Holy Saturday

Jesus is in the tomb. We still believe...

WaPo - Palm Sunday Around the World

On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate, saying, “Sir, we remember, while He was still alive, how that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise.’

Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead.’ So the last deception will be worse than the first.”

Pilate said to them, “You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard. (Matthew 27)


I long for Thy salvation, 0 Lord, Thy law is my delight
The mind is affrighted at Thy dread and strange burial.
Let me live, that I may praise Thee, and let Thy ordinances help me
The women with spices came early at dawn to anoint Thee.
I have gone astray like a lost sheep, seek Thy servant, for I do not forget Thy commandments (Psalm 119)

OrthodoxNet.com - Lamentations at the Tomb

Good Friday

The Last Supper

The Last Supper by Jacopo Bassano

26 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”  27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the[b] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” 30 When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. (Matthew 26)

The More Things Change...

As is my custom, I'm off the grid 'till next Monday out of respect for the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  I'll have posts, but they are short, each commemorating an even of Jesus Christ's passion, and after this one the comments will be turned off.

Meanwhile, here's something to think about.  Pop it out to full screen for maximum effect...

Are You Serious? The Federal Government Can Do Most Anything!

Liberals are just now waking up to the reality that Obamacare is hard to defend, because they haven't deigned to defend it until now.  The liberal argument for Obamacare has been based in "bandwagon/argumentum ad populum" and "appeal to authority," both logical fallacies.

Here's a common illogical example addressing government's power to regulate non-activity and make us eat broccoli:

Until this week, most scholars seemed to think this would be treated by the justices as a distinction without any special significance. “It’s a silly distinction,” Douglas Laycock, a University of Virginia law professor, told me this week. Opponents of the law “have gotten an enormous amount of mileage out of ‘inactivity,’ but that really has nothing to do with the regulation of commerce,” he said.

One hundred professors from many of the country’s major law schools signed a statement arguing that those seeking to overturn the law “seek to jettison nearly two centuries of settled constitutional law” and “there can be no serious doubt about the constitutionality” of the insurance mandate. 

One hundred professors! No serious doubt!  Imagine that! This is the kind of argumentation the left's advocacy is shot through with. No reasoning, just intellectually-flaccid statements that include such phrases as "everybody knows" and "experts agree." They won't even rebut serious challenges, imperiously discounting them out of hand.

Yes We Can!  ...Make them eat their broccoli...

When Justice Scalia asked the broccoli question, White House Solicitor Verrilli stumbled and fumbled, disappointing tearful progressives everywhere. Here's what a New York Times writer thought he should have said, and it sums up progressive thought in a nutshell:

But it seems to me that a succinct answer to Justice Scalia’s question is that the commerce clause would not limit Congress’s ability to regulate broccoli — if members of the House and Senate were crazy enough to pass legislation requiring all of us to eat green vegetables and if that were deemed a rational way to regulate commerce. The same could be said of health clubs.  (NY Times)

Progressivism is Fundamentally Un-American

There you go, folks. This is why progressives should never be trusted with power, and their century-old strongman ideology is fundamentally un-American.  In their world, unlike the founding fathers', a crazy congress could force us to eat our arugula, or march the fatties off to government boot camps, and that is the fatal flaw of progressivism: Trusting our overlords to not be crazy, stupid or greedy as they wield absolute power.  Yeah, that's a great plan!  Sarcasm aside, it is antithetical to the bedrock foundation of this republic, it ignores the entire arc of human history, and flies in the face of our understanding of human nature.

Note how the progressive author blithely dismisses individual liberty:

"To Depression-era farmers, it was no doubt an affront to individual freedom that the federal government had the power to tell them what crops not to plant." (NY Times)

Not buying insurance, or Filburn growing wheat for his own consumption in defiance of government quotas, is fair game for progressives because it affects overall commerce. But everything is connected, so what on earth does not affect overall commerce? That is how markets work. Under the progressives' capacious understanding of the commerce clause, there is no human activity under the sun that the federal government could not regulate.

An old or severely disabled person deciding to not die and instead electing an expensive medical procedure would fit into the same category. A progressive government, using its own twisted logic, would regulate that too, regulating the person right out of existence.  I'll spare you the historical precedents...

"the federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country." -- Democrat Congressman Pete Stark

Please go read Ilya Shapiro's excellent article slicing and dicing the hapless left, We were Serious the whole Time

Limbaugh Recovery Much Better Than Obama's Economic One

The Progressive's Manufactured Outrage Machine is sputtering, and Rush Limbaugh is strong as ever.  Heh heh heh...

So far, though, Limbaugh’s opponents have been disappointed, and an analysis of the math – a very tricky proposition in itself – suggests their goal of running Limbaugh off the air will fall short.   (Hollywood Reporter) 

One New York advertiser, Mark Stevens, went on Fox Business Network to describe the fleck-spittle liberal hatred he's been subjected to...

Stevens described a coordinated attack – which he likened to “organized terrorist activity” – whereby liberal activists nationwide who aren’t his customers have been pressuring him to pull his ads. After his TV appearance, the hosts reported that Stevens received 38,000 emails supporting his decision to stick with Limbaugh compared to 2,000 that condemned him.

