Wednesday Mashup (4/13/11)

(No posting tomorrow, by the way – can’t see how at the moment…)

I give you Fix Noise “Democrat” Doug Schoen here; basically, he complimented President Obama on his speech today about the deficit (shocking for me to be somewhat in agreement with Schoen, but I am a bit – in fact, I was halfway through a post ripping Number 44, but I put it on hold for now because I think he said the right things, and I’ll give him the chance I wasn’t prepared to give after that disgrace of a performance last Friday…if it turns out that this whole thing is just another sap to folks such as yours truly with no follow-up, rest assured that I will tear his bloody head off, and I'm not talking about Schoen).

However, this wouldn’t be a typical Schoen column/blog post unless he peddled some truly ripe dookey, and he does so here, saying that “the president trails the GOP by twenty points in terms of managing the economy, and particularly in managing the deficit.”

This is the poll Schoen is talking about. If you manage to find any point where Obama is measured head-to-head against the Repugs on the economy, please let me know, OK (yes, the numbers are sliced and diced against Dems, Repugs and independents, but not directly against “Orange Man” or Senator Mr. Elaine Chao, who of course are thoroughly unmoved and, at the moment, are prepared to hold the debt ceiling hostage…can’t imagine the stupidity of the individuals who actually vote for these characters, and hopefully I never will).

Next, I really don’t have much to add, but I just had to note that Howard Rich of The Daily Tucker heaped praise here on fellow Tucker-ite Matt Boyle for the latter’s supposed expose of the Obama “slush fund” (and that would be the more than a half-billion dollars in health benefits paid out to a temporary early retiree insurance program included in the healthcare reform law, spread out to 5,500 employers covering 61,000 people announced by the administration in March…as noted here – first bullet – your first hint that there’s no “there” there is the fact that it was announced by the administration a full month before Boyle “broke” the “story”).

Of course, as noted here, it’s a stretch at best to consider Rich any type of a journalist either.

In addition, David Zurawik recently took the opportunity of Glenn Beck’s exit from Fix Noise to engage in more false equivalency between Beck and Keith Olbermann (here). However, to his credit for a change, Howard Kurtz really took Zurawik to task for it (here).

Continuing, it looks like “The Golden Arches” wants to hire 50,000 workers by April 19th (here). That’s good I suppose (baby steps if nothing else); as a response (sort of), I give you the following here.

Finally, I give you some spirituality news here…

Throughout much of the English-speaking world, the Roman Catholic Church is preparing its priests and parishes for the most significant changes to the Mass in the more than 40 years since the church permitted English in place of the Latin.

The changes are included in a new English-language translation of the Roman Missal, a translation produced after almost 30 years of labor, intrigue and infighting. The new missal, the book of texts and prayers used in the Mass, is intended to be closer to the liturgical Latin that was used for centuries than the current version. The church officials promoting it say it will bring an elevated reverence and authenticity to the Mass. Many Catholics who prefer a more traditional liturgy are eagerly anticipating the change.

But after getting a glimpse of the texts in recent months, thousands of priests in the United States, Ireland and Australia have publicly objected that the translation is awkward, archaic and inaccessible. Although most are resigned to adopting the new missal, some have mounted campaigns to prevent it from being introduced.

“What we are asking of the bishops is to scrap this text,” said the Rev. Sean McDonagh, a leader of an Irish group, the Association of Catholic Priests, which represents 450 priests — about 1 out of 10 — in that country. “I know people are not going to use it. I wouldn’t use it, because everything I know in terms of theology and anthropology and linguistics, it breaches every one of those.”

…

One of the most noticeable changes is in the Nicene Creed, the statement of faith that Catholics learn to recite as children. Currently, Catholics say that Jesus is “one in being with the Father,” but in the future they will say that Jesus is “consubstantial with the Father.” This is one of several changes that include unfamiliar vocabulary.

This is completely unsurprising when you consider the following (here)…

In the years before his election, Cardinal Ratzinger's comments about the legacy of Vatican II drew keen attention, especially when he spoke about the liturgy. In 1997, he said the drastic manner in which Pope Paul VI reformed the Mass had caused "enormous harm" to the church. It was not that changes were not needed, Cardinal Ratzinger said; in fact, he said, in many respects the new Roman Missal was an improvement.

The problem in his view was that the old missal was suppressed. Instead of continuity, he said, the old liturgy was demolished and the new Mass constructed from its pieces.

"I am convinced that the crisis in the church that we are experiencing today is to a large extent due to the disintegration of the liturgy," he said.

If Pope Benny thinks that the decline in attendance at Sunday Mass is due to the “disintegration” of the liturgy (as opposed to this, and to a lesser degree I guess, this), then he’s more out of touch than I could have ever imagined.