tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51035274935300653642023-09-26T04:32:35.851-04:00Noman SaysNomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.comBlogger328125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-54686184668498808162014-03-17T03:05:00.002-04:002014-03-18T18:11:18.409-04:00Since You Asked, Somechop
A
funny thing happened on the way to a serious discussion about Catholic beliefs
and American politics. It disappeared
into cyberspace.
A
sister-in-law had posted a story on Facebook concerning the President’s tin-earedresponse to a critique of the Affordable Care Act. Everyone should read it.
I
understood his point, which reduced to “be responsible and prioritize your
Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-70671427821765603062014-02-25T16:40:00.000-05:002014-02-26T23:18:32.999-05:00Hanging By A Thread
A week ago, I thought I had things under control. My blog post was up on Monday and I’d jotted
down thoughts for another two; my upcoming classes with senior executives were
planned; my beard was trimmed.
On Tuesday, I ate lunch with a friend I’ve been out of
contact with for a while. He gave me
inscribed copies of his two most recent books, which I started reading that day.&Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-26320163477345181912014-02-17T22:36:00.000-05:002014-04-29T23:47:34.129-04:00Throwaway Children
Despite misgivings, the L.A.
Times is in favor of allowing the euthanasia of terminally ill children. It
approves of Belgium’s
new law establishing protocols for the practice, and wants a similar regime
instituted in California.
At first reading of the decision, the editorialist gasps, but recovers his breath upon realizing that the idea of helping children die only
seems Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-10352647913692489982014-02-12T17:25:00.000-05:002014-05-01T01:06:33.194-04:00Unequal Distribution
I
“What do you
think of Evangelii Gaudium?”
Not having
read more than a few snippets, and having avoided the brouhaha that followed its
release last November, I didn’t know what to say.
“Well, I know
the Pope's a faithful son of the Church, which rules out his being a Marxist.”
My friend
persisted. “But, what do you think about
his economics?”
“I haven’t
read the Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-3631219627491911052014-02-07T22:30:00.001-05:002014-06-10T18:27:46.413-04:00Immigrant Son (II)
You probably know the parable, the
one about the vineyard workers (Mt. 20:1-16).
The landowner picked workers throughout the hot day, starting in the morning.
At day’s end, he paid them all the same regardless of what hour they’d
started.
Naturally, the laborers picked in
the morning were burned, in more ways than one.
They were upset at working harder Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-4639195864297405862014-02-04T21:10:00.002-05:002014-02-09T23:27:37.416-05:00Immigrant Son (I)
The meme said: “Rewarding illegal aliens with citizenship is
unfair to immigrants who followed our laws and waited their turn.”
The reply came quickly: “Are they envious because America is
generous?” (Mt. 20:1-16)
I’d like to answer that question for two reasons, neither of
which is that I'm inclined to dive into the fray over immigration
reform.
I am a first generation American Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-16027766735038513892014-01-31T11:21:00.001-05:002014-02-27T23:29:53.668-05:00Not Birds Of A Feather
It
was funny, you have to admit.
No
sooner had Pope Francis prayed for peace in the Ukraine, and released two white
doves from his Vatican window, than a crow
and a seagull swooped in for the kill.
Feathers flew, the thousands in St. Peter’s Square gasped,
and the suggestion that God was saying something must have entered even the
most skeptical of minds.
But,
saying what?Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-1648250079029816012014-01-23T16:52:00.001-05:002014-02-08T14:47:04.743-05:00The Society of Fallen Men
Occasionally, something not
directly related to the topic of the book I’m reading grabs my attention. It happened the other day while reading Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of
the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System (2011, p. 10),
by Barry Eichengreen.
The topic was money, or, more
accurately, currency.
There was no
standard US currency, no US Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-41468381618414403722014-01-21T17:13:00.000-05:002014-01-31T17:28:53.585-05:00Adventures in Fatherhood
“What did I tell you about
that yesterday, sweetie?”
My eight-year-old Jopa (short
for Johanna Paulina) stared at me blankly with her big blue eyes. “I don’t know.” She was cutting up an entire avocado,
throwing it into a bowl to mix with a full can of tuna and a mountainous blob
of mayonnaise. Breakfast.
“Didn’t I tell you not to
open cans of tuna, peaches or Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-21037448297595358982014-01-17T17:00:00.001-05:002014-01-31T17:29:23.734-05:00Whither the Consumer?
“Did anyone fill Mr. Torres’s
prescriptions?”
The pharmacist looked with a
slightly bothered mien behind the wall of separation to her two colleagues and
the cashiers gathered in the back. They
ruffled through some bags and shrugged.
The pharmacist I’d asked
checked through the drawer of filled prescriptions as if to upturn the final
stone. Lo and behold! There they Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-46678300442064652062014-01-10T01:16:00.000-05:002014-01-31T17:29:51.410-05:00Sport As Moral Teacher
San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh has taken to repeating Malcolm X’s slogan, “by any means necessary.” The other day his star linebacker, Patrick Willis, echoed it in a press conference, so the motto has obviously taken hold in the locker room. I imagine that if I still lived in San Francisco, I’d be hearing it from my friends.
That’s because sport is pedagogical as well as Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-461224525854799732014-01-04T16:02:00.002-05:002014-01-31T17:30:11.543-05:00Catholics and Wealth
“How do people get rich?”
It was an innocent enough
question coming from a young boy overhearing the conversation I was having with
his grandfather. We’d talked about the
Fed, banks, quantitative easing, cronyism and more.
The boy was naturally curious.
What happened next is what
prompts this post.
