Recession Chugs on, Except in Government
Washington Examiner, Editorial, February 8, 2010
Sundance and the Dance of Death
Posted By Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, Catholic Exchange, February 8, 2010
Honestly, the last place I ever imagined seeing my face was on the big screen at the Sundance Film Festival. I actually appeared in a documentary film last week called “12th and Delaware” which attempted to show the struggle between life and death in the real-life scenarios of abortion-minded women. The name of the film derives from the street names on an ordinary corner in Ft. Pierce, FL where extraordinary things happen every day. On one side of the street is a death camp (i.e., an abortion mill) and on the other side is a center of life, the Pregnancy Care Center (PCC), which I helped found in 1999. I still serve on the Board of the PCC, and my greatest privilege is listening to the first-hand accounts of the miracles that happen there everyday. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of babies have been spared from a violent death at that abortion mill – and their mothers spared the agony of suffering from an abortion because of the work of Pregnancy Care Center.
The film did not win any Sundance honors or Academy nominations, but then again, the greenie avatars that frequent these rarified environments were not likely to be thrilled with a subject that most of them just want to go away. After all, abortion is an ugly business and even the most avid abortionists and left-wing radicals don’t want to draw too much attention to it.
We agreed to do the documentary for the purposes of telling the story of the heroic work of crisis pregnancy centers all over the world. As in all dealings with those who favor abortion, however, a cloud of deceit blanketed the film project right from the very beginning even though the directors came dressed as “objective” reporters. They promised us that the film was to center solely on the ministry and good work of the Pregnancy Care Center, but they began secretly filming at the abortuary across the street in order to get a “balanced” perspective, and of course they did not tell us of it until the movie actually premiered. Since the abortion center and its workers knew from the beginning that the PCC was being filmed, their responses, attitudes and actions were of course well-constructed to present a Hollywood-type view of abortionists as compassionate helpers of women. In one scene, for example, the abortion clinic owner, whose name is – appropriately – Candace Dye , hastily decides on camera to give one of her clients a $50.00 discount on her abortion. Can you imagine an abortionist giving away her profits? Now that is genuine acting.
Despite the mendacity of the pro-abortion media, the story of the heroism of the women who work in pregnancy care centers needed to be told. The extraordinary commitment of the women in the crisis pregnancy ministry undoubtedly makes them the unsung heroes of the pro-life movement. Best of all, the film highlights the uniquely creative and positive response of the movement that loves both the woman and the baby but does not make a single cent helping them . No one in the abortion business can say that – something else curiously left out of the film!
Anne Lotierzo, the director of the Pregnancy Care Center was the protagonist of the story and could not have given a better example of the profound zeal for the welfare of the abortion-minded women and their babies that is typical of pregnancy center directors. She told me once about a young woman who came into the PCC in error, thinking it was the abortion clinic where she had an appointment to abort that very morning. When Anne told her it was not, she began to sob. Through her tears she looked up and cried, “I was up all night talking to God. I haven’t lived a good life, I have ignored Him but I knew He would listen. I said, ‘God, give me a sign, just give me just one sign that you want this baby!’ This is it, this is the sign.” The young woman went on to make a complete change of life, returned home to another state into the loving embrace of her parents who were thrilled with their new grandson.
Anne and her team are there on the front lines of the battle between life and death, and they meet women in the last desperate moments before an abortion to let them know that it’s not too late to choose life. That’s reality, not a reality show. The pregnancy care ministry is a real-life drama, not a documentary, and I know that God rewards them for all their heroism.
By the way, I forgot to tell you about my scenes in the film. The filmmakers came to a pro-life Mass and talk I did in IL last year and filmed me giving my main stump speech about the role of the devil in the grisly abortion business. I can only imagine the faces of the movie industry big-wigs when they were forced to listen to one of my homilies at Sundance! Come to think of it, maybe that’s why the documentary didn’t win any awards: the people in the rabidly pro-abortion movie industry don’t like anyone saying bad things about their boss.
