After Two Years of Obama ... Here's Your Change!

	January 2009	TODAY	% chg	Source
Avg.. Retail price/gallon gas in U.S.	$1.83	$3.44	84%	1
Crude oil, European Brent (barrel)	$43..48	$99..02	127.7%	2
Crude oil, West TX Inter. (barrel)	$38..74	$91..38	135.9%	2
Gold: London (per troy oz.)	$853.25	$1,369.50	60.5%	2
Corn, No.2 yellow, Central IL	$3.56	$6.33	78.1%	2
Soybeans, No. 1 yellow, IL	$9.66	$13..75	42.3%	2
Sugar, cane, raw, world, lb. Fob	$13..37	$35..39	164.7%	2
Unemployment rate, non-farm, overall	7.6%	9.4%	23.7%	3
Unemployment rate, blacks	12.6%	15.8%	25.4%	3
Number of unemployed	11,616,000	14,485,000	24.7%	3
Number of fed. Employees	2,779,000	2,840,000	2.2%	3
Real median household income	$50,112	$49,777	-0.7%	4
Number of food stamp recipients	31,983,716	43,200,878	35.1%	5
Number of unemployment benefit recipients	7,526,598	9,193,838	22.2%	6
Number of long-term unemployed	2,600,000	6,400,000	146.2%	3
Poverty rate, individuals	13.2%	14.3%	8.3%	4
People in poverty in U.S.	39,800,000	43,600,000	9.5%	4
U.S.. Rank in Economic Freedom World Rankings	5	9	n/a	10
Present Situation Index	29.9	23.5	-21.4%	11
Failed banks	140	164	17.1%	12
U.S.. Dollar versus Japanese yen exchange rate	89.76	82.03	-8.6%	2
U.S.. Money supply, M1, in billions	1,575.1	1,865.7	18.4%	13
U.S.. Money supply, M2, in billions	8,310.9	8,852.3	6.5%	13
National debt, in trillions	$10..627	$14..052	32.2%	14

Just take this last item: In the last two years we have accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our entire nation ' s history.  Over 27 times as fast. Metaphorically speaking, if you are driving in the right lane doing 65 MPH and a car rockets past you in the left lane.   27 times faster, it would be doing 7,555 MPH!

Sources:

(1) U.S. Energy Information Administration; 

(2) Wall Street Journal; 

(3) Bureau of Labor Statistics; 

(4) Census Bureau; 

(5) USDA; 

(6) U.S. Dept. Of Labor;
(7) FHFA; 

(8) Standard & Poor ' s/Case-Shiller; 

(9) RealtyTrac; 

(10) Heritage Foundation and WSJ; 

(11) The Conference Board; 

(12) FD IC;
(13) Federal Reserve; 

(14) U.S. Treasury

Crisis of 'Indifference' Shows Need for New Evangelization, Pope Says

From CNA

Pope Benedict stressed the urgency of evangelizing modern society, saying that Christians today face the task of reaching a world that grows increasingly apathetic to the message of the Gospel. 

“The crisis we are living through,” he said, “carries with it signs of the exclusion of God from people's lives, a general indifference to the Christian faith, and even the intention of marginalizing it from public life.”

We Remember; We Will Never Forget

"Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord"

Homily of Father Jay Scott Newman - 'The Universal Priesthood'

Sending of the Apostles

Homily of Reverend Jay Scott Newman

Pastor

St. Mary's Catholic Church

Greenville, South Carolina

May 22, 2011

Choir of Ely Cathedral - "Now the Green Blade Riseth"

The Choir of Ely Cathedral perform the Easter hymn 'Now the Green Blade Riseth,' set to the French carol tune 'Noel Nouvelet.'

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,

Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;

Love lives again, that with the dead has been:

Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid Him, Love Whom we had slain,
Thinking that He'd never wake to life again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Up He sprang at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain;
Up from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
By Your touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

John Allen: Benedict's 'Quiet Revolution'

From The National Catholic Reporter

By John L. Allen, Jr.

