Author: Mark Noonan

The Ryan Plan and Catholic Social Teaching

Mark Noonan98 Comments

Our liberals have been running with a meme which goes “Ryan’s budget plan is anti-Catholic” – the basis of the liberal argument is that a letter was written under the letter head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops which condemned the Ryan plan when it was first presented.  Without getting in to the intra-Catholic weeds on this, the mere existence of such a letter does not either indicate Catholic doctrine nor how the Bishops, if pressed on the matter, would rule.  Lots of liberals reside on the staff of the USCCB and they do take their opportunities to help liberal Democrats.

The letter, itself, held that the alleged cuts to social spending in the Ryan plan violated Catholic teaching as it relates to helping the poor.  Of course, Catholic teaching is that the poor have an absolute moral claim upon the wealthy for sufficient housing, clothing, food and health care – there can be and is no argument about that.  If you’ve got the means, you are morally obligated to help out the less fortunate.  On the other hand, how you are to help out is not set out with precision – because it can’t be.  Circumstances are so varied among both the haves and the have-nots that no one person can figure out exactly what one person should do for another in all circumstances.  The bottom line is that there can be a great deal of different opinion on the best means to the end – and Ryan’s bishop, Robert C. Morlino, has written an article clarifying the Catholic view – first laying out what is required:

…It is the role of bishops and priests to teach principles of our faith, such that those who seek elected offices, if they are Catholics, are to form their consciences according to these principles about particular policy issues.

However, the formation of conscience regarding particular policy issues is different depending on how fundamental to the ecology of human nature or the Catholic faith a particular issue is. Some of the most fundamental issues for the formation of a Catholic conscience are as follows: sacredness of human life from conception to natural death, marriage, religious freedom and freedom of conscience, and a right to private property.

Violations of the above involve intrinsic evil — that is, an evil which cannot be justified by any circumstances whatsoever. These evils are examples of direct pollution of the ecology of human nature and can be discerned as such by human reason alone. Thus, all people of good will who wish to follow human reason should deplore any and all violations in the above areas, without exception. The violations would be: abortion, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, same-sex marriage, government-coerced secularism, and socialism…

So, we can say, “politician A is in favor of elective abortion and as that is an intrinsic evil, I must not vote for politician A”.  But outside of the area of intrinsic evil, there is a lot more flexibility – and it becomes a matter of prudential judgement on the part of Catholics (and, indeed, everybody) to decide as best they can.

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What Media Bias? Part 192

Mark Noonan49 Comments

Though this might be “What Attacks on Mormonism?, Part 1”, depending on how you look at it – from Warner Todd Huston over at Breitbart:

As the race for the White House heats up, Reuters suddenly realized that the massive Mormon Church has a lot of money in its bank accounts. The news service went on to needle the Church, saying if it were a business “wealthy adherents like Mitt Romney would count as its dominant revenue stream.”

Reuters took the if-it-were-a-business theme even farther in its opening paragraphs.

“It would also likely attract corporate gadflies protesting a lack of transparency. They would call for less spending on real estate and more on charitable causes to improve membership growth — the Mormons’ return on investment.”

Of course, a religion is not a “business” proposition. A religion does not operate like a company does, it has far different goals. But assessing a religion wasn’t Reuters’ goal here. Making Mormons out to be “rich” elitists that act suspiciously and are pushing a snobbish presidential candidate on the nation was Reuters’ goal…

This from the same MSM which essentially went all “Reverend Wright, who?” in 2008.  I don’t recall any stories about how Wright’s organization was financed – and that leaves aside anything more than a glance at the fact that Obama attended a racist, anti-American church for 20 years.

One might want to think that there would be only one trip in to the gutter for our Democrats and their lapdog MSM in 2012 – forget it; they’ll troll in every gutter there is.  They will attack Romney because he’s rich.  They’ll attack him because he’s white.  They’ll attack him because he’s Mormon.  They’ll attack him as a war monger and they’ll attack him because he had college and missionary deferments during the Vietnam War.  They will lie.  They will launch whispering campaigns claiming all sorts of horrors about Romney’s past.  They will attack his wife.  They will attack his children.  They will attack his friends.  They will try to intimidate people in the right blogosphere who are favorable to Romney.  This will be the dirtiest political campaign in human history and the MSM will be right there in the trenches with the DNC, doing what they can to help Obama.

