Fr. Hans

Bailout Numbers in Perspective

Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council | Raymond J. Keating | September 26, 2008

When it comes to tallying up the federal government’s recent bailout announcements, the numbers are so staggering that they might seem unreal to many people.

For Bear Stearns: $29 billion.
For Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: $200 billion.
For AIG: $85 billion.

And now, of course, Washington debates Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s $700 billion to bailout financial firms that made bad debt decisions.

That’s $1.014 trillion in taxpayer money placed at risk. (And there’s the $25 billion loan package-bailout moving through the Congress for automakers.) Unfortunately, since there is no substantive analysis to back up the $700 billion the Treasury wants, the bill may go even higher.

But let’s take $1 trillion as the number for now, and put it in perspective. For example:
[Read more…]

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How Obama lost the election

Asia Times | Spengler | September 3, 2008

DENVER – Senator Barack Obama’s acceptance speech last week seemed vastly different from the stands of this city’s Invesco Stadium than it did to the 40 million who saw it on television. Melancholy hung like thick smog over the reserved seats where I sat with Democratic Party staffers. The crowd, of course, cheered mechanically at the tag lines, flourished placards, and even rose for the obligatory wave around the stadium. But its mood was sour. The air carried the acrid smell of defeat, and the crowd took shallow breaths. Even the appearance of R&B great Stevie Wonder failed to get the blood pumping.

The speech itself dragged on for three-quarters of an hour. As David S Broder wrote in the Washington Post: “[Obama’s] recital of a long list of domestic promises could have been delivered by any Democratic nominee from Walter Mondale to John Kerry. There was no theme music to the speech and really no phrase or sentence that is likely to linger in the memory of any listener. The thing I never expected did in fact occur: Al Gore, the famously wooden former vice president, gave a more lively and convincing speech than Obama did.” [Read more…]

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Rejoice O Bride Unwedded

This is one of my favorite hymns in the Orthodox (Byzantine) tradition. The first is sung in the original Greek, the second is the English translation. The hymn was authored by St. Nectarios of Aegina early in the last century. Also, the term Theotokos means “bearer of God” or “the One who bore God” in Greek. It is the name of the Virgin Mary and functions as a Christological statement, that is, it affirms the child born of Mary is God. This was decided at the Council of Ephesus in 431.

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Solzhenitsyn Was a Russian Patriot

Wall Street Opinion Journal | Robert Conquest | August 8, 2005

Those of us who had long been concerned to expose and resist Stalinism, in the West as in the USSR, learned much from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I met him in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1974, soon after he was expelled from the Soviet Union — the result of his novel, “The Gulag Archipelago,” being published in Paris. He was personally pleasant; I have a photograph of the two of us, he holding a Russian edition of my book, “The Great Terror,” with evident approbation. He asked if I would translate a “little” poem of his. Of course I agreed. [Read more…]

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Alexander Solzhenitsyn – Memory Eternal

The Times | Tony Halpin

Last struggle is over for Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

He was the conscience of a nation whose writings exposed the horrors of the Communist Gulag and galvanised Russian opposition to the tyranny of the Soviet Union.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s long struggle for his beloved Russia ended last night at his home in Moscow, 14 years after he had returned in triumph from exile imposed by the Soviet regime that he had helped to bring down. His son Stepan said that the Nobel laureate had suffered heart failure, aged 89.

The former dissident had been in failing health for some years. He lived long enough to be fêted by a Kremlin that had once condemned him to slave labour. The former Russian president, Vladimir Putin, once a KGB officer, travelled to Solzhenitsyn’s home to present him with the State Prize for humanitarian achievement last year, thanking him for “all your work for the good of Russia”. [Read more…]

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Court affirms law calling unborn ‘living human beings’

World Net Daily | June 30, 2008

Ruling lifts Planned Parenthood injunction against state’s abortion statute

A federal court ruled against Planned Parenthood and rejected an injunction against a state law requiring doctors to tell women seeking abortions that they may face serious medical conditions and will “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit issued a 7-4 ruling Friday to lift an injunction against the South Dakota informed consent abortion law. Attorneys representing the Alliance Defense Fund filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the Family Research Council in defense of the law.

“A woman’s life is worth more than Planned Parenthood’s bottom line,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence in a statement. “Anyone truly concerned about the interests of women supports making sure they have access to all the information necessary to make a fully informed decision. Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, has argued adamantly to restrict the information women have about the lives of their pre-born babies. We’re pleased the court’s decision today will make sure women have access to the information they need and deserve.”

[Read more…]

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Intelligent Design Isn’t ‘Stealth Creationism’

William Dembski ID relies not on Genesis but on reliable scientific methods for discriminating designed from undesigned structures. Reprinted from The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design.

Intelligent design needs to be distinguished from creation science, or scientific creationism. The most obvious difference is that scientific creationism has prior religious commitments whereas intelligent design does not. Scientific creationism is committed to two religious presuppositions and interprets the data of science to fit those presuppositions. Intelligent design, by contrast, has no prior religious commitments and interprets the data of science on generally accepted scientific principles. In particular, intelligent design does not depend on the biblical account of creation. The two presuppositions of scientific creationism are as follows:

* There exists a supernatural agent who creates and orders the world.
* The biblical account of creation recorded in Genesis is scientifically accurate. [Read more…]

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