The Necropolitan Sentinel | chi per lungo silenzio parea fioco

Ripped Off in Pieces

Posted on May 16, 2013 By Anthony Bialy

A piecemeal approach leaves everyone hungry. Attempting a few half-assed plans every decade or so is no way to fix things or even pretend. Our dysfunctional junkie government got this way by just trying a little bit of angel dust at a time.

Nobody should be surprised that our labyrinth of regulations came about in such a disorientating way. Lack of vision leads to bashing knees on table corners, as seen by those blind to our problems who think little modifications are all that's needed to correct horrible policies.

Our border is naturally leaky considering the efforts to seal the gaps with Scotch tape. If those responsible for our current immigration situation were trying to sneak in the country using the same approach, they'd be stuck on a fence with only Tang powder to stave off dehydration. With their foresight in mind, it's a wonder we don't have turnstiles installed on the edge of San Diego.

A couple bills every now and then that seek to appease foreigners who don't like this country enough to obey its rules have somehow failed to alleviate the problem. We should know by now that people who don't respect our boundaries also tend to be insufferably and doltishly amoral. The question is, what do we do with non-citizens who disobeyed our laws to get here and now think it's our job to accommodate their desire to be here?

The moaning of those who want to melt the pot itself highlights the need for a wholly different strategy. Any approach that doesn't start with spraying Pam on a giant solid fence that stands at our porous country line and the intention to boot anyone we find who sneaked in appeases their interests, not ours.

The expense of not locking the door goes beyond the huge price tag. If we can't control who's here, there's not much that can be kept safe at all. E-Verify won't stop illegal hiring, but background checks for guns will stop crime? Okay. Every chicken wire stopgap fix tacitly presumes the uninvited's rights trump those of the hosts.

Oblivious to the drain caused by whoever last got to raise taxes, today's lawmakers strive to grab a little bit more from those well-heeled segments who are not presently politically fashionable. Don't worry: you'll get your turn to get hosed, presuming you have any hope of making more than you earn today. The only certain tax policy aside from those who oppose onerously high rates getting ironically hassled is that they need more right now than they got before. They're only taking from rich bastards who wouldn't otherwise buy products that create jobs or hire you directly.

The fragmented approach to collecting revenue has turned the economy into smithereens. The incessant rate tweaks and deductions always result in punishment for advancing. It would be far preferable to have one low rate rather than consolation prizes for oppressive brackets that reward relationship status or domicile purchase.

Thank the current income grabbing schematic on oh so well-considered wartime measures that persist long after the war. The withholding of income to fund efforts to expel the Axis from Europe and the Pacific Rim continue to conceal the pain of tax day.

Perhaps trivia ringers can summon an example of when Washington encouraging behavior has ever been a wise idea. Governmental good intentions have led to good results that one time in the future that Keynesians assure us is on the horizon.

The thought of scrapping the capsizing vessel by charging people for their federal services with either one percentage for every income or purchase would reduce the process's invasive nature. But maybe another escalation of the progressive variety is going to fix our finances. Hitting an iceberg on the hull's other side could even it out.

As for our physical beings, we've been sawing off a gangrenous limb with one hacksaw pass at a time. Health care needs a new general diagnosis. Instead, we get a different quack at every upstairs medical clinic. The necessity of constant tweaks should be a sign that the whole is rotten straight through. Getting health care through work indefinitely because of another danged World War II-era law is not a great indicator of foresight.

Our prescription sucks, and the real cure requires a more holistic approach. Specifically, the government should start again and announce you can buy insurance wherever you want. Such an open competition to keep you healthy would beat having to hope for a decent plan at work or, ugh, from your loving government. Making everyone subsidize everyone else is cunning until the first person realizes that they're getting soaked for the privilege of trying.

Just because hindsight is easy doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile endeavor. The fact time exists makes it effortless to look back and see what went wrong than to anticipate the future. It's totally necessary and acceptable to see the way that knee-jerking to momentary problems has left us with only worn joints.

The government's approach to business is not the same as business's approach, as seen in everything your unhealthily reactive leaders have ever done. Washington's needling little responses inevitably damage the intended beneficiaries, but that's just the natural result of not caring enough to do a comprehensively wise job in the first place.

Anthony Bialy is a writer and “Red Eye” conservative in New York City. Follow him at http://twitter.com/AnthonyBialy. Download a free ebook of his 2012 columns at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/270599.

