In case you're wondering

I'm just going to carry on ignoring the US news. Except perhaps to remind everyone that we pretty much get the leaders we deserve.



~

Wow, a grown-up in politics!

~

This is why I'm a conservative

Specifically, an eeeeeveel, small government, (anti-Distributist), warmongering, cut-taxes, anti-union, homophobic, misogynistic, anti-choice, social, fiscal and moral conservative... politically speaking that is.


Because conservatives are funny.
Never yet met the lefty capable of laughing at himself or who didn't fly into a rage when countered.


It's the unconquerable earnestness that gets me down. Oh, how well I remember those tones from my mother's feminazi friends in the 70s.

I once scared a priest friend of mine with my feminist impression. It's pretty easy to imitate. You just lower your tone and drop all facial expression, lower your chin an inch or two so you look like you're looking directly and "sincerely" into the person's eyes and making some really profound point, and say everything in a monotone and pause...between...every...word. Remember to nod slightly as you talk. The secret is never to smile. Earnestness is the watchword.

He jumped back in his seat and said it was just a little uncomfortably too close to the evil troll feminist anti-nuns who ran the show at his seminary. Yeah yeah, cry me a river. I was raised by the trolls.

And what is it with that bizarre chanting thing? Isn't there something about it that sounds familiar? Ooooooh yes...

"Yes! We are all individuals!"

The Dale Price law of Monty Python strikes again!



~

And we'll let you

but only if you ask very, very nicely.



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Breaking: Leftist coup being staged...

...in Milwaukee.

Yep.

The world has finally completed it's journey to the Dark Side of the Weird.

Arabs are demonstrating in the streets for freedom and democracy (if the MSM is to be believed...so, you know...) and the hard left in the US, in the person of Wisconsin's public employees union, the state Democrats and the President, are attempting to overturn by force a democratically elected government.

...the President of the United States’ re-election campaign is involved in coordinating the protests in Wisconsin and are organizing similar protests in other States.

Um, my American chorus can correct me if I'm mistaken, but aren't there Big Rules about the President mixing it up in the outcome of state elections? Aren't they supposed to keep their noses out of it? Or at least try to be discreet about interfering in state politics...



~

See?

I told you so.

Ok everyone, calm down. Obama isn't a Muslim

It's quite simple. Obama belongs to the same religion as his colleagues in the political world. The same as Mrs. Pelosi, Mr. Biden and Mr. Kerry. The same as his European counterparts Dave Cameron, Sarkiozy and Merkel. The same, in fact, as most Catholic bishops of the United States, Canada, England and Wales, Belgium, Austria, Germany, France and Scandanavia. As most "Catholic" journalists and nearly every journalist on the "religion" beat. As the entire editorial staff of National Catholic Reporter, the Tablet and America, and probably about half of the staff of L'Osservatore Romano (all to varying degrees of faithfulness and fervency, of course).

Is there a name for it? Modernism, springs to mind. Narcissism, perhaps...

Me too

Doh!

Kathy made a campaign ad for the 2008 US election.



One of the places where Kathy and I really bond is our mutual hatred of hippies and all their foul pomps and works. Her loathing seems to be more political than mine.

She has told me that she wasn't raised by them, so, you know...

I hear it's snowing ... somewhere.

The above is a photo of America this morning.

Update:

and someone has pointed the government's newest weapon of mass destruction, the Darwin Ray, a massive new secret satellite defence system, right at the snow...

These past few days, the sane people of the region have been dedicating themselves to making sure you do not have to drive anywhere. The federal government has been shut down. Employers have offered telecommuting options. But as roads are plowed and cupboards are bare and cabin fever sets in, cars have begun to appear on the roads again, and many witnesses agree: The idiots are on the loose.

"So this Chevy Suburban," Rudi Reik says. "This Chevy Suburban was driving behind a firetruck," down a narrow Dupont Circle street in the middle of blizzard conditions. Apparently, the driver decided that the official vehicle was not moving fast enough. "He pulled out into the opposing lane of traffic and tried to pass," beaten back only when the fire engine honked wildly. Idiot.

...it was actually illegal to be on the roads if you weren't an emergency vehicle...and yet I just watched someone try to parallel park behind my car. At night. In blizzard conditions.

Final proof

that Obama is, in fact, the antiChrist.

He's pre-empted a Charlie Brown Christmas...

you know, the one where they actually recite St. Luke's Gospel. On TELEVISION.


