Monday, March 18, 2024

Why?

Why is it that the Left goes bat-crazy psycho-nuts whenever the issue of Sex Trafficking is brought up? Any time someone brings up the prevalence of the sex slave trade today, they seem immediately linked to crazy conspiracy theories and attacked as liars and kooks.

Jeffrey Epstein, whose life story should be the subject of a million movies, TV shows and streaming specials, is largely ignored.   I can imagine, in a different age, his case being one of those stories that never goes away.  Yet it only appears to raise its head when something makes it happen, and then it is quickly swept under the carpet again.  Which I find interesting. 

The movie Sound of Freedom was ravaged.  It was brutally attacked.  Film critic and Catholic deacon Steven Greydanus linked to an authority who said the movie's lies would lead to endless death and suffering on the part of trafficked children.  Others attacked the movie for failing to be a full scale dissertation on the subject.   Triumph of the Will got less pushback.  

Now we have Senator Katie Britt, who gave the response to the State of Union stump speech.  Wow.  I mean, the Press/Left always attacks the Republican who gives the SOTU response.  Remember the great Dry Mouth Apocalypse of Marco Rubio?  But this has been brutal.  Apparently she bold faced lied about a case involving sex trafficking from decades ago.  I don't know the details since everyone has their versions.  I just notice that the topic of sex trafficking itself has been all but ignored in preference for attacking her.  Once again.  Even the victim in her example has jumped on board and attacked her as the main point of contention. 

I just notice trends.  And one trend I notice is that the national press spends scant little time discussing the modern global slave trade driven largely by the sex slave trade.  Especially given our current lack of mercy or empathy for Western slave traders and slave owners of the past.   Local press outlets will sometimes cover it, mostly in the sense of how local agencies are helping victims.  But there's no real big national 'we must stop the horrors!' media frenzy.  No ongoing headlines keeping it in the public eye for months on end, like George Floyd or the Unite the Right rally of 2017 or gun violence.  In fact, it seldom comes up.  

Unless someone brings it up, and then it's pull out all the stops and attack - the ones bringing it up.  Again, I'm no conspiracy theorist.  Nonetheless, if those - usually on the Left - would mount an outrage driven crusade against sex trafficking with the zeal that they go after those who bring up the problems with modern sex trafficking, I'd be far less inclined to give wild conspiracy theories even a second glance.  

But as I've said before, there comes a time when it takes far more credulity to disbelieve a conspiracy theory than to believe in one.  And given the reactions I've seen over the last few years where this topic does and doesn't come up, the craziest thing to believe appears to be the claim that nothing is going on behind the scenes where this modern scandal of human slavery is concerned. 

Friday, March 15, 2024

Twisters twisters in the night

To our West.  Image from the Dayton Daily News
So we were in the path of those tornados that swept through the Midwest last night.  Just to our west, the worst of the tornados - at least as of now - hit and did much damage.  At least three were killed by the storms.  In these parts tornados are usually of the weaker variety.  But in recent years, especially in the last couple, the storms have growing in frequency and severity.  I've noted the sudden shift in weather in just the last couple years.  

Fortunately for us, the cell that produced the tornado suddenly swung south and then after it passed, turned east again.  It weakened a bit as it approached us, and then strengthened.  It looks like places farther to the east also got hit hard.  

This is the fifth tornado I've been through, including two that hit right next to where I was at the time.  When I was little, about four years old, a tornado cut a path right up to our house and then 'jumped' over our property.  In Florida, I was getting ready for work when a tornado hit and cut travel across the intercoastal bridges, leaving me stranded.  

Apparently when I was an infant, my mom was home with my sister and me while Dad was at work.  A tornado hit the town then (that town has been hit before, owing to its place in the Ohio landscape) while she kept rocking in her rocking chair.   

And finally when I was a pastor in Southern Indiana, our church was one of the few buildings with a basement.  So we were assigned to make sure the doors were opened in case of something like a tornado outbreak.  One night it hit, while the Final Four was going on (prompting those basketball obsessed Hoosiers to constantly apologize for having to break from the important stuff to talk about all of that saving our lives gibberish).  

