'This is Why the American People Have Thrown You Out of Power'


More here.
 

Science....it poisons everything.

Who killed Tycho Brahe?

1984 again.

Apple won't let you download the Manhattan Declaration application because opposing governmental attempts to railroad same-sex marriage and to vitiate conscience limitations on abortion constitute hate speech.

Top 8 Historically Incorrect Christmas Songs....

...because there is nothing worse than a historically inaccurate Christmas carol.

And as an added bonus, the history of "Silent Night."

My sympathy for deranged Muslim fundamentalists and their fatwas increases around Christmas....

....when I found out that the Smithsonian Christman exhibition "Features Ant-Covered Jesus, Naked Brothers Kissing, Genitalia, and Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts ."

Winter is coming.

When Commercials Go Wrong.

I never realized how creepy those old T-Mobile commercials were.

"The reward of faith and obedience is not immunity from suffering. That's the reward of anesthesia."




Science Fiction writer Orson Scott Card pens a moving autobiographical reflection on why "feel good" religion misses the point.  There's stuff in his essay that all parents can appreciate, as well as some insights into his Mormon tradition.

Remembering Elizabeth Anscombe.

Who?

Read here.

Saul on the road to Damascus in Liberia.

This is one weirdly horrific story about a former Liberian warlord who after years of practicing cannibalism and child sacrifice and exploiting "boy soldiers" had a vision of Christ and, apparently, repented.

One wonders about how true the stories of how normal cannibalism and child sacrifice are, and how true is the story about conversion. 

But such things do happen.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

What's been crossing my mind as I've been listening to news reports about the Wikileaks diplomatic disaster is, where is this stuff coming from?

The news sources have been noticeably shy of details about what should be a key issue. There have been various references to someone who is facing court martial, but apart from that we've got nothing.

Now, if this person were a member of the Tea Party or was a supporter of Sarah Palin, we'd undoubtedly have a full backstory on him and his friends and neighbors.  But we've got nothing.

Why isn't that dog barking.

Apparently, the answer is that the leaker is a gay activist who was despondent about a break-up with his boyfriend.

According to the Washington Examiner:

"The revelations of Manning’s openly pro-homosexual conduct suggest that a more liberal Department of Defense policy, in deference to the wishes of the Commander-in-Chief, had already been in effect and has now backfired in a big way. The result could be not only the loss of the lives of U.S. soldiers, as a result of the enemy understanding U.S. intelligence sources and methods, but damaged relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan and a possible U.S. military defeat in the region as a whole." - Accuracy in Media


The suspect in the leaking of classified military files, Spc. Bradley Manning, voiced his disgust with US Army commanders and U.S. "society at large" on his Facebook page just prior to his alleged downloading of thousands of secret documents, according to the British news media.

According to one story appearing in Britain's The Telegraph, Manning, who served as a US Army intelligence analyst, became depressed after a break-up with his homosexual campanion. He also wrote: "Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment," and quoted a joke about "military intelligence" being an oxymoron.

Manning, who is openly homosexual, began his gloomy postings on January 12, saying: "Bradley Manning didn't want this fight. Too much to lose, too fast."

And:

According to Accuracy in Media, a media watchdog group, Manning's Facebook page shows that he enjoyed the MSNBC program hosted by Rachel Maddow, the lesbian activist, and that he listed the left-wing Media Matters and the National Center for Transgender Equality as being among his “likes and interests.”


"Manning’s affinity on his Facebook page for 'Repeal the Ban' is also significant. It is a project of a group called Servicemembers United, which describes itself as the nation’s largest organization of gay and lesbian troops and veterans, their allies and supporters. The group receives financial support from the Open Society Institute of billionaire George Soros," wrote AIM's editor Cliff Kincaid.

So, we have someone who is openly identified as a potential target for subornation.Obviously, though, like the financial meltdown and TSA screening, we have an institutionalized, ideological blindspot that is going to lead us to more disasters in the future.

Frustrated Obama Sends Nation Rambling 75,000-Word E-Mail

The Onion.

Thus far the response from the American public has been subdued, though a sixth of the populace did not even receive the e-mail because the message generated 50 million mailer-daemon delivery failure notifications.


"I tried reading [Obama's] e-mail, but it was just way too long," said 48-year-old Sophia Washington of Moraine, OH, adding that because her computer displayed the text all on one line, she had to scroll from left to right in order to read it. "I just ended up skimming to see if my name was in there. It wasn't, but I did notice that my daughter can stay on my insurance for one more year. That's great. I think that's because the Republicans won the midterms."

Because getting convictions against people who want to kill Americans is too hard...

...the Department of Homeland Security turns its attention to the real threat against Americans - internet copyright infringement.

The Department of Homeland Security's ICE has launched a major crackdown on websites enabling copyright infringement or selling counterfeits of trademarked goods. In just the past few days ICE has seized at least 12 domains, TorrentFreak reports.


All of these domains now display the image shown here.

The sites fall into two categories: torrent sites that enable the download of copyrighted music, and sites selling knockoffs of trademarked goods like designer handbags.

A controversial bill that would allow the Attorney General to shut down domains on similar grounds was recently derailed (temporarily) by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden.

The owner of an affected site told TorrentFreak that his domain was taken over without any prior complaints or notification from the court.

"Progressives" put on their Stalin mask...

...and accuse Republicans and businessmen of "wrecking" the economy.

That's always the first move after the state-controlled 5 Year Plan doesn't work.

Pius Wars, Continued.

Reuters reports:

Jewish leaders reacted with dismay Sunday to comments in Pope Benedict’s new book that his wartime predecessor Pius was a “great, righteous” man who “saved more Jews than anyone else.”


Many Jews accuse Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of having turned a blind eye to the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked quietly behind the scenes because speaking out would have prompted Nazi reprisals against Catholics and Jews in Europe.

In his book to be published Tuesday, called “Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Sign of the Times,” the German pope says Pius did what he could and did not protest more clearly because he feared the consequences.

The more research into the "Pius Question," the more I've come away convinced that Pius XII was "the real deal" - generous, courageous and principled.  There is no question that Pius was responsible for saving more Jewish lives than any single person duing the Holocaust because the Catholic Church was the institution responsible for saving more Jewish lives during the Holocaust than other institution, and Pius XII issued the instructions to rescue Jews.  Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide in 1967 credited Pius with having saved between 700,000 and 800,000 Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

It is particularly shocking that the Roman Jewish community would lead a revisionist attack on Pius inasmuch as Pius threw open Roman churches and Catholic religious offices to shelter the Jews and at one point offered to come up with the ransom for the Roman Jewish community, ostensibly as a loan of gold, but in actuality a gift.

I knew there had to be a reason I liked LL Cool J...

...aside from his great performance in "Deep Blue Sea."

40 Celebrities who are Republican.

Some are predictable, but some are surprising.

I mean, James Earl Jones...who would have guessed?

"...if you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope and pray that the euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens."


