January 2008 Archives

Born January 30, 2008 at 11:15 AM

7 lbs 8 oz -- 20 in long -- brown hair, brown eyes

Delivered by some guy named Dr. Smith because our midwife couldn't get there in time. Jenny couldn't hold back and the baby was already crowned, so our nurse grabbed an off duty doctor who was standing in the hall who came into our room wearing a Hawaiian shirt to -- as he put it -- "make sure the baby didn't fall on the floor."

Little Tony is happy and healthy, though he spent most of his first 6 hours sound asleep,nursing just once! Mama-Lu was once again incredibly strong and brave, and is resting with the baby in the hospital.

We'll be home Friday. Matthew and Charlie should be home sometime after that to meet their baby brother.

Oh, and if you think he looks familiar it's because he could be Charlie's twin.

UPDATE: We're coming home today! Our hospital changed its policy sometime in the past week so that beta strep positive mothers' babies can be discharged after 24 hours!

Pray for us! I'll post pictures when I can.

Do I love Get Fuzzy

Danielle Bean: "I don't suppose Maria Montessori is going to stop by to do the laundry?"

In other Bean news, it's nice to know my boy isn't the only one whose "sm"s sound like "f"s. (This is a lot of fun when talking about SMoke -- and even more fun when your at a crowded playground with said son and he sees a jet trailing smoke and so he starts screaming "SMOKE")

I like the folks at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and I'm glad that they have a new web journal, First Principles, but how do you start a website in 2007 with no syndication feeds?

John Dickerson, with my comments in red:

I'm no Obama fan, as I've made clear in numerous posts over a couple of years here, but Dickerson here is shameless.

Jill Stanek: Top 10 reasons Obama voted against the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act

Jimmy Breslin, still plugging away...

McSweeney's Lists: Maxim Articles Rewritten as Sociology Papers

Not necessarily in order of seriousness:

• Manilow lives up to the legend:
  You expect glitter. You expect anthems. You expect grand pianos. But you don't expect Barry Manilow to put on a Nehru jacket and smoke a joint.
• Review of Change or Purpose by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn.

I'm no Jonah Goldberg fan and I have no intention of reading his book, but I think he acquits himself surprisingly well in this interview. He's pretty good at avoiding the interviewer's Gotcha! proof-texts about Mussolini, and I much appreciated this (ellipses in original):

Anyway, it seems to me that his path to tieing fascism to liberalism is by using fascism as a sort of stand-in for statism. That seems problematic to me. Fascists and liberals are both obviously statists, but fascism tended to use statism in an exclusionary way -- "we are the Aryan nation," whereas most progressives are statist in a multi-culti all-inclusive way that tends to transcend the nationalism inherent in fascism. So I guess Goldberg is right that fascism is statist and liberalism is statist, but the uniquely horrible things about fascism had less to do with it being statist than with it being a rallying cry for one group of people to justify hating another group of people. Liberalism at its best doesn't do that. (Though I will note the obvious -- liberalism as practiced publicly is far from liberalism at its best, but then we'd have to say the same thing about conservatism, because people on every side of every debate are tempted to use their cause to rally people in hatred against the other, which sort of leads us to the uninteresting and obvious thesis that slightly fascist tendencies exist on all sides of the spectrum.)

But of course, those are just preliminary impressions based onthe interview and uninformed by the actual book, which I don't intend to read.

According to Andrew Sullivan, McCain:

• is "the most reassuring as a potential president"
• is "demagoguic"
• "has learned nothing from these past five years and even less from history"
• is "clearly the Republicans' best viable candidate"

Thanks for clearing that up, Sully.

This leads me to inaugurate a series I will be running from now until the Illinois primary, entitled:

"Why I can't vote for any of these clowns."

Episode 1: The McCainiac

Boy, you gotta have sympathy for John McCain. He should have been the nominee in 2000, and has spent the 8 years since then (except for McCain-Feingold and immigration) kissing the rear-end of every Republican in the nation, telling everybody who would listen, "I am a conservative Republican." The hawkiest of the hawky hawks, he famously backed the surge* before it was popular, but gets no credit from the Limbaugh wing of the Republican party because of a handful of instances where he has exhibited independent thinking.

