The Bush-Cheney spin

From The Corner:

"Senator Kerry picked one of the best lawyers in America as his running mate, and yet in the debate tonight that lawyer was unable to defend Senator Kerry's record. If Senator Edwards can't defend Kerry's record on Iraq, defense, taxes, etc., then it must truly be indefensible."

Good one.

Although it's indicative of the state of modern American politics that the party of the guy that most people think won needs to spin.

In more important news...

Twins win! Twins win! Twins win!

"VP Debate Ends: Viewers Eager to Learn Who Won"

Sadly, this probably has a good deal of truth in it.

And the winner is...

Cheney.

I thought he was himself: calm, precise, and effective. Yeah, he had some lame arguments, but all in all, he responded to Edwards' attacks, and blasted him when appropriate.

Edwards reminded me of Clinton. Without the bottom lip bite, and not as effective.

I see in some preliminary surfing that some other Bush supporters think Edwards got pounded... I'm not sure if I agree with that, but I do think Cheney won the debate.

What effect will it have? Who knows.

Hmm...

Apparently, the Air Force has been working on anti-matter weapons, which would dwarf even nukes in terms of destructive power.

The question is, should we develop them?

New ITC document

Thanks to Kevin Miller, I see that the International Theological Commission has come out with a new document: "Communion and Service: The Human Person Created in the Image of God." As Kevin summarizes the Zenit report, the text "offers a basis to debate such current topics as evolution, environmental ethics and bioethics."

Course, if I was keeping up on my Zenit reports, I'd have seen it already... sigh.

Good news!

My second reader gave his approval to my dissertation, which means that I get to go to Rome sometime in the next month or two, publicly defend the dissertation, and (presuming that goes well) earn the doctorate!

Woo-hoo!

Scientism: making a god out of Science

In light of Senator Kerry's speech today on the need [sic] for increased killing of the youngest of human beings -- er, for embryonic stem cell research, that is -- Paul Cella offers some outstanding thoughts. I was tempted to post the entire thing, but here's blurb whet your appetite:

What this is, it seems to me, is not science but scientism; and when men argue that philosophical or theological objections to theory X or procedure Y ought to be discounted, and the decisions about its use made purely on the basis of “good science,” it is very difficult for a detached observer to conclude that they really mean what they say. Some philosophical system must animate science’s interaction with human endeavors. There is no way around this: it cannot illuminate its own applications. The scientific method tells us how a discrete question is to be answered; it does not tell us how to apply the answer to life. We want to discover whether genetic cloning at the embryonic stage is possible: science can answer that question. But it can tell us almost precisely nothing about whether such technology ought to be used by men (the only assistance I can imagine science providing on this latter question is to inform us that cloning carries high risks of failure.) Bereft of first principles, Science is nothing but a decaying mass of unconnected facts, an organ with no mind to command it.

Okay, so that was a hefty blurb. But there's plenty more to read... go do so.

An election issue? Darn right!

Bill Cork on the importance of today's defeat in the House of the constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

First Debate

I was teaching the diocesan bible study & apologetics courses last night, and hence only caught the last ten minutes or so of the debate, and that on the radio.

Based on what I heard, I thought Kerry did a slightly better job. I spoke with my wife, and she thought Bush came off better on TV than on the radio.

From what I've seen, it sounds like the consensus (among both sides of the aisle) is that it was a narrow Kerry victory (although a few think it was a draw, and some think Bush won). Quite a few folks think that Kerry needed a knockout, and hence his narrow victory was insufficient. While I don't think he scored a knockout (based on what I heard and what I've seen after the fact), I do think this debate was helpful to Kerry, although there's room for debate about the extent of the help.

One thing, though: one of the questions I caught pertained to Russia and Putin (can someone teach George to pronounce "Vladimir" as "Vladimeer" and not "Vladimer"?). In his time, Kerry noted how shortly after the fall of the USSR, he saw all the files in KGB headquarters, underneath Treblinka Square.

There's a little problem... Treblinka was a Nazi death camp! Kerry was referring to Lubyankaya Square. Now, that's really not that big of a deal. But somehow I suspect that if the President had said it, we'd be hearing a lot more about it.

In spite of that gaffe, I still give the debate to Kerry, slightly.

"I'm a Pro-Life Democrat"

An interview with the Executive Director of Democrats for Life of America

Keep this in mind

The next time someone talks about how President Bush "stole the election," remind them of this:

A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago conducted the six-month study for a consortium of eight news media companies, including CNN.

Of course, some people never let things like facts get in the way of their political views.

More 'ad limina' addresses

This spring, I linked the first seven addresses by the Holy Father to the bishops of the U.S. making their ad limina reports to Rome.

John Paul II received another group in June, and has received two more in September.

The June address was to the bishops of the Provinces of Portland, Seattle, and Anchorage.

The first September address was to the bishops of the Provinces of Boston and Hartford.

The second was to the bishops of the Region of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

New link!

I've become pretty bad about keeping up on linking other blogs these days. One of those who have been overlooked is "Anne Shirley" of Ruminations. The really sad thing is that Anne is probably the geographically closest blogger to me, at least in St. Blogs and the other circles I travel in in Blogdom.

Sorry for the delinquency, Anne!

