Monthly Archives: March 2013

The Catholic Church Is On The Rack

Christianity, Criminal Injustice, Pseudoscience, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Sex

The breakdown of boundaries in society may be one of the main sources of all the rot we see around us, but the Catholic Church will not be permitted to survive in the way it was intended to function: as a hierarchical organization.

The Pontiff likely quit because, brilliant prescient man that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is, he knows that the Church is no longer a haven from the toxic tides of populism and liberalism. And he is powerless to stop the avalanche.

The clamoring masses believe that they are every bit as smart as men like Benedict. The faithful, moreover, no longer see themselves as members of a community of believers, but as members of gay, lesbian, feminist, black, brown and plain angry clans. Unless the Church recognizes their brand of identity politics—they will bring it down.

Benedict also knows that the Church is on the rack. The victim community has found a way to bleed the Church dry and rob it of its moral authority. Sexual abuse litigation is big business, a racket facilitated by courts that are conduits to this theft.

After “asbestos, tobacco, guns, lead paint,” the next jackpot for tort lawyers was … sex, wrote Daniel Lyons of Forbes Magazine. In 2003, Lyons hashed out all there is to say about the sexual-abuse shakedown to which the Catholic Church has been subjected.

In “Sex, God & Greed,” Lyons pointed out how many of these class-action claims are, if not bogus, backed by the discredited excavation of false memories. (See my “Repressed Memory Ruse.”)

“… The focal point of this tort battle is the Catholic Church. The Church’s legal problems are worse even than most people realize: $1 billion in damages already paid out for the victims of pedophile priests, indications that the total will approach $5 billion before the crisis is over… The lawyers are lobbying states to lift the statute of limitations on sex abuse cases, letting them dredge up complaints that date back decades. Last year California, responding to the outcry over the rash of priest cases, suspended its statute of limitations on child sex abuse crimes for one year, opening the way for a deluge of new claims. A dozen other states are being pushed to loosen their laws. … But this wave of litigation does not end here. Is there any reason to think that the priesthood has a monopoly on child molestation? The lawyers who are winning settlements from Catholic dioceses are already casting about for the next targets: schools, government agencies, day care centers, police departments, Indian reservations, Hollywood. Plaintiff lawyer Roderick MacLeish Jr. and other litigators have parlayed the priest crisis into a billion-dollar money machine, fueled by lethal legal tactics, shrewd use of the media and public outrage so fierce that almost any claim, no matter how bizarre or dated, offers a shot at a windfall.”

Death By Democratic Socialism

Crime, Democracy, Founding Fathers, Paleolibertarianism, Private Property, Race, Socialism, South-Africa

I’ve just heard the neocons of The Five, on Fox News, lambaste the late Hugo Chavez for the crime levels in Venezuela.

Not that the panel said this, but populist, revolutionary movements that “empower” the masses can give way to lawlessness.

Obscene levels of crime in South Africa are a by-product of the overnight dismantling of what was once a hierarchical society.

The meme about crime in South Africa is that it’s apartheid’s fault (“the white man made me do it”). It’s a script that has no base in reality, and is the product of the twisted minds of liberals there and here. Never mind that South Africa was inhabited by genocidal tribes prior to the implementation of the policies of apartheid.

Except to maintain a vigil outside the ailing Nelson Mandela’s hospital—the news media refuse to report honestly about crime in South Africa.

Amy Chua did a remarkable job in linking violence to the outbreak of unfettered democracy in countries with a market-dominating ethnic minority. But Amy Chua is too bright to make it onto American TV (except to discuss, and be derided for, her non-progressive parenting).

Back to the subject: From the perspective of the flaccid Five, the link between lawlessness and democratic socialism is obvious in Venezuela, but not in South Africa.

By the way, what is America if not a social democracy?

In the US, a poll is the most popular argument for a policy. Might makes right. “Polls show that the American people want Obama care.”

“So bloody what” is what our Founding Fathers would retort. “You can’t have everything you want; and you can’t have what doesn’t belong to you.”

Jobs: More Cover-Up Than Recovery

Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Labor

Although “The labor force participation rate, which measures workers and those looking for jobs … fell to a 32-year low of 63.5%, tied with where it stood in August 2012”—Mark Hanna at Euro Pacific gives out a “better than expected employment report”:

* The government reported a net 236,000 new jobs as the unemployment rate fell to 7.7%. Economists expected the 160,000 new jobs in February and the unemployment rate held steady at 7.9%.
* Service industries led the gains with 73,000 new jobs, while construction added 48,000 and health care provided 32,000. Retail also added 24,000.
* There was a downward revision in January’s data, from an initially reported 157,000 down to 119,000. December’s numbers, though, were revised up from 196,000 to 219,000.
* Average hourly earnings rose four cents to $23.82 an hour, while the average work week edged higher to 34.5 hours.

By Paul Craig Roberts’s assessment, this is “The Missing Recovery.” He pulls the curtain back on a declining “U.3 measure of unemployment rate”; declining “because it does not count discouraged job seekers who have given up looking for a job.”

AND:
• An “expansive monetary policy of bond purchases to maintain negative real interest rates continues 3.5 years into the recovery.” This comes “at the expense of interest income for retirees on their savings accounts, money market funds, and Treasury bonds.”

PBS admits too that, while unemployment dropped because people found work, “some 130,000 others stopped looking for work, so they were no longer counted.”

Robert Wenzel’s EPJ (Economic Policy Journal) has it right: This is a Ben Bernanke manipulated uptick.

We’re floating on a confetti of funny-money. How can we tell what’s real and what’s not real?

CPAC Sheds A Heavy Weight; Gains Light-Weights Galore

Bush, Conservatism, IMMIGRATION, Intellectualism, John McCain, Neoconservatism

As was mentioned a few posts back, Chris Christie will be conspicuous by his absence from this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, which will commence on March 14.

New Jersey’s popular Republican governor is getting his comeuppance. He campaigned for the Democrat Barack Obama throughout October of 2012. Now the governor has not been invited to partake at CPAC. “He’s not … conservative,” offered Al Cardenas, who is chairman of the American Conservative Union that sponsors CPAC.

CPAC has hosted countless unconservative members of the establishment, one of them was the Republican’s presidential nominee for 2008, John McCain.

As part of the unholy McCain-Kennedy-Specter trinity, McCain worked to legalize 20 million illegal immigrants. He blessed George W. Bush’s deficit spending and obscene stimulus package. By National Review’s count, McCain voted for higher taxes 50 time. And like any good liberal, he disparaged Mitt Romney for making it in the private sector.

The Conservative Political Action Conference would be acting less incongruously were they to blackball dough ball Christie for being the consummate backstabbing, slimy, opportunistic politician. Republicans who are not conservative are the norm.

For example, Jeb Bush. This year brother Bush will be a featured speaker at CPAC. Bush junior is hardly much of a conservative. Jeb Bush’s new book, “Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution,” advocates further liberalization of US immigration policy. However, so liberal has the GOP become on immigration, since November 2012, that Bush’s book is being rejected as too hawkish.

Fear not. Substituting, at CPAC, for the absence of one heavy weight governor—and the reference is not to Christie’s intellect—are plenty lightweights. See for yourself.