On the other hand, McCain did this all to himself. The "maverick" McCain relished being a media darling, but when you repeatedly give your party's base the middle figure, it makes it tough to ask for a promotion.

What about being pro-life? Well, he generally votes right on abortion, but Rick Santorum recently took a break from running EPPC's stupidest program (though I suppose I should give them credit for changing the name from the "America's Enemies" program) to point out that, off the Senate floor, McCain "fought against us to even bring [social issues] up." So he voted pro-life, but tried to make it so he wouldn't have to. I guess he saves all of his passion for planning 50-year occupations of Iraq, because occupying Arab countries works so well, doesn't it?

Furthermore, with regard to character, I know everybody says McCain's is unimpeachable, but every time I see him move his mouth, all I hear is condescending drivel. He doesn't sound sincere, he sounds like somebody straining really hard to sound sincere. The result is I don't believe a word he says.

So there you go, I won't be voting for McCain because he's at best tepid on those life issues he happens to get right but passionate about fighting wars we can't afford against countries that can't hurt us, and because I don't believe a word he says.

That said, if a war hawk has to win, I guess I hope it's McCain, because he's the only candidate of either party I can see as a competent commander in chief. I think his concern for our troops is genuine and if you're going to police the world, you can't have a Keystone Kop as your chief.

* I don't watch debates, but has any Republican debate moderator had the stones to ask if the surge's "success" isn't at least partly due to ethnic cleansing having been successfully carried out? Killing or chasing away all of the other sects in your neighborhood would reduce sectarian violence.

The Economist, on Barack Obama's attempts to help Kenya settle its elections problems (emphasis mine):

"Mr Obama's father was of the same tribe as the opposition leader. Mr Odinga even claims to be related to the Obamas, though Mr Obama has not confirmed this. Mr Obama's loyalties, however, are post-tribal...."

Yes, but John Edwards held a press conference at which he delivered a stirring "Two Kenyas" speech. And Hillary is prodding Kenyans to back 76 year old Mwai Kibaki over the younger Raila Odinga. She acknowledged Kibaki's corruption but argued that his experience gives him a leg-up.

Horse slaughtering was banned in Illinois this year. Has that spared horses the cruelty of being treated like... um... every other animal? Of course not! Now they're all crammed into trailers and shipped under grueling conditions to Mexico where the slaughterhouses (and the jobs!) went. Well, all except for the ones that won't yield enough meat to justify the increased shipping costs -- those are just shot. Congratulations PETA!

By the way, Catrin Einhorn is awesome. The New York Times should totally give her a raise. Tray ball!

First Things -- Eric Clapton: Susceptible to the Truth

Champaign folk -- you only have until the 8th if you're not already registered!

Here's how.

• The Catholic Fantastic of Chesterton and Tolkien -- a review of Alison Milbank's Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians: The Fantasy of the Real
• One for my brother: The Gospel According to Frank Capra
• From Fides News -- a list of missionaries killed in action in 2007.

OK, I understand getting to any BCS bowl is a big deal. As an Illinois alumni, I expect precious little from the football team. I lived in Champaign for the entire Turner era, so it's not like failure and humiliation are foreign to my college football experience.

Yet I have to wonder how it is that in those rare years when the stars align and the U of I football team rises to mediocrity while the Big 10 plummets in overall strength, allowing the Illini to stumble into a bowl, they get the worst imaginable bowl match-ups.

6 years ago Illinois somehow finished atop the Big 10 to earn a BCS slot and they played LSU in the New Orleans (I was there -- except for a brief second half surge, it was tragic).

And this year, Illinois pulled off upset after upset and what happens? They tavel to southern California to play the University of the same name.

Now, of course a major bowl is better than say, the Motor City Bowl or nothing at all, and it's not that I think the lllini had a chance. But when, practically by definition, any Illinois opponent in a big-time bowl is going to be a far superior team, is it too much to ask that they not have home-town advantage either?

Who were you rooting for? Did you want Michigan, your co-Midwesterners, to redeem the conference and avenge last year's national championship loss? Or were you cheering on Florida to add yet another humiliation to your greatest and vilest rival's miseries?

This is, of course, a rhetorical question, as I know Buckeyes everywhere are mourning even this minimal level of success achieved by the Wolverines.

To all the ladies:

Becoming Cary Grant