And now this.  I will say this, the stories are true.  Of the three tornados that hit when I was able to see the conditions, it's just like they say.  First you have the storms, massive winds, lightning, downpours and hail.  Then silence.  A dead, suffocating silence.  And then it hits.  The two times I heard the tornadoes actually hit nearby, it does sound like a locomotive.  

And they are fickle things.  Back in 1974 during what they called The Super-Outbreak, my dad was at work on the railroad.  He stayed where he was, since it takes only the strongest tornadoes to damage a railroad engine.  So he kept on moving, watching the distance as he crossed no fewer than four of the tornadoes that night.  He said there's no sense trying to plot a course and guess.  They jumped around like rabbits, appearing here, vanishing there, reappearing a mile later.    

So having gone through number five, I hope that's it.  We were fortunate, though others weren't.  Our prayers for them while the state digs out of the second outbreak of tornados in almost as many weeks.  Again, nobody denies the climate changes.  And it's tough not to see a sudden shift in weather patterns.  It's approaching it scientifically and realistically that most people want, not doing the political thing that dominates the disucssion nowadays. 

Just admit it

Obviously a badge of honor

Abortion has become the source and summit of modern liberalism.  It is the one sacred issue behind which all other issues and priorities can be placed.  Racism has its place.  Sexism is usually important.  Opposing sexual violence is more often than not important.  The border?  Eh. Climate change as good as always.  But abortion?  Apart from complete fealty to all things LGBTQ, I'm at pains to think of anything more important, more cherished, or more emphasized among the Left than legalized abortion. 

This is not hyperbole on my part.  It is, if anything, a restrained observation of just how much passion, zeal, and focus is prioritized among the Left for defending legal abortion to the exclusion of almost any other issue.  It's the ace in the hole that could, by liberal pols' and pundits' own admission, save the day in November. Whatever else is happening in the world, whatever suffering or misery, they are betting that liberals will turn out for Biden over abortion rights if for no other reason.  Again, something they point out almost gleefully. 

The New Pro-Life Catholics who swept abortion under the rug as an unfortunate, but completely understandable, result of everything from patriarchal conservatism to capitalist corruption are going to have to admit to this.  For years they have insisted that nobody wants an abortion, nobody is 'pro-abortion', Democrats have other priorities, they merely maintain, as a sort of last ditch necessity, the right to abort pregnancies by the tens of millions. 

Now we have the party that is willing to promote abortion and everything to do with it in a way that would make P.T. Barnum blush.  And beyond that, the growing 'I'd proudly abort a million pregnancies because I can' testimonies are becoming all too common in pro-abortion advocacy.

You can just see the agony and regret on their faces

The slick sleight of hand by New Pro-Life Catholics was that they took a caricature of those who insisted abortion was a non-negotiable and used that to altogether avoid confronting the Left's emerging abortionphilia.  That was at a time when they could still lean on 'safe and rare is all we want.'  But that, like the age of sanity and virtue, has long since passed.  So 'New Pro-Life Catholics' who hang on the 'nobody is promoting abortion' label had best be honest.  For siding with the movement dedicated above most things to aborting undesirables on an industrial level is bad enough.  But lying in order to justify it?  That would give a whole new spin on the old 'Liars for Jesus' kerfuffle.  

We won't get into this being one of the top issues for our most Catholic president. The growing notion that Vatican II means never having to care about Catholic teaching is for another post. 

Catholics who insist liberals drive down abortion numbers might want to consider context

And they have built the high places of Baalim, to burn their children with fire for a holocaust to Baalim: which I did not command, nor speak of, neither did it once come into my mind.  Jeremiah 19.5


Wednesday, March 13, 2024

I never saw this


Of course insurrection is a thing.  It's a crime.  An actual crime.  Like robbing a bank or stealing a car.  And if you commit those crimes, you're charged with, and perhaps found guilty of, committing those crimes.  But you aren't a car thief because someone calls you a car thief. Or a bank robber simply because media talking points say you are.  Or a racist just because someone says you're a racist. It has to be officially proven for it to stick, at least on this side of the Gulags.  

With that said, it doesn't appear they have actually demonstrated that the January 6th protests and riots were an insurrection, despite media narratives to the contrary.  To me, and many of those in that 'billions', it was yet another riot in a year of riots. This one directed at liberals in many ways that riots following Trump's election in 2016 were directed at conservatives.  