Glad tidings

Obama Gets Nobel Prize: World Bursts Out Laughing

So, the Nobel committee has given its reasons:

They "attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons."

He also "created a new climate in international politics." "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future".

Vision.

See, I was talking about this the other day. It's all about self-identity and "visions" and things.

So, now that we have a world in which one can "self-identify" as any gender of your choice, that you can decide whether to be male or female or some other thing as yet unidentified by science; now that we have a world in which, for example, a poor black kid can grow up to be a rich white woman, Nobel Prizes are given out for having "visions".

Considering the loot involved, I think it's time for the rest of us to get visioning.

The world, I note, is rocking with laughter at the absurdity of it.

Really, when a White Liberal Guilt establishment like Saturday Night Live is mocking you, you've really hit bottom...

"I won it for not being George Bush. To be perfectly honest, this award was a complete surprise as I have only not been George W. Bush for nine months. But I am deeply honored none the less."

Nobel Meme

So, I was at a press briefing with a v. nice Ghanaian Archbishop and, sitting in the back, was wondering with the the Zenit guy what the Nobel Prize committee could have been thinking of.

But this nice African seemed to put his finger right spot on the reason.

It's 'cause he's black, see.

Duh!

So, after the meeting, I went to lunch with a friend and we worked out a list of other stuff they can give Obama prizes for.

Next year, in keeping with the theme, the Nobel Prizes will go to Barack Obama for

Peace - For his contribution to Changey Hope

and the following year, we can give it to him again, for

Peace - Hopey Change

Literature - for "Audacity of Hope"

Chemistry - for caring deeply about global warming

Physics - for walking on water

Economics - for improving the global economy by causing the US dollar to plummet

Moreover, we propose that in honour of the Greatness that is Obama, a new series of Nobel Prizes be established.

For racial reconciliation:

for being the world's first white man in a black man's body.

Come up with your own, and send them to The Nobel Prize committee.

Update:

Zach said (on facebook)

Another new Nobel Prize. The Not-Being-George-Bush Nobel Prize.

Zach comments:

"Here, President Obama, have the Nobel Peace Prize. Everyone will know you didn’t earn it, or do anything to deserve it, but you seem like a nice man, and well, we really hated your predecessor. So you get a special award just for not being him. Kind of the Miss Congeniality for world leaders...."

The Bell Curve of Personhood

The pieces are moving into place.

Obama's new "health Czar",

Dr. Emmanuel has stated repeatedly in public forums such as the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that doctors were driving up health-care costs because they value the Hippocratic Oath as "an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others."

Dr. Emmanuel raises the possibility of a new ethical system, the "Complete Lives System" that would ration care away from the elderly, away from infants, and away from human beings judged unable to rationally participate in society (such as those with dementia), in favor of those aged 15-44, who have the best chance "to live a complete life.

Hmm..."Complete Lives System" huh?

Reading the above, I instanly recognised this as my good old Bell Curve of Personhood.

I think I told y'all about how I once gave a few talks to teenagers in Catholic schools. Kind of Life Issues 101.

In those talks, I developed what I called the Utilitarian Bell Curve of Personhood.

The Bell Curve of Personhood was a kind of diagram illustrating how the abortion/euthanasia/Bioethics logic works. Some years ago, bioethicists were having a grand time at conferences and in peer review journals trying to work out exactly how a human being qualifies for this ephemeral thing they invented called "personhood".

The Bioethics (cf. Utilitarianism) personhood theory assigns a certain amount of personhood according to a set of criteria. Who sets the criteria and what is on the list exactly is open to debate, as is the number of boxes a human must tick to qualify, but the essential gist is that personhood isn't something that comes automatically with the right type and number of genes.

You have to earn it.

You might think that the personhood clock starts at birth, but bioethicists are not so naive. They do, in fact, assign a modicum of personhood to embryos, even to the very first single-cell stage. It's just that it isn't enough personhood to prevent you being killed. You certainly get quite a lot of Personhood Points (PPs) for being born successfully. But lose them again if you have some kind of defect that makes it hard for you to get on in life without help.

You get the gist, I'm sure.

People who have very little of each of the items on the list were afforded a low level of personhood and were at the lowest parts of the curve. People with lots of them got to be right on the top of the curve.

Too far down on the curve and "society" should have the right to kill you for being too inconvenient or expensive, or if your parts are useful in some way.

But watch out! Being on the top of the curve doesn't make you safe. The highest point is one from which we slip all too soon and too easily.

