Whiskey Fire

The Belt of the Crozier...

... ain't what it used to be.

Boston’s cardinal is to boycott a Jesuit college’s graduation where Taoiseach Enda Kenny is the commencement speaker, over his support for the proposed Protection of Life in Pregnancy Bill.

In a statement, Cardinal Sean O’Malley said abortion was “a crime against humanity” and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has asked Catholic institutions not to honour those who promote it.

Mr Kenny is due to receive an honorary degree from Boston College at the May 20th commencement. Cardinal O’Malley said that since the college had not withdrawn its invitation and Mr Kenny had not declined it, “I shall not attend the graduation”.

This is the good bit:

“It is my ardent hope that Boston College will work to redress the confusion, disappointment and harm caused by not adhering to the bishops’ directives,” he said.

Ochone, the confusion, disappointment, an' harm the College is after causin'! It's thrown the worl' in a TERRIBLE state o' chassis!

It's rather difficult to believe at this late date that anyone much cares about, or even less for, the moral pronouncements of any Boston cardinal -- except perhaps for those scattered demented few who pay attention to the utterly discredited and darkly comical fatwas issued forth by the Radical Clerics of the U. S. Catholic fringe.

As for the notion that "Taoiseach Enda Kenny" is pushing for Mandatory Abortion in the Isle of Saints and Sages, haha no. No no no.

Anyway, hooray for these MA shouty idiots! Tim Corcoran and R. S. Devane salute you. Both of those fine fellows had nothing but praise for the Boston Irish, who never met a moral dilemma they couldn't use as a fucking bludgeon.

MAS. All you need to know about how screwy Irish American Catholicism is, never mind Irish  Catholicism, is to be Boston College and have to decide "huh, a visiting Leader of a Free Nation who was to speak and a local Bishop who would have waved, who wins?"

Eamon de Valera would have felt he had no choice but to ignore O'Malley in these circumstances, by the way. That's not even disputable.

The Windblower

I should hope

That the new Pope

Young kids he won't grope;

 

But I'm lapsed --

And so give no craps --

To Douthat I leave faps --

 

Who's in the See

Means shit to me:

After Ryan, or then Murphy.

 

MAS. The coverage of New Pope! in the US is stupid, but in some ways, revealingly stupid. Look at the Douthat link in the second stanza. Douthat is talking shit. It sounds plausible, but it's crap -- it has nothing reomtely to do with the real politics in play. Charlie actually follows this shit; read that.

 

Obscurity and Misery

Kathryn Jean Lopez is a Woman of Mystery. Among these mysteries are how on earth did she ever get a job, and also, what idiocy is she complaining about now -- was the lotion not placed correctly in the basket again?

Gracious.

Immiseration

I use that word a lot (I did in my syndicated column this week). I should probably find more adjectives, but it really does capture so much of the misery of the hour on matters of family, and relations between men and women, and the lack of flourishing among so many around us.

This is someone who has been paid as an "editor." This is also someone who thinks that "immeseration" is an adjective, and who is probably only allowed to get away with "lack of flourishing" because she was told at gunpoint that "flourishment" is not a word.

Remember: the National Review is a place for Intellectual Conservatism.

Her syndicated column is, as it happens, scrumptious. Oh, wait. I meant that "it is full of scrumptiousnessitude."

There was a young man — 23 at most — quietly saying his morning prayers on Capitol Hill on the third day of 2013, and it seemed for a moment like an injection of the warmest ray of light in the midst of a blistering cold spell.

Only the most dreadlfully abject junkies get high off sunlight, but then I guess if you're suffering from chilblains, you wouldn't be too upset at the odd "blistering cold" locution. Or too enthused about some poor young fella desperately emploring Jesus to make him not gay.

He walked into St. Peter’s Church on the House side of Capitol Hill shortly after I did for a bipartisan, ecumenical prayer service that marked the beginning of the 113th Congress. The last days of the 112th had been a bit . . . hellish. And so to see John Boehner sitting up front and then Nancy Pelosi being whisked in by the Secret Service — one could be tempted to be cynical. Was this all a show? If it was for real, it was a portrait of civility. Leading the prayers were not just the priests who welcomed all to the Catholic parish a few stones’ throws away from the Capitol building but also Protestants, the Jewish Eric Cantor, the Muslim Keith Ellison.

Can someone amongst our readership please fact check this? How many stones need be thrown here? Yes, yes, you can go first.

