Back in college in North Dakota, I first encountered White Castle on a bitterly cold January Friday night.  A bunch of students from Chicago decided they’d gone long enough without “sliders”.  A few of them decided they’d undertake the sixteen-hour one-way trip back to Chi to get some, and maybe bring some back.   Helpfully, a Minneapolis kid told them there were Castles in the Twin Cities, cutting the trip in much less than half. So they took off, around 11PM.  And came back early the next afternoon, happy.

There are two morals to that story:

• College kids in North Dakota in the 1980’s who didn’t have girlfriends or parties on the agenda could go really stir crazy.
• White Castle generates incredible customer loyalty.

One of my English professors, Dr. Brucker, had White Castle as a hobby.  He somehow had wangled a subscription to the White Castle in-house magazine, and knew more White Castle trivia than anyone seemed to need.

I didn’t actually eat one myself until I moved to the Twin Cities.  The Sunday after I moved into my first apartment, not far off of East Lake Street, I wandered up to Lake and 36th, and saw the white tile cube, and figured it was worth a try.

I ordered four cheese sliders and a coke, and sat down.  A few moments later, as I was waiting for my order, a big fella – probably 6’2 and 350 pounds – walked in and loudly and sloppily proclaimed “I just got paid!  Gimme thirty sliders and a large Coke!”.  As I sampled my first sliders – yum! – I watched, just a tad amazed, as the big guy bolted the whole order down and staggered up the street.

Thanksgiving Dinner, in some parts of Chicago.

And back when I was producing the Don Vogel show?  We marked all major celebrations – good ratings books, last days before fun vacations, whatever – with Don flipping me a $20 and sending me to the ‘Castle on White Bear Avenue for sliders and scabs for the whole crew.

Anyway – White Castle just turned 90:

The restaurant chain, famous for its original sliders, first opened its doors March 10, 1921, in Wichita, Kan. The now Columbus, Ohio-based company is family-owned and does not franchise. It also owns its own meat production facilities and bakeries to ensure quality control.

“White Castle is proud to be 90 years young,” said Jamie Richardson, vice president of corporate and government relations. “Since 1921, White Castle has remained true to its original mission and values. Our name says it all — White signifying purity and Castle signifying strength and permanence.”

I do about 1-2 trips a year to White Castle.  One thing that has changed; 25 years ago, it used to be entertaining to watch the guys behind the grill stuffing sliders into the little cardboard boxes like Las Vegas card dealers, banging through a couple a second.  I haven’t seen that in a long time…

Anyway – gassy-but-happy America salutes you, White Castle!

To: Chris Wallace, Fox News

From: Mitch Berg

Re: Your interview with Shirley Phelps

Mr. Wallace,

As you are aware, debating lawyers is entirely do-able.

I was going to say that debating cultists – as in your interview with Shirley Phelps, daughter of Phred Phelps, and the lawyer who won Westboro Baptist Church’s case at the Supreme Court on the nature, and even contradictions, of their cult theology – is just not.

But then immediately afterwards, watching you flense Dick Durbin, I realized you were just sandbagging.

That is all.

The Catholic Church has, um, given its blessing to a “ Confession” iPhone app:

A Catholic bishop in Indiana has approved “Confession: A Roman Catholic App,” created by a company called Little iApps.

For $1.99, Catholics can use their iPhone to help them examine their conscience as part of the sacrament of reconciliation.

But there’s a catch: The application is not designed to replace going into the confession booth.

You’ll still have to see a priest to be absolved from your sins.

(CLOSED CIRCUIT TO I.T. GEEKS)

The Catholic version uses a three-tiered architecture.  The Lutherans and Presbyterians are reportedly working on a two-tier version of the app.

(END CLOSED CIRCUIT)

I wasn’t going to write about this until I saw he’d written about it first.

Ryan Rhodes – who’s been running the “Rambling Rhodes” (among many other names) blog for about as long as anyone in Minnesota has been blogging, and has been a regular commenter on this blog ever since I’ve had comments – had a rough December.  He and his wife’s twins – Finn and Zoey – were born very, very prematurely, weighing a pound and a half apiece.

Finn died on New Years’ Eve.  But Zoey is hanging in there.

Unfortunately, the tragic turn of events that greeted us at the end of December, as well as the gaping hole left in our lives by Finn’s passing, has numbed my wife and me considerably when it comes to the sheer medical miracle that Zoey is still with us and fighting strong. We’ve been so mired in grief and sorrow, the everyday fact of Zoey’s continued existence almost seems like it’s the least fate could give us. Nay, owes us.

But, she is alive. And, it is rather miraculous.

She was delivered via C-section at a paltry 1 lb. 4.5 oz. I like to use the analogy of her being the size of a TV remote control, but that doesn’t really convey the reality. Her tiny size didn’t register for me until I saw her footprints alongside the footprints of my first son, Aiden, when he was born at 8 lb. 15 oz. The difference is truly staggering, like Andre the Giant next to Vern Troyer. And I remember thinking, 15 months ago, how the hell we were going to keep AIDEN ALIVE.