Critics ‘Crucify’ Palin Over Notes on Hand; Say Nothing of Obama’s Reliance of Teleprompter Use for Speech to 6th Graders
If You Can Write It On Your Hand, You’re Probably On The Right Track
Jillian Bandes, TownHall.com, February 08, 2010
Huffington Post is all over this image, showing Sarah Palin’s hand during the Tea Party Convention speech. On it, she has written: “Energy, budget cut tax, Lift American Spirits.”
http://townhall.com/blog/g/d06806da-202c-4cc3-9f25-5bc2bd7ee9d6
Obama Deploys ‘Prompters for Primary School Appearance
FALLS CHURCH, VA – JANUARY 19: U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the ‘Race To The Top’ program at the Graham Road Elementary School January 19, 2010 in Falls Church, Virginia. The President is announcing his request for an additional $1.35 billion in 2011 for the program that was created as part of the economic stimulus bill signed into law last year. He is joined by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
http://bigjournalism.com/mwalsh/2010/01/25/not-a-photoshop-monday-pet-goat-open-thread/
Obama’s New Budget Contains Massive Funding of Abortion, Planned Parenthood
By Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com Editor, February 2, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — President Barack Obama released his FY 2011 budget on Monday and it contains provisions that will force Americans to pay for abortions in the United States and promoting abortion abroad. The budget takes advantage of Congress having overturned the ban on abortion funding in the nation’s capital.
Obama’s FY 2010 budget contained a new policy allowing public funding for abortion in the District of Columbia and Congress eventually approved overturning the Dornan amendment that had long banned funding.
Page 1248 of Obama’s proposed budget requests that public funding for abortion in the District of Columbia be continued.
As was the case last year, the Obama budget also proposes overturning another ban on abortion funding — concerning the Legal Services Corporation.
Congress has previously approved budgets that retain a long-standing prohibition on the Legal Services Corporation, which provides legal help to lower-income Americans, providing legal counseling to any person or entity “that participates in any litigation with respect to abortion.” ….continued….. http://www.lifenews.com/nat5952.html
Why Did the USCCB Join This Civil Rights Organization?
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Deal Hudson, Inside Catholic, Feb. 8, 2010
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Members of the LCCHR must pay annual dues depending on the size of the group ($1,000 minimum) and “must share LCCHR’s principles and purposes.” These criteria were confirmed by Lisa Haywood, membership services director:
Equal rights, equal opportunities and equal justice with regard to race, religion, ethnic origin, gender, disability, age, or sexual orientation; and in which every group is accorded an equal opportunity to enter fully into the general life of the society with mutual acceptance and regard for difference.
As a general statement, this contains nothing objectionable; the trouble is with its application. In short, the LCCHR lobbies on behalf of abortion rights and same-sex marriage.
The question naturally arises: Why did the bishops’ conference join this organization? When LCCHR staff sit in front of a member of Congress, they can legitimately say they are representing the Catholic bishops.
There is nothing ambiguous about LCCHR’s lobbying activity on behalf of abortion, same-sex marriage, and “family planning.” All the items on the LCCHR Web site listed here affirm their support of “marriage equality” and opposition to bans on same-sex marriage — policy positions directly opposed to the teaching of the Catholic Church.
For example, this press release from February 2004 expresses LCCHR’s opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment. In it, deputy director Nancy Zirkin states:
The proposed amendment would not only prohibit states from granting equal marriage rights to same-sex couples, but apparently seeks also to deprive same-sex couples and their families of fundamental protections such as hospital visitation, inheritance rights, and health care benefits, whether conveyed through marriage or other legally recognized relationships, running afoul of basic principles of fairness as well as causing harm to real children and real families.
Regarding its abortion advocacy, LCCHR supports the ratification of the United Nations’ notoriously pro-abortion Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW): “The Convention is the only human rights treaty which affirms the reproductive rights of women and targets culture and tradition as influential forces shaping gender roles and family relations.”
LCCHR also praises the work of Planned Parenthood, saying it “delivers vital reproductive health care, sex education, and information to millions of women, men, and young people worldwide.” And a letter from LCCHR to Attorney General Michael Mukasey supporting the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act argues:
The DOJ bears a critical role in enforcing and protecting women’s basic rights affecting their health, privacy and safety through the positions it takes in key constitutional and statutory interpretation cases, and in many other ways. For example, it is responsible for enforcing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which is key in protecting women’s access to reproductive health care.
For many years, LCCHR has lobbied hard against the confirmation of pro-life judges and justices. In the midst of the debate of pro-abortion nominee Dawn Johnsen, Nancy Zirkin asserted that civil-rights groups are upset that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) hasn’t made the abortion advocate a higher priority. “There’s frustration she’s not at the top of the list,” Zirkin said.
