"Don't let Trump be misunderstood"

Eric Burdon was one of the most horrible people in Rock and Roll history. Why would I say that? Well, he named his band The Animals. Didn't he know that they were human beings made in the image of Almighty God?



It is nearly as bad as what President Trump did yesterday. He referred to Catholic Priests as 'animals'. Can you believe that? He called Catholic Priests animals! That is absolutely unacceptable. Doesn't he know they are human beings? Regardless of what they have done? Oh, wait. Sorry; that was Pope Francis that referred to priests as animals. Excerpt:

During a Q&A session towards the end of the meeting, Francis spoke of a “pastoral cruelty,” such as priests who refuse to baptize the children of young single mothers.

“They’re animals,” he said. “This is individualism.”

[It’s] “an individualism which doesn’t affect only priests, but society as a whole, that looks for pleasure, that is hedonist, searching for that ‘damned’ well-being which has hurt us so much,” he said.

Should the Pope have called these priests who refuse baptism due to lack of paternal parentage "animals"? Hmmm... You know what? Yawn. No one cares. Maybe he should have been a little more specific and called them a "brood of vipers." That's a classic, I always thought. I mean, it is a rhetorical device, is it not? Whether it is Christ, or the Pope, or Eric Burdon or Trump talking this way.

("Hey, Jesus, you said 'Let he who is without sin throw the first stone.' So can I throw a tire-iron?" Ha, ha. Grow up.)

Speaking of the Pope and Trump, I got myself in trouble once when I said "The Pope and Trump are a lot alike." "How so?" shot back an indignant liberal Catholic dude I know who likes the Pope and despises Trump. "Well," I replied, "they both speak off the cuff continually, and get themselves in trouble all the time that way with detractors, but neither seems to care very much." He had no response to this observation.

Do you know what the motto of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) is? It's really simple to remember, boys and girls: "Rape, Control, Kill." They are really into facial tattoos, so maybe they want to look like animals. However that wouldn't be justification to call them animals so much as the fact that they are big into underage prostitution. There is tons of money in that industry, or so I have heard.

So if in a scientific or theological or metaphysical sense it is incorrect, inaccurate or insensitive to call the members of the MS-13 gang "animals", I would argue that it is not for lack of trying on their part. And if you think President Trump is saying something racist about Latinos by calling these nasty people "animals" then you are misunderstanding him on purpose.

Update: This is pretty hilarious.

Well, we're all happy

I couldn't believe the news when I heard it this morning. And I was happy, obviously, we all thought these women were long gone. But immediately I thought "Does this say something about law enforcement around here?"



Charles Ramsey seems like a great guy, and a good guy. But why does he go racial at the end? They should have cut that. Irritating. My kids aren't afraid of people with dark skin, and they're as white as Edgar Winter.

South African Handshake....

...it could save your life.

Erick Stakelbeck: "Kiddie Jihad"

If you are scandalized by Catholic church child abuse scandals, here's a little something to help you shy away from becoming a Muslim.

Strategies in the global war against Islamic terrorism are taking very different roads in 2010. The Obama administration hopes downplaying Islamic extremism may help when dealing with Muslim countries.

Terror groups, however, are taking extremism to new levels by indoctrinating Muslim children in the deadly art of suicide bombing.

"The state-sponsored illegal recruitment and education of innocent Muslim children to become suicide bombers and child soldiers is occurring throughout the Muslim and non-Muslim world," said Brooke Goldstein, founder and director of The Children's Rights Institute, an organization focusing on human rights violatios against children.

"In Pakistan, thousands of children are being educated in madrassahs," she said. "In Iraq, handicapped children are being blown up at polling stations. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is paying up to $12,000 per child, donated to them by their own families.”

Taliban leaders run training centers where boys as young as 11 years of age learn to be suicide bombers. Some are even younger.
A 6-year-old Afghan boy recruited in 2007 was told that his suicide belt would "explode into flowers."

Cute. Maybe the Muslims are worried that Heaven will run out of virgins if the martyrs are all postpubescent males.

The article ends with a glorious punchline: "In the meantime, she says international human rights groups like Amnesty International have shown little interest in the issue." That is because AI equals politics plus fundraising.

Remember 'transparency'?

