Noonan: The STILL Don't Know How To Handle Him!

Excerpts from Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Jorunal:

"Ten years in, and Democrats still don’t know how to handle Donald Trump. He used them as foils and they allowed it, sitting there snarling, at points screaming. Part of how to handle him is if he tries to manipulate you into doing the right thing—if, for instance, he challenges you to stand in respect for a mother mourning the murder of her daughter—you put aside that you’re being manipulated and stand. Because it is right to show human sympathy and regard. The thing to do is look better than Mr. Trump, not worse. You say: My base demands coldness. Then get a new base. If you can’t, leave before you are reduced to a soulless husk of the eager, happy person who walked into that chamber a decade ago. . . .

"Mr. Trump brought back his social issues—immigration, transgenderism, crime. Most potent was the story of Iryna Zarutska, the 23-year-old woman murdered last August in Charlotte, N.C. She had legally migrated here with her family from Ukraine and was working in a pizzeria. Her story haunts me, haunts a lot of people. She was brand-new here, innocent of America, and died by herself in terror on a train seat, her throat slashed; the last thing she saw was the towering man, her blood dripping from his knife.

"It haunts us because in the way of life the obscure judges and court officers and prosecutors and legislators who let it happen are all fine, their lives undisturbed, but the girl is dead and the man who killed her had been arrested more than a dozen times before the stabbing, and had a criminal record going back to 2007. He never should have been free to do what he did."

Catholics In Crisis: Who Will Lead Us Now?

Pope Francis has been laid to rest. And now, the truth must be faced: the Catholic Church is in a state of crisis -- perhaps the most serious crisis the Church has faced in nearly 100 years.

Francis (aka Jorge Mario Bergoglio) was a highly authoritarian pope who ruled in an autocratic manner. During his reign he kept even his allies guessing regarding his next move, was distrustful of the Church hierarchy and, whether intentionally or not, sowed runaway confusion about the core teachings of the Church as well as the Church's commitment to those teachings. 

Don't take my word for it. Listen to what two renowned Catholics and Church experts have to say on this subject. First, columnist and author  Peggy Noonan:

There is broad appreciation for the man and his efforts but not deep sadness at the end of his papacy. In its dozen years, Francis was often confusing, with striking impulses followed by unexplained silences, with a lack of doctrinal clarity. For me the whole blur culminated in the Synod on Synodality, essentially a conference on having conferences. His liberalism seemed uncertain except when it was aggressive, even belligerent . . .

Remember, Noonan is a devout Catholic. Now, here's an observation from another devout Catholic and respect Church scholar, the esteemed biographer of Saint John Paul II (John Paul the Great), Paul Weigel. Here, he describes the Great Divide that the Church now faces:

Fundamental questions are at stake in the choice of a new Bishop of Rome . . .  the fault line within Catholicism has been defined by two competing understandings of the Church’s approach to the modern world, especially on questions of religious authority, human dignity and the place of sexuality in our lives.

According to one interpretation, the [Second Vatican] Council began the Church anew, and if that means jettisoning or modifying truths held for almost two millennia, so be it. The other interpretation holds that Vatican II reformed the Church in dynamic continuity with its settled tradition, as the Church finds fresh ways to present ancient, enduring truths.

 

Both New Model Catholicism and Dynamic Orthodoxy, as we might call them, seek to make the Church attractive to Christians and others looking for spiritual insight and guidance amid today’s cultural turmoil. Only Dynamic Orthodoxy has been successful in drawing growing numbers of people to the Church, especially outside the regions where the faith began. Which view will prevail?

Again, Weigel adds that "Francis has been the most autocratic pontiff in centuries."

Will the Church now modify or jettison 2,000-year-old core truths and "so be it," as Weigel explains or will it opt for a "dynamic" return to core teachings in an manner that has already proved successful in growing the Church both in emerging nations as well as in some Catholic communities in North America? This is a critical question and one which must be confronted because, from all indications, this Church's fault line is at a perilous point. Indeed, under Francis it most assuredly grew deeper and wider. 

About a week from now the cardinals will begin their conclave to select a new pope. How will the voting break? Who will emerge to lead the Church through this quagmire? 

