How Could There Be A Disconnect?

Leaving the Forum after the U2 concert on Saturday night, we drove east on West Manchester to get on the 110 and head back to San Diego. There were two police helicopters in the air just south of us, flashing their searchlights below, looking for someone. When we got to Figueroa, the street just in front of the 110, we came to a complete stop as no fewer than 6 cop cars went screaming by, down into the same neighborhood where the choppers were orbiting.

If 6 cars came from our location, it's a safe bet that others were converging from other directions.

The neighborhood is exclusively black except for where it's exclusively Hispanic.

From the demographics dot map. Green is black, yellow is Hispanic. The cops were headed to the circled area. Blue dots represent whites, red dots, Asians. There are no red or blue dots in the area.

Here's what had to have happened: Black or Hispanic citizens called the cops because black or Hispanic gang members were shooting each other / random people / both. The people who called the cops knew that some of the cops who came would be white. They asked white cops to come to their neighborhood to protect them.

This happens all the time.

Meanwhile, inside the Forum, Bono did a "hands up, don't shoot" bit in one of his songs, just like so many other entertainers and politicians. For the celebrities, the white cops are dangerous, racist thugs. For the people in this pretty poor part of town, the cops were reassuring and needed.

How is it possible that these people have so little contact with the realities of life in Baltimore, Inglewood, Detroit and East St. Louis? Even if they live in a total bubble, how does that bubble perpetuate itself? Wouldn't you think that eventually they'd have to see reality?

Bono Needs To Take A Break From Davos And Visit Inglewood Instead

We went to see U2 at the Forum in LA on Saturday. It was a terrific show, albeit full of political and social messages aimed at the 1970s. Lots of talk about MLK, Amnesty International, Irish car bombings from 40 years ago, social justice and even some gloating by Bono about the gay marriage vote in Ireland. Bono did some name-dropping as well, mentioning Davos in one between-song talk. It was all very conventional, like listening to Lawrence Welk talking to you decades ago.

Outside the Forum, in Inglewood, fatherless black men were shooting other fatherless black men.

INGLEWOOD: As many as five people were shot and wounded today in violence that started at gang party in Inglewood before spilling into neighboring South Los Angeles.

Two of the victims, both men, were wounded in a car-to-car shooting in Inglewood and ended up at the intersection of Van Ness and Century Boulevard, according to Lt. Leonard Perez of the Los Angeles Police Department’s 77th Street Station.

I've never been a big U2 fan and I don't own any of their music. I usually liked their singles when they were played on the radio, but I'd never heard a full album.  I had no idea how relentlessly political they were.

Bono beat his messages from 20, 30 and 40 years ago into our heads with every tool he could find. Meanwhile, in the year 2015, not 6 blocks from where his wealthy fans were nodding their heads in agreement and singing along, poor, black boys from "perfectly acceptable alternative family structures" were dying at each others' hands.

Bono's heart is unquestionably in the right place, but his messages seemed like such a wasted opportunity.

Never Blog Hungry

Some mornings, after reading articles and blogs posts I could have written in my sleep, I regret that I didn't spend the time cooking something incredible, new and delicious for breakfast. Well, new, anyway. It all seems like such a waste of time, this Internet thingy. Instead, I could be experimenting in the kitchen, photographing and blogging later. The rest of the rubbish - Hillary Clinton as the denouement of America, for example - is so trite and obvious that it's hardly worth the time when I could be creating yummy things to eat.

You do get that, don't you? That Hillary is such an over-the-top fascist looter that it's not worth blogging about?

Hmm. I might have to mix things up. Still, there's something to be said for fried grits with bacon in the morning...

Everything Old Is New Again

Asia for the Asians!

Q: That's the slogan for: Imperial Japan (ca 1940) or Fascist China (ca 2015)?

A: Yes!

Dig this:

Japan frequently referred to their expansionist program as the creation of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and along with that went the phrase "Asia for the Asians". It was meant to portray a vision of Japan leading Asian nations in looking out for Asia.

And this:

SINGAPORE—A senior Chinese naval commander has claimed new islands his country is building in the South China Sea will benefit the region, while stressing that such activities “fall well within the scope of China’s sovereignty.”

Noting the military usefulness of the islets China is constructing in the disputed Spratly Islands, Adm. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army’s general staff, said they would mainly enable China to provide “international public services,” including maritime search and rescue, disaster relief, and scientific research.

There's that weasel word, "mainly" again. I guess if the islands provide China the ability to claim territorial waters way out to sea, that's an unexpected bonus for them.

I also like the "scientific research" part. For a country who has taken pollution to a whole new level, the phrase, "scientific research," brings up images of them constructing the Island of Dr. Moreau out there.

Asia for the Asians!
Err, Asian animals.
Err, mutant Asian animals.
Oh, never mind.

Work Has No Value

... or at least that's what we seem to be saying with the $15 minimum wage in Los Angeles and similar crazy increases elsewhere. It's all false.

Many times at Catholic Charities I ran into people, almost all men, who just wanted a job. They didn't care if it paid $7 an hour, they just wanted to work and be useful and have a purpose. They would have been willing to live 10-to-an-apartment if only they could show that they were earning their own way.

Here's my prediction for the future in LA: As the minimum wage rises, low-income workers will be laid off, perhaps to be replaced by machines, perhaps to be replaced by sheets of plywood nailed to the outside of shuttered businesses. The progressives who dominate LA will want to help and will create make-work public jobs programs. In order to fund these, the government will borrow money. After a while, the city will go bankrupt.

All through this process, a basic, masculine need will go unfulfilled - the need to work at something meaningful.

We'd be much better off reducing the minimum wage than increasing it.

Otto Von Bismark, Please Call Your Office

Back when the Russians first started gobbling up the Ukraine, I recall Secretary of State Botox and his cronies flapping their gums about how this wasn't the 19th Century any more and that modern* nations no longer engaged in war with guns and bombs. It was all very gauche and got in the way of eating gluten-free, sustainable arugula. No, leaders of modern nations sat down together and talked.

And talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked.

Or maybe not.

U.S. surveillance imagery shows China has positioned weaponry on one of the artificial islands it is developing in the South China Sea, American officials said, supporting their suspicions that Beijing has been building up reefs for military purposes.

The U.S. imagery detected two Chinese motorized artillery pieces on one of the artificial islands built by China about one month ago. While the artillery wouldn’t pose a threat to U.S. planes or ships, U.S. officials said it could reach neighboring islands and that its presence was at odds with China’s public statements that the reclaimed islands are mainly** for civilian use.

For those graduates of Harvard and Columbia who need trigger warnings when they read children's stories about Roman gods, here's what artillery looks like when it's doing those things artillery was meant to do.


* - Read: Nations ruled by people who graduated from Ivy League universities.

** - Why is this a problem? The weasel word "mainly" gives it away. You'd think that this crowd with their "living" Constitution as a weasel word for seizing dictatorial powers for El Presidente would have figured this out.

Fie Upon The Purists, Let's Hear It For Butts!

I'm taking the week off, trying to finish wiring my MGB. In the course of doing so, I need to create wiring junctions. For example, there are about 10 different circuits in the cockpit that need a wire run to ground. Up to now, I've been making these junctions according to the wiring snobs, soldering and shrink-tubing them. I'm getting better at it, but it's a pain in the neck and it takes some time.

