05.11.08
Posted in Media, Society, Politics at 2:59 pm by Sheila
Substance and gravity.
Two candidates, and no network moderators.
Barack Obama’s campaign is considering a suggestion from John McCain’s campaign for the two presidential hopefuls to participate in joint town meetings and debates around the country starting this summer, Obama’s chief strategist said Sunday…
Asked about the suggestion and how seriously it was being considered, David Axelrod, Obama’s chief campaign strategist said: “Very seriously.”
“We believe that is the most significant election we’ve faced in a long time,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“We’re at war. Our economy is in turmoil. And we’ve got so many challenges that the people of this country deserve a serious discourse, and it shouldn’t be limited necessarily to three kind of very regimented debates in the fall,” he added, referring to those sanctioned by a presidential commission.
Let the people ask the questions they’re most concerned about. Many haven’t been asked yet by big media. There’s been little to no follow through, and little accountability by candidates who dodge issues. This is a great idea. The people deserve a serious discourse. Keep it civil, open and honest. We’ll learn what we need to know about two competing worldviews on the issues that most challenge our nation.
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Posted in Society, Culture at 9:11 am by Sheila
Happy Mother’s Day.
May God bless each and every one abundantly.
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05.10.08
Posted in Media, Politics at 5:45 pm by Sheila
Or is it a media-driven effort to push Hillary Clinton out, finally? Something did change today, whether it was perception or reality.
The headlines have been turning over rapidly all day, but they’re all variations on this one. It started a couple of days after the North Carolina/Indiana primaries, picked up momentum Friday when Obama began picking up more declared superdelegates, and turned a corner today.
Barack Obama has taken the lead in superdelegate endorsements for the first time, marking a potential turning point in the endgame of the Democratic primary.
Obama picked up five superdelegates Saturday, after rounding up nine such endorsements the day before. The gains erased Hillary Clinton’s once-imposing lead among the party officials and insiders who play a key part in selecting the nominee.
Now there seems to be a rush to get in line behind the presumptive nominee, which Obama appears to be today more than anytime before now. Question is, does this really mean the end of Hillary Clinton’s possibilities, no matter how remote they were before? Or is that an orchestrated perception?
As is often the case with media and politics, perception becomes reality. Obama is helping drive that perception by shifting his campaign strategy. He’s now running against John McCain and it feels like the race for the general election.
Training his sights on presumptive GOP nominee McCain, Obama even said Saturday he would be happy to meet the Arizona senator for joint town hall meetings, after spending weeks refusing to debate Clinton.
“That’s a great idea,” he said. “Obviously we would have to think through the logistics on that. But to the extent that I, should I be the nominee, if I have the opportunity to debate substantive issues before the voters with John McCain that’s something that I am going to welcome. “
Won’t we all.
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Posted in Media, Abortion, Culture at 5:30 pm by Sheila
“Bella” was released this week on DVD with amazing success. It has already climbed up to the top tier of Yahoo and Amazon ratings, and it’s turning into a phenomenon. Jason Jones, from the film’s promotion team, told me today that some people are buying multiple copies and giving them to crisis pregnancy centers. He said that in Florida, one woman who intended to get an abortion changed her mind after seeing the film.
Watch the film’s star Eduardo Verastegui explain how life changing it’s been for him as well. He credits his mother, an especially poignant part of the story behind this film that simply and in few words, celebrates the power of family. It’s about the anguish of adversity and the grace of redemption.
Verastegui announced a special promotion running right now at the movie’s site for a private screening. And he told the story of his mother’s influence on his life. Beautiful story.
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Posted in Media, Society, Geopolitics at 10:09 am by Sheila
Time Magazine wonders whether - short of any other option to relieve a relievable disaster - it’s time to invade Burma.
To recap what’s in some of the posts below on this situation:
The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma’s infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur.
It’s unthinkable that the world remains poised and ready to rush in with all sorts of relief, but continues to be blocked by the strongmen who rule the country with a death grip.
So what is the world doing about it? Not much. The military regime that runs Burma initially signaled it would accept outside relief, but has imposed so many conditions on those who would actually deliver it that barely a trickle has made it through. Aid workers have been held at airports. UN food shipments have been seized. US naval ships packed with food and medicine idle in the Gulf of Thailand, waiting for an all-clear that may never come.
The junta is more concerned about its power than the masses of people.
“We’re in 2008, not 1908,” says Jan Egeland, the former U.N. emergency relief coordinator. “A lot is at stake here. If we let them get away with murder we may set a very dangerous precedent.”
That’s why it’s time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma.
How else to reach the people?
Some observers, including former USAID director Andrew Natsios, have called on the US to unilaterally begin air drops to the Burmese people regardless of what the junta says.
They’re talking over options at the highest levels of the world community, talking it to death….the death of hundreds, thousands and increasingly more Burmese men, women and children. As the Time piece says, “the world’s capacity for mercy is limitless”, but what’s the quality of mercy so restrained?
