Letterman will need some new jokes tonight!

One less audience member to hiss at him.

On the other hand, less venom in his monologues.

They caught the Bronx Zoo cobra.

HT: Drudge

You're fired, Donald!

The Donald has been making noises about a run for the Republican presidential nomination next year.

He can stop. After this, he falls back into the pack of whack jobs and candidates who can be easily written off as whack jobs whose nomination would only ensure Barack Obama's re-election.

HT: Drudge

ADDENDUM: Yeah. Whack job- although sadly, the part about presidential puckering does have a great deal of truth to it.

Bummer! GMX to ruin Mail.com

It was many years ago that I started collecting Mail.com email addresses. With domains like baptized.com and minister.com and even (through NHL mail) blackhawksfan.com, they were irresistable.

Unfortunately they used the buggy Outblaze software and interface, and there was effectively no spam filtering at all. I was very excited when, a couple of years ago, Mail.com started using AOL Webmail's excellent software, interface, and filtering system. If it had not been for the fact that I've used slow library computers so much since then, I would have used it a great deal more; with the exception of Gmail, AOL Webmail may be the most reliable and best-filtered in the business.

Unfortunately, though, it seems that the German outfit GMX- which already runs a buggy and poorly-filtered webmail service of its own- has acquired Mail.com, and is in the process of re-ruining it. Already the available domains have been cut back, and the process of migrating existing accounts to the gimpy GMX interface is under way.

It's a shame, but I don't think I'll be using all those neat email addresses anymore. I've had enough experience with my GMX account having been so deluged with pornographic spam as to be unusable simply because I very briefly used it for Yahoo Groups (no other webmail service I've used for those Groups have had any problems at all as a result), and frustrating me with its constant glitches and bugs to the point where I was ready to tear out what little hair I have.

I hope AOL, which briefly had a service called Tunome which used its excellent software and interface for "vanity" email addresses, gets back in the business.

The most important Biblical discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Archaeologists have discovered a 2,000 year old, wirebound codex which may impact biblical studies more profoundly than any such discovery since that of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The codex contains a map of ancient Jerusalem, bearing a cross at what is believed to have been the location of Jesus's tomb.

Some of the speculation concerning this book (including the notion that it is, or contains, the "sealed book" referred to in Revelation) seems to be  a bit overheated. But it will be fascinating to see what light, if any, it sheds on the history of the passion of Christ and on early Christian beliefs and practices.

Let's get a few things straight about Libya

1. Limited bombing and cruise missle attacks on selected targets over a period of days does not constitute a war.

2. Those on the Left who criticize President Obama's measured and humanitarian response to Khadaffi Duck's onslaught against his own people need to get a life.

3. Those Republicans who are silly enough to be trying to tie Mr. Obama's hands in this matter are out of their ever lovin' minds.

Mercury Messenger sends back first picture

Here's our first view of the planet closest to the Sun, Mercury, from NASA's new orbiter:

HT: Drudge

15-6-2

Marian Hossa scored an overtime goal last night to give the Hawks a 3-2 road victory over the Red Wings, and solidify their grip on the last playoff spot in the Western Conference of the NHL.

The Hawks have gone 15-6-2 in February and March after having barely played .500 previously. As is often the case even in bad years, they have pretty much owned the Wings all season.

They play Boston tonight in another huge game. They're getting hot at the right time. We shall see what we shall see.

"Wasn't Joan of Ark Noah's wife?"

I recall once reading in a book of actual statements from student papers collected by a teacher that "Martin Luther died a horrible death. He was excommunicated by a bull." Another student quoted in the book identified Joan of Arc as indicated by the title of this post.

Uwe Siemon-Netto herein reflects on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and on the need for a return to an awareness of history (and geography).

The only encouraging thing about the picture he paints is that it seems that it's not only American young people (and adults) who are clueless in these areas.

Meanwhile, The Onion reports on a related matter.

Infamy!

Goose Island, the Chicago microbrewery whose beers have deservedly grown in popularity to the point where it is becoming a national brand, has been sold to Anheuser-Busch.

According to Goose Island, the reason for the sale was that demand for its beer vastly exceeds its capacity to produce and market  it. As a national brewer, Busch already has that capacity.

Links to Harry Carey aside, Anheuser- Busch is best known for its connection to the evil St. Louis Cardinals, the Cubs' arch-rival in the National League Central.

The CEO of the St. Louis-based brewer says that every effort will be made to build a brewery in Chicago.

Sometime in the future.

Cityview's "progressive" bigotry

No, a "bigot" cannot properly be defined as "someone who is winning an argument with a liberal."

But when I saw a button a few years ago that made that claim, I had to smile. It appealed to my inner Rush Limbaugh- the naughty little boy in me who cannot resist something that gets a rise out of a group of people who, as a group, are notorious for lacking a sense of humor. It's the same part of me that led me, when I was a seminary senior (and a registered Democrat at the time, having voted for Walter Mondale two years before- in fact, having been a delegate to the Democratic State Convention- and destined to vote for Michael Dukakis two years hence) to display a poster featuring a military parade in Red Square with the caption: "Russia: Visit us before we visit you!" on my dorm room door. The reaction of my humorless and intolerant Far Left classmates was priceless.

It was the same phenomenon that gets Rush his ratings. Our friends on the Left never seem to disappoint ol' Rushbo when he goes deliberately overboard in an attempt to get them to make fools of themselves by taking him seriously. He's quite upfront about it: "demonstrating absurdity by being absurd," he calls it. In fact, many on the Left seem not to have not yet caught to the fact that if they developed a sense of humor and laughed at Rush's intentional absurdity instead of becoming apoplectic over it, he would soon go off the air.

