Friday, October 26, 2012

Class with a Capital K

Joe Biden rarely disappoints (from the MailOnline).
'Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?' Biden's bizarre question to father of Navy SEAL who died in Benghazi attack
The father of one of the Navy SEALs who was killed in the Libya consulate attack has criticised the White House reaction to his son's death - especially a bizarre and obscene comment Joe Biden made to him.Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, said he thought Barack Obama had 'no remorse' over the attack and felt Hillary Clinton was 'not telling the truth'.And he revealed that at the ceremony for the return of Tyrone's body, the Vice President approached his family and asked, 'Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?'Mr Woods added that the President seemed cold and distant at the time, saying: 'Shaking hands with him, quite frankly, was like shaking hands with a dead fish.' 
Is there anyone in the Obama Administration who possess what might pass for compassion and decency?

(Hat tip to Justin Martyr)

Class with a Capital K

Joe Biden rarely disappoints (from the MailOnline).
'Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?' Biden's bizarre question to father of Navy SEAL who died in Benghazi attack
The father of one of the Navy SEALs who was killed in the Libya consulate attack has criticised the White House reaction to his son's death - especially a bizarre and obscene comment Joe Biden made to him.Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, said he thought Barack Obama had 'no remorse' over the attack and felt Hillary Clinton was 'not telling the truth'.And he revealed that at the ceremony for the return of Tyrone's body, the Vice President approached his family and asked, 'Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?'Mr Woods added that the President seemed cold and distant at the time, saying: 'Shaking hands with him, quite frankly, was like shaking hands with a dead fish.' 
Is there anyone in the Obama Administration who possess what might pass for compassion and decency?

(Hat tip to Justin Martyr)

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Cancel Their Vote

A wise person once posited if every high school student were required to take and pass one course each on the Constitution and economics, the left would be a minimal political presence in this country. Even if an overstatement, that requirement would certainly lead to less idiocy of the likes below and far too prevalent in our republic (from Democratic Underground--where else?--via the Instapundit).
Let’s say that you have the ability to print your currency using your computer printer, and every merchant accepted your printouts as a valid exchange for goods and services. You need to pick up your dry cleaning? You printout a $20 bill and your cleaners hand over your garments without question. Same would be true for your mortgage, groceries, car note, etc. Your creditors even accept your printouts as payment on your debts. 
Given this, how can you ever be broke? Answer, you cannot be broke. The U.S. government is not in debt simply because it can create currency to pay off the debt, and our creditors gladly accept our currency as payment on our debts. You see, the world needs our dollars because the world needs oil, and in order to buy oil, you need dollars, which means that the world needs to stockpile dollars, and that means that the U.S. can print all of the money that it wants without incurring massive hikes in interest rates to attract lenders.
Breathtaking, isn't it? On November 6th there will be vast numbers of our citizenry who actually subscribe to drivel like that filing into the polling places. Keep it in mind when considering whether or not to vote yourself.

Cancel Their Vote

A wise person once posited if every high school student were required to take and pass one course each on the Constitution and economics, the left would be a minimal political presence in this country. Even if an overstatement, that requirement would certainly lead to less idiocy of the likes below and far too prevalent in our republic (from Democratic Underground--where else?--via the Instapundit).
Let’s say that you have the ability to print your currency using your computer printer, and every merchant accepted your printouts as a valid exchange for goods and services. You need to pick up your dry cleaning? You printout a $20 bill and your cleaners hand over your garments without question. Same would be true for your mortgage, groceries, car note, etc. Your creditors even accept your printouts as payment on your debts. 
Given this, how can you ever be broke? Answer, you cannot be broke. The U.S. government is not in debt simply because it can create currency to pay off the debt, and our creditors gladly accept our currency as payment on our debts. You see, the world needs our dollars because the world needs oil, and in order to buy oil, you need dollars, which means that the world needs to stockpile dollars, and that means that the U.S. can print all of the money that it wants without incurring massive hikes in interest rates to attract lenders.
Breathtaking, isn't it? On November 6th there will be vast numbers of our citizenry who actually subscribe to drivel like that filing into the polling places. Keep it in mind when considering whether or not to vote yourself.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

State Cuts Obama Loose

Fleeing the sinking ship:
The State Department now says it never believed the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was a film protest gone awry, giving congressional Republicans new fodder for criticizing the Obama administration's initial accounts of the assault. 
The State Department's extraordinary break with other administration offices came in a department briefing Tuesday, where officials said "others" in the executive branch concluded initially that the protest was based, like others in the Middle East, on a film that ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad. That was never the department's conclusion, a senior official told reporters...
This has to be at the behest of Secretary Clinton, no doubt after counsel with her husband. Time is catching up with Hilary; she's got one last stab at the presidency in 2016 and the last thing she needs is to be dragged down with the spiraling Obama Administration. Since, however, the State Department also has a lot to answer for in this debacle, she may not be spared.

Still, I wonder if we'll see more of this in the coming weeks.

