Fraizer

So, in an effort to curb Fraizer's piddling we have resorted to Prozac. Yes, Prozac. Apparently others have had success putting their cats on Prozac to end their apparent anxiety (how can a cat be anxious?) and stop them from going outside the cat box. On a side note, we explained we cannot have him peeing on the couch but do not want to put him down. They said recently 93 year old woman had to put her cat down and my be interested in taking him. Darci and I always said Fraizer was the perfect cat for an elderly person, laid back and a total lap cat. Problem solved? It's that or this...

MI/AZ Primary

Mitt wins Michigan and Arizona. The two not-Mitts are killing each other. It is looking more and more like we will be stuck with Mitt in November. Another election where I vote against the Democrat rather than for the Republican, at least Presidentially. Sigh...

The Oscars

Did anybody watch the Oscars last night, I didn't. Did anybody actually see a movie that was nominated for anything. I saw Moneyball (pretty good) and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (meh). That was about it. What a sad state of movies today. Nothing good to watch.

For Darci

The Romney/Paul Connection

Rush thinks Mitt made a deal with Paul to keep him in the race to attack the other two (he never seems to have  a bad word to say about Mitt) and not to run 3rd party. Rush's idea of the pay off...a high post (VP????) for Rand. An interesting thought. Proof, Ron Paul is not campaigning in Michigan but is still running ads there attacking Santorum.

Bad things happen in 5s?

1. Tuesday Fraizer piddles on the couch. His days are numbered which sucks because Noah loves, and I mean LOVES, the cat. That is going to suck.

2. Wednesday Gracie pukes in bed over night and proceeds to leak from every orifice the rest of the day including shitting through 2 outfits and puking on our bed. Back to the doctor we go.

3. Wednesday morning a 10 year old girl slips on an icy sidewalk outside the duplex, lost consciousness and gets EMS'd to the hospital. Darci is convinced we are going to be sued and will lose a child in the settlement. We are insured up to 2 million thankfully but Noah is negotiable.

4. Wednesday morning we learned a "fire proof" safe is not water proof. Apparently at some point in the last year a water jug leaked onto the safe and all the documents, cash, and savings bonds got soaked and moldy. Most are able to be saved but COME ON!!!!!!!

5. Wednesday afternoon we learn that while trying to refinance our home and duplex that the duplex is legally split into 2 separate lots. So despite owning it for 7 years and having one loan for the whole thing the assessor learns of this and thinks we have to get 2 separate loans for the duplex. AWESOME.

Palestinian Refugees and Satan

No relationship between those two headings, by the way.

Read a great/disturbing article on National Review today called "The Ever-Growing Palestinian Problem." You should read it. The gist of it is that unlike most refugee populations that diminish over time due to resettlement and death, the Palestinian "refugee" population has grown from what should be about 150,000 to about 5 million thanks to two major redefinitions by the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refuges) to include descendants of male refugees (thereby guaranteeing, of course, that the number of "refuges" will continue to grow). The Palestinians, by the way, are the only refuge group worldwide to get its own separate relief agency at the U.N. and that agency is the largest U.N. agency in terms of staff. And the charade goes on.

For tonight: let's wager how many times the word "satan" is used. I'm going with 5. I'm going with that number because only the moderators will use it; Santorum will stick with "good and evil."

For the record, Santorum is right.

CNN Debate

Here we go again. The next debate is Wednesday night on CNN at 7:00 p.m. It's been awhile, so I'm ready for this one. Interesting that it's on Ash Wednesday.  I wonder if the two Catholics will have ashes on their foreheads????? So, if you're up for it, I'll be ready to blog at 8:30. Who's in?

For Mom

Another Take from Mr. Angry Libertarian Catholic himself - Karl Denninger

Before you get your knickers in a twist, Karl (the author) is a practicing catholic.  MiM presents the below without comment.  MiM does not want to debate this issue.  MiM has no specific opinions that he would like to share at the present time, other that his general desire to eat a pork-based meat product.  MiM merely thought you might find this interesting. 

The Truth About The Catholic Healthcare Brouhaha

Fox News inadvertently blew the cover off the issue, and it's exactly as I maintained in my earlier column.
Here's what I said:

There is nothing preventing the Church from organizing groups and soliciting health insurance quotes for those groups.  Being comprised of "faithful" people, that policy might include the provision that one could obtain these services but with the membership being comprised of faithful individuals who do not believe in such things there would be no use and thus the rating would not include that which is not used!  Contrary to popular belief all health insurance ratings are in fact simply a composite of the risk factors of each participant. (I know this to be factually true as I negotiated and purchased same for my company when I ran it.)

