To prevent or avoid, that is the question. At Debatepedia, in re; civil unions vs. gay marriage, we find
Discrimination: Can civil-unions avoid second-class treatment and discrimination?
No. Can they prevent it. Being things, not people, civil-unions [sic] are not in danger of second, third, or any other -class treatment.
Let us now take note of liberals of old vs. those of now, in the words of economist and social philosopher Ludwig von Mises:
“Those who call themselves ‘liberals’ today are asking for policies which are precisely the opposite of those policies which the liberals of the nineteenth century advocated in their liberal programs.
The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial — that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom.
They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions.”
Yes. They speak of economic freedom as if it’s on another, parallel track, which it is not.
Richard Bove on Kudlow: Who’s funding WikiLeaks? He raises this question, wonders if W-Leaks is basically market manipulation, a new form of inside trading. This in light specifically of new threat to expose a U.S. bank, with signs pointing to Bank of America. It would be an attack on the U.S. financial system.
Which name comes to mind as bankroller of W-Leaks? The man who hijacked the British money system a few years back, the Batman villain-Joker-like George Soros.
It’s the name I thought of. Silly?
Phil Lawler at CatholicCulture.org comes up with something else from the book with the pope-on-condoms item:
If you want to drum up controversy on the basis of one quote pulled out of the Pope’s book-length interview Light of the World, how about this one, found on page 152:
Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation.
Unlike the now-famous quotation about condom use, this sentence isn’t pulled out of context. The Pope isn’t merely speculating. He isn’t raising a possible objection or exception to his own argument. His point is clear.
Thing is, he’s talking about his own institution, where among the clergy there may be no hotter issue.
Lexington Green at Chicago Boyz spreads the word about a South Loop Tea Party gathering tomorrow night at 7 — Blackie’s, 755 S. Clark — where Adam Andrzejewski is featured speaker, with emphasis on the Open the Books project, a.k.a. forensic audit of state etc. He launches a devastating critique of the recently failed Brady campaign, and in the process of Brady:
I supported Adam on this blog when he was running for the Republican nomination for governor. I had the pleasure of speaking to Adam recently, and I said, and I firmly believe, that had he been nominated, the energy and excitement that caused a GOP groundswell nationwide would have carried him to victory as well. Adam would have presented a real alternative. (As I also told him, he is the only person I have ever voted for, not counting Reagan in 1984, who I actually thought would do a good job, rather than simply voting against the Democrat.)
On the other hand, Green continues,
Brady ran a lifeless and low-risk campaign, a typical idea-free Illinois Republican campaign, that was completely at odds with the spirit of 2010. He stumbled to defeat in a year where victory was there for the grasping, with the Republicans picking Obamas old Senate seat and four Houses seats in Illinois. There are times when fortune really does favor the bold, and this year was one of them. As a result we in Illinois are stuck once again with the feckless and hopelessly wrongheaded Pat Quinn, while the state swirls down the drain, an Island of Blue in a Red Midwestern sea, a big, out of step, bankrupt state like New York or Calilfornia. Too bad.
So well said, that. Maybe I will meet him at Blackie’s. But that can’t be his name, can it? Lexington Green? (HT: the ever-helpful Instapundit)
NY Times, purveyor of WikiLeaks, held up its skirts over ClimateGate revelations, which were too yucky for them. Ah, but that was different!
For a calmly reasoned skewing of The T, see the admirable Power Line.
Have a look at life in Trinidad from my man Nicholas Stix, visiting his wife’s family there from Queens, a la R.K. Narayan.
Take this opener, from Somewhere in South Trinidad, picking up on an earlier item’s reference to Hindu-prescribed prayers for the dead 11 months after the funeral, in this case for his father-in-law:
We got through prayers for Pa without a hitch, except that hardly anyone showed. Over 150 people had showed for his funeral, in spite of the fact that it was held on a work day, but fewer than 30 for his prayers. Although The Boss [Nicholas’s wife] and her sister from Long Island traveled over 2,000 miles to come, only two of his four daughters living in Trinidad were present for prayers.
Water is a problem:
I’ve been coming since 1999, and the federal water authority, WASA, has locked off the water for hours (i.e., all day, until most people are in bed asleep) and days at a time, since long before that. That’s why everyone on the countryside has to have huge tanks holding up to 500 gallons of water. Most such tanks today are made of heavy-duty plastic, but Pa has two made of steel and concrete, weighing at least 300 pounds empty, in back of the house, and in front, facing the road. When the water locks off, you fill big, plastic paint barrels full of water, and schlep them in the house for bathing and washing dishes. We fill dozens of empty, two-liter Coke bottles with water for washing hands and drinking water.
He has more about the island here, including this:
Trinidad & Tobago [full name] really is a lush, island paradise. It is hot (86-95 degrees) year-round, mosquitoes, flies, and ants are plentiful, the soil is fertile, and most people are poor, by American standards. But though it produces bananas (called figs by the locals) that are sweeter than most youll find in the States, T & T is no banana republic.
Canadian pro-lifer Steve Jalsevac has discovered “the greatest and most damaging incident of Vatican media incompetence that has probably ever happened,” citing CatholicCulture.org’s Phil Lawler, who wrote of “public-relations bungling at the Vatican,” and Denver’s Archbishop Charles Chaput, who wrote of “baffling failures of some [of the pope’s] aides” — both in regard to the pope’s condom-approval comments.
This morning at mass, I was miles away and completely unaware — 8:30 mass and not at all crowded — when I came to and stood and saw a hand reaching out for mine from my left, in the pew in front of me. It was Our Father time.
I took the hand with my left, holding on to the pew with my right. This matters. I don’t fall down a lot, in fact not at all lately, in part because I do not ask too much of my balance. But the guy two rows up, having grasped his friend’s hand with his left, was leaning back, looking at me and extending his right — across an entire pew.
I tried to shake him off, but he persisted, and I finally had to stage-whisper, “Too far!” He pulled back, but by then I was not saying The Lord’s Prayer very well, in fact not at all, having narrowly missed a dangerous balancing act.
The prayer was over in a few more seconds, I dropped the hand to my left and put both hands on the pew in front, breathing a sigh. In a minute, the handclasp of peace. The woman whose hand I’d held, having witnessed my shaking off the man’s hand, put hers out tentatively. I grasped it gingerly, fingers to fingers, having incipient arthritic issues and being in general not the hand-shaker I used to be.
And of course I had to do the same for the guy two rows in front, including a wink and a nod as salve to whatever feelings I had hurt (none, I decided), and that was that for my going-the-extra-mile worship procedures for the day.
Oh yes, I’m afraid I didn’t meet the searching eyes of the woman giving communion as she seemed to expect, so that our souls might if ever so briefly coincide and commune, because, I must confess, my chief interest was in Jesus, with whom I was trying desperately to make contact. In any case, I got in my “Amen” for her, I think before she said her piece, and she placed the host on my palm.
Back I went to my pew, hands not folded but at my sides, for balance’ sake. It’s better that way, you know. I mean the high-wire man does not hold his hands folded in front, and neither do I returning from communion.
This guy shapes up as a public enemy.
WASHINGTONThe U.S. State Department made a last-minute push to press WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange not to release what’s expected to be around 250,000 classified documents, arguing it could endanger human rights activists globally, U.S. counterterrorism operations and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He wants the names of the endangered, but no soap. For some reason the State Dept. doesn’t trust him.
Blithe Spirit 