Zirkin’s comment is consistent with the LCCHR’s history of opposition to judges who are pro-life and against same-sex marriage. LCCHR opposed the confirmation of J. Leon Holmes “because of a series of very troubling statements that he made during his legal career that called into question his impartiality on important issues of gender equality, civil rights, women’s rights.” Other pro-life nominees opposed by LCCR include Charles Pickering Sr., Victor J. Wolski, Clarence Thomas, Matthew W. McConnell, and D. Michael Fischer.
Finally, it should be noted that the USCCB participated in the 2007 and 2008 annual dinner to raise funds for the Leadership Conference of Civil Rights. Evidently, the USCCB regards the work of LCCR so highly it wants to provide support over and above its annual dues.
Last October, I questioned the USCCB’s membership in the So They Might See coalition, which had called for a FCC investigation into the so-called “hate speech” of Rush Limbaugh. USCCB spokesman Helen Osman explained that the USCCB “shares So We Might See’s general commitments to improving access to broadband among the under-served; to reducing violence in all media; and to reducing the excess of advertising in children’s programming” (emphasis added).
A similar argument will not succeed in explaining the relationship between the bishops’ conference and this civil-rights group. The “general commitments” of LCCHR include both the promotion of abortion on demand and same-sex marriage as civil rights.
Deal W. Hudson is the director of InsideCatholic.com and the author of Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (Simon and Schuster).
http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7632&Itemid=48
Does He Always Have to Be the Center of Attention?
“Super Bowl No Place for Obama Interview”
By: Lowell Ponte, NewsMax, February 8, 2010
The Super Bowl is supposed to be an event where football fans can forget worldly worries for a day by submerging themselves in beer, pizza, new funny ads, sportscaster predictions and postmortems, and focus on the contest between the two most successful NFL teams.
So why during Sunday’s pregame did CBS, the network carrying this game, cut away for a 10-minute (it felt like an hour) interview of President Barack Obama done by CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric?
Was America suffering withdrawal symptoms from going a few hours without Mr. Obama’s relentless appearances on our TVs?
Americans have come to expect a brief appearance by presidents on Super Bowl weekend but usually by telephone after the game, and then only to congratulate the winners.
Despite having the biggest TV audience of the year, few presidents would try forcing partisan politics down its throat.
But Couric, whose dismal ratings and $15 million annual pay have sparked rumors she may soon be fired, began her interview by asking Mr. Obama about whether he will press ahead on healthcare legislation.
Continue reading
QUOTE OF THE DAY!
‘The Green Police’: Audi Super Bowl Commercial Envision Enviromental Future
JammieWearingFool: The scary thing is the environmental wackos would have you arrested for some of these “crimes” in the commercial.
“Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.” So What’s the Problem?
February 7, 2010 at 8:29 pm – Focus on the Family
Dateline: Colorado Springs, CO
USA Today: What could they say to this? Pam Tebow, a happy mom, stands center screen, talking about her “miracle” baby Timmy and how he “almost didn’t make it into this world.” She beams, “He’s all grown up now” but she worries because, “with all our family’s been through, you have to be tough.”
USA Today: ‘Miracle’ Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad Puts Hit on Critics
At about 6:43 p.m. ET, one simple ad changed the Super Bowl forever.
It’s now an accepted truism that the Super Bowl is as much about the advertising as the on-field action; of the estimated 100 million people who will view this year’s game, a significant number can’t identify anyone outside of Peyton Manning(notes). But almost everyone will remember the commercials –- in particular, one entitled “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.”
It appears simple enough: Pam Tebow telling a heartwarming story about her rather famous son, former University of Florida star quarterback Tim Tebow, punctuated with a little CGI’d violence. Indeed, given all the hype that had built up about the commercial — the rumor that it would be a strident anti-abortion screed, for instance — many viewers were left with an “is that it?” feeling afterward. (A slightly different version of the ad aired before the game.) But it’s what’s implied, what the ad represents, that could fundamentally alter the Super Bowl commercial landscape.
Over the past 43 Super Bowls, commercials have grown from simple product pitches into pop-art touchstones as companies spend millions for 30 seconds of the nation’s undivided attention. They’ve run the gamut from provocative to subversive, ridiculous to sentimental. They’ve employed celebrities and ordinary people; they’ve praised and mocked their subjects. But until Sunday, they all had one thing in common: They stayed away from the charged worlds of politics, religion and morality.
With one gently pitched 30-second ad, however, all that has changed. A door previously closed has now been cracked open. The ad isn’t simply an advocacy of a particular moral position; it has the potential to be a watershed moment in our national discourse if we allow real-world concerns to impact our entertainment.