Euro-skeptic Nigel Farage gives the EU a tongue-lashing.
 

Sauce for the goose.

In response to media pouncing on a misstatement by Sara Palin, Professor Jacobsen hosts a cavalcade of Obama's greatest misstatements.

Happy Thanksgiving to our Vegan friends.

And the worst 10 Christmas movies of all time...

....including "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" and 2 out of 3 of Tim Allen's Santa Claus movies.

10 Best Christmas TV Specials...

...including the "Star Wars Christmas Special" about which George Lucas said that "if he had the time and a sledgehammer, he would track down every copy of this TV special and smash it."

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

"Sometimes a facepalm is the best first reaction."

AP mangles reality in its story on Pope's comment on condom use.

Steampunk Future Shock.

Thanksgiving in 1810, 1910 and 2010.

Jonah Goldberg "gets" Benedict XVI

From NRO:

What Benedict said in a book-length interview is that in certain circumstances using a condom would be less bad than not using one. To use Benedict’s example, a male prostitute with HIV would be acting more responsibly, more morally, if he wore a condom while plying his trade than if he didn’t.


The pontiff understands that not all harms are equal. Assault is wrong, for instance, but assault with a deadly weapon is more wrong than assault with a non-deadly one. Recognizing and limiting the harm you do can be the “first step in the direction of a moralization, a first act of responsibility in developing anew an awareness of the fact that not everything is permissible.”

Now, I’m not on the same page as the Vatican on all matters of sexuality, never mind theology. But I respect the Church’s position. And, given the core assumptions of Catholic moral thought, I think Benedict’s reasoning is sound.

But, more relevant, I appreciate the role the Church plays in savoring the right notes.

It’s a tired trope for Church critics to glibly suggest that the Vatican has the blood of millions on its hands because it doesn’t back condom distribution, particularly in Africa. That is as absurd as it is unprovable. The Church’s opposition to corruption, ethnic violence, and murder are just as pronounced and resolute, and yet such maladies persist in Africa as well. Are we to believe that African male prostitutes — no doubt devout Catholics all — were simply following Church doctrine when they declined to use condoms?

Meanwhile, the Church does perhaps more than any other institution to aid the sick and feed the hungry in Africa, something you certainly can’t say about many of the critics in the Fourth Estate peanut gallery.

As for the Church’s preferred approach — abstinence until marriage — it may be impractical in most parts of the world, as the critics claim. But it would undeniably save more lives than condom use if put into practice. What seems to offend many isn’t the efficacy of the solution but the suggestion that such values have any place in the modern world.

The Church’s position is that the truest notes are those that not only celebrate life and love but cut through the whitewater din of devouring time. As those notes become harder to hear, the answer isn’t to stop playing them but to turn up the volume.

Perhaps it’s the approach of yet another dad-less Thanksgiving — a holiday during which we give thanks for whatever parts of our lives are set to the music of those true notes — that has set my mind in this direction. But that shouldn’t surprise, for he was always the true rock in my river.

Pope approves of throwing people down elevator shafts...

....or possibly not ...explains Mark Shea.

ROME -- In a startling change to the Catholic Faith, Pope Benedict XVI announced today that tossing people down elevator shafts could represent a first step in assuming moral responsibility "in the intention of reducing the risk of having your own son electrocuted to death before your very eyes."

The Imperial Mainstream Media Center has taken this as a signal that the Church intends to canonize Darth Vader for his saintly courage in tossing Emperor Palpatine down an elevator shaft as the latter was torturing Darth Vader's son to death with huge bolts of electric Force energy. In addition, the Imperial Mainstream Media Center has also declared that the pope therefore means to say that destruction of whole planets, as well as the subjugation of billions of inhabitants all over the galaxy, the betrayal of his closest friends, the slaughter of the Jedi and their younglings, and his conversion to the Dark Side "don't matter."

But most importantly, according to an Imperial Mainstream Media spokesman, "The point is, throwing people down elevator shafts is now formally accepted by the Church as moral behavior and Catholics need to think about how to incorporate this new development of doctrine into their lives. If you feel that throwing people down elevator shafts is the safe and right thing for you, then," says the Imperial Mainstream Media Center, "we believe the pope means to say, 'Do it with my blessing.'"

But seriously, folks: Two things are beyond my comprehension in this latest kerfuffle from the incurably thick mainstream media and the reliably easy-to-blindside people at the Vatican who seem to make it their business to let the MSM turn Benedict's sensible remarks into a "gaffe" or, sillier still, tinder for global conflagrations of "controversy."

First, what's the big deal with what Benedict said? His point, for anybody with two brain cells to rub together to see, is that somebody who has lived a sinful life can take a modest and imperfect step toward forgetting himself and try to do something for somebody else. That doesn't automatically make him a hero or a saint, nor does it baptize the details of his attempt at self-sacrificial decency as a Good Thing. So when Darth Vader -- after betraying the Jedi, killing a bunch of children, acting for years as the lieutenant of the Most Evil Man in the Galaxy, destroying Alderaan, torturing Han Solo, and trying with might and main to kill Luke Skywalker -- finally feels a tiny pang of conscience after watching his own son be tortured in the most sadistic manner possible and tosses Emperor Palpatine down an elevator shaft, we can say that there has been "a first step in assuming moral responsibility" -- a first eensy weensy, itsy bitsy step. We can't say, "Pope approves throwing people down elevator shafts."

It is just so obvious when it's put that way.

From reading Aquinas' commentaries on de Anima and the Nichomachean Ethics, I knew that the intellect is prior to the will in that the intellect "tees up" the options for the will to choose, but it takes Thomistic Sci-Fi author Mike Flynn to summarize the idea in this understandable way:

On the free will front, I explained the Aristotelian position: the will is an appetite for the products of the intellect, and the intellect is therefore prior to the will.

"For the products of the intellect."  Good stuff.  The intellect "gets busy" and outlines the pros and cons of a decision, but the will has to choose by an act of "appetite" what will be done.

Flynn continues:

I gave the parallel with the perceptions of the senses and the emotions (or sensitive appetites). The will is necessarily free because the intellect does not know perfectly. I asked how many wanted world peace. Most raised their hands, causing some worry regarding the others. But when questioned, most admitted they did not know what world peace would look like or how it would be achieved. Since you cannot desire what you do not know, the will is free to choose various means to the end. That's all free will means, after all. It doesn't mean muscular motions, or random choices, or unpredictable choices. For more detail see a previous essay.

Dhimmi Alert.

Egyptian Muslim crowd of 10,000 attack Christian Coptic community:

The large mob of Muslims from el-Nowahed and the surrounding villages besieged and waged an attack against Coptic homes amidst cries of "Allah is the greatest" and other Islamic Jihadist slogans. They threw fireballs, gasoline and stones at Coptic homes and detonated Butane Gas cylinders. Christian-owned homes were looted and shops were broken into, plundered and burned. There were no reported casualties.