Or just like the riots and protests of 2020 that were aimed at anything American in general, at government buildings, at Christian churches, at religious art featuring white people, or businesses and residential areas, injuring and even killing innocents*, and destroying much property.   And all of that after four years of pundits, activists and even journalists declaring the 2016 election a fraud, stolen, corrupted, illegal, and in need of being overturned by hook or by crook. 

But I didn't see an insurrection on January 6th, 2020, at least not yet. I'm waiting for the verdict.  For I vehemently reject the modern Left's insistence that things like due process, presumption of innocence or burden of proof are antiquated ideals once used to keep the oppressed down, and therefore worthy of being overhauled or eliminated.  

If it is found to be legally true, that by the law an actual insurrection did take place, and a court has ruled so, then I'll concede the possibility at least.  As far as I know, however, that hasn't happened yet, at least with the riot as a whole.  Much less that Donald Trump has been found legally guilty of being linked to such a crime.  

*I'll assume at least some of those 25 said to have been killed during the 2020 riots were killed due to the 2020 riots.  I recently had a debate with deacon and film critic Steven Greydanus who challenged that assumption, and suggested that just because they died during the riots doesn't mean they died because of the riots.  If that is true for some, I have a hard time believing all of them were only coincidently killed in ways unrelated to the riots and protests in which they were killed.  

Monday, March 11, 2024

The State and God are not the same

 Because obviously God would have some improving to do to equal the State:


The ease with which Christians have shoved God into the Sunday closet and deferred to the efficacy of the State as our only salvation shows the speed with which God can so easily be mocked. 

For the godless Left, of course, the State is substitute God.  And activists are its prophets.  For the believer and the sane and rational individual who made it through kindergarten, we know better. 

Now I have no idea what issue is being referenced here. Mocking thoughts and prayers began with selectively chosen shootings and the idea that guns and guns alone are the only thing worth focusing on.  Since then it has spread to a host of issues where the only acceptable response is to take your loser thoughts and your loser prayers to your loser God and keep them for an hour on Sunday mornings where they belong.  

Again, it is the progressive activist and the dogma of progress that will save the day.  God, prayers, and anything spiritual has bupkis to do with the real problems of the real world.  Let's bet on how many good and faithful Christians approve this message. 

I should say that it goes without saying I believe Christians should be involved in things, including politics.  But since mocking thoughts and prayers unless tied to distinctly leftwing activism has become all the rage among the Left, I'm wagering the shirt is supposed to imply more than a simple statement of intent. 

This might come as a shock

But apparently this last winter was the hottest on record.

Which is a headline getting as common as the morning traffic report.  For quite some time, every month, ever season, every year, every week, every day seems to be the hottest on record ever.  

Even when summers have been mild or we have been hit with disastrously arctic level freezes as a year or so ago.  The headlines always read 'Last [insert here] hottest on record.'  Sometimes there's a qualifier, like hottest in US, or hottest in Europe, or hottest in a month with an R in it.  But always the hottest.  Always.

Why do I feel like there is something about this that doesn't seem right?  I mean, they must have the stats, the numbers, the data.  Yet call me too much of a skeptic, but I can't help but think the headlines and the accompanying meteorological data somehow aren't the whole picture.

Of course I could be wrong.  It wouldn't be the first time. 

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Pope Francis nails the spirit of modern Christainity

By telling Ukraine to embrace the 'white flag' of negotiations.

Let's face it.  Christians have been charging forth with white flags waving for generations.  Since WW2, Westerners and Americans have joined the call to charge forth and surrender.  That's how we're at the place we are today.  

And it isn't in one area alone.  The world has been having its way with the Church, and by extension the civilization it helped build, for more years than I can remember.  If what Pope Francis said seems bothersome, I'd suggest we take a long, hard, honest look at the last century or so and ask why.  

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Shameless shout out time!

In the 'little store that could' department, my son and daughter-in-law were asked to speak at the local public middle school about business, entrepreneurship, and bookselling.   Hard to believe they're heading into their second anniversary as business owners.

