Enough of the Drag Queen crap

Walsh is correct. Drag is basically "female blackface".

Nigerian Catholic Massacre: The Murderers are Muslims

The Catholic League points out the taintedness of the media's coverage of the Nigerian Catholic Massacre.

This was only the latest in a series of killings carried out by radical Islamists against Christians in Nigeria, though the media are reluctant to discuss the identity of the terrorists.

No one was better at describing what happened than Nina Shea, whose expertise is monitoring religious liberty worldwide at the Hudson Institute. “The massacre in a church while filled with Sunday worshippers is an atrocity that we’ve repeatedly seen in northern Nigeria over the years. Those were the work of Islamist extremists.” Mostly Muslims live in the north of Nigeria; the south is populated by Christians.

Among the media who did an accurate job reporting on the mass shooting was Christianity Today, Quartz Africa and Reuters. They made it clear that Muslim radicals were to blame.

The New York Times and the Associated Press made a passing reference to the role of Muslims (abcnews.com and the Washington Post picked up the AP story). Many others were worse.

There are many reasons why people like to cover for the violent actions of Muslims, but they all cause the truth of Islamic violence to be supressed in the name of something of lesser value than the truth. Sensitivity ("They have a different culture..."), equality ("Christians can be violent, TOO!") and even tolerance ("We have to try to understand their point of view!").

Here's the harsh truth from a page on the Christianity.com site.

By most conservative counts, the Quran contains over 100 passages that call Muslims to take up arms against unbelievers in the name of Allah.

“Kill them [unbelievers] wherever you find them… And fight them until there is no more unbelief and worship is for Allah alone” (Quran 2:191-193).

“Strike off their heads and strike from them every fingertip” (Quran 8:12).

“Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties; in exchange for that they will have Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah, so they slay and are slain” (Quran 9:111).

“Truly Allah loves those who fight in His cause in battle array…” (Quran 61:4)

“The Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” (Sahih Muslim 1:33).

The Daily Stumble goes beyond the normal level of cognitive dissonance

Atop Mark Shea's Facebook feed today we find this sensible and true assertion:

Jesus Christ is not here to put the stamp of approval on your political ideology.

Yet several minutes before this, he linked to this dainty morsel on his blog which I call The Daily Stumble. Excerpt:

The young man said to him, “All these I have observed; what do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell your guns and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young Gun Lover heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had a great arsenal.

And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a Gun Lover to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a Gun Lover to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mt 19:16–24)

Mark Shea admits that this is a paraphrase of what Jesus said to the rich man in Matthew 19. And I submit to you that this paraphrase is an attempt to have Jesus Christ put the stamp of approval on his political ideology "gun hurt people whole bunch so gun bad".

I would love to go up to anti-gun-Christ and mock him — which is ok since he is not the real Christ — by pointing out "hey, them liberals love theyself some fancy plug-in cars and proceeds from they car sale gonna feed a whole lot more po' people than from my gun, bruh".

I don't know anyone who loves guns, period. A gun is a tool that can be used for good or ill. People tend to get attached to things for many reasons. If you are holding onto your great grand-daddy's 30-30 for sentimental reasons, I would definitely sell it and buy someone for which you can buy cheaper and more common ammo. There's my free practical advice for the day.

Taken from an article titled "Lithium Mining and Its Impacts on the Environment" (https://www.techolac.com/business/lithium-mining-and-its-impacts-on-the-environment)

Strive for Excellence

This story makes me exceedingly happy.

Today, Strive Asset Management (“Strive”) launches with the mission of restoring the voices of everyday citizens in the American economy by leading companies to focus on excellence over politics. Strive is led by co-founder and Executive Chairman Vivek Ramaswamy and has raised over $20 million from some of America’s most prominent venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

Strive aims to solve a fiduciary problem created by the three largest U.S. asset managers — BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street — which control over $20 trillion in assets, exceeding the total U.S. gross domestic product. These “Big 3” firms bear a fiduciary duty to advance the best interests of their clients. Yet in the name of “stakeholder capitalism,” they use their clients’ funds to exercise decisive influence over nearly every U.S. public company to advance political ideologies that many of their clients disagree with. They engage in coordinated efforts to enact a uniform social agenda across corporate America resulting in higher gas prices and other consumer harms, which Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich recently called “the biggest antitrust violation in history.”

The fact that it is happening in my home state of Ohio is simply an added bonus. I will be transferring my Vanguard accounts to Strive Asset Management as soon as possible.

Kill people when necessary

"This ain't gonna make the news.... They want you to stay in the dark because they have a political agenda."

I am tired of Bad Language, Part 1

I have been becoming increasingly tired for some time now with what I have decided to call Bad Language. I am not referring to curse words or slurs, F-words, N-word, S-word, etc. What I mean could be more exactly called "abuse of language". But I am going to call it bad language because its effects are bad.

There are numerous uses of the phrase "brother's keeper" in current popular media, and most people with some Biblical literacy know that this phrase comes from the story of the murder of Abel by his own brother Cain which appears in the fourth chapter of Genesis. After Cain kills Abel, God asks Cain "Where is Abel, your brother? Cain says "I don't know; am I my brother's keeper?" Then God says "The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground."

I have heard insightful sermons on this passage, but they are rare. Most of what you hear is like the content on this page. Don't get me wrong--many of the standard messages here are very good, such as "love your brothers and sisters", "treat them kindly", etc. But the big conclusion, delivered in bold capitalized words, at the end of the article is completely off: Even If Cain Wasn’t a Brother’s Keeper, We Are Still Called to Be.

