Killing Babies No Different Than Abortion

Yup, that's what the great minds of several medical "ethicists"at Oxford University have said in The Journal of Medical Ethics:


"Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are 'morally irrelevant' and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued...:

While were at it, how about disabled adults, seniors, Jews, and anybody else who doesn't run in the right circles? There is no doubt in my mind who is morally irrelevant and it isn't the babies. 

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203753704577253491644700830.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion


www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9113394/Killing-babies-no-different-from-abortion-experts-say.html

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost wrote a poem by this name and it ends with the following verse:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 


www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-road-not-taken/

This poem came to mind this morning as I remembered that yesterday was the first day of Lent and the beginning of the pilgrimage towards the horror of Good Friday and the surpassing joy of Easter as contrasted with Mardi Gras the evening before. The crowds in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro were enormous while those attending Ash Wednesday services were much smaller and considerably more restrained. Roads that start next to each other can have vastly different destinations. The one less traveled makes all the difference.

How "Bout Them Gas Prices?

Here we go again on the high gas prices. Having fun yet? And isn't it nice to hear the chorus of Democratic voices singing the praises of these price increases? After all, as David Harsanyi points out:


"In 2008, Steven Chu, Obama's (and, sadly, our own) future secretary of energy (sic) lamented, 'Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.'"


townhall.com/columnists/davidharsanyi/2012/02/22/arent_high_gas_prices_what_democrats_want/page/full/


Nice job folks - you are definitely working on it! Give Obama another 4 years to knock out more pipelines and completely eliminate drilling in this country and we will be there! 


The usual response is that oil and gas are disappearing resources and we have to wean ourselves off them now to make it less of a jolt when they are gone completely. Really? Consider the following: 


"According to the Institute for Energy Research, there is enough natural gas in the U.S. to meet electricity demand for 575 years at current fuel demand, enough to fuel homes heated by natural gas for 857 years and more gas in the U.S. than there is in Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and some place called Turkmenistan combined. Oil? The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the United States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world's top oil producer. There are tens of billions of easily accessible barrels of offshore oil here at home -- and much more oil around the world."

I am quite confident that a shift to a different energy source will occur sometime in the next 500-800 or so years.

Then there is the other all-purpose excuse: Global Warming! Booga booga!! But the longer this excuse is used as a rationale for regulating just about everything, the more real science is making it out as the Big Lie and even green politicians are noticing. A former heavily green minister of the Social Democratic Party in Germany has recently questioned green orthodoxy based on scientific research about such silly ideas as the sun having something to do with heating the earth's atmosphere. He is, of course, paying a political price for his apostasy but mainline news magazines in Germany are starting to take a critical look at this subject and discovering that maybe things aren't quite as greenies have represented. 

finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2012/02/22/another_enviro_scientist_turns_global_warming_skeptic

Returning to an old theme, ideas have consequences, bad ideas have bad consequences, and the U.S. is paying the price for bad ideas right now. Gas prices have gone up 90% on Obama's watch. Some of it is market-driven because China and India have been buying oil in a big way, but much of it is self-inflicted and driven by ideology. We can increase the supply of these readily available resources and when supply increases, prices come down. It's about time we again try what we know works.

Decoy or Real Deal?

Israel has covertly moved electronic intelligence ships into the Indian Ocean off the Strait of Hormuz, it is fueling its Jericho II IRBM missiles, and has its F-15E Strike Eagles lined up and ready to go. Any guesses where?

This may very well be a feint to draw Iran's attention, which I believe is futile because the mullahs are not rational people in any conventional sense. It could be preparatory to a real strike. The IRBMs are a new variable, but I still do not think Israel can mount the sustained campaign necessary to take out Iran's nukes. This means that the Israeli strategy may be to hit the Iranians hard enough to make them really angry and have them lash out at us. If that happens, the Israelis are no doubt hoping that we will finish the job. Maybe. I don't trust the guy in the White House very much, though, even though this is something that should have been taken care off some time ago. Time will tell, but I don't like the feel of the breeze blowing this way.

www.wnd.com/2012/02/u-s-military-told-to-prepare-for-iran-ops/

Observation Point

We have had three dogs now and they shared a common - and extremely annoying - trait. Periodically they would go on a walk-about and most often come back stinking to high heaven for having rolled in manure, fish fertilizer, or some other really odiferous substance. We could always smell them before we saw them. We then had to drag them to the outdoor hose and give them 3 or 4 baths to get as much of el stinko off as possible before letting them in the house. Oyvez!