Scandal-Plagued Obama Administration Round-Up, 5-15-13

Posted on May 15, 2013 By Dan Collins

9 Comments

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. I've been busy, and honestly it's been all I can do to keep up with reading about Scandalpalooza. I'm just going to dump a whole bunch of good reading on the various scandals listed by Mary Pat in the post below for the moment, so that I can clear the tabs.

Michelle Malkin reminds us with details that all of these administration abuses of power have precedents.

Mike Ciandella at CNS shows that Soros is the big funder behind a lot of the proggie organizations that were pressuring lawmakers and the IRS to investigate their conservative counterparts, and Carl Levin of Michigan is one of the members of Congress who duly passed along their concerns.

Catholic-in-name liberal front groups that received Soros funds may have been instigated IRS harassment of Catholic Professor Anne Hendershott, who wrote about the links among those groups and their funders. It's a common trope among leftists that someone pushing the TEA Party/patriot/small government line must be in the pay of the Brothers Koch (who seem to have had their IRS information leaked) or some other deep-pocketed conservative 1%er, because that's their own model, and they assume it's ours. This causes Jimmie Bise to lament.

The IRS somehow ended up with medical records pertaining to 60 million citizens (correction per Starless in comments: 60 million records pertaining to 10 million citizens), many of them in California, without subpoenaing them. Gabe Malor from Ace of Spades cautions on Twitter that the suit some of those people have initiated isn't against the IRS generally, but against 15 of its employees, and urges caution because this is a civil suit and because he thinks that the lawyer representing them is given to overreaching. An Obama Campaign Chairman also managed somehow to get ahold of Romney tax records. Hmmm.

The IRS also finally sought to bring its Determinations Unit under control when it began to be concerned about possible media blowback. Meanwhile, they want you to share everything. When everything is about redistribution, an agency such as the IRS becomes the most important investigative agency in the country, Citizen.

In that vein, Da Techguy cautions not to run into a liberal ambush by calling for Obama's impeachment before all the investigations have run their course. It's more important to get the information and get it before the public at the moment.

Not that you weren't aware of the close relations between the administration and tax-exempt cronies in Media Matters, but here it is demonstrated that MMfA has been used by the Justice Department to put their spin on issues out there. Not a new story, but one of many flashbacks that people are now connecting up to present scandals. That kind of collaboration ought to get their tax exemption yanked, but instead MMfA are trying to justify the IRS's little pogrom against TEA Party and other organizations.

Here's a good treatment of the problem with Sebelius leaning on insurers to get the ObamaCare ramp up funded, a practice generally referred to by the name extortion. It also flies in the face of a little law known as the Anti-Deficiency Act, which was one of the troubles with Iran-Contra. But since Sebelius has apparently faced no consequences from having violated the Hatch Act, that's only to be expected, I suppose.

Then there are a class of treatments we might classify as zeitgeisty that point out that none of these scandals ought to surprise us at all, because the Obama administration is essentially Chicago on the Potomac, deriving its sense of good governance from the Windy City where His Imperial Lawlessness cut his political teeth.

As I'm sure you already know, the administration gets reports regarding its own lawlessness news agencies, just like you and me.

UPDATE: IRS harasses pro-life organizations, protects Planned Parenthood.

Scandal Tsunami: It’s Not the Cover-Up, It’s Targeting the Media

Posted on May 15, 2013 By Meep

2 Comments

Let's see what particular litany of Obama administration scandals we're up to, now:

Benghazi
IRS targeting of Tea Party/conservative/Jewish/??? groups
IRS leaking confidential info to liberal groups
EPA fee politicism
Snooping on AP reporters to find leak source
(added later) Sebelius shaking down companies in health biz to implement Obamacare (can't believe I forgot that one)

That's the ones of which I'm aware are currently "hot". I'm not even touching "old" scandals like Pigford and Fast & Furious.

I bolded one scandal: the snooping on the AP. What's interesting about that one is that it is possible that the particular actions not only are totally legal, but also ethical (for a pretty good definition of ethics).