This isn't to say we're any less proud of our other boys.  Oh, they're no angels.  And heaven forbid the topic of politics comes up where two or more of them are gathered.  But as hopes of parents goes, we couldn't do much better.  

Monday, March 4, 2024

I don't believe it

So Reuters has a poll by Reuters that finds extremism is voters' greatest worry.   I don't believe it.  Granted, by now everyone should take polls with at least a block of salt.  But in the polls I've been following out of morbid curiosity, I've not seen extremism anywhere near the top.  In not a few polls it hasn't been mentioned at all. The economy, the wars, the crime rates and the border crisis all top the majority of polls I've seen, with concerns about healthcare always being a contender.  

Nope. This strikes me of one of those 'how to stuff a survey' polls.  You know, like asking 'Do you support legalizing child rape or do you think extremism is the country's greatest concern?'. 

Again, polls by now should be seen as reliable as the media that reports them.  Nonetheless, when I see something like this that is hell and gone from what I've seen almost anywhere else, you just know something is up.  The only thing I can think of is that the sampling of Americans in the poll were all from the Reuters press office. 

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Our choice in a nutshell

Choose God and choose life.  Embrace the Gospel.  Flee the hellish culture of death that sees life as important only when expedient.  Carl Olson chose well: 

"I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice, and clinging to him; for that means life to you and length of days... " 

Deuteronomy 30.19-20a

Friday, March 1, 2024

Orwell never went this far

The headline alone says it all:

Some states are trying to make sex binary?   You've got to be kidding me.  Go back twenty years and say that and you'd be met with blank stares from everyone in the room.  This shows the speed with which we're sinking and sinking fast.    

It's all about power and the removal of the Christian Western tradition.  Pick almost anything assumed to be true, and throw it on its head. It can be as ludicrous as you want.  Right now, go through the Mental Health industry.  Because despite statistics to the contrary, we're convinced the MHI is infallible and can do no wrong and solve all of our problems.  If it says C-A-T spells dog, then by golly it's true.  The press will approve this message.

At the end of the day, this is telling us that O'Brien was holding up five fingers.  Because four fingers is really five.  The MHI says so, the press affirms it, and you had best get with the act or else.  When your society has reached that level, it's no longer case of when will it collapse, but when did it collapse. 


UPDATE:  In keeping with the press as the machine of lies and exploitation, I was shown this.  It's about a young person dragged into the madness of post-gender reality, and who has died.  Before the death, there was a fight. in school  In the 'oppressed is always good and can do no wrong/oppressor is always evil and can do no right' template, there is not even an attempt to ask who might have started it.  Transgender = oppressed = always good = can do no wrong.   That's all we need to know. 

But the part that gets me is that the media has been trying to squeeze what exploitation it can from this, with the usual activists and lawyers jumping on board.  Yet the only thing we know about the death at this point is from the preliminary autopsy here:

The latest police statement says preliminary autopsy information indicates that the teenager "did not die as a result of trauma".

So the only thing that has been said is that the death was possibly not due to trauma.  It reminds me of that ABC story that shocked the world and then was swept under the carpet. You know.  The one involving Matthew Shepard that admitted one of the men accused of killing him was, in fact, part of the LGBTQ community.  That is, it wasn't a "hate crime."  Yet it was the main impetus for ramrodding the - then - controversial notion of 'hate crimes' and 'hate speech' into our social order.  

I wonder what really happened with this poor youngster swept up in our modem age of expedient insanity.  I doubt we'll ever know.  I do know that our media is now to the point of literally letting us know it is promoting BS and lies and doesn't even care.  At least it could have left the part about it possibly not being due to the trauma out of the story.  That it knows it can put it right there in front of us, and then proceed to push the agenda based on BS, shows where we've gotten to, and just how crazy things have become. 

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Prayers for Gary Sinise and his family

May his memories be made of times like this
Gary Sinise has announced that his son, Mac, died of cancer this January.  It was after a fire year battle.  He was diagnosed with cancer in the same year Gary's wife was diagnosed.  In one of those 'why this guy God, he's one of the good guys!', you're reminded that it rains on the just and the unjust. 

