XDA

I dated a girl like this. She was great.

(h/t This Isn't Happiness)

Labels: Female Tongue

It's old news that Secretary Sebelius of the US Department of Health and Human Services proposed regulations, with the White Houses' blessing (at least), which would have required Catholic organizations (not the Churches themselves), like schools and hospitals, to provide health insurance under Obamacare which health insurance plans would have to provide things anathema to the Catholic catechism, namely, contraception, abortifacients and sterilization. The executive regulations were also almost certainly unconstitutional as the federal government can't make a statute apply to certain things a religion does. The recent case of Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, involving a Lutheran school and the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, went 9-0 against the administration's position (that the ADA applied to the Chruch school). Tough to believe there'd be a majority for legislation forcing the Catholic Church to cross its fervently held religious belief regarding contraception, sterilization and abortion by making it provide and pay for the three bad items. This was a dumb idea from the very start.

Then it got worse.

The President today proposed this accommodation: We'll call the contraception, abortifacients and sterilization "preventative care" and make the health insurance carriers give all three to all women for free. That way: "Religious organizations will not be required to subsidize the cost of contraception,” and, “contraception coverage will be offered to women by their employers’ insurance companies directly, with no role for religious employers who oppose contraception.”

But this is no different than the first proposed rules. Setting aside the "free" aspect as the traditional liberal blindspot, the Catholic Organization still has to provide health insurance which provides the three anathema services. Nothing has changed.

To call the President's thinking here childlike is, I think, an insult to children. It is not as good as holding your hands over your eyes and saying, "You can't see me."

It's just stupid.

Religious liberty preserved, my wide ass.

Labels: Catholic Church Catechism: Obama Accommodation

The JAMA here, has the latest of a series of several studies which list among the main, or "predictive" risk factors for breast cancer in young women the following: Drinking too much alcohol. Uh ho. Daughters! Nota bene.

This study follows on earlier studies here and here, both from 2010, which found amoong other serious risk factors, these: Induced or multiple abortions. And these studies follow on earlier studies, here (2009) and here (2003,) which found oral contraception use was a risk factor for a subset of breast cancer (triple negative) and oral contraception was a serious risk factor in young women, respectively.

Whic brings my mind back to the Komen/Planned Parenthood non-scandal. If the raison d'être for Planned Parenthood is a serious risk factor, in two different ways, for breast cancer, why wouldn't Susan G. Komen pull its funding?

Which of the two is playing politics with women's health and lives?

Labels: Susan G. Komen; Breast Cancer Risk Factors

This is the data set from the most modern and reliable sea level measuring satellite available. Too bad it only goes back a few years.

Remember the peer reviewed, take it to the bank IPCC prediction that the Himalayas would be glacier free in 2035? Remember recent "Oh, yes they are melting" reports? Here's closer to the truth:

The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

Here's a different spin to the same news:

Nearly 230 billion tons of ice is melting into the ocean from glaciers, ice caps, and mountaintops annually—which is actually less than previous estimates, according to new research by scientists at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

If the amount of ice lost between 2003 and 2010 covered the United States, the whole country would be under one-and-a-half feet of water, or it'd fill Lake Erie eight times, researchers say. Ocean levels worldwide are rising about six hundredths of an inch per year, according to researcher John Wahr.

While vast quantities of ice melting into the ocean is not exactly good news, Wahr says, according to his team's estimates, about 30 percent less ice is melting than previously thought.

OK, if "vast quantities of ice [are] melting into the ocean" then why isn't sea level rising? Like the average global temperature for the last 15 years, the sea level rise has gone pretty flat the last 8, just when the so called experts are telling us that vast quantities of ice are melting into the ocean.

Somebody's lying to us and it's probably not the satellite.

Labels: Global Warming Hoax; Magic Meltwater Disappearance

The Susan G. Komen Foundation, the corporation behind the pink ribbons and the annual events supporting research into a cure to breast cancer (to which Ms. Komen succumbed in 1980), cut off its funds to Planned Parenthood and all hell broke out. Planned Parenthood doesn't actually provide mammogram screening (despite the testimony to the contrary of its president before Congress last year); it just refers women out to those who do. Komen thought its money might be better directed to the the organizations receiving the referrals rather than giving them. Apostasy! Komen is perceived to have blinked and backed down. (It may have just doubled down in much more politically correct language). The shrieking and gnashing of teeth by the left is a tell, however. The left is like the ideological Roach Motel--you can join, but you can't leave. The left celebrates diversity as long as everyone conforms. Completely. Forever.

...the more I think about it, the more I realize this is a clarifying moment. Think of it! Three decades of service to women fighting breast cancer, and having raised and distributed hundreds of millions of dollars nearly $2 billion towards that goal, means absolutely nothing to these people now trying to destroy Komen. They could have denounced Komen’s decision, but in light of all Komen has done, and still does for women, turned their ire on the Republicans, the Religious Right, and so forth. But no, Komen broke ranks, and it must be dealt with harshly. And the sympathetic mainstream media is helping them do the job.

Rod Dreher at The American Conservative.

Yeah, what he said.

Labels: Susan G. Komen; Roach Motel ideology

Huge Deficits as Far as the Eye Can See. (h/t Jimmy P)

I like that it's in percentage of GDP. You get a better picture of how bad the spending was during Reagan and Bush (father) and what good things the '94 House Republicans did. Notice too that the thing heads seriously south when the Democrats take over Congress in January, 2007

Oh, and the Alternative Fiscal Scenario is the more likely prediction, even if it's a bit rosy still.