Stevens then appeared on the Fox News Channel and told host Megyn Kelley that emails he has been receiving from Limbaugh’s detractors say that he is “under surveillance” and “in danger.”

“Your house is going to be surrounded by buses," "your business is going to be destroyed," "your people are in trouble,” Stevens said when asked about the contents of the emails.

Meanwhile, Limbaugh is still attracting some large advertisers, including Chrysler, Nissan and Fox Broadcasting, which has recently advertised its show Touch. (Hollywood Reporter)

This is why Limbaugh is still on the air. Phony offense hustling, like all fakery, ultimately fails.

Another case in point is the fantasy that Obama knows the first thing about basic economics and that he is turning the economy around. Whatever gains we see are happening in spite of him and his "experts."

The Worst Economic Recovery on Record

Nearly three years after the Great Recession officially ended, the jobless rate is still above 8 percent — the longest stretch of such high unemployment since the Great Depression. Add back in all the discouraged job seekers and the part-timers who wished they had full-time gigs, and the unemployment rate is just shy of 15 percent.

While the economy is growing, it’s not growing rapidly. At this point in the typical post-World War II recovery, the economy was growing at an average pace of nearly 5 percent. The Obama recovery has managed just over 2 percent average annual GDP growth.Indeed, take-home pay for US workers, adjusted for rising prices, has actually fallen over the last year. (NY Post)

Add in the falling value of our dollars and...

All in all, Obama’s economic rebound kind of feels more like a bust than a boom.   (NY Post) 

Are you better off than you were four years ago?  A majority of Americans are shouting "Hell NO!"

You can gin up phony indignation, but you can't fake an economic recovery

Other Links:
Daily Beast - Media Matter Limbaugh Boycott a Flop
Obama Campus Fervor Losing to Apathy
Obama:  "Creepy" Chisler

Progressives Corrupt History, Impugn Founding Fathers

Contrary to what progressives are saying, the individual mandate is unprecedented

Obama's goose-stepping minions are in a panic, grasping for anything to steady their reality-induced vertigo.  Liberal blogger Green Eagle linked to an article claiming a 1798 act passed by congress and signed by President John Adams set a legal and constitutional precedent for the individual mandate.  Yes, they are so desperate that they are trying to prove that the founding fathers invented socialized medicine.  

I did a little googling and found a veritable infestation of such articles.  All of them are laced with snide little jibes about how devastated we " conservative constitution worshipers" will be upon discovering the constitutional treason committed by the founding fathers, who we worship as gods.

I have a little piece of advice for the Left Blogistanis. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Do some research before running off with the first piece of propaganda that suits your pinched worldview.  An unflinching examination of the facts reveal that, as usual, these progressive apologists are mostly full of it.

There is no Individual Mandate in the 1798 Law

The articles citing a precedent for an individual mandate are flat-out wrong, claiming the law mandated "privately employed sailors to purchase healthcare insurance." It clearly does not, so the authors premise is destroyed and thus his argument is invalid. 

What the act did was require ship owners to pay a tax to the US Government in order to dock here.  The funds were used to set up a network of merchant marine hospitals to care for sailors who worked in a very dangerous profession.

Rick Ungar wrote an excellent article in Forbes Magazine making a similar claim, stating the law sets a precedent for single-payer, government run health care. Unlike the first author, he makes a very good case, but still not convincing.

A commenter made a salient counter-argument that is echoed in other rebuttals:

The opposition is that the Federal government cannot constitutionally force American citizens to purchase services from “PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS”.

The monies collected in regards to the Act in question were not required to be paid to a Private institution; they were required to be paid to agents of the Federal government.

The short legal rejection of this argument can be found at the excellent legal site, The Volokh Conspiracy.

So the Act is totally dissimilar to the Obamacare mandate. In the 1798 Act, the government imposes a tax, collects all the tax revenue, and spends the revenue as it chooses.

The Act certainly did not order seamen to purchase any form of private insurance, nor did it order them to purchase any other type of private good. The Act is a solid precedent for federal involvement in health care, and no precedent at all for a federal mandate to purchase private products.  (David Kopel)

As Kopel points out, this act could be cited as a precedent for taxation to fund a single-payer medical system run by the US government (socialized medicine), but not for the individual mandate.  And that is why, to the hand-wringing liberals' chagrin, the White House did not invoke this argument.

Obamista Liberalism:  Intellectually bankrupt and fundamentally dishonest

Lest we believe the founders were proto-socialists, let's dig a little deeper...

Dig a little deeper and what you will see is that the founders taxed merchant shipping companies that docked here and used the tax to fund hospitals for seamen, who performed a very dangerous job at the time.  They were following an older British precedent that pre-dated the founding of our nation.

It is noteworthy that this was not forcing the sailors to purchase something, but a tax on the shipping companies.

It is also notable that the founders did not impose such a scheme on the whole country. No such program existed for farmers, militias or any other group, which makes this a unique circumstance that is being taken out of context.

A better line of argument from liberals would be to use this as a precedent for government socialized medicine, where citizens pay taxes in and get government-provided health care in return.  But even that would be a stretch given the limited nature and historical circumstances of 1798 act.

So no, the founding fathers did not engage in socialized medicine, and what Obama and the Pelosicrats are doing is historically unprecedented.  

