Stones Cry Out

Well, we made it to the East coast, i.e., Jersey. Today we were doing a college tour for my youngest.

1. I don’t get cable, but apparently there is a “reality” show about Ducks … (two remarks on that here and here). Seems to me the situation is basically as follows,  the left purports to want to enter into “conversations about race/gender/marriage”, but they really don’t. If you really want to “have a conversation” when the other side speaks their mind, you reply, you engage in conversation, you …, uhm, talk. But no. What the left does is try to shut you down and fire you. That’s not engaging in conversation, that’s naked coercion. Persuasion by force and coercion (a) doesn’t work and (b) is highly unethical. So in the absence of people like Mr Schraub and the left leading (or at least entering) the hew and cry to reverse the suspension, those on the left are left with that unfortunate choice of asking themselves, “am I stupid or evil.” (the assumption here being that attempts at persuasion by coercion is evil). The first link makes an interesting point, you can’t refuse to sell a cake based on your beliefs, but you can be fired saying what you believe, hmm.
2. Faith and commerce.
3. Cinema.
4. A really bad whoops moment noted.
5. Theotokos and Nativity.
6. Situation and being awake.
7. Obesity. I’ve seem some remarks about obesity and whether or not it should be treated as a disease and why we so often blame the obese for their condition. I think the salient insight on why we tend to blame the obese for their condition in the US is that those of us who are not oveweight realize how easy it would be to eat to much and not exercise. The non-obese have to work at it to stay thin, their feeling is that those who are not thin just didn’t do their due diligence and got where they were.
8. What the administration is setting aside.
9. A book noted.
10. Of war and human nature.

Tomorrow, train ride to East coast begins. In ze meantime … links?

1. Trickery of the shoe varietal.
2. From the same source, of memory, loss, and recovery.
3. We can thank the White House for this Christmas gift.
4. If true, amazingly stupid.
5. Selfie … pretty close to selfish.
6. On those manmade gasses and their effects.
7. Fundamentalist Islam and the UK.
8. Well, at least they can claim a better rollout than the US, that it didn’t cost $1 billion, and took less than 6 years to develop.

So, recently in my attempt to back in shape, I’m trying swimming, which is new to me. I’m really (repeat) really slow (to put it pointedly, there are pool meet records posted on the wall, I can’t beat the times posted by “under 8 y/o girls” yet) … and I can’t swim very far before being winded. But I’m improving. I think I need to grow lats before the slow thing can be really solved.

1. Not liking the Obamacare thing, the uninsured.
2. Vulnerable?
3. Yes, but to be honest, you have to give the Admin a bit of a break there. Those other Presidents didn’t have their projects done by no-bid contracts with their buddies company.
4. The President’s commission reviewed the NSA procedures and made recommendations .. and he spoke as well. Remarks on that here, here and here.
5. Ohio moves against homeschooling.
6. Of course you can talk about it (see liberals think if you can’t talk about it, then it is evidence of bigotry).
7. In which “a great idea” means take a bad thing and make it even worse.
8. Make sure you are not drinking anything near a keyboard when reading this headline.
9. Apparently athletic ability no longer a criteria in politically correct land.  After all, we wouldn’t want to judge people on ability or character …. just the color of their skin or the group to which they adhere.
10. But I guess once you truly embrace the stupid you can’t stop.

This issue has been in the news before, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen an opinion from this high up in the Catholic church.

To deny Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians who are Catholic, such as Secretary of State John Kerry, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, “makes perfect sense” because it is a discipline that goes back to St. Paul, “the very first years of the Church,” said Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former archbishop of St. Louis and now the chief justice at the Vatican’s highest court.

In an interview with EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on Dec. 13, Cardinal Burke explained that it is necessary to protect the Sacrament, the Communion wafer offered at Masses, from “being profaned, being violated by someone receiving unworthily,” someone “who knows that he or she is unworthy and yet presumes to come forward and to take the Holy Eucharist.”

