Liberal insecurity

Of course, today’s “liberal” professor will agree to neither of those suggestions. He uses affirmative action to promote his self-esteem not to promote “a diversity of perspectives.” And he uses the word “diversity” only to hide his deep-seated intellectual insecurity.

Politicians

All Senators and Congressmen should have 2 terms, one in Washington and one in prison.

Bishop Robert Vasa

"I answer to the Holy See, I don't answer to the USCCB."

Stimulus

The Social Security Administration’s inspector general reports that the federal government sent stimulus checks totaling $22.3 million—intended to help increase consumer spending—to more than 17,000 prison inmates and almost 72,000 dead people.

Widowhood

Mindful of this, I instructed my healthy, active spouse that he is not to depart the planet ahead of me.

[Women are wonderfully illogical]

Ideology

Ideology tends to create Airport Terminal societies.

Bureaucracy

When the head of the outfit is confronted by a scandal that can no longer be ignored, and the public has grown more outraged than usual, protocol demands that the top exec submit ... somebody else's resignation.

The Church in the U.S.

From 1970 to 2000, our bishops have presided over the largest melt-down of the Church since the Protestant revolt.

The times

“Bad times, hard times — this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times. Such as we are, such are the times.”
Augustine

The Old Order Changeth

In response to this topsy-turvy world, the traditional media, tenured professors, well-paid public employees, rigid ethnic and racial lobbies, unions, organized retirees, open-borders advocates and entrenched politicians all are understandably claiming that we live in an uncivil age.

European Union and Germany

The European Union has been reduced to finger-pointing and standing in line to beg Germany for cash.

Serbs

as Madeleine Albright herself said in 1999: “The Serbs need some bombing and that’s what they’re going to get.”]

Portland OR

Mr. Armisen’s character describes Portland as a place “where young people go to retire.” Sure enough, economists have shown that the city in recent years has drawn a disproportionate amount of young people, and that many of them end up being underemployed.

Democracy

One cadet who asked an officer why it was not possible to discuss grievances openly was told: "We are here to defend democracy, not practise it."

Redevelopment

How can you tell if redevelopment funds bankrolled a building? It's new, big and mostly empty.

Algore

The wisdom of Al “Nature Watch” Gore:
“A zebra does not change its spots.”

Eternity

As the economist Herbert Stein noted, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

Color

The college resident assistant who set up dorm recycling bins for "white" and "colored" paper. A wag crossed out the latter and wrote in "paper of color."

Abraham's betrayal

In the Book of Genesis we are taught how God chose Abram (later Abraham) and called him to set forth to a new land as the Patriarch of chosen people, (Gen 12). In great faith Abram set out and God led him to Canaan where he eventually settled in Bethel (a name which means “House of God”) (Gen 12:8). But there was a famine in the land and, instead of staying and trusting God, he left Bethel and went to Egypt (Gen 12:10), though God had said no such thing. Now Egypt is a symbol of the world and is distinct from Bethel which is a symbol of the “House of God.” And while in Egypt Abram prospered, but sinned mightily by prostituting his wife Sarai, placing her in Pharaoh’s harem so as to secure his own safety and prosperity (Gen 12:11-15).

Now Abram is chosen by God, he is God’s man and God gave him an inheritance. But Abram forsook his glory from heaven and preferred worldly glories and comforts. God would have to shame Abram back to his senses. The biblical text says:

But the LORD inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” (Gen 12:17-19)

So it took Pharaoh to compel Abram to leave Egypt (the world) and return to Bethel (House of God). Frankly it is a rather embarrassing moment in salvation history.

Catholic or not

About seven years ago a Catholic Charities Agency California was informed by a California judge that they would have to provide contraceptives in their medical benefits plan for employees. He refused to accept a claim of religious exemption and ruled that there was nothing “Catholic” about this agency of Catholic Charities since they took primarily government money and gave it to the poor. Further, none of their literature mentioned Jesus Christ or sought to promote the Catholic Faith. Hence, they were secular, not Catholic, and thus had no claim to religious exemptions. Here too, I cannot say if the Judge was fair since I have no direct knowledge of Catholic Charities in the particular diocese in question.

