Good-Bye!

Like many, I hoped McCain would win, but intellectually knew he would lose. We were asking America to do one recently uncharacteristic thing in this election: choose age, experience, self-sacrifice, and competence over perpetual adolescence, indulgence, inexperience, and energy.

We were asking Baby Boomers – let me emphasize BABY here – and their younger minions to hand power backward to an older generation, and specifically to a member of that generation who represented individualism and self-sacrifice, two things not found – as a general statement – among those under 60.

And so America has chosen to become France West: choosing spoon-feeding and the envy of the nursery school over feeding yourself and being satisfied with what you earn on your own, rather than worrying about what somebody else happens to have.

No doubt you are wondering about the title here: The Age Of Ausonius.

Ausonius lived throughout most of the 300′s A.D. and can be considered a kind of Renaissance man 1200 years before the Renaissance: he founded schools, was a renowned intellectual, wrote some famous poetry, was a general and succesfully defeated a Germanic invasion, became involved in Imperial politics, and was also the private tutor for the heir to the Roman Empire, Gratian.

The Age of Ausonius was an age of decay, when the Roman Empire failed to find solutions to its problems outside of the purest expediency (bribery of enemies, raising taxes to confiscatory levels, allowing Germanic tribes into the empire as “immigrants” when they were actually invaders).

Ausonius lived to see his student Gratian assassinated, and lived to see the empire eat itself, with the eastern co-emperor willing to bribe Germanic barbarians and treat them as erstwhile “allies” to stop hassling the east and attack the west.

Ausonius died in 395A.D., and did not live to see the Romans negotiate with and bribe Alaric and the Goths several times to avoid a sack of the city: eventually the bribery simply encouraged the Goths to return again, and in 410 A.D. Alaric and the Goths entered Rome and sacked it.

Does any of this sound familiar? Ironic “immigration,” bribing enemies with “foreign aid,” pretending that your enemies are “allies” and hoping that they will just go away if you negotiate and bribe them enough?

After Gratian died, Ausonius left Rome and stayed on his estates in France, writing nature poetry. Nothing in his poems betrays the chaos and decay around him! Was his poetry an escape? Or did he simply not see, or not want to admit, what was happening around him?

We do not know.

William F. Buckley about 40 years ago asked in an essay: if you lived in a declining age, would you be able to know it? Or would you – perhaps – accept everything around you as normal, and not see it as part of a long-term trend downward?

Future historians might trace the decline of America to the rise of the self-indulgent “bread and circuses” generations born after World War II, the generations who refused to sacrifice for a decisive win in Vietnam, who demanded ever more “freedom” from morals while shackling themselves to drugs and immorality, the generations who refused to continue the epic of space exploration (the first astronauts were part of the WW II generation) in favor of an easier, cozy “save the planet” and “help the poor” mentality.

The Reagan/Bush I years – the last gasp of the WWII generation – could not stop the coming wave.

Semiotics is a branch of social studies which looks at the “signals” a society sends out and then tries to determine what these signals might mean.

I look at the failure of our society to stand united behind the effort in Iraq for even 18 months!

I look at Ground Zero in NYC – still empty after 7 years!!! – and contrast that with the construction of the Empire State Building in that same city – done in 13 months!!! – DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION!

I look at our failure to build a space station on our own, to have a moon base, to have a manned Mars expedition, nearly 40 years after the WWII generation took us to the moon.

And now I look at the monstrosity of a President Obama, a modern day cultural Alaric, a barbarian who wants to control our modern Rome in order to sack it, elected by a self-centered society of perpetual teenagers, and I remember William F. Buckley’s rhetorical question:

“If you lived in a declining age, would you be able to know it?”

People are concentrating on the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid!” again, but they fail to see why the economy’s troubles are based on the assault on masculinity, which radical feminists started decades ago.

First of all, if we postulate an Obama win on Tuesday, forgive us: in either case, the simple rise of such a character to such a height does not inspire confidence in America’s future.