UPDATE: Here's a piece at Powerline which explains why even the terrible projections of the CBO are not based in reality, Money quote:

In particular, the baseline outlook assumes the expiration of three policies that will not happen. First, it assumes that the tax cuts put in place in 2001 and 2003 will expire, raising taxes sharply at the end of this calendar year—a proposal not even President Obama supports. Second, the baseline assumes that the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will begin to snare more and more taxpayers, even though the AMT has been patched annually to hold taxpayers harmless for more than a decade. Third, the baseline assumes that Medicare’s payment rates for physicians will decrease by 27 percent on March 1, 2012, despite the fact that Congress has repeatedly prevented the payment reduction. While those assumptions are not tenable, they do improve CBO’s baseline deficit outlook by $4.9 trillion over the projection period—overstating tax receipts by $4.6 trillion and understating Medicare spending by $326 billion.

Labels: Government Overspending

So this woman doesn't have to wear a burka.

Labels: Not Naked Outstanding Women

First let me talk about the etymology of the term "bite the dust". Many probably think it was coined in the Queen song but it has, I believe, a more ancient origin, probably in the Iliad (c 700 BC) or at least in the mid 19th Century translation thereof. It is a kenning for dying in battle. Now we use it for just dying or failing.

So talking about failure, the list of failed government supported, 'green energy' companies has expanded from Solyndra to now include, Evergreen Energy, Ener1, Beacon Energy, SpectraWatt, and Eastern Energy (with 6 more in serious financial trouble). All told, our government has almost certainly wasted $6.5 Billion on these losers, chump change in the greater, horrible debt picture, but still real waste. It is all the more disheartening that this backing of the government is based on a fraud, that increased CO2 will be in any way deleterious to our planet. And the final insult to injury is that President Obama has said he will double down on supporting such worthless projects in the future.

Labels: No Energy Economy; Bankrupt Green Energy

Here is an editorial at The Nation magazine about what it calls the "disastrous" Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010). The editors of the extreme left wing magazine cheer on the recent, foolish Montana Supreme Court's decision to rule opposite of the U. S. Supreme Court. The Nation also calls for an amendment to the Constitution to reverse the Citizens United decision of "corporate personhood rights." The amendment is titled: "Corporations are not people."

Of course, there is nothing in Citizens United which declared corporations anything other than a business organization chartered by the state and granted many legal rights to an undying entity separate from its owners and organizers.

Here is what the Court actually wrote:

The Court has recognized that First Amendment protection extends to corporations. Bellotti, supra, at 778, n. 14 (citing Linmark Associates, Inc.v.Willingboro, 431 U. S.85 (1977); Time, Inc.v.Firestone, 424 U. S. 448 (1976); Doran v.Salem Inn, Inc., 422 U. S. 922 (1975); Southeastern Promotions, Ltd.v.Conrad, 420 U. S. 546 (1975); Cox Broadcasting Corp.v.Cohn, 420 U. S. 469 (1975); Miami Herald Publishing Co.v.Tornillo, 418 U. S. 241 (1974); New York Times Co.v.United States, 403 U. S. 713 (1971)(per curiam); Time, Inc.v.Hill, 385 U. S. 374 (1967); New York Times Co.v.Sullivan,376 U. S. 254; Kingsley Int’l Pictures Corp.v.Regents of Univ. of N. Y., 360 U. S. 684 (1959); Joseph Burstyn, Inc.v.Wilson, 343 U. S. 495 (1952)); see,e.g., Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.v.FCC, 520 U.S. 180 (1997); Denver Area Ed. Telecommunications Consortium, Inc.v.FCC , 518 U. S. 727 (1996); Turner, 512 U. S. 62; Simon & Schuster, 502 U. S. 105; Sable Communications of Cal., Inc.v.FCC , 492 U. S. 115 (1989); Florida Starv. B. J. F., 491 U. S. 524 (1989); Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc.v.Hepps, 475 U. S. 767 (1986); Landmark Communications, Inc.v.Virginia, 435 U. S. 829 (1978); Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U. S. 50 (1976); Gertz v.Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323 (1974); Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Assn., Inc.v. Bresler, 398 U. S. 6 (1970). This protection has been extended by explicit holdings to the context of political speech. See, e.g., Button, 371 U. S.,at 428–429; Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U. S. 233,244 (1936).

It wasn't that the Supreme Court suddenly and out of the blue found "personhood" for corporations, you mental midgets; it's that the court stayed with nearly 80 years of precedent and found, yet again, that people who organize their business interest as a corporation do not lose their individual right of free speech protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Here's more from Justice Kennedy:

Under the rationale of these precedents, political speech does not lose First Amendment protection “simply because its source is a corporation.” (The identity of the speaker is not decisive in determining whether speech is protected. Corporations and other associations, like individuals, contribute to the ‘discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and ideas' that the First Amendment seeks to foster”). The Court has thus rejected the argument that political speech of corporations or other associations should be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not “natural persons.” (Citations omitted).

So, let's follow The Nation's thinking here to its rational conclusion. If corporations can be stripped of their First Amendment rights regarding political speech because they are not natural persons, then the New York Times Corporation and Time, Inc., to name but a few examples, would have no First Amendment rights at all. Congress could then pass any law abridging the hell out of any corporations' First Amendment rights. I am led to believe that The Nation is itself a non-profit corporation (since 1943) and so if it gets what it says it wants it will necessarily forfeit its First Amendment rights as well.

Is this what passes for rational thinking on the left?

Oh, and regarding your proposed Amendment to the Constitution. Good luck with that. Please expend a lot of money and energy chasing that dream.

Labels: Citizens United; The Nation magazine