Today, at the auto parts store to get something else, I picked up a package of 10-12 ga butt connectors. Since my wires are about 16 ga, I can easily get two in per side, giving me a four-wire splice with no more work than stripping the wires, sticking them in and crimping the butt connector tight. It works like a champ.

Behold the power of this fully operational butt splice!

I pulled at the wires and they didn't move and then I tested the circuit. Perfect connectivity across all leads.

Forget that soldering nonsense, I'm a butt man from now on!

Err, wait, I didn't mean it that other way...

Classical Mythology = Multiverse + Jersey Shore

At the prompting of some trigger-warning coed at Columbia, a school where I would decline to send even a dog, I am currently listening to Ovid's Metamorphoses, a source book of Roman mythology.

If you ever had to take a comparative religions class and this was offered in contrast to Judaism or Christianity, consider retaining a lawyer and suing. This stuff is nothing more than Jersey Shore with some magic and a slap-dash creation myth thrown in. Everyone is banging everyone else, husbands and wives are yelling at each other and once in a while someone gets turned into a cow or a tree. There's no moral theme to the whole thing other than to let you know that the gods exist and they're not much different from you except that if you tick them off, they can make your life a mess.

They're the Gaystapo (or maybe the Clintons), but with a little more class.

These are your gods, citizens. Worship them!

As I listen to the stories, all I can think of is how retro we are these days. As in paleo-retro. Functionally, there's no difference between the ancient Romans listening to these stories and modern secular society watching reality shows. Remove our Judeo-Christian foundation, which we are doing at breakneck speed, and you end up here, idolizing creatures that seem a lot like you, do whatever they want and are a topic of gossip around the water cooler or ox cart.

If you look at the stars at night and need a creation myth to help you sleep, we can tell you about Saturn and the Titans or the Multiverse. Take your pick. It's all the same since it has no impact on your life at all. Somebody, somewhere knows something or other about those sparkly dots up above and that's good enough. Let's hit the clubs on Friday and see if we can bag some chicks, OK? After all, everyone from Jupiter to Vinny are doing it.

Cheezburger of the Day

... and it's right on the money! Our Maximum Leader and I have had an understanding for over ten years now. She gets one snack per night at a time of her choosing. She finds a way to make noise, I get up and give her some crunchies and then go back to bed. Any more noise and she gets a pillow thrown at her. It seems to work pretty well.

Until about 6:30AM. If I sleep in past that, she declares the agreement null and void and makes a ton of racket until I get up and the morning breakfast ritual begins. Since I like to get up early anyway, it's usually not a problem.

In any case, here's the Cheezburger. Enjoy!

Happy Memorial Day!

I usually don't do blog posts for holidays, but this one is special. My dad graduated from West Point and spent his career in the Air Force. He was a B-26 pilot in Korea, preserving freedom for others, just as all of our veterans have done.

Happy Memorial Day and thanks to all veterans for their service.

A South Korean attraction, made possible by American veterans who fought to keep it from being conquered by the communists.

This Is Why We Watch Sports

My man Jonas Gutierrez, my favorite soccer player, cancer survivor, scored the clinching goal in the last game of the season, a game that ensured Newcastle would stay in the Premier League next year.

Listen to the roar of the crowd as the ball goes in. Awesome.

Everyone Everywhere Is Religious

Because they have to be in order to function.

By "religious," I mean that they believe in things not supported by evidence or science.

In pondering what might be the larger themes in the gay marriage wars, the evangelism of the new atheists and even the campus trigger warning craze, I keep coming back to the same thought: these are religious wars, not political ones. I'm becoming convinced that politics follows culture which itself is founded on a dominant religious belief.

The reason I think everyone is religious is simple. Chemistry does not allow for the self. I know this is an old argument of mine, but it keeps jumping out at me in the context of finding the bigger themes. Here is the argument again in case you missed it before.

From a Gonzaga website, Gonzaga itself being a Jesuit university and as such, like the Jesuits, could be considered either Catholic or secular depending on which fad the Jesuits are following today, offers up this web page for one of their chemistry classes containing the diagram below.

This is an energy state diagram for a chemical reaction. The reaction is well-understood. Subject to the caveats of statistical chemistry, this is the way it always behaves. The same reactions are constantly occurring in your body, governed by similar rules. "You" have nothing to do with them. They simply happen.

There is no evidence for "you." There is no science that supports free will. There is nothing in anything we understand, and what we understand increases every day, that suggests anything other than nihilism. I've heard plenty of counter-arguments in the comments of this blog, but none of them undermine the diagram above and the diagram above and ones just like it are the basis for everything in the Universe.

Game over.

If you argue, if you cajole, if you hold "beliefs," if you take positions, if you talk about "individuals" or "people," you are religious because you believe in things that are not supported by evidence or science. Everyone, everywhere must be religious in order to function. You have to believe that "you" exist and "you" are making decisions, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Secularists are not devoid of religion, they are devoid of a coherent cosmology. That is, they wave their hands about when discussing Creation, the meaning of life, the purpose of existence and so forth. They're religious, but in a primitive sense like the Apaches. The Apaches had a vague creation myth which secularists replace with the Multiverse, repetitive Big Bangs, or whatever hip creation myth they heard on NPR last week. It doesn't have much of an effect on them other than to release them to do whatever they want, which is the key to the post-modernist belief system.

That's the key. Attacks on Christianity or Islam or Judaism are not attacks on religion itself because we are all religious. They are attacks on particular cosmology by people who want to replace it with their own, their own being essentially a retreat back in time to something closer to the creation myths of the most primitive humans.

The Great Spirit forming the world out of the foam at the bottom of her tub after washing her hair isn't substantially different from the sparkly unicorns of the Multiverse. The important thing is to get all that out of the way so you can get on with the important tasks of robbing and killing the Navajo or worshiping your crotch, whichever tickles your fancy.

Eat Your Hearts Out, Christian Rock Fans!

For her high school graduation, I'm taking my daughter and a friend to Fishfest. Headliners include the Newsboys and Toby Mac.

It's going to be awesome.

Can We Hire Enough Police?

@AskACatholicNun turned me on to this excellent, short video.


It meshes well with BDaddy's post on Gay Marriage and craft beer which contains this tidbit.

Destroying traditional pillars of culture and morality results in the need for more government control to make up for the lack of self-control in the population. This is a feature, not a bug, of the process of destroying the culture and is embraced by the left. For example, rampant sex between undergraduates on college campuses is the norm today, or so we are led to believe. While perhaps that has always happened to some extent; it was far less in degree and done with far greater discretion in times past. But since this behavior gives rise to sex under questionable circumstances, we have the California have the California State Legislature considering how to regulate sex on campus.

It's kind of what I was driving at in my snarky mock-caption of a photo of rioters in Baltimore.

The whole sexual assault prevention craze is another symptom of this problem. We did away with religion-based objective morality, but not the need for it. Now we're trying to derive that same morality from first principles when those first principles are suffused with total individual freedom.

That doesn't seem to be working out so well.

