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Name: John Ostrowski
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Cigarettes will destroy us all!!!

The Honorable Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. to the UN: Cigarette smoking is a "significant contributor to global warming."

Bahahahahahaha.

...

Bahahahahahaha. Someone please get this man a comedy contract.

(H/T to Drudge)
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Are we supposed to sympathize?

The left is so big on being completely and utterly inoffensive. Well, that is, they want everyone is disagrees with them to be completely and utterly inoffensive. No conservative should ever say anything that makes anyone else upset in any way. The same standard doesn't really apply to themselves, as liberals say all kinds of stupid and offensive things all the time (though the offensiveness is usually mitigated by the stupidity; it becomes a joke more than an insult). If you don't believe that liberals are overly sensitive, witness this liberal reaction to a conservative's comments.

Here's an example of liberals not realizing that they themselves often offend and make others uncomfortable. The airline did nothing wrong, and every passenger in the story should stop feigning offense. Get over it, pansies.
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Racism unhinged

George Will recently wrote on the campaign in Michigan to get a referendum banning affirmative action on the ballot. Read about it at the Washington Post. It's amazing to read the lengths to which the opponents of this referendum will go to keep it off the ballot. I'll give you two of the reasons Will lists:
  • Pressuring signers of MCRI petitions to say they did not understand what they were signing. Some talk radio stations have broadcast the names of signers, and opponents of MCRI have gone to signers saying, "Did you know you signed a petition against equal opportunity?" Two who recanted their signatures, saying they had signed without reading the measure, are federal judges.
  • Asking a court to rule that MCRI committed "fraud" because many who signed the petition supposedly were confused -- the signers were presumably not competent to read and understand the initiative, the full text of which was printed at the top of each petition.
Simply amazing. The hypocrisy of some people (the opponents after all claim to be part of the civil rights movement) seems boundless.
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Mitt Romney: The GOP's John Kerry

When will the right stop fawning over Mitt Romney? This RedState blog post should give everyone reason to:

Mitt Romney tries to justify his position in the interview by stating that he's always been personally opposed to abortion, but did not want to impose his personal views on the populace. Even if that's true, consider this: by Mitt Romney's definition, Ted Kennedy isn't pro-choice either.

The post also features some quotes from Romney over the years. He sounded very pro-choice until about, oh, a few years ago. Coincidence? I'd like to think I'm not that stupid.

There's no reason to risk a vote on this man if I can't be 100% sure that he is pro-life. There is no way I would ever consider, for a second, voting pro-abortion. Call me a single issue voter if you want, but I think the lives of 1.6 million babies a year supersede all other issues -- in fact, it makes all other issues seem downright trivial.
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Bush: humble president or puppeteer of the universe?

It seems that a lot of people would pick the latter. A story today on falling gas prices and rising Bush ratings has this little morsel in it (h/t to Drudge):

A USA Today/Gallup poll last week found that 42 percent of the roughly 1,000 adults surveyed across the United States believed President George W. Bush's administration had "deliberately manipulated the price of gasoline so that it would decrease before this falls elections."

This is just saddening. Are 42 percent of Americans really that stupid? Do they have any understanding of how our economy and government work? Probably not. Either these people are complete idiots, or they are all conspiratorial loons (read: liberals). Tony Snow has a nice response to this idiotic suggestion:

"I have been amused by ... the attempt by some people to say that the president has been rigging gas prices, which would give him the kind of magisterial clout unknown to any other human being," he told reporters.
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Good pope, bad pope?

I just stumbled across the Insight Scoop blog from Ignatius Press. It has a lot of great stuff on it. Here are a few posts that jumped out at me:
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Follow the leader?

What does one do when one's bishop, someone who had been an ordained minister for 40 years, converts to a different faith?

This question is prompted a story linked from Spirit Daily telling of a retired Lutheran bishop who will soon be ordained a Catholic priest.

That has to got to make anyone who Joseph Jacobson presided over question their own faith. I'm not saying that everytime someone's religious leader switches religions that they should follow. If one of my priests converted to a different religion, I'd probably be upset that they were leaving the faith, but I'd be more concerned that they were wrong than that I was wrong. Of course, I also don't know the structure of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. What is the hierarchy like? Is a bishop relatively high on the ladder, or relatively low?

I ask this, because if the pope for some reason converted, I'd start asking myself questions. It's different if a priest converts, but the pope? Of course, I don't anticipate the pope converting anytime soon, so it's not something I worry about. But I am curious as to reaction of parishoners when a priest or minister decides to leave the faith.

*This is one of those rare cases where a Catholic priest can be married. If a married man who is an ordained priest/minister in a different Christian denomination (that is fairly close to Catholicism, such as Lutheranism, Anglicanism, and especially Orthodox) converts to Catholicism, they can be ordained and, of course, remain married.

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Bobby Schindler shuts Ellen Goodman up

Ellen Goodman runs her mouth in the Boston Globe about people in "vegetative" states.

Bobby Schindler, Terri Schiavo's brother, responds with a letter letter her know exactly why she is wrong. My heart still goes out to the Terri Schiavo's relatives, and it's terrible that Goodman feels she can simply co-opt their tragedy as a way to support her half-baked theories.

I'm sorry, Goodman, are you a scientist? No? Well, the 41 doctors at the end of Schindler's letter are, as are the researchers in Britain who came up the the new study that Goodman is criticizing. How about we leave the anlalysis to professionals, huh Goodman?
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The most difficult sacrament

I only read the first few paragraphs of this homily, but it looks good so far (h/t to Spirit).