I think our relationship with God probably bears more than a passing resemblance to this canine behavior. We believers do pretty well for a while and then suddenly, without much explanation, head out to the pucker brush and roll in marvelously stinky sin. We all have our customized dung (sin) piles but when we come home, we all smell pretty much the same to God. Paul even wrote a Bible verse about it. Romans 7:19. Oyvez!

Lord, help me be more like you and less like our dogs who drive me crazy. Amen.

The New Normal

The annual Federal budget deficit has never exceeded 6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) except during the Civil War, WW I and WW II. Thus far it has exceeded that level in every year of the Obama Administration. If he is reelected we can expect that level of spending to continue. This is magical thinking and it cannot continue. We are not at the level of Greece yet, but by the end of a second Obama term we would be. Greece is probably over the falls for a variety of reasons; sad but true. The fallout, though, will hopefully be a cure for this magical thinking because it is going to be ugly. Live and learn.

 www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/painful-cost-obama_629745.html

Occupy Athens

The picture is of Athens burning tonight because the Greek Parliament adopted an austerity budget. Greece is showing every indication that it is going to have to go over the falls before it figures out that economics are not negotiable past a certain point - and they are there.

Take a good look because this will probably also be multiple American cities in a few years when we have to undertake similar measures to keep from totally collapsing our economy. The mindset is exactly the same: you can't take away our benefits! Someone else should pay for my lifestyle! In the case of Greece, they want the Germans to pay for it. In the case of the U.S. the 50% of Americans paying taxes are supposed to pay the tab for the other half and smile. This is madness. There is no free lunch. It is a tragedy that it has to come to Athens (or Chicago, LA, etc.) before people learn.

Do-Nothing Congress Gets One Right

If you have read this blog, you know that I think the ethanol subsidy has been one of the really awful programs funded by the Feds. Beyond the $6 billion per year subsidy to giant ag firms, it has wrecked lots of engines and fuel tanks, raised food prices for corn (often to those who can least afford it), and wrapped itself in a bogus green mantle to make people think it was environmentally sound when in actuality it used more fossil-based fuels to manufacture than gasoline. But Congress recently did nothing and killed this monstrosity in its tracks. How? By failing to re-authorize the subsidy. Yeah team! May Congress do more such "nothing" in the future! The next step is to repeal the EPA mandate for the stuff in gasoline.

townhall.com/columnists/paulgreenberg/2012/02/11/a_blank_canvas_can_be_a_beautiful_thing

Creative Parent-Child Relations

This is a father patiently explaining to his daughter why he is doing what he is doing. With his .45. To her laptop.

Energy Crisis?

 

(Tip o' the hat to Laurie Way)

Will They or Won't They?

Israel has been playing a high-stakes game of poker with Iran for some time over the latter's aggressive moves to build a nuclear capability. Such a force would be an existential threat to Israel. With the very short missile flight times over the Middle East, it would be very difficult to avoid one or more hits with even the best anti-missile defense system overhead. I am frankly surprised that the Israelis didn't pull the trigger when President Bush was in office - he was definitely more sympathetic than the current regime. That is water over the dam now, though, and Israel is faced with a situation where projecting power is going to be very difficult with a mildly hostile U.S. and a definitely hostile Syria and Iraq. It isn't without reason that Iran has been moving to build influence in those two countries, which would at least have to look the other way for a massive Israeli airstrike on Iran.The Saudis remain a wild card. The question remains: will the Israelis strike?

I think the answer is "no" because they have waited too long. Iran has had ample time to hide and harden its nuclear facilities and I doubt that Israel has sufficient long range striking power to take all of them out. I am not sure that we have enough power to do it either, but we do have the ability to mount a sustained campaign that makes it more likely to achieve a favorable result. Of course, there is no political will to do so. Russia and China are Iran's protectors, as they both just demonstrated in the UN by vetos of increased sanctions in the face of strong U.S. pressure. They could be expected to bluster and threaten and probably airlift in sophisticated weaponry. Oil talks. The rest of the world doesn't like Israel anyhow and would just as soon that it go away.

