How Much Hypocrisy in 140 Characters

Good advice, but the person giving it doesn't believe it.

Hypocrisy is Hillary Clinton's telling people to have respect for "laws, institutions, and basic human rights and freedoms." She has respect for none of these things, but it is in her on best interests that everybody else (mostly) does so. In her world, Laws are for little people, and she has been part and parcel of an administration which has been systematically seeking to undermine both secular (marriage) and religious institutions and to trample on basic rights (e.g. to life) and freedoms (e.g conscience liberties).

This is real hypocrisy. It also goes to show that just because a statement is hypocritical does not make the statement false--we should have respect for laws and institutions, for duties and responsibilities and the rights and freedoms and privileges that they entail. Society breaks down and civilization passes from decadence to collapse when we don't.

Also, for those who missed it because they get their news from social media and the Daily Show, there has been an attempted military coup in Turkey.

When Amateur Hour Ends

The current Administration has proven to be largely an amateur operation. This has hurt us internationally, primarily: it is, in my opinion, best when the domestic policy of the country (at least) is for the most part decided by the states. On the other hand, Amateur Hour does not last forever, even in this Administration. There are certain things which President Obama and his underlings have approached with a dogged persistence: stamping on the states' already-too-limited powers and authorities is one such thing.

But it should be clear to any impartial observer that a significant goal of this Administration has been to go after the rights and freedoms and way of life of those whom disagree with the President. It has been to engage in social engineering, and to marginalize those who are on the opposite side of the Culture Wars: not only to prevent us from getting what we want, but to needlessly take from us what they don't need. The (happily failed) attempt at passing the Freedom of Choice Act was the first and most obvious case of this. The tyrannical HHS abortion/sterilization/contraceptives mandate was another, which has been partially overturned by the Courts*. And the latest is that that the Tyrant and his Minions are insisting that churches must be forced to cover abortions in California**.

It seems that the goal of the Left in general and this Administration in particular is to ensure not only that our civilization collapse into barbarism, but that Christians should be the targets of the barbarians when the burning times come.





*It is largely still in force, however: the Courts have taken Little Sister of the poor off the hook, largely, but most private business are not. In some ways, this is a Pyrrhic victory for the good guys, in that while the Little Sisters of the Poor have retained their freedom of conscience rights, many Catholic business owners are still having theirs trampled on; but the gullible public, which is alternatively feed propaganda and then left with no news at all by the various Left-wing stooges in the media, tends to have less sympathy for the rights of a small business owner than for the rights of a habited religious (for now).

**Granted, this is a collaboration between the administration and a depraved state's government: it's only a matter of time before other states and perhaps the federal government directly follow suit

How Compromises Work

The ideal model of a compromise would have both parties working together to find a mutually agreeable solution to a disagreement or a problem. In a more typical compromise, both parties at least have some input or consultation--both have some say in the final outcome--and the process might involve some give-and-take.

I write this, largely because it seems to me that this concept has been lost on President Obama. This is a general statement, that is, it is a summary of a consistent pattern I have observed. His "compromises" with the bishops, for example, will continue to be rejected (and hopefully vigorously fought) so long as he does not make any serious attempts to address their objections to his HHS policy.

The impression I have of the situation is that he simply doesn't grasp these objections--which I suppose is understandable, given that a large portion of our population apparently fails to grasp the objections or their import. His base may or may not grasp the objections to the HHS mandate--the more spiteful members of it grasp the objections reasonably clearly and cite those as reasons to force this on people of good faith--and therein lies a part of the problem. He steadfastly refuses to actually act in consultation with the people who have the strongest objections to this policy. Perhaps if he actually listened to their complaints--or sent an adviser to do so--a viable compromise could be reached.

Instead, each so-called compromise only looks like he is under the mistaken idea that the objections are merely financial in nature. To be fair, most of the objections to nationalized/socialized healthcare are primarily economic (though there are other good objections beyond these); but the bishops at least are not really arguing against the economics of Obamacare. Rather, it's the moral particulars, those parts of the law which present a problem of conscience (and a fairly obvious one at that) which are the hang-up. This is especially true of the little add-ons like the HHS contraceptive/sterilization/abortifacient mandate which are irrelevant to the law as a whole but which President Obama has decided to tack on and stick with come hell or high water.

Please Pray: For Religious Liberty to be Upheld

The US Supreme court is hearing oral arguments today on two cases over the Tyrannical HHS mandate. Please pray that they will strike down this law as the Tyrannical Dictate that it is.