Let us state emphatically: Obama is not a symbol of American masculinity. Whether or not you believe the unproven rumors about his bisexuality, few people would say they see a classic image of the American male. Look at the agitprop images that the Obama campaign itself has produced: they are shadows from New York and San Francisco art galleries, full of the atmosphere of the ambiguous “metrosexual.”

But what can you expect? For decades, boys and men have been assaulted in the culture wars for being themselves: this has been chronicled nicely in various books, famously by Hoff-Sommers in her book “The War Against Boys” a few years ago. But earlier critics noticed a change in the attitude on things masculine: poet Robert Bly outlined his fears in “Iron John” nearly 20 years ago.

Semiotics is a branch of Social Studies where the scholar observes smaller signs and signals in a society to determine trends. As a teacher I have noticed the emptiness of playgrounds, the rise of soccer, the decline of baseball, the appearance of hyper-protective helicopter parents hovering and micromanaging their children’s lives to prevent anything bad from happening. I note the complete absence of a 1930′s-1950′s style childhood, even a remnant, where kids are alone by themselves blocks away from home and parents.

“The Little Rascals” with Spanky and Our Gang are impossible today.

Baseball is one of the most difficult games: it takes patience and much practice to hit a baseball, but it is also very dangerous. Soccer takes skill, but not nearly as much, and the soccer ball is nice and soft in comparison to a baseball.

Baseball is a higher risk sport: the only risks our boys are taking are on video screens, or with parents on the soccer sidelines with cellphones ready to call the emergency room.

What does this have to do with the Economy?

Capitalism Americn-style takes patience, not the drug-addled instant gratification pushed in our I-must-feel-good-always society. Capitalism American-style needs RISK-TAKERS: but our boys – and girls – are protected from taking risks more and more, and so what are they learning? Taking risks – within limits of course – is bad!

In short: The helicopter parent – the result of the diminished role of the male and the rise of a so-called empowered female who pushes security and avoidance of conflict – is a long-term enemy of the basic ideas behind American society.

Obama is their perfect candidate: I hope America does not vote to become a secure, risk-avoiding country like France. That we are so close to doing so, I fear, is more than just an aberration.

For those of you with children in school – of any age – who might be wondering what all this “socialism” and “redistribution” talk is about, I offer my handy-dandy method from my classroom.

I say:

Imagine that I take all the grades from the last quiz, add them up, and average them out to a grade of C -. Since it is not fair that some of you are smarter than the others, and since it is not fair that some of you can do homework and study, while others have chaotic family lives, or are addicted to video games and Mountain Dew and cannot concentrate on school, or whatever, I will “spread the intelligence around” and give everyone the C-, or I might even be generous and just raise it to a C, or I might be even more generous and give everyone an A, to make things fair.

Inevitably this outrages the A and B kids especially, who then ask: “Well, what’s the use of studying or learning anything?”

Exactly.

For adults, the following “joke” has been bunnying its way around the ether:

“Notice to All Employees

As of November 5, 2008, IF President Obama is officially elected into office, our company will instill a few new policies which are in keeping with his new, inspiring issues of change and fairness:

1. All salespeople will be pooling their sales commissions into a common pool that will be divided equally between all of you. This will serve to give those of you who are underachieving a ‘fair shake.’

2. All hourly employees will be pooling their wages, including overtime, into a common pool, dividing it equally amongst yourselves. This will help those who are ‘too busy for overtime’ to reap the rewards from those who have more spare time and can work extra hours.

3. All top management will now be referred to as ‘the government.’ We will not participate in this ‘pooling’ experience because the law doesn’t apply to us.

4. The ‘government’ will give eloquent speeches to all employees every week, encouraging its workers to continue to work hard ‘for the good of all.’

5. The employees will be thrilled with these new policies because it’s ‘good to spread the wealth.’ Those of you who have underachieved will finally get an opportunity; those of you who have worked hard and had success will feel more ‘patriotic.’

6. The last few people who were hired should clean out their desks. Don’t feel bad though, because President Obama will give you free healthcare, free handouts, free oil for heating your home, free food stamps, and he’ll let you stay in your home for as long as you want even if you can’t pay your mortgage. If you appeal directly to our democratic congress, you might even get a free flat screen TV and a coupon for free haircuts (shouldn’t all Americans be entitled to nice looking hair?) !!!