His grandfather challenged in
a surprisingly emphatic, nearly Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-76338959789914510022013-08-27T00:49:00.000-04:002014-01-31T17:31:11.804-05:00Espousing Heresies<!--[if gte mso 9]>
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Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-69653605796902806632013-08-01T01:07:00.001-04:002014-02-18T15:07:47.040-05:00Comedic America
I don't ordinarily laugh at the picture of a surgical glove being readied. But, I do when the picture accompanies a headline regarding ObamaCare. That's because we all know where the finger is headed, and the subliminal connection is startlingly funny.
Having become docile zombies like Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate, Americans are helpless to protect themselves Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-19177275227873794182013-03-27T07:49:00.000-04:002014-01-31T17:32:04.160-05:00At An Earlier Stage Of The Culture War
This week's Supreme Court hearings on gay "marriage," and recent Facebook posts of a brave young man at Hillsdale College have encouraged me to share something I wrote over 20 years ago.
It involved a magazine at Harvard, Peninsula, which was started by (mostly) Cathlo-conservatives at the College to combat the overwhelmingly Leftist tilt of campus publications, the faculty, the Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-25500946405243832402012-08-30T00:14:00.000-04:002014-01-31T17:32:34.332-05:002016: Obama's America
"2016: Obama's America" proposes an explanatory and predictive framework--that is, a positive model--for ordering phenomena. I was asked afterwards if I thought the movie proved its thesis that President Obama embraced, and is driven by, his mommy and especially daddy's anti-colonialist beliefs. In terms of scientific proof, of course not. The movie proposes a hypothesis; it doesn't Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-77686544668657317912012-07-07T13:31:00.000-04:002014-01-31T17:33:01.727-05:00Lent, After Pentecost
I began this post on notes taken during a Lenten retreat but never completed it. Browsing through unfinished work I saw it and thought it sufficient to stand on its own, even after Pentecost. Thank you Father John W., and all the profound, eloquent priests whose wisdom I have benefitted from over the years.
----------------------------------------
Sanctity isNomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-53574829111599087982012-07-05T23:45:00.001-04:002014-01-31T17:33:48.545-05:00The Privilege is All Mine, Mrs. Terry
The grieving woman with AZ Governor Jan Brewer is Mrs. Josephine Terry. Her son, border-patrol agent Brian Terry of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), a division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), was killed by Mexican drug thugs in December 2010 with weapons they'd obtained through a merdicious ATF program entitled Fast and Furious.
The Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-27273446570874055462012-06-26T18:09:00.000-04:002014-01-31T17:34:21.895-05:00Germany v. Greece
The Euro Cup has provided superb relief against the dramatic backdrop of a collapsing Euro and decaying social-welfare model--the kind we're rapidly emulating in the US. This article from the NY Times--a decidedly Greek-friendly paper under these circumstances--concerns the recent match between Germany and Greece won by the Germans 4-2.
I find it rich in humor and irony. For Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-27377940866416905002012-06-22T23:31:00.003-04:002014-01-31T17:34:44.099-05:00The Procrustean Constitution
Justice Anthony Kennedy has reminded me yet again of the Court's default setting in culture-war cases since the 1960's. His legal reasoning can be summed up as heads-the-Left-wins, tails-the-Right-loses.
Part of Justice Kennedy's opinion in Federal Communication v. Fox is excerpted in today's Wall Street Journal.
A fundamental principle in our legal system is that laws Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-62890827242899042942012-06-13T17:58:00.001-04:002014-01-31T17:35:18.441-05:00Phrenology for the Smug
Andrew Ferguson has authored a penetrating and very funny analysis entitled "The New Phrenology" regarding Democrats tendency to denigrate conservatives from behind the pretense of science--social psychology mainly though not exclusively. That's a field absolutely stuffed with people on the margins with issues.
A sample:
It is a principle of psychopunditry that the political Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-27332130097151845382012-04-30T16:36:00.001-04:002014-01-31T17:35:53.586-05:00Chile's Cautionary Lesson for the US
Mary Anastasia O'Grady writes about communist stirrings in prosperous Chile, the poster child for Chicago-style liberalism. That's university-of-Chicago style, not Mayor-Daly-like-Chicago style.
Chile's Presdident, Sebastian Pinera (pictured above), is channeling his inner compassionate conservative much to his country's detriment. He saps the nation's moral and material resourcesNomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-56601735838013385922012-04-28T01:45:00.002-04:002014-01-31T17:36:33.309-05:00Mambo Gallego
Pictured above are Armand Assante, Antonio Banderas, and Desi Arnaz, Jr. from the 1992 film "The Mambo Kings." I loved the movie for its music, scenes of the Palladium, fine acting, tortured love triangle and sheer stylishness, but had to fast forward through too many pointless skin scenes to recommend it.
It nevertheless features my favorite movie dance. Set to Tito Puente's Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-7641798323221572472012-04-26T16:34:00.000-04:002014-02-08T15:26:30.545-05:00Impressions of Miami
Years ago, I thought I'd discovered paradise on earth in Locarno and Lugano, Switzerland, which enjoyed the benefits of Italian culture and Swiss efficiency. Beautiful people rode trains that ran on time.
I experienced something similar last week in Miami, which is considered the capitol of Latin America. Happily, it is in the United States where things mostly work correctlyNomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5103527493530065364.post-70383199863344621592012-04-22T21:38:00.000-04:002014-02-08T15:27:34.049-05:00In Praise of Statism
You'll never here it from me. I fall on the liberty side of the private-public divide--the private side, which includes civil society to care for those who fall through the cracks through misfortune, injudicious use of liberty or any other reason.
The title is merely a pretext for sharing an amusing video that's gone viral. It is a Reagan-Obama encounter that teaches a lesson Nomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08312361903414052411noreply@blogger.com1