Mitch McConnell on Obamacare

From the Washington Examiner:

As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said, "They want us to vote on a bill that no one outside the majority leader's conference room has even seen. That's right. The final bill we'll vote on isn't even the one we've had on the floor. It's the deal Democrat leaders have been trying to work out in private. That's what they intend to bring to the floor and force a vote on before Christmas. So this entire process is essentially a charade."

So for a Republican, voting on this would be sort of like giving up and letting the arranged marriage just go through. I advise running away.

GW on GW

Gerald Warner on Global Warming, that is. Rush Limbaugh is reading this on the air currently and I'm dying laughing. Excerpt:

When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying – what do you do?

No contest: stop issuing three rainforests of press releases every day, change the heading to James Bond-style “Do not distribute” and “leak” a single copy, in the knowledge that human nature is programmed to interest itself in anything it imagines it is not supposed to see, whereas it would bin the same document unread if it were distributed openly.

After that, get some unbiased, neutral observer, such as the executive director of Greenpeace, to say: “This is the single most important piece of paper in the world today.” Unfortunately, the response of all intelligent people will be to fall about laughing; but it was worth a try – everybody loves a tryer – and the climate alarmists are no longer in a position to pick and choose their tactics.

But boy! Was this crass, or what? The apocalyptic document revealing that even if the Western leaders hand over all the climate Danegeld demanded of them, appropriately at the venue of Copenhagen, the earth will still fry on a 3C temperature rise is the latest transparent scare tactic to extort more cash from taxpayers. The danger of this ploy, of course, is that people might say “If we are going to be chargrilled anyway, what is the point of handing over billions – better to get some serious conspicuous consumption in before the ski slopes turn into saunas.”

This “single most important piece of paper in the world” comes, presumably, from an authoritative and totally neutral source? Yes, of course. It’s from the – er – UN Framework Committee on Climate Change that is – er – running the Danegeld Summit. Some people might be small-minded enough to suggest this paper has as much authority as a “leaked” document from Number 10 revealing that life would be hell under the Tories.

Kind of long, I know, but it's hard picking a best part.

Nature is a language -- can't you read?

How many songs mention Luxembourg? Or buck-toothed girls?

Engrish meets spam scams

This appeared in my inbox today from tangwong.yu@yahoo.com.hk. I don't know why he thought my name was "Acknowledge". But maybe we'll consider that as a boy's name for our child just in case we can't think of one.

Acknowledge,

An Iraqi made a fixed deposit of $6.5m usd in
my bank branch (Hang Seng Bank, Hong Kong) where
am a director and he died with his entire family
in the war leaving behind no next of kin, I'm ready
to share 50/50 with you if you choose to stand as my
deceased client next of kin. If interested mail me at
the address below.

Email Contact: tang.yu@livemail.tw

Yours Truly,
Wong Tang

Well, Tang Yu very much! But no tangs....


Seriously, anyone want to "stand as [his] deceased client next of kin"? Do deceased people stand? All the ones I've seen are lying down.

As Tweety Bird would say, "Dealing with scammers is the wong tang to do!"

Black on black crime

From the Catholic League:

Catholic League president Bill Donohue speaks to the Omnibus Spending Bill just passed by the Senate:

The Congress is now officially on record approving a bill that tells mothers in Washington, D.C. that if they decide to take their baby to term, and elect to send their child to a private school—just like the one that President Obama and his wife have chosen for their own children—they can do it on their own dime: the successful voucher scholarship program that 1,700 poor kids were enrolled in is now dead. But if these same mothers decide to abort their babies, the same government will rush to pay their bills.

Most of those affected are black. The bill will soon be signed into law by America’s first black president. Is there anyone so stupid not to understand what is going on?

A short explanation of why any Catholic should be against Obamacare

Phil Lawler's piece is a summary, but it lays out all you really need to know about what is wrong with Obamacare from a Catholic perspective, even without abortion coverage. Excerpt:

And not only unnecessary but unjust, according to the best traditions of Catholic social thought. In Quadregesimo Anno (79), Pope Pius XI explained:

As history abundantly proves, it is true that on account of changed conditions many things which were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now save by large associations. Still, that most weighty principle, which cannot be set aside or changed, remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.

By those standards, set forth in one of the main magisterial texts of Catholic social teaching, the health-care reform legislation now pending before Congress could be judged an “injustice” and a “disturbance of right order.” But Pope Pius XI used still stronger language. Such a program, he said, would be “a grave evil.”

Of course, the automated response to this from the social justice robots would be that the "lesser and subordinate organizations" can't do the job. They are obviously wrong; the facts demonstrate this easily. And it's good to know that Pope Pius XI is on our side here.