Huzzah for the neighborhood

Our neighborhood swim team won its first swim meet in five years earlier tonight, by a score of 272 to 241. Jane wanted very much to swim, but obviously could not. She was there for most of the meet to cheer brother Thomas on, however, and he turned in several personal best times wearing his new purple swim cap. I don't think Jane ever actually cheered. But she watched parts of the meet, and her presence was present enough.

Swim team parents and volunteers have been unfailingly gracious to us. Not only that, but the kids on the team all signed a poster that said "Welcome Back, Jane."

Watching the camaraderie of a meet, it's esay to see why the team is a rallying point for the whole neighborhood even when it loses. I can't think of another venue where I'd be greeted with "Hey, Miracle Man!" or commiserate with another parent about the otherworldly color and chemical composition of the "Flaming Hot Cheet0s" that our boys seem to like.

Victory tonight was especially sweet.

I was on my feet most of the time, acting as an announcer over the loudspeaker mounted in front of the lifeguard office, but the experience was worth it.

A good reminder

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you,' that would suffice."
-- Meister Eckehart

Mending slowly

I talked with my brother last night, and he reports that many of the prayer candles in the famous grotto at the University of Notre Dame have Jane's name on them.

That's a nice thought, and it moved me almost as much as Jesus saying "Little girl, get up" in yesterday's gospel reading.

Jane saw three doctors in a followup visit this morning.

No word on her head yet, and her broken wrist remains a dicey proposition, but she has youth and resilience on her side. She's pleased that she got to swap the puce-colored Ace bandage-on-a-splint she had been wearing for a traditional plaster cast wrapped in a bandage of bright Kelly green.

In other family news, we made good on the game of Risk that I'd started setting up last nght, and I talked Thomas into a haircut by convincing him that he'd swim faster in a meet tomorrow with shorter hair.

Popped a stitch?

Most of Jane's forehead continues to look better every day, but she also appears to have popped a stitch (suture?) or two at the top end of the line where plastic surgeons sewed her scalp back in place.

I phoned the pediatric surgeon on night duty in the hospital. That doctor said there was likely little cause for concern, unless the edges of the hole were red or Jane developed a fever.

Jane spent her day in pajamas. We argued playfully over who was entitled to more chocolate-covered fruit, but I think the highlight for both of us was when her friends Kristen and Lauren came over, because Kristen and Lauren are experts at playing quietly. When all three girls got bored with tweener-themed comedy on the Disney Channel, they played a game of "Polly Pockets" in Jane's room.

We had intended to play a game of "Risk" as a family after dinner, but the "Risk" board took me too long to set up, because I haven't played that game in 20 years. Perhaps we'll play tomorrow instead.

More later-- we all have sleep to catch up on!

What I read in June (or better, did NOT read)

I did not actually finish any books this month. Family friends returned library books that would otherwise have been overdue.

Here's a list of recommended summer books instead. Julie has a similar list with no seasonal restrictions. And my favorite curmudgeon has a rant up about a book to avoid that is not by Dan Brown.

If you like Julie's list, you might also like the following Listmania lists that I placed on Amazon back before North Carolina made it impossible for state residents to profit from product referrals on that site (not that my lists ever made money, but now the political critters have seen to it that they never will):

Catholic Christianity made easy but not stupid (originally created in 2003)

Great Religious Fiction (originally created in in 2002)

I like both lists, but they're little more than time capsules now. From the email explaining why:

"We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date."

Read so far this year: 18 books (that total has not changed since May)

Previously in this series:
January, February, March, April, May

Now phase two

Family friend Katra returned to California really early yesterday morning.

Eight mylar balloons float against our family room ceiling.

Thomas participated in a swim meet with our neighborhood team Tuesday night, swimming as the sole O'Hannigan in the meet but acquitting himself well. Cathleen and Katra watched him race while I napped at home, exhausted. I hope to be all over next Tuesday night's meet.

Jane's collection of stuffed animals is perhaps a third larger than it was at this time last week. She naps a lot, too, and we're glad for that.

Stitches are coming out of my arm later today, although I didn't help things along when I slipped on stairs and landed on the already-traumatized elbow. The ER nurses who last chacked my arm gave me a package of "Steri-Strips" to bring to our family doctor. They said private-practice doctors don't always have them handy, but they're good to use on wounds around joints after the stitches are out, and they'll fall off by themselves eventually. Meanwhile, the monkey bars in the park will just have to keep misisng me until perhaps the Fourth of July.

Memory games like Taboo and Stratego now supplement family favorites like Blokus, and we're all making a point of playing more of them to help Jane along.

Everybody in the house has internalized the hospital's pain rating scale, so we can ask Jane "How's your head? How's your wrist? Give me a number." If we don't ask, she volunteers the information.

Sometimes I think I don't know what "normal" is any more. I'm learning gratitude, though. When friends sign email with phrases like "Big Giant Hugs," I can actually feel them. And yesterday at twilight I marveled at the slinky grace of a black cat who was herself studying fireflies while they blinked yell0w-green around her.

Yeeesh!

Jane is home! All 7 mylar balloons and a small herd of stuffed animals in her hospital room barely fit into friend Dawn's car next to two gift baskets and an air mattress, but now begins a new chapter of O'Hannigan family life.

This was one of the first conversations Jane and I had after she had settled into the family room sofa and noticed the tube sock sleeve on my left elbow (it's a great bandage substitute if a wound has been healing and you don't use the toes of the sock; it was recommended to me by nurse Jennifer).