State Cuts Obama Loose

Fleeing the sinking ship:
The State Department now says it never believed the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was a film protest gone awry, giving congressional Republicans new fodder for criticizing the Obama administration's initial accounts of the assault. 
The State Department's extraordinary break with other administration offices came in a department briefing Tuesday, where officials said "others" in the executive branch concluded initially that the protest was based, like others in the Middle East, on a film that ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad. That was never the department's conclusion, a senior official told reporters...
This has to be at the behest of Secretary Clinton, no doubt after counsel with her husband. Time is catching up with Hilary; she's got one last stab at the presidency in 2016 and the last thing she needs is to be dragged down with the spiraling Obama Administration. Since, however, the State Department also has a lot to answer for in this debacle, she may not be spared.

Still, I wonder if we'll see more of this in the coming weeks.

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

And Speaking of Sad Decline...

I recently fulfilled my Sunday obligation at the Catholic church in Delhi, NY. The pastor, whose theology is pure post-Vatican II reformist, skipped the Gloria. For whatever odd reasons, he will not recite the Penitential Act/Kyrie and the Gloria in the same Mass, one or the other but not both  (I suppose a complaint could be filed with the Bishop but with this one sitting on throne, why bother? He's far too busy closing churches, anyway). Father loves to sprinkle his homilies with pithy facts and quotes. In this homily he made sport of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonists for espousing temperance (they did not; they drank, often in staggering amounts), attributed H. L. Mencken's famous definition of Puritanism to W. C. Fields and then, best of all, attributed Belloc's even more famous quatrain on Catholicism ("Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine..."--which Father botched royally) to E. E. Cummings, of all people! To make it all perfect, Father also informed us Cummings was a Catholic convert. Huh? The things one learns!

One of the advantages of living in New York City (which helps offset the many disadvantages) is one doesn't have travel far to find a decently celebrated Mass, Tridentine or even Novus Ordo. It pays, however, to get out of town on occasion and be reminded just how dismal the state of the priesthood and liturgy is in most Catholic parishes. It's makes you grateful if your situation is a more fortunate. On a happier note, it's my observation most younger priests these days take liturgy far more seriously than their predecessors and seem much better read. The problem should solve itself over time (Deo volente).



And Speaking of Sad Decline...

I recently fulfilled my Sunday obligation at the Catholic church in Delhi, NY. The pastor, whose theology is pure post-Vatican II reformist, skipped the Gloria. For whatever odd reasons, he will not recite the Penitential Act/Kyrie and the Gloria in the same Mass, one or the other but not both  (I suppose a complaint could be filed with the Bishop but with this one sitting on throne, why bother? He's far too busy closing churches, anyway). Father loves to sprinkle his homilies with pithy facts and quotes. In this homily he made sport of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonists for espousing temperance (they did not; they drank, often in staggering amounts), attributed H. L. Mencken's famous definition of Puritanism to W. C. Fields and then, best of all, attributed Belloc's even more famous quatrain on Catholicism ("Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine..."--which Father botched royally) to E. E. Cummings, of all people! To make it all perfect, Father also informed us Cummings was a Catholic convert. Huh? The things one learns!

One of the advantages of living in New York City (which helps offset the many disadvantages) is one doesn't have travel far to find a decently celebrated Mass, Tridentine or even Novus Ordo. It pays, however, to get out of town on occasion and be reminded just how dismal the state of the priesthood and liturgy is in most Catholic parishes. It's makes you grateful if your situation is a more fortunate. On a happier note, it's my observation most younger priests these days take liturgy far more seriously than their predecessors and seem much better read. The problem should solve itself over time (Deo volente).



Monday, October 08, 2012

The Sad Decline of Mainstream Media

The New York Times, in a piece on the decreasing popularity of college bars, has appended an editor's note:
An article on Thursday described the effect of social media use on the bar scene in several college towns, including the area around Cornell. After the article was published, questions were raised by the blog IvyGate about the identities of six Cornell students quoted in the article or shown in an accompanying photo.

None of the names provided by those students to a reporter and photographer for The Times — Michelle Guida, Vanessa Gilen, Tracy O’Hara, John Montana, David Lieberman and Ben Johnson — match listings in the Cornell student directory, and The Times has not subsequently been able to contact anyone by those names. The Times should have worked to verify the students’ identities independently before quoting or picturing them for the article.

Boy, those Times reporters are getting dumber and dumber. Any fool could have told them the real names of those individuals are Ima Hoare, Connie Lingus, Anita Woody, Dick Hertz, Heywood Jablome and Ben Dover, respectively.

The Sad Decline of Mainstream Media

The New York Times, in a piece on the decreasing popularity of college bars, has appended an editor's note:
An article on Thursday described the effect of social media use on the bar scene in several college towns, including the area around Cornell. After the article was published, questions were raised by the blog IvyGate about the identities of six Cornell students quoted in the article or shown in an accompanying photo.

None of the names provided by those students to a reporter and photographer for The Times — Michelle Guida, Vanessa Gilen, Tracy O’Hara, John Montana, David Lieberman and Ben Johnson — match listings in the Cornell student directory, and The Times has not subsequently been able to contact anyone by those names. The Times should have worked to verify the students’ identities independently before quoting or picturing them for the article.

Boy, those Times reporters are getting dumber and dumber. Any fool could have told them the real names of those individuals are Ima Hoare, Connie Lingus, Anita Woody, Dick Hertz, Heywood Jablome and Ben Dover, respectively.