A funny thing has happened as the story of a recent Vatican crackdown on a legendary monastery in Rome has made its way into the English-language press. I mean that literally -- the story has been turned into a joke, thereby obscuring its real significance.

For those with eyes to see, the suppression of the Cistercian abbey at the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, one of the traditional seven major pilgrimage sites in Rome, rates far more than placement in a "news of the weird" column. Instead, it's the latest chapter in what might be called a "Quiet Revolution" under Pope Benedict XVI, referring to a reform in clerical culture beginning in Rome and radiating beyond.

Mark Steyn: The Unzippered Princeling and the Serving Wench

Hat Tip to The Monarchist

From the Orange County Register

By Mark Steyn

Back when he was still the officially designated Next President of France and not an accused rapist, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was glimpsed at the annual IMF soccer tournament wearing a T-shirt emblazoned "YES, WE KAHN!" (Monsieur le directeur was not participating in the game: The field he likes to play requires more horizontal exertions, as even the deferential and protective French media have begun belatedly to acknowledge.) In consciously mimicking the slogan of another and very successful presidential candidate, the IMF boss and Socialist Party candidate improved upon it – or, at any rate, made it more accurate. "Yes, We Can"? Er, no, actually, you can't. But yes, he Kahn!

A man is innocent until proven guilty, and it will be for a New York court to determine what happened in M Strauss-Kahn's suite at the Sofitel. It may well be that's he the hapless victim of a black Muslim widowed penniless refugee maid – although, if that's the defense my lawyer were proposing to put before a Manhattan jury, I'd be inclined to suggest he's the one who needs to plead insanity. Whatever the head of the IMF did or didn't do, the reaction of the French elites is most instructive. "We and the Americans do not belong to the same civilization," sniffed Jean Daniel, editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, insisting that the police should have known that Strauss-Kahn was "not like other men" and wondering why "this chambermaid was regarded as worthy and beyond any suspicion." Bernard-Henri Lévy, the open-shirted, hairy-chested Gallic intellectual who talked Sarkozy into talking Obama into launching the Libyan war, is furious at the lèse-majesté of this impertinent serving girl and the jackanapes of America's "absurd" justice system, not to mention this ghastly "American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other."

Read the rest of this entry >>

From Dancing Nuns to New Age, Time Has Come to Save Churches and Turn Back to Sanctity

From Spirit Daily

Pope Benedict XVI has slowly but surely moved on a course that will make him more than just the "caretaker" Pope many envisioned him to be.

And that will come, perhaps, because of his effort -- subtle, but powerful -- in nudging the Church back to greater reverence.

This has been seen in his encouraging re-establishment of elements from the older Mass (including in the way of music as well as the new Missal); requiring every bishop to allow the Latin Rite; and, most recently -- stunningly -- his closure of a major monastery in Rome that had allowed the singer Madonna to perform there and has a nun and former disco dancer who performed modern dance, in church, with a Crucifix. In the U.S. are dozens of convents and retreat centers where nuns have adopted Zen, yoga, and New Age therapies -- an untold scandal that seems to have evaded a Vatican visitation of convents (at least thus far) and the notice of local bishops.

Vietnam: Christian Activists Face Prospect of Death Penalty

From Catholic World News

Three Mennonites who advocated on behalf of farmers whose land was sold by Communist officials have been charged with attempting to overthrow the government. If convicted, the three, who have been denied access to their families and an attorney, face the prospect of life imprisonment or the death penalty.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Vietnam: Christian land rights activists to go on trial (Christian Solidarity Worldwide)

Mark Helprin Delivers the 159th Hillsdale College Commencement Address - 'Churchill and the Presidency'

We typically post longer videos, speeches and conferences on Saturdays when our readers have more time to spend with them.  However, our traffic is usually much heavier on weekdays, and this speech by Mark Helprin is one that should not be missed.  