Supreme Suspense

Washington Times

Obamacare was in the docket for three days, and the White House did a poor job defending it...

La La Land liberals are in shock, reeling from Obama White House Solicitor General's embarrassing performance.  It's not his fault; he had nothing to work with.

Progressives are in a panic. After years of telling us to sit down and shut up, and deeming us unworthy of debate or explanation over Obamacare, they are now a quivering lump of molded fruity jello with nuts in it, trembling at the prospect that the Supreme Court could knock down the entire incoherent, unconstitutionally rotten edifice known as Obamacare.

Constitutional Complacency, Intellectual Sloth

It's symptomatic of a larger progressive problem. They've driven the steamroller for so long they've forgotten how to explain themselves and form cogent arguments because they haven't had to. Now, they desperately cling to last century's paternalistic model, which is breaking down and crumbling around them...

Those who believe in the blue model and want to extend it have lost their touch; the dream machines of the blue social engineers don’t sail serenely across the azure sky anymore. Think of the various carbon exchanges and environmental planetary schemes; think of high speed rail proposals like California’s $100 billion train to bankruptcy; think of Obamacare.

These days the experts, “social entrepreneurs” and smart young blue twenty somethings fresh out of the Ivy League whomp up social programs with as much verve and dedication as their New Deal and Great Society predecessors, but the new Dreamliners don’t take off. At most they roll around the runway, emitting clouds of noxious smoke; wings fall off, windows pop out, turbines misfire and the tires go flat. (Walter Russell Mead)

Liberals are left sputtering wishful thinking sophistry and incoherent emotionalism in defense of Obamacare, complete with pretzel logic, grannies pushed down stairs and starving children. Here's the far-left Nation Magazine on forced redistribution:

But that is, of course, the whole point of insurance, and nothing in the Constitution forbids redistribution of resources or collective sharing of burdens. (The Nation)

Nothing in the Constitution forbids blowing up the Capitol or lighting people on fire either.  The constitution enumerates the powers of the federal government, and forced redistribution is not one of them.

This is the dangerous progressive mindset:  "Government may do it if you can't find a specific prohibition against it in the Constitution."  That is upside-down ass-backwards.  

If it is not in the constitution, government may not do it, and that is why the Obamacare monstrosity is unconstitutional.

Their only other line of argumentation is tautological: They concede that government can't take iron-fisted actions like regulating entire industries and making everyone purchase something unless it is part of a larger regulatory scheme, so they create the larger scheme and then ham-handedly regulate the hell out of it.

100 years of dominance has made the progressives complacent and decadent

They've gotten sloppy. Oh, they are still dangerous, like the aging, flabby fighter who can still coldcock you if you get in his wheelhouse, and who carries a razor just in case...

Progressives have essentially told us to shut up and eat our arugula. Whatever government cooks up can be called "commerce," and they can thus regulate us all into oblivion, constitution and personal liberty be damned.  This is not classical liberalism. It is the opposite, yet so-called liberals stand on their little hind legs and cheer on this statism.  They are inconsistent and bereft of fundamental philosophical principles.  Instead, they are ruled by emotionalism and whatever fever happens to grip their collective groupthink this week.

When they hijack the state and perpetrate drive-by shootings on our liberties, it's all good to them.  It's for our own good, for the good of the collective, as they blather on about non-existent social contracts.  But when rightwingers move the levers of federal power for their own agenda, it elicits an ear-spitting chorus of indignant howls from these same malefactors.

Knocking down the entire rotten Obamacare structure and telling Harry and the Pelosicrats to read the Constitution and start over would be an act of judicial restraint, since there is no severability clause. Obamacare is a stinking, unconstitutional affront to everything this nation was built upon.

Links:

Constitutional Contempt

What does Individual Mandate have to do with Free Riders?
El Lay Times:  Bad Omen
CNS - Justice Breyer
Court Likely to Overturn Obamacare
Powerful Objections to the Individual Mandate
Justices Poised to Strike Down Entire Law
Scalia - Reading the Bill Cruel and Unusual Punishment
What a Doctor Knows About Obamacare
Democrats in Disarray
Can Democrats Recover?

Inside, Outside, Leave Me Alone

What does the video mean to you?

I had always found it a sad song, even when I didn't understand the context.  I saw Quadrophenia once long ago, but I was too young and too much in altered states to grasp the meaning.  Now I must get it through these windows into the innerwebz because I can't get my hands on a copy of the movie...

I've been an outsider many times in my life.  I was welcomed into quite a few tribes, but I could always feel my strangeness, even as those who welcomed me may have as well but did their best to not betray it.

But back to the video.  I discovered it awhile back on YouTube, and it struck me because I now have a son coming of age, and I remember the awkwardness of adolescence.  I love the old world faces on the train, btw.  Veddy veddy mid 20th Century Europe.

Btw, Roger Daltry has to be the greatest rock singer if for no other reason than the fact that he sang not one but two demented but excellent rock operas written by his eccentric but talented guitarist Pete Townsend.

Red Scare

Here come the food police again...

"Small quantities of processed meat such as bacon, sausages or salami can increase the likelihood of dying by a fifth, researchers from Harvard School of Medicine found. Eating steak increases the risk of dying by 12%.