Why, the $150,000 a year, white computer engineer could have a stroke from too much stress. He might find himself unable to communicate after his stroke and therefore unable to work. He slips down that curve and into the eugenicists' disintegration chambers before you can say 'socialised medicine'.

I see that Mr. Obama is moving the free world closer to that happy day when my utopian sci fi novel [that yes, I'm still working on, now and then] will come true in which the world is a much nicer place because illness, disability and even social discontent are dimly remembered myths of a long lost past. Medicine has abandoned its former and untenable dedication to treating ill and disabled people one at a time and trying to cure their illnesses and mollify their disabilities, and has been reformed to instead treat "illness" and "disability" by the much cheaper method of simply getting rid of sick and disabled people.

I like to work on the principle that the scariest fiction is the one closest to current reality.

Megalomania much?

"We are God's partners in matters of life and death."

Catholic voters: Setting that bar as low as she'll go

Obama's newly appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has hotly denied he supports "forced abortion".

Responding to

concerns Holdren co-authored a book which allegedly contained comments supporting coercive population control measures. A spokesman for the department said that Holdren disavowed such policies at his confirmation hearing.

Oh good.

With this helpful clarification, I'm sure we can continue to support President Obama's work in "reducing the number of abortions" now that we have been so reassured.

It is further proof, as some highly placed members of staff at the Vatican have also helpfully assured us, Obama can't possibly be a "pro-abortion president". Just look at the moderate positions held by his key appointees.

That's racist

I hope you'll forgive me for thinking, but, it has occurred that the US left, including the Catholic left, is gaga over Obama because he is the first "African-American" president.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but this seems to be the basis of his appeal. On November 8 last year, I was walking back from St. Peter's to the office and saw a group of US tourists, all black, holding US flags. They were taking pictures of each other in front of St. Peter's Dome, as you do, and chanting "ObamaObamaObama..." I passed quickly on, but the image of this man's joyful face stayed with me. (ObamaObamaObama...)

As many more sober thinkers have pointed out many times, Obama is one of the least experienced politicians ever to hold such a high office. He is also one of the most evasive about his past.

As Binky put it the other day:

When you look at a leader like Winston Churchill, he’d been leading and doing real things and handling very serious responsibilities for years. Of course he made mistakes of various sorts, but not from inexperience, or noob-itis. He’d been military, Head of the navy, politician, and so much more in th years before he became Prime Minister of Great Britain and her remaining Empire. A very, very full CV indeed– and he came from a long line of famous and impressive people.

...

What, exactly, had Obama done before becoming president? Got a couple degrees. Got a pile of radical friends & mentors & groomers. Got an ambitious wife. Got in ith the Chicago Democratic mafia machine, got on a spending-spree radical education program that did very little, helped ACORN extort questionable mortgages from banks. Got into the Senate, where he was notable for nothing. Got to be president. Not much of a CV.

Someone recently, examining the bizarre goings on at Notre Dame this weekend, said that the equasion is simple. One honours a person for his accomplishments when one approves of them. Notre Dame gave Obama an honourary law degree. Does this mean that Notre Dame, the alma mater of some of the most accomplished people in the US, believes that Obama's accomplishments (see above) are worthy of a high honour? Perhaps the highest honour the institution is capable of bestowing.

Notre Dame chose to bestow an honor on the most pro-abortion President the USA has ever seen. You honor those whose positions and actions you believe are laudable.

Does this make sense? Does this equasion equate?

Notre Dame, I understand, even in its diminished post-moderne condition, is jammed with people who can think rings around most politicians. Who have degrees coming out their pores, who have published, lectured, devoted their lives to a single subject, who have contributed with their thought, their architecture, their engineering, their medicine, their governance, some of the most important gifts the US posesses.

Why would they think this man, apart from his having been elected as President, is their equal?

Haven't they met politicians?

I have, lots, and I wouldn't invite one home for tea, never mind give one an award.

Could it be that there is really only one reason that the Catholics at Notre Dame were so extremely keen not only to give Obama the platform, but to be seen doing so?

Could it be that Notre Dame honoured him ... well...

because he is black?

Ummm...

isn't that...


racism?

Oh come on Binky, don't hold back.

Tell us what you're really thinking

"President Obama is a bad man."

He is a liar and a deceiver. An appeaser. A racist. Treacherous to friend & enemy alike. A soft-fascist Marxist. A possible foreign-born muslim. A narcissistic neophyte, possibly mentally ill.

