As usual, James Howard Kunstler nails the depressing national reaction to the death of Michael Jackson, the pop songwriter, performer, and ghoul. It has been a grotesque carnival of sickness, from the biological mother of Jackson’s adopted children, who announced this week that she had been merely a sperm receptacle and has no interest in seeing - much less consoling - her own kids; to Jackson’s abusive father, Joe Jackson, who greeted news of his son’s death by cheerfully offering a vapid elegy for Michael the “superstar … who will live in our hearts forever,” even as he pimped his new record label and planned to transform his boy’s funeral into a Pay-Per-View spectacular; to the Vampire Twins, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, elbowing each other out of the way in an effort to capture the moment on behalf of their respective shakedown empires; to the vulture-like media - especially CNN - manufacturing morbid prurience and feasting on the dead flesh of a fellow human being; to the American public itself, that vast, pagan, god-hungry congregation, performing yet again the kind of cheap, graceless rituals of synthetic mourning we’ve come to accept as a substitute for real grief. The whole empty, disgusting spectacle makes me ashamed to be a participant in this pathological culture.

Here’s Kunstler:

As America entered the horse latitudes of summer, befogged in a muffling stillness on deceptively calm seas, we were distracted for a while by visions of a pale death angel moonwalking across the deck of collective consciousness. Eerie parallels resound between the sordid demise of pop singer Michael Jackson and the fate of the nation.

Like the United States, Michael Jackson was spectacularly bankrupt, reportedly in the range of $800-million, which is rather a lot for an individual. Had he lived on a few more years, he might have qualified for his own TARP program — another piece of expensive dead-weight down in the economy’s bilges — since it is our established policy now to throw immense sums of so-called “money” at gigantic failing enterprises (while millions of ordinary citizens wash overboard, without so much as a life-preserver). Anyway, Michael Jackson was on the receiving end of one huge bank loan after another long after his pattern of profligacy was set and obvious. They threw money at him for the same reason that the federal government throws money at entities like CitiBank: the desperate hope that some miracle will allow debt servicing to resume. Michael could burn through $50-million in half a year. It didn’t seem to affect his credibility as a borrower. When his heart stopped last week, he was living in a Hollywood mansion that rented for several hundred thousand dollars a month. You wonder how the landlord cashed those checks.

Like the USA, Michael Jackson was a has-been. He hadn’t recorded a song worth listening to in over two decades. He had done almost nothing but spin his wheels, hop around the globe from one place to another at enormous expense, and make himself available for award ceremonies to stoke his ego (and give advertisers a reason to promote some televised award show). He existed strictly on image, an anorectic figure nourished by moonbeams of attention, famous for saying that he loved his worshippers when the truth was he merely sucked the life out of them. In his last years, he even looked a bit like Nosferatu, the personification of the un-dead, and his fascination with ghouls was the basis for his biggest hit way back in the last century. A zombie nation deserves a zombie mascot.

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Good summary of the pro-life argument - which, by the way, is not religiously based - by Micah Watson of the Witherspoon Institute. Watson makes a compelling case that on the core issue of the presence and inviolability of human life, the anti-abortion movement has won the argument, and that those who retain a “pro-choice” point of view do so either in ignorance of the facts, or by adopting a philosophical position that some human lives are worth less than others and therefore not deserving of protection.

Consider the basic pro-life argument as it has developed over the last thirty years. Though there are many versions and several sophisticated philosophers who have made the case in more formal terms, the argument rests on three simple fundamental beliefs. The first is normative, the second medical or scientific, and the third is political.

The normative premise is that human life is a fundamental good and all human beings have a right to life. Some philosophers hold that this is a right not to be intentionally killed, though the killing of a human being may be accepted if it is the foreseen but unintended consequence of another justified action. Other philosophers do not completely rule out intending to kill a human being, but would take culpability and desert into account. Regardless, pro-lifers generally agree that unborn human beings have a right to life that cannot be violated.

The scientific belief that ties into the normative premise is the simple medical fact that embryos and fetuses are human beings. There is no longer, strictly speaking, any debate about “when life begins.” That question has been answered not by religious authority but by the disciplines of human biology and embryology. A human life begins at the moment of conception when a distinct and complete, though immature, human being forms from the joining of her parents’ gametes.

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An Austrian prelate at a Corpus Christi procession in Linz. Yes, the monstrance is a giant tong and the “host” is a loaf of focaccia bread. Seriously.

Hat tip to the blogger at Catholic Church Conservation, who writes: “What is wrong, to show the Lord of Creation in the shape of bread in this manner? One sees relaxed people standing in the background : They recognise Him no longer, they see only the bread. The Cherubim and Seraphim, Thrones and Powers, who, it is to be hoped, even in this place, accompany the celebration of the mystery recognize His glory and prostrate themselves before Him. The Church in it wisdom traditionally shows us, whose eyes are held, the Body of the Lord in the golden aureole, so we at least suspect, what we see. The oh-so-enlightened modernists are not only deficient in their fear of God, they also have no sympathy with the people. The scandal took place in front of the recently reopened Ars Electronica Centre, a high tech IT centre. They have a superb top floor bar and restaurant overlooking the Danube- they also serve foccacia bread!”

Most Holy Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - we adore You profoundly and we offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifferences by which He Himself is offended. And by the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart and those of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg You for the conversion of poor sinners. Amen.