The bishop is correct in saying that confession is the most difficult sacrament, I think. Nothing is as daunting as approaching another person, even though he may be acting in Christ's stead, and reveal your sins. It is is also a very healing sacrament. Says the bishop:

Confession is the most challenging and difficult of the sacraments, because in it we lay bare our inmost thoughts, our weaknesses and sins that shame us, our deepest motives. This we do to another human person, a priest who, we know in faith, takes the place of God. It can be very humiliating. And yet we get untold benefits of freedom, forgiveness, peace, healing and strength from this sacrament. We sin as individuals. We also have to make an individual confession. It does us good to go on our knees, put our sinful deeds into words before an ordained priest, face up to the truth about ourselves and entrust our lives to God's merciful and just love.

Amen.
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We need a president like this in the U.S. next term

President Fox is going to the basilica in Mexico City to thank the Virgin Mary for her help (h/t to Spirit).

We need a Catholic president in the United States. Not an adulterer (Kennedy) or a heretic (Kerry), but a Catholic like Fox/Calderon.
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EXCOMMUNICATED!

So long, heretic.

But seriously, I'm glad the Holy See isn't tolerating this crap.
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Buchanan on Iran

I'd have to agree with Buchanan's latest column, Consult America -- Before Iran War!

I think he may have overstated the consequences of a preemptive and unnecessary war, but nonetheless I agree that while we must not back down from Iran, this does not mean we must start a war with them.
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Alec Baldwin: Always good for a laugh

Witness Alec Baldwin's latest post on The Huffington Post:

I can't remember which upset me more....the stolen election in 2000 or the war in Iraq. Or was it when they outed Valerie Plame, a woman working in the service of her country's intelligence apparatus who had the "misfortune" of being married to a government official who dared to contradict this White House's right-wing-nut-bag agenda in Baghdad?

Is this guy serious? Is this guy really still harping about the 2000 election. You know, the one which know one has been able to show was stolen. Seriously, six years. It took Nixon a day to realize that crying about voter irregularities in Texas and Illinois in 1960 wouldn't do anything. So why are liberals still crying about a vote that had no voter irregularities? Because they have nothing better to do.

And did anyone give Baldwin the memo about Plame and the source that outed Wilson? Does he know it was Richard Armitage, hardly a fan of Bush's Iraq policy? Or is he willfully ignorant because it allows him to hold on to a deeply head conspiratorial belief? (Almost certainly the latter.)

I encourage you to go and read the rest of Baldwin's rant. He goes on to complain about a multitude of other Republican sins that he perceives. It's funny because it shows that he is not capable of taking an issue, analyzing it in depth, drawing conclusions, and suggesting solutions. He simple can't do it. It seems he has a multitude of incredibly simplistic thoughts swimming in his head (Stolen election...Iraq war bad...Rove outed Plame...Bush evil...Cheney evil...Rumsfeld evil...Republicans bad) that he is unable to sort through in order to produce a coherent column. He comes across as a rambling idiot. Why is this?

Alec Baldwin is a classic Hollywood psuedo-intellectual. What do I mean by this? Well, he's a Hollywood liberal, and he makes all kinds of strong assertions while mistakenly operating under the belief that he is intelligent. It's almost sad, really.

This example might be a little removed, but it makes sense to me because I'm in college. Think about your time in school, especially years spent in higher education. Class discussions could always be broken down more or less into four groups: the just-plain-dumb kids, the middle-of-the-road kids, the smart kids, and the psuedo intellectuals. Of all the groups, only one was consistently annoying: psuedo intellectuals. The other groups could be annoying depending on an individual's character traits (arrogant smart kids were annoying, and unfunny dumb kids were annoying). Psuedo intellectuals were the ones consistently contributing to class discussions; they acted as if they knew everything, but you felt like smacking your forehead everytime they opened their mouth. Alec Baldwin is a psuedo intellectual.
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This is what bugs be about segments of the religious right

Read this story on Falwell and Republicans (h/t to Drudge) and see if you can identify what bugs me.

No, it's not this part:

"I certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate," Falwell told a private prayer breakfast. "Because nothing will energize my (constituency) like
Hillary Clinton."

"If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't," Falwell added, drawing a roomful of laughs and cheers.

As the story notes later on, it was an off-the-cuff joke. I'm sure Falwell does not really believe that Hillary is worse than Lucifer. Nor do Christians.

What bugs me is this remark:

Attendees also were assured during the prayer breakfast that God would preserve a Republican majority in Congress.

What happened to free will? No, seriously, there's no reason to believe that America is God's chosen land. God did not prevent the Nazis from rising to power; He did not prevent the atheists in the U.S.S.R. from starving millions to death; He didn't prevent Hamas victory in Palestine. God has given humans free will, and it does not seem to me that He makes a point of intervening in the political workings of society to achieve and end He desires.

We can pray that God help us in our fight for a culture of life, but I do not believe that He wants us to think that our victory is assured by Him. Free will is a tricky thing. It can work against you as often as not.
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Eat a cockroach, get unlimited line jumps at Six Flags

Fair trade. One might wonder why PETA would make a stink out of this tiny issue when about half of the vendors in any given amusement park sell meat.

Here's my take. Everyone expects PETA to make a stink about anything involving animals in any way. So PETA getting upset about Six Flags selling meat would just be business as usual for most people. PETA needs to do something really, really outrageous (like come to the defense of poor, poor cockroaches) to get noticed. Of course, most really, really outrageous things are also really, really stupid. So PETA's rep drops even more. It's a vicious cycle, but a god vicious cycle, because it means PETA is always losing.

And kudos to my Six Flags for standing behind their offer.
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