The delicate balance of drugs, medications, fluids, oxygen and general environment required to keep a 24-week old preemie alive is ridiculously complex. Each time I visit Zoey, I have to practically squint past the banks of machines and monitors to see the little wriggling putty of flesh that is my daughter.

He walks through the concentric miracles of both technology and infant physiology that are helping Zoey hang in there:

The lungs, which are about the most undeveloped organs in their whole bodies, can somehow be persuaded to kick things into developmental gear. It’s not an exact science, but the organs that are normally one of the last ones asked to perform can be coaxed from the bench and perform a game-saving series of plays that can make even the most die-hard pessimist hope, optimistically, for a victory. Preemie lungs are the Detroit Lions or the Cincinnati Bengals, or an expansion team.

Today was a good day. A much-needed good day. For all of us.

Tomorrow? Who the f*** knows?

But, you know what? I’m hopeful, and that’s huge.

So I’ll urge your to direct your prayers, karmic imprecations, best wishes or whatever your worldview calls for to Ryan, his wife, Aiden and, of course, Zoey.

Apropos not much.  Just saying.

More.

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

This past year, I’ve been vastly more blessed than I could ever deserve; wonderful friends, my kids whom I love so much, great opportunities – and even a few gnarly challenges requiring some creative solutions that, in the end, have turned out to be blessings, so far.

And like all of us, I’m blessed to live in a country where I can write this.  If you are, or have ever been, in the military, thank you for the Christmases you’ve spent away from home, standing on that wall brushing snow off your rifle or tank or F16 or destroyer while the rest of us drank eggnog somewhere behind you.

What can I say but “Merry Christmas”, and God bless you all!

So on behalf of Johnny Roosh, First Ringer and Bogus D, thanks for another great year, and whatever the holiday means to you, I hope you find it in spades!

John Scalzi interviews the innkeeper.

That innkeeper.

SCENE:  At the headquarters of Jared ® Jewelry.   Patricia LOPEZ, the receptionist, is sitting at the front desk answering phone calls.

Phone rings.

LOPEZ:  Hello, Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry®…

VOICE on phone: Hello, this is Sol Gallivan, the Guardian of Empiricism.  What does your slogan “It can only be Jared” mean?

LOPEZ: Hello again, Mr. Gallivan.  It means the same thing it did yesterday.  It’s an ad slogan.

GALLIVAN:  But it implies that all meaning comes from Jared ®.  How do you substantiate that claim?

LOPEZ:  I don’t.  Can I help you?

GALLIVAN:  Yes.  Explain how you figure all meaning comes from Jared ®?

LOPEZ:  I really can’t, sir.  It’s just a slogan.  Thanks for your call.

GALLIVAN: But I…

(Phone hangs up).

(LOPEZ continues typing an email).

(Phone rings)

LOPEZ: Good Morning, Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry®…

GALLIVAN: Hello, this is Sol Gallivan, the Guardian of Empiricism.

LOPEZ: Hello again, Mr. Gallivan.

GALLIVAN: Could you please explain what you mean when your company says “it can only be Jared®?  Because it implies that there is some order to the universe, some eternal questions that are answered by your store.

LOPEZ: Yes, Mr. Gallivan.

GALLIVAN: Can you please tell me what those questions and answers are?

LOPEZ: No, Mr. Gallivan.

GALLIVAN: Because I’d like any empirical evidence that you have that your store actually imposes order on the universe.

LOPEZ: We’ll get back to you on that, sir.

GALLIVAN:  When exac…

(LOPEZ hangs up the phone).

(Jared LIGHT, CEO of Jared ®, walks in).

LIGHT: Hey, Patty.  What’s new?

LOPEZ:  Same as always.  That Gallivan guy is yapping about our ad slogan.

LIGHT:  (Yawns deeply).  OK.  Well, could you send one of the interns out for coffee…

(Phone rings.  LOPEZ holds up hand for a moment of quiet).

LOPEZ:  Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry®…

VOICE (on phone):  Yeah, this is Jeff Buckstein, security director for Jared’s ® Maplewood, MN store…

LOPEZ: Hey, Jeff.

BUCKSTEIN: Hey Patty.  I just had security haul off that Gallivan guy.  He was standing outside the store, yelling at people who were walking in.

LOPEZ:  What was he doing this time?

BUCKSTEIN: Yelling at people coming in the store that “there is no scientific evidence that It could, indeed, only be Jared ®”.

LOPEZ: Criminy.

BUCKSTEIN:  Please pass the word, OK?

LOPEZ: Will do.  Thanks, Jeff. (Hangs up).

LIGHT:  Gallivan again?

LOPEZ:  Yep.