Yep.  The Church could put together a group of faithful that would not want to buy such services, and they thus would not pay for them.  Oh sure, they'd be required to "make them available" but that which you don't use you don't pay for, and if nobody in your group uses them they won't be part of the rating either.  In other words, it would be a nullity.
Well, if there was such a group....... and that's the problem.

A report last year from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit sexual health research organization, found that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women have used birth control despite the church's teachings. According to a Reuters report on the study, only 2 percent of Catholic women rely on natural family planning.

Ding ding ding ding ding ding.
There you have it folks.  The truth.  There is no ability to create such a group because if you actually required people to live to the Catholic Church's view on these matters the pews would be empty and so would the donation plate on Sunday.
So the Bishops can whine and scream like petulant children all they want but the facts are something else entirely.  They can't excommunicate everyone who uses birth control as they'd wind up with 2% of their current population of Catholics and the Church (at least in America) would instantly collapse.
They know this as well, despite their screaming from the pulpit.  These Bishops are not stupid people.
What they are, in fact, is dishonest and in this dishonesty they dishonor the faith, they dishonor their office and they dishonor The Church as an institution.
In point of fact were the issue as stated the Bishops would have, as I noted, also been opposed to Obamacare from the start because the very act of requiring someone to pool funds to buy someone else's health care inevitably leads to you funding someone's personal decisions you have a moral problem with, whether it be sloth or gay sex.  But they had no quarrel with and in fact supported Obamacare's forced individual mandate, along with Medicaid and its forced transfer payments and mandated tax structure, even though both did and do support medical treatment for various diseases that are either in the main or even only contracted through behavior that wantonly violates Catholic dogma, along with both birth control and abortion.
Among these treatments, incidentally, are those for essentially all sexually-transmitted illnesses.  Oh sure it's technically possible in some cases to contract them without having sex, but it's difficult and in the most-egregious of cases (e.g. HIV) the remaining non-sexual vectors that are statistically significant are also prohibited behaviors (e.g. IV drug abuse.)
This much is certain -- if both parties to the sexual act adhere to Catholic teachings then it is impossible for them to contract a STD since neither of them would have ever slept with anyone other than the spouse to which they were married, both beingvirgins at the time of marriage.  If neither party ever sleeps with any other person than their spouse, and both spouses are virgins at marriage, those two people by definition will never contract a STD.  So why should they pay (monetarily) for someone else's sin and why has that never been an objection over the years of Medicaid and in fact when Obamacare was debated?
Well?
Here's what I believe the truth to be and my evidence is here and in the previous article. The Bishops and prelates have been agitated about birth control and (of course) abortion for a very long time.  The latter is a shared position of many people, including Catholics.  The former, however, is definitely not -- virtually all Catholics who are sexually active, married or not, despite the Church's protest and catechism, use artificial birth control, and that's a fact.
So this little brouhaha gave the Bishops the opening on an issue they have not been willing to take on before.  The Church has, of course, been against artificial birth control and abortion forever.  That's not new, but it's also almost-universally ignored among Catholics, whether the Church likes it or not.
What the Church has never been willing to do, however, is raise a conscientious objection under the First Amendment to the provision of these services with employment tax dollars, even though they've been paying into said funds for decades.  Nor have they been willing to agitate for the congregation to also find an objection of conscience predicated on the First Amendment, to paying taxes (at both a State and Federal level) that go into Medicaid, which provides not only artificial birth control but also abortion.
In fact, the Church was for Obamacare for everyone, including the general congregation of Catholics, even though they knew damn well that it would pay for not only birth control but abortion services along with treatment for STDs that can only be contracted by acts that violate Catholic Canon, and none of this was concealed at the outset of the Obamacare debate.
It was only when the Church as an employer was tagged in the same way they were willing to have silently shoved down everyone else's throat, including the faithful that fill the pews on Sunday (myself included) that suddenly they became exercised over the issue of both birth control and abortion services to the degree that they state they "won't" comply.
Hypocrisy is a terrible thing, especially when it comes from the leaders of a powerful and influential group.  What the Bishops owe their congregations is both an apology for being willing to foist off on the congregation "acceptance" of these taxes for the last couple of decades along with an explanation for exactly why the faithful should comply with something they themselves claim is a rank Constitutional violation, and why they've advocated that Obamacare specifically, and Medicaid and other government-provided health care generally that happens to include both abortion and birth control services, is a social good and thus worthy of not only vocal but monetary support.

Catholicism and its deal with the devil

From a GREAT article by Paul Rahe at Ricochet. The full article is here...Ma you gotta read it.

In the 1930s, the majority of the  bishops, priests, and nuns sold their souls to the devil, and they did so with the best of intentions. In their concern for the suffering of those out of work and destitute, they wholeheartedly embraced the New Deal.