What to expect? I think that you will see an increasing number of attacks like the stuxnet virus hobbling Iranian computers and Iranian nuclear scientists taken out by hit teams. I would be delighted to be surprised, but I will not be holding my breath. A nuclear Iran will soon be a reality and then we will see if the mullahs have been bluffing about their willingness to use such a weapon. If the answer is "no" then we can expect a full-scale nuclear exchange and realize that this is the price of equivocation in the face of an implacable foe - a lesson we should have learned from WWII. Cowardice never goes out of style.

news.yahoo.com/just-bluff-fears-grow-israeli-attack-iran-191022654.html

Someone is Doing Their Job

As a lawyer, it is nice to see courts doing their job, in this case the Federal 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. 


Julea Ward was getting her masters in counseling at Eastern Michigan University. She was asked to counsel a gay couple about their relationship and since this involved affirming their gay views, it violated her religious beliefs. She followed her department policy and arranged for another counselor to take the case. For this she was thrown out of school despite having a near perfect record. 


The 6th Circuit was not amused. The court asked if a Muslim counselor would be asked to counsel a Jew that his Judaism was the true faith or would an atheist be required to tell a Christian that God was real? Probably not, so what the Sam Hill was EMU thinking here? The best line in the opinion exposes the reality at the heart of this case:


“Tolerance is a two-way street. Otherwise, the rule mandates orthodoxy, not anti-discrimination.”


I couldn't agree more. Rigidly-enforced orthodoxy is exactly what you find in universities and colleges all across this country. It is way past time for this abuse of the First Amendment rights of believers to come to a screeching halt and I commend the 6th Circuit for taking the Constitution seriously. 




townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/2012/02/06/eloquence_in_defense_of_liberty

In Due Course

I came across a verse the other day while preparing for a mediation that I had never seen before :


                The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.  Psalm 119:130
                                                                                                                        
I was struck by the idea of the understanding of God's will ("light") unfolding and how true it is in describing my experience of God's revelation. It applies in two contexts. 


The first is reading the Bible. Some people approach reading the Bible like a dart board: open it to a random page and see if the verse revealed speaks to your situation. This can be a problem if you choose a verse like Matthew 18:9 for example. Reading the Bible is more like mining - you have to work at it for a while and gradually amidst all the tailings you begin to uncover gold that reflects His light into your life and with that light comes understanding. Usually this is more general knowledge like what God does and does not like, His nature, general rules for living etc. Occasionally, though, you even get a specific answer to a dilemma that you are facing, but that is more rare. The more general rule: the more you read; the more you understand.


The second context is regarding God's will for your life. God rarely reveals His will in a big flash, but rather does so in a gradual unfolding. God is in the details. Over time, you begin to discern a pattern in friends' responses to your issue, or you keep finding yourself hitting the same circumstances when you act in a certain way, etc., etc. In other words it gradually dawns on you what the answer is to your problem. If you repeat this process enough, you begin to know where to look, what to listen for, and that's a good thing. Most often, though, we see God's work only in retrospect by noticing His fingerprints all over, and it becomes clear that He was there unfolding His revelation all along but we never were able to put together the pieces until He was done. 


Our prayer should be for patience to wait out what God is unfolding in our life and to have eyes to see and ears to hear it. He has all the time in the world and often uses it. Don't be anxious because He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. Philippians 1:6

Interesting Catch

The oceans cover 80% of the earth's surface. Other than shipping lanes and coastal areas, however, most of the them receive little contact from man. Thus it is logical to believe that there are some interesting things out there that we have not yet seen. Here is one example.

The picture shows an amphipod caught from very deep water off New Zealand. Normally these are about the size of the shrimp you get at your favorite fish place. This one happens to be 13 inches long, which makes you wonder what might be chowing down on these critters at the same black depths. As robot research submarines become more prevalent, some of the answers will start to come in. Whoever thinks, though, that we know everything there is to know about this planet had best think again.

www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/green/wildlife-news/120202/supergiant-amphipod-monster-crustacean-found-new-zealand

Get Real

Yup - this is our family. This is life.

Return to Sender

Yup, the U.S. Post Office always delivers through rain, snow, and apparently ^&%$! Unfortunately what the postman left in this yard did not have a return address label. A metaphor for what the Feds really think of us? Special delivery indeed.

www.kgw.com/news/Mail-carrier-returns-to-duty-after-relieving-himself-in-yard-138534659.html