Two Kens call on Obama and Pelosi to "come clean". Excerpt:

With both President Obama and Speaker Pelosi, we see the dangers of reckless actions. When the president released those memos, he clearly did not anticipate the widespread outrage that release would generate. Nor did he anticipate the public reemergence of a vice president who is also a former Defense Secretary, and ex-White House chief of staff, a top-notch national security expert and one of the most articulate speakers on the topic.

Likewise, when Speaker Pelosi satisfied her liberal base by vilifying the noble men and women who work to keep America safe at the CIA, she did not anticipate that Leon Panetta, a former fellow Democratic congressman from California and an Obama appointee, would hold a press conference to declare that his officers were telling the truth. Speaker Pelosi hardly expected one of her own colleagues would expose her statements as untrue.

Both Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi promised transparency. We are now only seeing half of the facts on these two important scandals. It’s time for them to provide the whole truth.

The idea that Pelosi was totally against everything which was going on with interrogation is ludicrous. She has overplayed this hand. This truly may be part of Obama's play to get rid of her and replace her with someone as dumb as Joe Biden.

A Must Read for the Gullible

This is kind of stale but boy, do I love John Zmirak's piece on the film Longford from December '08. It's sort of a review/recommendation, but more than anything it's an illustrated condemnation of "misguided compassion". Zmirak quotes Mother Angelica as calling this folly "the reigning sin of our time" and he shows how the character and story presented in the movie gives us a perfect example of this vice. From his article:

Frank Pakenham, the Seventh Earl of Longford, was a kind and pious man. Born a British aristocrat, he flouted public opinion by converting to Catholicism in 1940. An accomplished historian, loving husband, and nurturing father -- one of his many overachieving children is historian Antonia Fraser -- Lord Longford was also active in politics. Long a member of the British House of Lords -- and a convinced socialist -- he led campaigns against pornography and gay activism, in the face of widespread mockery in the press. (It didn't help, I guess, that he insisted on conducting widely publicized fact-finding tours in strip clubs, with journalists in tow. Did I mention that Longford lacked the virtue of prudence?)

Educational reformer, chronicler of the Irish war for independence, visionary moral crusader: For none of these things do Englishmen remember the Earl of Longford. Instead, they know him as the British lord who tried to get Myra Hindley out of jail. Hindley's name is still a watchword for hellish cruelty; she was convicted in 1966 along with her lover Ian Brady for jointly kidnapping, sexually abusing, torturing, and murdering five children -- whose anguished cries they tape-recorded. The Moor Murders, and the subsequent trials, were the media sensation of the middle 1960s, and neither Hindley nor Brady showed remorse at their public trial. The two were sentenced to life in prison.

And that's where poor Longford came in. As a deeply religious Catholic, the Earl made a point of visiting prisoners -- which, you might remember, is one of the Corporal Works of Mercy. What you might also recall from Catechism class is that it nowhere says you have to try to get the prisoners out, assuming they're guilty. That distinction eluded the good Lord Longford, who responded to a letter from Myra Hindley requesting a visit.

As the film depicts their dawning (fawning?) friendship, it is clear that Hindley is a brilliant manipulator, skilled at reading Longford's character and telling him what he most wants to hear: That she is deeply, profoundly sorry for what she did. That she was an abused child, seized and dominated by a strong, sadistic lover, who forced her to take part in the murders. Oh yes, and that she is deeply attracted to Longford's Catholic faith. Would he consider sending her some Catholic books, including her in his prayers, and returning for future visits?

Zmirak goes on to reveal the horrifying and embarrassing results of what he brilliantly describes as the "slow-motion train wreck of the Little Choo-Choo That Could." He states that he favors the death penalty for this noble do-gooder by the end of the film. Although he is possibly exaggerating, Longford seems like a guy who, after pushing an enormous boulder down a mountain, claims that he had no idea that fifty goat-herders would be smashed. In other words, Longford is the kind of moral idiot who really poses a danger within society.

I said at the start I loved this article, and I do for the same reason that I love my Swiss Army knife and my all in one Epson printer. It's designed to take on a number of important jobs and complete them well. First of all, it shows the major attack on the virtue of prudence and how that attack takes shape in our society among the bleeding hearts. I especially like the point that helping the guilty get out of punishment is not a work of mercy.

