No, I came here for an argument.

If you'd care to see me apologetic-ing, I did so over at Hot Air earlier this week. I got into a wrangle with a Protestant brother/sister arguing that the Bible doesn't have a Gospel According to Gordon Gekko. This was in relation to the misreported story about the Vatican allegedly whipping up some"new sins," amongst which is "excessive wealth."

I argued that the Bible is replete with warnings to rich folk, and that scripture never portrays wealth as neutral, in fact only approving it where the person in question is already regarded as righteous.

I think I did well, but I'll leave that up to you. If nothing else, I'm left with the distinct impression that the prosperity "gospel" has disturbingly long tentacles.

Speaking of boilerplate.

Voting for the 2008 Catholic Blog Awards is underway.

Once again, I see I'm racking up about as much support as a gay Mike Huckabee clone in Utah.

From the bottom of my heart:



My far-classier wife Heather has also been nominated in a couple of categories. If you want to make sure that we don't have to face our children's tear-streaked faces again this year, vote for the both of us.

Free Advice for Two-Timing Politicos.

Stop doubling-down on your wife's humiliation by having her stand by your side for the boilerplate half-assed apology for your disgusting behavior.

I hope her lawyer has been genetically modified and had wolverine and piranha genes spliced in.

That Eliot's a sweet piece of work.

Ner Dalert.

I am somewhat surprised the comic book quiz received only 29 votes. Apparently y'all aren't comic book geeks. I wasn't much of one, but I went through that Phase. You have no idea how relieved I am that no one voted for Lord Saker. I don't even think the character's creator remembers that one. Thanks also for not voting for the Beyonder, a supremely-bad idea ended in his/its overdue destruction at the hands of...the Molecule Man, saints preserve us. With an assist by the Silver Surfer.

By the way, the (most) correct answer was the Joker.

However, I know there are more geeks/nerds/dweebs out there, so I will attempt to smoke you out over the next few weeks. Starting with the Gary Gygax Memorial Best D&D Modules Quiz. Yes, you can pick more than one. Followed thereafter by Best Nerd Bands.

One last thing--who gave Der Tommissar permission to leave the Blogosphere? It wasn't me, so I hereby rescind the invalid "permission." Bad form.

The skipping record.

Another day, another NCReporter editorial, this one about the decline of Catholic identification in the U.S. when you subtract out the immigrant effect.

The answer to reverse this worrying trend?

"Why is the Vatican so defensive about pelvic issues? They sound very defensive right now. I mean, you spend thirty years trying to talk about clerical celibacy, birth control, "adultery" and gay people getting it on and it's like all they ever focus on.

It's them, right?"

Consider the Reporter's list of discussion topics:

We’d add a few of our own: the sex abuse crisis, particularly the cover-up by bishops; rules prohibiting birth control; rules forbidding Communion to divorced and remarried Catholics; lack of accountability on financial matters; the second-class status of women in the church; rejection of gays and lesbians.

A round half dozen topics, and fifty percent are related to smuggling the bratwurst. You get the sense that the Reporter's editorialists knew that it was a bit pelvocentric, hence the tossing in of financial accountability to bring it up to 50% non-genital.

Mind you, I can agree with the necessity of financial transparency, but I doubt people are running for the exits because of accounting practices.(1) I also agree that the sexual abuse crisis has not abated and has not been handled properly to this day. This sort of thing does drive reasonable, good-hearted people out the door and will remain an albatross for years to come.

The rest? With a partial exception, spare me. Here's the partial: divorced and remarried Catholics do need to be treated better. At a minimum, the annulment process should be free everywhere in the country (it's free in the Detroit archdiocese) and the Church needs to explain marriage as a sacrament with crystaline clarity, along with genuine pastoral sensitivity to those who have escaped from bad marriages. Obviously, that's not what the NCRep is gunning for, which is divorce-and-remarriage-without-consequences, but that doesn't mean the current system is problem free. Far from it.

But.

Would capitulation to the Reporter's talking points stem the tide? No, and if they had a shred of honesty, the editorial writers would acknowledge this. Time to wake up and smell the decomposing canary.

