Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
A compendium of examples of The Left, in that never-ending crusade for ++giggle++ greater equality, losing their shit over the Hobby Lobby decision.
Via Instapundit: “Fuck you, Hobby Lobby.” And, “Scalia law is a lot like Sharia law.”
The most partisan Supreme Court Justice of all: Sam Alito.
What better place to start than with ScotusBlog, the news site described to Twitchy.com as “a fantastic resource for learning about all-things related to the U.S. Supreme Court.” Angry birds on Twitter mistook Scotusblog for the high court itself and began tweeting their objections to the ruling. “SCOTUSblog retweeted many [indicated below by ‘RT’ or ‘MT’] and provided a funny running commentary about the cluelessness.”
:
Yeah, we know, it’s Twitter. But the quality of argumentation on offer from serious news organizations often wasn’t much better. The Washington Post commissioned an op-ed by Sandra Fluke, described as a “a social justice attorney” and a California state Senate candidate. She calls the decision “an attack on women,” as if religious liberty were an exclusively male domain. Carrying “data-driven journalism” to a pointless extreme, a post on the Post’s Wonkblog is headlined “The 49-Page Supreme Court Hobby Lobby Ruling Mentioned Women Just 13 Times.”“The anti-choice movement wants to limit not just affordable access, but all access to abortion and birth control,” Fluke claims in the op-ed. “It is an attack at all levels, and today’s decision is just another success in these efforts.” Even if true, that is irrelevant to the legal merits of the case.
“Hooray! The War on Women is back!”
Here’s White House press secretary Josh Earnest : “President Obama believes that women should make personal health-care decisions for themselves rather than their bosses deciding for them…The constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office disagrees with that conclusion.” This appeal to diploma is weird, because Hobby Lobby turned on the straightforward application of a federal statute. The First Amendment’s free-exercise clause wasn’t reached.
There’s another ex-lawyer who should also know better, given that her husband signed the relevant law “to protect perhaps the most precious of all American liberties,” as Bill Clinton put it in 1993. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) sailed through the House unanimously and the Senate 97-3.
Yet today Hillary Clinton thinks the Clinton family’s RFRA legacy is nearly Iranian. Its protections belong to “a disturbing trend that you see in a lot of societies that are very unstable, anti-democratic and frankly prone to extremism,” which is “women and girls being deprived of their rights,” including “control over their bodies,” she said this week.
America’s mullahs are also after Democratic Party chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who warned on MSNBC that “Republicans want to do everything they can to have the long hand of government, and now the long hand of business, reach into a woman’s body and make health-care decisions for her.” Democrats made Hobby Lobby-based fundraising pitches over the weekend, before the decision was even handed down.
Well you know — they’re just treating women like they treat any other target “oppressed” class. Hit the lecture circuit, hit the campaign trail, give speeches, write fund-raising letters, let the oppressed know how poorly they’re being treated — get those votes, get that money. If it had anything at all to do with making people equal, the crusade would be about making it easier to instigate large, important financial transactions while you’re in the process of changing your last name. Fact is, in our society, the difficulty involved in doing that has a lot more to do with making women second-class citizens than anything medical.
But, it also has something to do with being married, and that’s a little bit too much “womens’ choice” for our lefty friends to allow.
No, what’s really remarkable about Hobby Lobby, and the risible aftermath, has nothing to do with women at all. It’s about this sub-surface alternative economic system. Here we have a little-noticed connection to another favorite lefty issue “income inequality.” My exchanges with lefties about this all go pretty much the same way: I make the quite logical point that as long as there is economic freedom, and inequality among people about how to treat money, there will be income inequality because some people do not like to have or spend money. That earns me a sneer, along with any one of a number of other cues that I have toppled over the brink and excluded myself from the reasonable. B-u-u-u-t, it’s really true.
This sub-surface alternative economic system is for people who do not like money. Here’s the deal: You want something and decide your want is actually a need. So, since you need it, your employer buys it for you, because he’s compelled to do so by force of law. Forget about how much it has to do with the contract between you & him, that doesn’t matter because you need it.
And because you need it, you get to dictate the parameters of this thing you need so, so badly — but somehow, can’t quite get around to opening your billfold to pay for it. It is to be provided to suit your preferences, just as if you were the person spending the money. Which is stupid, silly, idiotic…but, it’s gotta be that way. Otherwise, everybody goes completely apeshit, because that’s how they make sure this alternative economic system continues to service them, by going completely apeshit. It’s an economic system built on wrath instead of on greed. And that’s what is happening with this “Hobby Lobby case.” They’re having their pandemic, highly organized temper tantrum, so that consumers in the secondary economic system can enjoy as much choice as consumers in the primary economic system.
Given that, none of this is surprising. Except for the lengths to which these secondary-economic-system advocates will go, to keep on pushing it. It is truly…exhausting. It’s just like the teenager dreaming up endlessly twisting & contorting “legal” arguments about why it isn’t his turn to take out the garbage, when it would be so much less work to just take out the garbage. Why not just earn money for the things they want & need, put it in the bank for awhile, and then spend it? It’s truly baffling. Sandra Fluke, to the best of my knowledge, has yet to answer the question.
By the way, Happy Independence Day!!
Update: “It’s an economic system built on wrath instead of on greed.” That’s quite good, isn’t it? I should expound on that someday.
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- House of Eratosthenes | 07/06/2014 @ 08:14