Tasty Tidbits 8/13/11 – Curmudgeon Special

  1. Anathema (Corporatism I)
  2. Can you top this I?
  3. A golden anniversary
  4. Catholicism/Americanism mish-mash.
  5. Rick Perry’s Crony Capitalism Problem.
  6. Can you top this II?
  7. Food police (Corporatism II).
  8. Corporatism III
  9. A Feast of the Mother of God.

(I seem to detect an antiwar, anticorporate selection bias here. Imagine that!)

Continue reading “Tasty Tidbits 8/13/11 – Curmudgeon Special”

Tasty Tidbits 7/23/11

  1. Obama as Gorbachev.
  2. Who lacks standing to diss Herman Cain?
  3. Obama should suspend habeus corpus.
  4. The Great Gerrymander.
  5. Norway.
  6. An exhibit in the libertarian case for abandoning regulatory bodies.
  7. What’s Wrong with Benevolence?
  8. Ouch! That argument makes too much sense!
  9. Today’s Gospel reading rocks!
  10. Am I one sick puppy?

Continue reading “Tasty Tidbits 7/23/11”

You can’t make this stuff up

I recently stumbled upon a fundamentalist site, so absurd that it has lingered with me, explaining “why the Apocrypha isn’t in the Bible.” It’s absurd as any patent circular “reasoning” is absurd: the Apocrypha isn’t in the Bible, in substantial part, because it teaches false doctrine. And how does one discern false doctrine? By seeing if it’s in the Bible. Continue reading “You can’t make this stuff up”

Stopping START

Republicans in Congress and the conservative movement are capable of dissenting from bipartisan foreign policy consensus, but only when it would be the most foolish and harmful to do so. Bipartisan consensus on foreign policy is very often destructive and dedicated to shoring up U.S. hegemony through countless commitments that we can’t afford and shouldn’t be trying to maintain. This consensus has endorsed dangerous policies from invading Iraq to expanding NATO to isolating and antagonizing Iran, and on all of these Republicans in Congress and movement conservatives have largely been reliable supporters. We can expect that they will continue to rally behind such policies in the future, because they are exercises in American power projection, because they are confrontational, and because they are incredibly short-sighted and reckless. Continue reading “Stopping START”

Orthodox Economics (with a shame-faced eucharistic postscript)

I’m unlikely for years, if ever, to compose a better introductionto Distributism for Orthodox Christians (or others) than this article from the Orthodox Peace Fellowship . All the following quotes, accordingly, are from it unless otherwise noted.

“Capitalism immediately appeals to Americans, who value freedom above just about everything,” the article acknowledges But don’t expect me to bite my tongue about what I see of  Emperor Capital’s new clothes. Continue reading “Orthodox Economics (with a shame-faced eucharistic postscript)”