Stones Cry Out

Good morning.

1. The big race, and a look at the course.
2. Moving product.
3. Shooting’s too good for ’em. 
4. One of the gentlemen notes two reasons why porn is bad for you. This as well, is not unrelated.
5. That was my suggestion, back in the day.
6. 47% pay no federal taxes?
7. Animals without oxygen.
8. More on the Obama assassination kerfuffle.
9. Uhm, … in the East, Christian churches are domed and have always been so, Islam borrowed that from the Christians. 
10. Coolness in nature untangled.
11. Video.
12. For the ladies in Pakistan.
13. Post-Pascha let-down.
14. Self reliance and healthcare.

An interesting note from last nights reading. I had started reading American Rifle: A Biography. At the start of the book it notes that before the advent of the flintlock the American natives weren’t interested in firearms. But the flintlock change that, and the musket (later rifle) became a highly sought very expensive commodity item. Prior to that introduction, wars and conflicts between American native groups were based on enmity and for one 7 year conflict between two tribes resulted in 7 deaths. After the flintlock, conflicts were based not on enmity but on (economic) interest and became deadly. After 25 years, the number of combatants from one tribe dropped from 800 effectives to 300.

The point that enmity vs (economic) interest driving lethality is probably can be generalised and considered in the context of the popular opinion about European religious conflicts of the 15th-17th centuries.

Good morning.

1. An example of how Orthodox theology is bound to its liturgy.
2. A billion dollars? I tend to think that’s not credible.
3. Islamic extremism, apparently, doesn’t exist.
4. More Democratic fantasies … see the second paragraph here (and read the rest too).
5. Zipping around the globe.
6. Putin in Poland mentions Katyn. I’m not sure that approach will sit well with the Poles. More here.
7. Hope and change vs reality. Well, it is a change, after all Bush didn’t implement the plan … Mr Obama did.
8. Never is a hard thing justify, i.e., let’s suggest a situation where the wife is in the process of beating her husband is he justified in striking back in defense?
9. Or another advertising plug for SWA.
10. Getting out and marching (for Christ and the Cross).
11. Theodicy.
12. For myself, I think a Amendment prohibiting the Feds (or States for that matter) from entering actuarial enterprises would be best. New Orleans is a prime example of why
13. In the past, I’ve tried to identify the difference between Liberal/Progressives, Conservatives, and Libertarians as a different ordering of the importance of Equality, Happiness, and Liberty, wherein each group puts the corresponding facet as the primary goal of government as primary. Here is a suggestion it is a different perspective on costs for the latter group.

Good morning.

1. Nuclear thoughts.
2. Pascha in Iraq.
3. One atheist and the empty tomb.
4. Praise and vitriol.
5. A prayer.
6. 10 party government!?
7. It seems to me the Blame Bush/Cheney, err, Obama chant is missing here.
8. Will the denizens of the Beltway read this?
9. Consternation? Huh!? Why?
10. The Left calls them chickenhawks, the parallel phenomena on the other side, “fake macho?“
11. More on the politics and daughter count thing.
12. Yer not qualified.
13. Unpaid interns and Mr Obama.
14. Fine tuned qualification lists.

Tea partiers mostly white, conservative, male, pro-life, poll says

So says the New Mexico Independent.

From the post,

According to a recent Gallup poll, tea partiers are mostly white (79 percent), conservative (70 percent) and male (55 percent). While 68 percent of tea party supporters have not graduated from college, 55 percent—make more than $50,000 per year.

And yet, Timothy Johnson, a black tea partier, states,

“Black Republicans find themselves always having to prove who they are. Because the assumption is the Republican Party is for whites and the Democratic Party is for blacks,”

That was from the article, Black conservative tea party backers take heat.

Do you think liberals on staff at the New Mexico Independent will note how black tea partiers are called Uncle Tom, Oreos, and traitors?

This started as a reply about hermeneutic in the context of the flood on my personal blog. Do we take the flood literally or not. My interlocutor was exasperated exclaiming that to not take the text literally implies words have no meaning. This is exactly backwords. Here is my response to him.