For our Catholic readers, what’s your take on this?

So, I’m figuring out my schedule as I’m kinda off this week.

1. So, more “scientific discoveries” of the restating the obvious sort, this time from economics. The old folk saying “40 below keeps the riff raff out” from North Dakota comes to mind.
2. Again, science restating the obvious. To get good at anything takes lots of practice. To get world-class good at something takes that plus lots of talent. Duh.
3. Staking claims and property rights … on the moon.
4. Woops.
5.  A commercial noted.
6. The global warming, err, climate change crowd are probably crowing about this (to which a reprise of their own comments on cold weather is in order) … but it’s cool anyhow.
7. To whit.
8. “Judge Leon” three posts, here, here and here. Unfortunately for me, the phrase “Judge Leon” brings this for me.
9. Speaking of names and associations. Jack Bauer is in the news.
10. You can keep your doctor, liberal New Yorker impact.
11. Pre-game go go go (and a counter opinion). Upshot, consistency won out.
12. You can take the gymnast out of the gym, but … you can’t take the gym out of the gymnast.
13. Art and the ant.
14. Of church and state.

Good news on the religious liberty front. Gabriel Malor writing at Ace of Spades give a great rundown of the main points of the district court judge’s ruling with regards to forcing the Catholic Archdiocese of New York to cover, or exempt themselves, from the ObamaCare™ requirement that they cover contraception or abortion. In a snark-less post, it’s just a matter-of-fact examination of the ruling, and why this may have a very tough road to the Supreme Court, assuming it’s appealed that far.

Some highlights (but, as they say, read the whole thing):

This is the first litigation to result in a final injunction against the contraception mandate for religious non-profit organizations that come within the Obama Administration’s purported exemption to the mandate.The 7th, 10th, and D.C. Circuit Courts of Appeals have all found the mandate to be an unacceptable burden on the free exercise of religion for for-profit businesses that don’t come under the exemption. This case is important, though, because it recognizes that even the act of having to claim the exemption is an unacceptable burden on religion.

…

Very late in this case, the government realized that, although the Archdiocese and its constituent organizations are covered by the mandate, the regulations might not actually force a third party they designate to provide the objectionable contraception coverage. The judge was not amused:

…

The Obama administration has handed out so many exceptions to the law, it can no longer claim the law serves a compelling purpose.

…

The administration, as it has frequently done with respect to disobeying laws it does not like, argued that it had to enforce the contraception mandate in such an infringing manner because it could not do it any other way. The district court pointed out the obvious flaw in this line of thinking:

A very interesting and damaging ruling.

Now that same-sex marriage has been accepted by some states, it’s no longer a draw for the evening news, so ABC News in America has decided to move on to the next big thing; open marriage. These are marriages where fidelity is more of a suggestion than anything else. It’s not polygamy, which at least formally acknowledges, in one manner or another, a lasting relationship with more than one spouse. Instead, open marriage, or polyamory, means two people are legally married while continuing to see other people.

So ABC News decided to present a generally positive quote-unquote “news” piece about those for whom commitment is something only for mentally disturbed people. The most critical thing said in the whole segment was that reporter Nick Watt thought it just wasn’t his thing, and that his wife wouldn’t like it. But the rest of the segment, including questions to a psychologist, was generally positive. Not a hint of an opposing viewpoint.

This is what passes for “news” in the 21^st century; one-sided advocacy journalism. Even if Watt isn’t personally in favor of it, showing one side only, on a controversial topic, on a news show, is advocacy.

Do other news organizations do it? Yes, on both sides of the aisle. But while Fox News and the Wall Street Journal get lambasted anytime they don’t play it down the middle, so many liberal news watchers have such a blind spot when something like this airs. Conservative media bias is outrageous. Liberal media bias is…hey look, a unicorn!

