Tom Faranda's Folly

The President in 2008 - mandating health insurance is like mandating everyone must buy a house.

Yup - That's the comparison he made while running for the Democratic nomination, against Hillary, who favored a mandate. Worth remembering, as the Supreme Court ponders throwing the whole Obamacare fiasco out.

Against it before he was for it.

Further proof there is a God: Keith Olbermann suing Al Gore

It doesn't get any better then this!!!!

Current TV is, of course, Gore's channel.

Keith Olbermann Fired from Current TV, Replaced by Eliot Spitzer

Gore -

We created Current to give voice to those Americans who refuse to rely on corporate-controlled media and are seeking an authentic progressive outlet. We are more committed to those goals today than ever before. Current was also founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers. Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it.

Olbermann -

Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, instead of abiding by their promises and obligations and investing in a quality news program, finally thought it was more economical to try to get out of my contract.

It goes almost without saying that the claims against me implied in Current's statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently....

It doesn't get any better then this.

Chances of winning the mega-million lottery, vs. other unlikely things

Here's an interesting little ditty - 15 unlikely things that are more likely to happen to you, then winning mega-millions.

For instance, you're more likely to be killed by a falling vending machine ...

15 Things More Likely to Happen than Winning Mega Millions

Here are some of the more interesting one (uh oh! i'm lefty!) -

Death by Vending Machine

Odds:  1 in 112 million

On average, two people in the U.S. are crushed to death underneath vending machines each year. Please snack responsibly.

Becoming President

Odds:  1 in 10 million

Mitt Romney has seen these odds and he likes them.

Dying From Being Left-Handed

Odds:  1 in 4.4 million

It’s a right-handed world. Apparently, a fair number of left-handed people die each year from using right-handed products incorrectly.

Hit the link forthe rest of them.

Jimmy Carter calls on Democratic Party to abandon their pro-abortion position

On Laura Ingraham's radio program.

Here he is at a book signing a few years ago.

Carter said toning down the stridently pro-abortion position would help win back Republicans who abandoned the Democrats because of abortion and other liberal social issue positions.

Here's the full interview with Carter, which touched on many issues -

The Laura Ingraham Show - Pres. Jimmy Carter: Dems should be more pro-life

A text of his comments on abortion -

@13:41 Carter: I never have believed that Jesus Christ would approve of abortions and that was one of the problems I had when I was president having to uphold Roe v. Wade and I did everything I could to minimize the need for abortions. I made it easy to adopt children for instance who were unwanted and also initiated the program called Women and Infant Children or WIC program that's still in existence now. But except for the times when a mother's life is in danger or when a pregnancy is caused by rape or incest I would certainly not or never have approved of any abortions.

@14:49 Carter: I've signed a public letter calling for the Democratic Party at the next convention to espouse my position on abortion which is to minimize the need, requirement for abortion and limit it only to women whose life are in danger or who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest. I think if the Democratic Party would adopt that policy that would be acceptable to a lot of people who are now estranged from our party because of the abortion issue.

Well I expect to live awhile longer, but it would take divine intervention for this to happen.

 

Why Catholics leave the Church

Having posted this yesterday Conversion story: How/why a Baptist woman with a PhD. in chemistry went RC, and wanting to assure some of my readers that I look at both sides of things, here's a research study -

The bishop would have gotten an earful.

While the study was restricted to one diocese, chances are the responses could come from just about anywhere in the U.S., where a 2007 report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found one-third of Americans were raised Catholic but one-third of those had left the church.

Best Buy, probably not a Best Buy stock

It's tough to run a retailer when people walk into your store, look over the goods, compare prices and then buy from Amazon for a better deal.

Here's a very fast (two pictures) look at their problems.

The Collapse Of Best Buy In Two Simple Charts

Here's what they're doing about it.

BEST BUY IMPLODES: Misses Revenue, Firing 400, Closing 50 Stores

U.S. soldier dies saving an Afghan girl

A father of three children, in the Rhode Island National Guard.

Sgt. Dennis Weichel, 29, died in Afghanistan last week as he lifted an Afghan girl who was in the path of a large military vehicle barreling down a road.

 

 

Conversion story: How/why a Baptist woman with a PhD. in chemistry went RC

Came across this. Stacy Trasancos has quite an extensive website and seems to write for a number of Catholic publications. And she's currently in a graduate theology program at a Catholic Seminary. Been married several times; has seven children.