Prayer for Our Nation
God our Father in Heaven, you chose Mary as the fairest of your daughters; Holy Spirit, you overshadowed Mary at the Annunciation; God the Son, you became incarnate in the womb of Mary, your Mother. In union with Mary, we adore you, the Most Holy Trinity and acknowledge that you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, hold eternal dominion and authority over all nations.
Most Holy Trinity, we place the United States of America into the hands of Mary Immaculate in order that she may present our country to you. Through her we wish to praise and thank you for the great resources of our land and for the freedom, which has been our heritage. Through the intercession of Mary, have mercy on the Catholic Church in the United States. Grant us peace. Have mercy on our president and on all the officers of our government. Grant us a fruitful economy born of justice and charity. Raise up and protect all of our families. Through the intercession of our Mother, have mercy on the sick, the poor, the tempted, sinners—on all who are in need. Above all, we ask Mary to intercede on our behalf that you would protect our conscience rights and religious freedom, upon which our country was founded.
Mary, Immaculate Virgin, Our Mother, Patroness of our land, we honor you and give ourselves to you. Wrap your mantel of protection around each of us and all our fellow citizens. Protect us from all evil and harm. Pray for us, that acting always according to your will and the Will of your Divine Son, we may live and die pleasing to God.

From CatholicVote.

Religious liberty is threatened around the world. Christians are being persecuted (both hard and soft) around the worlds. Just because everybody else is doing it doesn't mean we need to do it here.

Rant: Obamacare and Schadenfreude

Jonah Goldberg's latest at National Review is a delight to read. Some will say that we are rejoicing over others' suffering. I am not rejoicing over the suffering of those who have seen their premium skyrocket and their policies get cancelled. Granted, a large number (a majority, perhaps?) can certainly be said to have brought it on themselves--they did, after all, vote to re-elect Barack Obama to the Presidency and a Democratic Party majority in the Senate. Lesson learned? Perhaps, perhaps not. We'll see what 2014 brings.

But no, this set of just deserts is not the cause of conservative glee. I'm certainly sorry even for those who were duped into voting for Obama, and even for those who continue to insist that it still wasn't a mistake to re-elect him. I don;t want them to suffer, I just want them to not be in power, since they generally make bad decisions which the rest of us have to live with.

Here is the real source of conservative glee in all of this:

As a matter of public policy and fiscal health, this is a mixed bag. It’s good that poor sick people without insurance coverage are getting something. On the other side of the scale, we have the fact that the country is racing toward entitlement-fueled bankruptcy. So if you can overlook that, yippee!

But as a political and ideological matter, this is beyond fantastic. For years we’ve been told that Democrats were more “reality-based,” that “facts have a liberal bias,” in the words of Paul Krugman, and that if they could just have their way, they could fix all of our problems. No one represented this arrogant promise more than Barack Obama himself. But, with an irony so rich it would be made of Corinthian leather if it was a car seat, the only way he could get his signature legislation passed was to baldly and brazenly lie about it, over and over and over again. He created a rhetorical cloud castle where no one would lose his insurance, every family would save thousands of dollars, and millions of the uninsured would suddenly get coverage. Anyone who doubted this was called a fool or a liar, or even a racist. It was, in the parlance of liberalism, a “false choice” to assert that Obamacare couldn’t be a floor wax and a dessert topping.

It is indeed a very Christian sentiment, "How the haughty are brought low" (Isaiah 2:17, 5:15; Luke 1:52). And I can think of few people in living memory more haughty than President Obama, and to a lesser extent his enablers and their supporters. How many times during the "#Shutdown" were we told that Republicans just wanted to take Obamacare hostage by delaying it? That they should be made to kneel like good subjects before the throne of Barack Almighty, kiss his ring, and beg his forgiveness for opposing the Obamacare Bill?

And now, scarcely a month and a half later, all we are hearing from the Democrats in Congress is that we need some sort of delay for Obamacare. Suddenly they're suggesting that maybe we should hold off on the whole thing until it myriad "bugs"--a euphemism for the various unfortunate features and predictable if unintentional bad effects--can be fixed. That very suggestion was actually called "racist" when Republicans were making it.

My suggestion is that we scrap the whole damn thing, starting with the worthless and tyrannical HHS mandate, and nearly equally tyrannical though apparently Constitutional individual mandate. If we're going to require everyone to have healthcare insurance, we could at least be sensible in what we require the healthcare plans to cover--big and unexpected costs, emergency services (for true emergencies), perhaps a check-up/physical once per year. The rest should be at best optional. And if we're going to admit that the purpose the Obamacare is to subsidize debauchery and hedonism for Millenials (and beyond), that we should scrap the whole thing. It really is reasonable and fair to make people dig into their "beer money" to buy their own contraceptives, whether at $9/month (the actual cost) or $18k over 4 years (the claimed cost).

Then there's the fact that many American have lost their insurance--the insurance that they largely chose for themselves--to Obamacare in spite of the president's "promise" (really an outright lie) to the contrary:


The president and his administration have doubled down on this lie by first claiming that he "misspoke" when he made this promise, that he had never really made this promise. When he realized that people have a tough time believing that he misspoke when he uttered nearly the exact same phrase 36 times (or probably more), he switched to claiming that the insurance lost was "substandard." This apparently means that it didn't cover contraception and maternity leave for 70 year old men. That contraception coverage is crucial--why else would the penalty for not covering contraception/sterilization/some abortions be steeper than not providing any healthcare at all ($100/employee/day = ~36,500/employee/year for the former and $2000/employee/year for the latter)?

But in the meantime, it is certainly entertaining to sit back and watch our haughty president and his arrogant supporters squirm a bit. And not just because they have been lying repeatedly to the American people for the last several years.