Birds of a feather

1991, Reverend Jesse Jackson, who counseled former President Bill Clinton about his dalliances with Monica Lewinsky, revealed an extramarital affair that resulted in the birth of a daughter

Love and hate

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."

--- Elie Wiesel

Heretics

The heretics never attack orthodoxy; the heretics only avenge orthodoxy on each other. [GKC]

Equal but not fair

For hard-core Labourites, in whose Utopia everyone is equal but nothing is fair,

Prosperity

In C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, the senior devil Screwtape writes to the junior devil Wormwood, ‘Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels he is “finally finding his place in it,” while really it is finding its place in him.’

Main stream papers

The Ministry of Propaganda no longer has any standing in any community other than its own progressive/socialist/marxist base

Car races: Russia vs. U.S.

During the Cold War, supposedly there was a race between an American made automobile and a Russian made vehicle. The American car won. The Russian newspaper Pravda's headlines read: "In Car Race, Russian Race Car Comes in Second -- American Finishes Next To Last."

Manhattan College

The school’s own Trustees Report noted that by the 1960s, the board had successfully “eliminated any structures of control by authorities of the Church or the Institute [of the Brothers].”

Lies of the NYTimes

"'A girl had written a poem about an abortion. It was very emotional and she was teary eyed and he said something about strapping a bomb to the fetus and making a baby bomber,' Ali said."

Here's the Times' version: "After another student read a poem about getting an abortion, Mr. Loughner compared the young woman to a 'terrorist for killing the baby.'"

Liberals

One friend says Loughner never listened to talk radio or watched the TV news. Throw in "never read books" and you have the dictionary definition of a liberal. Being completely uninformed is precisely how most liberals stay liberal.

Mayor Daley II

("They have vilified me, they have crucified me; yes, they have even criticized me!")

Medicine in England

Last November I paid just over half the Boots' price at Tesco at about £7 or £7.50 (can't remember exactly) AND got an appointment to have the jab done within 24 hours. That's what I call good service at a good price. My GP's surgery put me on a waiting list of several weeks, although I belong to a priority group on 2 counts, i) my profession, ii) living with a father of 94.

Grief

The priest added that Christina's parents – Roxanne and John – are reeling from grief.

Being Jewish

Giffords joined a temple and began identifying with the paternal side of her ethnicity. The interesting thing, though, is that her Jewish paternal-line grandfather, Akiba Hornstein, changed the family surname to "Giffords" in order to hide their Jewish identity.

In a rut

"After making every possible effort to get out of our rut and failing, we must call it home and remodel it."

--- Rabbi Shraga Silverstein

Community colleges

(And with over 1100 community colleges across the country housing nearly half of the country’s undergraduates,

Manhattan College

The union submitted evidence from many documents suggesting that Manhattan was in fact a secular institution with religious roots.

"Catholic" colleges

Manhattan College is like many other Catholic institutions (and some colleges affiliated with other religious groups) in that it admits many non-Catholic students, employs many non-Catholic professors and boasts of its independence, academic freedom, and diversity.
And now the NLRB agrees that it is not religious enough not to come under the NLRB jurisdiction.

Friends & enemies

“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy,” quipped Henry Kissinger in 1968, “but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

The happy-tudes

Makers of the Jerusalem translation of the Bible.

Apathy

What's the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

Liberals etc.

"if you want to make a conservative mad, lie to them, and if you want to make a liberal angry, tell them the truth."

Academe

Rowan University has agreed to pay Donald Farish, who had announced plans to leave when his contract expires in June 2012, $600,000 to leave a year early, The Press of Atlantic City reported. Paul Tyahla, executive director of the Common Sense Institute of New Jersey, criticized the buyout. "It’s become an unfortunate standard to compensate presidents on the way out.... Boards have become convinced that you don’t want a lame duck president for the last year, and so presidents should instead be paid for not being there," he said.