Blah blah... OK, here we go:

We’re not dreaming the way we used to. The generation that went to outer space has grandkids who may not be leaving their parents’ basements anytime soon.

NRO CALLS FOR MASSIVE GOVERNMENT SPACE PROJECT.

They’re not getting married. And even if they do get married, they are crippled by ridiculous expectations as to who men and women are and should be in the 21st century, and many of them are deprived of religion, which has been known to help us to figure out how to live joyfully.

I was born an Irish Catholic. My wife is an Irish Catholic. We know from "ridiculous expectations as to who men and women are and should be." We "live joyfully" mostly because we jettisoned the "Catholicism." 

The idea that "Catholicism makes most Catholics happy"... well, I'd like to see the research on that one.

Blah blah.

Grace is amazing, as the hymn tells us.

Fuck you.

Get a load of this:

And despite our bad decisions or indifferences or despairing of politics, there are men and women of principle. Among them is the Green family, which runs the Hobby Lobby arts-and-crafts chain. They run their business in a way that they believe will be conducive to the family and faith lives of their employees. They are refusing to comply with the infamous Health and Human Services mandate because they are evangelicals who are opposed to abortion, and they are consequently now in defiance of the law. Whether America knows it or not, they are fighting for freedom itself with their defiance and their witness to trying to live lives of integrity. To be “free” includes not  complying with a culture that has become complacent about its immiseration.

"To be free" means that you get to make your own choices as regards to the insurance you are provided as a condition of your employment. For Lopez, "freedom" means the right of employers to control the consciences of their employees.

I didn’t interrupt that kid who was praying to ask him, but I hope his prayer was that men and women in elected office are inspired by the likes of the Greens, instead of viewing them as backward anomalies whose view of religious liberty belongs in the past.

I hope the lot of you repulsive authoritarian creeps gets shat on by a Heavenly Elephant.

Why Atheists Hate Christmas, In Case You Were Wondering

I stopped making fun of Doug Giles, jeez, maybe ten years ago, for reasons of sportsmanship. Giles has this shtick where he talks like Pat Robertson doing Dennis Miller, after both have been clobbered with a sackful of bowling balls.

Giles is simply so abysmally stupid, there is not much point in even bothering.

However. This absorbs me strangely, because I am as it happens eager to learn why precisely I dislike Christmas.

The Real Root of Atheists' Anti-Christmas Rage

Do tell.

Why do some atheists embarrass themselves year after year trying to eradicate Christmas from American culture? Why do they make themselves societal hemorrhoids during this hallowed season? Is it because they are crusaders for equality, secularism’s saviors and humanism’s heroes? I’m sure that’s what they tell themselves when they’re pouting on their couches all alone on Christmas Eve after every single one of their friends has dumped them for being a rabid jackass.

There are appoximately zero atheists trying to eradicate Christmas from American culture. Given the holiday's traditional association with booze, that would be absurd.

I believe, however—and I could be wrong—that the reason some rage against the machine is that they hate God and love their sin, and bringing up Jesus in December is not the way they wanted to finish off the year. Indeed, Christ really rains on their parade … and they love their parade.

I would enjoy the Christ Rain as a finale for the Atheist Parade. Honestly.

Christmas, if you really get down to the brass tacks of it, isn’t about reindeer, elves, iPhones or Lindsay Lohan punching a gypsy, but about mankind’s sin problem and what God did to remedy it by sending His Son.

Doug Giles has told a joke. You know it is a joke because he mentions iPhones and Lindsay Lohan, which exist in Pop Culture. Hence, Doug Giles has told a joke.

I know the chief facet most people focus on regarding Christ’s birth has been the peace on earth and good will toward men stuff, but if you dig around in the gospels a tad you’ll quickly see that the “peace on earth” thing is an ancillary perk to the main reason the second person of the godhead donned an earth suit and decided to hang out with us dunderheads. The core cause that necessitated Jesus’ incarnation was our jacked up carnality. Yep, Hambone, it was our sin. There, I said it. Sin. Yours, mine and ours.

Perhaps an omnipotent deity could produce a more embarrassing paragraph than the foregoing. Perhaps a just one could have savagely afflicted Giles with some amusing plague before he could make his thoughts public.

There is no God.

Indeed, many atheists are up front about it and don’t want to leave their wantonness.

Nope.

Call me goofy

No.

While most atheists this Christmas will be drinking to forget, I will, as Martin Luther said, drink to remember the One who was and is and is to come.

Heh, you're a Protestant. At least I rejected a real bullshit religion.

