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Good morning, everyone in search of the spark that animates us, whether trying to kindle it in ourselves or in another. Have a tale of a very skilled instructor who found a way to get men unversed in the idea that they were deserving of love from themselves to practice the metta and find loving-kindness.
Top billing tonight is a counterpoint to a previous sequence - historical examples of anti-Catholic bias in the United States, which points out that organizations that have been anti-Catholic, like the Ku Klux Klan, have not been friendly to many of the same groups that the Catholic Church has not been friendly to, either. I don't see it as a refutation of the idea that there's work to be done in Catholicism and that people should be agitating for the Church to reform its stances, but that there is the danger of a speck-plank problem if you go after someone else without making sure that you're working to make your own house stand on better and more just foundations.
Here's a way of how not to go about it - a potential ballot initiative in California would amend the state's constitution to exempt any speech based on Biblical reasoning from hate speech or other rules that restrict speech based on whether they would disrupt public safety or peace. So if you want to talk about how the gay people are damned because the bible says so, in as inflammatory and in-your-face manner as you like, that would be okay, if the initiative passed. The other side, the people who aren't using the Bible would still be restricted, however. It is for Me, but not for Thee, and that should run afoul of some other Constitutional provisions both in California and in the United States.
More evidence that the safety net is nto fraying, but already torn in several places - because neither the caregivers nor the government can afford to do anything else, Indiana government workers have suggested dropping off the severely disabled at homeless shelters while their caregivers go to work. This is not part of their official policy, according to those government agencies, but the alternative is having someone sitting in a truck for hours on end waiting for their caregiver to get done with work. Or they might get dropped off at the public library to wait. There's no money to care for them and no waivers available. Think about that the next time someone says that we're paying too much in taxes - think about who's not getting funded that needs it, and who is getting funded that doesn't.
In the world today, An intelligence contractor has vowed to fight the accusation from the Pentagon that they went too far in collecting intelligence about militant activity, which for some people is a revelation - there is a line that can be crossed in these regards.
China and Japan continue to have conflict over who owns a series of islands that would be helpful to trade routes.
The chief of the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service, popularly MI6, indicated that while terrorists attacking is a threat to be wary of, nuclear proliferation is by far a greater threat to the world.
In technology, a time-lapse graph of all the nuclear explosions of the last century, worldwide, a treasure trove of free reading material, available first from Baen and then rehosted elsewhere, building a very precise clock to test the theory of whether our three-dimensional universe is a hologram instead of the whole of spacetime, and another article about how three-dimensional printing is going to rock our worlds once they bang out the kinks...with pretty pictures of Doctor Who toys.
Finally, NASA offers us their evidence that climate change, whether cyclical or anthropogenic, is happening.
Which leads to an interesting opinion piece by slacktivist about how facts are often insufficient to be convincing to anyone other than the truly uninformed. this extends past climate change, of course, and becomes important for those, say, looking to convince others about whom to vote for on Tuesday. For some, their minds are already made up through some sort of rationalization, and the facts will not penetrate because they contradict the rationalization. For others, the facts do not penetrate because they are deliberately being liars, and they wish to push their lie on others to become deluded by it or use it as a rationalization for not paying attention to the facts. But something that runs through all of them? They have their reasons to vote, whether they are factual, ill-informed, uninformed, or pants-on-fire lies. What are yours?
Ms. Coulter is back in fine form, expressing her indignation at the positions of some Democratic candidates that she thinks are equivalent foils to the Tea Party's slate of insanity.
Right before the election, Mr. Henninger supposes that the Democratic furor over the Citizens United decision is really a tantrum thrown because it derailed EFCA, the "card check" legislation that Mr. Henninger suggests would have given unions even more power at the expense of corporations. It's a novel theory, but it doesn't explain the other part of the objection - donors are not disclosed under Citizens United. I think that while Americans will object to the general fact that election spending far outstrips what the limits are on personal contributions, so that their voice gets drowned out, either by corporations or unions, they would grudglingly accept it or defend it if they knew who the money was coming from. That way, they can then make business decisions about whether to support corporations that support causes anathema to their personal ideas.
The WSJ is far more blunt in their assessment, proudly claiming that American can't be run from the liberal position and that every Democratic Congress that tried has been thumped at the polls since. Because LBJ ran into Vietnam, Carter ran into gas shortages, someone found a scandal to stick to Bill Clinton, and Obama has, well, a mess that's not easily fixable and a Senate under deadlock. But it's still the fault of liberal policy enactments by Congress that the Democrats got deposed. World events have nothing to do with it at all.