No, I don't really believe that a bigot is somebody who is winning an argument with a liberal. Bigotry is an ugly thing. It isn't merely uncool. It's un-Christian, un-American, and indecent. But I am absolutely convinced that in the minds of most liberals, a bigot is, very simply, anybody who simply disagrees with them.  About almost anything.

Social conservatives, it seems to me,  have been ineffective in the ongoing debate over contemporary attitudes toward homosexuality for two reasons. First, for entirely too long, most have insisted on maintaining the untenable position that homosexuality is either voluntarily chosen, or in any case reversible in most cases through psychotherapy or an effort of the will. Both assertions are, in the present state of knowledge, untenable, and by continuing to cling to an untenable position traditionalists have prevented society as a whole from taking their position seriously. It's hard to take anybody seriously who doesn't understand the very phenomenon he's opining on.

A little over half of the identical twins of gay men, raised separately, are also gay. While that is a rate of heritability substantially less than that of, say ADD or OCD (and, since identical twins are genetically identical, the fact that all identical twins of gay men are not gay themselves pretty much blows the "gay gene" theory out of the water), 52%  is high enough to prove conclusively that something biological is going on. One theory gaining currency is that male children of women who have already borne several males are often gay because the biochemical environment of the wombs of such women are predisposed to be more hospitable to female kids, the law of averages being what it is.

But in any case, homosexuality is not a choice. It is not merely "habituated." It is none of the crackpot things social conservatives have come up with to try to make the case that there isn't a biological predisposition to homosexual orientation.

The second way in which traditionalists have shot themselves in the foot is even more inexcusable. There is a bit of logical slight-of-hand in the position of those favoring the acceptance of homosexuality, and attempting to bludgeon society into following suit. These folks ignore the point that the controversy is about a behavior.
Granted, there are unwitting allies of the social Left who not only refuse to acknowledge that sexual orientation is something other than voluntarily chosen, but disapprove of people because of their sexual orientation- something they can't help. Thoughtful social conservatives, on the other hand, recognize something neither social "progressives" or the obscurantists among social conservatives will concede: that there is a distinction between homosexual orientation, which is not chosen, and homosexual behavior, which is.

Despite the efforts of many in the ELCA and elsewhere on the religious Left to argue otherwise, both Testaments and  five thousand years of Jewish and Christian ethical tradition condemn homosexual behavior. There is no intellectually honest way around it. But homosexual orientation is another matter. No thoughtful social conservative would think of suggesting that homosexual orientation- a thing outside the individual's control- is even an ethical issue, much less something to be condemned. But social conservatives have nevertheless allowed the social Left to conflate the separate issues of orientation on one hand, and behavior on the other.

One difficulty, of course, is the fact that we live in an era in which the very concept of sexual self-restraint is looked upon askance. Many people openly express the opinion that it isn't possible. It is, of course, certainly difficult. But the experience of our species testifies that in fact it not only is possible, but is necessary for the well-being of society. The poverty and human suffering which current sexual mores have created among the forty percent of children currently born out of wedlock and their mothers is testimony to the fact that self-restraint of some kind is often necessary for the welfare of the individual members of society, as well as for the whole

Homosexuals, as well as heterosexuals, are human beings, and not brute beasts. We cannot control our sexual orientation. But being human beings, we are capable of controlling our sexual behavior. And it is behavior, not orientation, which lies at the heart of Judaism's and  Christianity's ethical rejection of homosexual behavior. In fact, the very concept of homosexual orientation is sufficiently recent that it doubtful in the extreme that previous generations even recognize that there were issues involved other than mere behavior. Certainly the authors of the biblical condemnations of homosexuality were unaware that something called homosexual orientation, as distinct from homosexual behavior, even existed.

Social conservatives have shot themselves in the foot by allowing the social Left to confuse that issue. It is simply not logically possible to condemn ethical disapproval of a behavior, as opposed to condemnation of a group of people for something over which they have no control, as bigotry. And yet, ignoring the fact that it is the behavior rather than the orientation which social social conservatives find objectionable, the social Left has gained untold leverage in the debate over the acceptance of homosexuality in our culture by stigmatizing traditionalists as somehow being "bigots-" as if behavior, as well as orientation, were an immutable characteristic of homosexual individuals!

The fondness of both the social and the political Left for substituting ad hominems for arguments- a characteristic also notable among extremists of the Right, by the way- is noteworthy. It is always easier to shout a slogan than to make a case. And to demonize one's opponents rather than engaging them in civil discourse is the more effective strategy, as well as the less labor-intensive.

Here in Des Moines we have an alternative weekly called Cityview-  a publication whose editorial policy makes even "Iowa's best Red newspaper," the Des Moines Register, look moderate by comparison (I hasten to note that no, I don't really believe that this widely-repeated nickname for the publication which brags that it is "Iowa's best read newspaper" is accurate. The Register is not Communist. It is just very, very liberal. That's my inner Rush acting out again).

Suffice it to say that, in a section entitled "GoodBadUgly," the current edition of Cityview delivers itself of the following bit of hate speech:

Choir members at the Crystal Cathedral were forced to sign a statement that "sexual intimacy is intended by God to be only within the bonds of marriage, between one man and one woman," which is a self-righteous slap-in-the-face (sic) to not only homosexual people, but also heterosexual couples choosing to live together out of wedlock...Greed and hate are a nasty combination.