So, just get ready for it – it will get nauseating but the payoff will be the crestfallen looks on MSM faces on November 6th.

 

 

Adam Smith, Chick Fil A and How Hatred Makes You Stupid

Mark Noonan72 Comments

I was unaware of it until just a short while ago, but it seems that during “Chick Fil A Appreciation Day” a man named Adam Smith (yes, the irony is flabbergasting)  made a video of himself berating the random Chick Fil A employee he confronted after ordering a cup of water.  What first struck me about the story was just how monumentally stupid you’d have to be to do something like that.  At most, you’d have to figure your strongest effect would be to make a hard-working person’s day lousy – along with having to deal with all the actual work and,  of course, the genuine customers who make demands which can run from the difficult to the impossible, here comes a guy who wants to rant and rave at you for the positions held by a senior, corporate boss you’ve probably never met.  Additionally, there is the chance that if you wanted to go off on a rant like that then the person you’re ranting to might actually be someone on your side:  people don’t carry their views on signs tacked to their heads…for all this dunderhead knew the person he confronted could have ended up not just being in favor of gay marriage, but also actually gay…and maybe even hoping to get married.  What possible good effect could you hope to have by doing it?

But now it turns out that the video Smith posted and which went viral has resulted in his being fired:

An executive at a medical manufacturing firm lost his job after a YouTube video of him verbally ambushing a young employee at a Tucson Chick-fil-A went viral.

Adam Smith, formerly chief financial officer at Vante, stepped down after the video – which Smith shot and uploaded himself -caused embarrassment to the company…

So, Smith is now unemployed in addition to being revealed as an idiot.  As someone who has suffered because of the expression of speech (long time readers will remember that I’ve been stalked, my car has been vandalized, I’m pretty sure my computer has been hacked – and along with threats of violence, I also had one person try to post a picture of my house on the ‘net…turns out it was a house belonging to a different Mark Noonan) I do feel bad for Smith losing his job and I hope his employer reconsiders the move.  But I also hope that Smith and everyone else learns a lesson:  there is no need to get nasty about politics.  It really isn’t the be all and end all of existence.  To build yourself up to such a level of hate that you are doing monumentally stupid things – as Smith did – is just bizarre.

Relax.  Take it easy.  For me, it is pretty simple – God wins and as I’m trying to walk with God, I’ll be ok, in the long run.  If you don’t believe in God then it can get a bit more tricky…but, still, you’re not going to live forever on this earth.  When you’re dead will it matter if you managed to get off a rant on some random person?  What is the point of being a jerk?  What do you get out of it?  A sense of superiority?  Is it really that much of a rush?  That much a salve to your pride?  For goodness sakes, take a pill – have a glass of wine; go watch the sun set.  But don’t go off on a rant.  Stupid.

Unemployment at 8.3%

Mark Noonan22 Comments

So, how is that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?  41 months at 8% or higher unemployment.  And with 150,000 dropping out of the labor force, you know that the real unemployment rate is much, much higher than the official number.

The BLS, apparently working hard for Obama’s re-election, decided that with unemployment rising they’d better give the MSM something else to talk about – certainly don’t want them talking about the massive number of people out of work.  Better to have them talk about the number of jobs being created!  So, they just made up some numbers to make it look like the number of jobs went up.  From Zero Hedge:

Happy (about) the headline establishment survey print of 133,245 which says that the US “added” 163,000 jobs in July from 133,082 last month? Consider this: the number was based on a non seasonally adjusted July number of 132,868. This was a 1.248 million drop from the June print. So how did the smoothing work out to make a real plunge into an “adjusted” rise? Simple: the BLS “added” 377K jobs for seasonal purposes. This was the largest seasonal addition … for a July NFP print in the past decade…But wait, there’s more: the Birth Death adjustment, which adds to the NSA Print to get to the final number, was +52k. How does this compare to July 2011? It is about 1000% higher: the last B/D adjustment was a tiny +5K! In other words, of the 163,000 jobs “added”, 429,000 was based on purely statistical fudging.

