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!

A Little Bit On Leviticus

An anon commenter on a previous post tried to ensnare me with a snippet of scripture from Leviticus, assuming that I had to take it literally. Apparently, the passage said we all needed to buy insurance from State Farm, devour ten pimentos a day or wear pink on Thursdays, I can't remember which. I replied that as a Christian, Leviticus didn't really affect me.

In the Acts of the Apostles, there's a relevant passage about converting the Gentiles (non-Jewish people). James has this to say:

It is my judgment, therefore, that we ought to stop troubling the Gentiles who turn to God, but tell them by letter to avoid pollution from idols, unlawful marriage, the meat of strangled animals, and blood.

All of the legalisms of Judaism are replaced by a few, simple rules* so that the Church can concentrate on what's important. Had they not done this, they would have first had to convert the Gentiles to Judaism and then from there to Christianity. Judaism would have been the undergraduate degree and Christianity the graduate degree. Clearly, that's not what they did, that's not what we do and not what we preach.

Ergo, the Old Testament verses flung thither and yon are not the snares some make them out to be.

* - We don't worry so much about strangled animals or blood any more.

From The Spam Mailbag

One of my email accounts is quite old and has been splattered across the Interweb Tubes. It gives me endless hours of fun (?) reviewing emails with subject lines like these. Enjoy.

Grow your own bananas for pennies. Is this safe for work?

Create an email masterpiece. Email and masterpiece aren't two words that can go together in the same sentence. I'm pretty sure the rules of English grammar forbid it.

Don't look away from the road again. Maps are overrated.

Are you tired of flimsy food storage containers? Not since I started using ammunition boxes from the Marine Corps!

Discover the 3 simple secrets that complete the Law of Attraction. Lots of money, a cute rumpus and lots more money.

Blow out sale on printer ink. An ink blowout? Sounds wretched. I'll pass.

Do this every morning with coconut oil. We already do. ;-)

Let us help protect your family. Guido and Nunzio will be by later today to collect the monthly premium.

Master self protection in 3 minutes. Use both hands and squeeze the trigger, don't pull. Also, buy a Bengal tiger as a pet.

Walk-in bathtubs are designed for comfort and safety. But they're not as much fun as two-person showers.

Instant mind control. Instant mind control.

Mom turns $97 into $7397. By adding a 7 and a 3 to the beginning of the numbers.

We get rid of your unwanted timeshare!

The Mob Is In The Streets

So Indiana seems to have passed some law protecting what should have been protected all along by the constitution - freedom of religion. Apparently, it means that a baker who doesn't think two guys who live together should be called man and wife can refuse to make them a wedding cake. A firestorm of unidentifiable size has come from this.

For the life of me, I can't figure out what the big deal is here. Why can't Ted and Bob just go to another baker? Since gay marriage is as often as not ratified by judges over the will of the people, why can't some of those people live the way they want to live without further interference from the courts? Wasn't that the whole idea - the rest of us, no mater how much we vote or how we word our state constitutional amendments - couldn't tell Ted and Bob what does and doesn't constitute a marriage? If Ted and Bob are free to choose the definition of marriage for themselves, why aren't the rest of us?

Further, up until about ten years ago, none of this was in question. Ted and Bob couldn't get married anywhere and that was that. Why all the screaming about some of us not moving at the same speed as the libertines? Where's the understanding and compassion for those who doubt the wisdom of declaring all family structures equal?

This isn't rational or legal, it's simply a rioting mob, convinced that it's engaged in a righteous crusade. Since the mob has the entertainment industry, tech tycoons and academia on its side, it seems much larger than it really is. From the polls I've seen, the gay marriage question isn't a landslide in either direction, but most of the noise is coming from the side of the rioters.

I suspect this latest libertine, all-families-are-equal rage-fest will end the way most riots end.

Lots of things smashed to bits and no reflection on the consequences 10-20 years from now.

Blue Skies

... and pink flowers. I left it big, so it might be worth a click. Enjoy!

Central Banks Buying Stocks

The Bank of Japan (BoJ) has decided that printing money and buying every bond issued by the Japanese government isn't enough. Now it needs to print money and buy Japanese stocks. I don't have link in front of me, but according to a story in the Wall Street Journal, the BoJ is going to buy $3T Yen worth of Nikkei 225 stock funds this year. Let's use the US as a comparison to see what effect this will have on the market.

$3T Yen is $30B. The Japanese economy is 1/4 our size, so that's the same as the Fed buying $120B worth of, say, S&P 500 stocks. The S&P 500 daily volume is on the order of $94B. $120B of investment in a year would be buying $1B of stock every 3 days. Taking account of weekends, if you bought S&P 500, you'd bump $94B to $95B every other market trading day. That doesn't sound like it would have much of an effect on the market. It might not be a good thing for a central bank to have billions of dollars in volatile assets in its portfolio, but that's another story.