Accepting Abundance

How is this for a vault?

Pretty athletic. I couldn't do it.

Pravda endorses Obama

HA!

...in an op-ed today posted on Pravda's website, the infamous former Soviet newspaper writes, "Electing Mitt Romney as the next President of the United States of America would be like appointing a serial paedophile as a kindergarten teacher, a rapist as a janitor at a girls' dormitory or a psychopath with a fixation on knives as a kitchen hand.

CNN viewership down 50%; FOX news down 17%

Interesting report from the Business Insider -

Wait, Did CNN Just Lose HALF Of Its Viewers?

Housing prices are back! ... To 2003 levels

Housing prices are back to early 2003 levels

CNN legal analyst on day 3 Obamacare Supreme Court arguments - disaster for Administration

Jeffrey Toobin - here's what he said yesterday: CNN legal analyst distraught - he thinks the Court will strike down the individual mandate

And today, the trainwreck is in addition "a planewreck."

Mike Tolkin, new coach of USA Eagles national rugby team - I coached him over 20 years ago

When he played for the Met Union Select Side. I still remember him making a left footed drop goal (playing flyhalf), which started a big rally for us. NY won, after we trailed by something like 20 points, against Eastern Penn. It was a very memorable game for a few reasons, not the least of which was our rally.

Mike is a great guy, and always has been. I had a nice chat with him back in June, 2010 when he was on the Eagles coaching staff at a tournament at Red Bull Stadium outside of Newark, NJ. I hadn't seen him in quite a few years and took a couple of pictures.

Mike has taught English at Xavier HS in Manhattan, I think since he graduated from college.

This is bigger then Tebow ...

Here's the NY Times story about Mike.

When USA Rugby began looking for a coach after the World Cup last fall, it had hundreds of applicants but opted last month for Tolkin, 44, who along with lecturing on sonnets has built a remarkably successful rugby program at Xavier High School in Chelsea.

Tolkin says his philosophy of teaching can be applied to the classroom and the field: “Students remember 10 percent of what you say, 50 percent of what they see and 90 percent of what they do.”

Along with his duties at Xavier, Tolkin was the defensive coach for the American national team at the last World Cup. The United States placed fourth in its group of five there, but many were impressed with the team’s defense, which gave up only 22 points to Ireland and 27 to Italy.

Nigel Melville, the chief executive of USA Rugby, said he was “very pleased” with the defensive effort at the World Cup. Several of Tolkin’s colleagues on the United States staff applied for the job, he said, but “Mike stood out.”

Previous coaches were European, most recently Eddie O’Sullivan, an Irishman. But Melville said he “always wanted to hire an American coach when one became available.”

Great. I love it. A case of a nice guy finishing first.

 

 

 

 

Audio from the Supreme Court oral arguments yesterday

As the Solicitor General - Verrilli - stumbles around, and Justice Ginsburg tries to save him.  I found this three and a half minutes to be quite fascinating.

 

CNN legal analyst distraught - he thinks the Court will strike down the individual mandate

UPDATE: Here's another view, from the Alhouse weblog - The Obamacare case

The oral arguments for and against the mandate were given today. Justice Ginsburgh (I heard her on the radio) did her best to help the Solicitor General. She was actually telling him what he needed to say.

Jeffrey Toobin, an ardent liberal.

 

New Study: Key to staying thin - eat more chocolate

Just yesterday, while reporting on my six month lymphoma check up Health Update I was moaning about how everything was fine - except I'd gained almost nine pounds since November.

Today, there's a new report out that proves, once again, that there is a God.

Pass me the Whitman's box.

Eating lots of chocolate helps people stay thin, study finds

For the study, published in the March 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers examined more than 1,000 healthy men and women who were free of heart disease, diabetes and cholesterol problems. They were all enrolled in another study that measured the effects of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, but for this study researchers assigned them questionnaires that gauged how often participants chowed down on chocolate.

The researchers found that the participants - who were an average age of 57 - ate chocolate for an average of twice of week and exercised roughly 3.5 times per week. But the more frequent chocolate-eaters had smaller BMIs, a ratio of height and weight that's used to measure obesity.