By way of context, Jane knows she was in an accident, but does not remember that event:

"Daddy, is your car broken?"

"Yes, punkin. Extremely broken."

"Did you save me any scrap metal?"

"No sweetheart, I did not. I didn't know you wanted any metal from the car."

"How about the logo? Did you save me the logo?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't save that, either. I'm just glad you're back."

After a delicious supper provided by one of the other swim team families, Thomas played a game of Stratego with Katra while Jane and Cathleen watched part of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Jane is only supposed to walk up and down stairs with help, but already we have to tell her to slow down so we can catch up to her. I was so moved when she stood very still to let me put antibiotic ointment on the stitches in her forehead while wearing a surgical glove. She looks really cute in a head scarf, although she didn't wear one long.

Cathleen found blue glitter nail polish with which to paint Jane's nails. That color is going to clash with the ace-bandage brown of the cast on her right wrist, but as the smiley faced balloon tied to our front stoop would imply, nobody cares. Right now we're too busy being grateful.

Sheesh

NOW they find out that Jane also has a broken right wrist?!

Happy Father's Day

Earlier in this week that feels like a month, my one wish was that Jane would be out of the Intensive Care Unit by Father's Day. With God's help, she did even better than I had dared hope.

Cathleen continues to keep bedside vigil on our daughter. Last night her best friend Katra slept over in the hospital, also, to keep both of them company.

Jane got a gentle bath and another MRI yesterday. We're told that a 20-minute bath at this stage of her recovery is as tiring for her as a 12-hour work day would be for someone without a brain injury, and so it was no surprise that she slept afterward.

When Jane woke up, it was just in time for visits-- one short visit from the wonderful man who first called EMS and then helped me climb out of my wrecked car at the accident scene, and then another from a school friend named Carolyn, and Carolyn's father Karl. Carolyn helped Jane name her growing collection of stuffed animals. Jane had a coffee theme going for those bears and doggies, because, speaking quietly but clearly, she named them Hershey, Chocolate, and Mocha.

Friends bought Thomas to the hospital for a visit with his sister, and that was neat to see, also. Jane remembers Thomas, but mistook one of her girlfriends for one of our neighbors who is also a friend.

Thomas then went with one of my work pals and her nephew to a stage production of High School Musical 3. He had thought before going that he might not like it, but admitted afterward that it was fun. The stop at Red Robin beforehand was a hit, too ("Dad, I had a bottomless soda. Five Cokes in 45 minutes for $2.25! It was a great deal!").

Memo to SusanCarol: Five Cokes?! I'm embarrassed that my son was oblivious to the outrage of that number (When I challenged him on that, he said, "Dad, I controlled myself. I could have had six Cokes.") But thank you. And your fan club now has another junior member.

I'm starting to feel like Jane is making such wonderful steps in physical recovery that I need to keep pace with her so as to support ongoing mental and emotional recovery. It will take time to sort all this out.

I'll be going back to the hospital with Thomas in a little while. And writing that sentence, simple as it is, gives me pause. That I can write it at all means that I'm alive, and Jane's alive, and Thomas is very much with us. People whom I love are at the hospital for me to see, and I get to see them. I spoke with Jane on the phone, and got to hear her say "Happy Fathers' Day, da-da."

Not even 9:00 am, and it's already a great Fathers' Day.

Postscript: Mass today could not have been any more gripping in the way that Scripture readings fit our current situation. We got Job 38, about the power of God, then Psalm 107, about the love of God, then 2 Corinthians, where Paul reminds people that "the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come."
The gospel was Mark 4:35-41, and in the sermon, Monsignor Tim emphasized that in the storms of life, it's good to ask if God cares, because the answer is always yes.

Apart from all that, the choir belted out not one but two favorite hymns-- "How Can I Keep from Singing?" and "Precious Lord, Take My Hand."

That second hymn is not often sung by our church choir, but family friend Katra and I had heard it earlier in the week while riding the shuttle service that the hospital provides between its main parking deck and various medical buildings.

Our driver on two trips had a CD of the Elvis's gospel tunes keeping himself and his passengers company, and people on the shuttle van had been singing along with the King's instantly-recognizable baritone the other night.

Icing on the cake: Jane got her neck brace taken off today! And whacked her brother with a teddy bear!

Another day of miracles

I have never been so humbled and so grateful in my life.

Today (technically yesterday, as it's ridiculously late) Jane opened and focused her eyes. She continued speaking in short sentences. She walked a few shaky steps with assistance. She ate soup ladled to her with a spoon, and then chewed a few pieces of melon. She still has a cervical collar and IV lines, but she did so amazingly well that as of a few hours ago, she's out of the Intensive Care Unit and into a regular hospital room!

That's just the highlight reel for the last 16 hours.

People have recommended www.caringbridge.org to me twice now (and I love 'em for it). I will look at that as soon as time permits, but I wanted to get this squib out where I already have virtual acreage.

Those prayers -- we will never be able to repay you people. Keep them coming, please. And know that we O'Hannigans lift you up in gratitude, also.

A partial record of blessings received

I would not wish the car accident that Jane and I were part of on anybody. Cathleen has maintained a hospital vigil 24x7 since Tuesday afternoon, while I've divided my time between hospital and home. Son Thomas is caught in the middle, but struggling mightily to rise to the occasion. And the whole experience continues to open our eyes to so much grace, it's humbling.

