Here's to more backlashes

C-FAM reports on the Obama's Administration attempt to shove the LGBT agenda down everyone's throat in the international community. Excerpt:

U.S. and international leaders increasingly criticize President Obama’s foreign policy approach, especially his weak responses to massive human rights atrocities and religious cleansing in the Middle East and Africa.

But the Obama administration boasts – and few disagree – it has been all-hands-on-deck when it comes to expanding sexual rights.

The State Department released a fact sheet listing its “significantly expanded efforts” to promote LGBT rights through “private engagement with governments and civil society, public diplomacy, foreign assistance, and work in multilateral fora.”

“There are few areas where I think our task is so clear” as to work “for the rights and the dignity of LGBT persons around the world,” said Secretary John Kerry.

What a neat foreign policy. Tone-deafness and limp-wristedness is such a great combo. Luckily people aren't standing for it everywhere.

National leaders and foreign policy experts say this focus has caused a backlash in some countries.

Uganda President Museveni reportedly initially leaned against legislation toughening penalties on homosexuality. When he signed it into law, Museveni pointed out pressure from Obama had a reverse effect.

“I would like to discourage the USA government from taking the line that passing this law will ‘complicate our valued relationship’ with the USA as President Obama said,” Museveni said.

“Africans do not seek to impose our views on anybody. We do not want anybody to impose their views on us.”

Glad to see some people have courage. Here's hoping for more backlashes.

Reanimator

Straight from Miskatonic U. (not to be confused with Wossamotta U.), proof that hooking up the jumper cables to Sis's rotting earlobes is always worth a shot at another tinkle of paperback sales.

When The Dead Come For You

Read the whole thing, or, you know, just take my word for it and spare yourself another episode of this banal little horror show.

Abuseniks

Manufactured anger is in the news right now with President Obama's latest stage performance over the VA scandal. Rush Limbaugh is talking about it right now with a fun montage made up of about 5 years worth of unconvincing Obama play-rage over things like the IRS scandal, the healthcare.gov fiasco, etc. Limbaugh also makes the very astute observation that the mock outrage is messaging which targets people he calls "low-information voters", not those of us who know play-acting when we see it.

The Media Report has a great example of the same sort of mock-rage-as-messaging with this piece about Mitchell Garabedian's recent fit asserting that the Catholic Church is "once again acting in the most immoral way by allowing the wholesale sexual abuse of children" merely because the church wouldn't pony up over a false accusation:

Garabedian probably thought he would have it just as easy when he filed a similar lawsuit, also in 2012, against the Diocese of Fall River, alleging abuse by a priest starting in the late 1970s. In his suit, Garabedian made the astonishing claim that a priest abused two parishioners for nearly a decade starting when the boys were 9 or ten years old and lasting until they were seventeen.

Alas, however, the diocese hired independent investigators to look into the matter, and they concluded that the evidence did not support Garabedian's claim. Most notably, the accused priest died in 1996 at 83 years old, and not a single allegation had ever been made against him.

Yet even though no evidence of abuse was found by investigators, the diocese agreed not only to offer free counseling for the men but to also enter a mediation process to bring closure to the case.

However, as the Diocese of Fall River reports, Garabedian recently abruptly "ended the mediation process."

In other words, when the diocese apparently refused Garabedian's demand for money, he unleashed his tirade that the Church was now somehow "allowing the wholesale sexual abuse of children."

Ah, yes, those pesky details. Why do you Catholics want evidence of wrong-doing? CAN'T YOU SEE HOW ANGRY I AM ABOUT THIS?!? GIVE ME MONEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!

The real treasure in this post is the comment posted by Publion. I'm including the full text here. It's long, but it does a great job at summing up what is really going in the Catholic Church-only abuse industrial complex.

I would also ask of ‘Another Mark’ (the 19th, 952PM) the same question that ‘Mark’ asks (the 20th, 652AM): why trust this lawyer (hereinafter: ‘MG’)?

Readers may recall my mention of a Boston attorney in D’Antonio’s book who was involved in various bits of quite possibly prohibited and unlawful skullduggery in helping the Boston Globe get its series published in early January 2002 (D’Antonio is pro-Stampede and sees MG’s activity as sort of charmingly enterprising). That attorney D’Antonio was discussing was none other than MG. And MG is certainly a prime candidate for inclusion among those torties who have taken the Anderson Strategies into the big-time.

And on what basis are we supposed to credit ‘Another Mark’s (hereinafter: ‘AM’) unsupported and global assertion that “the church HAS allowed the wholesale abuse of children”? [giveaway exaggerated formatting retained]

Which is then followed by snark to the effect that MG “must be doing something right now that David Pierre must attack you”.

Which also includes the classic Playbook legerdemain of presuming that the reporting of a historically and actually verifiable fact (i.e. MG’s publicly stated ire at the Diocese of Fall River) constitutes “an attack”.

And then a mere epithet about it being “laughable” that MG treats the Church as “a trip to the ATM”, also a juvenile bit from the Playbook that has been seen here many times.