What explains the effect? Even though chocolate can be loaded with calories, it's full of antioxidants and other ingredients that may promote weight loss, the researchers said.

"I was pretty happy with this news myself," study author Dr. Beatrice Golomb, associate professor of medicine at the University of California-San Diego, told USA Today.

Right! That makes two of us!!

This isn't the first study to suggest a daily dose of chocolate can do the body good. Last summer, a study of more than 100,000 people found those who ate the most chocolate were 39 percent less likely to get heart disease and 29 percent less likely to have a stroke ...

HA! Love it -

NY Times poll: most Americans oppose health law

As in, most Americans oppose Obamacare. It's in the NY Times, so it must be true.

Two-thirds of Americans want the Supreme Court to overturn some or all of the health care law, even though large majorities support a few of its major aspects, according to a poll by The New York Times and CBS News.

At the heart of the opposition is the individual mandate requiring Americans to obtain health insurance, the least popular part of the bill and a crucial piece at the center of the court arguments, which began Monday and will turn to the mandate on Tuesday.

******

as has been the case since nearly the inception of the law, much confusion lingers over certain portions of it, underscoring Mr. Obama’s struggles to win public support for his benchmark legislation. In the Times/CBS News poll, less than half say they have a good understanding of the law, probably stemming in part from the fact that the provisions attracting the most opposition — like the mandate — have yet to be put into effect so therefore cannot be evaluated in tangible ways.

Yet other aspects of the law attract widespread support. Asked about a provision requiring insurance companies to cover people with a pre-existing medical condition, 85 percent said they approved of that element.

Similarly, 68 percent approved of the provision allowing children to remain on their parents’ policies until the age of 26, and 77 percent approved of a provision reducing the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare recipients.

Still, the poll results echo some of the criticisms raised by Republicans on and off the campaign trail. Robert Fawcett, 49, an independent from Yakima, Wash., said in a follow-up interview to the survey that while he favored some portions, the overall legislation was too far-reaching. “The whole way the law was brought about, the length of it, the scope of it, was a wrong step in the wrong direction,” he said. “I believe forcing people to buy insurance is unconstitutional; it’s taking away the choice people have.”

Most Americans say they worry that the law will raise their health expenses, and a steady majority say they are somewhat or very concerned that it will limit access to care. In addition, most agree with the Republicans’ contention that many businesses won’t be able to afford to provide coverage to employees and will be forced to cut jobs.

 

 

The President creates a made-to-order commercial for the Republicans

Rugby: Hong Kong Sevens, final day

Must have been a great final! I was at the 1990 final, which the commentator mentions (eat your heart out, Tom O'Connor!).

 

Health Update

had my annual CAT scan and my semi-annual visit with my lymphoma oncologist Dr. Zelenetz last week, at Sloan Kettering.

CAT scan was "pristine" and everything else seems fine. Bloodwork has a few odd things, but that's been the case since my chemotherapy ended in january, 2006 (Six years ago! Hard to believe!!).  Probably due to the chemo and nothing to be concerned about. Or so he says - of course it's my bloodwork not his!

The thing that is irritating - I've gained almost nine pounds since my last visit, in September, 2011. I'm sure I gained all the weight since Thanksgiving. Very annoying - I am in the gym five or six days a week, but my downfall is my seefood diet (I see food, I eat it). 

I'd love to lose 15 pounds, but that is over 52,000 calories. YIKES!

 

Is it cool to not have a smartphone?

Here's an amusing column in the NY Times that says yes.

FULL DISLOSURE: I have a semi-smart phone, and this coming week will be upgrading to an android LG Spectrum (two for one sale @ Verizon).

A Smartphone Future? But Not Yet

I understand the advantages of smartphones: I’ve received important messages too late, become lost in the hinterlands of Brooklyn and spontaneously wanted to look up how many episodes Zack’s DynaTac appeared in. I also fear my own susceptibility to an e-mail-checking addiction, like the character Ryan on a recent episode of “The Office,” who panicked when his phone was taken away during a bar trivia game.

Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” argues in the book that because of the brain’s neuroplasticity, Web surfing rewires people to be more adept at perfunctory multitasking, but diminishes the ability to sustain focus and think interpretatively.

