Tag Archives: Catholic Church

THE POTENTIAL FOR A LANDSLIDE

Posted on May 2, 2012 | 3 comments

Gallup says the Presidential race is in a dead heat.  No doubt they are correct, but that’s now and now is not November.  Pollsters report the present and they record the past.  Pollsters shy away from doing something dumb like trying to predict an election.  They are smart.  I will predict the election.

Barack Obama will go down in a resounding defeat.  That’s where I am; here’s how I got there (thanks, Glen).  The President has lost some support among voters across the board except for blacks.

1. He has alienated the U.S. Military anew.  With timing that would be the envy of Jack Benny, buddy Barack slighted the heroes of the Bin Laden operation by conferring upon himself a metaphorical medal for gallantry in decision making.  In doing that he alienated a lot more that just a few Navy Seals.

2. Obama has lost a good piece of the support he had from the Catholic Church.  Catholic leaders know he deceived them; parishioners know Obama’s policies are at odds with their beliefs.

3. The Jewish vote is fading fast.  Obama got 78% of the Jewish vote in 2008.  The latest poll shows Obama at just 61% against Romney.

4. Campaign funding for Obama is falling significantly short, while at the same time money is pouring in at record rates for the Republican candidate.

5. The youth have suffered the most from the high level of unemployment.  They know Obama has had 3 ½ years to do something about it but has failed to bring about any visible improvement.  He has lost the enthusiastic support that the Democratic candidate customarily gets from young people in a presidential election.  Few will switch their vote but many may stay away in droves (thanks, Yogi).

6. Blue collar workers have seen the light.  The President, yea even the Democratic Party itself has given up on courting this voting group.  These workers have been thrown under the bus and they know it.

7. Core Democratic voters, those who always vote Democratic because it’s always the only thing to do, they will still vote Democratic but only if they vote.  Many are very disappointed with Obama but will never voice it.  Turn out could be low.

8. Paul Krugman says the election will be very close and Paul Krugman is never right.

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MORE ON THE CATHOLIC FLAP

Posted on February 17, 2012 | Leave a comment

Professor Paul Rahe minces no words in writing More Than a Touch of Malice, an article you can read at Ricochet.  He adds his wisdom to the argument that, far from committing a gaffe, Obama’s riling of the Catholic Church was a deliberate and well thought out step taken to define and solidify his base.

In 2008, when he first ran for the Presidency, Barack Obama posed as a moderate most of the time.  This time, he is openly running as a radical. His aim is to win a mandate for the fundamental transformation of the United States that he promised in passing on the eve of his election four years ago and that he promised again when he called his administration The New Foundation.

In the process, he intends to reshape the Democratic coalition – to bring the old hypocrisy to an end, to eliminate those who stand in the way of the final consolidation of the administrative entitlements state, to drive out the faithful Catholics once and for all, to jettison the white working class, and to build a new American regime on a coalition of  highly educated upper-middle class whites, feminists, African-Americans, Hispanics, illegal immigrants, and those belonging to the public-sector unions. To Americans outside this coalition, he intends to show no mercy.

Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, taught that transforming a nation with a prosperous middle class like the United States into a Marxist socialist society could only be accomplished if approached as a three act play:

Act I – join the crowd, gain respect, acceptance and legitimacy.

Act II – develop the theme, spread discontent, and build a following for Act III

Act III – the act of final transformation which Alinsky says will of necessity, be violent.

Act I is complete.  The Occupy movement opened Act II; there is ample discontent.  It only needs to be channeled, fanned and kept alive.  “Those damned Regressives, now they want to take away your sex life”.  That will do it.  That’s the Catholic flap.

Act III…, there will be no Act III; we will see to that in November.  But if there were, the curtain would open in January with an Inauguration Proclamation declaring, “I, Barack Hussein Obama, am the way, the truth and the light; there is no way out of this mess but by me”.  And America would be on the road to becoming a Marxist Socialist society.

Bob B

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BARACK OBAMA’S VAUNTED CONCESSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Posted on February 12, 2012 | 1 comment

Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw explains the reality of the President’s ostensible concession in a published piece aptly titled Semantics at the Highest Level.

Consider these two policies:

A. An employer is required to provide its employees health insurance that covers birth control.

B. An employer is required to provide its employees health insurance.  The health insurance company is required to cover birth control.

The President changed the law from A to B which is no change at all.  The claimed concession is not an about face; it’s about farce.  It has oft been said that perception is reality.  The two are not the same, of course, but the aphorism makes the point that the difference is irrelevant.  Perceptions are formed by speeches and headlines while truth and reality often remain in obscurity.  In a prior post on this subject, I wrote “If there is one thing the President knows well, it is the art of agitation, how to create it, how to use it as a tool for accomplishing an objective and even how to deal with it if it turns negative to your cause.”  The pot is still simmering on the issue but thus far Obama has dealt with it effectively.

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WILL THE CATHOLIC FLAP COST OBAMA THE ELECTION?

Posted on February 9, 2012 | 2 comments

The Catholic outrage could cost Obama the election.  But Obama doesn’t believe it will or he would not have taken the stance he did.  If there is one thing the President knows well, it is the art of agitation, how to create it, how to use it as a tool for accomplishing an objective and even how to deal with it if it turns negative to your cause.  The role of a community organizer could be summed up in three words – agitate, intimidate, mediate.  You remember, do you not, that in the primaries for 2008, Obama cited his organizing experience as a reason why Democrats should choose him over Hillary Clinton.  Politics is his profession; agitation is his method; don’t sell him short.

The Catholic demographic is heavily comprised of white middle class traditional, Truman/JFK style Democrats.  They are the tradesman, the small business entrepreneurs, the salt-of-the-earth people, proud to be American and proud of their self sufficiency and loyal to their church.  This demographic, once a stalwart of the Democratic Party, has been migrating away in recent decades.

To voters, politics is all about choosing the best people to govern them.  To a politician, politics is all about strategy and strategies are subject to change over time.  Last November, the New York Times wrote:

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

Catholic Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh put it this way,

“The Obama administration has just told the Catholics of the United States, ‘To Hell with you!’ There is no other way to put it. To Hell with your religious beliefs. To Hell with your religious liberty. To Hell with your freedom of conscience.”

The far left has always felt contempt for the church, any church.  With the advent of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid trinity the Democratic Party’s policies and tactics are those of the far left.  A great many of the Democrat electorate have not yet realized that their party has left them.  This is a wake-up call for the Catholic Church.

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SEX ABUSE AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Posted on May 19, 2011 | Leave a comment

It’s not their fault. The culture made them do it. 

That’s the essence of a report just released by a research team from John Jay College. The report entitled “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010” was mandated by a group of U.S. Catholic bishops.

The study found that pedophilia was not the cause behind the widespread abuse that grew rapidly from the fifties through the sixties and peaked in the late seventies. Opportunity was the cause. The priests involved did not show pedophiliac behavior other than having sex with young boys. I guess you have to read the report to believe it.

The full 152 page report was initially available for download, but the link no longer works. However, Salon offers this report. Or go to this article from the Saint Louis Review. It includes an interesting chart. Click it to enlarge it.

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