Mark Helprin delivered the 159th Hillsdale College commencement address on May 14.  Brilliant, wise and eloquent, we believe it is an important address that you will want to listen to several times - to better mine it for all its truth.

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A truly great speech by a great American.

Obama Digging Up Dirt on Potential Opponent Chris Christie

It isn't only the Obamunists who should be researching Governor Chris Christie, conservatives would be  wise to look a bit more closely before jumping off a cliff with the New Jersey governor.  His tough talk makes for a good YouTube video, and he is standing up to the public employee unions on fiscal matters and getting state finances in order.  Governors have no choice but to do so.  But on a host of issues that conservatives care about, Christie is at best a moderate.  As U.S. Attorney, there were serious ethics questions. He is a big-government Republican of the Bush stripe, and appears to believe in global warming and cap-and-trade.  Unfortunately, the New Jersey tough-guy rhetoric masks just another "big-tent" Christie Whitman.

From The New York Post

By Josh Margolin

President Obama's re-election campaign is trying to dig up dirt in the Garden State.

Despite New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's repeated pronouncements that he will not seek the GOP presidential nomination, Obama operatives are compiling a dossier of what they call "opposition research" -- material that could be used to damage Christie if he changes his mind, The Post has learned.

A Very Happy Victoria Day to All Our Canadian Friends!

We have been surprised and delighted by the large number of Canadians, particularly from the beautiful western provinces, who visit this blog.  

Sunlit Uplands reveres the historical, social and cultural bonds that unite the English-speaking peoples, and it is deeply gratifying to see so many throughout the Anglosphere responding to our posts.  Because of the large number of readers from Canada, we have added a Canadian news source to our Sunlit News feed, and we hope that you will not hesitate to call to our attention any article that may be of interest to our readers.

We extend to all our Canadian friends and your families, "from Cape Race to Nootka Sound," warmest good wishes for a very happy Victoria Day!

Tim Pawlenty to Announce Candidacy on Monday

Tim Pawlenty is announcing his candidacy in Iowa tomorrow for President of the United States.  We're going to take some time to look over the field, but T-Paw is among those we like.  Here's a preview:

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Choir of King's College, Cambridge - 'This Joyful Eastertide'

The Palestrina  Choir (Ireland) - 'Regina Caeli' 

1 - 'Regina Caeli', Gregorian
2 - 'Regina Caeli', Aichinger

Founded in the 1890's by Dr. Vincent O'Brien, then a music teacher at St. Mary's Place Christian Brothers School in Dublin, and under the patronage of Edward Martyn, an associate of W.B. Yeats in the Irish Literary Theater, later to become the Abbey Theater, the Palestrina Choir provides liturgical music for St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin.  Many famous soloists, including the legendary John McCormack, were first trained as choristers in the Palestrina Choir.

The choir has given concerts throughout Ireland and abroad and has featured regularly on radio and television.

From the Pastor - 'Truth and Beauty'

A weekly column by Father George Rutler.

IN many ways New York is the artistic capital of the world, and we are in the middle of it. We certainly would be remiss if we did not foster this treasure, in the great Catholic tradition. Many visitors are surprised that much of the devotional art and ecclesiastical decoration in our church is the work of our own parishioners. If we can become an “atelier of the Lord,” it will be very much part of our Christian witness and stewardship.

Our Lord ascended to Heaven so that the Holy Spirit might come at Pentecost and fill the Church with His truth. The greatest art expresses that truth and is far superior to vain “self-expression.” John Keats said “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” but T.S. Eliot rightly thought that the expression was meaningless sentimentality. The craftsman ignorant of the Creator becomes a vain aesthete expressing nothing more than the ego. While truth is beautiful, beauty is not truth itself but expresses that truth. In the classical tradition, beauty consists in proportion, integrity and clarity: it is harmonious, suited to its purpose, and intelligible. This is sublimely seen in Christ Himself, Who incarnated this beauty as the Way (guiding to a harmony of virtue) and the Truth (revealing God) and the Life (enlightening with creative love). St. Macarius, an Egyptian monk of the fourth century said, “The soul which has been fully illumined by the unspeakable beauty of the glory shining on the countenance of Christ overflows with the Holy Spirit . . . it is all eye, all light, all countenance.”