If for any reason you are not happy with the new policies, you may want to rethink your vote on November 4th.”

Maybe you can print this and hang it up on your bulletin boards at work!

Class warfare in America has become worse than ever before, thanks to the Dems and their constant agitprop about “tax cuts for the WEALTHY” and “tax breaks for BIG CORPORATIONS.” I am reminded of class-warfare complaints in England during the 1930′s about “the idle rich.”

This implies that your bank account is robbed by the Republicans and the money is handed over e.g. to a billionaire like George Soros. Why they would give him your money is unclear, especially since he backs Obama!

One might think that the Left-Wing always wants to increase government, so that they can continue to buy votes from the lower classes. As a result, there is never enough taxation of the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy.

But the more subtle aspect here can be seen if one imagines the prosperity America would enjoy if taxes were drastically slashed along with a corresponding reduction in the Federal budget. Imagine a cut in the budget of 1/3, which would return ONE TRILLION DOLLARS to the economy!

Talk about a financial stimulus package! The spread of prosperity – and America so far is prosperous despite the efforts of the Dems in the FedGov to make it otherwise – would be immense, especially as this retention of our own money would be invested and reinvested, “snowballing” year after year.

But such prosperity would mean that there would be fewer people in the lower classes who would be listening to class-warfare politics from the Dems. Who would vote for them, if more people were better off through their own devices and not through the Marxist largesse of the Democrat Party? On top of this is the Democrat belief that America should be punished for being America, for stealing land from Indians, for African slavery, for ruining the planet: we need to be taxed to “fix” all these things through spurious policies of redemption.

And finally we have the pacifism: by saying that America has higher priorities to the “poor” and the environment etc etc etc and cannot therefore afford a military to keep us a superpower, our taxes have to be diverted to more “just causes.”

The horrifying realization is: the Democrat Party can * never* allow America to become as prosperous as it could or should be! Their whole philosophy of power and of America depends on an economy that is mediocre or failing, and as a result, both to buy votes and to punish us for our past sins, they will consciously or subconsciously pursue policies to ensure such mediocrity.

I have written various pieces (q.v.) about the few bishops of the Catholic Church who stood up to Pelosi and Biden last month about abortion, which brought back the debate about excommunicating leftist Catholics (oxymoron alert!) who support all sorts of issues inimical to Catholic/Christian teachings, or at least denying them Communion at Mass, a sort of half-way step toward excommunication.

One archbishop, Raymond Burke of Saint Louis, on October 3rd, said the Democrat Party was becoming the “party of Death”: the story normally would cause screaming MSM headlines. Did you hear about it? Normally the MSM would be demanding apologies, along with Reid and Pelosi and Biden demanding freedom of conscience, etc.

http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=29806

With a heavy heart, Archbishop Raymond Burke acknowledges that the U.S. Democratic Party is quickly moving to become the “party of death.” The new head of the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature said this in an interview published Saturday by the Italian episcopal conference’s daily newspaper Avvenire.In this interview conducted by Gianni Cardinale, the archbishop, who was formerly the archbishop of St. Louis, comments on his move to Rome and his views of election-year politics in the United States.

We know why the MSM refused to fuss about this: no analysis is necessary. But such a comment has been the exception: and even with the IRS rules about losing tax-exempt status if churches become politicized, we know that there are ways for the churches to express their pleasure and displeasure at certain political trends.

I can say that the American Catholic Church has been timid in recent decades about commenting on the political scene as an institution: part of this is an historical reluctance from the desire to be absorbed into the melting pot and not be too apart from the Protestant majority, part of it comes from the lack of consensus among the hierarchy, and another part comes from theological conflicts, e.g. the Vatican refusing to accept the self-defensive nature of the Iraq War, opposing capital punishment, and other stances which are part of a left-wing agenda.

But what has happened to the voices of Conservative Christians in this election?