LIGHT: Maplewood again?

LOPEZ: Yep.

LIGHT: It’s gonna be one of those days.

LOPEZ: Yep.

(Phone rings)

LOPEZ: Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry®…

GALLIVAN:  Hello, I’m Sol Gallivan, the Guardian of Empiricism.  I’d really like to know what you mean when you say “It can only be Jared…”

LOPEZ: It’s still just a slogan, Mr. Gallivan….

GALLIVAN:  I’m just wondering how you can sleep at night telling people untruths like…

(LIGHT motions to LOPEZ to give him the phone as GALLIVAN chatters away in the background).

GALLIVAN: …preying on the gullible and weak-minded…

LIGHT: Mister Gallivan?  This is Jared Light, CEO of Jared Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry®.

GALLIVAN: Mister Light, I’d like to ask you…

LIGHT: No, Mr. Gallivan, I’d like to ask you; if Jared Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry® is not what it can only be, what else can it be?

GALLIVAN: …

…

LIGHT:  Mister Gallivan?

(GALLIVAN hangs up the phone).

LOPEZ: Thanks, Mr. Light.

LIGHT:  No problem.

“Why don’t Muslims crack down on their terrorist elements” has been a pretty standard question since 9/11.

The short answer – they, largely, are:

It used to be that there were plenty of mosques in the West run by radicalized, or very conservative, clerics. But no more. Since September 11, 2001, Western nations have cracked down. Radical clerics were either expelled from the country (these guys tend to be migrants), or police investigations of criminal activity by these firebrand clerics put them in jail, or on the run.

Which is not to say there was never a problem:

 Turns out that in the 1980s and 90s, a lot of mosques had been taken over by a small number of radical members. Threats and violence were used, and it often got quite ugly. This was ignored until the 1990s, and not tolerated much at all after 2001. While this kept the radical Moslems quiet, it did not always change their attitudes. But these men were usually migrants, often from the same country, or region, as their fellow congregants.

As with so many things, 9/11 changed all that:

After 2001, Moslems in the West, particularly the United States, knew that they were responsible for the terrorist activity of Moslems they worshiped together with. They could usually recognize another migrant who might be up to something dangerous. Action could be taken to stop it, or drive the troublemaker away (or turn him in to the cops). But the new converts were harder to read. Thus the growing tendency to scrutinize those seeking instruction to become a convert.

And it’s having an effect:

Even before September 11, 2001, al Qaeda warned its agents to not hang out with American Moslems, who were known to turn in suspected radicals. Now American Moslems are letting the FBI know about suspicious new guys seeking to convert. That has led to the arrest of some active terrorists. But in many European countries, local Moslems are less prone to let the police know of someone suspicious, and there are more active Islamic radicals (because the Middle East is closer, and Moslem migrants are less likely to be accepted by the natives.)

Unmentioned in the piece; is the Twin Cities’ extremely fundamentalist Somali Muslim community an exception?

I had a chance to sit down with Sol Gallivan.  By day, he’s a data entry clerk at a regional gas station chain.  In his free time, though, he is Woodbury’s self-anointed “Guardian of Empiricism”. 

I sat down with him in his apartment along Valley Creek Lane.  He was dressed in his royal-blue leotard, a red and yellow “GoE” shield embroidered to the front, a red cape slung jauntily over his shoulder.  He poured a Chocolate YooHoo onto a bowl of Captain Crunch as we spoke.

MITCH: So you call yourself the East Metro’s “Guardian of Empiricism”.  What does that mean?

GALLIVAN: I find places where people are behaving irrationally, and I go and mock them.

MITCH: Er, OK – give me an example of this…

GALLIVAN:  I went to Best Buy on Black Friday.

MITCH: And…?

GALLIVAN:  I stood by the cash register and yelled at people who were buying extended warranty protection. 

MITCH:  Er…you yelled at them?

GALLIVAN:  I yelled HEY! DON’T YOU KNOW THAT MOST PRODUCTS DON’T GO BAD DURING THE WARRANTY PERIOD?  YOU ARE BEING IRRATIONAL!

MITCH:  Er – well, be that as it may, it’s their choice…

GALLIVAN:  Right.  And it’s my choice to mock them for it!  Because they’re gullible!

MITCH:  Well, sure – everyone who’s ever worked in the industry knows those warranties are prett much a cash cow for the business.  Still, it’s their choice!  What difference does it make to you?

GALLIVAN:  They have done something mockable!  It is my duty and mission to mock it!

MITCH: Duty and mission to whom?

GALLIVAN:  Empiricism!

MITCH: Sounds like your mission is to be a self-proclaimed, solipsistic pain in the ass!

GALLIVAN:  That’s what the security guard said as they threw me out on the street.  Irrational sheeple!

