Random Thoughts

Israelis and Palestinians. Isn't it interesting that all those smart people at the UN, and now all those equally smart people in the Obama administration, seem to want Israel to get rid of those Jewish settlements in the West Bank in preparation for a future Palestinian state? Apparently they want to ensure that any new Palestinian state will be Jew-free. After all, we couldn't possibly allow any Jews to live among those Muslim Arabs. Having Jewish neighbors would just be too much for the Arabs to handle. And yet, there's no mention of the fact that many, many Muslim Arabs live in Israel. They vote in Israel. They have representatives in the Knesset. And they enjoy a much higher standard of living than those who live in Gaza. I don't hear the Israeli government calling for an Arab- or Muslim-free Israel.

Hmmm. An interesting double standard, don't you think? Gee, do you think that there might be a touch of anti-Semitism behind it?

Of course, there can never be a Palestinian state until the Palestinians publicly accept Israel's right to exist. So far they haven't. Their only declared goal is to toss Israel into the sea. How can anyone expect the Israelis to negotiate seriously with a people whose only goal is the destruction of Israel?

Unemployment Soars. When the new administration proposed its "recovery plan" and new spending legislation it released a graph (below) showing what unemployment would be like with and without the plan. The dark blue line is the administration's predicted unemployment with the recovery plan, the light blue line shows predicted unemployment without the plan. The red data points, however, show the reality. Source: click here.

Looks like a trend to me. Any bets on what the June figures will be? Makes you think it might have been better had the government done nothing and just given the economy the room it needed to find its own way to recovery. Active, intrusive government action in the economy is always taken with the best of intentions and always leads to unintended consequences that end up damaging people's lives.

Clueless: Next Supreme Court Justice. Apparently Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's choice to be our next Supreme Court Justice, will be just one more pro-abortion voice on the court. This assumption is based on her reply to a questions asked by pro-life Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC).

When the Senator asked Sotomayor if the unborn child had any rights, she gave a most surprising response: She said she had never thought about it. Isn't that remarkable? She's been a judge for almost two decades and she's never thought about the core principle involved in the most contentious moral, political and legal issue facing this nation. The only conclusions one can draw from her response is that she (1) lied to provide political cover during the upcoming conformation hearings; or (2) is completely clueless, an intellectual and judicial lightweight of the first order. Certainly any pro-life judge, indeed any pro-life human being, would have thought much about the rights of the unborn child.

...not that her opinions or her intellect will make much difference. She and her future colleagues on the Supreme Court will not be the ones who stop abortion. That will come only when the American people decide in their hearts that no more unborn babies will die. When that happens, the plague of abortion will end.

Read more here.

Book Recommendation. As I prepare to teach a parish course on Church History, I've done a lot of extra reading on the subject. Among the more interesting new books is one written by Father Walter Brandmuller, the Vatican's chief historian and president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences. The book -- Light and Shadows, Church History amid Faith, Fact and Legend -- was published just this year by Ignatius Press. It's a wonderful read and casts much needed light on many of those shadowy events and issues that have led so many people to misinterpret the history of the Church.


God's peace.