Smartphones are especially pernicious because they “increase the ease of access to the Internet far beyond anything we’ve had with laptops,” Mr. Carr said in an interview over his land line (he also owns a dumbphone, as do the other family members). “You see a similar type of compulsive behavior” to computer-assisted Web surfing, “but it can go on continuously from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep.”

Such constant online status, Mr. Carr said, means that “we stop having opportunities to be alone with our thoughts, something that used to come naturally.”

“Anytime we have a spare second,” he said, “we feel compelled to check what’s going on outside of us.”

He has found an acolyte in the writer Jonathan Safran Foer, who jettisoned his smartphone after reading “The Shallows” and “finding myself checking my phone while giving my kids a bath,” he wrote in an e-mail from his computer. “It can be nice to stay in touch, but smartphones necessarily redefine ‘being in touch’ to mean something that has almost no value. (What was I checking for? Tossed-off e-mails from people I barely know.)”

Good feature - hit the link for the whole thing.

Rugby: Hong Kong Sevens, day 2

At the Friday Religious Freedom rally

People who only read the NY Times don't know this, but on Friday there was a coordinated 140 city series of Rallies to protest the HHS Mandate.I first posted about the mandate here on January 21st The President's Administration launches a direct attack on Catholic - and other - Churches and conscience protection and I've done a number of posts on it since then (just type in "HHS Mandate" in the search box on the right).

The Rallies were covered by virtually every paper in the nation - with the exception of the NYT - and you can read a bit about it here (and see two short videos), NY City Rally for Religious Freedom - a big success! with links to the Washington Post, USA Today and the Westchester Journal News.

There were about 500 people at the NY Rally, held outside the Federal building (the one with the George Washington statue) at 26 Wall Street.

I travelled down with four other people - retired fireman John Marks drove us. Besides John and I, there were three women - Judy Anderson, Carol, and Marty.

Anyway, here's my self-portrait half an hour before the Rally began (When Judy is involved in anything, we always arrive early). Behind me, the steps of the Federal building and below my right arm is John.

Now here's the steps 45 minutes later, early in the Rally as physician Dr. Anne Nulty, in the sleeveless dress, is giving a stirring five minute talk.

The event went on for over ninety minutes, with multiple speakers. The crowd was very mixed by age and demographics - the students here are from NYU and Columbia University. BONUS - just noticed that the woman who is the best known anti-abortion activist in the U.S.A. is also in this picture - almost in the dead center. 

So a Friday well-spent out of the office. This one was taken by the car attendant where we'd parked. He was shocked when we told him why we were there.

We then rewarded ourselves with a late lunch at Rory Dolan's on McLean Ave, in Yonkers.

Of course it was Friday and it's Lent, so no meat -

 

 

 

 

 

Great ad from the guy running for Congress against big wig Dem Steny Hoyer

Classic -

 

Rugby: Hong Kong 7's, day one

Played in, duh, Hong Kong

The new Snow White movie - not exactly a Walt Disney production

Whew. Being released in June.

And here's a longer "sneak peak".

http://youtu.be/Jh1fuecA2Pw

 

 

The Joba Chamberlain ankle injury

Horrendous. Stay off of trampolines.

Yankees relief pitcher Joba Chamberlain dislocates ankle, loses life-threatening amount of blood, as status for 2012 season remains unclear

TAMPA — Joba Chamberlain lost so much blood Thursday when he hurt his ankle while playing with his son that there initially was concern for his life, a Yankees' source said.

At the very least, the gruesome open dislocation of Chamberlain's right ankle could be career-threatening and probably will preclude Chamberlain from pitching for the Yankees this season.

A gruesome mess.

Cashman said Chamberlain was at a children's recreation center when the accident occurred and, though the GM said he didn't yet know the full story on how Chamberlain was hurt, he added, "I believe it was a trampoline, whether it was a trampoline specifically — any of you who have kids, there's places out there you can go with your children and it's a lot of gymnastic stuff. That's what it sounds like. That's a loose description."

******

"The dislocation means the ankle bone is forced out of its socket by some sort of injury and 'open' means the skin is ripped open, like with what Joe Theismann had with his injury," said Weinfeld, who has not treated Chamberlain but is an expert on such injuries. "This makes it a much more serious injury because the skin envelope has been violated. When the skin is intact, it's much easier to heal."