Again, we turn to Weigel, writing in today's Wall Street Journal, who warns against assuming that all those cardinal electors appointed by Pope Francis (about 80% of them) will necessarily choose a new Pope in his mold:

Today, 13% of the cardinal-electors are from sub-Saharan Africa, the Church’s greatest area of growth, and 17% are from Asia. Latin America and the Caribbean will provide 13% of the electorate, North America 10%, Oceania 2%, and Europe 39%, despite much of the Church there being on life support.

Let's do the math. It takes a two-thirds vote (67%) of the cardinals to become Pope. Europe still holds the biggest block of votes with 39%. They're followed by Asia with 17%, Africa with 13%, Latin America with 13% and North America with 10%. But Europe and North America (49% combined) do not seem likely to vote in a block. Africa and Asia, as a block could bring in nearly a third of the vote. Africa, Asia and Latin America could bring in 43% -- a significant number, far exceeding that of previous conclaves for these regions. Suppose these newer areas of Church dominance decided to show their mettle? Combined with North America, they could put a papal candidate over the critical 50% mark. 

Yet, it may be personalities more than regions that will eventually sway the vote. And, cardinal electors may still be feeling sentimental toward the Franciscan era following the pope's funeral, thus impacting their judgement. Under such circumstances, if traditionalism is to prevail, the new pope will need to be a sort of stealth candidate. He may need to look and sound gentle, merciful and vaguely modernist while actually committing those very traits to a return to bedrock teachings. Or, he may present as a compromising bridge-builder while actually skewing traditionalist. Indeed, he may appear to be a product of the moderate/progressive wing but once ensconced, restore some semblance of orthodoxy. Barring that, we're in for more of the same -- not a good scenario!

Peggy Noonan On The Democrats Right Now

From Peggy Noonan's most recent column, about today's Democrats, in the Wall Street Journal:

Three thoughts. One, these aren’t serious people. Two, their job was to show they are an alternative to Mr. Trump, and instead they showed why he won. Third and most important, they will continue to lose for a long time. I hadn’t known that until Tuesday. . . . 

Democrats have to understand where they are. They have completely lost their reputation as the party of the workingman. With their bad governance of the major cities and their airy, abstract obsessions with identity politics and gender ideology, they have driven away the working class, for whom life isn’t airy or abstract. Democrats must stop listening to the left of the left of their party. It tugs them too far away from the vast majority of Americans. They have been radical on the border, on crime, on boys in the girls’ locker room. . . .

Face It: It's A Really Dangerous IDEOLOGY!

And now, excerpted from Peggy Noonan's fine column in this weekend's Wall Street Journal:

" . . . it would be a great national good if the woke regime were disrupted. Nobody likes it but the extreme cultural left, including the teachers unions. It did famous harm to the Democrats in the latest election.

"The debate over nomenclature—why, critical race theory isn’t even taught in third grade!—is mischievous and meant to obscure. The woke regime rests primarily on a charge that racial evil was systemically and deliberately embedded long ago, by the white patriarchy, in the heart of all American life, and that this ugliness thrives undiminished, which justifies all present attempts at eradication. We are not individual persons with souls; we are part of identity groups marked by specific traits. We hate each other and must fight each other. This regime is variously compared to China's Cultural revolution the French Revolution's Terror and Puritanism. It is an ideology. A philosophy bubbles up from lived experience and emerges in time; an ideology is forced down into people’s heads from above, and its demands are always urgent. . . . When parents 'were suddenly within earshot' of online classes, they became alarmed that children were 'being fed lessons on highly divisive topics of questionable academic benefit.' But when parents began to push back, they discovered who really runs the schools: unions, school boards whose members are often handpicked by unions, and businesses that sell curriculums and textbooks. 'None of them put students’ interests first.'"

Talk Radio's Troubling Post Trump Dilemma

Let's talk about talk -- talk radio, to be exact.

And let's begin by facing the fact that all media of all persuasions are sort of lost without Donald Trump to praise, accuse, exalt, deride, revere, ridicule, adore or abhor. He was a lightening rod for all media. He knew it; he cultivated it; he delighted in it. So now, there is a vacuum -- sort of.  I say "sort of" because some columnists, like Peggy Noonan for example, are still writing about Trump and using him as a crutch to fill out their weekly allotment of words. (Poor Peggy, she's lost her way.)

In talk radio, the post Trump chasm is vast. And it's been made even more evident and vivid since the passing of the modern-day inventor of conservative talk radio, Rush Limbaugh.