Now, Jehovah's Witnesses believe that God is offended by blood transfusions. I happen to regard that belief as goofy. But I do not regard it as a self-righteous slap in the face to people who give or receive blood.

The Reformed neighbors of my former parishioners in Sully, Iowa firmly believe that it is immoral to work on Sunday (despite the absence of any indication in Scripture that God ever intended Sunday to be a Sabbath). They are sometimes even a bit judgmental toward people who do work on Sundays. But I do not confuse this judgmental attitude toward those who violate what I believe to be a purely human rule of conduct with the perfectly legitimate- though, I believe, mistaken- belief that working on Sunday is itself sinful. That belief itself- as distinguished from its sometimes arrogant expression- is in no sense a "slap in the face" to those of us who disagree.

I could go on, but I think the point is made. People have all sorts of beliefs concerning God's intentions for human behavior. Reasonable people may disagree with any of them- and, if they have different epistemological beliefs concerning how God's will is to be ascertained by human beings, they probably do. But as obvious a point as this may be to people of good will, apparently it has to be pointed out to the staff of Cityview, as well as to many other bigots on the Far Left: to hold ethical or religious beliefs concerning the propriety of a behavior is not a "slap in the face" to those who disagree.

It is merely to disagree with them.

It would seem that for the staff of Cityview, as for a depressing number of people on the Left, the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech and even freedom of religion actually means freedom only of speech and religion with which Cityview agrees.

No, the policy of the Crystal Cathedral- whether one agrees with it or not-is not an expression of hate. Nor is it a slap in anyone's face. On the other hand, Cityview's religious bigotry is a clear attempt to stigmatize a legitimate exercise by the Crystal Cathedral of the First Amendment rights the Constitution guarantees. And it is clearly motivated by an ugly emotion sadly typical of extremists on both sides of the spectrum, Left as well as right: the very kind of ugly hate it libels the Crystal Cathedral as expressing in its mere adherence to what the Jewish and Christian faiths have taught for two thousand years.

And that, as opposed to the Crystal Cathedral's mere expression of an ethical and theological opinion of certain abstract behaviors, is not only a slap in the face to every Christian or Jew who believes what his or her faith has historically taught, but a textbook example of hatred and intolerance at its ugliest.

Sex and the single Christian

Here is an able re-statement by Joe Carter of First Things of what the genuine- and biblical- Christian sexual ethic has to say to the unmarried.

It should be said that there probably was never a time in American history- and maybe in human history- in which most people did not engage in pre-marital sex. But if Christianity's- and Western society's- traditional formal committment to pre-marital chastity is hypocritical, it has been truly said that hypocricy is the tribute which vice pays to virtue. If most people haven't actually practiced pre-marital abstinence down through the years, it becomes all the more interesting that its mores have paid such elaborate lip service to it.

The other day I was in my favorite English/Scottish/Irish/Welsh pub here in Des Moines (well, OK- the only pub in Des Moines which consciously caters to folk whose forebears come from everywhere in the British Isles, but still one worth noting; the Royal Mile received an award from Esquire magazine in 2007 as one of the  Best Bars in America). I got  a chuckle from the coaster, which bore the illustrated legend, "WARNING: Beer Goggles Can Cause You To See Storks." The out-of-focus stork on the coaster, of course, was carrying a baby. "Accidents," as the saying goes, "cause people."

Nearly 40% of American births are now out of wedlock. The consequences for these children- and usually for their mothers- of  such births tend to be drastic: a life of poverty, for starters, along with less tthan adequate health care and in most senses a beginning in life somewhere behind what constitutes the starting line for the rest  of us. The consequences of divorce for kids have not stopped us from divorcing at unprecidented rates; though the oft-cited statistic that half of American marriages end in divorce may not be accurate (the statistic is arrived at by comparing the number of marriages which begin each year with the number that end in divorce- two sets with comparatively few members in common, and bearing no statistically necessary relationship to each other) there can be little doubt that one of the reasons is an almost total loss of the concept that we have responsibilities when it comes to maintaining or abandoning a marriage which have to do with anyone but ourselves. And, hey- if you happen to get pregnant as the result of pre-marital hanky-panky, you can always off the kid. The Supreme Court says that it's OK, after all- and one of the major American poltical parties is virtually dedicated to the proposition that being able to do so is a human right.

But as Carter points out, even if the indubitable severance of sexual intimacy from marital commitment does not, in our particular case, end in divorce, abortion, or out-of-wedlock birth, there are ethical consequences to what he calls "pre-marital infidelity." Somewhere out there, single Christian, is your future spouse.

And the Faith has traditionally taught that even if you haven't met that person yet, you have ethical obligations to him or to her even now.

HT: Real Clear Religion

Liberal "Bible scholars" claim that the Old Testament left out Mrs. God

University of Exeter theologian Francesca Stavrakopoulou and J. Edward Wright of The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies and The Albright Institute for Archaeological Research say that Yahweh's wife, Asherah, was 'edited out' of the Bible.