"This makes it not only a career-threatening injury, but a limb-threatening injury. There is a small percentage of people who end up with an amputation. There are a small percentage of people, if the skin envelope doesn't heal, they are susceptible to infection and that can lead to amputation. These days, that's less likely to happen because we have good antibiotics."

Weinfeld added, "I would be very surprised if he played this year. He won't be able to weight-bear for two or three months, let alone start baseball activities."

Poor Joba. The term "injury-prone" comes to mind.

Some chess humor

From my friend Joe - who also sent me this A young lad lies to protect his Dad's reputation the other day - and is quite the chess player. To "get" the pix, it really helps if you know a bit about chess ...

Poor Pawns!

 

A homily from Pope Benedict: "The parish is a place in which we learn to live our own faith in the 'we ' of the Church."

From March 4th - feast of the Transfiguration - homily given by the pope at the Parish of St John Baptist de La Salle in Torino, Italy.

I rejoice that the sense of belonging to the parish community has continued to develop and been consolidated down the years. Faith must be lived together and the parish is a place in which we learn to live our own faith in the “we” of the Church. And I would like to encourage you to promote pastoral co-responsibility too, in a perspective of authentic communion among all the realities present, which are called to walk together, to live complementarity in diversity, to witness to the “we” of the Church, of God’s family.

 

An interesting financial chart from Ben Bernanke

Up on the Business Insider website -

It's two charts from a Ben Bernanke (President of the Federal reserve) presentation. As I've written before (my opinon), Bernanke and the Fed gets blamed for economic maladies by both Republicans and Dems. But I think he saved us from an even bigger mess, created by the Obama economic policies.

This Is Why They Called It 'The Great Moderation'

 

Long term care insurance and policy pricing

A couple of days ago, the NY Times had a short piece about the rise in the cost of long term care insurance (the type of policy that pays for assisted living, whether in an institutional setting or your own home, as well as for care in a nursing home).

Here's the link, with a couple of paragraphs excerpted (the whole article is only nine short paragraphs and well worth reading if you are at all interested) and then a brief commentary by an acknowledged expert on this product - me.

Cost of Long-Term Care Insurance Keeps Rising

The American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance says its yearly analysis of popular policies offered by 10 big insurers finds that prices for such policies have risen by as much as 17 percent from a year ago.

******

Mr. Slome said that insurance companies were pricing their products correctly. “The problem is, it’s an expensive product,” he said.

As mentioned in the NYT article, a number of big insurers have stopped carrying long term insurance - for example MetLife, which was the second or third  biggest writer of LTC policies.

The rise in premiums is not just due to the low interest environment (also mentioned in the NYT article), meaning the insurers are getting a lower return on your premiums, which they invest.

LTC insurance is a relatively new product and insurance companies had relatively limited morbidity data on which to base their expected costs and payouts for benefits.

ALSO - this is a big one - it being a new product, the insurers took calculated gambles on offering the policies at rates which were low in order to be competitive and gain market share.

In the 90's, insurance companies that wrote long term disability policies got crushed by higher then expected claims. The three biggest companies whose primary business was disability insurance (Union Mutual, Provident, and Paul Revere) had to merge because of poor claims histories - the one company is now called Unum Group. Most disability contracts had guaranteed premiums - so the companies couldn't raise the premiums on their in-force business when their claims losses were worse then expected.

The LTC companies, while making pricing mistakes, gave themselves an escape clause - within limits and with state approval (they have to prove to state insurance departments that higher premiums are justified) they can raise their premiums on in-force business. And many of them have done just that.

I can tell you from personal experience - both clients of mine and family members - that long term care insurance often (not always) makes LOTS of sense, despite the situation with premium increases. The best value in policies are the state partnership policies where you purchase coverage from a private insurer for two or three years of benefits, and if the benefits run out, Madicaid will pay without first liquidating your assets. (EDITORIAL: This is the sort of private/public partnership it would be nice to see in other areas of our lives!). You need to be sure the policy is a state-approved policy - has a certain benefit level - and most insurers do have the partnership policies as an option. 

Anyone interested in more info about this stuff - just email me.

 

 

New organization: M.A.D.D.D.

That's for: Mothers Against Daughters Dating Democrats

There's also a D.A.D.D.D. group ...

Aspirin as a cancer preventative

Only PBS could turn what ought to be a fascinating discussion into something a bit tedious, but they do. They also have the sound out of sync with the video (I don't even know how you can do that anymore).