At the risk of sounding polemical and vituperative, I relate that a friend of mine, having just returned to Rome from a trip home to the US affirmed this weekend that the US left's love affair with Barack is on the wane. They're starting to wake up to the fact that their golden (ahem) boy is a child who hasn't the foggiest notion what he is doing.

As I've said before, saying "I told you so" just isn't providing the thrill one might hope for.

I kind of miss this stuff about the HRCs in Canada

Being now officially a member of the Eurotrash demographic, it just doesn't seem like my fight any more. But it's still pretty fun to watch from a distance. A bit like whales that way.

Anyway, if there is anyone left in the 'sphere who hasn't seen Ezra's take-down of that HRC toady...oh...what'shername...I can't remember...but in case you are the last one to know, here's the link to the greatest scolding a Sane Person ever gave to the Newfangled Left.


http://www.youtube.com/user/EzraILevant

I don't know if there is anyone after that who might still be wondering what the deal is with the HRCs, but in case you are,

Blazing will explain it all to you:

...the Left draws most of its motivating energy from imaginary problems, like global warming, DDT, backalley coathanger abortions, and the chronic boredome of American housewives in 1950s suburbia. The Left is very concerned about something they like to call “social justice”, which I define as the stubborn application of unworkable solutions to imaginary problems.

...

Today, gay Canadians outnumber Muslim Canadians; when that balance shifts, and it will for obvious reasons, it will be interesting to see which side Canada’s liberal establishment decides to take, or is obliged to.

[Oh me too!]

"...the HRCs are engaged in class warfare. The majority of “hate speech” cases are brought by highly educated, highly privileged white liberals -- against less educated, working class, blue collar “reactionary” whites, who insist on speaking to each other about topics like immigration, using old fashioned, politically incorrect language.

I was pleasantly surprised that Ken Whyte and his crew fought back because, well, they’re Canadians. To continue the metaphor, I’ve often said that had United 93 been an Air Canada flight, the passengers would have held the cockpit door open for the terrorists -- then said “sorry” when they stepped on their feet.

Ezra likes to say that the HRCs and Section 13 are “unCanadian.” I respectfully disagree. I can’t think of anything more Canadian. They perfectly embody the Trudeaupian, Centennial celebration Canada I was born into.

Yep.

I am just, barely, old enough to remember when all this stuff started but not quite old enough to have known what Canada was before it was put through the Trudeaupian Presto-Change-O Commie Transmogrifier. I remember the process by which it was changed, both at the national level by legislation and at the local level by hippies going to their little GestaltDreamTherapyPrimalScreamGroupHug workshops. I remember being used as part of that great experiment (gotta get to the kids right?). But I never got to see the Before Time.

But I know people who remember. And what strikes me is that when they talk about it, it is clear they are talking about something Real, about something that concerns itself with the Real. What strikes me about Canuckistan, and about our whole Mirror Universe civilisation (in Britain, Europe, Massachusetts, Oregon, etc.,) that started at the Big Bang of 1968, is that it concerns itself with nothing real. It is devoted to unreality. Its language is made up of unwords. It's politics is about imaginary grievances, and its history is make-believe history. It is as if the deadly hypnotism that addled the pates of my mother's hippie/feminist friends in 1972, had leaked out into the real, transforming it into the strange landscape of their drug-induced fantasies.

Oh yeah? Well, you're politicising Eucharist!

For those who just can't take any more news about the cephalopod threat, a little commentary on the End of the World as we Know It from some Evil Rightwing Bloggers that should cheer you right up.

They're responding to Mr. Kmiec's crybaby snivelling article on the election and Catholics.

It's kinda long, and not really brilliant analysis. Just more or less what you'd expect from applying common sense and having...oh yeah...The Faith. Personally, I don't quite know what everyone's getting all hoity-toity about. It's just the same old Stockholm Syndrome blather from the left. And it's not like Kmiec hasn't distinguished himself in this vein before.

The ocean is wet.

The sky is big.

Leftist Catholic academics are in league with Stan and are working to destroy Western Civilisation, home baking, motherhood, and All Good Things.

Yawn.

But of course, the 'bloggers are all uproary about it (as if it's a slow news week). It's almost as if some people object to being called "rightwing". Weird. Next you'll hear them whining about being called "racists" by British parliamentarians.

