Your future, NOW!

An Intelligent Take on "OBAMACARE"

A snippet:

An established political idea is like a vampire. Facts, opinions, votes, garlic: Nothing can make it die.

But there is one thing that can kill an established political idea. It will die if the public that embraced it abandons it.

 Six months ago, that didn't seem likely. Now it does.

The public's dislike of ObamaCare isn't growing with every new poll for reasons of philosophical attachment to notions of liberty and choice. Fear of ObamaCare is growing because a cascade of news suggests that ObamaCare is an impending catastrophe.

Big labor unions and smaller franchise restaurant owners want out. UPS dropped coverage for employed spouses. Corporations such as Walgreens and IBM are transferring employees or retirees into private insurance exchanges. Because of ObamaCare, the Cleveland Clinic has announced early retirements for staff and possible layoffs. The federal government this week made public its estimate of premium costs for the federal health-care exchanges. It is a morass, revealing the law's underappreciated operational complexity.

Concerning the Pope's Recent Headlines

Highly recommend this commentary by R.R. Reno:

Via First Things

Thoughts on Current Affairs

Let's all hope we don't bomb Syria.  What is wrong with our country, that this is how we think about war?

Bombing and killing people for symbolic reasons is not self-defense, and so it's immoral. Plain and simple.

We are not and should not consider ourselves to be the world police.  Sometimes, bad things happen and there isn't much we can do about it.

Friendship

Friendship is sustained by common experience, sentiment, and most importantly, the will. 

what could be wrong with freedom?

Katie Roiphe via Jay Budziszewski: “It’s not the absence of rules exactly, the dizzying sense that we can do whatever we want, but the sudden realization that nothing we do matters.”

miscellany

An illuminated new op-ed by George Lucas:  "The Events Depicted In ‘Star Wars’ Actually Happened To Me" 

7.5 oz soda cans are the only way to drink soda.  Soda, being a mostly useless beverage, is not usually appealing to me, especially in its 12oz form.  I never finish the whole can, and I always feel gross afterwards. But shrink the portion size?  Genius. And as annoying as it is, it makes sense that they charge more for the small guy than its heavyweight 12oz counterpart.  After all, they make far fewer of the 7.5 oz ones.  But we can change that America!  Increased demand for 7.5 oz will change the supply and make it cheaper.  Join the 7.5oz movement!

Go Bruins!

 Apparently Billy Joel never actually got a DUI?  You learn something new every day.

 Betty Duffy is great.  I wish she would move her writing back to her blog-of-record, but she's probably making a least a little bit of money now.  Writing on the internet doesn't get much better than her page, so check it out.

On the largely ignored Kermit Gosnell

Robert George at Mirror of Justice:

I just finished watching the Fox News special ("See No Evil") on abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who is on trial in Philadelphia for multiple murders and other crimes. Gosnell can't understand how it can be that he is facing prison and possibly even the death penalty for killing the babies whose necks he snipped after they "precipitated" (i.e., emerged from the womb.) The women who came into his clinic came in to have the babies they were carrying killed. That was the point of the exercise. "Terminating" the babies' lives was the service he offered and performed. Had he killed the babies while they were still in their mothers' bodies (by, for example, inserting a needle to inject a poison into their tiny hearts) that would not have been a crime. He merely would have been assisting his patients in exercising what the Supreme Court deems a constitutional right. So why, he would like to know, is he being prosecuted for killing the same babies moments later after they precipitated? I must admit that I am no less puzzled by that question than Gosnell is. How can it be that killing a baby inside the womb is perfectly acceptable while killing the very same baby (or even a baby that is a few days or even weeks younger) outside the womb is first degree murder? Of course, in my view we should not permit the killing of babies inside or outside the womb. A baby's status as a precious member of the human family, possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity, does not depend on something as morally arbitrary as his or her location. But if we permit the Gosnells of the world to kill babies inside the womb, it seems odd to charge them with murder for killing them outside the womb. This is especially true in view of the fact that inducing delivery and then killing babies marked for "termination" eliminates the risk to women involved in the common abortion practice of dismembering babies inside the womb and removing their severed body parts.

lost the last couple of years to work

and what for?!:(
 

A glimpse into the future

Here's a slate article arguing for the legalization of polygamy.

file under stories that will largely be ignored

If the President was a conservative this would be a major news story until everyone in the world was aware of his sexism and how his sexism was a consequence of his political beliefs:

Obama’s Kamala Harris ‘best looking’ comment crossed the line 

The media is the President's ever vigilant PR rep.

true words from George Weigel

"The Church’s ability to preach the gospel is severely compromised when churchmen lead dishonest lives. Integrity is one key to mission effectiveness in the evangelical Catholicism of the twenty-first century."

God Bless Ryan Anderson

A courageous man.

The media has recently grown increasingly hostile towards those who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Thoughtful arguments don't happen in this country anymore.  You're either a moral hero or a mortal enemy.