Nevertheless, worth hearing/watching -

 

Rugby: 6 Nations; Ireland v. England

Played at Twickenham. Ireland lost their starting tighthead prop after 28 minutes, and if you can't scrummage - long day at the office. This match was on live in the U.S. on BBCA (America).

the cancer drug Avastin - being faked

A counterfeit. And worthless. Avastin is an important - and controversial - drug. As the four minute video discusses, there's a real prolem with many counterfeit and worthless medications being sold and used in the U.S.

CBS doesn't allow embedding of their videos.

Fake Avastin cancer drug issued to doctors

More photos from the Titanic

Pretty amazing. The 100th anniversary of the sinking is coming up - April 15th.

National Geographic - previously unseen photos

 

Fewer people want to go to law school

GOOD! Too many lawyers.

At least that's the conclusion you can draw from the fact that the number of people taking the LSAT is way down in the last two years.

The Law School Admission Council reported that the LSAT was given 129,925 times in the 2011-12 academic year. That was well off the 155,050 of the year before and far from the peak of 171,514 in the year before that. In all, the number of test takers has fallen by nearly 25 percent in the last two years.

The decline reflects a spreading view that the legal market in the United States is in terrible shape and will have a hard time absorbing the roughly 45,000 students who are expected to graduate from law school in each of the next three years. And the problem may be deep and systemic.

Many lawyers and law professors have argued in recent years that the legal market will either stagnate or shrink as technology allows more low-end legal work to be handled overseas, and as corporations demand more cost-efficient fee arrangements from their firms.

That argument, and news that so many new lawyers are struggling with immense debt, is changing the way law school is perceived by undergrads. Word is getting through that law school is no longer a safe place to sit out an economic downturn — an article of faith for years — and that strong grades at an above-average school no longer guarantees a six-figure law firm job.

 

A young lad lies to protect his Dad's reputation

From my friend and occasional contributor Joe -

From the mouth of babes - and of course any politician could be substituted. ... HA!

One day a fourth-grade teacher asked the children what their fathers

did for a living.

All the typical answers came up - fireman, mechanic, businessman, Wally

salesman... and so forth..

However, little Justin was being uncharacteristically quiet, so when

the teacher prodded him about his father, he replied, "My father's an

exotic dancer in a gay cabaret and takes off all his clothes to music in

front of other men and they put money in his underwear. Sometimes, if the

offer is really good, he will go home with some guy and stay with him all

night for money."

The teacher, obviously shaken by this statement, hurriedly set the

other children to work on some exercises and took little Justin aside to ask

him, "Is that really true about your father?"

"No," the boy said, "He works for the Democratic National Committee and

helped to get Obama elected, but it's too embarrassing to say that in front

of the other kids."

Robert DeNiro's joke

A little one-liner that actually is a bit amusing. Making something of it - by Gingrich or any other Republican - is dopey. I mean, who cares? Talk about the issues, not little jokes.

 

Rugby: Six Nations - Wales goes for Grand Slam v. France

Played in Cardiff. A Grand Slam - winning all your matches (five) in the Six Nations tournament.

Like every other sport the players have gotten bigger, faster, and stronger.

One try and lots of celebrating. Both Welsh props have played in all three recent Welsh Grand Slams (2005, 2008, 2012). The Welsh coach, Warren Gatland, is a New Zealander.

Here's the Welsh Rugby Union website for a little more history on Welsh rugby.

 

They finally replace the blonde secretary's typewriter ...

From humor consultant Ellen - people under the age of forty may not get this ...

 

Thank God we have the NY Times op ed columnists to explain Catholicism for us

This morning Frank Bruni, former restaurant critic for the Times and now one of their wizard op ed writers takes a crack at it. If you hit his name link you may find tht he has a certain animus toward Catholic teaching on sexuality.

The purpose of his column is to show that Santorum represents only one variety of Catholicism, and a small one at that.

And of course a large part the column is devoted to priestly sex abuse.

Many Kinds of Catholic

They (Catholics) don’t really constitute a voting bloc, because their political allegiances reflect income and education as much as creed. That’s a big part of their resistance to Santorum.