Come To Florida And Get Eaten!

That's the first thing I thought when I saw the great white shark on the specialized Florida license plate on a car in front of me. It looked like this.

I think the Florida Tourism Board ought to have a say in next year's design.

A Photo Caption You'll Never See

BDaddy and I have been speaking truth to power on Twitter lately with a pair of defenders of the dominant, secular orthodoxy. These members of the Establishment are telling us that ultimate, personal, sexual freedom is full of teh awesome. As a counter-culture, revolutionary prude, I offer you the following photo with incongruous caption.

Here, a group of married men who go to church every Sunday destroy a police car.

Yep, that's the problem alright. Too many people adhering to traditional, Christian morality.

Don't Blame Heather Gillers

... she's been honestly reporting the fiscal problems of Chicago, particularly the school district. Here's a sample.

Chicago Public Schools, already $6 billion in debt, passes $700M borrowing plan 6-0: http://t.co/VtKXcya8rc

— Heather Gillers (@hgillers) February 25, 2015

By my calculations, each man, woman and child in Chicago owes about $2500 on the school debt. The debt is about $6.7B and the population is about 2.7M. That debt, by the way, is independent of the rest of Chicago's government debt, Illinois' government debt or the Federal government debt.

I discovered Heather by searching and clicking around the Chicago Tribune's site. Her Twitter feed was easy to find and scrolling down through time, she's produced one honest report of the school finances after another.

If you think awareness of government debt would make much of a difference in the fiscal trajectory of cities, states or the nation in general, her tweets and articles should give you pause.

Glenn Reynolds had a series a while back with the theme, wealth and income are markers of behavior. I'd suggest that debt and borrowing are markers of culture.

What If Chicago Went Bankrupt And Nobody Cared?

I'm currently reading* Charles Murray's excellent book, By the People.


In it, he describes the systemic corruption of the American government that has arisen as a result of the government regulating and managing more and more of the economy. For example, if a business objects to interpretations of regulations by a part of the government, its primary recourse is to go before the regulatory agency itself. That's highly unlikely to have any effect and the fallback position is to get the intervention of elected officials. That intervention comes at the price of campaign contributions and other paybacks.

The more the government regulates and manages, the more opportunities there are for graft by elected officials, their staffs, lobbyists and the like. It's independent of political party. When everyone in Washington and the state capitals know this, they naturally seek to regulate more and more of the economy so more people can take a cut.

Chicago is going bankrupt. Over many years, they've spent more than they could afford, building up massive debts until their bonds have now been reduced to junk status. It's not racism, sexism, homophobia or greed, it's just math. Everyone knew it was coming and no one tried to stop it. Instead, they all kept grabbing all the money they could while peddling absolute rubbish to the rubes that voted for more government goodies.

The bankruptcy is going to have real consequences to real people. Retirees, with names and addresses and families and everything, are going to find themselves without income. Services to citizens will be cut so infrastructure will decay, business dealing with required regulatory agencies will find themselves delayed and much more.

At the very least, anyone who received briefings from the Chicago comptroller's office has known this was coming for years. Despite that, they all kept grabbing.

In the press, there are plenty of lapdogs of the current political overlords who continue to parrot the party line about needed services, compassion, sexism, racism, homophobia and whatever else the talking points of the day might be. I'm less clear on what they're getting out of the whole situation. Two possibilities come to my mind.

1. They are true believers in the progressive secular-religion nonsense about the benefits of an all-powerful State.
2. They desire to maintain access to elected officials who feed them stories and make the task of filling column-inches in the newspaper trivially easy.

Nowhere in any of this, outside of whatever Chicago Tea Party there might be and the poor, dimwitted, Chicago-machine-voting slobs who are now going to suffer, does anyone seem to care that the city has been looted.

* - Actually, I'm listening to it.

May Showers Bring

... a huge uptick in the San Diego percent-of-normal graph.

From now until October 1, San Diego typically gets about a third of an inch of rain. In the last two days, we've gotten more than an inch and a half. Very unusual, but very welcome.

We're now at 88% of normal.

San Diego is a coastal desert. A coastal desert with a population over 2 million. We get very little of our water locally, so while this storm was a welcome relief for the local flora and fauna, it won't have much of an impact on our water restrictions.

Maybe Pamela Geller Had A Point

From the "KT is slow on the uptake sometimes" file:

Over at Breitbart.com. there's an excellent blog post entitled, 6 Reasons Pamela Geller's Muhammad Cartoon Contest Is No Different From Selma. It's the first thing I've read on the topic that made me think that Geller was something other than an attention-seeking, narcissistic bonehead. The grabber for me was the first reason: The Oppressor Chooses the Form of Protest, Not the Protester.

Pamela didn't seek to blaspheme Islam, she blasphemed Islam because Jihadists told her, through threats of violence, that she was not permitted to do this. Had they told her she was not allowed to paint her house pink, she would have painted her house pink.

The other part that got me was this:

The 1965 Democrats and today’s Democrats are also bigots. The same CNN that protects Islam from offense by blurring the Muhammad cartoons, does not blur the Piss Christ.

Dear progressives - if you didn't want us to blaspheme Islam, maybe you should have avoiding blaspheming other religions in the first place. Whereas I laid the fault (and I still do, to some extent) at the feet of Pam Geller for organizing a blasphemy party, really, she was just playing by the rules set by the progressives in the first place when they lionized that no-talent cretin Serrano and his juvenile Piss Christ. They doubled down on it with their patronage and critical acclaim of The Book of Mormon. You made the rules, punks, we're just living by them.

I guess what I'm objecting to is this. The problem isn't Jihadists, it's the culture that thinks blasphemy is some kind of badge of honor. When this is performed at a major cultural awards event, blasphemy is no longer speaking truth to power, blasphemy is the power. Pamela Geller jumped in and joined the powerful in attacking what's left of the sub-culture that still believes in honor and respect for symbols of faith and nation.

When a conservative rebel like Geller allies herself with the forces of cultural entropy, the results will be good in the short run (publicity for the fight against Jihadists), but bad in the long run (one more voice saying that anything goes). In a way, she strengthened their hand.

Jihadists are strong because they stand for something against an American culture that stands for nothing. If we are united only in our desire for the freedom to do whatever we want, we stand for cultural chaos. They stand for something positive. We cannot rally to the flag because we've burned the flag. We can't stand for America because we've dissolved the nation by opening our borders. We can't stand for a moral code because morality is now utterly personal. They've got solid alternatives to all of that, ones their side can rally around.

Yes, Pamela Geller followed in the footsteps of great revolutionaries of freedom. Unfortunately, she allied herself with great enemies of civilization.

The Human Brain Didn't Evolve To Cope With Drugs

One of my buddies who does prison ministry was talking about an inmate he met recently. The prisoner is mid-30s with wife and kids. He was about to get out after doing his time. A two-time felon, he was terrified that he was going to fall down again and get sent in for life. Drugs were is Achilles heel, meth and crack.

Just as the human brain didn't evolve to cope with Internet porn, it didn't evolve to cope with drugs, either. For the next 40-50 years, this guy is going to have to find a way to keep out of the clutches of chemicals designed to ensnare him with a brain that has been warped to crave them.