They did not stop to ponder whether public provision in this regard would subvert the moral principle that children are responsible for the well-being of their parents. They did not stop to consider whether this measure would reduce the incentives for procreation and nourish the temptation to think of sexual intercourse as an indoor sport. They did not stop to think.

In the process, the leaders of the American Catholic Church fell prey to a conceit that had long before ensnared a great many mainstream Protestants in the United States – the notion that public provision is somehow akin to charity – and so they fostered state paternalism and undermined what they professed to teach: that charity is an individual responsibility and that it is appropriate that the laity join together under the leadership of the Church to alleviate the suffering of the poor. In its place, they helped establish the Machiavellian principle that underpins modern liberalism – the notion that it is our Christian duty to confiscate other people’s money and redistribute it.

At every turn in American politics since that time, you will find the hierarchy assisting the Democratic Party and promoting the growth of the administrative entitlements state. At no point have its members evidenced any concern for sustaining limited government and protecting the rights of individuals. It did not cross the minds of these prelates that the liberty of conscience which they had grown to cherish is part of a larger package – that the paternalistic state, which recognizes no legitimate limits on its power and scope, that they had embraced would someday turn on the Church and seek to dictate whom it chose to teach its doctrines and how, more generally, it would conduct its affairs.

In my lifetime, to my increasing regret, the Roman Catholic Church in the United States has lost much of its moral authority. It has done so largely because it has subordinated its teaching of Catholic moral doctrine to its ambitions regarding an expansion of the administrative entitlements state. In 1973, when the Supreme Court made its decision in Roe v. Wade, had the bishops, priests, and nuns screamed bloody murder and declared war, as they have recently done, the decision would have been reversed. Instead, under the leadership of Joseph Bernardin, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Chicago, they asserted that the social teaching of the Church was a “seamless garment,” and they treated abortion as one concern among many. Here is what Cardinal Bernardin said in the Gannon Lecture at Fordham University that he delivered in 1983:

Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker. Consistency means that we cannot have it both ways. We cannot urge a compassionate society and vigorous public policy to protect the rights of the unborn and then argue that compassion and significant public programs on behalf of the needy undermine the moral fiber of the society or are beyond the proper scope of governmental responsibility.

I have heard sermons articulating the case against abortion thrice – once in Louisiana at a mass said by the retired Archbishop there; once at the cathedral in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and two weeks ago in our parish in Hillsdale, Michigan. The truth is that the priests in the United States are far more likely to push the “social justice” agenda of the Church from the pulpit than to instruct the faithful in the evils of abortion.

And there is more. I have not once in those years heard the argument against contraception articulated from the pulpit, and I have not once heard the argument for chastity articulated. In the face of the sexual revolution, the bishops priests, and nuns of the American Church have by and large fallen silent. In effect, they have abandoned the moral teaching of the Roman Catholic Church in order to articulate a defense of the administrative entitlements state and its progressive expansion.

Perhaps, however, Barack Obama has shaken some members of the hierarchy from their dogmatic slumber. Perhaps, a few of them – or among younger priests some of their likely successors – have begun to recognize the logic inherent in the development of the administrative entitlements state. The proponents of Obamacare, with some consistency, pointed to Canada and to France as models. As anyone who has attended mass in Montreal or Paris can testify, the Church in both of these places is filled with empty pews. There is, in fact, not a single country in the social democratic sphere where either the Catholic Church or a Protestant Church is anything but moribund. This is by no means fortuitous. When entitlements stand in for charity and the Social Gospel is preached in place of the Word of God, heaven on earth becomes the end, and Christianity goes by the boards.

Perhaps the tyrannical ambitions of Barack Obama will occasion a rethinking of the social-justice agenda. The ball is now in the court of Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, who has welcomed the President's gesture without indicating whether it is adequate. Upon reflection, he can accept the fig leaf that President Obama has offered him. Or he can put Sister Keehan and her supporters in their place and fight. If he wants to regain an iota of the moral authority that the Church possessed before 1973, he will do the latter. The hour is late. Next time, the masters of the administrative entitlements state won’t even bother to offer the hierarchy a fig leaf. They know servility when they see it.

Happy Birthday Terry!

I have no idea what to give you, so I thought this was appropriate.

From Darci's Facebook part II

• How do you start your morning? With a cup of coffee? Eggs and bacon? Nothing says good morning like your 4 yo doing a modified version of downward facing dog requesting that you check to make sure he wiped good enough after his 20 min poop/book reading session.....

• Noah was whining and asking for help with his socks (which I normally refuse to help him with--he's 4 he can get his own darn socks on) When I asked what was wrong he said that he was having trouble getting his socks on straight and they (the socks) were making fun of him....so I needed to help him put on his socks so they would stop laughing at him. Then he shut his imaginary door to the dinning room and told Grace that she needed to leave, he was getting dressed and needed "privacy".