Here in the Philadelphia area, morning drive time talk radio is dominated by two conservative personalities who have each launched onto their favorite topic in this new era. One seems obsessed with the idea that you don't need to get the COVID vaccine. He basically comes across as an anti-vaccine zealot. The other finds it hard to complete any session without reiterating his contention that COVID was most assuredly developed in a lab in Wuhan, China and was directed at the US. These two spend hours on these favorite topics. Now, I'm not necessarily arguing with their contentions. I'm just saying that it's become tiresome. It's the proverbial broken record. And they too often seem to be at a loss for alternative topics.

One bright spot in the panoply of talk comes with the new Clay and Buck (Clay Travis and Buck Sexton) Show in Limbaugh's old time slot from noon till three. But we're unable to get that here in the Philly market because the station that used to carry Rush has now moved its nine till noon talker into that spot. So, no Clay and Buck for us, though you can access the show via the internet as I often do.

Yes, Clay and Buck are attractive because they're new and they have an advantage in that there are two of them and they can switch back and forth. Let's face it, few if any talkers can singly dominate a daily three-hour segment in their own voice the way Rush did. He was The Master. Rush also had a talent for letting those who called into the show have their say and he really, really listened to them. So many talk show hosts talk over the caller or cut the caller off. They abbreviate or annotate or even intimidate the caller. Sean Hannity, for example, rarely allows his guests or callers to fully answer the rambling, pseudo questions he poses. What we've just mentioned may be a quick any/or easy devices to "control" the program but they're not very smart and they do not make for a compelling or informative or entertaining show.

Of course, we hear so much about podcasts these days.

C'mon! I was doing podcasts 15 years ago and, in fact, you can link to them right here. There's nothing new about podcasts. And podcasts aren't live radio. They just don't have the same immediacy and/or the same relevance. 

Live talk radio is something very special -- it's real, it's engaging, it's intimate. Above all, it's a conversation.

The radio giants of yesteryear (people like Paul Harvey, Charles Osgood, Arthur Godfrey and others) all understood that you had to talk as if you were having a special, private chat with just one person. Indeed, Ronald Reagan became the Great Communicator precisely because he got his start in radio. That's where he learned the real art of communication. Reagan always knew how to use his voice, his modulation and his pacing to set the proper tone. 

A talker who shouts his way through the show (Mark Levin comes to mind) become tiresome no matter how smart or perceptive he or she may be. Likewise, those who seem to whisper their way through the broadcast in that touchy-feely NPR style are just as irritating and, ultimately, boring. And a shock jock/talker like Howard Stern simply isn't very shocking any more. His schtick has worn thin. 

And so many of these radio talkers are just terminally egotistical. One guy who has made his drive time mark on SiriusXM's POTUS is so taken with himself that even in a few minutes you will lose count of the number of times he says "I, me, mine" or "my". It's absolutely suffocating. And please, spare us the sycophant co-host who sucks up to the Grand Ego, endlessly agreeing and adoring. Ugh!

The best talkers don't see themselves as Radio Gods. They aren't terminally promoting themselves and their books or novelties or whatever.  They give guests and callers ample space, are self-deprecating, find new and surprising topics each day, don't droan on and on, are well (and  broadly) versed, recognize the power of the popular culture and know how too weave that into their conversation. They're also authentic and confident in who they are and what they're all about.

That's a tall order, for sure.

But in the post Trump era, it's never been more important!

A CRISIS Demands We Act On ALL Fronts!

From Peggy Noonan in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, a very prescient view of our current predicament:

It’s not a problem, it’s a crisis, it’s continuing, it has a hundred causes, we have to chip away at it hard. In a crisis you try this thing and then that; you experiment, boldly. You become daring.

We argue about which solutions are right, but all the solutions are part of the solution. We are in a mental health crisis; it’s not a right-wing talking point. We need more hospitalizations and more hospitals. We do need red-flag laws so that those who are potentially harmful to themselves or others have their guns taken. We do need deep national background checks, and let judges adjudicate disputes. We do have to help the single mother who knows her son is a ticking time bomb—she needs a better response than “There’s nothing we can do until he hurts someone.” We should try banning assault weapons. I don’t care if we don’t have statistics proving it will help—do it anyway, as a crisis measure, do it for 10 years again and see if it helps. If the National Rifle Association were wise, it would be supple now, in crisis. If the president were wise, he’d look to the country and put distance between the NRA and himself. If Democrats were wise they wouldn’t turn this into a game.