Additional HT: Holy Smoke

… from Iranian Artists in Exile:

From Fortune magazine. An excerpt:

It can’t go on forever, and it won’t. What will shock America into action is the prospect of fiscal collapse, which will grow more vivid each year. In 2008 federal borrowing accounted for 41% of GDP, about the postwar average. By 2019 the burden will double to 82% by the CBO’s reckoning, reaching $17.3 trillion, nearly triple last year’s level. By that point $1 of every six the U.S. spends will go to interest, compared with one in 12 last year. The U.S. trajectory points to the area that medieval maps labeled “Here Lie Dragons.” After 2019 the debt rises with no ceiling in sight, according to all major forecasts, driven by the growth of interest and entitlements. The Government Accountability Office estimates that if current policies continue, interest will absorb 30% of all revenues by 2040 and entitlements will consume the rest, leaving nothing for defense, education, or veterans’ benefits.

Read the whole article HERE.

Learn to Be Still

“We are like sheep without a shepherd
We don’t know how to be alone
So we wander ’round this desert
And wind up following the wrong gods home
But the flock cries out for another
And they keep answering that bell
And one more starry-eyed messiah
Meets a violent farewell-
Learn to be still
Learn to be still”

The folks at E-Trade really hit on a winning campaign. That little African-American baby with the worried look is the cutest darned thing I’ve ever seen!

Shocker: I thought the President’s speech at Cairo University was an unqualified success. In both tone, substance and, of course, delivery, I thought it was spot-on. Complaints about Obama “apologizing” for the United States are overblown; and besides, we in fact have a lot to apologize for. Likewise, complaints that he was too tough on Israel and too soft on the Palestinians strike me as foolish. He restated America’s bedrock commitment to the Jewish state and flatly called for Palestinians to abandon violence. But he also announced what everyone knows to be true: the Israeli settlements on the West Bank are the single greatest obstacle to a permanent peace. The longer they are tolerated, encouraged, and subsidized by the Israeli government, the more difficult it will be to tear them down later … and they will be torn down.

I take second place to no one in my defense of Israel and my criticism of the Muslim world, including Islam per se. But I also believe in giving credit where it’s due, and today credit is due to President Barack Obama for his speech in Cairo. Well done.

As insisted upon by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “every human life, from the moment of conception until death, is sacred because the human person has been willed for its own sake in the image and likeness of the living and holy God.” This included the life of George Tiller, abortionist, who was shot Sunday while serving as an usher at his Lutheran church in Kansas.

The Catechism goes on to make clear that “the deliberate murder of an innocent person is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human being, to the golden rule, and to the holiness of the Creator. The law forbidding it is universally valid: it obliges each and everyone, always and everywhere. (CCC #2261)”

There is, of course, the question of whether George Tiller was an “innocent person (CCC #2271)” For three decades the man specialized in performing late-term abortions, including those of healthy, viable children as late as nine months’ gestation. There was nothing “innocent” about him at all. In fact, while retaining his dignity as a human person, Tiller had also transformed himself into something of a monster.

Even so, it was not the place of Scott Roeder to execute justice. Had his own child been approaching the abortionist’s table, Roeder might have had a legitimate claim to be defending the defenseless (CCC #2265: “Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others.”). But this was clearly not the case. Tiller was shot in the foyer of his church on a Sunday morning in the presence of innocent people, including many children. Roeder’s was an act of vengeance, a cold-blooded and deliberate murder, intrinsically evil. It was wrong and cannot be justified. Scott Roeder should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The murder of George Tiller is also counterproductive in that it harms the pro-life cause. Just last week a new poll was released that revealed 51% of Americans now consider themselves “pro-life.” No doubt many of those respondents are still in the process of forming their consciences over the issue. They are works-in-progress, slowly coming to the realization that innocent human life should be protected at all stages, from conception to natural death, and that the right of a woman to privacy can never trump the right to life. How many of those tender consciences will want to be associated - even remotely - with the kind of anarchic violence visited upon George Tiller by Scott Roeder? How many will conclude that despite their warming to the pro-life label and cause, any further movement in our direction might carry them into precincts of violence that are as evil as abortion itself? Scott Roeder has set back the pro-life cause by decades.

However, it is possible to condemn the murder of George Tiller without claiming to grieve the passing of the man himself, as many are doing over at the Vox Nova blog. I associate myself with the sentiments of the poster, M.Z., who wrote:

It’s okay not to feel sad over the death of George Tiller. I know a lot of you are being told you should feel some sort of sadness. If you happen to be against abortion and find everything Tiller stood for to be repulsive, of course you are a Christianist that might as well have pulled the trigger yourself. Well, this is what you will be told at least. Or you might hear from fellow pro-lifers that we must express how terrible a thing has happened because not doing so will hurt “the cause.” (The quotes are there because like so many causes, “the cause” has consumed its object a long time ago.) Just because a rich, white guy is killed for the evil he has done doesn’t mean that we need to mourn the loss of society.

I don’t grieve the death of George Tiller. Grief is an emotion I feel only for Tiller’s victims, not the man himself. I don’t feel diminished by his loss. In fact, the world may objectively be a better place today because George Tiller isn’t here to butcher the unborn. I didn’t wish him dead, and I would have counseled Scott Roeder not to do it. Had I known he was planning to gun down Tiller I would have done everything in my power to stop him. But Tiller is dead, and you’ll find no crocodile tears being shed over him here.