Cathleen and I were talking about a thank-you list for all the people who have pitched in to help us. I think that's a great idea, but wanted also to take it a step further, and write out at least a partial list of blessings as they occur to me. I am blind to so much. I misunderstand even more. But I have been moved beyond words by these things, and perhaps posting them publicly might help others to see similarly in some small way. If it's not your cup of tea, I do understand. But I believe in angels, in grace, and in the love of God. I see all of that now more than I did before. Jane is an instrument of that confidence, bless her sweet heart, but she's only one of many.

Off the top of my head:

• The accident was on a bridge, but neither car went over the guardrail to the highway below.
• The first person who stopped and tried to render assistance to Jane and me was a nurse.
• Police and paramedics arrived quickly.
• Ambulances took my daughter and me to what is arguably the best trauma center in the state.
• Thomas and Cathleen were not in the car and so were not hurt.
• Dozens of friends have been asking how they can help-- and helping. I came home tonight to find dishes done, and dinner waiting. The family dogs had been walked twice, by different people.
• Cathleen was with Jane when she talked for the first time since the accident.
• Jane can now breathe without the ventilator.
• The doctor who pulled glass out of my arm came looking for me the next day even though he was off duty and the Pediatric ICU is a long way away from his normal haunts in the Emergency Room.
• One of our neighbors works in the hospital cafeteria.
• Jane got a visit from her school principal yesterday even though they've been on summer break for several weeks now.
• There are friends we can call day or night.
• Jane sat up in bed this afternoon, and without opening her eyes, said clear as day "I want a shower." When Cathleen asked "Do you remember Sophia?," Jane said "Sophia is my puppy."
• My co-workers have been temendously supportive.
• My wife's co-workers have been tremendously supportive.
• My glasses flew off my head and are scratched but still usable, which means I can visit my daughter instead of trying to get to the optometrist first thing.
• An intact family makes a wonderful Fathers' Day present.
• We're on prayer chains all over the place.

We're told that recovery from brain injury is a slow process, and we believe that. But we continue to be encouraged and inspired. If you're praying for us, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Please keep doing that.

Prayer request

Jane and I were in a serious car accident yesterday morning. Thomas and Cathleen were not with us at the time. I sustained only bruising and some deep lacerations to my left elbow, so I was discharged from the emergency room late yesterday afternoon.

Jane was ejected from my vehicle and suffered head trauma. She is still in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.

Jane has been mostly unconscious since the accident. We do have some good news in that doctors say there is no damage to her spine. She was also able to squeeze my hand with hers last night. A plastic surgery team stitched up her head wound, but brain swelling remains an issue, so we're not out of the woods. Neighbors and friends have been wonderful. Thomas just took over all the pet chores that are normally mine.

We'll take all the prayers we can get. We want to storm heaven on Jane's behalf.

UPDATE: June 17, 8:25 PM: Nursing staff took Jane off the ventilator. She's still unconscious, but now she's back to breathing on her own, without the help of a machine! Thank you for those prayers! Keep 'em coming!

The politics of Latin-to-English translation

A twofer from the Catholic Culture web site, courtesy of "Diogenes" and Dr. Jeff Mirus:

At their June meeting [later this week in San Antonio, TX] the US bishops will vote on a new set of liturgical translations, which have been prepared by linguists operating on the novel theory that a translation should reflect what the original text says, rather than what a small group of liturgists think the text should say. Father [Thomas] Reese [Editor of the Jesuit magazine 'America' and frequent pundit on all things Catholic] doesn't like that theory, and-- summoning all of his subtlety and dialectical skill-- describes it as a "stupid idea."

(From the column in question: "Over the last few years, the bishops have gradually adopted new translations that are worse than the ones in current use because of the Vatican fetish for word-for-word translations of Latin texts. When this project is finally finished, it will be imposed on American parishes. ")

Ha! That "imposed" cracks me up. I wonder if Fr. Reese said the same about the Catechism of the Catholic Church?

He might want latitude enough to translate "ex cathedra" as "from the Barcalounger," but I agree with the wag who had this to say about Fr. Reese's outburst:

If words don't mean anything, then they aren't important, in which case why would one translation be "worse" than another? If words do mean something, then they are important, and the Vatican's "fetish" is nothing more sinister than dedication to getting things right. So where's the problem?

Against the scrim of what Reese calls a controversy and people like me consider a welcome development, Dr. Jeff Mirus shines a spotlight of context:

"Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Paterson (New Jersey) is the chairman of the US Bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship. Last October he addressed the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions on the significance and goals of the revision of the Roman Missal, currently in progress. The revision is proceeding according to the principles set forth in 2001 in Liturgiam authenticam, an instruction of the Holy See which replaced the document in force since 1969, Comme le Prévoit, now regarded as seriously flawed.

As Bishop Serratelli pointed out, the main difference between the two instructions is that the heady 1969 concept of “dynamic equivalency” is now replaced by a more traditional concept of “formal equivalency”. With “dynamic equivalency”, the translator was encouraged to attempt to capture the concept presented in any given liturgical prayer without attempting to reproduce in the new language the particular words and phrases used in the Latin. This gave translators tremendous leeway and, given the times, led to a marked horizontalization and banalization (if such are words!) of the liturgy. Liturgiam authenticam’s “formal equivalency” insists that not only the underlying concepts but the precise words and phrases used to express them be preserved in the translation, ensuring superior fidelity to the mind of the Church.