But it’s also true that his particular Catholicism isn’t theirs. It’s the hierarchy’s. And his poor performance among Catholics should cause cardinals, bishops and the candidate himself to rethink the way they approach their religion.

From restaurant critic to religious and social commentator. Really Frank, try to write something original.

UPDATE: WSJ columnist Bill McGurn also wrote about Santorum this morning - but in a positive vein

...there is something about watching Mr. Santorum, outgunned in both staff and money, disdained by a media that literally cannot comprehend what he is saying, disliked by many in his own party and loathed by the opposition for the same thing—his beliefs—well, there is something admirable about a man who takes it all and refuses to be silenced.

 

Bristol Palin waiting for President Obama's phone call

After all, he called Sandra Fluke.

I found this story on Ann Althouse blog, who says "Best move for Obama? call her!"

Bristol's blog must be popular - there are over 1,100 comments on her posting.

Mr. President, When Should I Expect Your Call?

But here’s why I’m a little surprised my phone hasn’t rung. Your $1,000,000 donor Bill Maher has said reprehensible things about my family. He’s made fun of my brother because of his Down’s Syndrome. He’s said I was “f—-d so hard a baby fell out.” (In a classy move, he did this while his producers put up the cover of my book, which tells about the forgiveness and redemption I’ve found in God after my past – very public — mistakes.)

If Maher talked about Malia and Sasha that way, you’d return his dirty money and the Secret Service would probably have to restrain you. After all, I’ve always felt you understood my plight more than most because your mom was a teenager. That’s why you stood up for me when you were campaigning against Sen. McCain and my mom — you said vicious attacks on me should be off limits.

Yet I wonder if the Presidency has changed you. Now that you’re in office, it seems you’re only willing to defend certain women. You’re only willing to take a moral stand when you know your liberal supporters will stand behind you.

NY Times column on the outgoing Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury

Rowan Williams is the head of the worldwide Anglican (Episcopalian in the USA) Church. Also known as the Church of England, since it's still the official state-sanctioned religion of England (ever since Henry VIII).

With relations and in-laws in England, I know a fair bit about him and have followed his career a bit, since he became the head eleven years ago.

He just this past week announced he's stepping down and going back to academia.

in a sense he was born to the job - he's got an amazing "public school" (which is to say, cultivated and upper class) accent.

Anyway, here's a very good column about Williams, as well as the state of the Anglican Church (and the Catholic Church also) by Ross Douthat, in his once a week NY Times column (douthat is a convert to Catholicism).

For Williams, who announced on Friday that he will lay down his mitre at the end of this year, the Shariah controversy was typical of his tenure. Bearded, kindly and theologically subtle, the archbishop has spent the last 10 years trying to bring an academic’s finesse to issues where finesse often just looks like evasion — the spread of Islam in a de-Christianizing Europe, the divides within the Anglican Communion over homosexuality and women’s ordination, the rise of a combative New Atheism.

The result has been a depressing public ineffectuality for a man charged with leading the world’s third-largest Christian body. Whether he was talking vaguely about “interactive pluralism” as a way of avoiding tackling issues like forced marriages and honor killings in Muslim immigrant communities, answering “pass” to a journalist’s pointed question about his own views on sexually active gay clergy, or offering unreciprocated olive branches to proselytizing atheists, Williams rarely missed an opportunity to soft-pedal around an important debate.

But then again his office increasingly demands the impossible of its occupant. These impossibilities have been most apparent in Williams’s lengthy struggle to prevent Episcopalians in the United States and Anglicans in Africa from dividing over homosexuality. But the debate over gay priests and gay bishops is just one manifestation of the larger challenge facing a religious body that remains theoretically headquartered in Europe even as its center of gravity shifts southward, into the heartland of an emerging global Christianity.

This shift isn’t unique to Anglicanism: Roman Catholicism’s decline in the West has likewise been accompanied by striking growth in the developing world. (As the number of Catholic seminarians has dropped in the United States and Europe, for instance, it has risen by 86 percent globally since 1978.) In both churches, this geographic and demographic shift is putting a strain on institutional structures that evolved in a more Eurocentric age.

Canterbury has historically allowed for more of a theological big tent than Rome. But Anglicans at least shared a common ethnic heritage and cultural context. As the Communion has gone global, those bonds no longer exist.

Good column; hit the link for the whole thing.

