The Washington Independent had a very interesting article, or rather an interesting set of pictures of the electoral map as it would have appeared were only certain demographics allowed to vote. I thougth these were particularly interesting.
65 and Older
White Voters: (apparently “Black Voters” wasn’t shown because it was a literal sea of blue).
Men
Women
Self Described “Political Moderates”
Independents
Love him or hate him, one 3-letter acronym says it all.
Get the shirt. (or bag, or cup, or stickers)
* New York and Massachusetts both voted 62% Obama, 26% McCain, 1% Other.
* Oregon and Nevada both voted 55% Obama, 44% McCain, and 2% Other.
* North and South Dakota both voted 53% McCain, 44% Obama, and 2% Other
* Kansas and Nebraska both voted 57% McCain, 41% Obama, and 1% Other.
These are jsut statistical oddities, perhaps. But I think that it’s interesting to see how some states are very homogeneous politically with neighboring states.
UPDATE: I just figured out how to post the msNBC map, which yields almost identical results.
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By this point, most people have heard that Barack Hussein Obama is the 44th President[-elect]. And by this point, many have heard his infamous “pay-grade” response to the question of when human life - life which is endowed with those certain unalienable rights - begins and is warranted protection under the law.
First, I believe like many that this was a cop-out answer, because he didn’t want to deal with the tough question. But let us leave that for another time. Let us assume that our President-elect’s pay-grade does not qualify him to answer such questions. Let us assume that none of us have a pay-grade high enough. What then? Then, the only morally responsible thing to do is to assume that the embryo is a human with the inherent rights and dignity of one of the same kind 1 year later in development (or 35 years later in development). Why? Because you must always err on the side of life!
Earl and Jim-Bob are out hunting. Earl steps away, and a moment later Jim-Bob hears a rustle in the bush next to him. It might be that 100-point uber-buck they saw earlier, or it might be Earl, and if he doesn’t take the shot now, he might never get the chance again. What should he do?
If President-Elect Obama - or anyone - wishes to be a just and morally up-right man, one cannot mess up this fundamental issue.
Yet, for being above his pay-grade, he has no problems with seeking to enshrine FOCA into law. FOCA (the Freedom Of Choice Act) is a piece of legislation that, if passed through the Democratic-Majority House and Senate and signed by the president would REVOKE ALL ABORTIONS LAWS TO DATE.
FOCA creates a new and dangerously radical “right.” It establishes the right to abortion as a “fundamental right,” elevating it to the same status as the right to vote and the right to free speech (which, unlike the abortion license, are specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution). Critically, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court did not define abortion as a “fundamental right.”10 And with the exception of one justice’s attempt in 1983 to distort the Court’s abortion jurisprudence by framing the abortion license as a “fundamental right,” the Court has not subsequently defined abortion as a “fundamental right.” Thus, FOCA goes beyond any Supreme Court decision in enshrining unlimited abortion-on-demand into American law….
In elevating abortion to a fundamental right, FOCA poses an undeniable and irreparable danger to common-sense laws supported by a majority of Americans. Among the more than 550 federal and state laws that FOCA would nullify are:
- Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003
- Hyde Amendment (restricting taxpayer funding of abortions)
- Restrictions on abortions performed at military hospitals
- Restrictions on insurance coverage for abortion for federal employees
- Informed consent laws
- Waiting periods
- Parental consent and notification laws
- Health and safety regulations for abortion clinics
- Requirements that licensed physicians perform abortions
- “Delayed enforcement” laws (banning abortion when Roe v. Wade is overturned and/or the authority to restrict abortion is returned to the states)
- Bans on partial-birth abortion
- Bans on abortion after viability. FOCA’s apparent attempt to limit post-viability abortions is illusory. Under FOCA, post-viability abortions are expressly permitted to protect the woman’s “health.” Within the context of abortion, “health” has been interpreted so broadly that FOCA would not actually proscribe any abortion before or after viability.
- Limits on public funding for elective abortions (thus, making American taxpayers fund a procedure that many find morally objectionable)
- Limits on the use of public facilities (such has public hospitals and medical schools at state universities) for abortions
- State and federal legal protections for individual healthcare providers who decline to participate in abortions
- Legal protections for Catholic and other religiously-affiliated hospitals who, while providing care to millions of poor and uninsured Americans, refuse to allow abortions within their facilities
Now, I don’t care if you’re pro-choice or pro-life, that such a bill could be passed intact should frighten you. This “freedom of choice” act seeks to revoke the freedom of people of good intent from not performing actions which they view as morally reprehensible (and as above concluded, morally irresponsible). This is a FLAGRANT violation of the 1st amendment, yet with a rather blue House and Senate, and the opportunity to appoint activist judges, it could very conceivably result in the persecution of people for their deeply-held beliefs!