We know that James Dobson said in February he would sit out the election, if McCain won the nomination. This is probably one reason for the silence. Recently however, Dobson has changed his mind.

http://www.citizenlink.org/focusaction/updates/A000008358.cfm

Did the MSM report this? Did you hear about it? Again we know why not.

To be sure, a few brave pastors are going head-to-head with the IRS rules which have silenced many churchmen:

http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/465541.aspx

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Okay, all the puns are over: I had to cheer myself up some way!

But the Nobel committee in socialist Sweden has been going awry for years, and not just on the Economics prize.

What will the guys over at National Review’s “Krugman Truth Squad” do now?

Let’s start off with a random list of Billionaires who want Big Brobama erected as president, whether they are guilty about their wealth and want to push a left-wing agenda, or because they see a socialist government as an easier way for them to exert more personal power over the world, or both, or because they have some other reason rooted in potty-training or abusive parents: Stephen Bing, John Sperling, Andrew Rappaport, Teresa Heinz-Kerry, Herbert and Marion Sandler (Pro Publica) Stephen Rockefeller and the entire Rockefeller family, Ted Turner, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Maurice Strong, Peter Lewis, Oprah WInfrey, David Geffen, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas.

Then there are mere millionaires like Joel Hyatt and Mark Walsh.

Not to mention the usual rogues’ gallery of tax-exempt foundations: Ford Foundation, Pew Charitable Trust, the Nature Conservancy.

The Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago reminded me of the story of how J.P. Morgan almost exactly 100 years ago single-handedly resolved a similar banking debacle by bringing top American bankers together to fix and sort out the problems.

Why have our top business leaders and billionaires not done something similar now? Modesty? Fear of seeming political or interfering in the political process?

I now believe many billionaires have been doing something and have interfered in the political process, but not to solve the crisis.

To catalyze it and prolong it.

For some of you this may be old news: but one motivation for the above people was the re-election of W. in 2004.

After seeing W.’s election as another “Pearl Harbor” George Soros took action:

In April 2005, Soros and the other major players assembled a large group for a secret planning session. Seventy millionaires and billionaires met in Phoenix, Ariz., to discuss how to develop a long-term strategy. The attendees, including former Clinton White House aides Mike McCurry and Sidney Blumenthal and PBS talking head Bill Moyers, listened as officials from all the pro-Democratic Party 527 groups on which they had lavished millions of dollars explained why they failed to deliver the election to Kerry.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24422

Interestingly, the New York Times in an article by Matt Bai from July 25, 2004, revealed Soros-led leftist billionaires organizing themselves politically:

The real significance of Soros’s involvement in politics has little to do with the dollar amount of his contributions. What will stand out as important, when we look back decades from now at the 2004 campaign, will be the political model he created for everyone else. Until this year, Democratic contributors operated on the party-machine model: they were trained to write checks only to the party and its candidates, who decided how to spend the money. But by helping to establish a series of separate organizations and by publicly announcing that he was on a personal mission to unseat Bush, Soros signaled to other wealthy liberals that the days of deferring to the party were over. He became what the financial world would call the angel investor for an entirely new kind of progressive venture.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/magazine/25DEMOCRATS.html?ei=5088&en=13ada638bbe542f0&ex=1248494400&pagewanted=print&position=

And just one tiny example of the power of these people: the Sandlers mentioned in the list above, and involved in the subprime mess via Wachovia Bank, may have also been involved in getting NBC to cancel the SNL skit about the bank bailout.

See:

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/06/the-missing-snl-bailout-skit-and-the-soros-connection/

So why have these concerned citizens not banded together to stabilize the stock market by saying they will start investing in stocks, because there are so many good bargains out there now? (And there really are.)

It would seem the answer is obvious: they will not be buying anything until after the Erection of Big Brobama as President. (Yes, erection, not a mistake.)

A more troubling question: Where Are The Voices of the Conservative Billionaires/Millionaires Right Now?

One of the great mysteries to me so far is the happiness and great expectations of the Dems that they will increase their hold over Congress with approval ratings of what they have done so far at 9%!

It might be even lower given the “bailout” bill this past week!

So, why are the Dems so gleeful and positive that the Republican minority will be booted out???