The fastest-shrinking U.S. industry is newspapers

Going the way of the slide rule.

In recent weeks, LinkedIn, the networking website, and the Council of Economic Advisers have reported that the press is “America’s fastest-shrinking industry”, measured by jobs lost; the Newspaper Association of America has shown that advertising sales have halved since 2005 and are now at 1984’s level; and the Pew Research Center has found that for every digital ad dollar they earned, they lost $7 in print ads.

“There’s no doubt we’re going out of business now,” one unnamed executive told Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, which predicted a future of shrinking newsrooms, print deliveries only a few days of the week and more papers closing altogether. A USC Annenberg School study reached the stark conclusion that most printed US dailies would be gone in five years.

Departing executives and bankruptcy advisers have been among the few people making good money from newspapers. The chief executives of Gannett and the New York Times left in recent months with packages worth $37m and $24m respectively, while advisers to Tribune’s Chapter 11 proceedings have earned $233m.

Golden parachutes fro newpaper execs? Didn't they excoriate other indutries for this practice?

Charging for news online had been seen by many as the preserve of specialist titles, notably financial news brands such as the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, but the model has been adopted in recent months by a string of local newspapers such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune to the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

Publishers have focused particularly closely on the New York Times, which began charging for online content a year ago and counted 390,000 digital subscribers by December. Barclays Capital estimated this month that digital subscriptions could add $100m to the group’s annual circulation revenues, more than offsetting an estimated $50m-$60m annual decline in print advertising.

******

Even the business magnate Warren Buffett, a long-time investor in the Washington Post – which does not charge online – has backed digital payments. Sitting in front of the printing presses at the Omaha World-Herald, a local paper he bought last year, he told CNBC last month: “You shouldn’t be giving away a product that you’re trying to sell.”

By putting the same content online for free that they were charging for in print, Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman said newspapers had been competing against themselves. ...

This is from the Financial Times and it's worth hitting the link to read the whole thing.

 

Sharks mating "at an alarming rate"

Here's a 50 second video, in which experts "speculate" that it's due to global warming.

Huh? Yeah that's a speculation all righty.

Erin Burnett is the commentator/host on one of the CNN evening shows and she's pretty good - reasonably fair.

 

Dogs being popular with Farandas - here's a short dog-as-saviour adventure

As dog saves his owner - Yay! But maybe the girl didn't use the best judgement in where to work out?

 

Explaining the (real) War on Women

Peggy Noonan - who is a woman, but probably viewed in many circles as politically incorrect.

... the real war is against women in American public life, in politics and media most obviously, but in other spheres as well. In this war, leaders who are women are publicly demeaned and diminished based on the fact that they are women. They are the object of sexual slurs, and insulted in sexual terms. The words used are vulgar, and are meant to tear down and embarrass.

But to see this only through a left-right prism is to miss the problem. The problem is the coarsening of discourse in public life.

And here's a great point -

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the Year of the Woman, declared by someone in 1992 to mark and encourage the entrance of so many women into American politics.

At the exact same moment something else was happening in our public life, and it had equal or greater impact on our culture—the rise of the Internet.

Suddenly, by the mid 1990s, there was a new public place of complete freedom. Suddenly everyone—in blog posts, on personal websites, on news sites, in comment threads—had an equal voice and was operating on an equal field. The Internet became—this is America, we have a certain DNA—a bit of a Wild West. It was exciting and invigorating, a new frontier, but it held dangers, too, and darkness.

When anyone can say anything, anyone will. When the guy in the basement having his third Grey Goose finally got a telephone line on AOL, he found out he could take his Id out for a ride. He could log on, indulge his angers, and because it was anonymous he never had to stand by his words, or defend them. He never had to be embarrassed in front of his kids.

Lastly -

It would have been good if President Obama had discussed this in his news conference, instead of dodging a question about misogyny on the left. He called Sandra Fluke, he explained, because he wants public life to be safe for his daughters, if they choose to enter it. He would have made a braver, truer, more meaningful statement if he'd noted that Bill Maher has become so rich on sexism he had a million dollars to give to Mr. Obama's re-election campaign. And now, so as to discourage the bad treatment of women, Mr. Obama is handing it back.

That would have made an impression. That could have been a step forward.

 

Lá Fhéile Pádraig Shona Duit!

St. Patrick