Category: Blithe Spirit

Fire, he said, and they ran for the exits . . .

The crowded theater where it’s a sin to yell “fire” has become the masses who fear fear itself in the form of falsely alarming medical reports:

Almost 8,000 cases of pertussis, better known as whooping cough, have been reported to California’s Public Health Department so far this year. More than 250 patients have been hospitalized, nearly all of them infants and young children, and 58 have required intensive care. Why is this preventable respiratory infection making a comeback? In no small part thanks to low vaccination rates, as a story earlier this month in the Hollywood Reporter pointed out.

The conversation about vaccination has changed. In the 1990s, when new vaccines were introduced, the news media were obsessed with the notion that vaccines might be doing more harm than good. The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine might cause autism, we were told. Thimerosal, an ethyl-mercury containing preservative in some vaccines, might cause developmental delays. Too many vaccines given too soon, the stories went, might overwhelm a child’s immune system.

Then those stories disappeared. One reason was that study after study showed that these concerns were ill-founded. Another was that the famous 1998 report claiming to show a link between vaccinations and autism was retracted by The Lancet, the medical journal that had published it. The study was not only spectacularly wrong, as more than a dozen studies have shown, but also fraudulent. The author, British surgeon Andrew Wakefield, has since been stripped of his medical license

Etc. Another panic, another bad result.

Next thing, we’ll hear about the seas rising and engulfing New York.

Why Your Plan Was Cancelled: Health Insurance and Obamacare video – Illinois Review

A certain # of plans will be cancelled because they don’t fit into ACA categories, which change every year. This is bureaucratic nonsense gone wild.

There’s a bizarre reason why millions of Americans saw their health plans cancelled in 2013 and, as explained in a new video featuring Robert Graboyes of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, millions more will lose their plans in years to come.

“Permanent turmoil.” Welcome to the world of central planning.

“Liberal” hijacked, what to call a free society?

Hayek racked his brain:

“In the United States, where it has become almost impossible to use “liberal” in the sense in which I have used it, the term “libertarian” has been used instead. It may be the answer; but for my part I find it singularly unattractive.

For my taste it carries too much the flavor of a manufactured term and of a substitute. What I should want is a word which describes the party of life, the party that favors free growth and spontaneous evolution. But I have racked my brain unsuccessfully to find a descriptive term which commends itself.”

— Friedrich August von Hayek
(1899-1992), Nobel Laureate of Economic Sciences 1974
Source: “Why I Am Not a Conservative,” postcript to The Constitution of Liberty [1960] (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1972)

Walmart Banking — Free market working for low-income people

Only in America, where freedom works:

The free market caters to people at the bottom. The dollar stores do. Walmart does. They make high quality products and services available to people who have less money. The name of this game has always been the same: price competition. In four words: Save money. Live better.

Free checking, etc. Competition does it, not gummint..

Read about it at Tea Party Economist, who got it from the New Yawk Times.

(News Alert again, where the elite meet to learn about spreading the wealth around the old-fashioned way, by creating it.)

Let’s hear it for the new Chicago archbishop, the good and (for now) the merely not so good . . .

A Spokane supporter of Chicago’s incoming archbishop:

“This guy is not lukewarm about anything,” said Rob McCann, executive director of the local Catholic Charities, the diocese’s social ministry arm. “He’s a guy that doesn’t shy from a fight, and that’s exactly what the Catholic Church needs.”

He treads lightly where gummint is concerned, however, endorsing ObamaCare no matter what and shying away from at least one major social problem:

He launched an effort to enroll thousands of eastern Washington’s poor in health care under the Affordable Care Act, despite the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ opposition to the law’s contraception mandate.

And, shortly after arriving in Spokane, he would not endorse curbside vigils outside abortion clinics, which drew the ire of local opponents of abortion rights.

On the other hand, he knows how to run things:

From the beginning, Cupich focused on untangling the legal mess [remaining from
bankruptcy and other sex-abuse-related issued], according to some pastors within the diocese, who praised his shrewd administrative skills.

At the same time, those within the diocese said his rigorous work ethic drove various outreach efforts that helped rally the congregation.

All in all, what with programmatic and bully-pulpit injections of new life into parish school financing and outreach, including to migrant farm workers,

“His legacy is the momentum from a time of darkness to a time of great hope and enthusiasm, in just four years,” McCann said. “And in the cycle of the Catholic Church, where everything moves at prehistoric speeds, that’s amazing.”

Like Pope Francis, he’s a house-cleaner:

“He doesn’t believe in this privileged clerical class that can get by with whatever because they’re priests, bishops or deacons or chancery officials,” [Rev. Mike] Savelesky [vicar general for
internal matters] said. “He expects high personal integrity.”

As for anti-abortion vigils, he took a conservative position, temperamentally and logistically, endorsing “an education model that asked priests to ‘create new openings for learning and reduce obstacles.'” A sort of make-as-few-waves-as possible pragmatism strategy.

Which means he’s going to talk about it and preach about it, etc.? Old openings not working? What are some new ones? How reduce obstacles?

Finally, from this news conference watcher Saturday morning: The incoming archbishop did very well. Showed he will make good use of the television and radio pulpit which he does not directly control.

(Card. George did well too, btw, neatly reiterating to Jay Levine, who had asked him how he felt, that the question is what he thought. How so-and-so felt being in the category of “Otherwise, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”)

Finally finally, is it possible that Abp Cupich will address the state of the world, that is, the Catholic New World newspaper, which in my opinion can use an injection or two . . .

Your classic Dem, Lilly of Oak Park and elsewhere in gerrymandered district

She’s Mama Santa Claus, taxing, spending, loosening restrictions for constituents, adding them for employers, smiling all the while.

There have been updates to your [Vote
Smart] tracked items. Below are changes you may be interested in.

Camille Lilly voted Yea(Concurrence Vote) on HB 105 – Authorizes Election Day Voter Registration – Thu, Sep 18 at 09:00:19
Camille Lilly voted Co-sponsor(Introduced) on SB 741 – Expands Medicaid Services – Thu, Sep 18 at 09:22:12
Camille Lilly voted Yea(Passage With Amendment) on SB 741 – Expands Medicaid Services – Thu, Sep 18 at 09:35:32
Camille Lilly voted Co-sponsor(Introduced) on HB 8 – Requires Accommodations for Pregnant Workers – Thu, Sep 18 at 09:55:09
Camille Lilly voted Yea(Passage) on HB 8 – Requires Accommodations for Pregnant Workers – Thu, Sep 18 at 09:55:47
Camille Lilly was rated 0 by Illinois Citizens for Life – Thu, Sep 18 at 12:20:04

Not so much for the unborn, however, as we see in that last one. She’s convinced there’s no human being there, having given the matter careful consideration, apparently. Sure.