presidents, only Harry Truman and Richard M. Nixon did not make the trip to South Bend. And, so far as I know, the U.S. bishops were not upset until the current president followed hallowed tradition. It makes one wonder if the NCCB really has become the chaplain corps of the Republican party as several observers have suggested.
Other notable and sometimes controversial commencement speakers at Notre Dame have included Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, Dr. William Mayo, J. Edgar Hoover, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Henry Cabot Lodge, Eugene McCarthy, Canadian Prime Ministers Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, former Yale University President Kingman Brewster, Vernon Jordan, the president of El Salvador, Jose Napoleon Duarte, Andrew Young, Elizabeth Dole, the Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Bill Cosby, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, William F. Buckley, Jr., Tom Brokaw, “mildly pro-choice” Condoleezza Rice, and Mark Shields. A few bishops even spoke now and then, mainly in the late nineteenth century.
It is not recorded how many honorees were vetted by the NCCB. But I noticed that shortly before the bishops gathered for their annual meeting, the diocese of Wilmington, MD, went into bankruptcy because of clerical abuse of children, the seventh to do so. That was after the bishops acceded to a secret Vatican investigation of women’s religious communities in the U.S. We live in interesting times.
11.15.09
After a long pause, owing largely to returning from a productive sabbatical to a full schedule, I’m happy to be able to show off the new look of the blog space. It was designed by Steven Plane. I hope to have more regular contributions posted again soon. If Roland Emmerich is right, there’s only a little over 3 years left before it’s all moot anyway. 2012 is right around the corner. At least it is in my neighborhood. On the other hand, it’s already The Day after Tomorrow, and we’re still here. I suspect we will be after Dec. 21, 2012, as well.
Richard
08.20.09
Christian citizens of the United States will probably respond with as much dismay as did the official White House spokespersons and, later, President Obama to the release of Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali Al Megrahi on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Secretary of Justice, Mr. Kenny MacAskill. Most of the 270 victims killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December, 1988, were themselves citizens of the US.
US citizens are particularly keen on retributive justice, also known as revenge. Not surprisingly, the US is the only western industrial democracy that continues to administer the death penalty. Evangelical Christians largely support it. Despite opposition to the death penalty by recent popes and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, it appears that a majority of US Catholics also support it. No wonder, then, that God-fearing, righteously indignant, and indeed grieving people would at least want to see Mr. Al Megrahi spend his few remaining days on earth locked in a Scottish prison cell.
But on Thursday afternoon as I listened to the live press conference and later interviews with Mr. MacAskill, I was impressed by the repetition of two words that he employed to explain his action which, be it noted, was not a pardon – the conviction stands, despite grounds for an appeal which Mr. Al Megrahi’s lawyers withdrew early this week, apparently in order to facilitate his release.
MacAskill spoke of compassion and mercy, values which the Scottish people hold dear, as well they might, considering their long, difficult struggle for freedom. Others have spoken of compassion differently — some say that because Al Megrahi showed no compassion to his victims, he deserves none. Nor mercy.
But is this the proper measure of compassion and mercy?
As MacAskill spoke, I could not help but recall the words of Jesus –
You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you.
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. [Matthew 5:38-45]
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. [Luke 6:27-29]
Could Mr. Al Megrahi be innocent, as he — and others — claim? He would not be the first person wrongly convicted as a terrorist in a ghastly bombing — it took 15 years to clear the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six of the IRA bombings in England in 1974. But even if Mr. Al Megrahi is in fact guilty, does that disqualify him from compassion and mercy? If it does, then who of us dares ask for God’s forgiveness, “as we forgive those who sin against us”?
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