The context needed to understand the phrase is in Genesis 4:2, "Now Abel was a keeper of sheep." When you realize that Cain's answer to God's question is first a lie ("I don't know") and then a bit of mockery ("Am I my brother's keeper?") then you will see what a misuse of this phrase is. God is emphatic about this brotherly relationship and Cain is dismissive. There are a lot more things going on in this passage as well having to do with Cain being a "tiller of the ground" and Abel's blood "crying... from the ground" that skilled Hebrew scholars have noted, and it simply cannot be an accident that Cain used the same word as Abel's chosen profession.

I am not my brother's keeper. I am my brother's brother.

Writers like Mr. Haynes in the aforementioned article would no doubt expect God's answer to Cain's mocking rhetorical question to be "Yes; you are your Brother's Keeper." Whereas I believe the implied answer is "No; you are his brother." Cain is not expected to treat Abel like Abel's ovine charges. In fact, since Abel obviously slaughtered the animals he raised, the implied negative answer is made all the more emphatic to my mind.

A lot of people will roll their eyes at this point and say "Oh, gee whiz Paul, does this matter? Aren't groups like My Brother's Keeper and My Brother's Keeper International and I am my Brother's Keeper Prison Ministry Book Club good and wonderful organizations?" My answer is that I have no reason to believe they are not wonderful, but insofar as they exist to help other people and treat them in the proper way, they should not have brother's keeper in their names.

I realize that all human language deals with abstractions and therefore no word construct perfectly describes reality. But using this phrase is reinforcing at least several incorrect ideas about what is going on in the story, and frankly, it is ignoring or at least making light of the terrible sins and failings which led up to Cain murdering his brother. The jealousy, envy and anger of Cain were unchecked and they all led to a murderous, blind rage and finally to murder itself. This was the "sin crouching at the door", not some vague failure to realize that we all need to play "keeper" to each other.

Why is this so important to emphasize? It is because the people close to us in one way or another are the ones with whom we have the hardest time. Older brothers are embarrassed by their little brothers doing things which they would merely laugh about if a kid the same age next door did them. And younger brothers are resentful of their older brothers' privileges. And jealousy goes in both directions constantly. Let go, these smaller sins grow into more terrible ones--that's a fact. Indiscriminate killings seem to more often grab headlines, but most murdered people know their killers.

As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Haynes' article is replete with great scripture references, but a good antidote to Cain's problem would be Romans 12:14, "Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep." It is one of those verses which is practically identical in many English versions. I am the father of seven sons and when my boys follow this verse there are no problems. But when they let their "countenance fall", that is always the first inflection point. The devil says over and over, "If this person feels bad, you will feel good." It's the zero sum lie, and it is believed by many.

Look back at Genesis 2:15: "The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till IT and keep IT." The emphasis here on the word IT is mine. I have a hypothesis: the greatest instances of abuse of language involve the treating of people like things, or things like people. I have heard this saying before, "We are supposed to use things and love people. But too often we love things and use people." Also I believe that Pope John Paul II remarked that all the evil in the world had its origin in the treatment of people like things. We should take comfort in the knowledge that we are called to be brothers and sisters to one another, and not keepers.

Economist Glenn Loury on Biden's "craven pandering"

Glenn Loury, an African-American Economist who teaches at Harvard, was asked recently what he thought about President Biden's preannouncement of the race and gender of his first Supreme Court pick. Excerpt:

You could call this craven pandering. I’m bemused by it because it unnecessarily raises questions about the fitness of whomever he might appoint, when he might have simply chosen a black woman as his nominee, and crowed about it after the fact. To avoid casting any doubt over the choice that he would have made, he could have said this is the best, most qualified person that I could find. But in any case, as he’s done it now, he’s limited his range of options to a very small percentage of the total population of people who might have been selected, and, you could say, has put an asterisk by the name of whomever it is that he might ultimately select.

This is, by the way, the Supreme Court of the United States of America, this is the final stopping point for any legal dispute. There are nine justices serving there, the quality of an appointment is not a small matter. We’re not now admitting a marginal student to an elite college campus, we’re selecting the people who are going to govern the country. The President might have engaged in a kind of subtle and tacit preference, rather than crowing about it and making it overt and explicit. It sows a kind of contempt for the standards that we ought to be employing.

Loury sort of pegs the act of preannouncing and limiting himself as having an effect which is opposite to the presumed intention. It is like affirmative action on steroids, or perhaps a better analogy would be "quotas with more cowbell." The presumed intention is to tout the idea that a black woman can be just as brilliant a legal scholar as a white man, or white woman, or black man. But then suddenly you tacitly say "And to prove this, we will eliminate anyone else from the running!".

The only response to something this illogical that I can think of is "OK, boomer."

Just Say Hell No

Or say no to Hell, that is another way to put it. Good riddance to this phony.

“We had this one theme in the seminary called masculine vulnerability,” one former seminarian recalled, “and he was using it spiritually to manipulate people. He was using the ideas of masculine vulnerability, and detachment from the world, and freedom, to lure people into going skinny-dipping. He had people’s trust, and they saw him as a big brother so much that they didn’t think anything of it at first. And then he kept pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. I’m like, this is weird.”

Masculine vulnerability. What a fuck-load of bullshit.