What lies beneath this shift is an important liturgical recovery, the understanding that the liturgy is primarily the work of God and that its words and actions are supposed to reflect not so much individual styles of piety as the living Faith of the Church, into which each believer must be incorporated."

FOR MORE CONTEXT-- Previously on the same soap box here at the Paragraph Farm:

NABBed: The Revenge of the Translators (July 31, 2007)
A torpedo amidships (June 17, 2008)

Friendly fire

I seldom agree with Senator Robert Byrd, but you know what they say about blind squirrels and acorns. Byrd was right to tell President Obama that his penchant for appointing "czars" is not only unconstitutional but anti-constitutional.

Using the June 10 appointment of "Compensation Czar" Kenneth Feinberg as a hook, Ken Klukorski surveys the current scene:

"Over the past thirty years presidents have each had one or two czars for various issues, and once the number went as high as five. But now, by some counts President Obama has created sixteen czars, and there may be more on the way. Each of these has enormous government power, and answers only to the president."

[snip]

"Senator Byrd wrote a letter to President Obama in February, criticizing the president’s strategy of creating czars to manage important areas of national policy. Senator Byrd said that these appointments violate both the constitutional system of checks and balances and the constitutional separation of powers..."

"And Senator Byrd is exactly correct. The Constitution commands that government officers with significant authority (called “principal officers”) are nominated by the president but then are subject to a confirmation vote by the U.S. Senate. And principal officers include not only cabinet-level department heads, but go five levels deep in executive appointments, to include assistant secretaries and deputy undersecretaries."

This isn't rocket science (if it were, Senator Byrd wouldn't be the guy calling President Obama on it).

I'd like to hear the administration defend its mania for czars. I'm guessing the defense amounts to either "I won" or "Other presidents appointed czars, too," but I fear that it, like the bogus assertions about the effect of the "economic stimulus" package, has become another signature move for the president and his acolytes to spin. And "spin" is the kind word for it.

For the feast of Corpus Christi

The Anchoress is right. Whether you got a chance to sing that great Thomist hymn Tantum Ergo today or not, you should read Deacon Greg.

Wisdom from a Penguin

(Because if the Hurricanes had to lose, at least it was to the Stanley Cup champs)

Jon Paul Morosi's recap of Game 7 includes a nifty vignette. My hat's off to Matt Talbot, the unheralded "plugger" who scored the game-winning goal:

Talbot theorized: "It might sound stupid, but hockey is a lot in the head. You look at my skills — there are a lot of players in the AHL that have more skills than me. I'm not lying there. ... Every morning I wake up and say, 'Today's the best day of my life.' Well, today is really the best day of my life."

Talbot didn't have a multigoal game during the regular season. But he had two of them in the Stanley Cup finals, both coming in Pittsburgh victories.

Improbable? Sure. Then again, so was this notion of Pittsburgh winning Friday. The 1971 Montreal Canadiens were the last team to win the Cup in a Game 7 on the road.

Remembering John Wayne

Roger Ebert wrote a nice retrospective of The Duke, who died thirty years ago this week. Director John "Pappy" Ford gets a fine tribute from Wayne in the same piece.

Rules are only for the little people

If you annoy this administration, then, to borrow a phrase from brother Gollum, you must be one of those nasty little hobbitses.

The invaluable Bookworm has more detail. Ed Morrissey at HotAir says it's only a matter of time before this inconvenient Inspector General at AmeriCorps gets a show trial.

UPDATE, June 15: The firing came on the heels of two unpopular investigations.

Have you noticed how much the Democrats like czars? It's because czars are unfettered by messy Constitutional notions of accountability and transparency.

Pete Wehner has related thoughts, while Benjamin Sarlin's tutorial on "How to Write an Obama Speech" is amusing and all too true.

Monkeying with Middle Earth

"Whee was the chief village of Wheeland, a small and swampy region populated mostly by star-nosed moles and folk who wished that they were someplace else. The village enjoyed a brief popularity when, through a surveyor's fortuitous hiccup, the four-lane Intershire Turnpath was mistakenly built right through the center of the pathetic little twarf. There, for a time, the populace lived high on the hog off the proceeds from illegal speed traps, parking violations, and occasional bald-faced hijackings. A small tourist influx from the Sty led to the construction of cheap diners, flimsy souvenir stands, and prefabricated historical landmarks. But the growing cloud of 'troubles' from the east abruptly ended such trade as there was. Instead, a trickle of refugees came from the eastern lands bearing few belongings and fewer smarts. Not ones to miss an opportunity, the men and boggies of Whee banded together in harmony selling the heavily accented immigrants shorter names and interests in perpetual-motion machines. They also supplemented their purses by hawking black-market visas to the Sty to the few unfortunates who were not familiar with the place."

-- from Bored of the Rings, a parody of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, by Henry N. Beard and Douglas C. Kenney of The Harvard Lampoon (1969).

Suuuure, he's a student of history

I'd put that Cairo speech claim in the same pile I put Mark Morford's blind-to-irony-and-Genesis claim that President Obama is a "light worker."

Of course, the president never said he was an attentive student of history. He only implied that.

Victor Davis Hanson shows why that's another accolade without foundation. In a short essay, he reviews no less than nine distortions that suggest President Obama "lacks historical competency, in areas of both facts and interpretation."