Asherah is actually mentioned numerous times in the Bible- but in terms which hardly support the thesis that orthodox Yahwism was polytheistic, as Stavrakopoulou, Wright, and Aaron Brody of the Pacific Institute of Religion (among others) imply. She is usually presented as the consort, not of Yahweh, but of His arch-rival for the allegience of the Israelites, the idol Baal. The female deity- doubtless thought of as Yahweh's wife by certain polytheistic cults among the ancient Israelites, just as Baal himself was often conflated with  Yahweh- is consistently depicted in the Old Testament as an idol, the worship of whom was opposed by the orthodox. Ahab was said to have "provoked" Yahweh by building an altar to the alleged "Mrs. God." The passage in 2 Kings which Stavrakopoulou cites as relating the presence of a statue of Asherah in the Temple, for which sacred garments were woven, in fact reports Josiah's removal of the statue of Asherah and the male prostitutes in the Temple, as part of a reformation which included the destruction of sites sacred to Asherah elsewhere.  The adjective used by I Kings to describe an image of the goddess is "abominable."  And the famous showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel  depicts "the 400 prophets of Asherah,who eat at Jezebel’s table" as among those to whom the Elijah issued his challenge. Deuteronomy 16:21 explicitly forbids the worship of Asherah in connection with that of Yahweh.

In other words, nothing Stavrakopoulou or Wright or Brody or the others has to say is either new or surprising. The Old Testament clearly depicts the religious history of Israel as an ongoing battle between the orthodox cult of Yahweh and often syncretistic cults which worshipped other deities, often along side of Him.

Part of the problem, of course, is that much liberal Bible scholarship rejects the Old Testament's account of the Abrahamic antecedents of Israeliste worship, insisting that Yahweh Himself is actually only a somewhat more elaborate version of a Canaanite deity. Supposedly the Israelites picked up the worship of Yahweh early in the Exodus. And what would be more reasonable than for a Canaanite god to marry a nice Canaanite goddess?

In fact, there are a number of indications in the Old Testament that Yahweh was worshipped in Canaan. For example, Moses' father-in-law, Jethro- a  Midianite priest- already worshipped Him.  But nothing in the Old Testament conflicts with the notion; the Midianites and various other Canaanite tribes, after all, were also descended from Abraham.

But leave it to the extreme adherents of the historical-critical method to take an altogether uncontroversial group of facts utterly uncontested by anybody familiar with the Old Testament, and make it into the sensational (and wholly baseless) assertion that, rather than being a heterodox aberration, the worship of Mr. and Mrs. God was somehow ever a genuine part of the official Israelite cult.

HT: Real Clear Religion

St. Jude chooses to take a sad song, and make it better

In case you wondered.

Venezuela's zany dictator, Hugo Chavez, says that capitalism is to blame for the extinction of life on Mars.

Then why do they call it "the Red Planet?" Huh? Huh? Answer me that, Hugo!

Ok. I know. You're going to blame it on the Republicans, aren't you?

Well, if not, the zanies in the media probably will. It sounds like something that Des Moines' editorially extreme alternate weekly, Cityview, would gobble right up, anyway.

Way to go, Mr. President (please note sarcasm)

According to the head of the Federal Reserve, the United States is teetering on the brink of insolvency.

The Obama administration has dug us a deficit bigger than that created by all the other presidential administrations combined.  Democrats in the habit of tsk-tsking over the Bush administration's spending should reflect that the deficit for February of this year alone was bigger than that for the entire year of 2007,

And the Left wants to keep spending...

HT: Drudge

Maybe it was a bad batch of Guinness...

... but Thursday night, after I finished my corned beef and cabbage and was nursing a pint of the Black Stuff, within five minutes I heard "Hey, Jude" performed on the bagpipes and "The Lumberjack Song" from Monty Python sung by an Irish tenor.

My dinner was eaten at a pub featuring "Black and Tan stew," which is about the equivalent of celebrating Jewish New Year by featuring cold Gestapo soup.

Just sayin'.

Sláinte!

My paternal grandmother's family, the Fishers, came from Downpatrick in County Down, Ireland. Downpatrick (in Gaelic, Dun Padraig- "Fortress,or Stronghold, of Patrick") figures prominently in the history of St. Patrick's mission to the Irish, and is where he is buried.

In Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland, there are two institutions which bring the name of St. Patrick into association with another name commonly associated with this day: Guinness. Founded in 1759 by Arthur Guinness, the brewery at St. James Gate (Gheata Shan Séamuis) uses water from a well once used by St. Patrick himself to perform baptisms. And the Guinness family had a stained glass window installed in St. Patrick's Cathedral, the seat of the Irish primate. On it are inscribed a rather appropriate portion of Matthew 25:35: "I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink."

I myself will raise a Guinness or two while enjoying my corned beef and cabbage tonight- and perhaps also a drop of Bushmill's Irish Whiskey (Irish and American spirits are properly spelled whiskey, whereas Scottish and Canadian distillations are properly whisky; in practice, the distinction is often ignored). Bushmill's is distilled in County Antrim, the Waters ancestral home. Interestingly, in Irish Gaelic "Waters" is Uisci- pronounced "Hiskey," but related to uisce beatha, meaning "water of life-" the Irish name for whiskey, and the source of the English word as well.

In Ireland, btw, they don't eat corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day. The culinary tradition there is to eat peas, potatoes, and carrots at dinner, symbolizing the green, white and orange of the Irish flag.

In any case, sláinte! ("Health!," the traditional Gaelic toast in both Ireland and Scotland).

The return of the Irish snakes, and the pagan version of the shamrock

Maewyn Succat, the the British son of a pagan Roman official named Calphurnius and the grandson of a Christian priest, was kidnapped at the age of sixteen by Irish pirates, and made a slave. His captivity seems to have been rather gentle; he was employed as a shepherd.by a Druid priest, Milchu, who treated him well.  During his long days watching the flock, he meditated on the Christianity that seems not to have been especially important to him in earlier years.