It seeks to permit abortions on children who could survive outside of the womb (i.e. “viable”).
it seeks to overturn laws which even pro-choice people recognize are in the best interests of the mothers who undergo abortion.
It seeks to remove the authority of the States to regulate themselves, a flagrant violation of the Tenth Amendment.
And it seeks to make a surgical procedure a right of the stature of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is man’s inherent natural condition. In nature, we exist freely and speak freely, and the 1st amendment protects our ability to use this natural power. There is no natural power or right to abort a child.
This is utterly sick, morally repugnant and it utterly abuses the rights of the citizens. Nobody in their right mind (or left mind) should be able to miss that.
Please, regardless of your thoughts on any other of President-Elect Obama’s policies, please speak to your congressmen and congressmen-elect about this matter. The lives of many women, many children, and the freedom of a whole lot more depends upon it.
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As always, you can support my blog by buying that book you’ve been wanting.
I am very afraid today. I’m not merely a reactionary, uber-Republican who plans to cling to his bible and gun. But I am someone who greatly fears the next for years, for a number of reasons.
1) Barack Obama spent nearly all of his one Senate term RUNNING FOR OFFICE. His level of experience is very questionable, and I think I’d feel the same way were he Republican or Democrat. *
2) Barack Obama to this point has been well left of the center, and well left of where the majority of Americans view themselves. *
These policies include:
-The unconditional support for and license of abortion (See my post on FOCA)
-The removal of parents as primary educators of thier children (mandating public education, removing the possibility of homeschooling, which across the board out-performs public education)
3) The House and Senate have been greatly aligned in favor of his policies. He has the power, as an inexperienced freshman senator-turned-president, to irreparably change the course of this country, and I sincerely do not believe he understands the best interests of this country, since most of the tough questions are “above his pay grade”.
What I REALLY hate, though, is that because of these fears I cannot be happy that a Black man just got elected, because I REALLY fear this man as a politician.
And I genuinely fear that he was elected primarily on the basis of his Charisma, not his policies (given that the majority of people disagree with them), and the general dis-satisfaction with the Bush-administration.
Nevertheless, God bless president-elect Obama, and may the Lord change his heart on the key issues, which are morally non-negotiable. (I don’t like his tax-plan, but it’s not a matter of morality per se, as there is no objective answer to the question of how best to tax; there IS an objective answer to whether or not a child in the womb ought to deserve rights).
(PhotoCredit: foxnews.com)
* * *
And as always, you can support my blog by buying that book you’ve been wanting.
Exposure was a common pagan practice of getting rid of unwanted children. Fortunetly for us the whole process of baby-killing is, today, much more safe and legal.
And it’s about to get a whole-lot safer and ‘legaler’…
Okay, so I didn’t actually ‘ace’ it, in the sense of getting two 800s. But I did very well - well over 1400! I’ve taken it three times. The first time I took the GRE was during the senior year of my undergraduate program (about 5 years ago). I didn’t study, and took it in an over heated room wearing a sweater the day after my birthday… I scored an 1180 (V: 550, Q: 630, A: 5.5).
Then, five years later, after my tests scores were invalid and I took it - again with minimal preparation - and scored an 1190 (V: 570, Q: 620, A: 5.0). At this point I was ready to accept that the test was simply an accurate measure of my abilities since my scores were so similar. My advisor, however, told me that if I wanted in to a good grad-school program, I had to get closer to 1300, and if I wanted funding, I had to get closer to 1400.
1400 would be a 210 pt jump. Most articles I read suggested that studying could raise your score perhaps 50-70 points. I didn’t know if that would even be worth the large fee to re-test again, let alone the massive amounts of studying that I’d need to undergo just to jump through this hoop. But, darn it if I don’t want to go to Grad-School (for Philosophy).
So I got two books. The first book was “The Ultimate Math Refresher for the GRE, GMAT and SAT” by
Lighthouse Publishing. The book did a great job of working me through all of the awkward math problems that I’d forgotten how to do since grade school. Most important was the refreshers on things like multiplying various kinds of exponents (negative, fractional, etc), and the work on setting up inverse rate problems, and the geometry review.
One key I’ve found is to try to enjoy this, and honestly though it was boring at times, I really did enjoy some of it. I now understand WHY cross multiplication works. I understand WHAT pi is (Circumference/diameter). I can do long division! I simply worked through one chapter every few days, and within two weeks I’d completed this book! On the inside cover I wrote down all of the key formulas to remember (and now they made sense, like I understand why a triangle’s area is 1/2 b x h, since two triangles would be a quadrilateral, and the quadrilateral’s area is b x h.
The second book that I used was “Barron’s GRE“. The book that I used was actually a few years old, so it wasn’t updated for some of the new “question types” in the quantitative
section, but those really aren’t that hard (you solve a problem and type in the answer, rather than select it from options on screen.