Hanson also notes drily that his well-nigh irrefutable list "could be easily expanded." Charles Krauthammer would agree.

Baseball as a school of virtue

Elizabeth Tecla Mauro, Benedictine oblate and baseball fan, on the game when it's done right.

It's an essay the verges on poetry, and methinks she's read and appreciated W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe, among other classics.

A real Nowhere Man?

Too much about President Obama (Mr. Lecturer-in-Chief) seems helter skelter, and Bookworm has decided that the "let it be" option poses more risks for all of us than the "I get by with a little help from my friends" option. I think her question has merit.

David Goldman's analysis of the Cairo speech suggests Bookworm is actually soft-pedaling concerns that ought to be played at a volume consistent with a forte notation in a classical score.

Appreciating Franz Joseph Haydn

Damian Thompson:

"The truth is that Haydn filled drawer after drawer with pretty, clever but forgettable music during his 50-odd years as a working composer, much of it spent as a liveried servant for Prince Esterhazy.

But - and here's the point at last - he also wrote more works of sublime craftsmanship than any composer except J S Bach. Indeed, only Bach, Mozart and Beethoven surpassed his inspiration, which I would put on a par with Schubert's. Yet in my case it took a ridiculously long time for the penny to drop, because Haydn's art conceals itself in a way that no other great composer's does."

[snip]

"Sometimes more happens in a four-minute rondo by Haydn than in whole operas by other composers.

"Haydn was a pious Catholic, though -- unlike the unorthodox Beethoven -- he did not attempt to express his own theological ideas (in so far as he had any) in his sacred music. Perhaps that is why it is well suited to the celebration of the liturgy. His late Masses are on my list to get to know properly, along with the mighty Creation, once I've finished exploring the quartets. And the piano trios. And the piano sonatas, the best of which equal Beethoven's and are altogether more substantial than Mozart's.

As I say, if only the penny had dropped 20 years earlier. But that's Haydn for you: he waits for you to discover him after your grand passion for more demonstrative geniuses has begun to fade."

Spengler with the comparisons

President Obama's recent speech in Cairo may be the gift that keeps on giving, but not necessarily in a way that Obama himself would prefer. Here's Spengler with an instructive comparison highlighting one of the important differences between the pope and the president:

"Benedict believes that the Jews should be in Eretz Yisrael for the same reason that the Jerusalem Post does: because it is divinely mandated. Obama reinforces the Arab claim that Israel is the product of European guilt over the Holocaust. Who is the friend of the Jews, and who is the enemy?"

The comments on Spengler's essay are provocative, too.

The NYT finds barbeque

Reporter John T. Edge reports from Hemingway, South Carolina on "seriously slow" food.

Remembering Private William Long

Semper Fidelis and Rest in Peace. The whole Long family deserves our prayers and thanks.

Baby steps

Christine Kane on not making the perfect the enemy of the good. In musician-speak, it's better to get a first gig than to prepare eternally for a gig.

No reset button on the farm

Some things that Victor Davis Hanson has learned but President Obama has not. Hat tip and big thanks to Foxfier for the find.

In related news, William McGurn's column on jobs "saved or created" is a must-read. Drew M. is cynical (and, fair warning, potty-mouthed) about the same data.

At least they're not averting their eyes, or throwing good money after bad, or sending American jobs overseas-- let's not forget that.

A parting question: Did you know that the private sector is tracking stimulus spending in real time even though the federal government is not?

Me, neither (until now).

Bad prescriptions and better ones

The health care reform proposals now being floated in Washington, D.C. make for bad medicine, writes Betsy McCaughey, who makes a compelling argument for sliding-scale debit cards as a low-risk alternative that would help the people not now served by affordable health insurance.

As for fixing Medicare, she notes, "If rising health costs were to blame, Medicare would have been thrown into crisis in 1980, when annual health care spending increases topped 13 percent, instead of now, when the annual increase is less than half that. Demographics are to blame, and Congress has been warned every six months for decades that Medicare needs to be adjusted.

Telling all Americans they have to cut back on health care because Medicare is fiscally unsound is like ordering all Americans to go on diets and buy fewer groceries because the food stamp program is in trouble. Medicare can be fixed without subjecting the nation to a regimen of health-care scarcity."

In conjunction with McCaughey's informative essay, out today, it's also worth recalling a passage from Thomas Sowell's 2004 book, Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One.

Here's Sowell:

Economists may say that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but politicians get elected by promising free lunches.

"Most of what are called attempts to 'bring down the cost of medical care' are not that at all. They are attempts to bring down the prices charged by physcians, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. Many of those who are most active in trying to bring down those prices are most resistant to bringing down the real costs of medical care by such things as making it harder for lawyers to win frivolous lawsuits against hospitals or making the Food and Drug Administration's approval process for new medicines less time-consuming, or reducing the layers of bureaucracy administering various schemes of third-party payments. These things all drain resources that could be used to treat or cure diseases, or to prevent them. [snip]

Four things have almsot invariably followed the imposition of controls to keep prices below the level they would reach under supply and demand in a free market: (1) increased use of the product or service whose price is controlled, (2) reduced supply of the same product or service, (3) quality deterioration, and (4) black markets. All these things have been found when the prices of medical care have been controlled--and all are particularly harmful in matters involving pain, disability, and death."