He finally managed to escape. Once back in Britain, he had a vision in which an angel disclosed to him the Vox Hibernicus- the Voice of the Irish- calling him "noble youth" ("nobel" in Gaelic is padraig) to return to the land of his captivity and convert his former captors to Christianity.  He changed his name from Maewyn ("Warlike") to the adjective the Vox Hibernicus had applied to him- Padraig- and was ordained a priest, consecrated a bishop, and given the official blessing of the Church to carry the Gospel to Ireland. His first act upon arriving there was to visit his former master, Milchu, and buy his freedom.

So successful was Patrick that, to the former slave's horror and sorrow, his former master  committed suicide, vowing not to become a "slave" of the man who had once been his own slave.

St. Patrick is said to have driven the snakes out of Ireland. In fact, natural historians tell us, there never were snakes in Ireland to begin with. Most scholars believe that the "snakes" are actually a metaphor for the influence of paganism.

The shamrock became associated with Patrick- and with Ireland- because, according to legend, he was explaining the Christian faith to an Irish pagan who told him that he could not understand how God could at the same time be three and yet only one. To illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity, Patrick supposedly bent over and plucked a piece of clover- a shamrock.

Now, here is the crucial point: while the shamrock is nothing more than common clover, it does have one necessary attribute. A shamrock, by definition, has three leaves- no more, and no less. The four-leaf clover often confused with the shamrock on St. Patrick's day is not, in fact, a shamrock at all. The entire symbolism of the shamrock is as a metaphor for the Holy Trinity. If the number of leaves is other than three, the entire symbolism of the shamrock as regards St. Patrick- and thus, Ireland- is lost!

Sadly, we're seeing more and more four leaf clovers on St. Patrick's day- even among the Irish themselves, who should know better. It was rather depressing when, a few years ago, I even saw a sign covered with four leaf clovers rather than shamrocks advertising Beamish Irish stout.

Now, it's not just that using a four leaf clover destroys the entire significance of the symbol. In an important sense, it turns that symbolism on its head. Patrick, a Christian bishop, firmly believed that our lives and the events they contain are firmly under God's control. But the four leaf clover is a symbol of the denial of that idea- of the pagan concept of luck.

I have no idea which came first: the use of the four leaf clover as a symbol of luck, or the concept that the Irish- a people whose history has been marked by poverty and suffering to a degree that few nations on Earth have known- are somehow, of all things, lucky. But it does seem, somehow, to be tied together with the confusion of a Christian symbol- the shamrock- with a pagan symbol, the four leaf clover. In themselves, he two may be nothing more than variations in the form taken by the same plant. But in terms of symbolism, they have less than nothing in common.

But in any case, if the metaphorical understanding of St. Patrick having driven the snakes from Ireland is valid,the snakes seem to have returned.

This is one American who is losing faith in his fellow citizens

In the wake of 9/11, the United States went to war in Afghanistan in order to oust the Taliban-led government which enabled and sheltered Osama bin Laden and al Quaeda.

The Taliban was ousted and a deeply-flawed but marginally viable government was installed. But unlike our ancestors, Americans have short attention spans, and seem to lack the resolve and backbone to do what we have to do for the cause of freedom and make it stick.

As portrayed at the end of the wonderful Tom Hanks film Charlie Wilson's War, we had originally turned our backs on our Afghan allies once the Soviets were ousted from Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to establish itself in the first place. We started to lose interest once again once the Taliban had been turned out of power- with the result that the Taliban staged a comeback. The deterioration of the situation there was heralded by great publicity provided by the liberal media. As a result, support for the war plummeted. We even elected a president who pledged- foolishly-to establish a deadline for U.S. withdrawal regardless of the situation on the ground.

Such an arrangement, of course, makes success very unlikely. It amounts to a message to the enemy to the effect that if they simply hang back and conserve their resources, they will have a free hand once we've had a chance to get out of the country and leave it to them.

Even Barack Obama, though, is having second thoughts. Once a person actually is responsible for the nation's foreign policy instead of being a mere critic, he is compelled to confront consequences. And the consequences of abandoning Afghanistan would be that once again al Quaeda would have an entire country to serve as its base of operations, and, together with their Taliban allies, would be free to spread the cancer of Islamic extremism and terrorism throughout the world.

Ironically,  one of the greatest heroes of modern American history, Gen. David Petraeus, has turned the situation around in Afghanistan just as he did in Iran. For the second time in as many "unwinnable" wars, a "surge" has reversed the direction of the war and placed us on the verge of victory.

Gen. Petraeus pointed out before a congressional committee this past week that while we are now winning, the situation is not irreversible. Indications have persisted that we may not fully withdraw from Afghanistan in July after all; the consequences of premature abandonment of the Karzai government might yet snatch defeat from the jaws of something which looks very much like victory.

We seem to be on the point of winning in Afghanistan, just as we seem to have won in Iraq. Two wars that the Democrats and the Left have told us for years were unwinnable seem about to be won. How about that? And now, at the point of denying al Queda and its ilk the use of Afghanistan as a source of personel, a training base, and a hiding place impervious to search on what will hopefully be a permanent basis, most of us want to surrender.

Perhaps it's all that care the media has taken to present the war in  the most pessimistic possible terms. Or maybe we, as a nation, have simply lost our resolve, or character, our backbones, and/or our minds.