Is Our Nation's Atmosphere Now TOXIC?

Peggy Noonan writes with great lucidity about the high school shootings in the current issue of the Wall Street Journal. As always, Noonan has a keen eye for the deeper generators of our current predicament. Here are some excerpts:

We discuss motives, but isn’t it always the same motive? “I have murder in my heart.” Why do so many Americans have murder in their hearts? . . .  

A way to look at the question is: What has happened the past 40 years or so to produce a society so ill at ease with itself, so prone to violence? 

We know. We all say it privately, but it’s so obvious it’s hardly worth saying. We have been swept by social, technological and cultural revolution. The family blew up—divorce, unwed childbearing. Fatherless sons. Fatherless daughters, too. Poor children with no one to love them. The internet flourished. Porn proliferated. Drugs, legal and illegal. Violent videogames, in which nameless people are eliminated and spattered all over the screen. (The Columbine shooters loved and might have been addicted to “Doom.”) The abortion regime settled in, with its fierce, endless yet somehow casual talk about the right to end a life. An increasingly violent entertainment culture—low, hypersexualized, full of anomie and weirdness, allergic to meaning and depth. The old longing for integration gave way to a culture of accusation—you are a supremacist, a misogynist, you are guilty of privilege and defined by your color and class, we don’t let your sort speak here. . . . 

All this change, compressed into 40 years, has produced some good things, even miraculous ones. But it does not feel accidental that America is experiencing what appears to be a mental-health crisis, especially among the young. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported as many as 20% of children 3 to 17 have, in any given year, a mental or emotional illness. There is research indicating depression among teenagers is worsening. National Public Radio recently quoted a 2005 report asserting the percentage of prison inmates with serious mental illness rose from less than 1% in 1880 to 21% in 2005. Deinstitutionalization swept health care and the psychiatric profession starting in the 1960s, and has continued since. The sick now go to the emergency room or stay among us untreated. In the society we have created the past 40 years, you know we are not making fewer emotionally ill young people, but more.

And here, to me, is the problem. A nation has an atmosphere. It has air it breathes in each day. China has a famous pollution problem: You can see the dirt in the air. America’s air looks clean but there are toxins in it, and they’re making the least defended and protected of us sick.

A Very Worthy Honor For A Great American!

Anybody who follows this blog knows that we've long been fans of Peggy Noonan.
We've literally been singing her praises for decades.
Her two books on the Reagan era (What I Saw At The Revolution and When Character Was King) have long been favorites of ours. They're now classics. And, we used one of her books (On Speaking Well) as a textbook in our corporate communication classes at Penn State University. We even carry a quote from Peggy on the home page of this blog.
Peggy Noonan's commentary is not only insightful and thought provoking but her writing is also elegant -- something all too rare these days. She writes with a finely honed style that pays an almost imperceptible attention to detail and the many nuances in everyday life that eventually make for big differences (aka trends).
There have been times when we've marveled at her written observations to the point where we've wanted to commit them to memory.
She has the knowing eye of a keen observer and she often finds herself ahead of the curve.
Above all, she never forgets her roots. She may write for the Wall Street Journal but she rarely strays far from Main Street. She understands America and Americans -- not just who we once were but who we are now and where we hope to be tomorrow. She's never been seduced by the inside-the-beltway crowd or the mavens of Manhattan who would presume to determine our destiny from on high.
Now, Peggy Noonan has won the Pulitzer Prize!
Yes -- The. Pulitizer. Prize.
It's extraordinarily well-deserved.
And probably overdue as well. But that's OK.
Of course, none of this will change Peggy. She knows who she is and what she's all about. Morally astute and extraordinarily well-grounded, she exudes professionalism without pretense. And we love her for it.
Here's to thousands and thousands and thousands of more words!
Congratulations, Peggy!

Shifting Plates, Creating Breakthroughs From Chaos

"And so, now, it begins. And it simply has to be repeated: We have never had a political moment like this in our lives. We have never had a president like this, such a norm-breaker, in all the ways we know. We are in uncharted seas.

"His supporters, who flooded Washington this week, were friendly, courteous—but watchful. Two Midwestern women told me separately that they used to be but no longer are Republican. They’re something new, waiting for a name.

