GUNNED DOWN IN CHURCH
Now there's a headline for the ages.
I wish Dr. George Tiller had not been gunned down, anywhere. It doesn't change the fact that he was a baby-killer, a regular practitioner of the most grisly and barbaric form of abortion on the late-term viable unborn baby (for a healthy fee of five grand). But killing him is counter-productive, to say the least.
I'm slightly at a loss for words about this, which is good because I'd probably find the wrong ones. Robert Stacy ("The Other") McCain speaks well at this difficult moment:
Sometimes, when the stubborn wickedness of a people offends God, the Almighty withholds His divine protection, permitting those sinners to have their own way, following the road to destruction so that they are subjected to evil rulers and unjust laws. Never, however, does the wise and faithful Christian resort to the kind of lawlessness practiced with such cruelty today in Kansas.
One reason I so despise such criminal idiocy is that, as a student of history, I cannot think of a single instance in which assassination has produced anything good, no matter how evil or misguided the victim, nor how well-intentioned or malevolent the assassin.
From Brutus and the other republican Senators who slew Julius Caesar to Charlotte Corday, from John Wilkes Booth to Gavrilo Princip, and so onto Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray, assassination seems inevitably to work against the purposes of its practitioners.
Those who slew Caesar did not save the Roman republic. Marat's death only incited the Jacobins to greater terror. Booth's pistol conjured up a spirit of vengeance against the South more terrible than war itself. Assassination is an act of nihilism. Whatever the motive of the crime, the horror it evokes always inspires a draconian response, and involves other consequences never intended by the criminal.
The alleged assailant, Scott Roeder, is about as "typical" a pro-life advocate as the the Reverend Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church brood are typical Christian believers. I guess it's fitting that the Phelps clan wasted no time in showing up to support the murderer. They deserve each other.
Roeder began his career as a nutjob by joining up with the "Freemen" movement, an anti-government anti-tax cult that instructs poor dupes how to declare themselves "sovereign men" so they can dodge their taxes and legitimate creditors. (Hard to find a link to this bunch that isn't completely suspect.) He was also charged with possession of bomb-making materials, but acquitted due to procedural irregularities on the search -- according to his ex-wife this just made him more self-righteous.
So in other words, whatever flirtation he may have had with mainstream pro-life groups, he is one of those people who has always been of no use whatsoever, unwilling to do the kind of hard-slagging shoe-leather work that stays within the law and tries to change minds. It appears that stewing away in his little rage-bubble in the end proved unsatisfactory, and it appears that when he finally lifted a finger it was wrapped around a fire-arm. Lazy sod.
So in one blast of a gun, a murderer has shot the legs out from under every reasoned argument and every reasonable person who deplores abortion and works for the day that every child will be welcomed in life and protected by law.
Thank you so much, idiot.
Dr. Tiller joins the very short list of abortionists who have been killed for their profession. This list remains an infinitessimal fraction of the number of abortionists killed on episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent and in other television and film fantasies regularly conjured up by the artistic supporters of "a woman's right to choose."
And that, as Forrest Gump would say, is all I have to say about that.
FLOTUS: NO CHEAP DATE
President Obama and wife Michelle did a quick hop down to The Big Apple to catch a Broadway show, then back home again the same night. Needless to say, it cost more than that similar jaunt taken by Sky Masterson and Sarah Brown to Havana, in Broadway's timeless "Guys and Dolls". Cost estimates have run anywhere from $24,000 (Ha! are you kidding me?) to 75,000 pounds to $250,000 (at least, I'm bettin').
Now, as the mother of a certain Marine who flew a 100-foot helicopter from California to Wyoming, as part of a Normandy-style landing operation to facilitate Dick Cheney playing a round of golf during the last administration, I have no illusions about what it costs for the President to go anywhere safely for any purpose, and Lord knows we don't expect him to live like a monk while he's in office.
Or do we? At least we can say for sure that Cheney did not follow any of his well-escorted vacations with a speech scolding the American public into regarding the prospect of their personal economic train-wreck as a "sacrifice" they are "called to make." (Very Biblical language for describing the Obamandated downhill slide on the poverty wagon -- appropriate enough, I guess, considering the Divine Source.)
So normally I wouldn't give the cost of a Presidential date-night a second thought. But I'd be pretty surprised if any president in my memory ever did something similar -- that is, the drive-by drop-in for totally private entertainment purposes, to another city in another state, and home again that night -- on the public buck. We've had some jet-set presidents who would be quite comfortable doing such things, but usually for fund-raisers or some public event, and likely coupled with some sort of official business. Other presidents (the Bushes come to mind) would not have been temperamentally inclined to this brand of rather decadent jetting about for private fun. If that's another way of saying they were dull homebodies, I won't argue.
But whatever their personal habits, most of them lacked the rare kind of gall it takes to run for president on promises of exceptional purity, preach sacrifice, enforce hardship, and live like a frickin' sultan.
All that without bothering to put on a tie.
I don't know about Michelle, but when I get all duded up I do NOT want to be escorted by a guy in an unbuttoned shirt. As usual, Michelle managed to screw up an otherwise good-looking ensemble with something inexplicable, in this case an electric blue clutch purse. But at least she had a "finished" look, complete with sparkly jewels. So POTUS, put on a damn tie. FLOTUS should have kicked your butt.
This is the first time I've ever heard the First Lady referred to as "FLOTUS", which is only logical but somehow still funny. It's probably just me -- the word is too reminiscent of my first childbirth confinement, when the Last Nurse in the Nation to bother with wearing a little white cap and using proper technical terms kept asking me if I had passed any "flatus." She was actually a nice break from the presumptuous informality of her [our] generation, and I should never have referred to her as "Nurse Snippet."
A LITTLE CONFECTION FOR CATHOLICS
SUFFERING FROM BAD MUSIC:
A recent extended (as they always are) conversation with my niece and namesake yielded some fun concepts for those of us who subscribe to the credo of those folks over at the now defunct Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas. Here's my contribution:
GUARANTEED TO SOUR YOUR SUNDAE!!
IT'S BLAND!
IT'S FRUITY!
IT'S OOZING WITH SACCHARINE!!!
It's shot through and through
with gobs of heretical goo,
and topped with candy-coated NUTS --
THE ULTIMATE INDULGENCE!
Discover why Moses wandered for 40 years lost in the DESSERT!!
Haugen-Haas -- More dangerous than Ben and Jerry's.
Gum up your vocal chords, and go for it.