MITCH:  OK.  So you yell at people in checkout lines…

GALLIVAN:  Oh, don’t you underestimate me!  That’s just a time-killer!  The other day, I went to a H’Mong wedding. You know the bride was like fifteen, right?

MITCH:  Right.  It’s their cultural custom.

GALLIVAN:  Right.  And so I  jumped up by the witch doctor or the Oobadooba or whatever you call him, and yelled “HEY!  GETTING MARRIED AT THIS AGE IS IRRATIONAL! 

MITCH:  Wait – you interrupted someone’s wedding to insult their cultural norm…

GALLIVAN:  Not just a “cultural norm” – an “irrational” cultural norm that is just stupid!

MITCH:  Um…OK. 

GALLIVAN:  I walked into a Green Bay Packer bar and turned off the big screen TV, and yelled at them that they were empirically wasting their time watching football!  They should be reading a good book!  On biology!

MITCH: I bet that went well!

GALLIVAN:  They were too drunk to catch me before I got out the kitchen door.

MITCH: I bet.   Coulda been your funeral…

GALLIVAN: Oh, speaking of which!  Yes!  Funerals are the best!  I love going to funerals and jumping up during the happy-talk, and yelling HEY, YOU GULLIBLE PEOPLE!  IT’S ALL JUST GOING TO DECOMPOSE!

MITCH:  To a room full of the bereaved?

GALLIVAN:  They’ll thank me later. 

MITCH: Right.

GALLIVAN:  And don’t get me started on churches.

MITCH: Hm.

GALLIVAN:  But since you did – hooie!  Stupid, gullible people!

MITCH: Why?

GALLIVAN:  Because there is no empirical basis for religion!

MITCH:  When has anyone ever said there was? 

GALLIVAN:   Exactly!

MITCH:  No, not exactly.   Faith isn’t about empirical belief.  It’s about answering the questions that science doesn’t, and most likely can not.

GALLIVAN:  G’huck.  Right.  How stupid!  Science explains everything.

MITCH:  How did life start?

GALLIVAN:  A bunch of chemicals randomly formed and were hit by lightning.

MITCH:  And you empirically know this how?  There’s been no empirical, testable means to show not only how life began, but how human life evolved in the time we’ve had to develop things like “consciousness” and such.  None!

GALLIVAN:  We…well, we will know it someday.

MITCH:  How?

GALLIVAN:  Well, I believe we…

MITCH:  What’s that?

GALLIVAN:  I…er…

[faint smell of urine]

MITCH:  Anyway.  What’s your next project?

GALLIVAN:  On “Christmas” morning, I’m going to go around and tell kids there is no Santa Claus.

MITCH:  Sounds like you’re less a “Guardian of Empiricism” and more of a self-centered narcissist who gets a kick out of trying to poke holes in whatever happiness other people choose, for reasons of their own, to have in their lives.  I mean, it’s their business, not yours, right?

GALLIVAN: No.  Anywhere someone does something gullible, in whatever part of their life, for whatever reason, it’s my business. 

MITCH: That’s just…I’m sorry.  Words fail me.  Oh wait – one more question.  Do you mock people who believe that human life begins at birth?    So that people who get abortions in, say, the second trimester are killing a human being, because empirically, infants delivered in the middle of the second trimester are, empirically, alive today?

GALLIVAN:  What are you, a neanderthal?  That’s a womyn’s choice and personal business!

MITCH: Unlike culture, faith or choice of football team?

GALLIVAN:  You are stupid.  It’s because you are very gullible.  Pardon me, I need to go and change…

MITCH:  By all means.  I think we’re done…

GALLIVAN:  Live long and prosper!

The DFL starts to work on its damage control from its viciously anti-Catholic attack piece.

Blois Olson – who is not “the DFL”, per se, but has a history of working for DFL candidates – in his “Morning Take”

MN GOP will push to find controversy with a direct mail piece in SD40. GOP operatives are working hard to advance outrage over a mail piece sent by the MN DFL in the race for SD40 where incumbent DFL Sen. John Doll is running against GOPer Dan Hall.

“Find controversy?”

I think the controversy pretty much jumps out and beats you over the head.  Check it out for yourself:

Not a lot of room for interpretation there.

There is no doubt that if they get traction with this it could have some statewide impact on the election, especially if they advance the narrative that the piece is anti-Catholic. While one side of the piece shows a clergy collar with a faux button “Ignore the Poor”. The other takes legitimate pointed criticism at GOPer Dan Hall’s positions related to the MN budget and ties it to his profession as a chaplain.

Which is part of the DFL’s outreach to the region’s – mostly the Metro’s – “social justice-gospel” addled – Catholics; the idea that the state’s budget itself is a sort of Good Work.

That’s no different than finding issue with any other candidates profession and the political positions they take. The piece is hard hitting, but clergy of other faith’s wear a collar, and the word “Catholic” doesn’t appear anywhere on the piece.