For most of its 44-year existence, the Super Bowl has advocated only one form of morality: worship of the Super Bowl itself and its sponsors. Certainly, some companies have pushed the bounds of good taste, and the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake wardrobe malfunction of 2004 caused ripples throughout popular culture that are still being felt. But for the most part, the Super Bowl advocated and promoted a mainstream, middle-of-the-road existence that steered clear of divisive or controversial subjects.
Some ads make news because they were rejected. Indeed, GoDaddy.com has built an entire cottage industry on promoting its banned Super Bowl ads. This year, GoDaddy’s ad featuring driver Danica Patrick and an effeminate football player didn’t pass muster with CBS, nor did an ad for a male dating site called ManCrunch.com. Both had provocative, potentially controversial themes.
Which, in turn, makes the approval of Focus on the Family’s ad an interesting case study. Certainly, there’s no mistaking Focus on the Family’s intent or the magnitude of its controversial message, even if this particular ad’s content doesn’t incite any fiery emotions. The ad is the first chapter of a story, not the story itself.
The ad campaign also serves as a stake in the ground for Tebow himself. Tebow embodies unimpeachable, almost unbelievable moral fortitude. He’s gone on record as saying he is still a virgin and will remain so until marriage, and in a post-Tiger Woods world, he makes for an attractive corporate spokesman.
Ironically, his willingness to appeal to only a segment of the population may bolster his public image. We’re in polarizing times, where public figures are more than willing to trade mass appeal for targeted devotion. (Think Sarah Palin, for instance, who’s phenomenally popular now with right-leaning crowds despite having deeply unfavorable ratings with other segments of the American public.) If Tebow is willing to make that trade, it puts him in stark opposition to the tradition of megapopular athlete pitchmen like Michael Jordan, who famously declined to take political stands under the rationale that those who might be in opposition to the message buy shoes, too.
On a larger scale, though, the Tebow ad has the potential to change the landscape of Super Bowl advertising, and, in turn, the national post-Super Bowl conversation. Advocacy groups tend to follow the approach of siblings appealing to their parents: they did it, so why can’t we? The Tebow ad now serves as precedent; from now on, a network that turns down an advocacy ad is inviting a lawsuit, or at the very least wide-scale protests. The result could be that networks give equal time to opposing points of view, leading to a can-you-top-this cycle of advocacy messaging.
Certainly, one of America’s most fundamental rights is that every organization has the right to speak its piece. And if said organization happens to have the millions necessary to buy airtime during the Super Bowl, there’s a valid argument for allowing them to do so. But what about the many millions who look at the Super Bowl as an escape from the thorny political and moral issues of the day, who want nothing more than to watch some football and laugh at a few amusing ads along the way? Should money and political ambition trump the original purpose of the game? Do we need to have moral and ethical discussions involved in every corner of our lives? Or is that exactly what we need?
Years from now, as we sit through Super Bowls stuffed with ad after preachy, chastising ad, we just might long for the simpler times of burping frogs.
GOSPEL & MEDITATION: Only Believe in Christ’s Healing Power
Father Patrick Murphy, LC - Monday, 5th week in OT
Mark 6:53-56
After making the crossing, they came to land at Gennesaret and tied up there. As they were leaving the boat, people immediately recognized him. They scurried about the surrounding country and began to bring in the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed.
Introductory Prayer: I believe in your power of healing grace, in your capacity to heal both physically and spiritually. I come to you in spiritual illness and weakness, confident in your desire to heal and strengthen me. I humbly offer you my soul, wounded and aching from the spiritual cancer of self-love, pride and self-sufficiency. I abandon myself to your loving mercy. Thank you, Lord, for watching over me and loving me unconditionally.
Petition: Lord, heal my heart and soul, and help me to do what I must do to maintain my spiritual health.
1. Physical and Spiritual Illness For the most part, the people in this Gospel were not “hurrying throughout the countryside” to invite others to come and seek forgiveness and spiritual healing from Jesus. They were in haste, yes, but in haste to bring the sick so that the Lord would heal them from their physically infirmities. How blind is the human heart that often fears physical illness more than spiritual infirmities and falling out of God’s grace! The gravest ills we can suffer are those that come from within us: “For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, unchastity, theft, false witness, blasphemy. These are what defile a person” (Matthew 15:19-20).