Gary Sinise is one of those rare 'good guys of Hollywood.'  He's our generation's Bob Hope.  Though I fear that Hope had far more love and appreciation for his devotion to our military than Sinise has.  Keeping himself as far from partisan politics as he can, he nonetheless has devoted himself to our veterans and  to doing everything he can to support them and aid them in their troubles. 

He's best known, of course, for his role in Forrest Gump as the longsuffering Lieutenant Dan.  One of the most memorable performances of the 1990s, and possibly of all time.  He took that role and his identification with the character and turned it into his devotion to our armed forces in the years after the 9/11 attacks.  He hasn't looked back since.

I know.  People experience such tragedies all the time.  Why single this one out?  I guess, again, because he's one of the good guys.  Like the late Roddy McDowall, he's known to be someone who has no enemies in an industry awash with enemies.  And people from all sides of the ever more contentious aisles appear to respect him, as well they should.

So it's always tough when people who have devoted themselves selfishly for the cause of good appear to get hit and hit and hit again with tragedies.  It's times like this that you're inclined to say "Not fair God, why not drop these horrors on someone who has it coming, and I can compose a list pretty quickly.'  Until, again, you realize that's now how it works.  

For just like making the stupid mistake of calling hellfire down on the rich without realizing to some in the world I am rich, the same goes for the good guys and the bad guys.  Whatever I think of others who I feel deserve such trauma in their lives more than Sinise, there are others far better than me who could say the same about me.  But then, that's what makes them far better than me. 

In the end, on this side of heaven, we think of Corrie ten Boom's illustration of this life as a needlepoint  work of art knitted by God.  We see the business end on the rear of the picture - loose ends, dangling threads, knotted confusion.  God sees the beautiful picture on the other side. 

Whether that helps Mr. Sinise, I couldn't say.  He speaks of his son's strong Catholic Faith. Apparently Gary is also Catholic, having entered the Church in 2010.  I pray that faith of theirs will see them through the coming months and years as they deal with one of the worst things a person can experience, and the worst thing a parent can experience.  

When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but the LORD delivers him out of them all.  Psalm 34.17-19

Monday, February 26, 2024

Ken Burns is what we call White Noise

That is, just another annoying blip in the noisy static.  Apparently he produced a docuseries called The United States and the Holocaust.  If the interview in this article is any indicator, it is the same old same old for many, especially young, Americans.

That is, he's gracious enough to say the United States wasn't exactly responsible for the Holocaust per se, but then proceeds to explain how the United States and Nazi Germany were practically salt and pepper.  He trots out the Jim Crow era, genocide, Native Americans, slavery and antisemitism charges, applied to one country as easily as to the other.  

Apparently at least one episode focuses on the rift between FDR and antisemite Charles Lindberg.  I asked my son, who recently graduated college, about that.  He told me that those of his peers who even had heard of Lindberg, only knew him as some Nazi hero in our Nazi country, vaguely aware that he did something with flying. 

In keeping with our era of hyper-judgmentalism, the series seems wrapped in the context of 'sure we beat the Nazis, liberated the camps, and allowed thousands to come into our country ... but we didn't do it perfectly enough.'  Not like it would have been if our generation was there!  When you have the track record we have, I suppose arrogance is all that's left. 

The funny part of this interview is that one of the producers seems to think they've really blown the lid off of something.  The person talks about how 'uncomfortable' the real truth of our nation and its role in those events makes people in the audience feel, once they see the production. Really?  That's like saying people will be uncomfortable when they learn the secret that slavery existed in America's past.  That's as much a lack of awareness as you can get.

Years ago, when I used to comment on the Huffington Post, I ran into people who believed that the whole of the Holocaust was an American conspiracy, as was the entire war.  By then (c. 2004ish), it wasn't uncommon to run into people online who believed the Nazis were lifted up by the American Military Industrial complex for the sole purpose of inciting a war that the US could then exploit, and use to subjugate the world to our racist, imperialist ways. Compared to them, the saner ones back then dismissed such thinking, being content with the notion that America was no better than the Nazis, and didn't really lift them up as much as inspire them (the old 'the Nazis became racist when they studied the Confederacy' storyline).  