Olson goes on to point out that priests of other denominations wear clerical collars.  But the ad’s only context is the current race – where Archbishop Nienstedt has attacked gay marriage, and where Tom Emmer is a very orthodox Catholic.

And neither the Episcopal nor Orthodox hierarchies have taken any key political stances in this election (or have they?  Who would know?) as has the Archdiocese.  If this piece is a swipe at the Anglicans, Greeks or Russians, it’d be a response to an Orthodox or Episcopal stance that nobody’s really aware of; being a highly-qualified pundit, I’m pretty sure Olson knows that’d be a curious misallocation of resources at this point in the campaign.

The ad is a swipe at District 40 Senate candidate Dan Hall, who is a volunteer chaplain with the Burnsville Fire Department.  The DFL’ s line is that Hall is a “Hypocrite” for preaching on the one hand, and supporting Governor Pawlenty on rejecting the big federal Medicaid payment.

The DFL is taking it upon itself to tell us who is or is not a good Christian and Catholic, based on adherence to the DFL’s budget wish list.

Senators Koch and Fishbach gave a statement about an hour ago asking if candidate Dayton stood by his party’s attack.  Dayton is Catholic – or at least he’s given the homily at ultraliberal Saint Joan of Arc in Minneapolis.

I’m gonna suspect he lets this ride without mention…

UPDATE:   MDE has scanned the full postcard.

CORRECTION:  The postcard was sent by the DFL State, not Central, Committee.  It was an inadvertent slip.  Hard to tell all those committees apart.

As I’ve written in the past, single-sex marriage is not my marquee issue, personally.

Oh, I know what I believe; that marriage is about having kids, and kids grow up best with functional parents of both genders.  It’s a belief that should inform a lot of family-law issues (which is why I support gay adoption; two functional same-sex “parents” are not preferable to different-gender parents, but they are much better than a single parent, if that’s the choice.

But I think that as a rule government should stay out of most personal choices; that people should be able to sign a civil contract that ties them into a legal construct that gives them all the legal rights that a “Married” couple has – and that people like me should be able to opt out of the government contract and follow the purely religious contract that we believe in.  And if you belong to a religious demomination that can come up with a theological justification for it, then that’s your first amendment right – just as it’ll be mine to debunk it.

I’m not going to argue about it, either.

But the fact is that while Tom Emmer is not focused on gay marriage – this election is, quite rightly, about jobs to him – he also stands in sharp contrast to Dayton and Horner in that he does not want the issue decided by a DFL-dominated legislature or an “elite” court that jams the issue down the state’s throat.

Which is the subject of this ad:

Let the legislature do its damn job. For that matter, let the courts do their job, and interpret laws, not create them from whole cloth.

Emmer is right on this issue.  I think most Minnesotans agree.

Dayton wants our self-appointed “elites” to decide this issue.  Horner too, although he’s irrelevant.

Pass the word.

Joe Bodell at the Minnesota “Progressive” Project may know his technology.  But he needs to work a little on his cultural and language literacy:

It’s always been a curiosity to me that our media calls radical Muslim leaders “clerics” while people like Terry in Florida and Phelps in Kansas get to hang on to the title “Pastor.”

{{facepalm}}

That’s partly because Christian churches have  a fairly uniform system for naming and identifying clergy; Islam’s system isn’t nearly as uniform. “Pastor” is a very broadly-accepted definitive for protestant clergy; “Father” works for Catholics, while “Rabbi” generally works for Jews.

“Imam” is usually, but not always, an appropriate definitive for a Muslim prayer leader.

Sounds less ominous than “cleric”, doesn’t it?Are we trying to make the other side’s radicals sound like Dungeons & Dragons characters? Does that make them scarier, somehow?

Only if you are completely unaware that “cleric” is the singular of the plural “clergy” – which, to be fair, didn’t pop up in “Dungeons and Dragons”.

It is my right, under the First Amendment, to walk into a biker bar and tell them that leather chaps look like gay S and M wear.

Just because it’s my right doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Billy Joe Tubb, writing in South Carolina Traditional Values blog, takes on the real reasons for not building the Ground Zero Ground Zero Debris Field mosque:

The fact is that building a mosque next to the site of the World Trade Center Twin Towers, which were destroyed during the 11 September attacks, is a strange story. This is because the mosque is not an issue for Muslims, and they have not heard of it until the shouting became loud between the supporters and the objectors, which is mostly an argument between non-Muslim US citizens!

That is the interesting part; the actual Muslims are hardly party of the discussions.

Neither did the Muslims ask for a single building, nor do the angry Muslims want the mosque. This is one of the few times when the two opposing sides are in agreement. Nevertheless, the dispute has escalated, and has reached the front pages of the press and the major television programs, demonstrations have been staged in the streets, and large posters have been hung on buses roaming the streets of New York calling for preventing the building of the mosque and reminding the people of the 11 September crime. It really is a strange battle!