Chill out, people

Apropos of this post of mine from last week, I want to reiterate something: this election is not, I repeat, not, the end all and be all of our existence on the planet Earth. I've seen way too many people (chiefly on the left, but not exclusively) working themselves into hysterics about the outcome of the presidential election, to the point that I'm thinking they're treating this like a religion.

Chill out, folks.

Yes, this election is important, and vitally so. But it is not the sum meaning of our lives. The fact of the matter is, many of the things that both sides dislike and even abhor about the other side will continue after the election: we'll still have troops in Iraq (thank God!), and abortion will still be legal (sadly). Again, the election is important: President Bush has the right overall stance on both hotbutton issues, and the actions he'd take will make a difference on both issues.

Nonetheless, there are still more important things than this race, and I think we need to remember that.

More AP bias

From Powerline, here and here.

Bush v. Kerry

I've found a couple interesting quotes in stories on the election over the last couple of days.

In this MSNBC story, we find the following:

Betsy Bodenhamer, a 33-year-old teacher’s aide and mother of two from Galesburg, Ill., says she has always voted for Democrats in recent presidential elections. This year, she’s leaning toward Bush.
“I think if Kerry gets elected, he’s going to pull everybody out of Iraq and they’ll have to fend for themselves,” she said. “Situations like 9/11 will happen again and again.”

And in this Newsweek internet exclusive, we find this quote (from this NYTimes story):

Tom Ampleman, a blue-collar union member who lives near this suburb just outside St. Louis, says he voted for Bill Clinton twice and then Al Gore, but he is now grappling with deep religious misgivings about the Democratic Party.

"I haven't declared myself a Republican, but if I had to go in there and vote right now I probably would vote for the Republicans," Mr. Ampleman said recently, sitting in his pickup truck at a public park here.

"I'm not happy with the moral issues at all with the Democrats," continued Mr. Ampleman, who works as a welder at an aerospace company. "The Republicans will hurt me in the long run in providing for my family, but it's probably more important to watch out for the unborn and that kind of stuff."

Now, I disagree with Mr. Ampleman when he says that Republican policies will be more harmful to his ability to provide for his family, but regardless... statements like this befuddle liberals to no end. How -- they wonder -- can people vote for politicians whose policies are harmful to them? Ampleman gives them the answer: because on the most important issues, those politicians have it right, and voters like these are more interested in voting according to principle than pocketbook.

You realize what's going on here? You have voters who act against their own self-interests, and liberals -- who constantly attack and villify conservatives as the supporters of the rich and opporessors of the little guy, i.e. as the ones who act solely according to their own self-interests -- are upset and dumbfounded!

For more on this, read the Newsweek exlusive I linked... the title of the story is, "It's About Abortion, Stupid," and its point is that

Democrats stick to the uninspiring and oversimplified notion that people reliably vote their pocketbook, period. In this view, even Iraq is as much as anything else an economic disaster. “This is the Clinton legacy; never strike a moral issue,” complains one Kerry adviser who feels his alternative view has not been heard.

The author also notes, regarding Mr. Ampleman,

I find it wonderful that there are Tom Amplemans out there for whom voting is not only an economic calculation—a what’s-in-it-for-me? decision—but a moral exercise, a matter of trying to do the right thing.

But Democrats don’t seem to get that. And they don’t get Tom at all.

Crazy world, as Scorpions said.

(Hat tip to Emily of After Abortion for linking the Newsweek article.)

Santorum sets the record straight

Recently there has been some complaining in St. Blogs that Senator Rick Santorum not only supported pro-abortion Arlen Spector in his primary battle with pro-life Pat Toomey, but now also supports the rape & incest exceptions for abortion.

Santorum replied to both complaints in a letter to the editor (responding to another letter) in the Sept. 19-25 issue of National Catholic Register. He states that he "would not require exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother." So that's that.

As far as his support for Spector, he reiterates what he's said before: pro-life legislation can only pass if there is a Republican majority in the Senate, and since Spector stands a much better chance of winning the general election than Toomey, the overall pro-life cause led him to endorse Spector. Now, there's obviously other ways to read the situation, but I think it's unreasonable to think that Santorum has suddenly jettisoned his pro-life principles for partisan political reasons. Of course, I could be wrong, but I'd rather give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Were he to continue to act in a questionable manner, I'd revisit my stance. But at this point, I believe the guy.

"Public Schools No Place for Teachers' Kids"

That's the headline for this Washington Times story, which details the results of a study which found that "nationwide, public school teachers are almost twice as likely as other parents to choose private schools for their own children," and that "more than 1 in 5 public school teachers said their children attend private schools."

Flip-flop, but not who you think

Yesterday, John J. Miller posted the following at The Corner:

"In the end, what difference does it make what one candidate or the other did or didn't do during the Vietnam War? In some ways, that war is as distant as the Napoleonic campaigns." That's Dan Rather, talking about the Swift Boat Vets in an interview published on Aug 30. I hadn't seen it before reading today's WSJ editorial--which goes on to make this simple observation: "Nine days later Mr. Rather was reporting on Mr. Bush's National Guard service as if it were the story of a lifetime." Let's hope it really is the story of a lifetime--the one for which Dan Rather is always remembered.

How transparent can you be?