That was almost 20 years ago.  Does Mr. Burns really think people like that have gone away as opposed to multiplied exponentially?  Does he really believe they will be uncomfortable with his documentary?  About the only thing that will make them uncomfortable is his insistence that the US isn't solely responsible for the Holocaust.  That might bother them a bit. 

I don't think we realize just how post-Western, and by extension post-American, we already are.  Harkening back to my oldest son, he said a cool 1/3 of his classmates can barely distinguish between the Swastika and the Stars and Stripes.  Had I not seen examples myself of such thinking over the years, I'd almost be inclined to think he exaggerates.  But I have.  

And we have those useful fools like Burns, a historian I've traditionally enjoyed, to thank.  Because instead of seeing the bleeding obvious, they think they are bravely facing the fan club by exclusively focusing on the negative, endlessly criticizing, and so blurring the line between Nazis and America.  

BTW, all of this is made possible by the Left effectively elevating Western-based racism as the only, all defining, most evil, unpardonable sin in the world. And that goes for anything we thought we did well, like win the Second World War.  This is aided by the fact that by now, about 75% of our recollection of WWII is focused on the Holocaust, primarily as it effected Jewish (and sometimes homosexual) victims; about 10% focused on the Japanese interment camps* in the US, another 10% recalling the use of the Atomic Bombs, over 4% (but growing) the segregation in the US military in WWII, and a shrinking less than 1% on D-Day.   

For most youngsters today, that was WWII. The tens of millions of others killed barely make a drop in the bucket where focus is concerned.  The soldiers?  Except for some minority groups, they are barely mentioned at this point.  I subscribe the the National Veterans Memorial and Museum updates.  It's been many moons since a white male veteran was showcased.   You could be forgiven for not knowing white men ever served in our military if you got your info from that museum.  

But then, when mentioned at all, it's increasingly the fact that they were likely racists in their own white supremacist army.  Hence Burns can acknowledge 'a little heroism' from that time, but those were mere specks of light in the overall darkness that is, and always has been, America.  When that's your narrative, it's not hard for young people to conclude the Soviets might have been the good guys all along. 

*In December 2021, I saw on the news that some Asian American activists are wanting 'Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day' to be replaced by the anniversary of the Japanese Internment camps.  Sort of how Juneteenth will assuredly never be used to replace July 4th.  Again, we're seeing the utter destruction of the West and America, and it's likely a bit too late to stop it.  Thanks go brilliant thinkers like Burns. 

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Our very Catholic president speaks

Yep:

In case you're wondering or even care, the Catholic Church technically teaches against IVF.  Just what that means today is open to debate.  Obviously President Biden has expressed his opinion. 

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

This is a thing to watch

Apparently a couple in Indiana had their son taken away because he insisted he was a girl and they didn't comply.  You know the gist, he wanted to be called a girl and she or a million genders and what have you.  Apparently he was taken away from the parents pending an investigation into allegations of abuse.  Those were cleared.  Nonetheless, the child was still kept from the parents because, well, you can't have parents insisting their biological boy isn't a girl.  This is from on high from our 21st Century experts after all.  

This is what it's about of course.  To divide and tyrannize.  I give it about twenty years.  The complete end of freedom and democratic governance that is.  I will be in my seventies, and my sons - all four of them - well into adulthood and families and whatnot.  Whether it can be stopped at this time, it's hard to say.

I think conservatives fell for the old conservative v. liberal template and that has cost us big time. As my son said from his chats in college, most Young Republicans are so-so on the abortion thing. many aren't terribly religious, most have absolutely no problem with gay marriage, and some were even warming to the whole post-gender thing.  Why? Because they're conservative, that's why. That means they are merely conserving the conservativism of their day that they are familiar with.  

Let's face it, there aren't too many conservatives out there marching in protest or upturning the order to stop this.  Many of the secular variety don't seem to care.  The old Rush Limbaugh approach of calling down hellfire on something like the Gay Rights Movement, then partying with Elton John at your wedding because, well, you're rich, he's rich, and there you go.  That's what these youngsters have seen.  And that's from the resistance.