Anglican anti-semiticism

They should be singling out the Anglican church and the revival of ancient theological Jew-hatred being spread within the Anglican world by the Palestinian Christians of the Sabeel centre.

English & American solemnity

The American solemnity, it is enough to say, is more primitive, more academic, more like that of the German professor. But it is not the fault of Mr. More or Mr. Babbitt that the culture of ideas has only been able to survive in America in the unfavourable atmosphere of the university.

George Whibley

In a world which is chiefly occupied with the task of keeping up to date with itself... [TSEliot]

George Wyndham

There may be a good deal to be said for Romanticism in life, there is no place for it in letters. Not that we need conclude that a man of George Wyndham's antecedents and traditions must inevitably be a Romanticist writer. But this is the case when such a man plants himself firmly in his awareness of caste, when he says "The gentry must not abdicate." In politics this may be an admirable formula. It will not do in literature. The Arts insist that a man shall dispose of all that he has, even of his family tree, and follow art alone. For they require that a man be not a member of a family or of a caste or of a party or of a coterie, but simply and solely himself. A man like Wyndham brings several virtues into literature. But there is only one man better and more uncommon than the patrician, and that is the Individual. [TSEliot]

Politicians

I think Congressmen should wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers so we could identify their corporate sponsors.

Bishops, again

Hilary found himself virtually alone in defending Jesus’ deity before a hostile crowd of bishops in the southern French region of Gaul.

Jerry Brown

A perennial government employee, Jerry Brown is back in Sacramento,

Eden and Suez

If Sir Anthony Eden is sincere in what he is saying, and he may be, he may be, then if he is sincere in what he is saying then he is too stupid to be a prime minister'.
Bevan

Dulce et decorum est

As the troops used to say, “If the country is good enough to live in, it’s good enough to fight for.”

Man proposes

Mac Bryant is familiar firsthand with the adage: Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.

Catholic chaplains and Kerry catholics

One of the three Catholic chaplains who won the Medal of Honor, Fr. Robert Capadanno, a Navy chaplain, was killed giving Last Rites and aid and comfort to wounded Marines and their Navy Corpsmen while under fire, has, I understand, had his cause for Sainthood opened by the Vatican. He is now referred to as Servant of God. When I see the fawning nonsense lavished on the "catholic" John Kerry for his "service" in Vietnam by "Kennedy catholics..."

Friends and enemies

"Better a good enemy than a bad friend."

Tony Judt

Of kibbutz life, he writes:

[C]ollective self-government... does not make you either more sophisticated or more tolerant of others. Indeed, to the extent that it contributes to an extraordinary smugness of self-regard, it actually reinforces the worst kind of ethnic solipsism.

Inconvenience

But Americans are increasingly opposed to any sort of inconvenience.

Catholic education

The present function of Catholic higher ed is to create upwardly mobile Catholics.

Francis Crick

Some years ago, I happened to mention to a saintly Irish priest (his one small vanity was to think he looked like the actor Robert Mitchum) that the scientist Francis Crick – of Crick & Watson, the well-known firm of DNA supplies – had just died. “He didn’t believe in God,” I added. “He does now,” replied my Irish friend.

Journalists

There is no other sort of journalist. They are all lazy liberal arts graduates who would far rather crawl over broken glass than demean themselves with a few moments research into facts.

Saddam

[Britain, the U.S., Saudi] allowed him to use poison gas against Iran and winked at his slaughter of 180,000 Kurdish civilians. If he was a monster they created him.

Israeli generals

The old Israeli saying: "He was so stupid that even the other generals noticed."

Creed and Commandments

As Abp. Fulton Sheen said, "Souls generally do not fall away from Christ because of the Creed; they first have difficulty with the Commandments."

Pain and suffering

"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional."

Public pensions

The political class, which has made an art form of pension collection.

College

“I’m a repentant college graduate,” she said. “If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t go to college and would just start working.”

Certification

“I have every possible certificate,” Ms. Esposito said dryly. “I have everything except a death certificate.”

Al Gore

Al Gore once famously said: “it’s hard for a zebra to change its spots.”