The attack resulted in the burning of twenty-two Coptic-owned homes (video), two commercial shops, a bakery, as well as livestock. The sound of automatic weapons fired in the air was heard, to terrorize and intimidate the Copts, according to Ra'fat Samir, who heads the Luxor branch of the Egyptian Union for Human Rights.

Coptic News Bulletin aired a recording of phone calls made to several Copts from inside the burning village. Terrorized Copts were hiding on the roof tops of their homes, afraid to venture in the streets, could only cry out: "help us, save us, they are burning us." None of them could concentrate enough to tell the reporter the reason behind the sudden Muslim attack, they just kept pleading for help.

Security forces were able to impose order a few hours later, and a curfew was imposed on el-Nowahed village and the city of Abu-Tesht.

The rampage against the Coptic inhabitants of the village came in the wake of a story which circulated in town three days earlier, about an affair between 19-year-old Copt Hossam Noel Attallah and a 17-year-old Muslim girl, Rasha Mohamed Hussein, a relative of the village mayor. According to Anba Kyrillos, Bishop of the Diocese of Nag Hamadi, some witnesses saw the teenage couple walking together towards the graveyards, after which it was rumored in the village that he raped her, "although a Muslim woman confirmed that Hossam did nothing wrong to the girl," he said.

Unable to remember faces?

You are probably a super-reader.

That explains an awful lot.

In the Bizarro-Upside Down World that is Modern America...

....Muslim women may be excused from pat-down searches at airport security because it offends them.

Yea, well, the rest of us, too, but we don't count because we are not an official victim class of powerlessness.

Napolitano May Exempt Muslims From Airport Pat-Downs


Last Updated: Tue, 11/16/2010 – 4:52pm

As the U.S. government retaliates against an American for refusing to allow airport security to grope his genitals, the nation’s Homeland Security secretary considers waving the intrusive “pat-downs” for Muslim women who consider them offensive.

The demand came last week from the politically-connected Muslim rights organization that serves as the U.S. front for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Calling the searches “invasive” and “humiliating,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) advises Muslim women wearing religious head covers known as hijabs to reject full-body checks before boarding planes.

Those who are selected for the secondary screenings should remind Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers that they are only supposed to pat down the head and neck and that they should not subject Muslim women to a full-body or partial body pat-down, according to CAIR’s advisory. It further says that, instead of a body search, Muslim women can request to check their own hijab and have officers perform a chemical swipe of their hands.

A Poke in the Eye for the Episcopal Church.

The Fifth District Court of Appeals of the State of California has held that the First Amendment's rule that courts not get involved in adjudicating religious issues means that courts not get involved in adjudicating religious issues.  It has decided that a trial court erred in accepting the Episcopal Church's version of events as involving such an involvement, and has overturned the trial court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the Episcopal Church.

Here is the decision. [PDF Warning.]

The author of the decision was the author of the late, lamented St. Luke's v. United Methodist Church.

According to the Anglican Curmudgeon, whose alter ego, "A.S. Haley," argued the case:

The ground upon which the reversal is ordered is that the case as presented by the plaintiffs Lamb and ECUSA in their first cause of action is not properly decidable by the secular courts without their becoming too entangled in First Amendment issues, such as who is the proper Bishop of San Joaquin. It holds that ECUSA's recognition of Bishop Lamb is conclusive as to his position as Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, and to the continuity of that entity "for ecclesiastical purposes", but it goes on to hold that the validity of the transfers of title to diocesan property by Bishop Schofield while he was still the Episcopal Bishop will have to be decided upon neutral principles of state corporate law, and also any relevant governing documents of the Diocese and the national Church.


This decision therefore will require ECUSA to prove through its documents that there is a trust in its favor on all diocesan church property for it to succeed in its claims to diocesan assets. And since the Dennis Canon expressly applies only to parish property, and not to any property of a diocese, the element of proof required in the national governing instruments is lacking. (The word "hierarchical" does not appear in the Court's opinion.)

Weird Tales.

Check this one out, about a guy who went into a burning car to save a little girl and was visited by her father - her dead father - a few days later:

Days passed, and Johnson went back to his routine.


That is, until Tuesday morning around 6, he says.

"My wife is next to me in bed. She's sleeping. Everything is where it's supposed to be," says Johnson. "Then there is this man standing right by the bed. He says he needs help with a few things. I say, 'OK.'

"Now, I know it's him (Kotowicz) even though the only time I had seen him was at the accident, when he didn't look, you know, normal. He says he wants me to give a message to his wife and to his daughter. That's private so I can't tell you about that message.

"He also tells me to talk to the people at Sub Pop, he wants to let them know not to be mad at the driver that caused the accident. That's his message."

Johnson says that later that day, he went to the Sub Pop website, and there it was, a memorial photo of the man who had stood by his bed: Kotowicz.

Mark Shea observes:

These things do happen. What? You think the Church got this stuff about the communion of saints from thin air? Behind every Catholic doctrine is a great mass of human experience, both Christian and pagan. The doctrine doesn't create the experience, it merely gives us a framework for interpreting it. Catholic theology describes reality. That's why any person of good will from anywhere, open to pursuing reality, will sooner or later find himself on the road to the Catholic faith. The Roadmaker and the Mapmaker are One and the Same.

My father tells a story about his mother was visited one night by her dead father, who told her that my father was alright, which was around the time of some shipboard accident occuring during his deployment.  My father and grandmother were not given to making up stories, so I can't disregard the story out of hand. 

Also, the story is a "one-off"; it's the only story of that kind that they tell.  This seems to be common among the "credible" stories of the supernatural; the tellers of the story don't have the braggart's retinue of amazing stories.  And they never describe the event as somehow pointing to their personal uniqueness; their tone is always something like, "this is what I saw, make of it what you will."

Cheaters never prosper...

...at least where Professor Richard Quinn is concerned.

This is a very interesting and worthwhile article and video.  It seems that Professor Richard Quinn noticed through statistical analysis that the grade distribution for his class was skewed.  He was then informed that there was widespread cheating.  He ascertained that 1/3 of his class had cheated.  He was able to ascertain from analysis who the cheaters were and he offered this deal:

He said: “I don’t want to have to explain to your parents why you didn’t graduate, so I went to the Dean and I made a deal. The deal is you can either wait it out and hope that we don’t identify you, or you can identify yourself to your lab instructor and you can complete the rest of the course and the grade you get in the course is the grade you earned in the course.”


Prof Quinn also added a requirement for those who came forward complete a four hour course in ethics. In return there would be no permanent record of the cheating.

Over 200 students came forward to admit to cheating.

Outrage of the Day.

Terrorist who confessed to murder acquitted.

According to Daniel Foster at NRO:

Ahmed Ghailani was found not guilty of each of the over 280 counts against him — save one — in the first civilian trial of a Gitmo detainee conducted by the Obama administration.