And I would add that where the Church asks (as many organizations do) for “donations”, it does not try to take potential ‘donors’ to court in order to obtain vast sums from them on the basis of legal charges almost completely unsupported by any evidence.

Then a blunderbuss blam of a bunch of (otherwise quite rationally explicable) Church decisions in regard to “closing churches” that had been built – we see the smarmy heart-string pulling manipulative bit from the Playbook here – with “your hard earned heartfelt donations” from “you and your parents”.

Then a fresh paragraph with more Playbook stuff.

First, to the effect that “David Pierre acts as if every victim is a money sucking leach” [sic]: if anyone deliberately tried to bring a lawsuit against you, alleging acts from the long-ago for which they have no evidence but merely a story, and publicizes the whole thing highly, what would you consider such a person to be?

But then again: DP has never said any such thing as “money sucking leach” [sic] and I can’t recall any commenter using the term either.

But then again: in the Abusenik Playbook, if you don’t totally buy the script, then you are ‘attacking’ them. (The Abusenik objective here is to distract you from the fact that they may well be involved in something characterizable as the activity of a “money sucking leach”[sic] and therefore try to quickly get you (the reader or hearer) to focus on the (merely alleged) victimization of the whole thing.)

Second, we get – yet again – the mere but utter presumption of “the damage done” by alleged acts the nature and even the very existence of which has never been demonstrated. And I would also recall here the recent material here discussing the cautious use of “potential” in the statements of various scientific papers and research results. ‘Potential’ is not synonymous with ‘certain’ (and so even some phrase like ‘an absolutely certain potential’ would not move things forward at all in this regard).

Third, the Wig of Bemused and Honest Innocence with that “sadly”.

And then fourth: the use of the presumed “attacks” (discussed above in this comment of mine) to cluck condescendingly that “such attacks [do not] somehow support our church”. Would that be “our” Church? And is it not ‘supportive’ to point out how the allegations are unfounded and highly dubious and seriously improbable?

And in regard to “responsability”: did so many Abuseniks go to the same school of misspelling? There seems to be a pattern here.

And then fifth: the old “enabler” trope, right from the Playbook.

And then the next paragraph works toward whistling-away the profound and abyssal evidentiary and veracity problems with the Stampede and the Abuseniks: “simply because no one came forward while the priest was alive does nothing to prove he did not abuse during his lifetime” [correction supplied]

No, the fact that “no one came forward while the priest was alive” does not provide conclusive evidence that the alleged abuse never happened. But it also a) provides no evidence that the alleged abuse did happen and b) provides an element of increased-probability that the story was concocted opportunistically after the priest died, in order to cash in on the Stampede piñata game.

And it also provides some grounds for doubting the conceptual chops (and perhaps good faith) of anybody who would try to pass off such a conceptual misch as if it were clear and pristine logic, upon which he might base his assertions with no further need for explication.

And if the Church’s paid investigators “found no evidence” – although the Church (or Diocese, here) must know that it would very likely have to rely on those investigative findings in a public forum – then the same can be said for any investigators the tortie might engage (although, as we know, given the now-established dynamics of the Anderson Strategies in the Stampede, the tortie might well expect that his client’s claims and allegations and stories would never be required to face public and objective scrutiny in the first place anyway).

Abuseniks “really do see” us as “dumb blind sheep”, but “fortunately” – and especially through the work on TMR – that is not the case.

Which is what moves the Abuseniks to toss up the type of stuff we see here in the AM comment.

"Dump blind sheep", "low-information voters", whatever you want to call them the terms do not apply to us here. But I think "money-grubbing ambulance-chaser" applies to Mitchell Garabedian.

Alternative to Overpriced Cleveland-area Catholic High Schools

Just received this message in my inbox, so I thought I'd spread the word here at Est Quod Est. The parent-run Catholic school we send our kids to, Padre Pio Academy, is starting 9th and 10th grades in the fall. The cost is going to be very reasonable, especially compared to St. Edward's and St. Ignatius and it will also be 100% Common Core-free, so that's awesome.

EXTRA! EXTRA!

Who: Parents & Students Interested in High School

What: Meeting tomorrow (Thursday May 22)

When: 7:30 PM

Where: Padre Pio Academy - 12920 Madison Ave, Lakewood, OH 44107

Why: To find out about the PPA high school coming fall 2014

Hear a presentation about the High School curriculum and learn about registration, tuition, elective courses, clubs, activities and much more!

Staff members will be on site to talk to parents and students.

Don't forget — Special discount on tuition for registration expires May 30th. $900 Savings!

Spread the word!

*If you cannot make the meeting but would like to arrange a time to learn about the program, please call (216) 571-0174.

One of the reasons I feel extra motivated to post this is that a friend sent me this link noticing that the summer reading list at St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland once again includes the truly insipid book The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. I blogged about this last year and though I realize that our combox discussion featured cordial disagreements about how concerned parents and Catholics should be about the reading list, I think my argument is a little bit stronger now that the book is once again on the list. Assuming you really want to have a book which has been recently authored on your list — for whatever reason — can you really expect me to believe that there has been nothing written in the last year that is better than this book? I've read better Bazooka Joe comics. And Bazooka Joe doesn't make fun of Jesus Christ.