Primarily, I used the Barron’s book for the word-list. They have the 5000 most common words on the GRE. I went through the list from A to…R…yeah, I just ran out of time. But what I did in going through was I read every word, then tried to identify it before I read the definition. Then I read the definition. If I got it easily, I let it be. BUT: often words I thought I knew had very obscure definitions or alternate definitions I didn’t know. Any word I couldn’t or didn’t get immediately, I wrote down on a flashcard ( I cut a regular note card in half, so I got two out of each, since they were small). Then I kept these cards in a shoe-box, divided in half. Some of them were easier still, some harder; so as they became easier, I put them in the easier pile and looked at them less frequently. I kept a stack of the harder cards with me everywhere I went. In a line? I read a few cards. At a stop light? Read a card. Waiting for someone? Read some cards. (I was never a big note card person in school, and now I wonder what I was missing! I’m using the same technique to learn Greek currently).
Using this method I was able to quickly build up my vocabulary…and now in 5 years or so I can go back to that same box and keep learning.
The other nice bits in the Barron’s book were the reviews of how to figure out what they really are and aren’t asking on the reading comprehension questions (eg. if it says ‘what could you infer’, make sure the choice is in no way stated in the reading selection). Such advice seems basic, until you actually are reading under pressure.
The third and final thing I did was I took two practice exams using the Power Prep Software put out by ETS, the folks who make the GRE. My first practice test yielded at 1340 (V: 660, Q:680) which blew my proverbial socks off! I got nervous that the tests were not representative, because that was a huge jump of 150 points over my previous best.
My second practice test yielded a 1440 (V: 710, Q:730)! Another 100 points! Now I started getting really worried that these tests were flukes, but I went a head and scheduled my test for that week (gotta love the GRE’s flexible scheduling!), and I took it. It was an odd test (the power went out after my first essay for an hour!) but when it was all done, I scored a 1460 (V 720, Q:740), for a grand total of 270 points over my last official test! My verbal scores are in the top 98%, and my math is in the top 90%. I’ve not yet seen the Analytical section, but I’m not expecting less than a 5.5 (this was the one area I’ve always had a natural talent).
So, there you have it. Want to rock the GRE? Get those two books and study. Take practice tests (and they’re only really about 1 1/2 hours total to take if you omit the analytical writings which the computer cannot score for you anyway.
Let me know if this helps you, and what your success stories are!
A really ridiculous website was brought to my attention. It’s not the only one (Jack Chick certainly garners his share of ridiculousness against Catholics), but I thought I’d deal with it here. The website claims:
_____“…even now are there many antichrists…” -I John 2:18.
Pope John Paul II - Burning in Hell
Please notice the picture above with an upside-down cross. In his article, The Kingdom of Satan, Professor J. S. Malan says this about the inverted cross:
“This cross is not broken, but turned upside down. It indicates the rejection of Jesus Christ and contempt for the gospel of salvation. Inverted symbols are typical of the opposite values pursued by Satanists. People who are sometimes sacrificed to Satan on Black Sabbath are crucified upside down in accordance with this tradition. “
_____
Very nice. Very dumb, too. It saddens me that people could read this and believe it instantly, based upon and feeding their anti-Catholib bias. Perhaps an inverted cross can mean such things (a satanist may, for instance, invert the cross for precisely this reason). But that does not mean that the only thing an inverted cross can symbolize is rejection of Christ.
It could also mean that one honors the first person in the office of the Pope, St. Peter, appointed by Christ himself. It could be a way of remembering how one of the most important Christians died. From a secular source we read:
Traditions originating in or recorded in the apocryphal Acts of Peter, say that the Romans crucified Peter upside down at his request because he did not wish to be equated with Jesus. Acts of Peter is also thought to be the source for the tradition about the famous phrase “Quo vadis, Domine?” (or “Pou Hupageis, Kurios?” which means, “Whither goest Thou, Master?”), a question that, according to this tradition, Peter, fleeing Rome to avoid execution, asked a vision of Jesus, and to which Jesus responded that he was “going to Rome, to be crucified again,” causing Peter to decide to return to the city and accept martyrdom. This story is commemorated in an Annibale Carracci painting. The Church of Quo Vadis, near the Catacombs of Saint Callistus, contains a stone in which Jesus’ footprints from this event are supposedly preserved, though this was actually apparently an ex-voto from a pilgrim, and indeed a copy of the original, housed in the Basilica of St Sebastian.
The ancient historian Josephus describes how Roman soldiers would amuse themselves by crucifying criminals in different positions, and it is likely that this would have been known to the author of the Acts of Peter. The position attributed to Peter’s crucifixion is thus plausible, either as having happened historically or as being an invention by the author of the Acts of Peter. Death, after crucifixion head down, is unlikely to be caused by suffocation, the usual cause of death in ordinary crucifixion.