"They like Mr. Trump the way you learn to like someone you hired and will depend on. They judged him as exactly what’s needed to cut through the merde machine of modern Washington. He is a destabilizer; he shifts the tectonic plates; in the chaos that results, breakthroughs are possible."

Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, 1/20/17

She Calls It 'A Vacuity,' And She's Right!

Peggy Noonan during a post-election Wall Street Journal panel.

The Meaning And Majesty Of The Moment . . .

“We have witnessed something epochal and grave. It is the beginning of a new era whose shape and form are not clear, whose personnel and exact direction are unknown. But something huge and incalculable has occurred. God bless our beloved country.”
                                                  -Peggy Noonan

The Big Fact Of American Life Right Now . . .

Peggy Noonan really says it all via her latest observations in the Wall Street Journal:

"The big fact of the week, however, has to do with these words: They don’t like us. The Democrats, progressives and left-liberals who have been embarrassed by the latest WikiLeaks dump really hate conservatives, or nonleftists. They don’t like half the people of the country they seek to control! They look at that half with disdain and disrespect. Their disdain is not new—“bitter clingers,” “basket of deplorables.” But here it’s so unashamed and eager to express itself. . . .

"Here’s what you see in the emails: the writers are the worst kind of snobs, snobs with nothing to recommend them. In their expression and thoughts they are common, banal, dumb, uninformed, parochial.

"I don’t know about you but when people look down on me I want them to be distinguished or outstanding in some way—towering minds, people of exquisite sensibility or learning. Not these grubbly poseurs, these people who’ve never had a thought but only a sensation:Christians are backward, I saw it in a movie!

"It’s the big fact of American life now, isn’t it? That we are patronized by our inferiors."

The Destructiveness Of The Unappeasable . . .

Outstanding observations from Peggy Noonan in this weekend's edition of the Wall Street Journal:

There is something increasingly unappeasable in the left. This is something conservatives and others have come to fear, that progressives now accept no limits. We can’t just have court-ordered legalized abortion across the land, we have to have it up to the point of birth, and taxpayers have to pay for it. It’s not enough to win same-sex marriage, you’ve got to personally approve of it and if you publicly resist you’ll be ruined. It’s not enough that we have publicly funded contraceptives, the nuns have to provide them.
This unappeasable spirit always turns to the courts to have its way.
If progressives were wise they would step back, accept their victories, take a breath and turn to the idea of solidifying gains, of heroic patience, of being peaceable.
Don’t make them bake the cake. Don’t make them accept the progressive replacement for Scalia. Leave the nuns alone.

Click here for the full column.

Noonan: Culture Creates Kids Whose 'Nerves Are Shot'

An extraordinary reflection by Peggy Noonan (at CNN and in her new book) remembering her childhood years:

Things hadn't been let loose to such a degree. The messages, permissions, incitements and inducements of the culture were not rough, lowering, frightening.
Life then wasn't Arcadia, there was murder and mayhem because humans are humans, and "history is an abattoir" -- but there was a greater feeling extant of safety on the street. Parents could say to their kids, essentially, "Go out and play in America," and know they'd come back OK that night.
People don't feel that so much anymore, and it's a real loss. (It is right here to note that life would not have been so safe for a little girl and an old woman of color; the world might not have been so kind. But the larger point, that everyone was at least a little safer, I think maintains.) Sophisticated Europe, I learned years later, had looked at our culture -- its blandness, its innocence, its babyish assumption that the good would triumph -- and saw it a culture of children. We were more appropriately understood as a culture for children. And you know, that's not the worst thing.
Here is my concern. There are not fewer children living stressed, chaotic lives in America now -- there are more. There will be more still, because among the things America no longer manufactures is stability. And the culture around them will not protect them, as the culture protected me. The culture around them will make their lives harder, more frightening, more dangerous. They are going to come up with nothing to believe in, their nerves essentially shot. And they're going to be -- they are already -- very angry.

Click here to read the whole piece.

