Friday, August 9, 2013

Wendy Davis is Abortion Barbie.

From LiveAction. Erick Erickson can really peg it sometimes, now Wendy Davis is Abortion Barbie as sure as Tony Stark is Iron Man. Here's his blog post summarizing it, I didn't have time to hunt down his original tweet.

The left is in a tizzy on twitter for my referring to pink shoes wearing Texas State Senator Wendy Davis as “Abortion Barbie.”

It sums her up perfectly. All the nation knows about Wendy Davis is that she is ignorant of the horrors of Kermit Gosnell, wears pink shoes, and filibustered legislation to save the innocent in Texas. She joined the long line of Democrats before her to oppose legislation to protect other people while using property rights arguments to do so.

The media would prefer to focus on her blonde hair, her great outfits, and her pink shoes than on the procedure she wants to protect. That procedure, late term abortion, is opposed by a majority of women and men.

Abortion Barbie fits perfectly and I hope that moniker haunts her on the campaign trail. She is, after all, intent on building a national name for herself through abortion and pink shoes. I’m sure MSNBC will send her tampon earrings to go with the other accessories.

As an aside, one of the most hilarious bits of this is seeing liberals proclaim all references to someone as “Barbie” sexist. Really?
 
Too good. That last link about how they called Sarah Palin "Caribou Barbie" should shut everyone on the left up. And anyway, isn't Barbie supposed to be blond?

Thursday, August 8, 2013

The smart brother

My brother—the smart one in the family—has a book out, Almost Pioneers. Basically he found a diary written by a Wyoming homesteader in the early 20th century named Laura Gibson Smith and he edited it and published it with tons of footnotes explaining what things were like back then and stuff that someone like me has no clue about and someone with a Ph.D. in American history does. It's an intriguing read, and I'm enjoying it. I think Oengus would like it since he lives out in one o' them big states way out there.

Here's the description from the back: A wonderful peek into the lives of a couple who tried the wide open West as homesteaders and a wry look back at their ineptitude amid the pioneer bravado of the era.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Ignore any malware warnings

Some people have gotten an intermittent warning about malware when accessing this blog. This is because Catholic Culture's website was hacked awhile back, and the goofballs put some bad stuff there. They've fixed it since, but just to be safe I removed any reference to their site for now. The only thing was the little liturgical calendar reminder. But I don't think this was really any type of threat.

FREAKING IDIOTS!

More Bear Humor

From IJ Review.



Obviously the cartoonist can't show you what the ol' Russian bear is doing to Snowden.

Coffee with Ian

A dude in college loved Ian Dury. He was always playing his stuff, but this was the only tune that stuck in my head.



Monday, August 5, 2013

John Allen's article on the Pope Francis revolution and my "oh, noes"

This is a good piece in NCR by John Allen which Michael Liccione posted on his facebook page. I can't help posting some oh, noes moments.

In just four months, Francis has revived the international prestige of the papacy and its moral capital. The Italian edition of Vanity Fair recently declared him its "Man of the Year," including snippets of praise from unlikely quarters such as Elton John, who termed the pontiff "a miracle of humility in the era of vanity."

Elton John? Oh, noes!!

"He's very charming, but he's also very controlling, as all powerful people are," said Omar Bello, an Argentine Catholic journalist and author of a new book on the pope.

Very controlling? Oh, noes!!

His commission to study the economic and administrative structures, for instance, is made up of eight people, only one of whom is a priest -- Msgr. Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, a Spaniard who serves as secretary of the Vatican's Prefecture for Economic Affairs, and who's a member of the Opus Dei-affiliated Priestly Society of Holy Cross. The other seven are laypeople drawn from the worlds of economics, law and business management.

Opus Dei?! Oh, noes!!

Third, Francis is giving rise to a new culture of accountability, moving toward a more Anglo-Saxon understanding that "accountability" means somebody can actually get fired.

Anglo-Saxon? You mean those white people who fire you? Oh, noes!!

With regard to Francis talking about poverty more than he does about abortion I'm really not to worried about that. Does Pope Francis inspire me to give more of my money to poor people by talking about it? Not really. Does he inspire me to be kinder and more patient to those around me by his patient actions toward his subordinates and the pompous asses in the media? Yes, he does greatly. But if some stingy liberals are inspired to be more generous to poor because of Pope Francis then good for them.

Blessed John Paul II on the Eucharist

Today's Gospel commentary on the Daily Gospel site comes from Blessed John Paul II's encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia.

"Taking the five loaves... he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples"


The Church was born of the paschal mystery. For this very reason the Eucharist, which is in an outstanding way the sacrament of the paschal mystery, stands at the centre of the Church's life. This is already clear from the earliest images of the Church found in the Acts of the Apostles: “They devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (2:42). The “breaking of the bread” refers to the Eucharist. Two thousand years later, we continue to relive that primordial image of the Church. At every celebration of the Eucharist, we are spiritually brought back to the paschal Triduum: to the events of the evening of Holy Thursday, to the Last Supper and to what followed it. .. The agony in Gethsemane was the introduction to the agony of the Cross on Good Friday. The holy hour, the hour of the redemption of the world. Whenever the Eucharist is celebrated at the tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem, there is an almost tangible return to his “hour”, the hour of his Cross and glorification. Every priest who celebrates Holy Mass, together with the Christian community which takes part in it, is led back in spirit to that place and that hour.