As an aside, would conservative publications and columnists please stop claiming that Democrats vote as a unified bloc? We've had more than enough examples of how that doesn't happen that anyone saying so should have their credibility revoked, assuming they had any in the first place. The only seemingly solid point in the whole article is the one that says the Obama administration misjudged the people's focus - the economy is taking up more fear space and crowding out all the accomplishments, to the point where the WSJ says the people think they didn't get any tax cuts, when that's not true, and that the health care bill has only resulted in higher premiums and less choice, when there's an entire layer of insurance companies and other people in that mix that are making certain decisions to raise premiums and offer less choices. Mr. Steele's argument that the President's assumption that America does evil by default and needs to be redeemed into doing good hurts his ability to be a popular leader makes more sense as a possible underlying reason why the electorate continues to see him as a scary liberal "other" in the face of his clear American-ness.
Mr. Sowell regales us with part two of his "Brass Oldies" segment, this time on the idea that government intervention in the economy has positive effects, citing the claim that the Great Depression was prolonged by government meddling in tariffs and import restrictions, and that government can never create wealth or jobs, but only suck resources from the private sector which is the source of all wealth and jobs.
And out of opinions, Mr. Hanson decries American Groupspeak, the fear put in place by the government that stops people from talking candidly about issues such as race, sexual orientation, deficit spending, entitlements, illegal immigration, and why black kids end up in prison so much. Because if you do talk candidly, like Juan Williams did, you can expect to be fired...and hired on long-term by the people who want you to keep talking, because it's what they want people to hear. In this election cycle, perhaps more than previous ones, Mr. Hanson gets the Gargoyle. People do talk about the deficit and the need to shrink it, and which social programs they plan on cutting and which legislation they plan on repealing to reduce that deficit. Anyone talking about cutting the "defense" budget Hates The Troops and Wants The Terrorists To Win, though. That's just how it is. And speaking of cutting social programs, when people talking about the insolvency of the program, they're quite vocal about how it needs to be repealed or subjected to the whims of the private market, and not on how to fund it properly, because "everyone knows" anyone talking about taxes without the word "cut" immediately in front or behind it is a SocialistFascistCommunist who wants to let the government take over everything and impost a 100% income tax on all private businesses and workers. Y'know, American Groupspeak, the kind that takes the idea of a public option off the table before even giving it a vote because there's no way it can pass. "Everyone knows" that. Anything that we're having a vigorous debate about, even if one side clearly doesn't have much for evidence on their side? Is not settled into any sort of Groupspeak. Groupspeak is when something is so ingrained into the culture and society that its contrary point doesn't even get thought about, much less raised as a legitimate question.
Last for tonight, look in and see - a call for writings about sexuality from the pens of people who might not normally be visible.
Top billing tonight is a counterpoint to a previous sequence - historical examples of anti-Catholic bias in the United States, which points out that organizations that have been anti-Catholic, like the Ku Klux Klan, have not been friendly to many of the same groups that the Catholic Church has not been friendly to, either. I don't see it as a refutation of the idea that there's work to be done in Catholicism and that people should be agitating for the Church to reform its stances, but that there is the danger of a speck-plank problem if you go after someone else without making sure that you're working to make your own house stand on better and more just foundations.
Here's a way of how not to go about it - a potential ballot initiative in California would amend the state's constitution to exempt any speech based on Biblical reasoning from hate speech or other rules that restrict speech based on whether they would disrupt public safety or peace. So if you want to talk about how the gay people are damned because the bible says so, in as inflammatory and in-your-face manner as you like, that would be okay, if the initiative passed. The other side, the people who aren't using the Bible would still be restricted, however. It is for Me, but not for Thee, and that should run afoul of some other Constitutional provisions both in California and in the United States.
More evidence that the safety net is nto fraying, but already torn in several places - because neither the caregivers nor the government can afford to do anything else, Indiana government workers have suggested dropping off the severely disabled at homeless shelters while their caregivers go to work. This is not part of their official policy, according to those government agencies, but the alternative is having someone sitting in a truck for hours on end waiting for their caregiver to get done with work. Or they might get dropped off at the public library to wait. There's no money to care for them and no waivers available. Think about that the next time someone says that we're paying too much in taxes - think about who's not getting funded that needs it, and who is getting funded that doesn't.
In the world today, An intelligence contractor has vowed to fight the accusation from the Pentagon that they went too far in collecting intelligence about militant activity, which for some people is a revelation - there is a line that can be crossed in these regards.
China and Japan continue to have conflict over who owns a series of islands that would be helpful to trade routes.
The chief of the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service, popularly MI6, indicated that while terrorists attacking is a threat to be wary of, nuclear proliferation is by far a greater threat to the world.
In technology, a time-lapse graph of all the nuclear explosions of the last century, worldwide, a treasure trove of free reading material, available first from Baen and then rehosted elsewhere, building a very precise clock to test the theory of whether our three-dimensional universe is a hologram instead of the whole of spacetime, and another article about how three-dimensional printing is going to rock our worlds once they bang out the kinks...with pretty pictures of Doctor Who toys.