I cannot imagine that Muslims want a mosque on this particular site, because it will be turned into an arena for promoters of hatred, and a symbol of those who committed the crime. At the same time, there are no practicing Muslims in the district who need a place of worship, because it is indeed a commercial district. Is there a side that is committed to this mosque? The fact is that in the news reports there are names linked to this project that costs 100 million dollars!

The building used to be a Burlington Coat Factory…

Tubb follows the money:

The sides enthusiastic for building the mosque might be building companies, architect houses, or politicized groups that want suitable investments?! I do not know whether the building applicant wants a mosque whose aim is reconciliation, or he is an investor who wants quick profits. This is because the idea of the mosque specifically next to the destruction is not at all a clever deed. The last thing Muslims want today is to build just a religious center out of defiance to the others, or a symbolic mosque that people visit as a museum next to a cemetery.

…and cuts to the important point:

What the US citizens do not understand is that the battle against the 11 September terrorists is a Muslim battle, and not theirs, and this battle still is ablaze in more than 20 Muslim countries. Some Muslims will consider that building a mosque on this site immortalizes and commemorates what was done by the terrorists who committed their crime in the name of Islam. I do not think that the majority of Muslims want to build a symbol or a worship place that tomorrow might become a place about which the terrorists and their Muslim followers boast, and which will become a shrine for Islam haters whose aim is to turn the public opinion against Islam. This is what has started to happen now; they claim that there is a mosque being built over the corpses of 3,000 killed US citizens, who were buried alive by people chanting God is great, which is the same call that will be heard from the mosque.

Worth a read.

CORRECTION:  I mistakenly identified the author as Billy Joe Tubb.  the actual author is; Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed writing in Al Sharq Al-Awsat:

I regret any confusion.

Under New York state law and city ordinance, if a Muslim group buys property in lower Manhattan, and builds a mosque subject to city building codes and zoning regulations, a principled property-rights advocate should say “they have the right to do it” – even if the entire project is a thumb in the eye of the victims and the city that suffered so much on 9/11.

But I should also think it’d be perfectly legal for someone to buy some property near the mosque and build – subject to codes and zoning, naturally – a statue.  Of, say, Mohammed.

Maybe 110 stories tall.

UPDATE: This is, of course, satire.

Maybe the mosque builders would get the point then.

Jon Shields in the WSJ on Manute Bol’s “Radical Christianity”:

Bol’s life and death throws into sharp relief the trivialized manner in which sports journalists employ the concept of redemption.

Not just sports “journalists”, really – but we’ll come back to that.

In the world of sports media players are redeemed when they overcome some prior “humiliation” by playing well. Redemption then is deeply connected to personal gain and celebrity. It leads to fatter contracts, shoe endorsements, and adoring women.

Yet as Bol reminds us, the Christian understanding of redemption has always involved lowering and humbling oneself. It leads to suffering and even death.

It is of little surprise, then, that the sort of radical Christianity exemplified by Bol is rarely understood by sports journalists. For all its interest in the intimate details of players’ lives, the media has long been tone deaf to the way devout Christianity profoundly shapes some of them.

It’s not just true in sports, naturally.  The media treats the sort of faith Bol had – he spent his entire NBA fortune building hospitals in the Sudan, and spent his last years raising money through means most people, much less stars, would find humiliating – as a vaguely scary curiosity.

Read the whole thing.

As long as I can remember, American Jews have regarded Israel about the same way as northeastern Catholics look at abortion; something that’s supposed to be of overriding importance, but doesn’t really affect their voting patterns.

But Obama’s radical dissociation from Israel, and his shameless treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu, seems to be provoking a change.  I heard these numbers over the weekend, while interviewing Mark Miller of the Republican Jewish Coalition; for the first time,   American Jews are souring on Obama and the Democrats:

United States President Barack Obama has lost nearly half of his support among American Jews, a poll by the McLaughlin Group has shown.

The US Jews polled were asked whether they would: (a) vote to re-elect Obama, or (b) consider voting for someone else. 42% said they would vote for Obama and 46%, a plurality, preferred the second answer. 12% said they did not know or refused to answer.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll go to the GOP endorsee; that’s the GOP’s job to take care of.

Still, you don’t see these kinds of numbers every day:

In the Presidential elections of 2008, 78% of Jewish voters, or close to 8 out of 10, chose Obama. The McLaughlin poll held nearly 18 months later, in April 2010, appears to show that support is down to around 4 out of 10.

The poll showed that key voter segments including Orthodox/Hassidic voters, Conservative voters, voters who have friends and family in Israel and those who have been to Israel, are all more likely to consider voting for someone other than Obama.