Among the charges were one count of murder for each of the 224 people killed in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, but Ghailani was found not guilty on each. The lone guilty verdict came on a conspiracy to destroy government buildings charge, which comes with a sentence of 20 years to life.

The jury in the case deliberated for seven days, with one juror requesting to be replaced after telling a judge she disagreed with her peers and was worried she’d face their ire.

Though Ghailani had previously confessed to his role in carrying out the bombings, that confession and a crucial prosecution witness were thrown out because both stemmed from interrogations at a CIA camp.

Ed Morissey observes:

Let’s face it. Barack Obama and Eric Holder gambled their entire national-security credibility on the Ahmed “Foopie” Ghailani trial, arguing that they could get convictions of detainees captured abroad by military and intelligence assets while using federal courts as a venue rather than the military commissions that Congress repeatedly authorized for that purpose. Holder scolded critics who pointed out all of the reasons that such a strategy was much more likely to fail for “politicizing” the process, especially in regard to the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whose case is more problematic than Ghailani’s, where the FBI did a large part of the investigation before intelligence assets were used to seize and interrogate Ghailani.


The failure of Holder’s DoJ to win anything more than a single conspiracy count against Ghailani as a result of using a process designed for domestic criminals than wartime enemies shows that the critics had it right all along. It also shows that both Obama and Holder have been proven spectacularly wrong, since a man who confessed to the murder of over two hundred people will now face as little as 20 years, with a big chunk of whatever sentence Foopie receives being reduced by time already served.

The administration is left with three choices in regards to Ghailani: announce that they will release him at the appointed date whenever his sentence ends, announce that they will hold him indefinitely without regard to the court’s ruling on the matter while referring the case back to a military commission despite his acquittals, or refuse to state which they will do and hope the issue falls to the next administration.  The first will mean that the US will knowingly release a master al-Qaeda terrorist with more than two hundred murders under his belt; the second will mean that the trial they staged was nothing but a sham.  And the third will be a cowardly dodge.

Apparently,  Obama is arguing for the principle of "post-acquittal detention":

Even had he been acquitted on all counts, the Obama administration had made clear that it would simply continue to imprison him anyway under what it claims is the President's "post-acquittal detention power" -- i.e., when an accused Terrorist is wholly acquitted in court, he can still be imprisoned indefinitely by the U.S. Government under the "law of war" even when the factual bases for the claim that he's an "enemy combatant" (i.e. that he blew up the two embassies) are the same ones underlying the crimes for which he was fully acquitted after a full trial. When he banned the testimony of the key witness, Judge Kaplan, somewhat cravenly, alluded to and implicitly endorsed this extraordinary detention theory as a means of assuring the public he had done nothing to endanger them with his ruling (emphasis added):

[Ghailani's] status as an "enemy combatant" probably would permit his detention as something akin to a prisoner of war until hostilities between the United States and Al Qaeda and the Taliban end even if he were found not guilty in this case.

Great Moments in Fresno Culture.

Fresno ranks #1 for having the dumbest class in the history of dumb classes:

Let’s hear it straight from a student at Cal State Fresno, where they offered this course that epitomizes all that is wrong with California – “Self-Esteem”:

“It was taught by two old hippies. It fell under the curricula in the School of Education (I think it was designed for students studying to become elementary school teachers). I took it as an elective, because I heard that it was incredibly easy. Every class session, we would start out by singing, ‘I am special.’ The instructors would call out our names, and after we said, ‘here’ or ‘present,’ they would say, ‘we’re glad you’re here’ in a super sing-songy voice. Our assignments consisted of drawing mind-maps (basically – draw a picture of whatever is going through your mind). For our final, we had to pair up and teach something to the class. My partner and I demonstrated the fine art of making Rice Krispy treats. We didn’t earn grades in the traditional sense; rather, we were asked to grade ourselves. Guess what? I felt that I earned an A in that class, and an A was what they entered into the system. Best class ever! It was like kindergarten, and yes, I left each class session with a happy, cozy feeling.”

It's a class for teachers...let us speak no more of this.

Argumentative Fallacies Organized for Visual Learners....

...because nothing is cooler than a flow-chart.

Via Mark Shea.

"thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now".



Confessions of a fake student paper author.
 

I've written toward a master's degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I've worked on bachelor's degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I've written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I've attended three dozen online universities. I've completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.


You've never heard of me, but there's a good chance that you've read some of my work. I'm a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can't detect, that you can't defend against, that you may not even know exists.

I work at an online company that generates tens of thousands of dollars a month by creating original essays based on specific instructions provided by cheating students. I've worked there full time since 2004. On any day of the academic year, I am working on upward of 20 assignments.

 

A Mid-Career Retrospective

Jonathan V. Last writes about the "American Narcissus":

Yet you don’t have to delve deep into armchair psychology to see how Obama’s vanity has shaped his presidency. In January 2009 he met with congressional leaders to discuss the stimulus package. The meeting was supposed to foster bipartisanship. Senator Jon Kyl questioned the plan’s mixture of spending and tax cuts. Obama’s response to him was, “I won.” A year later Obama held another meeting to foster bipartisanship for his health care reform plan. There was some technical back-and-forth about Republicans not having the chance to properly respond within the constraints of the format because President Obama had done some pontificating, as is his wont. Obama explained, “There was an imbalance on the opening statements because”—here he paused, self-satisfiedly—“I’m the president. And so I made, uh, I don’t count my time in terms of dividing it evenly.”


There are lots of times when you get the sense that Obama views the powers of the presidency as little more than a shadow of his own person. When he journeyed to Copenhagen in October 2009 to pitch Chicago’s bid for the Olympics, his speech to the IOC was about—you guessed it: “Nearly one year ago, on a clear November night,” he told the committee, “people from every corner of the world gathered in the city of Chicago or in front of their televisions to watch the results of .  .  . ” and away he went. A short while later he was back in Copenhagen for the climate change summit. When things looked darkest, he personally commandeered the meeting to broker a “deal.” Which turned out to be worthless. In January 2010, Obama met with nervous Democratic congressmen to assure them that he wasn’t driving the party off a cliff. Confronted with worries that 2010 could be a worse off-year election than 1994, Obama explained to the professional politicians, “Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.”

And:

Obama’s vanity is even more jarring when paraded in the foreign arena. In April, Poland suffered a national tragedy when its president, first lady, and a good portion of the government were killed in a plane crash. Obama decided not to go to the funeral. He played golf instead. Though maybe it’s best that he didn’t make the trip. When he journeyed to Great Britain to meet with the queen he gave her an amazing gift: an iPod loaded with recordings of his speeches and pictures from his inauguration.

And:

It’s troubling that a fellow whose electoral rationale was that he edited the Harvard Law Review and wrote a couple of memoirs was comparing himself to the man who saved the Union. But it tells you all you need to know about what Obama thinks of his political gifts and why he’s unperturbed about having led his party into political disaster in the midterms. He assumes that he’ll be able to reverse the political tide once he becomes the issue, in the presidential race in 2012. As he said to Harry Reid after the majority leader congratulated him on one particularly fine oration, “I have a gift, Harry.”