So those appalled at this had best figure a new way to frame things.  The old 'Right/Left' dichotomy isn't working.  On the Left's side, it has been used to frame everything as 'Team Jesus/Nazi'.   On the Right, it means conserving the latest version of whatever happens to be what enough conservatives embrace or at least shrug their shoulders about.  It's going to take digging into the depths of many generations of madness to get back to the roots of what went wrong if there is any hope in salvaging things. 

Meanwhile, don't be shocked if in five years children declaring themselves aardvarks and taken by the state from their non-affirming parents is a normal as assumptions of rigged sports competitions are today. Because there is one thing that is true as true can be - slippery slope might be a logical fallacy, but it's also a historical fact. 

Saturday, February 17, 2024

Because it is not climate

That's why.  

So yesterday we were supposed to have a dusting of snow.  The temperatures would drop, some mix of rain and snow, perhaps a little dusting.  And that was that.  As late as yesterday morning's weather forecasts on the morning news.  Yet this is what it looked like this morning: 

Not exactly a dusting.  And because we weren't ready, much of the prep work hadn't been done.  My sons noted that they didn't issue any type of travel advisory until after the evening news, when the majority of the snow had passed.   

This morning, however, the weather forecaster did address the staggering fail when it came to the forecast.  Which is only one of many  in recent months.  We've noticed that it does seem they have been missing the forecasts more than usual over the last year or so. 

The meteorologist said, at the end of the day, it's weather.  Weather is complicated and not always easy to predict. Plus it's based on models.  Models provide many things, but it isn't some magical spell.  In this case, only one model showed anything close to what happened.  All other models showed what all of the local stations predicted.  A light snowfall if anything at all. 

I had to chuckle.  After all, much of the climate change narrative is based on models.  But apparently those models predicting what the entire global climate will be in a hundred years are just spot on perfect in their accuracy.  As opposed to models that predict the daily weather in a given location.  How can we predict what will happen outside our windows later today?  It isn't like predicting the entire planet's climate a hundred years from now!  Apparently that's as easy as pie. 

Always remember: A forecast of 79 degrees means excessive heat watch.  Modern meteorology in a nutshell

Anyone know anything about Creative Minority Report?

Apparently it hasn't been reachable for several days.  I don't personally know much about it.  But a reader was curious since he wasn't able to reach the site.  I tried and couldn't either.  So any info would be appreciated. 

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Goodbye GetReligion

And God bless you. 

GetReligion is no more.  Terry Mattingly, journalist and journalism professor and founder of the site, has called it quits.  I didn't visit it like I used to.  In fact, in later years I seldom visited at all.  

A big issue I had in the olden days was the premise.  Beyond looking at how religious stories were covered in the print media, the premise of the site was that journalism is truly the noble profession.   No matter how bad the mauling of a story, the contributors and Mr. Mattingly would insist most reporters and press rooms were filled with honest journalists just following the facts wherever they go.  Which  accounted for the website's most common question: Why do these press rooms keep making the same mistakes over and over again? 

When I pointed out why, for instance, the NYT always erred on one side, which was the same as the Los Angeles Times, or Chicago Tribune, or New Yorker, I often got smacked down, including by Mr. Mattingly himself.  I mean, I understood.  He was  journalist.  You don't want to admit the truth about selling cars if you're a car salesman (though my dad, who sold cars a few times in his younger days, was more than happy to do so - the Hollywood meme is true, when a salesman goes to 'talk about a better deal', they're just shooting the breeze).  But still. Over the years, the denial of the obvious just got under my skin. 

I don't know what happened and when, but looking at this announcement of the site's finish, it seems he has come around to admitting the obvious.  Leaning heavily on 'both sides are guilty', he appears to concede that journalism in the classic sense is no more.  Or at least a rare breed.  He appears to concede that news agencies are basically about furthering their goals and narratives full stop.  Journalists, therefore, are to find only that which aids the cause, and ignore or attack that which does not. 

Now, the above is my paraphrase.  But I don't see in that lengthy post, or the final one, anything to suggest otherwise. It's not that he wasn't aware of what was happening in the day.  He knew there were stories whose errors or choices were clearly bias driven.  He just maintained that it was the exception to the rule.  It looks, from what I can tell, that he concedes it is now the rule. 