The study found that cutting the amount of red meat in peoples’ diets to 1.5 ounces (42 grams) a day, equivalent to one large steak a week, could prevent almost one in 10 early deaths in men and one in 13 in women." (Pseudoscience Nannies condemn Red Meat)

1.5 Ounces a day??? Who the hell could live on that? The average working man eats that in one bite! And their idea of a "large steak" is ludicrous. 7 X 1.5 = 10.5 ounces, hardly "large" in the realm of Steakdom.

“Compared with red meat, other dietary components, such as fish, poultry, nuts, legumes, low-fat dairy products, and whole grains, were associated with lower risk.

They want us to live on nuts and berries...

Here's the unscientific part. Correlation does not mean causation:

Scientists added that people who eat a diet high in red meat were also likely to be generally unhealthier because they were more likely to smoke, be overweight and not exercise.

So, unless those scientists can show how eating red meat causes smoking and sloth, they can blow it our their blow holes.

Cameron English discusses the myriad problems with non-clinical studies that produced this junk science:

Research like this is entirely dependent upon participants to accurately recall what they've eaten during the period the study is in progress

Recording what you eat with any degree of accuracy is incredibly difficult even when you are motivated to do so, as anyone who has ever dieted knows. Now, imagine assessing the food surveys of over 100,000 people for a study spanning slightly more than two decades. Good luck. (Red Meat not to Blame)

Here's the real agenda...

In an accompanying editorial Dr Dean Ornish, of the University of California, San Francisco, said that eating less red meat could also help tackle climate change.

He said: “In addition to their health benefits, the food choices we make each day affect other important areas as well. What is personally sustainable is globally sustainable. What is good for you is good for our planet.”

Liberals love shouting "Science!" like that old dude in the Thomas Dolby video, while most of them know nothing about it.  When we conservatives are accused of being anti-science, this is the kind of junk science we are against.

The latte liberals can nibble their sticks and twigs and nuts.  Me, I'll continue grilling steaks when I can afford them and slow smoking big slabs of Texas-style Beef Brisket.

Red Meat Blamed for Everything

Treasury-Fed-Goldman Sachs: An Axis of Evil

The crooks at Golden Calf are in the news again, thanks to a loud and damning resignation letter...

Some of the best analysis I have seen on the issue is by Bill Frezza. He’s one of the good guys. He writes in Forbes Magazine, often training his razor sharp darts at the crony crapitalist rip-off artists and the big government buffoons who enable them.

I am certain that you will be hard pressed to find systematic illegal activity at Goldman Sachs. These people are lawyered up to the hilt. They know more about securities regulations than the people who wrote them (which I suppose isn't saying much). They know exactly how close to the line they can operate.

No, Goldman Sachs is not a law breaker. With all the former executives and cronies it has parachuted into the halls of government and all the money it showers on politicians running for office, it is actually a law maker. And that is the problem.

TARP was an inside job.  The crooks are still on the inside...

Thanks to this last banking crisis, the lines between the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Executive branch, and Goldman Sachs have all but disappeared. Using the entirely legal means of calling in chits from both political parties in its hour of need, Goldman Sachs looted the Treasury to save it from a liquidity crisis, cover its speculative investment errors, and make good on winning gambling bets that would have been uncollectable had Uncle Sam not stepped in to bail out counterparties like AIG.

Feel Poorer:  The bailouts stole money from you and me, devalued our savings and eroded our spending power...

Paying back the bailout money to the one entity that has the power to print it does not forgive the sin. In fact, the very act of printing that money stole value from its rightful owners, whose currency was debased, never to be made whole. The notion that the financial system would not have recovered if not for the federal bailouts is a self-serving lie. Yes, some of our largest financial institutions would have been swept away. Yes, their stockholders would have been wiped out-and deservedly so. But the underlying assets would have still been there, ready to be apportioned by a bankruptcy judge. And a lesson would have been learned not soon to be forgotten.

Think more government regulation will fix it?

The Dodd-Frank legislation does nothing but institutionalize their too big to fail status, while making it harder for would-be competitors to rise to challenge them.
This is not real market capitalism as it once was, should be, and could be again. This is crony capitalism of the worst order. (Bill Frezza)

... And it's all brought to you by corrupt politicians, clueless bureaucrats, and the Wall Street moles who infest our government.

Obama's Debt

President Obama has spent more in three years than George Bush, two wars and all, spent in eight.

(CBS News) The National Debt has now increased more during President Obama's three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency.

The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.

The National Debt also now exceeds 100% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, the total value of goods and services.

Mr. Obama has been quick to blame his predecessor for the soaring Debt, saying Mr. Bush paid for two wars and a Medicare prescription drug program with borrowed funds. (CBS News)

Mr. Obama has been quick to blame anything and everything to cover his profligate irresponsibility. Bush bears some of the blame, but Obama has done nothing to fix it.  Were he a CEO, he would have been fired by now.

Free Speech

The term "Free Speech" gets thrown around alot. I have used it and abused it myself.

Liberals clamoring to "Hush Rush" or "Flush Rush" or whatever else they want to do to him are not violating his free speech rights, but rather exercising their own rights.We all have a God-given right to speak freely, and the First Amendment to the US Constitution says only that government may not abridge it:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Government may not prohibit your exercise of free speech, but that doesn't stop private citizens from telling one another to shut the hell up, and depending on the context, telling someone to STFU is not a violation of the target's rights.