Economics Explained.







Via The Weekly Standard.

Great video of people doing impossible things....

...of course, you don't see all the ER room visits for when things don't work out so well.

When someone brings up the Crusades as evidence of Christian intolerance....

...mention this massacre that happened last week.

According to the Guardian:

Ghassan Salah, 17, had just arrived for the Sunday night service with his mother, Nadine, and brother, Ghaswan, when the gunmen burst through the cathedral's huge wooden doors. "All of you are infidels," they screamed at the congregation. "We are here to avenge the burning of the Qur'ans and the jailing of Muslim women in Egypt."


Then the killing began. Ghassan and seven other survivors described to the Guardian a series of events that have broken new ground in a country that has become partly conditioned to violence throughout eight years of war. Thar Abdallah, the priest who married al-Wafi was first to be killed – shot dead where he stood. Gunmen then sprayed the church with bullets as another priest ushered up to 60 people to a small room in the back.

Mona Abdullah Hadad, 62, was in church with her family when the gunmen started shooting. "They said, 'We will go to paradise if we kill you and you will go to hell'," she said. "We stood beside the wall and they started shooting at the young people. I asked them to kill me and let my grandson live, but they shot him dead and they shot me in the back."

Ghost Bike

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Ah, yes, the old "white people can't rap" joke.

This church skit is really well done, but kind of creepy. How often are there these kind of skits in Sunday services?  It seems fairly "Broadwayish."  And aren't these the people who complain about the incorporation of paganism into Christian liturgy during the 4th Century?

Remember when liberalism was about respecting people's right to choose?

San Francisco may vote to outlaw circumcision.

I wonder if they've bothered to include a religious exemption.

If it seems that a lot of "new atheists" are assholes, that's  because...

...they are.

In the course of  reviewing Sam Harris' new book "The Moral Landscape, Vox Day observes:

What Sam neglects to mention is that it also indicates that there is no difference between the two categories of belief, thus removing from his potential arsenal what he had hoped would be a substantive scientific argument in his war on faith. If he had been able to show there was an observable material difference between the two types of belief, he would have used that to make a case for the superiority of one over the other; I surmise that was the primary motivation for the experiment. However, his experiments did produce some interesting results, including the fact that it appears to give atheists a sense of pleasure to deny religious statements. So, ironically, Sam Harris would appear to have produced the first scientific evidence in support of my hypothesis that it is often the assholery that causes the atheism rather than the other way around.

Political rhetoric outstrips reality by 98%.

Hot Air provides some interesting data on actual demand for pre-existing insurance coverage:

255 million: The number of Americans with existing health insurance coverage.


20 million: The number of Americans without any health coverage at all due to economic circumstances.

375,000: The number of Americans with pre-existing conditions HHS said would apply for coverage in the first year of ObamaCare, one of the main political arguments for its implementation.

8,011: The number that actually did.

The Wall Street Journal describes the issue as the "8,011 Person Crisis":

To judge by President Obama’s rhetoric, the insurance industry’s victims have been wandering the country like Okies in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Thus ObamaCare gave the Health and Human Services Department the power to design and sell its own insurance policies. The $5 billion program started in July and runs through 2014, when ObamaCare’s broader regulations kick in.


Mr. Obama declared at the time that “uninsured Americans who’ve been locked out of the insurance market because of a pre-existing condition will now be able to enroll in a new national insurance pool where they’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable health care—some for the very first time in their lives.”

So far that statement accurately describes a single person in North Dakota. Literally, one person has signed up out of 647,000 state residents. Four people have enrolled in West Virginia. Things are better in Minnesota, where Mr. Obama has rescued 15 out of 5.2 million, and also in Indiana—63 people there. HHS did best among the 24.7 million Texans. Thanks to ObamaCare, 393 of them are now insured.

States had the option of designing their own pre-existing condition insurance with federal dollars in lieu of the HHS plan, and 27 chose to do so. But they haven’t had much more success. Combined federal-state enrollment is merely 8,011 nationwide as of November 1, according to HHS.

This isn’t what HHS promised in July, when it estimated it would be insuring 375,000 people by now, and as many as 400,000 more every year. HHS even warned that it would bill private carriers for any claims if HHS decided that they had cancelled coverage to dump costs on the government. That outcome would certainly be in keeping with Mr. Obama’s caricature of rampant discrimination against the sick

It's like the Reichstag Fire - manufacture a crisis to expand the power of government.

Hot Air concludes:

The Obama administration and its allies in the Nancy Pelosi Congress revamped one-sixth of the American economy, created new federal mandates, and created chaos in system that worked for the vast majority of Americans, just to deal with eight thousand people?  Perhaps they should have tested the issue by creating the program separately first and determining whether the demand required a complete overhaul of a health-care system that mainly worked for the rest of us, instead of arrogating to themselves the task of dictating the shape of a market they clearly don’t understand.

They don't make Messiahs like they used to.

Democrat consultants Douglas E. Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell in The Washington Post calls for Obama to be a one-term President.

We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents.

The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald.

It's hard to believe that Gordon Lightfoot's song, which seems to recount something buried deep in history, was based on an event that Harry Reasoner reported.

It's usually in the last place you look.

Jupiter's "lost" stripe is found.

Pope Benedict on the Bible

Pope Benedict has released a document on scripture which is called the most imortant on that subject since Vatican II.

The text of Verbum Domine is here.

Part of the text of Verbum Domine:

Here we can point to a fundamental criterion of biblical hermeneutics: the primary setting for scriptural interpretation is the life of the Church. This is not to uphold the ecclesial context as an extrinsic rule to which exegetes must submit, but rather is something demanded by the very nature of the Scriptures and the way they gradually came into being. “Faith traditions formed the living context for the literary activity of the authors of sacred Scripture. Their insertion into this context also involved a sharing in both the liturgical and external life of the communities, in their intellectual world, in their culture and in the ups and downs of their shared history. In like manner, the interpretation of sacred Scripture requires full participation on the part of exegetes in the life and faith of the believing community of their own time”.[86] Consequently, “since sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit through whom it was written”,[87] exegetes, theologians and the whole people of God must approach it as what it really is, the word of God conveyed to us through human words (cf. 1 Th 2:13). This is a constant datum implicit in the Bible itself: “No prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet 1:20-21). Moreover, it is the faith of the Church that recognizes in the Bible the word of God; as Saint Augustine memorably put it: “I would not believe the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church led me to do so”.[88] The Holy Spirit, who gives life to the Church, enables us to interpret the Scriptures authoritatively. The Bible is the Church’s book, and its essential place in the Church’s life gives rise to its genuine interpretation.

The famous Augustine quote is from Contra epistulam Manichaei quam vocant fundamenti, V, 6: PL 42, 176.