You Go To War With You Army You've Got

... and in our case, it's the Iranian Army in Iraq and ISIS allies in Yemen.

That's the whole problem with not having boots on the ground. You don't get a say in what happens on the ground unless it's blowing things up. You can't capture, hold and pacify territory with an F-16. Consequently, in Iraq, we're providing air support for whoever is willing to take on ISIS. That turns out to be Iran. If it turns out that we don't like the results once the whole thing is over and Iran has annexed all or most of Iraq, what do we do then?

Be all that you can be in the (Iranian) Army!

Update: I might have been too harsh. The structure of our alliances is actually quite sensible.

Finally, a simple chart of friends and foes in the Middle East. pic.twitter.com/8tQVpOeVwj

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) March 26, 2015

Getting Out Of Prison

... you're given back whatever you came in with and are given a trolley ticket so you get away from the front door of the jail. At least that's how it works here in San Diego. I've got friends in the prison ministry who talk about inmates who are about to get out and want to escape the ghetto life.

Escaping is really hard if you have no contacts other than your old friends and you've got no money to get away. I've met some of the recently released inmates while working at Catholic Charities where they've come in for food, but it wasn't until I heard the stories from my friends that I understood how hard it is for these poor souls to get on the right track.

Other friends have started a business called Rise Up Industries designed to help ex-cons and gang members go straight. Here's a little more about Rise Up.

And To Think These Are The Same People That Make Lamborghinis

A Fiat 500 Clown Car.

All For One!

... and that one is our Maximum Leader!

Whatever's in her dishes are hers. Whatever's in the Catican Guards' dishes are hers, too.

Tax Cuts Are Irrelevant

Arguing politics on Facebook is usually a very bad idea, but I have one old friend who is an avowed socialist (probably more of a Peronist fascist in reality) with whom I engage. He recently posted some twaddle by Krugman about tax cuts for the wealthy and blah blah blah. I responded with this.

Guys, tax cuts are nothing compared to interest rates when it comes to enriching the wealthy. The Fed is holding rates low, allowing the 1% to borrow $$ at trivial rates and invest in the market where they make plenty. Borrow at 1%, invest at 10%. It's free money for wealthy people. Tax cuts may bring them a few million, but the low rates bring them tens or hundreds of millions.

The Fed has to keep rates low because the government has so much debt that they can't service it if rates were at historic levels, say 5% or so for long-term debt. If the government had to pay 5% on our treasuries, it would blow multi-hundred-billion-dollar holes in the budget. We've spent ourselves into a corner and now have no choice but to follow economic policies that serve the ultra-rich.

Hilariously, it's the fascist economics of people like Reich and Krugman that got us here. No surprise there as this is where fascist economics always leads. The government grows and grows and the wealthy and powerful take advantage of it. Then the lapdogs of the ultra-rich like Reich and Krugman weave fairy tales about how the massive government that they support (at great personal profit) is going to protect you, the little guy, so you keep voting the right way.

It reminded me of The Rise and Fall of Bear Stearns about which I previously said this.

Throughout the book, Greenberg proudly talks about his trading strategies. It's all about avoiding losses so he can maximize profits. He rarely talks about his investments in real terms. That is, the investments are just financial transactions where he scrapes off his fee, they aren't vehicles for helping companies build homes, factories, or consumer goods. It's all just a pile of poker chips and he'll dump you as fast as he picked you up.

Alan Greenberg, the author of that hideous tome, never sweats things as trivial as tax cuts. Making gobs and gobs of money is all about interest rates, leveraging and rates of return.

While they mattered in the past when government wasn't the leviathan it is today, right now, tax cuts and tax increases are just a ruse to keep voters in line while the government and the ultra-rich loot our children. That's true from Japan to Germany to France to the US as we've all borrowed and spent our way into having to do what makes the Alan Greenbergs of the world rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

Yellow Flowers And Camera Quality

Over at Tim's excellent blog, I mentioned that the camera on my Galaxy S5 phone has, in some ways, surpassed my Nikon D60 artillery piece. Yesterday, I was visiting my parents where my mom's typically outstanding garden had yielded these beauties.

I left this quite large, so I think it's worth a click. Enjoy!

While the S5's camera gives more pixels in its shots, there's no question that the focusing, zoom and white balance on the Nikon are vastly superior. I took about 20 photos of my mom's flowers and many of them suffered from incorrect focal length or were overexposed.

The solution, of course, is to buy a new Nikon.