“Mysterium fidei! - The Mystery of Faith!”. When the priest recites or chants these words, all present acclaim: “We announce your death, O Lord, and we proclaim your resurrection, until you come in glory”. In these or similar words the Church, while pointing to Christ in the mystery of his passion, also reveals her own mystery: Ecclesia de Eucharistia – the Church's life is in the eucharist. By the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost the Church was born and set out upon the pathways of the world, yet a decisive moment in her taking shape was certainly the institution of the Eucharist in the Upper Room. Her foundation and wellspring is the whole Triduum paschale, but this is as it were gathered up, foreshadowed and “concentrated' for ever in the gift of the Eucharist. In this gift Jesus Christ entrusted to his Church the perennial making present of the paschal mystery.

More material documenting combox Nazism at The "American" "Conservative"

Speaking of comments not being approved over at The "American" "Conservative", a blogger named Thomas O. Meehan has posted numerous examples over at his site Odysseus on the Rocks of his comments not being approved by Rod Dreher and others. Mr. Meehan is an interesting example to me because I think he's much closer to Amconmag's way of thinking on certain foreign policy issues than I am. But, like us, he is utterly perplexed at how they can continue to advertise themselves as being conservative after displaying so much Obama-love and espousing so many liberal views. He writes this:

I was going to post something later on the President's faux impromptu speech to the White House press corps. And then I noticed an almost giddy puff piece in TAC by some kid they recently hired named Jonathan Coppage. Let me say that this is just the latest signal from TAC that they no longer wish to be considered Conservative in any way beyond their masthead. Along with Coppage's love letter to our mulatto messiah, there was a piece by Goldman attacking the 2nd amendment, a piece by Jacobs in the same vane and a really shameful piece by Millman whining about Human Bio-Diversity. So It's official, TAC is now a sham. It has devolved into a spineless exercise, a hermaphrodite among the journals. It is neither really conservative or left. It is a talking shop for those worshiping at the plastic shrine of the goddess NICE.

[Nota bene, I try not to use the term mulatto even as an adjective, but Kurt used it as a noun, so it probably can't be racist.]

Meehan's entire post is worth reading. I don't know if they published this comment, he doesn't say. Someone else can do that research if they wish. While you're at it, find out if Amconmag has any openly gay traditional religious conservative bloggers yet. They're due for a token of that important conservative voting bloc.

The way I discovered Thomas Meehan was through a snarky comment of his that was published on Jeremy Beer's review of The Little Way of Ruthie Leming. It's a short comment which I would be proud of writing, subtle but deadly:

This is a very timely and necessary review given Dreher’s extreme reluctance to publicize or advance himself in any way.

Isn't that good? See, that's the trick you need to use if you want a chance at getting a comment approved. He begins with perceived flattery: "This is a very timely and necessary review", but then he packs the business end of his argument in the subordinate clause. It's the Trojan Horse model, and it worked in this case.

Here's another interesting post from about a year ago about comment approval over at Amconmag.

A comment of mine was "excised" by Wick Allison over at the American Conservative last week. Excised is his term for his culling of comments that violate his criteria for respectability. An informed source tells me that Allison is the censor for all comments, without reference to the wishes of the writers. Curious that, considering they pay people to write but don't trust them to manage their own comments. Well, at least they're honest about it.

This is another step in the devolution of TAC from it's nationalist/traditionalist beginnings to something lesser and disappointing. TAC has come to suffer from a form of multiple personality disorder. It still publishes Pat Buchanan's and Jim Pinkerton's articles but it also publishes the work of Kelly Vlahos, resident harridan at the left wing Antiwar.com. Rod Dreher is on board writing from deepest, darkest Louisiana representing the childish crunchy-cons while Daniel Larison does a grand job deconstructing Republican talking points in the manner of a dissertation defense. He also does a very creditable job as agent of the vast pan-slavic mind view. That is, the Russian government ought to pay him. I'm not suggesting that they do, but that's how good he is at advancing the let's not be beastly toward the bear meme. Lately, to further extend the big tent into a three ring circus, TAC brought on people like Noah Millman who at least make no pretense at being a conservative.

He claims he has a source for Wick Allison being the main comment censor, and I don't doubt this claim. It rings true because this level of micromanagement is so odd that I can imagine any eye-witness to it would be willing to relate his strange experience. I have the experience of Wick Allison personally returning emails which was a little bit surprising to me.

The thing that is hard to remember in the aftermath of having a comment deleted is that you most likely scored a point. This is because you're irritated that it wasn't published. That means that you have to go and start your own blog—or go to someone else's who shares your opinion—and relate it there where it won't be excised. But here's the thing: this is the mainstream conservative experience in modern America. The mainstream media—which is dyed-in-the-skin liberal to leftist—used to practically control all the information that got out there, and they still control it to a great degree. Then we had the talk radio revolution—spearheaded by Rush Limbaugh, Fox news and the conservative pundits and blogger on the internet. Sites like Washington Examiner provide the counter-balance to WaPo even though they scrapped their print edition. Think of how the liberal mainstream media have tried desperately to censor so many huge stories. Any good news from Iraq back in the Bush years, anything bad about Islam, the Kermit Gosnell case, the dirt on Trayvon and his whacked gang connections, the Benghazi cover-up, etc., etc. But they can't always readily do this, thanks to alternative conservative media.

So the really pathetic thing about Amconmag is that they're doing what the drive-by media does on a tiny little scale. They really aren't much bigger in popularity than someone like R. S. McCain, and they are dwarfed by NRO and Hotair.com (source = alexa.com). By using a fine-tooth comb on comments with which they don't agree, they are just forcing people like Thomas O. Meehan to drop his subscription and to join the chorus of other conservatives in the rest of the world who doubt there's anything very conservative or even American about the "American" "Conservative". And they'll never engage us naysayers directly since they wouldn't want to give us hits, or maybe because their noses are at such a steep angle that they can barely even see us.


(Update: I added Meehan's middle initial after finding out he shares a name with a famous comedy screenwriter.)