6. Let us see then what Manichæus teaches me; and particularly let us examine that treatise which he calls the Fundamental Epistle, in which almost all that you believe is contained. For in that unhappy time when we read it we were in your opinion enlightened. The epistle begins thus:— "Manichæus, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the providence of God the Father. These are wholesome words from the perennial and living fountain." Now, if you please, patiently give heed to my inquiry. I do not believe Manichæus to be an apostle of Christ. Do not, I beg of you, be enraged and begin to curse. For you know that it is my rule to believe none of your statements without consideration. Therefore I ask, who is this Manichæus? You will reply, An apostle of Christ. I do not believe it. Now you are at a loss what to say or do; for you promised to give knowledge of the truth, and here you are forcing me to believe what I have no knowledge of. Perhaps you will read the gospel to me, and will attempt to find there a testimony to Manichæus. But should you meet with a person not yet believing the gospel, how would you reply to him were he to say, I do not believe? For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church. So when those on whose authority I have consented to believe in the gospel tell me not to believe in Manichæus, how can I but consent? Take your choice. If you say, Believe the Catholics: their advice to me is to put no faith in you; so that, believing them, I am precluded from believing you—If you say, Do not believe the Catholics: you cannot fairly use the gospel in bringing me to faith in Manichæus; for it was at the command of the Catholics that I believed the gospel;— Again, if you say, You were right in believing the Catholics when they praised the gospel, but wrong in believing their vituperation of Manichæus: do you think me such a fool as to believe or not to believe as you like or dislike, without any reason? It is therefore fairer and safer by far for me, having in one instance put faith in the Catholics, not to go over to you, till, instead of bidding me believe, you make me understand something in the clearest and most open manner. To convince me, then, you must put aside the gospel. If you keep to the gospel, I will keep to those who commanded me to believe the gospel; and, in obedience to them, I will not believe you at all. But if haply you should succeed in finding in the gospel an incontrovertible testimony to the apostleship of Manichæus, you will weaken my regard for the authority of the Catholics who bid me not to believe you; and the effect of that will be, that I shall no longer be able to believe the gospel either, for it was through the Catholics that I got my faith in it; and so, whatever you bring from the gospel will no longer have any weight with me. Wherefore, if no clear proof of the apostleship of Manichæus is found in the gospel, I will believe the Catholics rather than you. But if you read thence some passage clearly in favor of Manichæus, I will believe neither them nor you: not them, for they lied to me about you; nor you, for you quote to me that Scripture which I had believed on the authority of those liars.

If you are going to be a member of a murderous, enslaving criminal conspiracy, make sure it beloved by leftists.


Jonah Goldberg expresses frustration with the "free pass" that a particularly odious, murderous political ideology gets from the media:

I’ve been traveling so I haven’t had a chance to chime in on the NYT cutesy-wutsey story about Communists meeting in NYC.


If this isn’t the perfect illustration of the free pass Communism gets from liberal elites I can’t think of a recent better one. Just for the record, Communists killed more people than Nazis by a factor of 10 at least. Their rule lasted longer, enslaving more people, than the short-lived Third Reich. Moreover, unlike the German people who have repented and apologized quite a lot for their crimes, very few of the nations that have committed mass slaughter in the name of Marx have showed anywhere near the same contrition. Meanwhile the Times covers this group of self-indulgent Communists as if they’re somehow noble-but-eccentric. Can you imagine the Times covering a meeting of Nazis like this? Of course not, and I wouldn’t want them to. But Communists, well, why make a fuss? They are absolved from their history because they’re so well-intentioned. Yeah, it’s funny. But when you think about it’s also disgusting.

Here's the New York Times article on "Where Marxists Pontificate and Play."

IF communists have a reputation for anything, it is seriousness. (And if you have seen old photos of Karl Marx, you know that he did not smile much.) But at the Brecht Forum, a community center on West Street where revolutionaries and radicals gather daily to ponder and to pontificate, they also play. (Smiles abound.)

Michael C. Moynihan at Reason writes:

Via Dan Foster, yet another oh-those-wacky-commies human interest story from a mainstream media outlet. This is perhaps the most understated lede in the history of journalism, from the wonderfully bourgeois-sounding New York Times journalist Channing Joseph: "If communists have a reputation for anything, it is seriousness.” Well, communists do have a reputation for something—and it’s slavery and mass murder, which I suppose is rather serious business, but why pick nits. For instance, the death toll from Mao’s Great Leap Forward alone, according to historian Frank Dikötter’s recent archival research, exceeds 50 million. But Joseph is interested in discovering what commies do for fun when they don’t control the means of production.


In a brief profile of the Brecht Forum, named after the Stalinist playwright Berthold Brecht, who famously defended East Germany’s slaughter of protesting workers in 1953, Joseph offers a deeply uninteresting look at Manhattan’s delusional Reds: "...[T]there is also the monthly Game Night, when regulars put down their copies of “Das Kapital” and immerse themselves in table tennis, foosball and a complicated Marxist version of Monopoly called, appropriately, Class Struggle."

Pay not attention to the murders and the slave camps, they play a cute version of Monopoly!

We're waiting for similar coverage of American Nazis.

Ending Stalinism in American Academies.

Todd Hartch reflects on his experience in coming out as a social conservative at Eastern Kentucky University:

We have watched, though, as our campuses veered farther and farther off course. Sexual license is now taken for granted. Mentions of abortion, homosexuality, and even bestiality hardly merit a second glance in our campus papers. Many students have never heard a rational conservative argument about any moral issue. Our colleagues now scoff even at the idea of truth, as if it were some quaint notion from the Middle Ages. Discipline after discipline has lost its mooring and drifted into irrelevance or outright idiocy.


Perhaps all this might be justified if students were somehow benefitting from this atmosphere of license and relativism. The opposite is the case. Most students, even at the best universities, have no passion, no love of learning. Focused on careers, at best, or, more often, on nothing at all, they approach texts that have changed the world as if they were being forced to read the dictionary. Faced with the results of painstaking research, they yawn and check their phones. They do less homework than American students have ever done before because professors have relaxed their requirements. The result is that, amazingly enough, students are bored in their modern Sodom.

And:

What is to be done?


Step one is to end Ostpolitik on campus. Holding our tongues might have allowed us to advance professionally but it has contributed to the near death of the American campus. Yes, progressives bear much of the blame for the stultifying sameness of contemporary academia, but we let them do what they wanted. It’s time to speak up. It is time to make a public case for truth, for human dignity, for academic standards, and for the joy of learning. I guarantee that students will not be bored when they see us defending the truth. (I should point out that speaking up is not a synonym for being rude.)

We need to go into this process knowing that the risks are real. We probably will be condemned by our colleagues, our students, and our administrations. I doubt that I’ll ever get used to hearing the kind of words I related at the beginning of this article or to reading that much of the Psychology Department believes that my ideas reflect the kind of obscurantism that one might find in theocratic Iran. Still, this experience of being criticized publicly is not as negative an experience as some might believe because it is balanced by the support one receives from those who were waiting for someone to speak up. In fact, it is through bold public discourse that we can best find our friends and allies.