Everyone doing their own thing and discarding objective morality in favor of ultimate personal freedom sounds good until you watch human lives thrown into the meat grinder of drugs and porn. Secular humanist theory falls apart in the face of biological reality.

Mountains Of Byzantine Regulations Aggressively Enforced Is The Price Of Freedom

We're free! At last, we're finally free of the shackles of the Old Order. No more sexism, no more theism, no more oppressive traditional family structures and their implicit moral judgment! With every day, we move closer to that Edenic state of true and total personal freedom.

Of course, as we all know, freedom isn't free. No, there's a price to be paid for freedom. We must maintain eternal vigilance lest the dark powers of Christian morality and its wretched partner, chivalry, attempt to come back.

Well, vigilance and affirmative consent rules ruthlessly enforced by the State, that is. After all, we need something to do the job of a national culture based on Judeo-Christian objective morality.

It's Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month!

And we celebrate by lumping them all together because, apparently, we can't tell them apart*!

Of course, the problem works both ways.


* - They, however, can tell each other apart. Don't believe me? Go tell a Korean that you think he's Japanese. Let me know how that goes.

The Catholic Church And Illegal Aliens

Our new bishop in San Diego, Bishop McElroy, is a Jesuit from Berkeley, so we're not going to be able to expect him to talk sense on a lot of issues.

Interesting aside: The Jesuits are the priestly order having the hardest time with vocations. That probably comes from being so open-minded that their brains have fallen out*. Having a reputation for questioning Church teaching in favor of whatever's hip at the moment doesn't help when the faithful are faithful because the Church stands as a bulwark against the idiocies of the modern world.

In any case, Bishop McElroy has spoken about the need for the Church to care for immigrants, even those here illegally. I'm in favor of a border fence, border control and repatriation of illegals. I'm in favor of an enforced, deliberate, immigration process. Having said that, I completely agree with the Jesuit from Berkeley when it comes to caring for illegal aliens.

Immigration control is a political issue. Once the speeches, blog posts and voting is over, the people have spoken. If the rest of you are stupid enough to dissolve the border and let illegals come streaming in, I've rendered all I can to Caesar and he's decided to ignore me. Now it's time to render unto God.

In the eyes of God, illegal aliens are no less valuable than I am. Illegals who come hungry to Catholic Charities, I'm happy to feed. Illegals who live in crude encampments, I'm happy to support through donations to Church charities. Illegals who have medical bills, I'm happy to pay with my tax dollars. I don't want them here at all, but if the politicians are going let them in, the question changes from one of border policy to one of Matthew 25.

‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’

And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’

Just as it is with gay marriage, unfettered sex, rampant drug use and the rest of the glories of the libertine world we live in, our job as Catholics is to speak out against it, but once that's done, we're called to clean up the mess as best we can.

It's not OK for them to be here. It's also not OK to let them live like this,

* - That, of course, is a snarky generalization. The Pope, chosen after much prayer and contemplation by cardinals who aren't all radicals, is a Jesuit. Our former, long-time Cursillo pastor was a Jesuit as well and he was about as down-to-Earth as you could get. They're not all crazy.

A San Diego Rainstorm

... gives us a tiny uptick in our percent-of-normal rainfall graph. After a little more than half an inch of rain, we went from 65% of normal to 70% for the year. Yay!

Finally! We can take long showers again and water our lawns until they drown!

Odd factoid: We had rainstorms on 1 March 2014 and 1 March 2015.

Sometimes The Simplest Questions Are Best

I was having a rare political / social discussion with a friend at work when he threw the "women only make 73% as much as men" stat at me. I said it was debunked and he wasn't sure about the whole thing. Then I asked the question that made him actually wonder about his own assumptions.

If women do the same work for 73% of the cost, why don't companies hire nothing but women?

Ah. So easy.

More Action Than A Floyd Mayweather Fight

Watch this one to the end.


Orange cat: "CUT. IT. OUT!"

England's National Health Service Runs On Profits

On Twitter, one of the sports writers from England I follow led me to a tweet I can no longer find* wherein a fellow bemoaning yesterday's Tory election victory said something like, "Well, there goes the National Health Service. It was nice knowing you!"

The response tweets were instructive. People who had good experiences weighed in - "NHS saved my eyesight!" "NHS saved my mum's life!" and so on. Then there were the anti-business responses wailing that at some time in the future, the health care system might become profitable for someone through the horrors of privatization. "Profiteers" were attacked and "business" lambasted.

After my emotional reaction subsided, I thought that the reasoned response would be to point out that the entire government runs on profits. Without someone making a profit, there are no taxes. Ergo, if the government services are good, profits are good.

I wonder what the replies would be to something like that.

* - How's that for an unsourced story?

Slouching Towards Gomorrah

... holds up rather well after 20 years. I'm listening to Robert Bork's warning about cultural decline after having read it when it was first published in 1996. I'm not too far in yet, but so far he looks fairly prescient.

Especially when you read things like this.

Pam Geller And The Progressives: A Pox On Both Their Houses

Well, Pam Geller did what she planned all along. She provided a catalyst for violence and argument. By sponsoring an anti-Islam blasphemy party, she guaranteed that there would be outrage, blame and conflict. In the end, all she did was pour more cement over everyone's opinions.

Just like Charlie Hebdo's trash publications, there was nothing substantive to her event. She was simply out to hurt people. It wasn't a positive evangelism, it was the equivalent of a schizophrenic screaming obscenities at passers-by. In the end, people died and the country was divided yet again.

The progressives and Islamic fundamentalists Pam sought to provoke learned nothing at all from the exercise. The Islamic faithful now have one more reason to feel besieged and pay a little more attention to the voices in their midst telling them how awful the West is. The progressives now have one more reason to sneer at conservatives for being knuckle-dragging, hateful morons.

You can shout "FIRST AMMENDMENT!" all you want and no one's mind is going to change. If I'm wrong, point it out. Twitter has been intolerable with hate since the Pam Geller event. Convincing people of the need for freedom of speech is a sales job and you don't make sales by publicly defiling your prospects' most treasured icons.

If you want to move public opinion and affect the way people vote, political leaders talk and the direction laws take, you're not going to do it through deliberate acts of angry blasphemy. It was a total waste of time, money and effort, cloaked in self-righteousness.

The sooner the whole thing fades away, the better.

Hummingbird Fledgling

Yesterday, while taking a walk at work, I came across this hummingbird fledgling on the sidewalk.

It couldn't get more than 2" off the ground when it tried to fly and I didn't see any parents around. The sidewalk was reasonably well traveled, so someone else would eventually come across the little guy. I called a friend who takes in raptor chicks for Project Wildlife and she recommended I take it in to the local office.

In retrospect, that might have been a mistake. While I was at the Project Wildlife office, I found that bird parents will frequently kick fledglings out of the nest to teach them to fly. They will feed their children while they are on the ground trying to work things out. In all likelihood, I had gotten in the way of the natural progression of things.

The folks at Project Wildlife took in the tiny dude and will raise him to flight (probably about a week) and then will release him near where I found him. In the end, no permanent harm was done, but I'm sure I made a couple of hummingbird parents very unhappy.