MAS. As it happens, I'm not an atheist. I'm not a believer, either. Or an agnostic. I just don't care.

God bores me.

This I Believe, To Hell You Go, Science-Boy, Neener, I Win Twitter for Jesus

Oh, Erick, Erick Son of Erick, you unpleasant dink.

Truth be told, I think the world is billions of years old, but I have no doubt God created it.

Good for you! Have a biscuit.

The whole post is even more tedious than you'd imagine; it's all about how smug he is about God and so therefore human beings can sublet apartments in live whales if Jesus decides to permit them.

Whatever.

What does "religion" mean to Erick Son of Erick, anyhow? Well, this:

Watching fun reaction of the secular set roll in to prove my point

Yes, for Erick Erickson, religion is fun because it is all about winning Twitter fights.

I mean, get a load of this:

HA HA HA HA HA you go to Hell that is funny to me I win Twitter!

Sure.

Young Christians who have decided their path is to avoid the political fights that implicate the beliefs of their faith and old Christians who have grown weary of the fight must still fight and must still pick a side whether they think they must or not. The world continues to be at war with Christ and increasingly that fight takes place in the political arena. From Health and Human Services regulations to ridicule of believing politicians to Democratic Convention attendees opposing the inclusion merely of the word “God” in the Democratic Party platform, we are seeing that fight from the higher plane come down to eye level.

I mean, fuck the poor, the ill, the starving. There is corny bullshit about the Democratic Party platform to be spread!

Erickson's view of religion is self-glorifying, pinched, petty, and stupid.

And boring.

Here, if one must discuss religion, is a very good poem.

Take care of the sick, and the poor, and shut up, or at least be Seamus Heaney. Which you aren't, if you take Red State seriously.

 

Akin in Wonderland

Steve M axes a reasonable question.

Obviously I understand why the GOP would prefer it if Todd Akin would make himself scarce, but I don't understand why Republicans are as desperate as they seem right now to have him out of the Missouri Senate race.

I'm looking at this from the point of view of the persuadable voters the GOP wants in order to win other races in the fall. In my experience, the GOP has never had to pay a particularly high price with these voters for the craziness in its midst.

Fair enough. I don't disagree with Steve that the Romney campaign was planning to go all culture war after the conventions, and Akin went too nuts too soon.

But that's just the Romney campaign. Why everyone else?

Well, let's check the peanut gallery. Hello, goober.

Still, he has a few diehard defenders, who are fighting the wrong battle on his behalf. This isn’t about abortion or rape or “women’s health.” Nor is it about “defending our own” and not capitulating to the Left. (Heck, in this case, the Left wants Akin to stay in the race.) It’s about winning control of the U.S. Senate and putting a crucial swing state into the GOP column in November. Nothing — nothing — else matters.

If the GOP could think tactically, it would be dangerous. If it could think strategically, it would be a majority party. But it has too many Akins in it for either of those things ever to happen.

It's about cynicism and being in charge because you want to be in charge.

Ponnuru pipes something similar, albeit in his native winsome Fallohide:

Via Commentary’s blog, I see defenses of Akin — of his continuing his campaign, that is — from Tony Perkins and Kirk Cameron.

The Wise Council deliberates.

Those of us who take the view — the view shared by Akin, Cameron, and Perkins — that the law should protect the right to life of unborn children have an obligation to them, if we think that Akin’s staying in the race sets back that cause, to urge him to leave. And there can have been no serious doubt from Sunday onward that some other pro-lifer would have had a better shot of winning the seat.

Which is great fun, because the precise reason why what Akin said is a problem is that its idiocy and incoherence are precisely the same idiocy and incoherence that undergird the entire "pro-life" "argument."

Hence in this specific instance I have to say that I respect Kirk Cameron more than certain other people on his "side," because at least he is a consistently principled incoherent idiot who inexplicably gets to bother the nation with his crapheaded misogynist opinions. Hooray for Kirk Cameron!

The far right wants to win an election, and is terrified of being called nothing but a pack of cards, because they know they are nothing but a pack of cards.

Pinheads on the Head of a Pinhead

Michael Potemra.

Many of our conservative Roman Catholic friends are quite upset over the fact that New York’s Timothy Cardinal Dolan will be hosting both of the major-party presidential candidates at a charity fundraiser in a couple of months. I agree with our own Kathryn Lopez that Dolan is right to do this, but I would like to discuss some points about it.