Almost "Fulsome prison blues"

I've got a new essay up at American Spectator Online about the "martyrdom" that wasn't. As I mentioned there, I do not write to speak ill of the dead. My quarrel is with some of the living.

Charlie has some fascinating related thoughts. Dawn Eden does, too. And Ross Douthat's NYT column, while oddly headlined, is better than most of what's on the paper's editorial page, though it also misses a key point.

UPDATE: It figures that Thomas "American Papist" Peters is an ally in the noble cause of saving words from the depradations of those who would misuse them. He's trying to rescue "partisan."

When Hollywood was helpful

From his undisclosed location in Germany, the Paragraph Farm's "European Bureau Chief" sends this heartwarming story of how a modified poster of Gary Cooper as the sheriff in High Noon now helps to commemorate the rebirth of freedom in Eastern Europe and the anniversary of Poland's "Solidarity" movement:

Designed by Tomasz Sarnecki, it depicted the actor carrying not a gun, but a voting ballot, and wearing a Solidarity logo above his sheriff's badge, which read: 'It's high noon, June 4, 1989. [snip]

Krystyna Ratajczak, in charge of PR at the Warsaw City Council, says that by displaying the poster at the very heart of the capital, Poland sends a spectacular message to the world that Warsaw was the centre of the democratic transformations in the whole of Central and Eastern Europe.

Gary Cooper also reminds the residents of Berlin of the 1989 Polish elections. A huge banner, measuring 66 by 17 metres, featuring a motif from the historic poster has been displayed on the building of the former Polish Embassy in the German city. A copy of the poster is one of the items at an exhibition The end of communism held at the Polish Institute in Berlin. The original design of the poster was presented to the US Library of Congress by the late Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek in 1999.

I will always be grateful for having once had the opportunity to shake Lech Walesa's hand.

A fine rant

We have occasional differences of opinion, but Sister Toldjah is my friend. I like the way she thinks, and I like what she's bothered by, because the same things bother me, too.

Stanek makes short work of a myth

I almost never read WorldNetDaily because its site design hurts my eyes and its default tone seems to be apocalyptic. At least some of its columnists speak truth, however, and former registered nurse Jill Stanek is one of the good ones.

Here she shines the light on a myth that even Ann Coulter fell for, which is that the late Dr. George Tiller was one of only three doctors in the U.S. who performed (or in the case of what we're told are the other two doctors, still perform) late-term abortions:

"When it became public that Christ Hospital, where I worked, committed late-term abortions (as late as 28 weeks by my observations), these others in the Chicago area also confessed to same: Good Samaritan, Lutheran General, Illinois Masonic, Loyola, Northwestern, and Rush-Presbyterian St. Lukes. That's just Chicago, and that's just those who fessed up.

Not much later the Providence Health System, which owns a chain of 26 hospitals in Alaska, California, Montana, Oregon, and Washington, admitted to committing late-term abortions."

Read the whole column. Unfortunately, lots of doctors perform late-term abortions. There were never only three-- and, as she notes, to call most such abortions "medically necessary" would be laughable if it weren't lethal.

UPDATE: Stanek is not the only one questioning "medical necessity" as a rationale used by "pro-choice" activists. Here's the Anchoress, with one of many nuggets in an excellent essay touching the same subject:

"The American Medical Association has quietly conceded that—as we do not live in the nineteenth or even the early twentieth century, when a cesarean section was all but a death sentence for a woman—there really is no medical reason for such an abortion. One may additionally argue that delivering a baby feet first, then shoulders, is by no means a simple or easy sort of delivery, so the dangers it purports to spare a woman are not obvious."

John Zmirak has written about Tiller, too, and he's nearly always a great read.

Toby Harnden makes a list

He tracked President Obama's "10 mistakes in Cairo."

If he were just saying the equivalent of "neener neener," I wouldn't link to it, but his tone is reasonable and his argument compelling. A sample from "mistake number four:"

"By highlighting the most superficial aspect of women's rights is the Muslim world, Obama dramatically underplayed the oppression women face. It's not people in the West who believe women who cover their hair are less equal, it's countries in the Middle East that dictate that all women are less equal. From the Left, Peter Daou, who grew up in west Beirut, rails against the weakness of Obama's stance on human rights: "With women being stoned, raped, abused, battered, mutilated, and slaughtered on a daily basis across the globe, violence that is so often perpetrated in the name of religion, the most our president can speak about is protecting their right to wear the hijab?" From the Right, Stephen Hayes, points out: "In Saudi Arabia, women cannot drive. In Iran, they're stoned on suspicion of adultery. In Pakistan, politicians publicly defend 'honor killings' of young girls who have the audacity to choose their own husbands."

Harnden says that the worst passage in Obama's speech was the one about women and the hijab.

I didn't watch the speech, so I don't know whether I'd concur with that. I suspect I would not, because the president said something else that was not just superficial, but also plain wrong: Writing about "The Purple Prose of Cairo" at The American Spectator Online, George Neumayr notes that Obama "declared casually that Islam made possible Europe's renaissance and enlightenment."

That is the line I have the most trouble with.

You've heard the argument from me before, so I won't rehash it here, but it was the learning of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem (aka, classical Greek civilization and early Christianity) as preserved from the depradations of maurauding Northern tribes in the so-called Dark Ages by Irish monks, that made the Enlightenment and the Renaissance possible.