The moral of the story is that fledglings on the ground aren't always in trouble. Your best bet is to back off and watch for a while to see if the parents are around.

A Better Use For Twitter

... is to share things like this instead of screaming at each other. Enjoy!

pic.twitter.com/5RQkupOFR8

— The Cult Cat (@Elverojaguar) August 20, 2014

Is It Possible To Be A Good Chemist If You Don't Support Gay Marriage?

How about a weightlifter? A Beekeeper? Anything?

Dig this.

Aside: We've got friends who recently attended a lesbian wedding. They'd known the, err, bride (?) for years and had seen her have many boyfriends, including one particularly serious relationship that lasted for 4 years. When she announced her engagement, they were shocked to find it was to a woman. Two thoughts leaped into my mind almost immediately.

1. So much for being born gay.
2. It reeked of surrender. When they guy didn't commit, she found commitment wherever she could.

The wedding was a wacky, costumed, themed thing. Neither of the brides (?) were in any way connected to the theme, so I guess they picked it because the Star Trek uniforms were all rented out at the costume shop. As they described it, I just felt like it was a cheap mockery of the institution of marriage. There weren't going to be any kids, there wasn't any real point other than to throw a crazy party and get attention. I know, I wasn't there, I don't know the people, blah blah blah, but that's what it sounded like.

And yes, I know that hetero couples who can't conceive get married, too. But those ceremonies are a cultural nod to the primacy of the one man - one woman relationship that is the source of all human life. That's got to count for something, right?

Well, maybe not. It probably counts about as much as the whole #blacklivesmatter thing. 

We don't really care about people, we only care about being hip.

Saturday Night Open Thread

I'm getting ready for a dinner party and spent the day elsewhere so I didn't have time to blog. I've never done an open thread, in part because I don't have many commenters. With that said, have at it in the comments here. Diatribes, requests, conundrums, accusations, whatever turns you on.

Enjoy!

A Tiny Dinosaur

This fellow was resting on the sidewalk outside of our house. He let me get very close to take this photo which suggests he wasn't feeling very good. In any case, I got a great shot with the camera on my Galaxy S5 and left it large so it might be worth a click. Enjoy!

Working For A Social Networking Company

Do you think that the people who work at Twitter wake up every morning and say, "Gosh! Another day helping people yell at each other online. It's going to be a great day!"

A Party Game For Families With Dogs

The smaller Catican Guard is a Chihuahua - Cocker Spaniel mix. She is prone to frequent licking spasms and, like most dogs, her favorite tongue target is the face. The other morning, I was laying on the couch watching an EPL game and fighting her off. She'd jump up onto the end of the couch near my feet and then creep across my body until she sat on top of my chest, straining to lick my face. I'd let her lick my hand for a while and then gently pick her up and put her on the floor. The process would start again. During this hand-to-canine combat, I came up with a simple game. Here are the rules.

1. Everyone must lay in the middle of the floor, face up, with their hands at their sides.
2. The dog(s) must be loose in the room.
3. No one is allowed to move except to get up.
4. The last one to get up is the winner.

Feel free to post rule variations in the comments.

The Baltimore Riots Happen Every Day

... we just don't see them because they happen in neighborhoods we don't visit.

Here are some odds and ends that have occurred to me on the topic.

These folks live somewhere, just not near us. Image source.

• The people you see on your TV or on YouTube vandalizing and looting in Baltimore are not vampires. They do not emerge from coffins in a faraway castle whenever there's a shooting of a black man by a white cop and then return to their coffins to sleep for months once the looting is done. They are all someone's neighbors every day. Just as we only sling #blacklivesmatter around on Twitter if there's a white guy involved in a shooting, we only worry about these looters when there's a riot. It doesn't seem to occur to us that they're always out there, stealing, smashing and hurting.

• Things the rioters probably never hear: "You were out doing what?!? You just wait until your father gets home! He's going to tan your hide!" See also: tweet embedded below.

• What's it like to live amidst these people? What's it like to grow up among them? When I was, say, 8, I used to think that teenagers were demigods. Everything they did was cool and I wanted to be just like them, even more than I wanted to be an astronaut, cowboy, train engineer or French existentialist. How can we expect kids to grow up with any moral sense at all when their idols come home laughing and joking, arms full of booty? How about when their idols come home with the goodies and there are no responsible, adult men who beat some respect for property into them?

• This reminds me of the Geronimo book I blogged about yesterday. Geronimo spent years murdering and looting and then whined about how the white man didn't keep his word. I dunno, Geronimo, I'm not sure that anyone was really all that interested in keeping a treaty with a unpredictable, amoral thug. In the end, US troopers tracked him and his tribe down and mopped the floor with them. The outnumbered and outgunned Apaches did their best to make everyone mad and then were shocked when they were wiped out. There's a lesson for the Baltimore rioters here somewhere, I'm sure.

• Expecting the parents to take responsibility for their vandal-children seems to me to be the act of pure optimism and / or cultural ignorance:

.@BaltimorePolice issues statement to parents, urging them to please bring their children home amid #BaltimoreRiots. pic.twitter.com/mL97hmqdC4
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 27, 2015

Geronimo Was A Parochial Bonehead

At a friend's house for dinner this wekend, I spent some time talking to a retired Navy SEAL. During a wide-ranging discussion, he recommended I read Geronimo: His Own Story. I found it on Audible and have been devouring it greedily. There's lots to be pulled from it and no doubt it will engender several blog posts, but a couple of key points are worth mentioning here.

First off, Geronimo was a menace to everyone around him. Everyone associated with him ends up dead except him. After his tribe suffered a massacre at the hands of the Mexican army, no doubt in retaliation for something of which Geronimo was unaware, he dedicates his life to fighting and killing Mexicans. His first several forays were disasters. Almost everyone in his command is killed and they brought back nothing. His tribe was nonplussed, but he kept at it, albeit with fewer and fewer volunteers for his raids each time.

After a while, he had some success, mostly against mule trains and villagers. Here's one such described in his own words.

Early the next summer (1866) I took thirty mounted warriors and invaded Mexican territory. We went south through Chihuahua as far as Santa Cruz, Sonora, then crossed over the Sierra Madre Mountains, following the river course at the south end of the range. We kept on westward from the Sierra Madre Mountains to the Sierra de Sahuripa Mountains, and followed that range northward. We collected all the horses, mules, and cattle we wanted, and drove them northward through Sonora into Arizona. Mexicans saw us at many times and in many places, but they did not attack us at any time, nor did any troops attempt to follow us. When we arrived at our homes we gave presents to all, and the tribe feasted and danced. During this raid we had killed about fifty Mexicans.

Along with the booty came Mexican troops. Several times they followed him back to his camp and attacked, but the Apaches were too much for the Mexican army and managed to drive them off each time. At no time did Geronimo figure out that by constantly raiding Mexico, he was getting everyone ticked off at him. He had no comprehension of a larger Mexican government or the size of the Mexican population. He saw each town as its own tribe and the concept of Mexico as a nation that went from the border to the Yucatan was beyond him.

His soldiers fought with bows and arrows and spears. The Mexicans had guns, which the Apaches captured and used until the ammunition would run out. Superior technology and improving technology didn't seem to register with the Apaches. Year after year, they kept hitting the Mexican hornet's nest as hard as they could.