Secondly, I sense a corollary here that I've seen play out in my life personally, viz., the more prudent one becomes, the more mean one seems to the aforementioned unwisely compassionate in certain situations. For example, if a fairly close in-law's sibling is "dating" an incarcerated pen-pal, starts falling in love with him and talking about marriage, you might be considered mean for stating that you smell a train-wreck. Not that you are told this directly to your face, however, you are told that you don't know this guy and that "...she feels that he really has turned his life around and gotten saved in prison." Then you ask what he's in for. "Well, he hasn't told her that yet, even though she did ask him." Oh. That's when you start feeling like you know this guy a lot better than everyone else involved. The most merciful event in that case was that the in-law got wise in time and called it off.

Thirdly, the argument against capital punishment has been blurred and marred by the fact that many of those fighting it choose the worst poster children. Remember the efforts of left-wing wackos to save Stanley "Tookie" Williams, a convicted multiple murderer who refused to help police whilst penning anti-gang children's books? From Wikipedia:

Williams refused to aid police investigations with any information against his gang, and was implicated in attacks on guards and other inmates as well as multiple escape plots. In 1993, Williams began making changes in his behavior, and became an anti-gang activist while on Death Row in California. Although he continued to refuse to assist police in their gang investigations, he renounced his gang affiliation and apologized for the Crips' founding, while never admitting to the crimes for which he was convicted. He co-wrote children's books and participated in efforts intended to prevent youths from joining gangs.

Not quite a graduate from the St. Mary Magdalene school of repentance, I dare say.

Fourthly, aren't there people out there who need assistance who have never spent a day in jail? I've found plenty of people to help out by various means, finding work for them, just chatting and being friends with them, etc. There are people who are called to prison ministry--obviously Longford was not among them. My guess is that other romantics have fallen prey to wily criminals in much the same way. This story also reminds me of the judge from Tom Sawyer who thinks he's rehabilitated the town drunk, before he's forced to think again. Should have stuck to being judgmental, Your Honor.

Finally, It seems like people tempted to rob justice to pay mercy should take a lesson to the thief on the cross who pointed out to the other other criminal that they deserved punishment. I suppose that St. Dismas was showing us that a lot of the misguided compassion toward which we might be tempted is self-directed.

Charlie Rangel owns Pelosi

And Charles Hurt pwns both of them. Excerpt:

Try telling people in this economy that you just discovered a loose $75,000 you didn't know you'd made. For most people, that's called the lottery.

Is this "the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history" that Pelosi promised?

Pelosi ordered Rangel to Washington earlier this week, sending out signals that she would lower the boom on him.

At the very least, she would make him step aside until all his ethics inquisitions are finished.

Wrangling Rangel is no small order.

He's immensely popular on the Hill, even among many Republican lawmakers.

He's perhaps Pelosi's highest-profile committee chairman.

And he's one of her very top African-American lieutenants whom she simply cannot cross.

So, she folded like a cheap pantsuit.

Choice picture, too. What a piece of... ....work.... ...he is.

So hopefully all the "talk" talk is nothing but talk

Joshua Muravchik's Commentary Magazine article on Obama's expressed desire to have talks with world leaders is worth reading. In it, he takes a serious look at the historical record to illustrate why this has never worked to the advantage of the United States. Here's his conclusion:

Finally, we must always remember that such regimes are in a state of permanent war with their own subjects, and that every measure of legitimation they receive from the outside serves to discourage those subjects’ hopes for freedom and impair their will to resist. Even the government of the Soviet Union, our superpower counterpart, was eager for the symbolism of being treated by America as an equal. How much more so would the power of the petty tyrants or would-be tyrants who rule Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea—the countries with whose leaders Barack Obama expressed his readiness to meet and talk in the first year of his administration—be inflated by an audience with an American President. In this, especially, there is much to be lost—by ourselves and by those under their rule.

Should we talk with our enemies? Yes—to tell them what we think of them, and what we ourselves stand for. We should talk to them, that is, on our own terms and not theirs, and with their captive peoples in mind. But to the question that Anderson Cooper put to Senator Obama, the simple and correct answer was “No.” If Obama ever gains the presidency, the world will be safer if he has figured that out before he enters office.