HH

Soundtrack to a beautiful spring day in Cleveland.

Parent Hacks

Rod Dreher's Blood Eagle

SPOILER ALERT: FANS OF THE HISTORY CHANNEL SERIES "VIKINGS" WHO ARE NOT CURRENT SHOULD STOP READING NOW.

In this Dante post immediately following this Southern Gothic offering showing a paterfamilias reading Dante to his thralls over "filet of drum sautéed in butter, garlic, and fresh marjoram; preserved lemon risotto, green salad and Pommery Champagne", our Working Boy ceaselessly teases his hoped for book on Dante by referring again to his suffering, from which Dante has now saved him.

In a similar way, I am convinced that if I had not suffered as I’ve done, and in the particular way that I have done, these past two years, I never would have been able to understand the Commedia as it should be understood: not as merely an aesthetic object, but as a work of art that knew me better than I knew myself, and could reveal to me truths I needed to put my life back together.

Oddly, Rod has never specifically told us what his suffering consisted of or what he had to endure to finally fight his way through to the triumphal redemption of Pommery Champagne and insalate misto.

Fortunately, readers of EQE have bulldog reporter Keith to inform them, and I have finally run this mystery to the ground.

Horribly, it turns out that Rod Dreher has not only suffered through but survived the blood eagle having been performed on him by persons I have yet to identify, possibly disgruntled family members or local townies, or maybe even Biff from Back to the Future who heard he was back in town.

If you're squeamish about these things, you might want to skip ahead at this point, too.

Basically the blood eagle is like spatchcocking a chicken or turkey, except that it is performed on the opposite side of the torso.

The recipient (the sufferer, Rod Dreher) is alive and conscious at the outset. Cuts are made with a knife parallel to the spine on either side deep enough to expose the ribs, at which point the knife is exchanged for a war axe in order to chop the ribs free from the spine. The ribs are then popped free and spread out and up over each side of the back until they resemble the wings of an eagle in flight. Finally, the lungs are flipped up and forward to lay on the shoulders. Salt may be added, to taste. In the show Vikings, it is said that the recipient who doesn't cry out during the procedure is said to be welcomed into Valhalla, while those who do can never enter. My reporting on whether or not Rod Dreher cried out during his suffering is incomplete (he's a tough guy; I'll bet he didn't), but since Valhalla is probably not on his itinerary anyway I'm assuming it doesn't matter.

Others have suffered before, too, but I don't think anyone in history has suffered the way Rod Dreher has nebulously suffered and lived to tell us about it and tell us about it and tell us about it, a feat that is making me rethink my own suffering from my own vague and unspecified Existential Boo-Boo.

Without a doubt it's the renewed manliness and strength of character Rod gained from enduring and triumphing over his blood eagle which allowed him to create this second order, once removed, passive-aggressive post of concern for another human being, The Sarah Palin Who Might Have Been.

It's really important to closely examine the post's structure in order to fully appreciate the redemptive strength of character Dante has bequeathed Dreher in the shadow of his blood eagle.

This first thing to notice is that Dreher is not authoring the sentiment of the post, his role is only that of Pilateally purelled messenger. The sentiment itself originates with anonymous "reader Richard", a person few rightthinking people online have reason to doubt exists.

But, secondly, the sentiment itself is possibly the purest, most exquisite example of effeminate passive-aggressiveness ever produced by the hand of fey: Oh, what might you have been had you not been so terribly, terribly unfortunate as to have lived it as you?

This sort of formulation is mastery, people. This triumph of the self-diddling, ouroborean will is the sort of fingerprint-free, oblique, warrior manliness that can only come from the keys of a person who has personally endured the suffering I've reported on above and lived to tell about it.

Frankly, in my quest to become a better blogger in the manner of suffering-R-him Rod Dreher, it's pretty obvious I still have a long, long way to go.

Tough Guy, indeed

Way back when, the last time this blog blew up was around the time that Rod Dreher was lecturing all of us how he was afraid of being bullied by the Cool Kids because he wasn't down with SSM.  And it was noted that Sarah Palin agreed with Andrew Sullivan and vice versa that Dreher was a weakling.

Well, as they say, if you want to find out who the bully is, look for the kid who is whining the loudest about being bullied.  Over the last couple of days, Dreher has been running serial drive-by pieces (interleaved with pieces about Pope Francis's tweets) on how Sarah Palin is a blasphemer for her comment that "waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists".  Take that, Sarah Palin -- that'll show you for criticizing Dreher without mentioning his name.

Which is not the reason I posted this -- it is just another topic du jour being drowned by the fire hose that is Dreher's it's-just-a-notebook blog.  But I thought y'all might like the ordnance that Mark Levin sent Dreher's direction (summarized here, with audio link):

"Everybody knows what she meant," Levin said, "everybody knows it was a laugh line." Levin continues, "But Sarah Palin is easy pickins so they pile on.  Tough guy, huh?"

And I know you'll enjoy Dreher's response.  All he's got is name calling, and manipulating comment moderation to get the right response from his trained seals.