In the field, the Mexicans were no match for the Apaches. However, because Geronimo couldn't comprehend the notion of a larger government, he suffered a major defeat when he made a treaty with a Mexican village, thinking that would protect him from Mexican soldiers. The villagers gave the Indians tequila, got them drunk, whereupon the Mexican army showed up and shot his band of raiders to pieces.

Geronimo had no concept of morality outside of his own. It was perfectly honorable to raid and steal and murder as long as it was done the right way. He had no problem wiping out whole farmsteads if they resisted when he and his goons showed up to rob the place. When it happened to him under different circumstances, he was aghast and complained of treachery.

The reader has a major advantage over the author when reading this book. The Apache's world was tiny in all respects. They had no idea how big the United States and Mexico were in geography or population. They never understood anyone else's motivations nor did it occur to them that there could be other motivations. Technology was a given, not something developed by Man, continually advancing. Rather than understand it, they made use of simple things they could steal like guns, but left everything else.

Geronimo's end and the Apaches' end, for that matter, were utterly predictable. American and Mexican settlers finally had enough of the attacks and rather than engage in Indian-style warfare with endless tit-for-tat raids and pillaging, they decided to simply wipe them out.

Much like How I Found Livingstone In Africa, Geronimo's book leaves you with a much deeper sense of history than what our kids are learning in school these days with their perpetual repetitions of White Man Bad, Everyone Else Victim. There's a lot to be said for reading books by the people who lived at the time instead of distillations of them by people who want you to think a certain way.

This one is definitely going in the kids' reading pile.

To Geronimo, Mexico was a couple of villages near the border.

Sanguine, Velvet Ocean Waves

At least that's what I thought when I saw this lovely rose in my mother's garden. I left it quite large, so it might be worth a click. Enjoy!

It's Not Theology But Biology That Dooms Marriage Equality

... with Christians and Catholics in particular.

Since the time of St. Thomas Aquinas, Catholicism has reconciled science and theology. That reconciliation is based upon a few simple precepts.

First, God does not create contradictions. Second, God has created a rational world, one that we can work out for ourselves through logical thought. This leads to the third - if established science conflicts with theology, then our understanding of theology must be revised.

In the case of marriage, not only do science and theology agree, they thoroughly reinforce each other. Biology is pretty clear on how babies are made. They come from one man and one woman. Since people are paramount in the faith, that relationship must be a special one. To say that two men or two women or two men, three women and eight parakeets are equal to one man and one woman, you have to dismiss God-given biology. In essence, you have to say that God was mistaken when He decided that all human life would come from that one relationship.

As far as I'm concerned, if the populace votes to redefine marriage, then that's the way it goes. If Bob and John in San Francisco get hitched and are recognized by the government as married, that's their issue. However, if the government somehow forces me to recognize all marriages and all relationships as equal, it's violating my first amendment rights to freedom of religion. It is forcing me to deny the biological facts given to us by God. There's no squaring that circle at all.

Just something to ponder as the weeks go by and more and more Christians end up in the tumbrel, carted off to the guillotine for not being sufficiently enlightened.

Your Roman Numeral Joke For The Day

A Roman walks into a bar, holds up two fingers, and says “Five beers please!”

You're welcome.

Bonus joke:

A Buddhist monk approaches a burger foodtruck and says, “Make me one with everything.”

The monk pays with a $20 bill, which the vendor takes, puts in his cash box, and closes the lid. “Where’s my change?” the monk asks.

The vendor replies, “Change comes from within.”

Moral Choices

President Obama's criticism of Christians who still mistakenly cling to a definition of marriage based on that discredited superstition known as biology was a bit of a turning point for me. I see the world in a different way now.

Driving over to Mike Hess Brewing in North Park to hook up with @deanriehm yesterday, I passed a hookah lounge / smoke shop / adult book store. I also passed a protestant church. I thought, as I do these days, that the adult book store was above reproach while the church undoubtedly was a gathering place of people who required severe re-education.

We want more people in adult book stores and fewer people in church. Amazing.

Lizard

Taking a walk at lunch the other day, I came across this little fellow sunning himself on the sidewalk. He let me walk right past him and he barely moved. I got out my phone, turned on the camera and went back to take a photo. I don't know why I like it, but I do.

Odd thought: I can't recall seeing a resting lizard with its tail straight out. They're always curved. I wonder if lizards are right-tailed and left-tailed with the dominant side being the direction of curve they most often choose.

36 Years Is A Long Time When You're 16

... especially if you spend those 36 years in prison.

One of my Cursillo buddies* who's active in the prison ministry told me about an inmate who is about to be released from prison. The guy is 52 and has spent the last 36 years behind bars. At a recent meeting of their Kairos group, he told my friend that when he heard the authorities had decided to release him, he couldn't stop crying. He'd been in prison from age 16 to 52. Unreal.

When I was 16, I had a paper route. I was in high school and had an innocent crush on a little cutie named Louise. When my friends and I got out of school, we'd go to one of our houses and watch Monkees reruns and do goofy things. It's simply mind-boggling to think that if I had been that guy, I'd have gone from that point to age 52 in jail.

Say a prayer or two for the fellow. I can't imagine how he's going to be able to adjust to life as a free man. It's for people like him that some of my Cursillo friends started Rise Up Industries.

* - Cursillo is a Catholic group whose primary aim is to hoard wedding cakes and only give them out to people who meet our strict, judgmental standards.

You Know It's Bad When Italy's Finance Minister Is Scoring On You

A surprise to no one outside of the Ivy League geniuses* at the highest levels of our government and their fellow fascist / socialist buddies in Europe, Greece is about to finally go over the fiscal cliff.

Look, the numbers are going up! Yay! Oh, wait. That's the interest they're paying on their ginormous debt. Uh oh.
Source.

For those unfamiliar with the Greek situation: The Greeks spent lots of money on social programs because they were compassionate. Then they regulated the heck out of their economy because if they didn't strangle private enterprise, it might make undue profits. Finally, they handed out lots and lots of government jobs because that's just what a caring, 21st Century society does. Being good, little post-modernists, they didn't worry about actually creating anything or earning their benefits or stuff like that. That's racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and just plain mean.

So the Greeks borrowed and borrowed and borrowed. Every time it looked like they were going to go bankrupt, the Euros found a new way to slip them more money. Lots and lots of meetings were held in which Ivy League types (or Euro equivalents) in expensive suits talked with each other about credit extensions, quantitative easing, debt restructuring and economic reforms. No money was ever actually paid back. More borrowing took place.

Now we're at the point where even the dimmest Peronist fascist is starting to recognize that the Greeks are never going to be able to pay their debts and icky words from the Real World like default, bankruptcy and liquidation are starting to be used about Greece. (Those are words a good post-modernist should never have to hear without a ton of Trigger Warnings.)

To top it all off, the finance minister from Europe's fiscal clown car country, Italy, decided to take to the airwaves to say this.

Italy’s finance minister on Thursday warned that Greece’s worsening cash crisis could push the country into an accidental exit from the eurozone as time runs out for Athens to reach a financing deal.