From a less secular source we read:
Testimony of his martyrdom is extensive, including Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, St. Clement I of Rome, St. Ignatius, and St. Irenaeus. According to rich tradition, Peter was crucified on the Vatican Hill upside down because he declared himself unworthy to die in the same manner as the Lord. He was then buried on Vatican Hill, and excavations under St. Peter’s Basilica have unearthed his probable tomb, and his relics are now enshrined under the high altar of St. Peter’s. From the earliest days of the Church, Peter was recognized as the Prince of the Apostles and the first Supreme Pontiff; his see, Rome, has thus enjoyed the position of primacy over the entire Catholic Church. While Peter’s chief feast day is June 29, he is also honored on February 22 and November 18. In liturgical art, he is depicted as an elderly man holding a key and a book. His symbols include an inverted cross, a boat, and [a rooster].
So, there you have it. The upside down cross recalls the martyrdom of St. Peter, the first pope, the “rock” upon which Christ said he’d build his church in Matthew 16.
Q: Is it possible to vote for a pro-choice candidate and still be a Catholic in good standing? I keep hearing that this is can’t happen. Why aren’t things like economics and the war as important as this one issue? Do I have to be a one-issue voter?
A: The simple answer is that there are some issues that oblige a serious Catholic to vote in a way that is consistent with the objective moral law, and abortion is one of them, because it is intrinsically immoral and gravely so. For most issues that legislators will face, it’s a matter of finding the best way to enact a law aimed at the common good (eg. taxes, education, welfare, social security, etc), where the best way is often up for legitimate debate with no clear, definitive answer. Options are weighed and compromises are made. But some issues do not permit compromise, because they are matters of objective morality. The right to life is amongst the highest of all rights, without which no other rights can be had. “Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.” (CCC 2270).
John Paul II wrote “Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights - for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture - is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination” (Christifideles Laici)
Abortion is the unjust taking of innocent life, and as such is always an intrinsic evil. Anyone who formally cooperates in the taking of innocent human life cooperates with evil and faces automatic excommunication from the Church (cf. CCC 2272). This includes any law-makers who seek to safeguard abortion, and those who voted to put such law-makers into power (unless there was a sufficiently grave or proportionate reason, or no alternative).
Were a candidate in favor of terrorism, it would be unreasonable to say “I disagree with you on terrorism, but I’m curious about your tax plan.” There simply is no room for debate on this issue, and there never has been because abortion is never a good.
There are times when the woman’s life may legitimately be at risk from a pregnancy, and there are steps that can be taken which might ultimately result in the death of the child, but the death of the child cannot be the goal of such actions or the means of saving the woman (this is the principle of “Double Effect”).
So, why is the abortion issue more important than the war? By sheer scope, abortion claims in the US 1 million lives per year (not to mention the scarred women and men who later gravely regret the procedure). Seldom does a war cost 1 million lives - and innocent lives at that - per year.
But more importantly, there is such a thing as a just war, but not a just abortion. It is certainly debatable whether or not any particular war is just, but the issue still stands that war – though lamentable and always something to avoid whenever possible – is at times necessary to protect the life and well being of others (cf. CCC 2303-2317).
What it comes down to is that Abortion is an intrinsic evil, and therefore non-negotiable. We can pray that more politicians will begin to promote the pro-life issue, and thus open up further possibilities for voting, but as it is currently, some candidates regrettably disqualify themselves from being a morally licit choice.
***
Justin West graduated from Benedictine College in 2003. He is currently the
Director of RCIA, and the College Catechist. Questions may be sent to
Jwest@benedictine.edu
So often we hear that the world is dangerously overcrowded, and this is the dangerous rally behind the need to use contraception and limit our children to replacement numbers (and how ‘1′ child can be viewed as replacement is still rather mysterious).
But consider this.
This means that if we simply squeezed into single floor bulidings, each person in the entire world could have over 1,000 sq feet…for a family of four, that’s 4,000 feet, and that’s only single story houses, and only Texas.
This leaves the rest of the United States, Canada, Central and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Austrialia, and Antarctica void of human habitation, and free of human habitation and available for food farms and wind farms and all other fun human endeavors (and this is assuming we never decide to live under the ocean, which I’d love to sea (pun)).
Overpopulation is a myth.
Resource shortages have less to do with too many people, and more to do with too many greedy people. And one of the greediest sentiments I’ve witnessed is this desire to NOT have kids so as to live the comfortable life one wishes to live. Children are DIFFICULT, and that difficulty forces us to LOVE and CARE for others and the world in a way that is just not native to most people. No, I’m not saying single people and DINKs (Dual Income, No Kids) are inhernetly selfish, and that all parents are great and selfless, but this desire to not have kids “for the sake of the planet” is just ridiculous.
For a more catholic view of world population, you might snag a copy of this little digital pamphlet.
See Also: http://pop.org/