FreeThinke, driven to madness because I won't get off the topic of abortion, birth control and how our rights fit around those subjects, unleashed a vulgar fusillade to provoke me, a free-speech advocate, to acknowledge that there are limits.

Of course there are limits.  To understand what they are, we must ground the discussion in our natural rights of liberty and property.

Property is the key

You can speechify in whatever manner you wish on your property.  Come to the Casa Silverfiddle, and you no longer are at liberty to say what the hell ever you want.  We have standards at our house.  They're pretty loose, but if you abuse them you will be asked to leave.  Disrupt the comment thread with your petty little hissy fights or off-topic tirades, and you could be zapped.  Stand up in the middle of a string quartet performance and start singing Megadeth songs, and you'll get tossed out.  Whoever controls the property makes the rules, and that's as it should be.

Trolls

I started making forays into Left Blogistan a few years back, and ended up getting Banned from a Lefty Kook Site.  It burned me up because I was on-topic and had called no names.  Here's what I wrote about the experience:

Sinclair Lewis famously said: "Fascism will come wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible." That may have been true in 1935, but it is now outdated, since the bible and the flag no longer enjoy a prominent position in our left-dominated popular culture.

Fascism is already creeping up on us in the form of left-think political correctness. It is enforced by narrow-minded people who ignorantly call themselves liberals. It is writ large in workplaces, academia, and popular culture. But for big fascism to work, it requires thousands of little mini-me fascists. And these petty tyrants already practice it in thousands of petty fiefdoms scattered across our nation.

A few years later I got kicked out of a blog rather rudely and told in no uncertain terms to never return.  I still believe it was a petty potentate thing to do, because I was polite to everyone, although I did vigorously impugn the sources of their information, so they kicked me out.

However dictatorial and narrow-minded I may think their actions were, they had the right to do it.  Each blog serves a purpose, and when interlopers disrupt that purpose, they are not just "exercising their free speech rights," they are interfering with the rights of many others to have a free exchange of ideas.  Some blogs like this one enjoy a robust clash of ideas, while others do not want their group-think bubble popped, and both are within their rights.  

Jesus of Nazareth

Easter approaches, the focus of Christian life.  Many Christians watch Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" at this time of year, but at Casa Silverfiddle, we watch the late 1970's classic, Jesus of Nazareth.

It is an incredible move, if you can accept a blue-eyed Jesus.  Franco Zeffirelli did it to subtly make Jesus stand out, since the director controversially chose to emphasize the humanness of Our Lord.  The network almost refused to run it, despite the impressive cast of big name actors.

Michael York provides the performance of the movie as a very scary John the Baptist, preaching fire and brimstone like a raving mad man, and tenderly baptizing the repentant.  He should have won an Oscar, the way he so brought this most important man to life.

When he spies Jesus approaching as he is baptizing people, you see him express first an unselfish sadness that he must soon leave this world, followed immediately by a redemptive and inexpressible joy that the Messiah has arrived.  Beautiful.

I don't praise his performance lightly, because the cast is a star-studded who's who of all the big actors of that era.  Robert Powell's portrayal of Jesus is almost hypnotic as he tells parables and befriends those around him, including prostitutes and tax collectors.  James Farrentino is a burly, blustery Simon Peter, gruffly cursing his crew as they get the boats in.  In a crucial and tender moment at Matthew the tax collector's house, he drops his skepticism by tearfully confessing to Jesus, "I'm a stupid man."

Anthony Quinn as a tormented Caiaphas discussing Jesus with the Sanhedrin brings you right there, 2000 dusty years ago as they ponder and debate what it all means. Peter Ustinov is a deliciously decadent Herod, whose imperious and courtly mien descends into a purple murderous rage at the realization that the baby Messiah has escaped his grasp. These scenes bring the Bible stories to life in a way reading cannot, and I love reading and I love the Bible.

The masterpiece is a little over 6 hours long, but because it was originally a mini-series, it is easily broken up into smaller episodes. It is a great way to focus yourself and your children on the life of Jesus as you prepare for Easter. Watching it will also bring home just how controversial Our Lord's life on earth was, from the virgin birth, which caused quite a scandal, to the the zealots and ordinary Jews who saw in him an earthly savior who would lead them in driving the Romans from Jewish lands.

It is a reverent and beautiful treatment of the life of Jesus. I highly recommend it to you and your family.

For more information, I stumbled upon this website that links Bible passages to scenes of the movie.

(R) “Romney” or “Ryan?”

Paul Ryan has unveiled his latest budget, and he’s the only adult in the room, bringing little Barry, Nancy, Harry and their fellow whining naifs in the press to tears by telling them No. Money doesn’t grow on trees.

Democrats, incoherent and out of ideas, hate Ryan because he proposes to dismantle their progressive machinery that has destroyed tens of trillions in wealth and produced $15 trillion in debt and over $50 trillion in future unfunded liabilities. The Buffett Millionaire Tax they propose as a panacea would only raise $31 billion, one-tenth of 1% of the federal budget (if we could get the rich to stand still while government ... taxes them). There ain’t enough tax money to pay for all of this. 100% taxation won’t cover it.