Are people not paying attention? Do Americans think that because the president is a Republican the Congress must be full of Republicans too?

Possible Answers:

1. They are completely deluded and over-confident. In reality, their incumbents will be booted out in a “We Need A Change” election.

2. They are betting that while Congress as a whole is disliked, your local Dem congressman will not be seen as part of the problem, but as one of the sensible 9%, and therefore be re-elected.

3. The electorate does not know which party controls Congress, and as the Dems have been able to use the media to claim – probably successfully – that their mistakes are “actually” Republican mistakes, the electorate really will eliminate more Republicans. The idea is parallel with the Dem prescription for solving social problems: throw money at it, and when the problem continues and worsens, it is because you have not thrown enough money at it. Congress might have a majority of Dems, but it is not doing well because the majority is not big enough, and because they need Big Brobama in the White House as dictator-messiah.

4. Election Fatigue: People have tuned out and ignored politics because of overload. When a political ad comes on, they hit mute. This would seem to be not necessarily true, given the ratings for Thursday’s VP Debate. But still could be true for political advertising and news in general: newspaper reading is down.

Concerning Big Brobama and why he leads in the polls:

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Earlier I commented on the Intrade trend showing Big Brobama trading at near 7 out of 10, and wondered if any manipulation was going on by Big Brobama’s Beneficent Billionaires.

Well!

I came across a post by the CEO of Intrade on obvious manipulation during the Palin/Biden debate, manipulation pro-Dem.

I was watching in real-time the trading that was happening on both the McCain and Obama for President markets.
As you identified there appears to have been an attempt to manipulate the above markets with a view to causing the “Debate Market” to settle at 100. It did not.
Those involved will be contacted by our team and their accounts appropriately flagged on the exchange.
Where we identify trading activity that in our opinion is manipulative (or attempts at same) we reserve the right to reverse or void such trades.
Thank you again for your post.
John Delaney CEO Intrade

See the letter which prompted his response and other comments:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2097178/posts

At Newsbusters, author Tom Blume has an interesting analysis of MSM polling, which shows no real trend for the Big Brobama!

See:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2008/10/02/cooking-ap-polls-radically-changes-party-mix-fabricate-obama-trend

And:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2008/10/02/wapo-ignores-its-own-poll-showing-mccain-gain-focuses-palin-allegedly-dr

If Mr. Blume is even close to being right, when you combine this with any possible “Bradley Effect,” you will conclude that leftists are being much too optimistic right now!

Which means that any pessimism here is also wrong!

Checking around on things here in Ohio, I see that the Dems have been following Hitler’s dictum that if you push a lie often enough and loudly enough, people will be worn down and start to believe it.

You have not attacked Big Brobama enough and have not attacked in the right way!

We need ads with John McCain facing the camera and giving his straight talk to the voters: the straight talk needs to include the TRUTH about who has catalyzed the mortgage crisis, who was wrong on Iraq, who has been associating with anti-American radicals, who is cowardly and rarely takes a stand by avoiding voting, who will really be improving America with lower taxes and will NOT be increasing hatred among Americans by preaching class warfare about the “rich” as if they are lepers, and why not even throw in questions about Obama’s health because of his chain-smoking?!

NO ADS like this exist right now here in central Ohio: McCain facing the camera and speaking directly.

Where is he?!

We also need John McCain NOT to vote for this abomination of a bailout bill with the bloated pork barrel spending in it: he needs to face the camera and say “NO” to the bill as it is, and to proclaim the Dems are endangering America’s financial future by playing politics with the bill this week and adding useless and even immoral pork barrel sections to it: he should wave it in the air, if he can lift it, and throw it into a trash can.

It is time to anticipate the spin the Dems will give and pre-empt their arguments by turning such statements around against them. (See the above paragraph for an example.)

He needs to attack and attack and attack the Dems for lying and scaring America and for spreading envy and hatred among people.

I invite you to read through RedState essays today where you will find many great ideas to save your campaign.

Readers of my occasional little essays know that I have often used the phrase “Orwellian” to describe Democrat claims, and my nickname for Big Brobama derives from Orwell’s 1984.