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Posted in Society, Law at 9:48 am by Sheila
I wonder what the term “fat chance” really means.
It comes to mind in reading this:
This could be the Supreme Court term, one court watcher joked recently, that Justice John Paul Stevens remembers he is a Republican.
It’s interesting speculation, given that most of what’s predicted about Stevens these days centers on when he will step down and which president will get to replace him with his (or her) nominee.
It’s a surprise for a lot of people to even recall that Stevens was appointed by a Republican.
A 1975 appointee of President Gerald Ford, Stevens is regarded as the anchor of the court’s liberal wing. But he has joined with his more conservative colleagues in three high-profile cases that defied predictions they would showcase deep ideological divisions on the court.
This court is harder to handicap than before, thankfully. It’s a civil court under Chief Justice John Roberts. And it’s the most important issue to consider in electing a new president.
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05.09.08
Posted in Church, Society, Culture at 11:37 am by Sheila
Photo by Catholic New World
Pope Benedict loves speaking to and about the youth as the future of the Church and the world. He draws enormous energy from them, and they love him. He praises, thanks, challenges and encourages them in these messages, whether personal encounters or in addresses to other groups. They will be the leaders, parents, priests and religious to preserve moral order in the world, he hopes and he says.
In the current issue of Chicago’s Catholic New World, the glow of Benedict’s visit is still warm and his messages are continuing to have their impact. The issue is devoted to ‘priest appreciation week’, which picks up the pope’s call to Catholics in America to “love your priests”. And it puts the light on vocations.
When Benedict addressed the US bishops in Washington, he took a few questions at the end. The third one asked him to comment on the decline in vocations, “and on the reasons for hope offered by the personal qualities and the thirst for holiness which characterize the candidates who do come forward”, as the Holy See Press Office transcript states it.
Let us be quite frank: the ability to cultivate vocations to the priesthood and the religious life is a sure sign of the health of a local Church. There is no room for complacency in this regard. God continues to call young people; it is up to all of us to encourage a generous and free response to that call.
I was at a recent meeting at which Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George said vocations start in the family and specifically with a good marriage that shows love, forgiveness, sacrifice and true faith. Benedict emphasized that in his answer to the vocation question. He was sort of saying we can tend to overlook the obvious.
In the Gospel, Jesus tells us to pray that the Lord of the harvest will send workers. He even admits that the workers are few in comparison with the abundance of the harvest (cf. Mt 9:37-38). Strange to say, I often think that prayer – the unum necessarium – is the one aspect of vocations work which we tend to forget or to undervalue!
Nor am I speaking only of prayer for vocations. Prayer itself, born in Catholic families, nurtured by programs of Christian formation, strengthened by the grace of the sacraments, is the first means by which we come to know the Lord’s will for our lives. To the extent that we teach young people to pray, and to pray well, we will be cooperating with God’s call. Programs, plans and projects have their place; but the discernment of a vocation is above all the fruit of an intimate dialogue between the Lord and his disciples. Young people, if they know how to pray, can be trusted to know what to do with God’s call.
Young people, “if they know how to pray“, can be trusted….That was a very subtle but key remark for parents and educators.
It has been noted that there is a growing thirst for holiness in many young people today, and that, although fewer in number, those who come forward show great idealism and much promise. It is important to listen to them, to understand their experiences, and to encourage them to help their peers to see the need for committed priests and religious, as well as the beauty of a life of sacrificial service to the Lord and his Church.
His concern for the formation of youth is evident and enthusiastic.
…candidates today, as much as ever, need to be given a sound intellectual and human formation which will enable them not only to respond to the real questions and needs of their contemporaries, but also to mature in their own conversion and to persevere in life-long commitment to their vocation.
Benedict went on a few days later to St. Joseph Seminary in New York, where he was met by 24,000 wildly cheering seminarians, priests, religious sisters, and other young adults. In his address, he repeatedly asked them to listen in silence for the call of God to any action.
We must listen deeply. We must respond with a renewed social action that stems from the universal love that knows no bounds. In this way, we ensure that our works of mercy and justice become hope in action for others.
Then he focused attention on one call.
Dear young people, finally I wish to share a word about vocations. First of all my thoughts go to your parents, grandparents and godparents. They have been your primary educators in the faith. By presenting you for baptism, they made it possible for you to receive the greatest gift of your life. On that day you entered into the holiness of God himself. You became adoptive sons and daughters of the Father. You were incorporated into Christ. You were made a dwelling place of his Spirit. Let us pray for mothers and fathers throughout the world, particularly those who may be struggling in any way – socially, materially, spiritually. Let us honor the vocation of matrimony and the dignity of family life.
Let us always appreciate that it is in families that vocations are given life.
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Posted in Media, Society, Politics at 9:43 am by Sheila
This year’s presidential election has broken molds and busted myths about politics as the candidates find their way forward in new ways. Republicans the party of ’fat cats’ and Democrats of ‘the little guy’?
This little item on the Acton Institute’s blog looks at an interesting demographic trend and wonders what it may mean, going forward.