President Obama and his (pipsqueak) speechwriters have obviously never read Rodney Stark, Stanley L. Jaki, Thomas Cahill, H.W. Crocker III, Dante Alighieri, Oriana Fallaci, Thomas F. Madden, or anyone else who could set them straight on their history.

FWIW, David Horowitz thought well of the speech.

Bookworm has the mother of all roundups of reaction to the speech, starting with a zinger from Bob Owens. Her own analysis is characteristically thoughtful.

UPDATE: This richly- detailed essay from "Fjordman" should be conclusive proof that if you're going to call yourself a "student of history" as the president does, then you ought to do more than gloss over it.

Tater thoughts for lawyers?

Jonathan Witt with great stuff on the "Mr. Potato Head Constitution:"

"The very people most inclined to gush about our "living Constitution" treat it like a Mr. Potato Head:

Ooh, states rights. Let's pop that off and replace it with a metastasizing Commerce Clause.

,,,It's time to pause and take the living-document metaphor seriously. Living things have an internal logic, have functional constraints. They aren't endlessly malleable. You can't replace grandpa's liver with a second heart just because you think livers are passé -- unless you intend to kill grandpa. "

Tour de force

The Ratzingerian (and now Benedictine) stylistic range comprises at least three octaves. He can write almost colloquially ("Is the God who names himself and has a name, the God who helps and is always there, radically different from the esse subsistens, the absolute Being, that is discovered in the lonely silence of philosophical speculation, or what? "-- I love that "or what.")

He can also write with inspiring profundity. From the Introduction to Christianity:

"A world created and willed on the risk of freedom and love is no longer just mathematics. As the arena of love, it is also the playground of freedom and also incurs the risk of evil. It accepts the mystery of darkness for the sake of the greater light constituted by freedom and love.

"Once again it becomes evident here how the categories of minimum and maximum, smallest and greatest, change in a perspective of this sort. In a world that in the last analysis is not mathematics but love, the minimum is a maximum; the smallest thing that can love is one of the biggest things; the particular is more than the universal; the person, the unique and unrepeatable, is at the same time the ultimate and highest thing. In such a view of the world, the person is not just an individual, a reproduction arising from the diffusion of the idea into matter, but, precisely, a "person". Greek thought always regarded the many individual creatures, including the many individual human beings, only as individuals, arising out of the splitting up of the idea in matter. The reproductions are thus always secondary; the real thing is the one and universal. The Christian sees in man, not an individual, but a person; and it seems to me that this passage from individual to person contains the whole span of the transition from antiquity to Christianity, from Platonism to faith. This definite being is not at all something secondary, giving us a fragmentary glimpse of the universal, which is the real. As the minimum it is a maximum; as the unique and unrepeatable, it is something supreme and real.

"From this follows one last step. If it is the case that the person is more than the individual, that the many is something real and not something secondary, then there exists a primacy of the particular over the universal, then oneness is not the unique and final thing; plurality, too, has its own and definitive right. This assertion, which follows by an inner necessity from the Christian option, leads of its own accord to a transcending of the concept of a God who is mere oneness. The internal logic of the Christian belief in God compels us to go beyond mere monotheism and leads to the belief in the triune God who must now, in conclusion, be discussed."

Presidential outreach to Muslims overseas

Unlike NYT columnist Thomas Friedman, neither Daniel Goldman nor Ralph Peters thinks President Obama's upcoming speech to the "Islamic world" from Cairo, Egypt is a good idea. Moreover, Robert Spencer finds the president's assertion that the United States is "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world" astounding and peculiar. In this -- and, I hasten to add, this alone -- Goldman, Peters, and Spencer appear to agree with Osama bin Laden, albeit for very different reasons.

I suspect the objections of commentators to the political right of Mr. Friedman are the kind of thing that Obama and his advisors did not even think about while indulging their mania for pressing the "reset" button. In the unlikely event that objections to making a conciliatory speech in Egypt were raised by people who saw nothing unusual in January's assertion that "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus," President Obama's dismissal of those objections doubtless came, like that curious description of the American melting pot, from his Inaugural Address: "What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them."

One almost hopes that the president said that, rather than variations on the same theme seasoned with an f-bomb or two by Chief of Staff Emanuel.

But the objections are thoughtful, and not so easily dismissed, even if you're one of those who thinks that "dialog" trumps all. Over to you, Goldman:

"To speak to the "Muslim world" is to speak not to a fact, but rather to an aspiration, and that is the aspiration that Islam shall be a global state religion as its founders intended. To address this aspiration is to breathe life into it. For an American president to validate such an aspiration is madness."

Goldman knows that some of his readers will instantly murmur "specifics, please," and so he provides a few:

"By addressing the "Islamic world" from Cairo, Obama lends credibility to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other advocates of political Islam who demand that Muslims be addressed globally and on religious terms - in contradistinction to nationalists such as Mubarak. Rather than buttress a loyal ally, Obama's speech undermines him on his home ground. That is a lose-lose proposition.

There is a way to rescue the situation, which I now propose to Obama in good faith: change the venue to New Delhi."

That suggestion will be ignored, as will Joseph Loconte's reservations, which have mostly do with the criminal excesses of the Mubarak regime. So here's Ralph Peters, with something he wants the president to think about:

"I can't alter his speech, but I ask our first multi-racial president to bear in mind two things during the brief flight between Cairo and Riyadh: The Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt were the earliest, greatest and most tenacious enslavers of black Africans. And the Saudis are the leading sponsors of religious hatred in the world today.