2. Taking Refuge in Christ Holy men and women throughout the centuries have firmly believed that “touching” Christ through receiving the sacraments brings about spiritual healing and redemption. “My heart has been wounded by many sins,” St. Ambrose used to pray before he celebrated Mass, “my mind and tongue carelessly left unguarded. Lord of kindness and power, in my lowliness and need I am turning to you, the fountain of mercy; I am hurrying to you to be healed; I am taking refuge under your protection. I am longing to meet you, not as my Judge but as my Savior. Lord, I am not ashamed to show you my wounds. Only you know how many and how serious my sins are, and though they could make me fear for my salvation, I am putting my hope in your mercies, which are beyond count. Look on me with mercy, then, Lord Jesus Christ, eternal King, God and man, crucified for our sake. I am putting my trust in you, the fountain that will never stop flowing with merciful love: hear me and forgive my sins and weaknesses.”
3. Those Who Touched Christ with Faith All those who touched Jesus Christ with the touch of faith were cured: the Canaanite woman, the blind man, the ten lepers, the man with a withered hand, the paralytic, Jairus’ daughter, the woman with the hemorrhage, the boy with a demon, the Gerasene demoniac, the deaf man. All these people in the Gospel had something in common: it was their faith that allowed the Lord to heal them. The phrase used in the case of the woman with the hemorrhage is telling: “power had gone out from him” (Mark 5:30). Faith is one of the most powerful acts of the human person, since God himself chooses to be moved by it. How strong is my faith in the power of our Lord Jesus Christ? Do I reach out and touch him in faith every day? Do I allow him to act in my life through faith? What am I waiting for?
Conversation with Christ: Lord, you are all powerful and the source of my salvation and spiritual healing. In this prayer I am reaching out to touch you in faith, even though I am unworthy and my faith is weak. Heal me, Lord. Give me the strength to resist the power of evil in my life and to adhere to your grace and goodness. Lord, I believe; increase my faith.
Resolution: I will offer up short acts of faith in the Lord throughout the day.
http://www.regnumchristi.org/english/articulos/articulo.phtml?se=363&ca=975&te=735&id=20302
THEY DID IT!
WHO DAT? NOBODY!
New Orleans Saints vs. Indianapolis Colts: 31-17
TED JACKSON / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE Saints QB Drew Brees holds up the Vince Lombardi Trophy after beating the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 in Super Bowl XLIV at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fl., Sunday February 7, 2010.
http://photos.nola.com/tpphotos/2010/02/new_orleans_saints_vs_indianap_46.html
Founder’s Quote Daily
“No compact among men … can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other.”
–George Washington, draft of first Inaugural Address, 1789
ST. JOSEPHINE BAKHITA
“I have given everything to my Master: He will take care of me… The best thing for us is not what we consider best, but what the Lord wants of us!” – St. Josephine Bakhita
St. Josephine Bakhita was a slave whose life tells a beautiful story of hope. After enduring torture for several years, she was finally sold to a caring master who took her to Italy. It was there that she began to learn about the Catholic Church, received the sacraments and entered the religious life.
Josephine was born in 1869 in a small village named Olgossa, located in the Darfur region of Sudan. As a young girl, while out in the fields with her family, she was kidnapped and sold into slavery. When her captors asked for her name, the child was too terrified to remember. They gave her the name Bakhita, a name that means “fortunate” in Arabic.
Her life as a slave wouldn’t appear to be one of a “fortunate” person. Bakhita was often tortured by her owners in the form of branding, cuts, and beatings. In her biography she notes one particularly terrifying moment when one of her masters cut her 114 times and poured salt in her wounds to ensure that the scars remained. “I felt I was going to die any moment, especially when they rubbed me in with the salt,” Bakhita wrote.
While she did not yet know of Christ, she was able to bear her suffering. She remained hopeful and pondered with awe, the creator of the world. “Seeing the sun, the moon and the stars, I said to myself: ‘Who could be the Master of these beautiful things?’ And I felt a great desire to see Him, to know Him and to pay Him homage.”
After being sold a total of five times, Bakhita was purchased by Callisto Legnani, the Italian consul in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. Two years later, he took Bakhita to Italy to work as a nanny for his colleague, Augusto Michieli.
Michieli sent Bakhita to accompany his daughter to a school in Venice run by the Canossian Sisters. It was here that Bakhita felt called to learn more about the Catholic Church.
In 1890, she entered the Church and took the name of Josephine Margaret. She was received into the Church with inexpressible enthusiasm stating, “I received the Sacrament of Baptism with such joy that only angels could describe…” Continue reading
A Message Viewers Can Take Away From Super Bowl XLIV……