And:

Step two is ecumenism. There are, of course, very real theological differences between, for instance, Catholics and Evangelicals. But there are large areas of agreement, such as marriage, abortion, the dignity of the human person, and the existence of truth, where we can cooperate. In this time of crisis we can put aside our disagreements to fight for the common good. The principles outlined in the Manhattan Declaration—life, marriage, and religious liberty—offer a strong basis for such ecumenical work.


Third, we need to dialogue with those most opposed to our ideas. Some professors and students will respond to our more visible presence on campus with anger and ridicule, but some will want to understand us. With this latter group we must make every effort to communicate clearly and to forge relationships of trust and respect. Most of our partners in dialogue, of course, will not change their minds. Many, however, will come to see that our views have a certain logic that they can respect. The discussion that I led in the EKU library had its dramatic moments, but I am looking forward to more such events for two reasons: first, it personalized “the other side” and made me see them more clearly as men and women struggling to find the truth; second, as weak as the truth may seem, it is inherently appealing. Being able to speak the truth, especially in an intimate setting, is worth our time and effort.

Fourth and finally, live in hope. Soviet Communism had the KGB, the Red Army, millions of party members, and a system of gulags to enforce its nefarious designs, yet it utterly dissolved during the course of a few years. Do not assume that the regime now dominating our campuses is any more substantial, any more permanent than the Soviet regime. Structures built on faulty foundations may look solid but are inherently unstable. The contemporary university, resting on relativism, multiculturalism, and rationalism, does not have a coherent account of its purpose because its most cherished notions are mutually contradictory. Despite the fears of many conservatives that it is unredeemable, the university is in fact ripe for criticism and reform. Ostpolitik, however, will not get us very far.

"Socrates was not a Belgian, the Paris Underground is not a revolutionary movement and the essential tenet of Zen Buddhism is not every man for himself."
At the National Catholic Register, Mark Shea links yours truly concerning last week's conversation with Apologetics 315 on the recommendation of John MacArthur's lectures on "The Heresies of the Catholic Church."

It is fair to point out that Apologetics 315 took down that post.  The blog proprietor, Brian Auten, explained in his last comment:

Unfortunately, this blog post has proven to be more harm than help, I think, which is not what I had hoped for. In addition, it has been more polemics and not apologetics, which is not the core purpose of the site. I think there is much to learn about both sides of the issue, and MacArthur has generated more heat than light. I am going to take this resource offline.

I commend Brian for his charity.  He posted the link in good faith. He discovered that the tone of MacArthur's talks were offensive to Catholics and fair-minded Protestants. So, he took down the link as being counter-productive to his objective of promoting Christian apologetics.

It is also fair to say that I learned a lot from my exposure to MacArthur, but not what MacArthur hoped I would learn.  I learned that there is a reason for all the bad, strawmen arguments that are made about Catholicism; there are some really ignorant Protestant teachers who are still teaching their congregations that nonsense.

For example, I was surprised beyond the limits of imagination that MacArthur - who, again, has written lots of books and runs a seminary in Southern California - would rely on Loraine Boettner's long discredited list of "Catholic Inventions."  Mark Shea observes:

I know what you’re going to say. That a candle is a sign of light and hope and that it’s just a gesture of love to God, to his saint, and to the people you are praying for. You might even note that in the Old Covenant, lights were lit in the Tabernacle as a sign of prayer to and love of God. You might even note that the author of Revelation saw the Church represented by a lampstand (Revelation 1:20). You’ll probably even say that the idea of accumulating merit from the treasury of saints just so long as the candle burns never entered your mind (not that there’s no such thing as merit, of course. It’s actually a very sensible idea.).


But what do you know? You’re just a stupid Catholic who believes everything he’s told. The people who uncritically regurgitate whatever MacArthur tells them are way smarter than you. They think for themselves when they cut and paste claims like the one above without a movement of the gray matter. It is as critical, self-aware intellects that they paste and repaste the list of Roman Catholic Inventions , credulously swallowing the urban legend that it comes from a former priest who saw the light and completely ignorant of the fact that it originates with professional anti-Catholic Loraine Boettner. They are also ignorant of the fact that The List contain such obvious falsehoods ...

Read the whole thing.

The awful 1950s - Sanity and Marriage

Jennifer Robach Morse gives a talk on same-sex marriage, but, first, she discusses the dysfunctions engendered by "no fault" divorce.  Everything she says is true about the experience of childhood in the 50's as compared to modern childhood is true, and every bit is a tragedy.

An Angel with No Name.

This subject came up one night at Communio - probably because this is the kind of thing that causes anxiety in Catholic circles, unlike, say, in Protestantism, where the big issues includes things like ordaining homosexual bishops and what kinds of snakes should be handled - and John Kasian said this same thing, but we all laughed at him because, really, who would ever think of doing something like this.

Anyhow, Mark Shea points out that there is a papal document discouraging people from giving names to their Guardian Angels.  It is at paragraph 217 of the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, which says:

217. Popular devotion to the Holy Angels, which is legitimate and good, can, however, also give rise to possible deviations:

• when, as sometimes can happen, the faithful are taken by the idea that the world is subject to demiurgical struggles, or an incessant battle between good and evil spirits, or Angels and daemons, in which man is left at the mercy of superior forces and over which he is helpless; such cosmologies bear little relation to the true Gospel vision of the struggle to overcome the Devil, which requires moral commitment, a fundamental option for the Gospel, humility and prayer;

• when the daily events of life, which have nothing or little to do with our progressive maturing on the journey towards Christ are read schematically or simplistically, indeed childishly, so as to ascribe all setbacks to the Devil and all success to the Guardian Angels. The practice of assigning names to the Holy Angels should be discouraged, except in the cases of Gabriel, Raphael and Michael whose names are contained in Holy Scripture.

So, John was right.

Free Speech is good.  Free Speech lets us play "Spot the Idiot."

Like cartoonist Ted Rall, and MSNBC who are seriously discussing whether now is the time for violent revolution.

Sounds like a reason to defund it.

NPR CEO changes story and claims that defunding NPR would be devastating.

Christian decline may be stalling...

...in England.

The numbers showed Church of England attendance holding fairly steady since 2001 at just under 1.2 million. Catholic attendance leveled off in 2005 at a little more than 900,000, while Baptist Union attendance increased modestly since 2002 to nearly 154,000.


The findings contradicted recent forecasts. Retired Christian Research director Peter Brierley earlier this year projected further decline, including an alarming drop-off among young adults.

Ecumenism.

5 Anglican Bishops leave Church of England for Catholic Church.

Newsflash!  Lawrence O'Donnell is a Socialist!

According to the Daily Caller:

Lawrence O’Donnell is a socialist.