There are a few self-identified Christian churches who preach the Reporter's gospel, and each one of them is in varying stages of undeath. Take, for example, The Episcopal Church [urgent note from Chris Johnson: "PLEEEEEASE!"].

TEC endorses everything on the Reporter's wishlist: Women bishops and clergy, a divorced gay bishop and plenty of gay clergy, a thrice-married straight bishop and no problem 'tall with slapping a raincoat on Mr. Happy or otherwise engaging in evaluations of spongeworthiness. In fact, birth control is a mark of proper Piskie stewardship.

Result? For reasons which continue to escape the logical/spiritual assessments of the Reporter's editorial board, TEC is not standing-room-only on Sunday mornings. The description I'm looking for will prominently feature the word "crater."

Other mainline denominations are losing members, too, but none resemble the Catholic Church in organization and worship quite so much as TEC.

But looking more like TEC will help us grow. Especially if we keep saying it over and over again, year after year after year. It would almost be touching if it weren't so delusional.

----------------------

(1) Rather like those who try to argue that slavery wasn't the cause of the Civil War. To which I reply that I had no idea people in Massachusetts and South Carolina were so willing to bayonet each other over tariffs.

Oh, yeah....

Business Time, by Flight of the Conchords.

This one's for all the husbands and wives out there.

Warning--a little on the racy side, but more in a Barry White as opposed to Snoop Dogg sense.

If you get what I'm saying.

And I know you do.

To say that I've never really cared for Bjork's music is an understatement.

Even by English standards.

It's along the lines of saying "I've never really cared for fiberglass catheters" or "I've never really cared for National Catholic Reporter editorials." Her singing style reminds me of Yoko Ono after five years of a-pack-a-day habit. When the Sugarcubes showed up on Saturday night live performing one of their "songs," I deliberately turned the sound down and cued up AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap."

Be that as it may, she deserves some credit for giving Sinofascism a pop to the probiscus:

China pledged Friday to impose tougher curbs on foreign artists after pop star Bjork sang in support of Tibetan independence in Shanghai, warning similar actions could lead to them being blacklisted.

"We will further tighten controls on foreign artists performing in China in order to prevent similar cases from happening in the future," the Ministry of Culture said in a statement on its website.

"We shall never tolerate any attempt to separate Tibet from China and will no longer welcome any artists who deliberately do this."

A video on the Internet site Youtube shows the Icelandic singer closing out her concert in China's financial hub last Sunday with the song: "Declare Independence", during which she yelled "Tibet" several times.

A nice bit of defiance from a lefty in the lair of the beast. Better than the Indigo Girls in Cuba, that's for sure.

Sad as it is to say, this is quixotic. Tibet is finished as a nation. Thanks to more than a half century of repression and resettlement, Tibetan independence is about as likely as that of Aquitaine.

Thanks in some small measure to weaselly reportage like this closing tag:

Bjork is one of many prominent Western celebrities, including actor Richard Gere, to have lent their support to Tibetans campaigning for independence for their homeland, or at least an end to what they say is severe repression there.

"What they say," indeed.

Contemporary book vetting.

"Hello, Uzayr? Yes, this is Ted Sorrento at Imagination Books. Sorry to bother you the day before your first book tour, but I need to touch base on a couple of things that have come up. Do you have moment?"

"Great."

"Getting right to the nub: some researchers have made frankly stunning claims that some of the claims in your memoir aren't...how should I say this? 'Fully correlated to the demonstrable facts'? Yes, I'll go with that. They are going so far as to call From Titicaca to Tawhid: A Latino-Muslim Journey 'utterly fictitious.'"

"Ummm.......yes, that would be a 'problem.'"

"'Which facts'?"

"Starting at the beginning, really:

1. That you weren't born Xochimilco Fuentes, a Quechua-speaking poor child born and raised on one of the artificial Uros islands in Lake Titicaca.

2. That your mother wasn't killed while working for an oppressive right-wing landowner/death squad leader in a tragic-yet-avoidable gardening accident involving a dangerously over-stacked compost pile.