Noonan: Now It's The Rulers Against Those Ruled

Peggy Noonan has written a wonderful column about the elites and those they would presume to manipulate, sedate and dominate. We commend it to you.
Here's a cogent excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:

The gap between those who run governments and those who are governed has now grown huge and portends nothing good.
Rules on immigration and refugees are made by safe people. These are the people who help run countries, who have nice homes in nice neighborhoods and are protected by their status. Those who live with the effects of immigration and asylum law are those who are less safe, who see a less beautiful face in it because they are daily confronted with a less beautiful reality—normal human roughness, human tensions. Decision-makers fear things like harsh words from the writers of editorials; normal human beings fear things like street crime. Decision-makers have the luxury of seeing life in the abstract. Normal people feel the implications of their decisions in the particular.
The decision-makers feel disdain for the anxieties of normal people, and ascribe them to small-minded bigotries, often religious and racial, and ignorant antagonisms. But normal people prize order because they can’t buy their way out of disorder.
People in gated communities of the mind, who glide by in Ubers, have bought their way out and are safe. Not to mention those in government-maintained mansions who glide by in SUVs followed by security details. Rulers can afford to see national-security threats as an abstraction—yes, yes, we must better integrate our new populations. But the unprotected, the vulnerable, have a right and a reason to worry.

Click here for the full column.

Noonan: American Now Fully 'In Play' And It's Fun!

Peggy Noonan has penned a wonderful column in the Wall Street Journal about the Donald Trump phenomenon and its impact on American politics.
According to Peggy, right now "America is so in play."
Here's an excerpt:

Something is going on, some tectonic plates are moving in interesting ways. My friend Cesar works the deli counter at my neighborhood grocery store. He is Dominican, an immigrant, early 50s, and listens most mornings to a local Hispanic radio station, La Mega, on 97.9 FM. Their morning show is the popular “El Vacilón de la Mañana,” and after the first GOP debate, Cesar told me, they opened the lines to call-ins, asking listeners (mostly Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican) for their impressions. More than half called in to say they were for Mr. Trump. Their praise, Cesar told me a few weeks ago, dumbfounded the hosts. I later spoke to one of them, who identified himself as D.J. New Era. He backed Cesar’s story. “We were very surprised,” at the Trump support, he said. Why? “It’s a Latin-based market!”
“He’s the man,” Cesar said of Mr. Trump. This week I went by and Cesar told me that after Mr. Trump threw Univision’s well-known anchor and immigration activist, Jorge Ramos,out of an Iowa news conference on Tuesday evening, the “El Vacilón” hosts again threw open the phone lines the following morning and were again surprised that the majority of callers backed not Mr. Ramos but Mr. Trump. Cesar, who I should probably note sees me, I sense, as a very nice establishment person who needs to get with the new reality, was delighted.
I said: Cesar, you’re supposed to be offended by Trump, he said Mexico is sending over criminals, he has been unfriendly, you’re an immigrant. Cesar shook his head: No, you have it wrong. Immigrants, he said, don’t like illegal immigration, and they’re with Mr. Trump on anchor babies. “They are coming in from other countries to give birth to take advantage of the system. We are saying that! When you come to this country, you pledge loyalty to the country that opened the doors to help you.”

Click here to read the entire column.

Noonan On Torture: Report Is Flawed, Still Troubling

From Peggy Noonan writing in the Wall Street Journal:

We should not judge those who, in the months and years after 9/11, did what they thought necessary to forestall further attacks on America’s civilian population. They went with the legal guidance they had, propelled by the anxiety we all experienced. “There was no operating manual to guide the choices and decisions made by the men and women in charge of protecting us,” wrote former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey this week in USA Today. None of them should be abused, embarrassed or prosecuted now.
But who is more hawkish and concerned about our security than Sen. John McCain , and who has more standing on the subject of torture, having been tortured over 5½ years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam? He was denied medical treatment, starved, beaten, his arm rebroken and his ribs shattered; he was made to stand and put in stress positions, and put in solitary confinement for two years. This week on the floor of the Senate, he said the kind of practices outlined in the report, whose issuance he supported, do not produce actionable intelligence and “actually damage our security interests as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.” He added: “The use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights.”
What the report contains is believable but insufficient; it’s not the whole story, it’s part of the story. Those involved in the episodes outlined should have been interviewed, and were not. The investigation and report should have been conducted so that they could win full bipartisan involvement and support, and were not.
The most stinging critique came from Mr. Kerrey, a Democrat who served eight years on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which issued the report. In his USA Today piece he slammed the report’s partisanship: “I do not need to read the report to know that the Democratic staff alone wrote it.” The Republicans refused to take part “when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.”

Click here to read Noonan's entire column.

Noonan: Obama's Poor Judgement Did Him In

Peggy Noonan is out with an astounding column in the Wall Street Journal. For its sheer simplicity and searingly clear analysis this column is a stunner.