The other issue, of course, is that those who said that same-sex marriage would lead to a slippery slope have been, yet again, proved absolutely on target. We aren’t falling for it, but the news media is pushing.

“More guns, more violence”, so goes the mantra that, apparently, many liberal politicians and their voters keep chanting. In one way, it sort of makes sense, if you think about it without considering anything else other than the number of guns.

However, there were some maps made by the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime that tend to set this mantra on its ear. Remember, now; this is data from the UN, not some conservative think tank.

The map shows that where gun ownership is higher, the number of homicides is, generally speaking, lower. In most cases, where the country is orange or red on the gun ownership map – the high end of the scale – they’re green on the homicides map, meaning the low end. Places like the US, which no one would deny is awash in guns, to those places in Europe where you can still get them, more guns mean fewer homicides. And all these values are population based; per capita.

And to just reinforce the point, when the country is green on the gun map – where it’s difficult to get guns – you’re extremely likely to see red on the homicide map; one might say figuratively and literally. Fewer guns in Central and South America, Africa and Russia don’t translate into rainbows and unicorns, unfortunately.

It’s time to stop chanting and take an honest look at the facts. The unicorns might just be grazing in another field entirely.

President Obama gave something of an apology in November for his promise that if you liked your health care plan or doctor, you could keep them, period. Turns out what he meant was that if he liked them, you could keep them. And he turned out to be very difficult to please.

But he’s not the only one who was going around making that promise. Here’s a link for the occasions where these Senators went and did likewise.

SEN. MARY LANDRIEU (D-LA)
SEN. KAY HAGAN (D-NC)
SEN. MARK BEGICH (D-AK)
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D-CO)
SEN. PATTY MURRAY (D-WA)
SEN. TOM HARKIN (D-IA)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY)
SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL)
SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV)
SEN. MAX BAUCUS (D-MT)

Baucus actually wrote most of the bill that eventually became ObamaCare, and was a major player in health care policy for decades before, so his transgression is especially grievous. They were fed a line, which a few of them at least should have known to be false, and parroted it to the people.

The American people were not promised a website; they were promised that they could keep their plan and doctor. Will these Democrats pay a price for this? Will saying something so transparently false hurt them at the ballot box? Do Democratic voters really want people who lie this brazenly, or are just tools for those that do, representing them? Will they vote them out? We’ll see, but hold not thy breath.

Well, I’m back in town.

1. Belief in Santa Claus? This is really really dumb. Do people doubt that Julius Caesar existed? Do they write articles about it? Is that something that needs defending. Wiki doesn’t doubt he exists. But apparently journalists are clueless. I suppose you could wonder about the tense “exists” vs “existed” … which depends only on your faith in the Resurrection or lack thereof. But he was a historical personage of that there is basically no doubt.
2. Youth and passing into maturity (or not).
3. Half a point in defense of the young boy who kissed his classmates hand. Half a point for pointing out that the act was problematic. Loss of a point (or two) for not realizing the scope of the infraction was minor at best.
4. But the victory dance was done, the web site is fixed, mission accomplished and all that. How can that be?
5. Privacy and law.
6. More silly science … newsflash! People with low impulse control have … (wait for it) poor impulse control.
7. To give the same source its due … things going bang are cool right?
8. Verse and photo.
9. In favor of min wage increase.
10. Not so much in favor of same.
11. A dialog.

G’day

Links:

1. David, err, Jonathan and Goliath.
2. Uhm, I say it all the time. Apparently I’m not “men”.
3. Not incorrect, not misleading, … a lie.
4. Judo with the liberal correctness enforcer.
5. Or you could just recall details of the life of the actual St. Nicholas of Myra.
6. Whe “throw the bums out” becomes the sole objective.
7. Natalie Cole and the test tube.
8. Disposing of nuttery on both sides with respect to Mr Mandela. If you ask me, he was a prophet (which occupation has nothing to do with prediction of future, but has everything to do with upsetting applecarts and pointing out flaws in the status quo).
9. Sarin and Syria … was it another Benghazi mythmaking exercise?
10. Doc Smith.
11. A problem looming for Obamacare?
12. Speech, freedom and the law.