The gravamen is that Democratic presidential candidates in the current election have exhibited a whopping advantage among all kinds of elite groups, identified by professional, financial, or educational status. Meanwhile, Republicans garnered more support from plumbers, truckers, and janitors.
What a switch, if conventional wisdom prevailed. But there’s little to no conventional wisdom left in this campaign year. So follow the trending data. Which the National Review article Kevin Schmiesing is analyzing here does, but doesn’t explain that well.
Confused? The plumbers, truckers and janitors support for Republicans is “a phenomenon” that the National Review reports, but doesn’t explain…
other than to note that Democrats have enjoyed a $200 million advantage in general, which may go a long way toward generating the more specific category advantages. And which may further be explained (this is my speculation) as being due to a) more people thinking a Democrat will win the White House and wanting to support a winner, or b) the Democratic primary race being more competitive than the Republican, or c) a combination of the two.
But I’m wondering about the speculation on the influence supporters will have on the two parties. Here’s what the National Review says:
What should we make of all this? National political parties, after all, reflect their supporters, and party leaders traditionally feel a responsibility to cater to their supporters’ whims. A party that receives overwhelming support from elite Wall Street investment firms, corporate bigwigs, and highly educated professionals may find it exceedingly difficult to raise their taxes or impose draconian new Big Government regulations on them. Similarly, a party that is losing well-educated suburban professionals and gaining support from blue-collar workers may find it more difficult to support free trade agreements and embrace globalization.
This is making big assumptions. But that’s been another trend in this election, if little else has been constant. It’ll be interesting to watch the parties construct their platforms at the summer conventions, to put it mildly.
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Posted in Media, Society, Geopolitics, Culture at 9:10 am by Sheila
The langauge in this commentary on Hugh Hewitt’s blog is electric, especially given the story in the post below. Read the text he posts there by Randy Elrod, on the automagical world created by servant leaders who deconstruct corporate structures that slow people down when they want to reach other people. They’re totally out of anyone’s control, and yet are working better than…corporate structures.
For example, Compassion International recently asked me to help form a group of influential bloggers for a historic trip to Uganda. A trip in which we visited slums, HIV/Aids hospitals and projects each morning. We then blogged, created video, and recounted stories raw with reality and emotion each afternoon. Thousands of people around the world followed our eight day journey real-time and over 400 children were sponsored and rescued from poverty. The viral loop that was created spawned hundreds of additional posts and offered the opportunity for thousands of additional people to experience the trip in an automagical way.
I came upon this just after posting the story out of Myanmar about the tragedy of keeping people from helping people because of a paranoid controlling military junta. Comments on the NYTimes blog, among others, show how compassionate people are in wanting to find a way.
This little commentary by Elrod speaks exactly to that.
Millions of cultural creatives offer a more hopeful future(s) and are converging for profound change. This convergence is a quiet revolution without manifestos or alpha leaders. This story is one that begs ten thousand tellers and then ten times more to be inspired by it.
And wouldn’t it be great of a lot of them could mobilize some relief effort under, over or around the radar of the military junta in Burma to reach the people.
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Posted in Society, Geopolitics at 8:51 am by Sheila
AP Photo
There’s been a huge setback in relief efforts in cyclone ravaged Myanmar/Burma.
The United Nations suspended relief supplies to Myanmar on Friday after the military government seized the food and equipment it had already sent into the country.
Earlier, in a statement, Myanmar’s military junta said it was willing to receive disaster relief from the outside world but would not welcome outside relief workers.
The military strongmen who have ruled that country for decades is afraid of relief workers coming in from democratic countries and spreading ideas of democracy. For that fear, they will accept hundreds of thousands more human fatalities and disastrous conditions no one can live in even if they do survive much longer.
Paul Risley, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, said, “all the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated.” He said the World Food Program was suspending the few flights that the Myanmar authorities had so far allowed to enter the country until the matter was resolved.
Myanmar said it had turned back one relief flight because, in addition to disaster relief supplies, it carried disaster assessment experts and an unauthorized media group.
They’re in dread fear of information.
“The frustration caused by what appears to be a paperwork delay is unprecedented in modern humanitarian relief efforts,” said the official, Paul Risley, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, in Bangkok. “It’s astonishing.”
The paperwork delay is a tactic to keep everyone out.
In New York, United Nations officials all but demanded Thursday that the government open its doors.
They should go all the way and demand it.
“The situation is profoundly worrying,” said Mr. Holmes, the United Nations official in charge of the relief effort, speaking in unusually candid language for a diplomat. “They have simply not facilitated access in the way we have a right to expect.”
Mr. Holmes’s predecessor in that job, Jan Egeland, said, “children are going to die from diarrhea because of this government’s inaction.”
And it’s going to get a whole lot worse than that.
The New York Times’ Lede blog is asking for anyone in Myanmar with access to the internet to send updated reports. People are looking for ways to help there. One way is through the churches already there, and there are many. Here’s one relief effort.
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