“Negotiations are difficult, liquidity is getting short, so under pressure it’s more likely that an accident can happen,” the finance minister, Pier Carlo Padoan, said in an interview.

That's game over right there. When the Italians start dunking on you over your debt, you're finished.

* - Said geniuses are too busy right now worrying about grown men having access to the widest possible array of cakes to sweat trivial things like the international banking system blowing up.

Is There A Difference Between a 5-bladed Razor and a 2-Bladed One?

... besides price?

I've got a Gilette Fusion Pro Glide Homotopic Mapping Triceratops Hegemonic 5-Bladed Razor*. The cartridges for it are expensive, something like $4-5 or so a pop. Recently, I also bought a bag of cheap, disposable 2-bladed razors to do a  comparison. Here's my take so far.

First off, the whole reason we men shave is so that daddy can get some sugar. We want to be smooth and soft, not raspy and scratchy. However, we shave in the morning, not at night, so by the time the smoothness is required, the beard has partially grown back. No matter which razor we use, there's going to be a little stubble. From my experience, a new, 5-bladed razor gives a slightly better shave, so by 9 PM, the stubble is a 1.3 on the Wife Owie Scale instead of the 1.8 with a new, 2-bladed one.

Shaving hurts when the blades get dull. More accurately, it hurts when the front blade gets dull. The thing then pulls on the whiskers instead of slicing them off cleanly like Robespierre on a good day. The front blade has no idea how many blades are behind it. Therefore, the front blades in both the Super Atomic Storm Chaser 5-Blade Razor will dull just as fast as the ones in the Goodwill Thrift Store Bargain Bin 2-Blade Razor. No difference there.

If the front blade's dull, the razors don't give nearly as close a shave. For one thing, you stop shaving sooner, leaving some stubble behind because you're tired of getting your whiskers yanked. However, because the Superstar Pro Glide 5-Blade Razor cartridges cost and arm and a leg, you'll let the dull ones go a few days longer than you will the Homeless Harry 2-Bladed ones. At that point, the 2-bladed razor gives a better shave than the 5-bladed ones.

Conclusion: 2-bladed razors are better. They cost less, give almost the same shave when both are new and will be replaced sooner than the more expensive 5-bladed ones.

* - Well, I think it's called something like that. The name's really impressive and it's got 5 blades.

Always Shop The Cheapest Store First

I'm throwing a Jamaican-themed bash for some of my Cursillo brothers tonight, so yesterday I was running hither and yon (mostly hither), picking up ingredients. Among many other stops, I drove to K'nB to pick up some good Caribbean rum. Right next door was Windmill Farms, a specialty grocery store, akin to Whole Foods and Sprouts.

I needed some Chayote for a pickle dressing and since I've never bought it before, I wasn't sure if the Albertsons near my house (my planned last stop) would carry it. I went into Windmill Farms and before you knew it, I was picking up a lot of the fruits and vegetables on my list, fearing Albertsons wouldn't have them or would have unripe ones.

Big mistake. Not only did Albertsons have them all, they had them at much lower prices. For example, I bought mangoes at 2 for $4 at Windmill Farms, only to find them at Albertsons at 2 for $1. Argh! That was almost $10 thrown away right there.

If you shop at the cheap place first, you guarantee spending the least amount. If, by chance, they have everything you need, you won't end up having to go anywhere else. If I was doing it again, I'd have gone in this order:

1. Costco
2. Albertsons
3. Puerto Rican Specialty Market
4. K'nB

I would have saved a lot of time and money right there.

Yellow With Bee

Trap Queen Pizza

In researching the current top hip hop songs, I came across the one below. I intended to compare and contrast it with the death-threat-suffering folks of Memories Pizza in Indiana who said they wouldn't cater a gay wedding (as if anyone would ever ask a pizza joint to cater their wedding).

The problem with that comparison is that it's not apt. The magnitudes are all wrong. The video below has picked up more than 43,000,000 views in a month or two. Memories Pizza probably doesn't serve more than 100 people a night. 200 tops, if it's crazy busy.

The video below is a marker of society. Memories Pizza is just some couple trying to make a living running a little restaurant. It's not an apples and oranges comparison, it's a comparison of the annual apple harvest of the state of Washington vs. a single orange.

In any case, watch the video and ask yourself what it says about the country when the thing has 43,000,000+ hits.

Q: When Is It OK For Madmen Bent On Destroying You To Have Nuclear Weapons?

A: When 10 years have passed.

That seems to be our current attitude towards Iran. Success is defined as slowing down their progress towards the Bomb. I don't get it. 10 years might as well be tomorrow. In fact, 9 years and 364 days from now, it will be tomorrow. About that time, our grandchildren will be in grade school.

And it's OK to have my grandchildren blasted into ash on their way to Ms. McGillicuddy's English class by a pack of apocalyptic loons because ... what?

An Irrational Sum

I read somewhere that Hillary's presidential campaign spending goal is on the order of $2.5B. That boggles my mind. Just what do you campaign on at that point? How do you even attempt to portray yourself as defending the Little Guy? To get to $2.5B, you've got to be raising huge amounts of money from insanely wealthy donors.

Second, if you're raising that kind of cash after picking up lots of $200K to $300K speaking fees for cookie-cutter speeches, how can you campaign as someone who's in touch with ordinary Americans?

The whole thing is rife with cynicism.

Image Of The Day

A friend shared this one at work. I loved it. Enjoy!

I'd Blog Today, But

... I just got back from a Cursillo Weekend and I'm totally beat and all I want to do is drink some good beer, hang out with a beautiful woman and watch the Crystal Palace - Sunderland game.

Oh, wait...

Surround Yourself With Good People

... the kind you want to imitate.

I'm working the men's retreat weekend again and it's been a lovely experience so far. Possibly my favorite one ever. I said that 6 months ago on the last one, so who knows, I'll probably be saying it again 6 months from now.

I'm working in the kitchen this time, mostly doing dishes. I'm learning professional cooking techniques from the chefs and restaurant owners who are also working the weekend. Lots of jokes, lots of great food, excellent meditations, all while we serve the candidates - men here for their first Cursillo weekend.

Chatting yesterday with my roommate, we talked about our lives before we started this spiritual journey. We had friends, but in many cases, they weren't helping us lead happier lives. Some of us drank too much, some slept around, some pursued money and status. We chased pleasure, but didn't find the happiness we have now.

One of the keys has been surrounding ourselves with Godly men. Up here with over a hundred guys, we talk about the things that affect every guy - wives, kids, jobs, money, pleasures - but we're all helping each other be better Christians so we can adore our wives, support our children and enjoy those pleasures the way God wants us to.

One of the guys talked about how he used to discuss women with his old friends. It was all about getting laid without love or commitment. He saw how empty his life was, but it wasn't until he had friends like the ones on this retreat that he saw how rich and beautiful life could be.

I pray you have or find friends like this.

Be Careful What You Wish For

... you might not like it when you get it.

With Christians facing death without succor in other countries and under legal (and worse) attack here, it's worth noting what happened to a certain American community that used to live in a far more Christian way than any American communities do now.

Back in the day, they produced art like this.

Now they produce music praising prostitution, drugs and raw greed. If that's too subtle for you, try this one. Both are top 10 hits right now.