3. That, orphaned by your absent father who had returned to Mexico, you weren't taken in by your "Uncle Ernesto the Scabrous" who taught you how to be a teenaged lake pirate.

4. That you never, in fact, were a pirate of any kind.

5. That you aren't, courtesy of your father, the illegitimate younger half-brother of Commandante Marcos, head of the Zapatero rebels in Mexico.

6. That you didn't sign on with said rebels following your Titicaca buccaneering, joining your dashing masked half-brother in adventures against the oppressive criollo landlords, leaving twin marks of 'M' and 'X' with your sabres on the walls of their haciendas as you made off with their ill-gotten gains.

7. That you didn't in fact rescue a busload of 'very grateful and energetically affectionate' college girls aged 18-22 on their way back from a Victoria's Secret show in Cancun from a gang of short, pudgy capitalist oppressors.

Yes, certainly, that's one of my favorites, too. But I'm not done, alas."

"8. That you weren't indeed later captured on a solo adventure by a band of inbred Aztec polytheists who nearly sacrificed you to their dark gods before you made a daring escape.

9. That you did not, chastened by that shocking experience, begin to question the meaning of life and take up a job bouncing at El Cabron Grande, a run-down oceanside bar in Veracruz.

10. That you did not meet your mentor while working there, a hard-drinking, short-tempered but good hearted Sunni Imam named Sheikh Ali Yurbouti.

11. That he did not teach you 'the meaning of life,' 'the glorious truths of Islam' and how to properly wield a katana while working there.

12. That Sheikh Yurbouti was not killed by the surviving inbred Aztecs who were hunting you down in a vengeful determination to finish their sacrifice.

13. That you did not then, in a grief-stricken berserk rage, strike down the 'vile kufr' who had murdered your beloved mentor in a 'hurricane of flashing steel, flying severed limbs and spurting neck-stumps.'

14. That you did not then, numbed by loss, 'wander the earth like Caine in Kung-Fu,' until you came to Detroit, Michigan and decided to build a mosque in his memory, where you remain as imam to this day, this time 'battling the new inbred Aztecs of hate and prejudice.'"

"In fact, some have argued, citing photographic and documentary evidence, that you are instead

1. Danny O'Herlihy, a lifelong Michigander, Chrysler production worker, husband and father of two who's never been south of the Texas panhandle and who acquired his knowledge of many of the details in his 'memoir' from Wikipedia."

2. That both your parents are still happily married after 36 years, retired and living in Boca Raton during the winter months.

3. That you are currently a semi-lapsed Methodist who attends Christmas and Easter services.

4. That your knowledge of Islam comes from a Comparative Religions class you took at Macomb Community College in 2003.

5. That your knowledge of piracy is entirely derived from the Pirates of the Caribbean oeuvre, both films and Disney World ride.

6. That your knowledge of swordplay comes from dueling your younger brothers with light sabers your parents bought you from Kenner while growing up."

"Really, Uzayr, I'm going to have to stop at this point. It's getting a little dismaying, to be candid. Now can you verify any events or provide supporting documentation?"

"You submitted the book with a note that it 'contained dramatic embellishment.'

I....see.

Ah.....well, yes, there is a barely-legible note to that effect. But that really wasn't the question. I'm looking for supp--"

"Oh, your wife's brother-in-law is a Mexican? But you call him 'Spanish' out of respect? Keep going--that's a start."

"'Sings great covers of Feliz Navidad and Freddy Fender tunes'?"

"You 'own a sombrero' and 'played football with a couple of Mexicans in high school'? Great--were they oppressed by any chance? 'Both started.' One was 'All-State, Class B.' No, not particularly oppressed at all."

"What about the Islamic stuff? 'Sometimes read Jihadwatch.' Let's keep that one under our hats--CAIR has been mostly positive about the book."

"'Know a couple of guys from Bangladesh on the assembly line--nice guys, good workers, pretty shy, don't speak a lot of English.'"

"'Know a bunch of Mexicans at the plant--pretty good guys.'"