Art is not merely an option for the Christian. Thus, the wisdom of Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice: “The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils . . .” The most sublime art is the Eucharist, in which we “take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims . . .” (Vatican II, SC 8).

Last Sunday, our church was overflowing for a Solemn High Mass to inaugurate a Society of Catholic Artists, founded at the initiative of Catholic painters, musicians, actors and writers. Whatever will be realized from this, it certainly is a hopeful sign in an age whose potential has often been thwarted by a misuse of art to diminish the human spirit. May it someday be said of these good people what was inscribed on the wall of a church in Leicester, England, during the iconoclastic period of the Protectorate: “In the year 1654 when all things were, throughout this nation, either demolished or profaned, Sir Robert Shirley, Baronet, founded and built this church. He it is whose singular praise it is to have done the best things in the worst times, and to have hoped them in the most calamitous.”

Father George W. Rutler is the pastor of the Church of our Saviour in New York City. His latest book, Cloud of Witnesses: Dead People I Knew When They Were Alive, is available from Crossroads Publishing.

SC Democratic Party Group Welcomes Their "Favorite Liberal," Mitt Romney

A South Carolina Democratic Party group, SC Forward Progress, has produced a video welcoming Mitt Romney, their "favorite liberal," to South Carolina.  While clearly intended to hurt a front-running contender for the GOP presidential nomination, the video does Republicans an enormous favor by presenting Romney in his own words, and making clear what a disastrous nominee this charlatan would be for the Republican Party.  

The video includes two clips from Romney's 2002 gubernatorial campaign debate, but it left out his most definitive comment in which he indignantly insisted, "I do not take the position of a pro-life candidate!"

To watch the debate segments in full, click here.

The Royal Wedding and How to Take Marriage Seriously

"Despite the fairy-tale aspects and all the Cinderella references, this wedding anchored their marriage into a familial and social order that goes way beyond them in time and geography."  

From Catholic Lane

By Mary Kochan

They grace the cover of Time magazine this week, do Kate and William, with not one but two full-page spreads inside: of the coach ride after the wedding and of the Westminster Abbey recession.

Days after the grand affair, the world still gawks and talks.  Much of the talk is about what the newlyweds have done and yet could do for the image and the substance of the British monarchy so bound up with the identity of the country itself and so besmeared with scandal and stupidity in recent decades. Thus it is that the royal family and much of Britain took this wedding and take this marriage very seriously.  There is a keen sense that in some way the future of their society, as they know it, depends on this marriage.

This is worthy of worldwide attention then, because the wedding of Kate Middleton to the heir of the house of Windsor demonstrated with a great deal of very British precision and no lack of careful punctuation, exactly how to take a marriage, and for that matter, marriage itself, seriously.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Drill Display

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Drill Team and the German Air Force Band No 4 perform a Drill Display during a military tattoo in Berlin. The Mounties show how to fight and defend with their cavalry lance on the ground.

Dr. Ronald Pestritto - 'The Obama Administration vs. The Constitution'

Dr. Ronald J. Pestritto, Assistant Professor of Politics, Hillsdale College.  

This speech was delivered as part of the "First Principles on First Fridays" lecture series, sponsored by Hillsdale College's Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C.