“I think we’ve seen pretty clearly that what this proposal does not do is take the serious approach to getting our fiscal house in order that everyone who’s serious about this issue says you have to take,” spokesman Jay Carney said. (Real Clear Politics)

The White House’s carnie barker in horn-rimmed eyeglasses should be shouting that at his own party. They’ve been on an unbudgeted free-wheeling spending binge for the past three years

We can fix this on our terms, while we still control our destiny, or we can wait until we are like the decrepit Soviet Union or today’s Greece, sold into penury and helplessly prostrate before the international bankers and enemy nations eager for our humiliating comeuppance.

Ryan shows a way out. Not the only way, but he’s the only one with a detailed plan that has been scored and analyzed. The Democrats are intellectually bereft; still hawking last century’s snake oil. Banking regulations failed? Pile on more regulations! Too much debt? We’ll spend our way out! It’s madness.

Democrats Protest Reality

Ryan’s gimlet-eyed analysis of the numbers sends fantasy land liberals into spasmodic paroxysms, leaving Democrat apparatchiks like Gene Sperling raging about “the tyranny of math.” Yes Gene, reality can be a tyrant to little children who stamp their feet demanding that unicorns poop rainbow-colored marshmallows from heaven.

All the left has left is scare tactics, while using “look over here!” tactics to keep our focus off of the looming debt-induced crash. Kevin Drum harps weakly on Ryan’s attempt to hold spending to 19% of GDP, but even that is not a big enough cut. We historically collect around 17% in good time and bad, high tax rates or low tax rates, so government budgeting should revolve around that iron law reality.

Dana Milbank makes the bald-faced case of government as a giant teat, and God forbid we try to wean anyone off of it. The children in the candy store never stop to contemplate that mommy and daddy are borrowing from China to pay for it all, and that it can’t go on forever. They love preaching environmental sustainability, which is a chimera because all natural resources are finite, while simultaneously believing in an eternal fountain of money to pay for their dreams and schemes.

Putting aside all the sturm und drang, here is the cold reality of Ryans “draconian” Plan…

By 2022, under the Ryan Path, debt as a share of GDP would be 62.3% vs. a projected 73.2% in 2012. Under the Obama budget, debt as a share of GDP would be 76.3% in 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Over that period, the Ryan Path would spend $5.3 trillion less than the Obama budget.

Longer term, the differences between the Ryan Path and the Obama budget are even starker. By 2030, debt-to-GDP would be 53% under Ryan, 128% under Obama. By 2040, debt-to-GDP would be 38% under Ryan, 194% under Obama. By 2050, debt-to-GDP would be 10% under Ryan, over 200% under Obama—assuming that under the Obama scenario, the economy hasn’t collapsed. (Pethokoukis)

Meanwhile, Obama and Pelosicrats have offered...  Nothing.

It's Murder

A Stupid Gun Owner is a Dangerous Gun Owner

Responsible gun owners and defenders of the right to self-defense must demand the prosecution of George Zimmerman

Police in the central Florida town of Sanford have said that 28-year-old George Zimmerman says he shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in self-defense during a confrontation in a gated community. Police have described Zimmerman as white; his family says he is Hispanic and not racist. (US News)

Neighborhood vigilante George Zimmerman murdered young Trayvon Martin.  I don't see how a reasonable person could reach any other conclusion. News outlets are blaming Florida's Stand Your Ground Law, but that's just agenda reporting.

Nothing in that law green-lights what Zimmerman did. He was flat-out wrong. Criminally wrong. You can’t just go chasing law-abiding citizens down the street at the point of a gun.

Zimmerman told a police dispatcher that the teen was "up to no good" because he was walking through his neighborhood "just walking around, looking about" with his "hands on his waistband."  Does the idiot have kids? That's what teens do!

Zimmerman chased after Martin, complaining to the dispatcher, "These a******s always get away."

Hell yeah!  When a gun-toting man is chasing you, you're going to try to get away. Of course Martin’s going to run. He probably thought Zimmerman was a pedophile or some kind of crazy person. He had every right to run. He also had a right to turn around and “jump” Zimmerman “from behind” (how do you get jumped from behind by someone you’re chasing? Zimmerman is lying.)

When someone chases you down and assaults you, you have a right to fight back. Too bad the kid didn’t end up kicking the dumb bastard’s head in.

Critics are calling for a repeal of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law in the wake of the killing, but that is like calling for the repeal of driving automobiles every time a pedestrian gets run down.

The perpetrator was not “standing his ground,” he was chasing down an innocent young man who was just trying to get back to his house before the second half started. If anything, had the kid killed Zimmerman, that same law would have protected him.

This is a tragedy. It is assault with a deadly weapon and murder. And Florida's Stand Your Ground law needs to stand.  It will protect potential victims from assaults by people like George Zimmerman.

Update:  Progressives are exploiting this tragedy (as they lamentably always do) to attempt to strike down the Florida law in question.  The law did not authorize Zimmerman to chase down an innocent person.  He was the aggressor in this instance.  Here is the text of the law so you can judge for yourself.

(Alleged Attacker not covered under law)
(Standing your Ground)

The Meaning of Breitbart: Coming out of the Closet

Modern-day liberalism is a prison, with plenty of inmates eager to serve as red shirts to keep the other inmates in line...