I’m a little bit surprised at this much brass on the part of the Bureau of Labor Statistics – all economic indicators in July were lousy:  there wasn’t the slightest indicator that we were actually adding jobs…and here they come up, straight faced, and try to tell us not only that the economy created jobs, but created them faster than in June, when things were better than in July.  But putting out that number – even with 16 million people out of work – allows Obama and his Democrats to keep up the meme of “jobs are being created” thanks to the stimulus.  That meme – which is the only positive thing Obama has – would be permanently finished if we had a jobs print in negative territory.  Now we know:  until after November 6th, no matter what is really happening, the BLS will not put out a negative number…even if actual jobs losses will be in the 200,000 range, they’ll just fudge it until they get a positive number.

Fine and dandy – we know that Obama’s hope for re-election revolves around lying about himself and lying about Romney.  The jobs report is the “lie about Obama” part, the latest fracas over Romney’s tax returns (set aloft by Harry Reid, who also seems to have some unanswered questions about his own past which have been floated just as credibly as the tax charge) is the “lie about Romney” part of it.  We’ll see if it works – the idea is to turn off independents, depress Republicans and fire up Democrats as Obama’s only hope is a narrow win in a low-turnout race which allows him to cobble together 270 electoral votes.  If it works, then it works – but it only works if Obama can fool the people.  He managed it in 2008; I don’t think he’ll be able to do it in 2012 (much harder to fool people by scaring them than to fool them by making nice).

In the end, I expect that reality will defeat Obama – he and his minions can lie all they want but the people know what they are going through.  I don’t know about you out there – maybe you’re all rich – but as for me it has been quite a lot of cutting back.  My shirts, for instance, are bought at Goodwill these days…and I’ve found in conversation that I’m not remotely alone among my friends determined to bargain shop or do without.  Things are rough; people fear the future; and for me and mine we’re actually far better off than many millions of people who were suckered by Obama in 2008 and now know the reality.  After all the hype and lies I think that on November 6th the real people of the United States who have been living in the Obama Recession will show up to vote – and we’ll have a new President on January 20th.

Culture Does Matter

Mark Noonan6 Comments

From NRO’s The Corner:

During my recent trip to Israel, I had suggested that the choices a society makes about its culture play a role in creating prosperity, and that the significant disparity between Israeli and Palestinian living standards was powerfully influenced by it. In some quarters, that comment became the subject of controversy.

But what exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture? In the case of the United States, it is a particular kind of culture that has made us the greatest economic power in the history of the earth. Many significant features come to mind: our work ethic, our appreciation for education, our willingness to take risks, our commitment to honor and oath, our family orientation, our devotion to a purpose greater than ourselves, our patriotism. But one feature of our culture that propels the American economy stands out above all others: freedom. The American economy is fueled by freedom. Free people and their free enterprises are what drive our economic vitality…

Read the rest of it here.  Romney is completely correct – is the the culture of barbarism which prevents the Palestinians from enjoying a better life.  Give up the terrorism, give up the “death to Israel” nonsense and get rid of the kleptocrats who run the place and the Palestinians will swiftly be as prosperous as the Israelis.  It is up to the Palestinians – they have to decide what kind of life they want to live.  The world waits – you can be sure of it that the United States, alone, would pour untold billions in to the West Bank and Gaza.  Make the West Bank and Gaza a free market enclave like Hong Kong used to be and in 20 years you wouldn’t recognize the place…and you’d have Israelis asking real nice if they can join in (Israel does have a lot of success, but they still over-tax and over-regulate a bit; a leftover from the socialist days of the past).

Things can change.  People can change.  But they have to want to – and as an aside, all you liberals out there who are supporting the current Palestinian regime:  you’re part of the problem.  You’re propping up the very people who ensure endless war, endless oppression and endless poverty for the Palestinian people.

UPDATE:  Yet another reason to vote for Romney – our recovery weakest in all the world since 1970.