What the Church Has Given the World

From astronomy to philosophy Catholics have made an extraordinary contribution to western civilisation, says Fr Andrew Pinsent

From The Catholic Herald (UK)

By Father Andrew Pinsent

Physicist Stephen Hawking meets Benedict XVI during an audience for scientists at the Vatican (AP Photo/L’Osservatore Romano, HO)

Introduction

At a recent debate, broadcast worldwide by the BBC, over 87 per cent of the audience rejected the notion that the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. Although the defenders of the Church were confronted by two masters of rhetoric, there is little doubt that the vote reflected a shift in attitudes towards Christianity in general and the Catholic faith in particular. To put this shift in blunt terms, whereas we were regarded recently as nice but naïve, today we are increasingly regarded as evil. As a result, teaching the faith and defending Christian ethics has become much more difficult.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Resigns as Head of International Monetary Fund

From The Telegraph

By Jon Swaine  

Strauss-Kahn, the French socialist, in court

In a statement released by the Fund in the early hours of Thursday morning, Mr Strauss-Kahn said he needed to "devote all my strength, all my time, and all my energy to proving my innocence".

The 62-year-old Frenchman has been under intense pressure since being arrested in the First Class cabin of on an Air France jet on the tarmac of John F. Kennedy airport on Saturday afternoon.

He also faces new claims that he hired prostitutes from the Manhattan Madam who served Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former Governor of New York.

He is being held at Rikers Island prison after being formally charged with seven crimes related to the alleged assault of a 32-year-old Guinean maid in his suite at the Sofitel earlier that day, including attempted rape and an illegal sexual act.

Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, said earlier this week that Mr Strauss-Kahn was "obviously not in a position to run" the IMF, while European figures had begun to say the same. 

The Dirty Old Man and the IMF

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Saturday was a bad day for the New World Order.

New York police boarded the first-class cabin of an Air France jet bound for Paris to collar Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, a Grand Master of the Universe and the Socialist Party’s hope to defeat President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012.

Strauss-Kahn, or DSK as he is known, was hauled back to New York and identified in a police lineup by an African maid at the Sofitel hotel as the man who emerged stark naked from the bathroom of his $3,000-a-night suite and tried to rape her.

Bishops of England and Wales Restore Meatless Fridays

In the end, it’s obedience, not personal choice, that holds us together as a people

From The Catholic Herald

By William Oddie

I do not often find myself moved by actual enthusiasm for official utterances emerging from meetings of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales. Now I do. A statement they issued on Saturday is not only wonderfully brief (around 400 words), it is written in a powerfully devotional style. Bishops’ Conference statements are sometimes businesslike about the affairs of the church, and sometimes relevant to the needs of society: they rarely convey any concern for the building up and nurture of the spiritual identity of those under their pastoral care—most of whom, frankly, have now come to look for guidance more to their parish priest and to the pope than to their bishops—so much for all the endless Küngian chatter about collegiality.

It’s not just that the pope doesn’t always pay any attention to the decisions of bishops’ conferences; neither do the “People of God”. But if collegiality consistently produced decisions, and English prose, of this quality, they would soon be up and running as a living reality in the life of the faithful. The text of this statement will no doubt be available elsewhere on the Herald’s homepage by the time this post is online. But I’m going to take the liberty of beginning by quoting it myself, in full, here:

By the practice of penance every Catholic identifies with Christ in his death on the cross. We do so in prayer, through uniting the sufferings and sacrifices in our lives with those of Christ’s passion; in fasting, by dying to self in order to be close to Christ; in almsgiving, by demonstrating our solidarity with the sufferings of Christ in those in need. All three forms of penance form a vital part of Christian living. When this is visible in the public arena, then it is also an important act of witness.

Every Friday is set aside by the Church as a special day of penance, for it is the day of the death of our Lord. The law of the Church requires Catholics to abstain from meat on Fridays, or some other form of food, or to observe some other form of penance laid down by the Bishops’ Conference.

The Bishops wish to re-establish the practice of Friday penance in the lives of the faithful as a clear and distinctive mark of their own Catholic identity. They recognise that the best habits are those which are acquired as part of a common resolve and common witness. It is important that all the faithful be united in a common celebration of Friday penance.