Dostoevsky

It is clear and intelligible to the point of obviousness that evil lies deeper in human beings than our socialist–physicians suppose; that no social structure will eliminate evil; that the human soul will remain as it has always been; that abnormality and sin arise from that soul itself; and, finally, that the laws of the human soul are still so little known, so obscure to science, so undefined, and so mysterious, that there are not and cannot be either physicians or final judges.

 - Review of Anna Karenina

"The Master" is one of the worst movies I've ever seen

I'd like my $4.99 and three hours back. A nauseatingly pretentious, vacuous movie that truly evokes the deepest kind of agony.  Who likes this trash?  Betty Duffy has something more productive to say than I do.

Television

Lately the wife and I have started watching television.  Before we were married, we never watched television, but now it seems like the only form of entertainment for which we have any time.  The kids fall asleep around 9 and then we get our one or two hours of silence before we close up shop for the night.  Perhaps better people would spend their time to themselves reading or praying.  But we're not better people, just average people.  Also, in our defense, there are some very interesting shows on television these days, whose production values exceed those of most movies.  Not all of the shows we watch are morally sound, and some are certainly not for children of any age.  But they are entertaining and even intellectually stimulating.  The top TV shows of recent time, almost in order of excellence:

1.   Person of Interest
2.   Lost 
3.   Downton Abbey
4.   The Mentalist
5.   Mad Men
6.   Elementary
7.   Girls (HBO)
8.   Portlandia
9.   Workaholics
10.   Tosh.0
11. Breaking Bad

Basically it's a mix of the profane, (Workaholics, Mad Men, and Girls - occasionally shutting your eyes is required), the violent ( Breaking Bad, Person of Interest, the Mentalist, Elementary), and low brow comedy (Workaholics, Portlandia, Tosh.0).    But despite the gratuitous garbage they often depict, they are all very smart.  And that's the best sell I have right now!

the ivy league

this seems right:

“…It is impossible to overstate the importance of American education’s centralization, intellectual homogenization and partisanship in the formation of the ruling class’ leadership. Many have noted the increasing stratification of American society and that, unlike in decades past, entry into its top levels now depends largely on graduation from elite universities. As Charles Murray has noted, their graduates tend to marry one another, perpetuating what they like to call a “meritocracy.” But this is rule not by the meritorious, rather by the merely credentialed – because the credentials are suspect. As Ron Unz has shown, nowadays entry into the ivied gateways to power is by co-option, not merit. Moreover, the amount of study required at these universities leaves their products with more pretense than knowledge or skill.” [links available to the Unz and Murray stuff in the original]

“Thus by the turn of the twenty first century America had a bona fide ruling class that transcends government and sees itself at once as distinct from the rest of society – and as the only element thereof that may act on its behalf. It rules – to use New York Times columnist David Brooks’ characterization of Barack Obama – ‘as a visitor from a morally superior civilization.’ The civilization of the ruling class does not concede that those who resist it have any moral or intellectual right, and only reluctantly any civil right, to do so. Resistance is illegitimate because it can come only from low motives. President Obama’s statement that Republican legislators – and hence the people who elect them – don’t care whether ‘seniors have decent health care…children have enough to eat’ is typical.”

 Here's the actual source article, by the scholarly Angelo Codevilla, via First Things

comments sections

the  majority of people who write in comm boxes seem content to argue over whether the article in question is truly liberal or truly conservative.  This left/right, liberal/conservative narrative, or hermenutic - (interpretative lens) has a way of truly diminishing the meaning of a blog post, a conversation, an article or a news story.  The point, after all is said and done, is to get at something TRUE.  The truth really doesn't need to be catgeorized as liberal or conservative, because it's true, and shouldn't that be good enough?  Not to say the truth can't be categorized as such, as it can certainly be done, but must it always be done?

I think that one of the keys to recovering liberal democracy is finding a way to talk to one another again, about things that matter.  If we stop using these words, we could start to listen to one another rather than prematurely conclude our conversations upon discovering someone's ideas fit into our "liberal" or "conservative" box.

Dr. Benjamin Carlson should run for office

Our country needs people like this, who can think and speak profoundly and simply.

(reference the 2nd and 3rd presidential debates of 2012)

in the future

In a future life, I may take up bartending.

Ward Eight
This classic cocktail is a relative of the Whiskey Sour and thought to have been invented at Boston's Locke-Ober Café in 1898.

2 oz. straight rye whiskey
½ oz. fresh lemon juice
¼ oz. fresh orange juice
¼ oz. grenadine (or more to taste)
Splash of sparkling water

Tools: shaker, strainer
Glass: cocktail, coupe or goblet

Shake ingredients with ice cubes and strain into a chilled glass. Add an ice cube and a splash of sparkling water.

in passing i note

Patheos has a "Pagan" webpage .It's pretty interesting.