The reason for these references is simple: they work.

Democrats and the left-wing have mastered doublethink, the ability to state a lie, know it is a lie, yet believe the opposite simultaneously.

How has this happened? Part of it comes from the onslaught of Nietzschean philosophy, where the will to power is the only thing necessary for success. Traditional morality is for the weak, and Christian morality in particular is for slaves. Join this together with relativist philosophies from France: the mistaken application of Einsteinian relativity to human perception and beliefs, where one point of view has no better aspect on the truth than any other. Truth, therefore, becomes an opinion, a toying with words: everyone’s opinion is valid…

Except some are more valid than others! (See Orwell’s Animal Farm)

So when you get outraged at the duplicity, the smears, the really inventive lies, and wonder how they can do this so baldly, so boldly, it is because the Truth does not exist for them. Power becomes their truth, and the irony is that the philosophy they follow is precisely what led to the ideology they claim to hate the most, Nazism, which, also ironically, is simply the other Janus-face of a philosophy they claim is just fine: Communism, two sides of the same coin, in the way that Stalin and Hitler were equals.

Be prepared especially therefore, if Big Brobama and a Democrat Congress are elected, for restrictions on religion and free speech disguised as tolerance and broad-mindedness and fairness.

Outrage at their lies and doublethinking claims is wasteful: they will not show remorse, because they believe they have the right to manipulate everything for the greater cause of their accession to power.

It is better calmly to expose their plans as socialist, as hostile to the idea of America, as part of a class-warfare ideology that is Communist, envious, small-minded, and unworthy of America.

Big Brobama has completed a world tour of diplomacy in 2009, as promised. He has been greeted by fawning Europeans and Africans and even Egyptians. His meetings with Ahmedinejad and Putin were spun into successes by the international media, since he came back to D.C. with pieces of paper promising disarmament and good behavior.

Taxes have been raised to class-warfare levels, and unemployment is rising, but the latter is blamed on W. and the policies of the previous years, along with evil companies sending jobs to other countries. Laws are passed to restrict companies from doing that, and so many companies re-form subsidiaries overseas and simply leave America, rather than face more regulation and higher taxes.

2010: the economy deteriorates further, and the U.S. has left Iraq prematurely, allowing Iran to make its move. Various eastern provinces of Iraq are seized by Iranian proxies, and Israel will have to decide if it wants to risk nuclear war with Iran, whose missiles can now reach them. Oil soars to $200 + a barrel, further crushing the world economy. Putin and friends begin moving to reassemble the Soviet Empire: the Baltic States are the first to go, then the Ukraine, along with various Central Asian states. Chavez, if still in power in Venezuela, will be further emboldened to spread his influence throughout South America.

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Focus on countering the claims Big Brobama is and will be making about the crashes on Wall Street!

Big Brobama is already putting out a 2-minute ad full of the usual stereotypes: class warfare agitprop of the most typical kind, blaming W. and the Republicans and greedy businessmen for everything.

History lessons about how the mess can be traced back in part to Clinton’s Jamie Gorelick (q.v.) are nice here at RedState (see my earlier post today about it), but a counter ad is needed immediately: focus on the Lehman Bros. being a top contributor to Big Brobama, along with a list of other Big Business firms supporting the Big Bro!

Focusing on e-mail hackers, nasty comments about lipstick, etc. is a loser: short-term (2-3 weeks) even focusing on the success in Iraq is a loser. I have a sense few people will care about that in the next weeks until things calm down with banks.

If it is a true crisis, it will be over in a few days. If it is a media-hyped crisis, the McCain camp will be playing defense.

Seven years will soon have passed! I was in a classroom when our librarian came to my room and said I needed to turn on the television set: an airplane crashed into the World Trade Center, and, she added ominously, “they think it was NOT an accident.”

No, it was not an accident, because Islamo-Fascists plotted to humiliate America, Weak responses to terrorism from the Democrat administration between 1992 and 2000 emboldened Osama bin-Laden and his terrorists.