Yes, you are exactly right. Words have meaning. There is this word hermeneutic, which I have used on more than one occasion used in this sentence. Yet, you gaily trounce in with replies like “Why start with the Bible at all? Why not just make up your own stories if that’s what you’re going to do anyway?” or other remarks along the “making it all up” line as if every religious person just takes their preconceptions and hammers the text until it fits. That is not what any honest theologian does (and I think the majority of people atheist or faithful are as honest as they can be). That word, hermeneutic means, “the method by which one extracts meaning from a text.” See that word there. Method. It is there for a reason. Read the rest of this entry

No, really.

Americans overall are far less likely to be killed with a firearm than they were when it was much more difficult to obtain a concealed-weapons permit, according to statistics collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control. But researchers have not been able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

In the 1980s and ’90s, as the concealed-carry movement gained steam, Americans were killed by others with guns at the rate of about 5.66 per 100,000 population. In this decade, the rate has fallen to just over 4.07 per 100,000, a 28 percent drop. The decline follows a fivefold increase in the number of “shall-issue” and unrestricted concealed-carry states from 1986 to 2006.

The highest gun homicide rate is in Washington, D.C., which has had the nation’s strictest gun-control laws for years and bans concealed carry: 20.50 deaths per 100,000 population, five times the general rate. The lowest rate, 1.12, is in Utah, which has such a liberal concealed weapons policy that most American adults can get a permit to carry a gun in Utah without even visiting the state.

This isn’t from some right-wing news source, this is from MSNBC, for cryin’ out loud. (But you have to wait until the last page of the article to get the above paragraphs and the link to the stats and comparative graphs.  This is MSNBC, after all.)

Here in Georgia, the town of Kennesaw passed a law that every head of household must own a gun.  It is not one that is enforced, but the law went on the books in 1982.  Crime started to go down, and 25 years later the crime rate was cut by more than half, with zero residents involved in fatal shootings.  Worth considering.

From F.A Hayek The Road to Serfdom Chapter 2:

To allay these suspicions and to harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives — the craving for freedom — socialism began increasingly to make use of the promise of a “new freedom.” The coming of socialism was to be the leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. It was to bring “economic freedom,” without which the political freedom already gained was “not worth having.” Only socialism was capable of effecting the consummation of the age-long struggle for freedom, in which the attainment of political freedom was but the first step.

The subtle change in meaning to which the word “freedom” was subjected in order that this argument should sound plausible is important. To the great apostles of political freedom the word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached. The new freedom promised, however, was to be the freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us, although for some very much more than for others. Before man could be truly free, the “despotism of physical want” had to be broken, the “restraints of the economic system” relaxed.

Hmm. There is not just a little similarity with these arguments and the arguments posed for healthcare. Democrats argue that healthcare is not socialism. Pedantically speaking that may be correct. But that is, in part, just a technicality. There are parallels here.

Good Morning.

1. On the Constitutionality question and healthcare, not so cut and dried as the defenders do pretend. And a little help in for your research on the matter.
2. Demographics and housing markets.
3. Iran.
4. On Pragmatism.
5. BSG, btw I’m just about finished with season 2.
6. A in race bike change done, well, just about perfectly.
7. Burning Judas.
8. Shifting standards, from a prior comment, “The threshold inquiry has to be the perspective of the women themselves, in their diverse circumstances, rather than imposing our perspective from up on high (and one size fits all).” So, the threshold inquiry about “maverick” status has to be from the perspective of Mr McCain himself, not imposing our perspective from on high (and one size fits all)?
9. Apparently at home moms are jobless.
10. Memory Eternal, one of best known Christian bloggers has passed. Noted, well everywhere.
11. Ontology and popular culture … or just a joke.
12. 40% of Tea Partiers are Democrats … oops.
13. Riding to work.
14. Drones.
15. Is that why I’m conservative?
16. And … for the Palin fans.

From Michael Ramirez (click for a larger version):

Treating your enemies better than your allies doesn’t seem to be working, for either our enemies or our allies. 

Good morning.