But a record number of Americans apparently no longer think the war in Afghanistan was worth it, and want to give up.  One may debate the wisdom of the war in Iraq, the other victorious war the incumbent President and the Left did every thing possible to lose (though here again, Mr. Obama should be given credit for coming to his senses and recognizing both the success of the "surge" he so vigorously denounced before the fact and the geopolitical consequences of employing the policy of surrender in Iraq he advocated throughout his campaign). But not to put too fine a point on it, to give up in Afghanistan would be, in effect, to let the people sheltered Osama and abetted those who flew those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon get away with it. No reasonable person can advance an argument that, as most of us now seem to believe, the war in Afghanistan is not "worth it" without confessing an attitude which would have made pretty much any American hide his face in shame in the aftermath of the attacks whose perpetrators were sheltered and trained in a country governed by the very people we are fighting there.

The same nation which displayed the flag from every available pole or lamp post in the wake of 9/11 is now ready to run up the white one. Perhaps, while we're at it, we might apologize to Osama. And perhaps, given the apparent change in our national character and values over the past decade, the Stars and Stripes should be replaced as our national flag by a white one, perhaps depicting a bunny rabbit and the caption, "Tread on me."

HT: Drudge

Farewell to the Tenth Doctor

While this is old news to people in much of the civilized world, here in Darkest Iowa we just saw "The End of Time," the final David Tennant Dr. Who episode, on Sunday night. Our local PBS station has been showing Tennant re-runs for months in order to broadcast this episode during its fund-raising week.

I just thought I'd be remiss in not noting this, and thus bidding farewell to what most Whovians consider the greatest of all the Doctors- including even Tom Baker, who for some reason that alludes me is generally regarded as the archetype.

There will always be a special spot in my heart for my first Doctor- the Second Doctor, Patrick Traughton, whose adventures I followed at ten thirty every Sunday night during the first part of my tenure in my first parish in suburban St. Louis. I'm rather fond of John Pertwee, who succeeded Troughton, as well. And I'll always regret that circumstance prevented me from seeing as many of the episodes featuring the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, as I would have liked. While he only appeared for one season, and his heart really wasn't in it, the Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, also ranks in my top five.

But I heve to agree with the conclusion every poll I've seen of Dr. Who fans has reached: that Tennant's Tenth Doctor was the best of them all.

Starting next month, Iowa Public Television will finally begin showing the adventures of the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith. But it won't be the same.

Hawks 6, Sharks 3

The Hawks scored five goals in the second period and beat San Jose last night, 6-3.

The victory was the defending Stanley Cup champions' eighth in the last twelve games, and snapped a three-game losing streak. It leaves them all alone in fourth place in the Western Conference.

Every game from here on out is huge. All are against teams with winning records, and most are against fellow participants in the very clogged race for the last six or seven of the eight Western Conference playoff spots.

Maher hates Islam, too

It seems that unfunny comedian and sixth grade-level atheist rhetorician Bill Maher is an equal opportunity religious bigot.

He slanders Islam as well as Christianity.

HT: Real Clear Religion

Uh-oh.

The recent Blackhawks winning streak is history. They've now lost three in a row, though both their shootout defeat at the hands of Tampa Bay Thursday night and this afternoon's overtime loss to the Caps did each earn the Good Guys a point. On the positive side, the champs did tie the game with 38 seconds left on a Jonathan Toews goal after pulling the goalie on a power play late in the third period.

The Hawks aren't far from where they need to be. Mainly, they need defense and penalty killing- not goaltending; Corey Crawford has been just fine. Keep in mind, by the way, in viewing the stats to which the link above leads that Crawford has only been the Hawks' starting goalie for a little more than half the season.

But tomorrow nights's home game against San Jose is huge. All of the Hawks' remaining games are against teams with winning records, and they're in the midst of a run of games with the  four or fiveother teams that are pretty much lumped together with them for the last couple of slots in the playoffs from the Western Conference.

The Hawks repeating as Stanley Cup champions looks to me like a longshot; I have to like Washington, Philadelphia, and Vancouver right now. But again, we're not that far away. If we don't repeat, here's hoping that the Bowmans can figure out a way to upgrade our defense and penalty kill enough to overcome Dollar Bill Wirtz's final joke: the salary cap he single-handedly talked the Board of Governors into adopting, which forces the Hawks to get rid of six or seven key players from their Stanley Cup winners of last year for much, much less than they were worth.

One more argument for monogamy

According to a recent study, monogamy has a high correlation with happiness, whereas promiscuity has a high correlation with depression.

HT: Real Clear Religion

A whole lot of shakin' goin' on

At 2:15 PM local time on December 16, 1811, a massive earthquake traditionally estimated above 8.0 on the Richter scale struck the New Madrid Faul, located midway between Memphis and St. Louis.

There were some two thousand aftershocks, four of which have also been historically believed to have been stronger than 8.0. Some experts today believe that most were in fact not quite that strong. The largest of them, in any case, all occurred on February 7. 1812. This dip-slip quake caused the Mississippi River to run backward (with consequences depicted on the above, on the left), cracked walls in Boston, and rang church bells in Montreal. It is believed to be the largest earthquake ever in the contiguous United States. Alaska has experienced more powerful ones still.

Bear in mind that for every point on the Richter scale, the force of the quake is multiplied by ten. The earthquake which caused the tsunami which has devastated the coast of Japan- and moved that coastline by eight feet- was nine times as powerful as the strongest of the New Madrid quakes.

The force of such an earthquake is nearly impossible to imagine. But to give some idea of how strong the recent quake was, it moved the Earth's axis by nearly four inches.

HT: Drudge

Sign of the Times

HT: Old Lutheran

VIctor Frankenstein and Ash Wednesday

What can a writer  do with another writer's  novel- one that's already a classic? How does one improve on such a masterpiece? And why try?