"I think I have enough to get the picture, Mr. O'Herlihy. We here at Imagination are left with little choice.

I'm going to have ask you to bring your Bengali and Mexican friends to the signing on next Monday. Paint a crescent on your sombrero and make sure your co-workers don't say anything.

See you then, Imam Fuentes."

Further inspiration here, here and here.

Nothing quite like the sweet, sweet taste of petrodollars to euthanize the conscience.

Cal-Berkeley and Cal Poly are racing to set up schools in enlightened Saudi Arabia.

Cal Poly's is men-only and Berkeley's being...circumspect about the nature of its school, assuring that there will be no discrimination.

But refusing to cough up any documentary proof.

Faculty concerns have slowed similar proposals between other U.S. and Saudi schools. At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, engineering professors are opposing an agreement to develop a men-only engineering school at Saudi Arabia's Jubail University College.

Berkeley administrators are making sure the King Abdullah proposal would not lead to discrimination, said Al Pisano, chairman of the UC Berkeley mechanical engineering department.

"We're in the middle of vetting all of this," said Pisano, who declined to say how much money the Saudi school would pay UC Berkeley. "If this agreement goes forward as planned, I think you're going to find that there will be no discrimination on any basis."

Unlike other Saudi universities, the new school -- known as KAUST -- will not be subject to gender or religious restrictions, said John Burgess, a former U.S. diplomat who runs the Crossroads Arabia blog. King Abdullah intends to allow KAUST complete freedom so it can become one of the world's top graduate schools, Burgess said.

"KAUST is unique," he said. "There will be no government pressure on curriculum or the way anything runs. This is being carved out of Saudi Arabia."

But it remains to be seen whether women and others will indeed be allowed to be equal partners in the new venture. The New York Times reported in October that Israelis would not be allowed to collaborate with KAUST.

Sounds like a stunning engineering achievement, floating above Saudi Arabia like that. After all, that would be the only way the institution would escape the eyes and truncheons of the hairy double-y chromosome types who call themselves the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

And it looks to be 100% Jew-free, too. Understandable--those clever Zionists might sneak a few more nut-shrinkers into the land of purity.

Very well-played, Cal-Poly and Cal Berkeley.

Remember when American universities used to have their thongs in a wad about companies that did business in apartheid-era South Africa?

My mistake was to think it was an admirable stand for the principle of the equality of all men before the law. More the fool me.

Looks like the Boers' real crime was failing to sling some serious piles of Krugerrands down University way.

Nah--too cynical...

Childbirth in the 21st Century.

Melanie and Dom Bettinelli have sprinted to the hospital, as it seems Melanie's water broke this morning. Baby Sophia Therese will be making her debut today.

Dom is just about liveblogging the birth here.

So we’re in the hospital in the birthing center now. Happily they have WiFi, which should make it easier to keep in touch. Melanie still refuses to let me broadcast the birth live over the Internet. She’s so old-fashioned.

I recorded our children's birth with a camera using the quaint throwback material called "film," and Dom's lobbying to set up a webcam.

All in all, it's probably safer to offer congrats at Dom's--he'll be able to relay them more quickly, I imagine.

And the final Cylon is...

Felix Gaeta.


I know, I've argued Lee Adama before, but I think Gaeta is much more likely. The whole "how'd he get into the Adama family" thing is too difficult a hurdle.

Gaeta has been at the center of the story from the beginning, albeit slightly off to one side. As senior officer of the watch, he's responsible for the Dradis warning system and navigation. He calculated the jump that got the Galactica to Ragnar so it would be able to fight and out past the Red Line--in short, he's responsible for shepherding the fleet in a very direct sense. Also, he cleared Baltar of the initial treason charge (involving doctored film), called foul on the rigged election, was the critical leak helping the resistance on New Caprica and tried to have Baltar killed for his actual treason. He's too committed to the survival of humanity (which distinguishes the Five from the Seven), indeed, too crucial to it. He fits the pattern of Tigh, Anders, Tyrol and Tori.

That's who my money's on.

Anybody else?