Respectful of this, and in accordance with the mind of the whole Church, the Bishops’ Conference wishes to remind all Catholics in England and Wales of the obligation of Friday Penance. The Bishops have decided to re-establish the practice that this should be fulfilled by abstaining from meat. Those who cannot or choose not to eat meat as part of their normal diet should abstain from some other food of which they regularly partake. This is to come into effect from Friday 16 September 2011 when we will mark the anniversary of the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United Kingdom.

Many may wish to go beyond this simple act of common witness and mark each Friday with a time of prayer and further self-sacrifice. In all these ways we unite our sacrifices to the sacrifice of Christ, who gave up his very life for our salvation.

What has now happened has been gathering momentum ever since the pope’s visit to Britain. It will be recalled that during the papal afterglow some very surprising people started to recommend the restoration of the Friday fast. Bishop Kieran Conry, for instance, argued that abstaining from meat on Friday “…. was one of the most obvious signs of Catholic identity, apart from going to Mass. It determined the diet in places like prison and hospital, and was something that Catholics were instinctively conscious of: we knew that we couldn’t have meat like everybody else that day, and it was a source of a sort of pride – it marked us out as different”.

The point, of course, is not simply that we abstain from meat on Friday (if we do) as a personal devotion: it is that we once did it, and soon will once more, out of obedience to the authority of the Church: it was once, and, deo gratias, will be again, a constant reminder that once we have taken the initial choice of committing ourselves to being Catholics in the first place, we are under obedience; and that it is that obedience that holds us together as a people.

The Church used to make this clear beyond peradventure: a convert was said to “submit” to the authority of the Holy See. This usage was thought, in the heyday of the “Spirit of Vatican II”, unduly forbidding and was quietly dropped in favour of the less daunting usage to “come into full communion” with the Holy See. But downplaying the idea of obedience has had damaging effects on the collective mind of the faithful. “Conscience”, as Newman taught, isn’t an excuse—as so often it seems when used as a Küngspeak neologism—for simply doing as we see fit : a Catholic conscience, on the contrary is something that is shaped and informed by the Church’s teaching; we have to OBEY our conscience, whose dictates will often go against our inclinations.

As I argued in this column at the time, commenting on Bishop Kieran’s remarks last year, nothing stops us from abstaining from meat on a Friday as things stand now. In our household we do already: but the point is that we do it as a private rule of life rather than as an expression of the fact that we are part of the daily life of the Church. We used to do it, in fact, even when we were Catholic-minded Anglicans: that, too, was just a personal devotion. As such, it was a kind of nostalgic tribute to an order within the Church which seemed to have passed away for ever. As I wrote last year, “It would be wonderful if our bishops now actually said, in terms, that the old tradition is now restored by their authority, and formally pronounced that we ought not to eat meat on a Friday without good reason”. Now they have.

The bishops might now turn their attention to building on their achievement: what about restoring our midweek Holydays of Obligation? They too, were once as Bishop Conry said of the Friday fast, “a source of a sort of pride – [they] marked us out as different”. To walk into Church on a Sunday and find that it is not one of the Sundays in ordinary time but Corpus Christi, a kind of bonus for our Sunday obedience rather than something we have to pay for by the sacrifice of our time and freedom of action on a weekday—(rather like a supermarket bogof offer, two for the price of one)—is , I find, not merely intensely irritating, it just feels wrong , it’s almost insulting: an implicit declaration that, since you probably can’t be bothered to observe Corpus Christi on its proper day, here it is without any extra effort to you.

But that’s a subject to return to at greater length some other time. It’s a bit unfair, now the bishops have done something really substantial towards the restoration of what was lost from the spiritual life of the faithful through the reductionism of the post-Conciliar period (not, I hasten to insist, through the Council itself) to carry on as though they had done nothing. This is not nothing. It’s a splendid beginning. We’re not there yet. But now, we can feel that under the guidance of the present Holy Father, the journey continues. We’re on our way: Deo Gratias.