Curiosity led me to want to read novelist Dean Koontz's Frankenstein novels quite a while ago. I finally gave it a whirl about ten days ago- and last night, I finished the fourth and most recent of them, Lost Souls. Koontz's answers to the questions posed in the first paragraph are that he updates the legend to the present day- not by making the whole story contemporary but by picking up where the story left off. and bringing it up to the present day.  In doing so, he makes a powerful and cogent comment on the direction in which our society seems to be heading.

The premise of the novels is that Mary Shelley actually merely wrote down a story she had heard somewhere- a story that was fundamentally true, although the events actually took place in Austria rather than in Transylvania. Victor Frankenstein- the real Victor Frankentstein-  has survived, and in the two centuries since his struggle with his supposedly final  encounter with original creation has improved his techniques many times over, infusing himself with the longevity and hardiness he has infused into an army of his own creations, with which he proposes to take over the world, exterminate the human race, expand his empire to the stars, and rule the universe as a virtual god. His is an ideology of rigid, utter materialism, of doctrinaire atheism combined with a ruthlessly intolerant and rigid determination to suppress all thought of a transcendent order in the universe, or any code he or his creations are bound to obey beyond their own wills.

Or, rather, Victor's own will. The alternative to serving God is not freedom after all, but bondage- and Koontz makes that point quite eloquently.

Koontz- a devout Roman Catholic- makes more of  the concept of free will than either the Bible in the spiritual realm or the best and most benign contemporary psychology in even the purely mundane really has room for. But by any reckoning, Victor Frankenstein's world is a ruthlessly totalitarian one. His creations exist to serve him, and him alone. He has created them stronger and more physically resistant to injury or assault than most humans, but programmed in such a way that their autonomic nervous systems shut down and they instantly die if they simply hear a simple phrase uttered in his voice.

Without going into too much further detail, Frankenstein- the monster's creator- has, in the two intervening centuries become a monster himself, an intimate over the years of Hitler and Stalin and Mao and the other great mass murderers of the modern era, many of whom have funded his work and shared his ideology in principle, even if he has kept them in the dark as to its final goal. He, like they, is a Utopian- himself a creature who has denied his Creator and sought to take His place, seeking to remake the world in his own image. Frankenstein- especially in Lost Souls- is the ultimate Post-Modernist. He is Nietzsche on steroids, a self-proclaimed Übermensch for whom the only law is the will to power.

But Frankenstein's monster- the original one- has also survived, and while Frankenstein himself has become a monster, his monster has, over the years of pain and anguish and sorrow, learned compassion and humanity. He expresses doubt early in the series as to whether, due to his unique origin, he has a soul. He finally comes to realize that he does- just as surely as his creator has lost his.

Deucalion, the former monster calls himself now- after the son of Prometheus, who stole what belonged to the gods alone and presumed to yield it to human use. He has spent many of his years in monastaries, struggling with his place in the universe and of the meaning of existence. And it seems that his creator's Creator had an agenda where Deucalion was concerned from the very beginning; the lightning bolt which gave him life also gave him an intuitive understanding of "the quantum character of the universe" which bestows on him some very strange capabilities. And this gift has its purpose. With the knowledge of his human creator's survival  has come an ironic realization for Deucalion:  like Frankenstein himself, it is his destiny to defy his creator in the service of Another.

We actually glimpse that Other in the third book of the series, Dead and Alive.  It is an exercise in the  theology of the Cross which places Him exactly where the One Who bore the cross for His own creations would put Himself on behalf of Victor's. It is in his encounter with the unnamed Christ (in a role guaranteed to make the reader uncomfortable in a profoundly salutary way) that Deucalion realizes that despite his own blasphemous origins, he is loved and valued by his creator's Creator, who has given His "grandchild" both a destiny and a mission far different from what Victor ever imagined.

As Hurricane Katrina bears down upon the city, Deucalion joins forces with New Orleans homicide detectives Carson O'Connor and Michael Maddison- a woman and a man who, at the story's beginning, decline to acknowledge that they've fallen in love with one another because to do so would no longer allow them to work together as partners- to confront Victor's plot as it begins to come to fruition. Koontz later wrote that he could not bear to inflict on post-Katrina New Orleans the further horrors of Victor's agenda, so he changed the plot in mid-series; the crisis is temporarily averted just as the hurricane hits, and the story's local changed for the second trilogy of the series, of which Lost Souls is the first book. In the process, Koontz manages to make explicit the ultimate fate of our presumptuous cleverness, and the destiny of all the works of man wrought in definance of his Maker- or in an attempt to somehow replace Him.

So what does all of this have to do with Ash Wednesday?

Everything.

We are all Victor Frankenstein, ready to declare God dead and ourselves His successor. The Old Self even in the Christian wants to honor no will but its own. Our collective Frankenstein has asserted itself to bring about a culture in which precisely the values for which Victor Frankenstein stands are in the ascendency. Materialism and ethical relativism are in vogue as they never were even in the days of the Enlightenment. Even Christians do not know their own souls, because the do not know the Faith. They are too busy constructing a Frankenstein's monster of cheap sentimentality and emotionalism and pop theology which they try to substitute for the Faith Once Delivered.

We see the Enemy for what and who he is in Koontz's thoughtful series, and it is not an accident that Koontz dedicates the third book in that series, Dead and Alive, to C.S. Lewis. Koontz's Frankenstein is, in a very real sense, a work of apologetics which compels us- not only the unbeliever, but the unbeliever in the believer- to acknowledge as, in the words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

And we are all Deucalion- redeemed by a love willing to become what we are, and to bear even the most blasphemous of our burdens and our brokenness and our bondage, to become what He is, in order that the sacrilege which penetrates to the heart of our very being may be made holy and given purpose and meaning.