Who owes whom an apology?"

For those in peril

Neo-neocon invokes the Navy Hymn -- which is nothing less than a prayer set to music -- while remembering the victims of the mysterious Air France airliner crash. May their souls rest in peace.

Neo has the full text of the hymn and a YouTube video link at her blog. The first verse always grabs my heart:

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidst the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
O, hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea!

Facts worth pondering despite the NYT

Ken Blackwell on the obstreperousness of the New York Times and its manifest hostility toward conservative Christian points of view:

"...for decades, the late Richard John Neuhaus had read and commented thoughtfully on the Times. He was most critical of “the newspaper of record’s” tireless pro-abortion advocacy. Neuhaus, once a charter member of the New York liberal establishment, was said to have “moved to the right” as he got older. Had he? Or did he still believe that abortion, like slavery, like segregation, like anti-Semitism, denies the fundamental human dignity of a significant portion of the human family?

After all, despite the Times’ ability to forget it, the laws against abortion were part of the homicide codes of all fifty states. Not the family law codes. Not the social welfare codes. The homicide codes. The lawmakers who placed abortion there were no creatures of what The Times calls “the religious right.” No state had a Catholic majority when those laws were enacted. No state legislature that passed those laws had a Catholic majority. Or a “religious right” majority either."

Double standards (again)

Apparently you have to be a news junkie with more investigative wherewithal than the White House Press Corps to recognize the name "William Long." May he rest in peace.

The principle of subsidiarity

Governor Palin understands what the Feds do not. She warns her fellow Alaskans about "economic overreach:"
"My record is clear. I support energy conservation through weatherization and developing renewable energy. But, conditions here required more “big brother” government involvement than most Alaskans want, and the new codes could cost Alaskans thousands of dollars per new home and renovation.

Alaskans have a strong history of independence and opposition to Washington, D.C., meddling in local issues. Our Constitution ensures “maximum local self-government.” Our communities have had the option to adopt building codes for decades. Most have not done so.

I’ve served as a city councilwoman and city mayor-manager. I’ve participated first hand in the mandated-building code debate. Anyone serving in local office knows strong deference to local communities leads to the best policies."

What I read in May

Zombies of the Gene Pool, by Sharyn McCrumb

Chasing Darkness, by Robert Crais

Monday Night Jihad, by Jason Elam and Steve Yohn

So far this year: 18 books

Previously in this series:
January, February, March, April

Reviewing a Ford Flex and a trip west

P.J. O'Rourke in good form, reviewing a Ford Flex for Car and Driver magazine. Thanks to Ann Althouse, who is guest-posting at Instapundit, for the find.

O'Rourke and his family did not get an owner's manual with their vehicle, but he turned that unfortunate lack into column fodder:

"There’s a large touch-screen computer console in the middle of the Flex’s dash. This will do anything from providing map directions to filing your federal income taxes. Or so we think. Our Flex came with lots of extras but no owner’s manual. It hadn’t been published yet. As a writer, I can understand how it takes time to craft that special style of car-manual prose and then send it to Mumbai and have it translated into Hindi by one class of sixth graders and translated back into English by another. But this meant that the extras on our Flex were mostly extra confusing. Figuring out trip mileage required more time at the computer than an average college freshman puts into her Facebook page during an entire school year."

Slam the door on the car czar idea

How's this for a hook?

"The current takeover of General Motors by the U.S. government and United Auto Workers makes me think back to Romania's catastrophic mismanagement of the car factories it built jointly with the French companies Renault and Citroen. I was Romania's car czar."

Over to you, Ion Mihai Pacepa. At least he, like Laer, hasn't been silenced (see also Dan at Protein Wisdom).

P.J. O'Rourke used to quip that the Berlin Wall came down when people on its eastern side "got tired of wearing Bulgarian shoes."

What Pacepa says about the Trabant is something very similar:

"In the late 1950s, when I headed Romania's foreign intelligence station in West Germany, I worked closely with the foreign branch of the East German Stasi. Its chief, Markus Wolf, rewarded me with a Trabant car -- the pride of East Germany -- when I left to return to Romania.

That ugly little car became famous in 1989 when thousands of East Germans used it to cross to the West. The Trabant originally derived from a well regarded West German car (the DKW) made by Audi, which today produces some of the most prestigious cars in the world. In the hands of the East German government, the unfortunate DKW became a farce of a car. The bureaucrats and the union that ran the Trabant factory made the car smaller and boxier, to give it a more proletarian look. To reduce production costs, they cut down on the size of the original, already small DKW engine, and they replaced the metal body with one made of plastic-covered cardboard. What rolled off the assembly line was a kind of horseless carriage that roared like a lawn mower and polluted the air worse than a whole city block full of big Western cars.

After German reunification, the plucky little "Trabi" that East Germans used to wait 10 years to buy became an embarrassment, and its production was stopped. Germany's junkyards are now piled high with Trabants, which cannot be recycled because burning their plastic-covered cardboard bodies would release poisonous dioxins. German scientists are now trying to develop a bacterium to devour the cardboard-and-plastic body."

I found that anecdote fascinating, and uncomfortably emblematic of the economic mess that we're in, with "help" from an administration staffed by people who seem to have made short careers out of winging it.

Michael Hasenstab has more.