Here's part of it:

At this dramatic time, with a world on fire, we look at the president and ponder again who he is. Mr. Obama himself mocked how people see him, according to a remarkable piece this week by Peter Baker in the New York Times. "Oh, it's a shame when you have a wan, diffident, professorial president," he reportedly said, sarcastically, in a meeting with journalists before his big Syria speech. Zbigniew Brzezinski told Mr. Baker the president's critics think he's a "a softy. He's not a softy."
Actually, no one thinks he's a softy. A man who personally picks drone targets, who seems sometimes to enjoy antagonizing congressional Republicans, whose speeches not infrequently carry a certain undercurrent of political malice, cannot precisely be understood as soft.
But we focus on Mr. Obama's personality and psychology—he's weak or arrogant or ambivalent, or all three—and while this is interesting, it's too fancy. We are overthinking the president.
His essential problem is that he has very poor judgment.

Click here to read the rest of this illuminating column.

Everyday Saints? Courage Makes The Difference!

Insight from our friends at the Save Jersey blog:

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

Peggy Noonan spoke to ETWN on Sunday morning (Rome time) to give her historical perspective on Pope John Paul the Great, Save Jerseyans, who along with Pope John XIII was canonized on Sunday at an overflow Vatican City open air mass led by Pope Francis.

John XXIII is best remembered for Vatican II. The latter pontiff played an integral role in its implementation (or moderation, depending upon whom you ask) but he also occupied the role of a famously close ally to her old boss, Ronald Reagan, as the Cold War entered its endgame. For Noonan (who is also a Catholic), the theology of sainthood is one which necessarily has practical implications for the political class.

Sainthood isn’t deification. A cursory read of any history of the saints tome will drive that point home in no time flat. “Don’t think of them as perfect,” Noonan told her Catholic network interviewer. “Think of them as people who are showing you that you can be that way if you tried harder.” In her mind, the fact that one man could help the West bring down an evil empire AND fail to adequately address an emerging sex abuse scandal is evidence enough of her conception of sainthood as being one of men with “foibles” nevertheless impacting history in a positive way.

Pope Francis, ever plain-spoken, said in his homily that it all comes down to “courage.”

“They lived through the tragic events of that century, but they were not overwhelmed by them,” concluded Francis. Amen. The world is changed, every single day, by men and women who born gods, emperors or billionaires but nevertheless rise to the occasion when history shows up at the front door.

It’s an example capable of inspiring anyone regardless of where you worship or what name you affix to the Almighty. God knows we could use more saints in New Jersey. No one is saying either man lived without failings. No one is expected to hit that bar. The Church, in its own subtle way caked in pomp, circumstance, sacramentality and incense, is calling upon ALL of us today to strive to work with each other, as JPII and Reagan did in the 80s, to advance the cause of human dignity and freedom around the globe.

Are you paying attention, Mr. Obama?

I think it’s worthwhile for all of us to seize this opportunity to reflect upon what real courage looks like; the first video below the fold features an excerpt from a Franciscan University talk on the JPII-Reagan friendship, one for which we’re still learning many of the delightfully surprising details, and the second is a trailer of Newt Gingrich’s “Nine Days that Changed the World” documentary reliving the Polish pope’s efforts to liberate his native land:

Noonan: Hillary Revealed As Aggressive, Combative

Peggy Noonan on revelations from the release of the paper of Diane Blair, a close friend of Hillary Clinton who died in 2000:

What did we learn of Mrs. Clinton from the Blair papers? . . .
From Mrs. Clinton there's an always-startling pugnacity and aggression. Sen. Sam Nunn, she says within Blair's hearing, "should be unmasked as a fraud." "HC urging hard ball." "HC still in despair that nobody in WH tough enough and mean enough." People "trying to destroy them."
The Clintons are always "getting killed." "HC on treadmill, how furious she is." "HC furious at speechwriters." "Is trying to work through her anger."
Mrs. Clinton often boasts about her toughness. After her husband's impeachment, Blair has Hillary observing it "drives their adversaries totally nuts, that [the Clintons] don't bend, do not appear to be suffering." On Beltway pundits: "We've rendered them irrelevant." People often "need to get the message bigtime." "They should have their noses rubbed into it."

Click here to read more from the Wall Street Journal.