The whole post is bananas. But this amuses most:

I think he was right to invite Obama because I think he has the intention of using the occasion as a teaching moment — not in the narrowest sense, as an opportunity to lecture the president on the HHS mandate — but to convey to a mass audience the Catholic approach to the world and to major moral and political issues.

The global child rape scandal kind of works against you there.

Honestly....

The Finest Joke

Does there exist comic conservative comedy? Who knows!

Here is something I don't think is funny: jokes about prison rape. If in our democratic society we have decided that rape is an appropriate punishment for criminal offenses, then we should say so by making that an official thing. "You have dealt heroin. You will thus be raped." But we don't do that; we have prison rape jokes! So it's funny that in our advanced democracy, rape is a tacitly accepted mechanism of state punishment and coercion.

So now that we are all laffing.

Here is a right-wing explanation of jokes.

Remember around 2009, when you were always hearing about how “important” Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show was, because “that’s where young people were getting their news.”

Studies and polls abounded, and an avalanche of op-eds speculated on “what it all meant.”

Notice how you haven’t heard that meme as much lately?

That’s probably because another Comedy Central show Tosh 2.0 gets even higher ratings than The Daily Show.

And the liberal elites don’t dare ponder the implications of that.

You see, comedian Daniel Tosh’s eponymous program “celebrates” Black History Month with features on “crackhead tossing” and February markdowns on Kool-Aid.

And Tosh’s “Web Redemption” segments dare to do something all good little grad students are taught to avoid: judge and shame miscreants and morons.

So anyone attending one of Tosh’s live stand up gigs has got to know what they’re in for, right?

They have no right to complain about being “offended” by his act.

You might almost say they were asking for it…

Conservative cultural criticism is perhaps in a period of decline. Also, I dare to ponder why snapperhead racism is popular... perhaps because there exist a lot of snapperhead racists? Could be. I learned that in grad school.

Ergo, if you show up at a Tosh gig you should be pleased when he says you ought to be gang raped.

?

COMEDY!

Here, look, kiddies:

Punchlines that are no longer easy-funny: Nigger. Kike. Chink. Fag. Slut. Mick. Wop. Bitch. Fairy. (Any of these could be also funny now; the point is that they once were just easy bigotry.)

Comedians do not get some sort of "just a joke" pass that means they are immune from all possible criticism. Nobody gets that.

Also, the Chapelle Show was, uh, funny, and Rough Crowd was fucking woeful.

Oh and rape victims are more victims of rape than smug-ass comedians are victims of getting comedy smack, usually.

No, really.

 

Freedom's Just Another Word for Go Fuck You

Here is James Taranto interviewing Cardinal Dolan.

The president of the U.S. Conference of Bishops is careful to show due respect for the president of the United States. "I was deeply honored that he would call me and discuss these things with me," says the newly elevated Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York. But when Archbishop Dolan tells me his account of their discussions of the ObamaCare birth-control mandate, Barack Obama sounds imperious and deceitful to me.

Yeah, well...

Fuck you.

That's Entertainment

Setup:

Campaigning in Ohio on Saturday, Rick Santorum displayed his culture-warrior side in full force, as he harshly attacked President Obama by suggesting the president wanted to see more disabled babies aborted and accusing him of projecting his values - which Santorum claimed were not rooted in the Bible - on the Catholic Church.

More setup...

He lambasted the president's health care law requiring insurance policies to include free prenatal testing, "because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society."

More setup...

But Santorum doubled down on his attacks, accusing the president of forcing a new moral code on the Catholic church.

"The president has reached a new low in this country's history of oppressing religious freedom that we have never seen before," he said. "If he doesn't want to call his imposition of his values a theology, that's fine, but it is an imposition of his values over a church who has very clear theological reasons for opposing what the Obama administration is forcing on them."

Asked about the fact that the president is a Christian, Santorum answered: "He says he's a Christian, he's a Christian," and would not elaborate on how to balance competing ideas about contraception within the broader faith. But he was firm in painting the president as promulgating a "new moral code" that he contended was "intolerant" of the church.

Aaaaaaand -- PUNCHLINE!

"You ask a lot of questions about the social issues," he accused a reporter who asked if he would speak out on those issues during a general election race.

Right.

Gosh-darn Lame-Stream Media, forcing Rick Santorum to spout all this religion stuff that he'd rather keep to himself. I blame Soros and his Media Matters hired goons. If it wasn't for them, Rick Santorum would never on his own say anything hard right and crazy, not to mention unpopular.