Yes. I'm sure that most of the people who hang out with me here are sick of hearing about it ('More funny duck videos!' I can hear you saying), but in case we've picked up anyone new lately, here's Hilary's Theory of Leftist Political Pseudo-Proliferism in 5000 words or more.

And, be sure to see my in-depth analysis below:

+This is a response to Pepperdine Professor Douglas Kmiec’s "A Tangled Web: the Election & the Blogosphere," which appears in the January 16 issue of Commonweal. We begin with a few general observations, followed by some exploration of them:

§ Mr. Kmiec is openly and unabashedly mesmerized by Barack Obama.
§ Mr. Kmiec’s understanding of his obligations regarding his Catholic faith has been completely distorted by and subjugated to his hero-worship of Obama.
§ A double standard is employed throughout this article. Mr. Kmiec repeatedly deplores what he apparently considers to be savage, personal attacks against him, yet as he deplores this, uses pejorative language which is equally inflammatory.
§ One of Mr. Kmiec’s two themes is that “right-wing bloggers” (see: pejorative language) have politicized his support of Obama, using the abortion issue to “drive a wedge” between the Vatican and the new administration. Yet it is Mr. Kmiec himself who attempts to politicize the issue.
§ The second of Mr. Kmiec’s themes is that he is a victim of “right-wing bloggers.”
§ Mr. Kmiec has also politicized the Eucharist.

I. Hero Worship

II. A Double Standard and the Victim Mentality
This piece may be accurately characterized as one long howl of indignation and hurt at being challenged, questioned and called names, as if Kmiec’s purity of character and motives are above reproach. The writer’s choice of terms to describe his critics’ behavior is revealing: “animosity,” “unrelenting personal attacks,” “lack of civility,” “highly concentrated rhetorical venom,” “tormentors,” “personal contempt,” “vilification,” “scurrilous remarks,” “demonizing me,” “blog calumnies,” and of course, the ever-popular “right-wing bloggers.”

The criticism of Mr. Kmiec stems from one thing and only one thing: his public and insistent infidelity to his faith. There is nothing “political” about this infidelity, yet Mr. Kmiec attempts to make it political. So who is politicizing the issue?

IV. The Sacred Deposit of Personal Waivers
Mr. Kmiec admits that “FOCA runs contrary to the pursuit of the common good,” yet this fails to diminish his fervor for Obama, as if Obama’s repeated promises regarding this demonic legislation were a minor exception to an otherwise commendable platform. He further glosses over the barbaric horror of FOCA by dismissing Obama’s commitment as a “one-time pledge of support.” Kmiec has also stated, elsewhere, that he believes Obama wants to reduce the number of abortions.

Reduce the number of abortions? How is that reflected in this statement, which went up on the White House website as soon as Obama was sworn in?

Note also that although Mr. Kmiec admits that FOCA “runs contrary to the common good,” he fails to acknowledge that it is anathema to Catholic teaching, which just happens to be the foundation of the common good. Not only fails to acknowledge it, but then has the temerity to state that he voted for Obama because of his Catholic faith! What Catholic faith is it, Mr. Kmiec, that can so casually ignore the very core of Obama’s professional life: his affirmation of the culture of death? And what Catholic faith is overridden by an “alluring gift of inspiration”?

Kmiec cites Archbishop Burke’s description of the Democratic Party as “the party of death” for its embrace of abortion, but instead of taking this to heart, Kmiec finds it “hurtful” to his father and to “millions of...lifelong Democrats.” In other words, the affirmation of Catholic teaching, and His Excellency’s solicitousness for souls, is now “hurtful” and a source of resentment! This is the selfsame attitude of the homosexual radicals, who find Catholic teaching about their disorder to be offensive, hateful, and discriminatory.

V. The Eucharist as a Weapon?
Mr. Kmiec’s response to every corrective action and teaching of the Church directed at him is to take it as a severe blow to his ego and reputation, and an offense to his feelings (again, a reaction identical to that of the homosexual radicals). Thus it is predictable, though tragic, that he should describe the denial of the Eucharist as a “weapon” to punish him.

(...)

Furthermore, being denied the Eucharist is not an invitation to “discussion,” it is an invitation to Confession and penance. But rather than face this, the Professor suddenly drags those of other faiths into the picture, who “do not see themselves as bound by the Magisterium.” Why this non sequitur? When did this become a matter involving other faiths? The answer is that it never did: this is just another evasive maneuver produced by pride.

(...)

Hilary Responds:

Soooo,

anyone got a good illegal link to the latest episode of BSG?