Despite its foibles, I appreciated Mr. Mattingly and the staff over the years.  I learned much about the nitty-gritty of journalism.  For instance, they taught me to ignore headlines, because headlines are often written by some editor, not the reporter who got the story. And they are the part of a story most easily able to drive an agenda at the expense of the facts.  

One story I recall them focusing on as an example was a story where the headline read 'Mitt Romney Defends Mormon Faith.'  That was back when the press was trying to hamstring Romney by pitting his Mormonism against the religious conversative base of the GOP.  The problem with the headline?  The only time Mormonism was mentioned at all in the entire article was one sentence that read 'When asked to defend his Mormon faith, Mitt Romney responded that he is running for president, not pastor.' 

That still sticks in my mind.  The good folks at GetReligion were brutal at times in eviscerating the press for the obvious, as in that case.  Mostly it did this when it pertained to religion news, but not always.  During the Proposition 8 whirlwind back in the day, they conceded that, even out of the sphere of religion, the press had taken on the part of marketing and propaganda organ for the Left rather than coming close to being objective. 

Nonetheless, for the longest time, they would circle around and insist that journalism was still the pure faith, and most news rooms and journalists were simply wanting to find the truth and report accordingly.  What happened, and when it happened, I don't know.  And I don't want to put words in Mr. Mattingly's mouth or assume more than he might have intended.  But it isn't hard to read the announcement, or subsequent posts, and not conclude that at least to some degree he has finally conceded what so many have known.  That the press has devolved beyond merely advancing agendas despite the truth, to actively suppressing and even attacking the truth in service of its agendas.  

Monday, February 12, 2024

Sometimes the Internet is almost worth it

As in this link.  Follow it and see what I mean.  It's a cutaway of a Boeing  B-17 showing particular areas within the plane.  Click on one of the circles, and a new page opens.  The page is a 360 degree photo layout that lets you see what that area of the plane would look like if you were in it. 

For the record, my uncle who flew in one in the war was a radio-gunner.  This model B-17, however, is before they added an extra machine gun to the window over his station.  It's odd how Spartan the interior was.  Not made for luxury flying.  It was freezing cold up there.   And the only thing to break the miserable conditions was antiaircraft fire and enemy planes.  

A sort of grit some have today, but so many more had back then. 

As a bonus, here is another site that walks you through what the duties of each station in the plane were and a little about the part each played in the overall mission.  Sort of a 'what to look for in your crew' spin.  I wonder if my uncle was a talented photographer. 

The crews loved their planes, partly because the planes could take a horrific beating and still make it home

Friday, February 9, 2024

And two days later

 

Often considered one of the seminal events of the 20th Century, The Beatles performed for the first time in the US on The Ed Sullivan Show.  I often wonder what my grandpa thought, since my mom says he was a huge Ed Sullivan fan, and never missed the show. 

By the time they arrived, they were already the number one act in America, per the American music charts.  No big deal today.  In 1964, however, before modern global tech, it was a huge deal.  Their appearance that night would net the largest television audience to date.  A full 40% of the US population tuned in that night (to put it in perspective, we would need a show with 132 million viewers to match it today).  

The next day, almost everything in pop culture and music changed.  The BBC once commented on the impact of The Beatles on a generation.  It was pointed out that something similar had happened in America after Pearl Harbor.  The next day after the attack, Americans by the thousands rushed out to join the military.  The day after their appearance on Ed Sullivan saw a spike in sales for not just records, but for musical instruments as well.  Record stores and music stores reported surges in sales over the following weeks.  And the hysteria didn't end in America or England, but swept across the world by the end of the year.  

And yet this was merely a smidgen of what was to come.  The exact reason for the Beatles' impact has never quite been pinpointed.  Historians, sociologists, psychologists and others have tried to figure it out over the decades.  Nobody has ever quite found the answer.  But as was pointed out on the anniversary of their Abbey Road album, it's impossible not so see the seismic shift in social and cultural trends in the years following the Beatles' global ascension.  And not just in music, but fashion, language, attitudes, film, you name it.  For better or worse, they made their mark in history far beyond the massive impact they had on the world of modern music. And in many ways it all began on Feb 9, 1964, with their appearance on Ed Sullivan.

Reporting after the event.