That is the truth, unless you hate America. In that case you might believe America attacked itself to start a war against Islam, to seize oil fields and steal Arab wealth, or to scare Americans into voting for the protection of the evil George W. Bush. Such beliefs are not just found in Ankara or Cairo: you can find them in San Francisco, New Orleans, Boston.

The September Eleventh attacks were the screams of an unreformed seventh-century religion unable to handle modern life theologically: to be sure, many Moslems have been able to adjust to modern life, but the fundamentalists who want to turn the clock back to 700 A.D. are positive they have a God-given right to destroy us.

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“Interdict” was a political technique used by the medieval Catholic Church to bring kings and emperor’s into line: it meant denying the celebration of liturgies and sacraments to the general population because of the actions of their leader. Innocent III used it against France c. 1200 A.D. to bring Philip Augustus into line.

Since this meant unreconciled souls could be condemned to hell, according to the theology of the time, if they died during this period, the pressure against the king was immense. The popes often prevailed, although the piety of the Middle Ages was no doubt greater than it is today in general.

While San Francisco will obviously not be punished for Fancy Nancy’s sins, Pelosi should be placed personally under interdict: a Texas politician some years ago was placed under personal interdict by the bishop of Corpus Christi specifically for openly supporting abortion.

Interdict allows the offender to remain nominally Catholic: excommunication is a complete removal.

My further question is: Why has it taken the Catholic hierarchy so long to address the issue of hypocritical “Catholic” politicians who support an anti-Catholic agenda? Teddy Kennedy is the most famous example from early on.

Why now specifically are they banding together against the Pelosi’s and Biden’s? Where have the bishops been the last 30 + years?

Was it simply that Pelosi invaded their territory on national television by claiming her brain contained actual knowledge of Catholic theology?

Have too many bishops accepted the rationalization that a Catholic politician would not want to impose his religion politically, i.e. abortion is a religious matter, separate from abortion as a matter in politics (somehow)?

My view, based on guesswork and no evidence: the bishops really fear a floodgate of infanticide, and perhaps the beginnings of Dutch-style euthanasia, if Obama and the Democrats get their possible landslide.

I do not usually have the time or opportunity to listen to conservative talk radio, (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage (?!)etc.) But I do skim through their transcripts on-line, and know that in general they were highly skeptical, disappointed, and perhaps even halfway angry about John McCain being the candidate.

Lately they seem much more enthusiastic about John McCain right now. So what has changed their minds, or at least softened their apathy and skepticism?

Two things seem to have happened: one big one was the “debate” at Saddleback where John McCain clarified a definite conservative attitude on the important issues. Following the transcripts of his shows, I noticed that Mr. Limbaugh in particular liked what he heard then.

However, the choice of Sarah Palin seems to have “sealed the deal.” Rush Limbaugh’s site today is full of very enthusiastic topics about Sarah Palin. (Allow me to emphasize “seems” since the hosts either have not endorsed or do not endorse a candidate.) I think we will be hearing the conservative radio voices being much more enthusiastic now about the prospect of a McCain administration.

Question: how important is their influence ultimately?

Allow me to say with trepidation that as a newcomer I am not comfortable starting a diary so soon, and will not make this a habit for various reasons (Time is a big one!).

But since I could not find a logical topic right now for this, here it is.

Sunspot activity, which goes in 11-year cycles, has been completely dormant for weeks recently. For the non-scientists sunspots are dark, cooler areas of electromagnetic radiation on the sun’s surface. Low-level activity has been associated with global cooling and ice ages.

http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=1

An excerpt from the above:

In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov predicted the sun would soon peak, triggering a rapid decline in world temperatures. Only last month, the view was echoed by Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. who advised the world to “stock up on fur coats.” Sorokhtin, who calls man’s contribution to climate change “a drop in the bucket,” predicts the solar minimum to occur by the year 2040, with icy weather lasting till 2100 or beyond.

I found this from a Russian site with more comments by Abdusamatov(in English):

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070115/59078992.html

Also see a real-time image:
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/

We expect the true believers to say it is much too early to stop the panic about global warming because much more information is needed about this! This is precisely the same argument with which they should be fish-whapped in the chops, whenever they continue to Gore us with warming agitprop.