Among Orthodox/Hassidic voters, 69% marked ‘someone else’ vs. 17% who marked ‘re-elect.’ Among Conservative-affiliated voters the proportion was 50% to 38%. Among Reform Jews, a slim majority of 52% still supported Obama while 36% indicated they would consider someone else. Among Jews with family in Israel and those who had been to Israel, about 50% said they would consider someone else…

It’s still two and a half years ’til the election, so nobody needs to get excited.  But not since Reagan have we seen such an erosion among Jewish support for the Democrats.

May you and yours have a blessed Easter.

I was seventeen years old. My grandmother was born in Italy and had always wanted to go back. Just weeks after her husband, my grandfather died, she decided it was time. He never wanted to fly and she had long since given up on trying to drag him along. This was her chance and I’d be her guest. A three and a half week tour of the homeland.

The Pope gave an audience in St. Peter’s square every Wednesday and we of course had tickets. My grandmother, a member of Northeast Minneapolis’ aristocracy of restaurateurs, must also have had connections within The Vatican. Our seats were only a few rows back from where his holiness would sit, once the Popemobile made it’s customary circuit around the interior of the square, packed with hundreds of thousands of cheering believers and tourists. Little did we know it was this day in May 1981 that Pope John Paul II would not address the animated crowd.

The Pope entered the square off in a corner, far from our post. We caught brief glimpses of his white robe and matching (and then unprotected) Jeep through the crowd. We otherwise followed him audibly as the cheers rose and fell as he traveled counter clockwise under a beautiful blue sky, through the outer bounds of the open air square, framed by rows of aged, towering and historic white columns.

I would guess he was about three quarters through his route, behind the columns in the round section of the keyhole-shaped space when the pigeons rose into the air, startled by something beyond our perception. The look on my grandmothers face conveyed her immediate concern.

Seconds later we heard the delayed pop of one of what we would learn later was a quick salvo of five shots, the other four muffled by closely packed onlookers. It sounded like a firecracker. At first we thought it was a prank, maybe someone had smuggled one into the square. It was the distant, ominous wail of women and children screaming that informed us something much more serious was afoot.

Mr. Agca shot the pope on May 13, 1981, in St. Peter’s Square, wounding him in the stomach, left hand and right arm.

The haunting sound grew in volume as the crowd became informed exponentially and traveled ominously from the point of impact to my distant perch as I stood on my chair, a typical teen-aged stance. From my vantage point I was startled to see a subsequent wave approaching through the throngs as the crowd instinctively dropped to their knees in prayer for their fallen magnate. I stood on my chair, alone, as everyone else around me fell to the bricks until just behind me, a priest, in Italian but clearly in disgust, scolded me while he horse-collared me to the ground, and implored me to pray as well.

Two years later, the Pope visited Mr. Agca in a an Italian prison and offered forgiveness.

Which is how long it seemed to take to get out of St. Peter’s square as sobbing Christians, uninformed as to their beloved Pope’s prognosis, made their way to the exits under the constant buzzing of helicopters overhead and caribinieri straining to secure and clear the area.

We made it back to our flat in Rome where the magnitude of what we had witnessed was revealed by worldwide television coverage of what would be one of the biggest global news events that year. We were glued to the screen as if we had been a thousand miles away. The fact that it had been a few hundred feet wouldn’t sink in until we were back home, weeks later.

The phone rang that night at two or three in the morning and we heard our host, a distant cousin, in Italian, clearly irritated by the disruption. It was when I heard him call out “Giovani! Telefono!” that I knew, curiously, the call was for me.

KSTP News was on the other end of the crackling line. Reporters had discovered we were the only Minnesotan’s in the square that day and they wanted an interview. I would find out later from my friends back home that my account of the incident was actually live on the air. It was probably better that I didn’t know it at the time.

The next three weeks of our trip was of course relatively uneventful as we visited the rest of Rome, touring Naples, Florence and Venice as well as the childhood home of my grandmother, reduced to remnants of a foundation by wars and the passage of time.

Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish man who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981, was released from a Turkish prison on Monday proclaiming that he was “the Christ eternal” after serving jail terms totaling 29 years.

Pope John Paul II miraculously recovered, forgave his would-be assassin, and served for over twenty more years. My grandmother passed away a few years after our pilgrimage.  I am grateful she chose me to accompany her on her last and only journey back to her home town.

In Obama’s speeches, one favorite phrase: ‘Let me be clear’

Obama’s declarations of clarity are far more than a little presidential throat-clearing.

In a presidency in which everything is murkier than Obama could have imagined, the “let me be clear” preface has become a signal that what follows will be anything but.

“Now let me be clear — let me be absolutely clear…”If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, a quarter-million dollars a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.” Since then, several proposals have muddied that assertion, including the Obama-approved tax on costly health insurance plans.

Let me be absolutely clear about what health reform means for you,” he said in July. “. . . It will keep government out of health-care decisions. It will give you the option to keep your insurance if you’re happy with it.” In fact, the government’s role in health care would increase under the legislation, and the changes would, in all likelihood, result in many people ending up with different coverage through reasons not of their own choosing.