Andrew Breitbart Stormed The Bastille

Kirsten Powers, who violated progressive orthodoxy by calling out the sexists on her own side, describes her own experience in how the left keeps the slaves on the plantation. Keith Olberboob called her a "house-trained Fox News liberal,” giving his dozens of fans the green light to join the attack:

After he also tweeted his attacks—which were echoed by other liberals trying to distort what I said—his (presumably “progressive”) followers let me know that I was a “wind-up toy” and a “bobble head” and “just another brainless plastic doll Fox puts on camera to appease the horned up 60-yr old white dudes at home.” All the typical insults that male political analysts and columnists get, I’m sure.

Don’t forget: liberals are the feminists; it’s the GOP who hates women. (Kirsten Powers)

She goes on to describe how liberal men in the media routinely dehumanize women with such cute phrases as "mannish," "female impersonator," and "Squirrely bitch."  Ha ha.

 Let’s just call a spade a spade: the uproar over Limbaugh is only because it fits into the Democratic narrative that the GOP is “anti-woman.” It’s Democratic Party activism dressed up as feminism. (Kirsten Powers)

The conservative women of ShePac have struck back:



Personal Testimony on the Significance of Breitbart

Andrew Breitbart escaped the plantation and lived to tell about it. Even worse for the left, he let other libertine, artistic free-spirits know it was OK on the outside, he helped them to escape and they are now turning on their erstwhile masters.  

If you spend much time at Breitbart, you will read a lot of artsy Hollywood types who are socially liberal but hate how many on the left mock traditional values and invariably blame America first.  They also see the cognitive dissonance of declaring yourself liberal yet cheering on an ever-growing omniscient and omnipresent Big Brother Government.

Daniel Knauf is the latest.  He talks of achieving his dream of being a Hollywood screenwriter, and eventually learning that he was a conservative in the wake of 911. The nonstop orthodox liberal hallelujah choir of blame America first in his own workplace was the catalyst. He was shocked and scared into frozen incoherence. He describes a chilling encounter with a true-believer unsatisfied with his non-committal language and refusal to bash America's stupid cowboy president:

She glared at me for a moment, as if attempting to x-ray my soul to determine whether I was a fellow-traveler, or something... else. Finally, she walked out to go write a check to PETA or shit herself over Global Warming or something. I was, for the moment anyway, safe. (Daniel Knauf – Chasing Andrew)

He describes how liberating it was to meet Andrew Breitbart and to subsequently discover Hollywood was filled with conservatives.

Then came Gerald Molen, Oscar-winning producer of Rain Man, Jurassic Park, and Schindler's List...

The sad part is we have to get to the point of losing everything before we stand tall and state unequivocally, "No more. Stop the madness. Stop it now!"

Last month, the conservative side of politics lost a champion of truth and a strong voice in the conservative movement with the passing of Andrew Breitbart. He was a man of high intellect, vision and courage. He never backed away from a fight and was responsible for turning out those who sought to endear themselves at the public trough via their egregious actions and poor moral values.

He disclosed them and brought them to the bar of justice for the American people to see and judge for themselves. He was a great example for all of us to aspire to. We cannot allow his passing to be just a closing of another chapter in the fortunes of America. We must carry his part of the burden he was so willing to share for all of us. (Hollywood Producer Slams Obama, Praises Breitbart)

For a similar conversion story by a famous playwright, see David Mamet's Why I am no Longer a Brain Dead Liberal.

Andrew Breitbart is gone, but his spirit lives on...

Progressives Infantilize the Poor

State governments that have the temerity to demand voters show official identification have been stirring progressives to righteous indignation for some time now. They noisily protest anything that would prohibit the dead, convicted felons and illegal aliens from voting, since those groups are a reliable Democrat party constituency.

The only real disenfranchisement caused by stricter voter registration and identification laws would be a self-imposed one on the irresponsible and the lazy, another reliable liberal constituency if it can be rounded up and bussed to the polls after being lured in by free booze and cigarettes.

Kevin Drum sums up the liberal view of poor minorities...

Lots of people assume that getting photo ID is no big deal. Most people have it, and even the ones who don't can easily get it. After all, it's free! But that's not true. First, you need a birth certificate. Middle-class folks might not realize this, but not everyone has a birth certificate handy, and both the hassle factor and the cost of getting one can be real deterrents. Add to that the hassle of getting a ride to a DMV office two counties away during working hours, and voting in the next election suddenly got a whole lot harder for you than it is for your average middle-class white suburbanite. You might even never get around to it. ( Kevin Drum – The Poor are Stupid and Helpless)

You need that stuff to get a job and to be a responsible citizen! How do these helpless people get to the polls? How do they get out of bed and feed themselves on their own? How do they find their ass with both hands?

The Denver Post, in a rare moment of lucidity, gets it right:

A 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case involving a voter ID law in Indiana, a state that also does not fall into the higher-scrutiny category, made it clear there wasn't anything inherently discriminatory about requiring voters to present a photo ID before casting a ballot.

The opinion was written by a liberal voice on the court, John Paul Stevens. He brushed aside concerns the law would disproportionately harm Democrats over Republicans.

If your natural constituency is lazy and irresponsible, changing the rules for them is not the answer.  If liberals really cared about these people, they would help them get these documents, not just so they can identify themselves at the polls, but so they can get into the mainstream of society and better their lives.