An amusing list

Some weeks ago, I noticed someone (on a blog) wondering what comics might be made into movies that might work but which haven’t. I’ve a few suggestions

• (web) Girl Genius.
• (not-web) Cerebus.
• (web) Schlock Mercenary.
• (web) Quantum Vibe.
• (not-web) Artesia?

Woops. Missed one.

1. Hollywood cougars. I’m guessing that fooled you.
2. Most everyone will pay more and we won’t like it. It has been remarked that “the horrible web services” aren’t the problem with Obamacare. That’s right. It’s just the horrible think hiding worse things. The Democrat gambit is that you pay more and they tell you they are giving you a subsidy to help you pay for it and you won’t notice your bottom line is worse, your deductible is worse, and you are paying for coverages you don’t want. So, will the pretend subsidy blind you to the flaws? How stupid are we? Dem answer -> really stupid. Are we? Time will tell.
3. Science, really good at noting the obvious.
4. More importantly lying is part of the political culture.
5. An expert on “women in the workplace” speaks, except in a short review of his career, he spent a whole year or two in the workplace in ’68 and ’69. Expert indeed.
6. A tech review of healthcare isn’t impressed.
7. Let’s see, the UN “is going after Assad” for war-crimes because the atrocities on both sides are rampant. If crimes are symmetric why would the justice seeking be asymmetric?
8. The all powerful loofah.

Sam Harris, says in his book The End of Faith that faith and religion are “the most prolific source of violence in our history.” The three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars, which chronicles some 1,763 wars that have been waged over the course of human history, begs to differ.

For those wars, the authors note the causes of each. Consider this; they categorize 123 as being religious in nature, which is an astonishingly low 6.98% of all wars. However, more than half of them, 66, were fought in the name of Islam. Take those out, and the percentage of non-Islamic religious wars is a mere 3.23%.

So the next time someone tries to use the Crusades as a way to paint religion as the primary source of all war, just ask them, “Is that the best you can do?” Takes quite a bit faith to believe that.

What if I told you that ice levels in Antarctica have reached 35-year record highs? What if I told you that the rise in the surface temperature of the earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that? And what if I told you that the lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace?

Well figure out what you would do if I told you, because I’m telling you. And I’ll tell you this as well; many climate scientists aren’t sure what to do. They’re trying to come up with explanations, but so far they’re just theories plucked out of thin air.

When the facts don’t fit the theories, scientists claim that they will rework the theories. Well, so far, we’ve seen little reworking and more digging in. And here’s another “what if”; what if the media gave this as much attention as they did stories of a spot here or a point there where warming is occurring? This isn’t weather, as they love to say; this is a pause in the warming of the climate that they’re having trouble figuring out. What if people were told about this, or is liberal orthodoxy in the media having a chilling effect?

Ok. Thanksgiving in the bag.

1. In other news, mixing heroin and meth still bad too.
2. “not many decades ago …. ” and they were right too.
3. The more you know, the worse it looks. Apparently.
4. Some vocals worth your time.
5. More here.
6. There may be good arguments against materialism, but those aren’t them.
7. The “three” things it needs? How about “not being a hoax?” As a better reason than those three.
8. I see. It’s not “if you like your plan you can keep it” … What he meant to seay was “if you don’t like our plan, you’re screwed.”
9. Defining “fixing” down. So a billion dollars to a no-bid friend’s company … that went well, eh?
10. Humor.
11. It’s always the quiet creeps that you have to watch out for … or how geology imitates child sex abuse, eh?
12. Hobby Lobby vs Ms Obamacare.
13. Heh.
14. Why would he say that? For the same reason Pauline Cael wondered at the Reagan electoral victory.
15. Nork.