Now, let me be absolutely clear:

Proverbs 26:24-26: “A malicious man disguises himself with his lips, but in his heart he harbors deceit. Though his speech is charming, do not believe him, for seven abominations fill his heart. His malice may be concealed by deception, but his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.”

If seeing James Cameron’s boffo blockbuster special effects extravaganza Avatar doesn’t give you a 3-D induced headache, apparently it will give you thoughts of suicide instead:

The beautiful alien planet Pandora depicted in James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ is so captivating that some audience members are becoming depressed and even suicidal when they fail to find meaning in real life after the film is over…

“I just watched avatar a few weeks ago and I’m feeling depressed and sad. It’s like I want to reach out and be in Pandora. I’d do anything to be in Pandora. I’ve tried so hard to dream about me being on Pandora but it hasn’t worked.”

“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it. I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.'”

I’ll admit I felt the urge to grab a gun after seeing “Cool as Ice”, but I don’t think it involved the same motivations.

While there’s nothing amusing about the serious depression and social alienation that allows individuals to be driven to thoughts of suicide from a 3-D film with 2-D characters, Cameron’s opus isn’t the first nor the last work of science fiction to do so.  There’s Star Wars depression.  There’s Twilight depression.  Who knows, maybe even Mitch’s light posting this morning caused a few cases of SITD withdrawal.

But regardless of the source, the causes for such depression from a work of fiction seem as much culturally based as personality-driven:

Tamara Nichols, who practiced psychotherapy for 11 years, says, “[The genre] can provide a sort of a symbolic model for people who don’t fit into the more mainstream ideas of what a man should be, what a woman should be.”

…it seems that many people who read science fiction as children had similar experiences: raised outside their mother countries, moved frequently, had health problems, troubled childhoods, and/or were academically gifted. These circumstances led these people to delve more deeply into books than to reach out to other people.

A multitude of critics as varied as the floral and fawna on Cameron’s fictional Pandora have expounded on the political and social messages that Avatar and its appeal suggest.  But regardless of the film’s real or accidental messages (and Cameron leaves little doubt about environmental intentions of the movie), the concept that Avatar’s appeal is largely what filmmakers 50 years used to call a “sword and sandal spectacle” is seemingly too timid a conclusion for some to be willing to reach.  What would columnists and bloggers have to write about without broad, overreaching conclusions on social phenomena?  Especially when your protagonists are giant blue cat people.

Maybe that’s the real underlying message of Avatar – millions of people are secretly suicidal furries.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Obama actually deified.

No, I mean actually deified, this time in the left-leaning Danish site Politiken.dk:

He is provocative in insisting on an outstretched hand, where others only see animosity.

His tangible results in the short time that he has been active – are few and far between. His greatest results have been created with words and speeches – words that remain in the consciousness of their audience and have long-term effects.

He comes from humble beginnings and defends the weak and vulnerable, because he can identify himself with their conditions.

And no we are not thinking of Jesus Christ, whose birthday has just been celebrated – – but rather the President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama.

I had to double check to see if the angry Moslems had killed noodle-, brained lefty commentator in Denmark after the “Mohammed Cartoons” controversy, and they’d hired Grace Kelly as a ringer:

For some time now, comparisons between the two have been a tool of cynical opinion that quickly became fatigued of the rapture that Obama instilled prior to and after the presidential election last year.

From the start, Obama’s critics have claimed that his supporters have idolised him as a saviour, thus attempting to dismantle the concrete hope that Obama has represented for most Americans.

Actually, my Danish friend, it’s the lefties and their bobbleheaded deification that created the cynical opinion; it’s Obama’s incompetence that have dismantled the “concrete hope”.

The idea was naturally that the comparison between Jesus and Obama – which is something that the critics developed themselves – would be comical, blasphemous, or both.

If such a comparison were to be made, it would, of course, inevitably be to Obama’s advantage.

That’s right.  Obama’s better than Christ.

Read the whole thing. 

I’m tempted not to go riot in the streets and demand the author’s death.

Chris Meirose is the pastor of the First Congregational Church in Waseca. He writes Because I Said So – a blog that’s been appearing consistently for almost five years.

And he’s all over the place; family life, computers, daily life at his church, politics – the same dog’s breakfast of topics that makes the most interesting blogs for me.

I liked this piece last month, about the value of spiritual upbringing for children:

With all of the time, money and effort that parents and churches invest in the spiritual growth of children, we find ourselves often wondering if there is really any statistical connection between childhood faith and adult religious commitment. A recent study by the Barna Group provides new insights into the age-old question.

The survey asked adults to think back on their upbringing and to describe the frequency of their involvement in Sunday school or religious training. The researchers then compared these responses to the current level of faith activity of these adults.

Read the whole thing – and of course, check back with Mr. Meirose often.