At least, that’s what the MSNBC commentator himself told Glenn Greenwald when they duked it out on the air Friday on “Morning Joe.”

“I am a socialist,” O’Donnell said. “I live to the extreme left.”

And:

Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for Salon.com, ran a column on Wednesday that attacked the election coverage by the news networks — criticizing O’Donnell’s commentary in particular.


“Ten minutes was the absolute maximum I could endure of any one television news outlet last night without having to switch channels in the futile search for something more bearable,” Greenwald wrote, “but almost every time I had MNSBC on, there was Lawrence O’Donnell trying to blame “the Left” and “liberalism” for the Democrats’ political woes.”

Greenwald said, “this ‘analysis’ is false,” citing the massive losses of seats by Blue Dog Democrats in the House.

The column didn’t go over well with O’Donnell, and the two went at it to such a degree that MSNBC altered its normal schedule to extend the segment.

“Glenn, Glenn, Glenn, Glenn, Glenn,” O’Donnell tut-tutted, as Greenwald began making the same argument as in his column, that “it wasn’t the liberals who lost,” but rather the more conservative Blue Dogs, “that’s the silliest thing you can say.”

“Why weren’t you on television pointing to the loss and saying that conservative Democrats cannot get re-elected when 50 percent of the Blue Dog caucus disappeared overnight?” Greenwald shot back. “Why were you pointing to the handful of liberals that lost as proof that liberalism failed?”

O’Donnell attacked Greenwald for misrepresenting what he had said, saying, “I asked questions, Glenn. Every single thing that you accused me of saying, I did not say.”

The argument went on to focus on labels, as both O’Donnell and Greenwald tried to affix a tag not only each other, but define just what political grouping it was that lost this election and what the Democrats should do in the aftermath.

The loss of so many Blue Dog seats, Greenwald insisted, meant that this election was not an attack on liberalism, but O’Donnell was unconvinced.

“Blue Dog dominance passed the most liberal health-care bill!” O’Donnell retorted.

O’Donnell attacked Greenwald for being a “progressive,” a label he had accepted earlier in the show.

“Unlike you, Glenn, I am not a progressive,” O’Donnell said somewhat condescendingly, “I’m not a liberal who is so afraid of the word that I had to change my name to progressive.”

O'Donnell is the former producer of the West Wing about a "progressive" president, and is the major asshat who went "incredible Hulk" on the late Kathy Siepp and melted down calling John O'Neill a "filthy Liar."

What a great week!

Voters repudiate big government. Republicans retake House.  Pelosi decides to run for Minority Leader so as to remind everyone of the "ugly face" of big govenment.

And now Keith Olbermann is suspended without pay for ethical violations!



Apparently, somebody at MSNBC decided that Olbermann was "shilling" for Democrats.

Here's more on the topic.

And Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard thinks the suspension is unjust.  Kristol is high-minded and probably right but (a) that just makes the news so much sweeter and (b) it's only when the left gets hoisted by their own rules that they develop a sense of fairness.

But the question is, why is NBC only now starting to get interested in impartiality?  This post notes:

And this is just cause to kick Olbermann off the air? And why now? William Kristol wonders if NBC’s parent company, General Electric. isn’t trying to curry favor with the new GOP majority in the House. More likely, as Bryan Preston points out, since Olbermann’s ratings have been tanking, his prickly presence in the newsroom has caused enormous friction with both on-air and behind-the-camera staff. MSNBC President Phil Griffin may have taken the opportunity afforded by Olbermann’s transgression to send the Kos-darling packing, ridding himself of this meddlesome high priest of hyperbole.

Apparently, it could not have happened to a more deserving jack-ass:

Certainly, the faux journalist Olbermann, whose “Special Comment” is among the most hyperbolic, exaggerated, and mean-spirited political commentary available, is the least deserving of sympathy of any figure on the left in America. He oozes a sneering, self-righteous superiority that only liberals who feel similarly blessed with outsized notions of transcendence can stomach. Reportedly, he is not a very nice fellow either, but how could he be otherwise given the manner in which he routinely portrays the opposition as a cross between the devil and Hitler?

The End Times Cometh...

...for frothing-at-the-mouth anti-catholics like John Macarthur.

Whispers in the Logia points out that with the acccession of John Boehner as the second Catholic Republican Speaker of the House, succeeding the Catholic-in-name-only Nancy Pelosi, we are in an anomalous period of American history.

In a state of affairs that would've been unthinkable not all that long ago given prior eras' widespread anti-Catholic hysteria on these shores, the handover of the House keeps three of the faithful among the Federal government's top five office-holders: the others remain Vice-President Joe Biden and Chief Justice John Roberts. To say nothing of an unprecedented two-thirds of the current Supreme Court.

The unique development is the rise of Catholics in the Republican party, outside of their traditional home in the Democrat party.

See Photo of Howard Dean not running for President by speaking in front of large crowd in Sacramento.

Howard Dean announces he is not running for President.

And after Obama closed Guantanamo, reformed immigration policy and ended the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy on gays, as promised so often, why would some of the big-money liberal northeasterners inside the Democratic party begin to think that maybe the Real Good Talker isn't a Real Good Choice as 2012 nominee?


For that to happen Obama would have to incur historic midterm election losses in Congress this month. Lose the crucial independent voters. Maybe even be so stubbornly focused on some pet legislative issue that he costs the party its whopping, hard-won majority in at least one Hill chamber, giving Republicans a political podium to build on for 2012.

And besides, who could replace Obama? There's no female candidate out there with the legislative and White House experience, name recognition, national Democratic following and popular fundraising husband to step in.

If only prison guards could marry.....

This one is actually more indicative of a scenario that is surprisingly common and unfortunate in our internet age.  From the Fresno Bee:

A former Avenal State Prison correctional officer pleaded no contest today in Fresno County Superior Court to a felony count of oral copulation involving a 15-year-old girl.


Under terms of a plea agreement, Brandon Goodson, 34, will be sentenced to either six months in jail or in the adult offender work program. He also has to register as a sex offender while he is on probation.

Clovis police said Goodson, at the time an Avenal State prison guard, and the female victim corresponded via text messaging and then met each other on Aug. 12, 2009. Later that month, Goodson surrendered to police after detectives got a warrant for his arrest.

Goodson also was charged with two other sex-related offenses, but under the plea agreement those charges were dismissed.

Outside court today, attorney Richard Beshwate, who represents Goodson, said his client accepted the plea agreement because if he had been convicted at trial, he would have been sentenced to prison and ordered to register as a sex offender for life. Because of the arrest, Goodson lost his job at the prison, Beshwate said.

The victim, Beshwate said, had gotten other adults in trouble with the law before.


"She flirtatious and has issues," Beshwate said. "But under the law, a minor cannot give consent."

Goodson is free on $150,000 bond until he is sentenced on Jan. 11.

From a professional standpoint, I've heard of other teenagers around that same age with a similar habit, which results in lost employment and wrecked lives.