Finally, NASA offers us their evidence that climate change, whether cyclical or anthropogenic, is happening.
Which leads to an interesting opinion piece by slacktivist about how facts are often insufficient to be convincing to anyone other than the truly uninformed. this extends past climate change, of course, and becomes important for those, say, looking to convince others about whom to vote for on Tuesday. For some, their minds are already made up through some sort of rationalization, and the facts will not penetrate because they contradict the rationalization. For others, the facts do not penetrate because they are deliberately being liars, and they wish to push their lie on others to become deluded by it or use it as a rationalization for not paying attention to the facts. But something that runs through all of them? They have their reasons to vote, whether they are factual, ill-informed, uninformed, or pants-on-fire lies. What are yours?
Ms. Coulter is back in fine form, expressing her indignation at the positions of some Democratic candidates that she thinks are equivalent foils to the Tea Party's slate of insanity.
Right before the election, Mr. Henninger supposes that the Democratic furor over the Citizens United decision is really a tantrum thrown because it derailed EFCA, the "card check" legislation that Mr. Henninger suggests would have given unions even more power at the expense of corporations. It's a novel theory, but it doesn't explain the other part of the objection - donors are not disclosed under Citizens United. I think that while Americans will object to the general fact that election spending far outstrips what the limits are on personal contributions, so that their voice gets drowned out, either by corporations or unions, they would grudglingly accept it or defend it if they knew who the money was coming from. That way, they can then make business decisions about whether to support corporations that support causes anathema to their personal ideas.
The WSJ is far more blunt in their assessment, proudly claiming that American can't be run from the liberal position and that every Democratic Congress that tried has been thumped at the polls since. Because LBJ ran into Vietnam, Carter ran into gas shortages, someone found a scandal to stick to Bill Clinton, and Obama has, well, a mess that's not easily fixable and a Senate under deadlock. But it's still the fault of liberal policy enactments by Congress that the Democrats got deposed. World events have nothing to do with it at all.
As an aside, would conservative publications and columnists please stop claiming that Democrats vote as a unified bloc? We've had more than enough examples of how that doesn't happen that anyone saying so should have their credibility revoked, assuming they had any in the first place. The only seemingly solid point in the whole article is the one that says the Obama administration misjudged the people's focus - the economy is taking up more fear space and crowding out all the accomplishments, to the point where the WSJ says the people think they didn't get any tax cuts, when that's not true, and that the health care bill has only resulted in higher premiums and less choice, when there's an entire layer of insurance companies and other people in that mix that are making certain decisions to raise premiums and offer less choices. Mr. Steele's argument that the President's assumption that America does evil by default and needs to be redeemed into doing good hurts his ability to be a popular leader makes more sense as a possible underlying reason why the electorate continues to see him as a scary liberal "other" in the face of his clear American-ness.
Mr. Sowell regales us with part two of his "Brass Oldies" segment, this time on the idea that government intervention in the economy has positive effects, citing the claim that the Great Depression was prolonged by government meddling in tariffs and import restrictions, and that government can never create wealth or jobs, but only suck resources from the private sector which is the source of all wealth and jobs.
And out of opinions, Mr. Hanson decries American Groupspeak, the fear put in place by the government that stops people from talking candidly about issues such as race, sexual orientation, deficit spending, entitlements, illegal immigration, and why black kids end up in prison so much. Because if you do talk candidly, like Juan Williams did, you can expect to be fired...and hired on long-term by the people who want you to keep talking, because it's what they want people to hear. In this election cycle, perhaps more than previous ones, Mr. Hanson gets the Gargoyle. People do talk about the deficit and the need to shrink it, and which social programs they plan on cutting and which legislation they plan on repealing to reduce that deficit. Anyone talking about cutting the "defense" budget Hates The Troops and Wants The Terrorists To Win, though. That's just how it is. And speaking of cutting social programs, when people talking about the insolvency of the program, they're quite vocal about how it needs to be repealed or subjected to the whims of the private market, and not on how to fund it properly, because "everyone knows" anyone talking about taxes without the word "cut" immediately in front or behind it is a SocialistFascistCommunist who wants to let the government take over everything and impost a 100% income tax on all private businesses and workers. Y'know, American Groupspeak, the kind that takes the idea of a public option off the table before even giving it a vote because there's no way it can pass. "Everyone knows" that. Anything that we're having a vigorous debate about, even if one side clearly doesn't have much for evidence on their side? Is not settled into any sort of Groupspeak. Groupspeak is when something is so ingrained into the culture and society that its contrary point doesn't even get thought about, much less raised as a legitimate question.
Last for tonight, look in and see - a call for writings about sexuality from the pens of people who might not normally be visible.