The answer is to help these people without documents become responsible; but that would work against the Democrats, since that would also probably turn them into Republicans.

Free Speech in a Time of Choler

For those who doubt that the modern left is turning into what Orwell warned us against...

Angelo Carusone, who started both the Stop Beck and Stop Limbaugh campaigns and who now works at Media Matters, prefers to call his efforts “education.” (Politico – Left’s War on Rush)

Meanwhile, people who are supposed to be taken seriously because they are senators shovel BS like this...

"Rush Limbaugh's comments were just nasty and directed at a particular young woman who had a particular point of view and was expressing herself. Bill Maher's a comedian. It's much different," said Schumer. "Rush Limbaugh has tremendous weight in the Republican Party and no one will rebut him. Bill Maher's a comedian who's on at eleven o'clock at night, but has very little influence on what's happening here." (NY Mag)

Breitbarting the Left

Oh, OK. If you label your misogyny as comedy, and you’re on late at night and you don’t have what someone subjectively considers “much influence,” it’s OK.

 Rolling along unquestioned and answerable to no one breeds this brand of arrogance and stupidity on the left, but Breitbart jammed a stick in the spokes, and the liberals with skinned knees are crying to mommy.

The Breitbartian pushback tactics are working...

Obama Henchman Cancels Bill Maher Appearance

David Axelrod will not be appearing as a guest on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” despite reports last week that he was scheduled to do the show in the next few weeks. (Politico)

Liberal Pigmouth Withdraws from Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association annual dinner

A couple of years ago, “comedian” Louis CK “joked” on the Opie and Anthony radio show about Palin coming to the Republican convention “holding a baby that just came out of her f-ing, disgusting [C-word], her f-ing retard-making [C-word].”

Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren posted a blog using similar language calling for a boycott of the Association’s dinner. Susteren wrote in her blog: “Another pig….and a media association has hired the pig, Louis C.K., to be their headliner for the big media dinner? Really? I am not going. I refuse to go. Everyone in the media should join me in this boycott.”

Following Van Susteren's criticism, Louis C.K. has withdrawn from the Association's dinner. (Newsbusters)

John Nolte over at Breitbart laments the flame wars and wishes it would all end, while reminding us that it was the liberals who started it, and they are now being burned by the flames they fanned.

We don’t want to shut people up, we just want to confront the liberal manufactured outrage BS machine with their own medicine.  Everybody on all sides needs to drop the bs. We all make mistakes, we all say stupid things in our lives, and no one is immune from criticism.

Maher Defends Limbaugh

In a strange twist, while we on the right use Bill Maher's crude misogynist vulgarity as a bludgeon against the left, Maher was defending Rush Limbaugh.

He also defended his earlier Twitter defense of Limbaugh, saying that Limbaugh had apologized and so the left looks bad for not accepting. “I said I don’t like it that people are made to disappear when they say something you – or people try to make them disappear – when they say something you don’t like. That’s America. Sometimes you’re made to feel uncomfortable, okay?” (Politico)

He argued that “the word they are upset about” was not said on HBO, but during his stand-up comedy act, “which I consider the last bastion of free speech.” (Politico)

And that is what this is really all about. Free Speech. Bill Maher is right. You speak freely and take the consequences. Noisy pre-fab offense-taking and the boycotts they spawn pollute the environment even worse.

The left could learn something from Maher. At least he takes a defensible and logically consistent position

Politico – Left’s War on Rush
Politico – “They Thought I was Finished”

Life: Ten Universal Principles

As I posted yet another anti-abortion piece, FreeThinke Grumped “Why are we going through it again …”

AOW agreed, but more diplomatically. She’s a wise and Godly woman, so I always listen to her. She is pro-life, but she also displays a world-weariness when the subject comes around.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but how a society views life says much about it. Taking life lightly will rot a people.

The left has turned a woman’s right to choose to kill a human life into a sacrament, a dogma which shall not be questioned. When you shove it in my face and demand funding for it, it is my right to question it, criticize it and even protest it.

Who really thinks doctors never performed "medically-necessary" abortions before Roe v Wade? Who thinks that putting out the flashing neon "Get Abortions Here" sign didn't increase that abhorrent practice?

If abortion were something that took place quietly in a normal medical setting, not Planned Parenthood abortion mills and God only knows how many charnel houses like that one in Philadelphia, what would we have to protest? Some hospitals would loudly trumpet that they do not perform abortions, while others would tell nosy inquirers to mind their own damned business.

Someone pointed out that most of the world's nations ban abortions, and from my own experience, I'd bet the farm that abortions still happen in those places. A large dose of birth control pills essentially acts as a "morning after solution." Please don't ask me how I know.

For those who care about the underlying argument for human life, I recommend the the thin but packed book, Ten Universal Principles - A Brief Philosophy of the Life Issues. It is a master work of tight pro-life logic that focuses not just on abortion, but on the sanctity of all human life and how to defend it.  I know the hard-core lefties won’t read it; they’ve already gone over the edge and nothing will bring them back. If a judge says so, kill ‘em! That is the principle-free progressive world they have created.

You don't think abortion is a slippery slope to infanticide?  Check this out:  Killing Babies no Different from Abortion. "Experts" say it, so it must be so.