Art is an indicator of the culture and of society as well. Before we go and do our best to destroy orthodox, American Christianity, we might want to ask what will replace it a few generations from now.

Tweet Of The Day

Apple's Tim Cook would demand LGBT rights in Saudi Arabia, but then he'd be dead Rob Lowe watching cable. Not alive Rob Lowe with DirecTV.
— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) April 9, 2015

Plus, a bonus tweet!

We need to fix this: the largest mental health treatment facility in Texas today is the Harris County Jail. #socialjustice #mentalillness
— Gratia Plena (@DrKBucks) April 9, 2015

Mental Illness And Civil Rights, Part II

In yesterday's post on this same topic, Tim left a typically well-considered comment with this tidbit about caring for the mentally ill homeless.

Do we have them live in situations where they have some freedom of movement, but people are there to supervise them and help them as needed? That might be best, but that sort of thing is labor-intensive and crazily expensive (basically the same situation as a nursing home or assisted living, which costs around $200/day), so who's going to pay for it?

Allow me to share a graphic that partially answers this question.

Our prison population, dominated by people from non-traditional families, has increased by a factor of 7 since the 1950s.

One of the by-products of our destruction of the traditional family is an immense increase in very expensive social pathologies. It's not just prison, it's lost income from uneducated children, drug-addicted adults, psychologically shattered abuse victims (most come from mom's live-in boyfriend, almost none from married, biological fathers) and on and on. We've worshipped sexual freedom until it impoverished us. The scoreboard doesn't lie.

If you cut that prison population in half, say, and said that each mentally ill homeless person cost four times as much to house a prisoner, you'd have the resources to care for 100,000 of them. Pick the 50 largest cities and pull 2,000 mentally ill people off the streets in each one and you'd make a huge dent.

What's never spoken in this crazed mob action against the bigoted Christians who want to keep cake from the mouths of innocent gays is what we've done to ourselves through a steady string of attacks on the traditional family. All family constructs aren't equal, not no way not no how. The fewer traditional families you have, the more opportunities you sacrifice. Caring for the homeless is one such.

You can't have it all. We've chosen to be libertines.

Mental Illness And Civil Rights

Today was my Triduum Tuesday*. Adoration, morning Mass and then grouping with my Cursillo buddies. At Mass, I saw a lovely young woman, blond, in her 20s and slightly disheveled at the back of the church. She had an unrolled sleeping bag and a bottle of water. I sat near her, thinking I could help her out at the end of Mass with whatever I had in my wallet.

Halfway through Mass, she started causing a scene. I asked her what was wrong and she told me the woman in front of her was making fun of her. It was a middle-aged Hispanic woman who looked shocked and confused at the accusation. The girl took her stuff and left and the woman and I spoke. She told me she kept things in the car - snacks, water, information about homeless shelters - for people like this girl. Neither of us could figure out what was going on.

The girl came back in and loudly accused the woman of laughing at her. The girl then left and we could hear her shouting outside the church that she was going to kill the woman for laughing at her. She was clearly delusional. Schizophrenic, perhaps? You could hear her ranting all through the rest of Mass.

A friend and I walked the woman out of church to her car where she was again confronted by the disturbed girl. We kept them apart and the woman drove away. The girl continued to rant and I noticed her right arm was missing from the elbow on down.

There's not much an untrained citizen can do for such people. You pray for them and offer them assistance if they're sane, but in this case, all you could do is make sure she didn't get herself in trouble by hurting herself, something or someone.

I guess I don't understand how important cake is. It just seems to me like the top civil rights issue of the day isn't whether or not two grown men have access to the widest possible array of cakes. I'd suggest that mentally ill people living on the streets until they die is slightly higher on the scale of civil rights issues. Dittos for the 685,000 black babies lost to abortion this year and the 460,000 more born to unwed mothers.

Then again, I was never a big fan of cake.

Maybe it's because I don't have much of a sweet tooth.

* - My wife thinks it should be Trifecta Tuesday, but I prefer Triduum. I then quoted her this scene. "I made it, I can call it what I want!"

Link of the Day

I thought this was awesome. It's a perfect fit to what my daughter has experienced in her public high school. Our government has created a generation of young people aching to find an injustice to thwart. It doesn't matter if the injustice is real, so long as they can attack the "bigots" they've longed to find.

Why do so many young adults paint absurd caricatures of Christians who request government protection of their religious freedoms, arguing their true goal is to ban gay men from sitting at the local lunch counter? Why do they spread falsehoods about legislation, insisting that bills like the one recently signed by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence will unleash a Republican-led Jim Crow revival aimed at the LGBT community? Why do so many people, Gen Xers and younger, invent a monster of anti-gay bigotry and keep screaming the monster is real despite a mountain of contrary facts standing before them?

The answer is “social studies.” My generation engages in straw men, misinformation, and lies because, in every year of social studies class, we studied the civil-rights movement not as history, but as hagiography. We didn’t just learn what events happened on American soil, we were encouraged to mimic the segregation-defeating holy ones and merit for ourselves a place alongside them in glory. Combining that admonition with our general aversion to hard work, we concluded that the only thing necessary to be as righteous as the saints who fought racial injustice was to decry an injustice that no one else was. And we became so desperate to find that injustice, we lost our minds in the process.

Read the whole thing.

He Is Risen!

I've used this image and link before on Easter, but I love it so here it is again.

This image comes from a beautiful resurrection story.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Purple-Pink

... with Bonus Bug!

I left this image fairly large, so it might be worth a click. Enjoy!

So, How's That Whole Kristallnacht Thing Going?

Unreal.

Memories Pizza was forced to close because of death threats the business received in response to its owners' statements regarding RFRA and service to gay customers (they said they would serve anyone but could not in good conscience cater a gay wedding)...The owners of Memories Pizza, the O'Connor family, did not willingly seek out controversy, deny service to a gay person or couple, or even go out on a limb to suggest that they would. No, they merely responded to a question from Alyssa Marino, a local reporter for ABC 57 News who had come to their shop in search of a story.

Raus hier, Christen!

Update:

Eugene Robinson, ever the willing lapdog of race- and gender-based fascism*, has penned a lovely piece of propaganda literature rallying the faithful. It's called, Pizza With a Side of Hate. It could just as well have been entitled, Einige Gedanken sind verboten.

Artist's conception of Eugene Robinson.

* - I would argue that his pieces sound best in their original German.

This Is Ridiculous

Oh please. A tyrannosaurus would never choose an F-14. An A-10 Warthog, maybe, but never an F-14.

How To Make Sure You've Got The Ingredients You Need

Here's a great idea I came up with so recently that I haven't had time to implement it.

We've got a couple dozen favorite recipes. We've got a cabinet full of spices, so we don't have to worry about those. What I frequently forget, however, are the main ingredients for the recipes. If I want to make Gulf Fish Eugenie, for example, I can't remember if it takes shallots or not.

The solution is simple. Create a Google document for your recipes. Go through your favorites and record only those main ingredients. That way, when you stop at the store on the way home, you know exactly what you need for any one of dozens of great dinners just by looking at the document on your smart phone. No muss, no fuss, no guessing!