Tag: Hypocrisy

Church

Celebrating Christmas

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Even the World Wildlife Fund had put out a statement Nov. 7 saying, “cutting a tree of this size in the midst of a climate crisis is a debatable decision,” which required “greater transparency.” I saw a Catholic News Service (CNS) article in the Boston archdiocesan newspaper The Pilot several weeks ago (Nov. 18) describing a dust-up concerning the Christmas Tree planned for St. Peter’s square this year. The Vatican had planned on installing an impressive, 98-foot silver fir taken from the mountains of central Italy, until activist...

Politics & Economics

The go-to tool for a go-to method of simply killing as many jihadis as possible

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Quote of the Day for Tuesday, September 27th, 2011:   J.E. Dyer, posting over at HotAir’s Green Room, on the implications of the increasing and expanding reliance of the United States’ military efforts in the Middle East on assassination via drone strike: To use this kind of force, the implication is that you don’t need to have a traditional-warfare justification.  Alternatively, you could say that this kind of force – drone-targeting; anti-personnel tactics untethered to the idea of securing a “better peace” – is now a way war can be defined. ...

Culture & Philosophy

It is hard to imagine zero-tolerance bullying prevention without schools becoming mini-bureaucratic-police states

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Quote of the Day for Wednesday, September 14th, 2011: Mary Rose Somarriba, writing yesterday at Public Discourse, on the recent anti-bullying legislation recently enacted in New Jersey (hewing closely to Obama administration policies), in an article called “A Bully-Free World?”: Why, one might ask, would the president lead a conference on preventing something like bullying, which is ultimately impossible to prevent? It could be, perhaps, because bullying is something that everyone agrees is wrong, and it is something that everyone can relate to, because ...

Politics & Economics

We can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house

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Quote of the Day for Tuesday, February 1st, 2011: I’m not sure quite how to attribute this… I’m quoting Joe Carter over at the First Thoughts blog today, who is quoting Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling published Monday striking down the ObamaCare law on account of the individual mandate, which is quoting then-candidate Barack Obama from 2008, who is essentially mocking the notion of a mandate… You can figure it out: Priceless. But if there remained any doubts, we surely know now why Senator Obama was so well-known for voting “present” during his l...

Media & Culture

Public Health Leaders Should Be Carefully Scrutinized

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Quote of the Day for Sunday, November 5th, 2010: Matthew Hanley over at The Catholic Thing on Thursday, commenting on the public reaction to Pope Benedict’s recent statement on condom use in the Peter Seewald book, in a post entitled Misrepresenting Benedict’s Bravery: The New York Times tells us the pope’s words, in the newly published book Light of the World, were received with “glee from clerics and health workers in Africa, where the AIDS problem is worst.” The pope as anachronistic obstacle to global health has long been a fashionable narrative. But...

Politics & Economics

“Mr. Ambassador, enter the Orient Express and go back to Istanbul, your wonderland!”

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Quote of the Day for Thursday, Dec. 2nd, 2010: Maybe Europe is not a lost cause after all? Perhaps my disillusionment with the post-modern political and cultural character of the Old World has been unduly overwrought? Between this dressing down by Austrian MP Ewald Stadler and the Nigel Farage tirade in Brussels the other day, perhaps I should be holding to a firmer hope for a European future worthy of its past. Not that I have any illusions about these guys representing majorities, but: Who woulda’ thunk? An MP on the floor of a 21st century European Pa...

Politics & Economics

Where the Streets Have No Shame

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Quote of the Day for Wednesday, Dec 1st, 2010: Elizabeth Scalia, posting an “On The Square” piece yesterday at First Things called Rationing Bono & Other Gaia-Saving Ideas, asking why the planet’s room mothers and former Vice-Presidents, who jet off to fancy places to hold “Save the Earth from the Earthlings” summit meetings on a regular basis, never seem to suggest solving the crisis of our impending planetary doom by outlawing things like sporting events, and rock concerts – like the current obscenely indulgent U2 tour, for example: As we read the ...

Politics & Economics

Waiting for Permission to Do Good?

Posted on by John W Gillis / 1 Comment

So, the uber-wealthy Warren Buffett is complaining again that he pays too little in taxes: “I think that people at the high end, people like myself, should be paying a lot more in taxes; we have it better than we’ve ever had it.” Buffett on ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour The duplicity in all this is just staggering. As a commenter at HotAir noted, Warren Buffett makes a significant amount of money selling tax shelters, such as life insurance, through his Berkshire Hathaway vehicle, and would stand to make an additional personal fortune should t...

Religion & Society

The Green Weapon

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Contributing to my continually growing suspicion that I am an alien who ended up on this planet by mistake, I observed the world observing Earth Day yesterday. This seems like a harmless enough celebration, and at one time I probably thought it sounded like a good way to recognize the importance of acknowledging humanity’s responsibility as steward of creation, but somewhere along the line (and quite possibly right from the start), the notion of earth-stewardship was co-opted by hucksters of an astounding variety of stripes. Everywhere I turned yesterday...

Politics & Economics

Most Private Family Matters

Posted on by John W Gillis / 1 Comment

Being not only the day after the day after President Obama’s inauguration, but also the anniversary of the dreadful Roe v. Wade decision, I was thinking quite a bit today about the abortion problem. Being well aware of his earlier statement to Planned Parenthood that could be interpreted to mean that the first thing he would do after obtaining the Presidential office would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, I’ve been warily eyeballing some news sources for the past couple days, waiting to see if the President picks up on the theme. Not that I think it...