Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
That's the core issue of challenges to the health care law: When 21 states and several private groups initiated lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Obama health care law earlier this year, critics denounced the suits as frivolous political grandstanding. But it is increasingly clear that the plaintiffs have a serious case with a real …
Continue reading "Health Care: If It's a Tax, It Should be Called One"
Hard to believe, but... More self-identified gay voters chose the GOP in the midterm elections than in previously recorded totals, according to a CNN exit poll. Thirty-one percent of self-identified gay voters cast their ballots for Republicans on Tuesday, 4 percentage points more than in 2008, according to a similar CNN exit poll... “The gay …
This interesting tidbit, buried in an Asia Times Online piece about why Myanmar (Burma) has been a string of dictatorships and conflicts since independence: During Myanmar's period of colonial rule, from 1886 to 1948, Great Britain preferred hiring ethnic minorities to work in its colonial administration, for fear of putting the majority Burman in positions …
Continue reading "The Old British Tactic of Playing Off Minority Races Against Majority Ones"
Without including engineers, who are charged with coming up with solutions to the problem, things get pretty irrational, as the September-October 2010 edition of Geo-Strata notes: Evolution has been at work on the climate situation recently. Let's overlook the late 1970s forecast of an impending ice age and focus on the early- to mid-2000s 'global …
Continue reading "Getting Past Panic in the Climate Change Debate"
But that's still NPR's line re the firing of Juan Williams, as elucidated at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches: When asked about the firing of Juan Williams by NPR for comments he made on Fox News, (NPR Political Editor Ken) Rudin said he regretted the way it happened, but it was almost inevitable. …
Continue reading "NPR News and Fox Not News? You've Got to be Kidding!"
This is the twelfth and last in a sporadic series on the Catechetical Lectures of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. The previous post was Mystagogy, Sacramental Theology and the Poker Playing Dog. It's time, I suppose, to “put a wrap” on this long series on the Cathechetical Lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem. For me at least, …
Continue reading "Some Closing Thoughts on Cyril of Jerusalem's Catechetical Lectures"
That's what they're paid to do: There was a palpable sense of disbelief in the air at Wednesday’s gathering of the Minnesota Transportation Alliance. On Tuesday, the transportation advocates saw some of their biggest boosters, including U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, chair of the House transportation committee, go down to defeat as Republicans took control of …
Continue reading "Transportation Lobbyists Better Work With the Winners"
A couple of interesting tidbits from this election cycle: first, concerning Allen West's victory over Ron Klein (congratulations are in order) in Florida's 22nd Congressional District, the Palm Beach Daily News noted the following: The West-Klein race was one of the nastiest campaigns of the season. Only the Shiny Sheet would put it this way. …
Continue reading "The Nastiest Election of the Season, and Yes, They're Smoking Something"
The late 1970's and early 1980's were an exciting time for me for this reason, but they were also a stressful time. Between the challenge of dealing with a Scots-Irish workforce (organised and otherwise) and a "culture of envy" which hadn't experienced the Reagan Era, things could get frustrating. It got to the point where …
Continue reading "The Closet Socialists are Still in the Closet"
This fascinating video from the Washington Post by Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori opens with this comment: ...and at some point it became necessary to shift approach and to say: "If you're going to stay as a leader in this organization, you have to be engaged, even if you don't like this decision over here. …
Positive Infinity 