All sin is idolatry. At its heart, every violation of the other commandments is a violation of the First. Strange as it may seem, Dean Koontz's Frankenstein strikes me as very appropriate Lenten reading. We can see ourselves in Victor Frankenstein- if, like Deucalion and unlike Victor himself, by God's grace we can acknowledge that have souls.

Not only that, but we can see where we, as a society, seem to be headed if we continue to forget the God that Victor denies, and adopt Victor's values as our own. And we can hear the call to repent, and to be human instead- to be as Deucalion, born in iniquity but redeemed by One on Whose love and forgiveness we had no claim.

Datsuk has noticed

Puck Daddy has an interview with the Red Wings' Pavel Datsuk in which he says this about my Blackhawks:

They are one of the leaders in the League now. They're in the Top 5. They did have a very tough beginning of the season, because it is very difficult to start a season after winning the Cup. There was a lot of attention the media paid to them. Teams were playing different against them because everyone wants to beat the Cup winner. They also had so many changed made during the offseason. On top of that they had a very tough schedule to start off the season. It all takes its toll. But right now they're back to where they should be.

While there's an element of whistling in the dark here that I freely admit- you don't lose the number and quality of players the champs did to Bill Wirtz's pet salary cap without suffering a falloff in the overall quality of your team- I think Datsuk is right.

At least I hope Datsuk is right.

I'm about to watch the Hawks play Florida on TV. A victory would be their tenth in a row. And it's March... the playoffs are just around the corner.

ADDENDUM: Actually, while they're fourth in the conference, the Hawks are tenth in the league. And despite outshooting Florida 39-15 last night, they lost, 3-2. Corey Crawford had a bad first period, allowing three goals (he was badly screened on the third). 

Sometimes in hockey you lose even games you dominate. But when you outshoot the other guys 39-15, you have to figure that you're going to be OK if you keep it up.

They try again tonight against Tampa Bay. They have fifteen games left- and the next four after tonight, against teams either just in front of them or just behind them in the standings, will be crucial.

So what are we waiting for? Bring on the stimulus spending...NOT!!!

February's monthly deficit was $223 billion.

That was a monthly deficit- the biggest in history.

Democrats and others inclined to blame George W. Bush for the deficit should reflect that this is bigger than the annual deficit in 2007,

HT: Drudge

One and done for The One?

Thomas McClanahan of the Kansas City Star thinks that President Obama, while he will be formidable in 2012, is very beatable- especially by, say, Mitch Daniels or Chris Christie.

From your word processor to God's inbox, Mr. M.

HT: Real Clear Politics

Reality check

It's a sad commentary on the intellectual honesty of the cultural Left that it has to be pointed out. But the ELCA, Lisa Miller, and others in denial are wrong.

The Bible really does condemn homosexuality.

Nor is there really any legitimate question about that fact.

It just goes to show that Dr. Goebbels was right: if you repeat an obvious lie often enough, people will believe it.

HT: Real Clear Religion

Here come the Hawks!

The defending Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks beat Carolina 5-2 last night for their seventh consecutive victory.

The Hawks ratcheted it up a notch in the third period, the stanza where they've had trouble all season, blowing open a close game.

The Hawks are finding themselves at precisely the right time- not only to make a run at a good seed in the playoffs, but to make it two in a row.

A fifth Stanley Cup banner would look awfully good in the rafters at the UC.

ONE GOAL!

It's official: the sky is falling

The highly politicized scientific establishment has made it official: the world's sixth mass extinction may be underway- and it's all humanity's fault.

Remember the days when you could trust what scientists said to be the quantifiable truth, instead of an agenda-ridden attempt to advance an ideology?

Remember, to quote novelist Dean Koonz, when science "was about truth instead of power?"

Remember when the very definition of science was the pursuit of truth wherever it led- precisely without an agenda?

Alas, science has given way to Scientism- and in a post-modern age such as ours, in which there is widely supposed to be no such thing as truth, "truth" inevitably becomes, as Nietzsche maintained, nothing more or less than the will to power.

Probert and Fleming had CTE

Blackhawks tough guys Bob Probert (left) and Reggie Fleming (below, right)suffered from CTE- the same syndrome fear of which lead Bears great Dave Duerson to take his own life a little over a week ago.

CTE is a dementia that comes from repeated blows to the head, such as those suffered by boxers, football players- and, it seems, hockey players. Hockey players suffering from the syndrome, however, tend- like both Probert and Fleming- to be those who played at least part of their careersbefore the NHL instituted its requirement that players wear helmets.

The syndrome- which often involves personality changes, memory loss, depression, and other symptoms similar to Alzheimer's Disease and other dementias- can only be positively diagnosed on autopsy. Probert, who died of heart failure, left instructions similar to those Duerson gave in his suicide note: to make sure that, after his death, his brain was studied for what it could teach medical science about the consequences of repeated brain injury. Probert and Fleming were both as famous, however, for their fighting abilities as for their hockey playing.

Fleming was a member of the 1961 Hawks Stanley Cup championship team. Probert, before turning away from the Dark Side and joining the good guys, played most of his career with the Red Wings.

Hawks appear headed for the playoffs

The Blackhawks- who have won five straight games, and are finally geting things together- moved into fifth place in the Western Conference last night with a win over Minnesota.

The top eight teams in each conference make the playoffs. In other words, if the season ended today, the Hawks would get their chance to defend the Stanley Cup after all, despite a season that started off very, very discouraging indeed.