1. Two Saints and Good Friday.
2. Christian redemption, large and small scale.
3. A Serbian song for Pascha.
4. An egg.
5. The Press and the Catholic Church.
6. Canada and the JDL.
7. April fools pranks in Russia.
8. Stage magic and the Administrations energy policies.
9. The intern and the min wage.
10. Legal research.

Good morning.

1. Rape on the decline, tied to the increase in the prevalence of pornography. Kids ethics and a tie in? 
2. How about this?
3. And a really good point on porn.
4. Red Tories … a term I don’t know much of anything about but perhaps should look into.
5. Labels and cans, for the LOST fans.
6. Good Friday in the Ukraine.
7. And the short hymn (troparion) for Good Friday.
8. Faith on the rise.
9. Looking back at the campaign. 
10. Greece.
11. Having an majority interest in that company makes this move suspect.
12. The unicorn, a fiscally conservative Democrat?

A teen can’t get her ears pierced without parental consent, but in more and more places they can get surgery without it.

San Diego school officials have upset pro-life advocates by adopting a new policy making it so teenagers no longer need parental consent for a host of activities, including abortion. The new policy makes it so teens can go on their own for confidential medical appointments without parental involvement.

The San Diego Unified Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday night to revise the policy without any opposition or debate.

Pro-abortion voices are, of course, thrilled at putting this sort of responsibility on children.

Vince Hall of Planned Parenthood told the television station he supports the change.

"Every day that the old policy was in effect, every day that the old policy guided people who work in the schools was a day that teens were really being put in danger," he claimed.

Teens were in danger because they had to get their parents’ permission to kill their unborn child?  On a daily basis?  Really? Hyperbole, anyone?

The only thing in danger was PP profits.  Follow the money.

From George Weigel at First Things:

The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague; its manifestations run the gamut from fondling by teachers to rape by uncles to kidnapping-and-sex-trafficking. In the United States alone, there are reportedly some 39 million victims of childhood sexual abuse. Forty to sixty percent were abused by family members, including stepfathers and live-in boyfriends of a child’s mother—thus suggesting that abused children are the principal victims of the sexual revolution, the breakdown of marriage, and the hook-up culture. Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft reports that 6-10 percent of public school students have been molested in recent years—some 290,000 between 1991 and 2000. According to other recent studies, 2 percent of sex abuse offenders were Catholic priests—a phenomenon that spiked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s but seems to have virtually disappeared (six credible cases of clerical sexual abuse in 2009 were reported in the U.S. bishops’ annual audit, in a Church of some 65,000,000 members).

Yet in a pattern exemplifying the dog’s behavior in Proverbs 26:11, the sexual abuse story in the global media is almost entirely a Catholic story, in which the Catholic Church is portrayed as the epicenter of the sexual abuse of the young, with hints of an ecclesiastical criminal conspiracy involving sexual predators whose predations continue today. That the vast majority of the abuse cases in the United States took place decades ago is of no consequence to this story line. For the narrative that has been constructed is often less about the protection of the young (for whom the Catholic Church is, by empirical measure, the safest environment for young people in America today) than it is about taking the Church down—and, eventually, out, both financially and as a credible voice in the public debate over public policy.

I guess one question would be, if the Pope’s fair game, why not the US Secretary of Education?  If not, why not?

The health care mandate is defended as Constitutional because it’s just a tax.

It gives people a choice: they can buy health insurance or they can pay a tax roughly equal to the cost of health insurance, which is used to subsidize the government’s health care program and families who wish to purchase health insurance….

Two questions.

1. Can the government mandate purchasing a GM automobile now that they have a controlling interest in GM with a similar tax, i.e., buy the car or pay a tax used to subsidize the program for those families to buy the same sort of car who cannot afford it? If the first is allowed, why not the second? And don’t pull the “not GM, but any automaker” argument. GM could install a proprietary widget in their car and the law would require that quite easily.
2. How about taxing people who don’t have at least one child of their own and adopt one child? Single -> tax. The tax roughly equal to the cost of supporting two children, which is used to subsidize those families which struggle to support those two children.

So, are the above two measures Constitutional? If they are not, why is the healthcare measure Constitutional while these are not?