• Noah is the most healthy one in the house. Looks like it's time for him to man up. On the way to preschool today he said "So, Mom. Someday when I am on TV do I get to be in charge and tell people what to do?" I said, " yes, Noah. If you are on TV someday you can go ahead and tell people what to do." I guess I should clarify if he's looking at acting, athletics or perhaps, America's Most Wanted...

• I will not take my daughter to the MD for a virus...I will not be that mother that overreacts... I will not demand abx....I will not freak out... I will just give tylenol and motrin-... 13 days into various illnesses the MD says "wow her ears are really red," Ugh. There goes my application for mother of the year. Screw it.. I WILL be that mother that overreacts and takes her kid in for everything instead of missing an ear infection.

• As a smell that could trigger uncontrollable gagging floats my way I ask...Noah, did you toot? Well, um, no..he replied. Did you fart? Well, maybe......it's a poop air bubble, mom. A "poop air bubble?" Yeah, you know...like when the air comes out of your butt like a bubble....... "nevermind, Noah. Nevermind."

Occupy at CPAC

Also from my Morning Jolt...I love this...

The language of the yahoos at Occupy D.C sounds like an over-the-top parody, but this is apparently how they really think:
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On February 9th through February 11th, a who's who of dastardly politicians will be holding the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Marriot Wardman Park Hotel at 2660 Woodley Road, NW. Similar to the Alfalfa Club dinner, this event is another gathering of bigots, media mouthpieces, corrupt politicians, and their 1 percent elite puppet masters.

CPAC will parade and attempt to perpetuate the radical right wing's imperialist ideologies with keynote speakers, movies and banquets dedicated to pursuing its racist, sexist, patriarchal and exploitative agenda. . . .

Our Mission: Occupy CPAC. Create as much non-violent resistance as possible, and make this a conference the attendees will never forget.
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Argh! How dare those conservatives get together on private property and hold meetings and chat with each other and listen to speeches and applaud! What, do they think this is a free country or something?

What bothers these losers is no particular activity at CPAC. What bothers these folks is that conservatives exist.

Their perfectly Orwellian rallying cry is -- I kid you not -- "Liberate Discourse." By preventing it, apparently.

I'll just note that nobody ever pulls these sorts of stunts at the NRA Convention.
"You can't build a moral high ground on feces and glitter," reminds blogger Iowahawk.

Big Night? and Catholics in an Uproar

Hannity tonight was great! Tuned in late, but caught the end of a segment with a young priest who is often on Fox and he was talking about the flack over the Obamacare mandate that Catholic hospitals provide free contraception coverage, including the very controversial morning after pill. The Obama administration is refusing to grant the Catholic Church a waiver on this, and this whole issue is exploding as a freedom of religion issue. 

Also, a potential big night for Santorum. Could be a race changer. Very interesting. 

Our Iowa

Feeling better and the CDC lifted the ban on our house. That said while sick I read the latest copy of Our Iowa and felt the need to share.

-I wished I lived in Iowa so I could take part in the prize contest on page 7. The winner basically gets the hell farmed out of some land, only in Iowa is that a prize.

-A trip down amnesia lane on pages 16-17. The only thing missing in the article was one of the kids holding up a sign stating "I MUST PEE" on hwy 65 between Collins and Colo.

-On page the 29 the caption for the bottom picture (old man and dog at the window) should read..."Hey dog, I am going to blame that pee spot on the floor on you. Thanks buddy."

-My sign suggestion for page 32 would be..."County of Polk....home to good folk....except for Ankeny....and its Hy-Vees...they sell MEAT AND CHEESE!"

-We need to make a purchase for Dad on pages 48-49, suggestions? If I could make a slogan it would be the Tim Owens "A short country drive to nowhere."

-Speaking of Dad he needs to make the thing on page 55

-I don't know why I lake the article on page 58, makes me think of farm sales

-Pages 60-61, photo 3 should win

-If it were possible for Trixie and Lynn Anderson to have a love child, it would look like Cynthia Murphy (middle photo) on page 73

That said, I emailed a letter to the editor and hope it gets printed in the next issue. I cannot wait.

The Cycle of Pain

Sorry I have been away from this for awhile, but let me tell you about our week. Last Wednesday Gracie gets the flu, violent vomitting, fever, the works. Thursday Noah gets a cold. Friday I get Grace's flu. Saturday Darci gets Gracie and I's flu. Sunday Gracie slightly recovers but starts to get Noah's cold. Wednesday I get Noah and Grace's cold and am currently in congestion hell. Kids are fun and I am thinking of moving out of the house. Blah................