What America Really Needs: An Anti-Stupidity Movement

Mark Noonan79 Comments

While running through the Facebook thread, I came across the following quote:

To be beautiful means to be yourself.  You don’t need to be accepted by others, you need to accept yourself. – Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich, as it turns out, is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who has gained some vogue in the West – probably initially from the fact that he was one of those dimwits during the Vietnam War who figured that if the United States would just leave and the war just “end” then everything would be just swell.  How anyone by the 1960’s could think that a communist regime would (a) seek cooperation with non-communists or (b) be anything less than hideously brutal once triumphant is beyond my understanding.  But, of course, Thich wasn’t alone – around the world literal tens of millions thought the same way.  In other words, they thought stupidly.  But no one ever called them that.  Reading the quote listed above, though, got me thinking that we who refuse to be stupid have to be a bit more forceful lest stupidity overwhelm us.

Because someone would only post a quote like that if they thought it wasn’t stupid.  You only post something like that if you think it wise.  But, my goodness, what a vapid bunch of pantheist nonsense is wrapped up in that short quote!  To be beautiful means to be be yourself?  What if yourself is a drug addict?  Or a thief?  Or a lazy bum?  It is, indeed, true that you don’t need to be accepted by others but before you go accepting yourself isn’t it rather important to determine if  yourself is worthy of respect?  Suppose you’re a hooker or a con artist – are you supposed to accept that yourself?

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War on Poverty, Fail

Mark Noonan71 Comments

From the AP:

…The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965…

The AP, being an MSM outfit, naturally puts part of the blame on a “fraying social safety net”, totally ignoring the fact that in real dollar terms we are spending vastly more on social programs than we ever did before.

Be that as it may, this is the final proof that Big Government welfare programs don’t work.  Of course, this has been easily demonstrable for several decades, now, but I don’t see how liberals can escape (save by flat out lying) the bald fact that their programs have failed.  This is it.  Its done.  Welfare doesn’t work.  No argument can be made that people would actually be worse off if we never started the War on Poverty, while plenty of arguments can still be made that we will be better off once we start dismantling this Big Government monstrosity.

Obama Runs a Deficit

Mark Noonan10 Comments

No, not just a US deficit – but a personal, campaign deficit:

Amid a heavy barrage of advertising by opposing “super” political groups, President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign spent more than it collected in June. While outraised again by Republican Mitt Romney…

To be sure, at the end of June Obama still had nearly $100 million on hand, but the fact that he’s burning through money faster than he takes it in doesn’t bode well – he’ll needs sacks of cash for the  September-November sprint and right now it appears that Romney will at the very least match him and may end up outspending him (and this is keeping out of the picture the super-PACs working for both sides).  This is undisciplined – this is a campaign which is not running effectively.  The vaunted Obama machine seems to be getting itself in to trouble – but no surprise to me because I never had any respect for Obama’s 2008 effort…he coasted to a win against a man who simply refused to hit hard (Obama also had a huge number of outside factors working in his favor).

But here’s the real kicker – with all this massive advertising and spending more than he took in, Obama didn’t move the electorate even an inch closer to him.  Even the biased, pro-Obama MSM polling still shows him in a bad position:  approval rating under 50%, now less than four months before election day.

 

 

 

Alexander Cockburn, RIP

Mark Noonan6 Comments

From Counter Punch:

Our friend and comrade Alexander Cockburn died last night in Germany, after a fierce two-year long battle against cancer. His daughter Daisy was at his bedside.

Over the years, from time to time, I’ve read Mr. Cockburn’s articles and no doubt out it, he was always a far-out, leftist extremist of the most commie type.  But I have to say that I always admired his grit and determination – as well as his style of writing.  He was, naturally, quite harsh in his condemnations of conservatives, but as a good radical leftist he also had plenty of fire for the hypocrisies of the liberals – from October 28th, 2004:

…Just as Kerry consistently disdained his eager and all-forgiving left supporters before November 2, he’ll redouble his public and private displays of rejection thereafter, contemptuously wiping Michael Moore’s moist kisses from all his cheeks. The constituencies President Kerry will be eager to placate and to satisfy will be exactly the ones he has courted the whole of this election year: the Neocons in Washington, and the bankers in Wall St…

A voice of extreme dissent is stilled and I’m sorry to hear about that.