But a different picture emerges if you look past the AP’s spin. DOJ is investigating a leak of national security information to AP reporters that culminated in a May 7, 2012 story that disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped a terrorist plot in early 2012. The story had the byline of five AP reporters. DOJ opened an investigation into the leak to the AP, and pursuant to itspublished special rules on investigations involving the media investigations, issued subpoenas to find out what numbers were dialed from the relevant AP reporters during the months of April and May 2012. Presumably the thinking is that AP reporters called their sources, and the investigators want to trace the phone numbers to see who the sources might be. As far as I can tell, the information collected by the subpoena concerned the work and personal phone numbers of the five reporters and their editor, as well as the general AP office numbers where the reporters were located and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery. The AP knows about this because pursuant to DOJ’s policies found in 28 C.F.R. 50.10, the government was required to give the AP notice that the records were obtained. The AP received that notice in a letter on Friday, and then today (Monday) it released its AP story expressing AP’s outrage. That’s pretty much all we know so far.

Based on what we know so far, then, I don’t see much evidence of an abuse.

As Orin Kerr notes, perhaps there's more to it, but you know what? I don't think it matters.

Because the ultimate result may be to light a fire under the media's asses.

And no, while in Benghazi the issue is primarily one of cover-up after colossal screw-ups to begin with, that's not the case with most of these scandals. The scandals are that they did them in the first place… WHICH THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE DOING.

Thing is, the media have been coming up with all sorts of excuses for this behavior, about how it was only right to investigate Tea Party applications as clearly they're not in the "social welfare" biz. That sort of crap.

But now, it's all changed. They'd been betrayed.

It's like the girlfriend of an asshole, who keeps excusing all the assholish things her guy has done – "Oh, it's okay that he stiffed that customer, the bitch deserved it", "Yeah, he's mean to his dad, but he is insufferable" ….. "Wait… he =cheated= on me? He cheated on ME?!?!?! SON OF A BITCH MUST PAY!"

I have no sympathy for the media in this. They were slackasses and dumbasses, and there were lots of signs of official malfeasance all over the place, but they were enablers.

So now the media hungers for blood after they find themselves the target. Sure, FoxNews being targeted is just fine, but the AP?! How dare he! How dare they all! We'll show them!

I bet if they work their investigative muscles, wasted on so many dead ends in the Bush years, they might just be able to dig up something new. I don't know what, but I bet there's loads of juicy stories just waiting to be had.

In the meantime, I'm playing "trying to avoid an audit" and seeing how my draft picks are doing. I have a great feeling about "bad management processes" and "inadequate staffing due to Republican intransigence".

RELATED: Treacher thanks the media for noticing what conservatives have noticed since Obama came on the scene. He basically makes the same point as I do.

HEY WAIT: Maybe here's a new IRS scandal: accessing a shitload of health care records for… wtf reason, I have no clue.

AND NOW: Steven den Beste on the Enabler Media:

This week's dam burst of negative news may make an end to it. It's just too big. They can't ignore it, and despite their best attempts they can't tamp it down. Will this be the end of the protective press?

Probably not, but it may be too big for them to fight, even though I expect they still will try. Obama's legacy is now toast, and when Obamacare implementation gets botched it's only going to get worse.

MN Legislature Gives 53% Of Its Constituents The Middle Finger

Posted on May 14, 2013 By Starless

Two months after the Red StarTribune released a poll saying that 53% of Minnesotans opposed gay marriage, the state legislature went ahead and legalized it anyway:

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Minnesota Senate Monday voted to legalize same-sex marriage, sending the measure to Gov. Mark Dayton, who plans to sign it into law in a ceremony Tuesday evening.

[...]

The Senate vote was seen as a foregone conclusion, and the debate lacked much of the drama seen days before in the House. Crowds of people were back at the Capitol, singing, chanting and waving signs, although the supporters far outnumbered the opponents. Their cries for and against the bill filtered through the Senate chamber during the debate.

It was an extraordinary moment, one unimaginable last fall when Republicans controlled the state House and Senate following big wins in the 2010 election. With the GOP controlling the Legislature and a statutory ban on gay marriage already on Minnesota's books, Republicans pressed to write the gay marriage ban into the state's constitution.

That effort, though, galvanized liberal organizers, who launched a massive fundraising and get-out-the-vote campaign that defeated the proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage at the polls, and helped deliver DFL majorities back to both houses.

You'll note that they claim the pro-opposite sex marriage amendment was a bridge too far for Republicans in the general election, but they have only circumstantial evidence to back up that claim.

All that's left in this process is Governor ~~Retard's~~ Dayton's signature on the bill, which will come at noon. He has assured Minnesotans that the language in the bill make gay marriages "civil only" and that religious institutions which do not wish to bless those marriages will not be required to do so. Of course, if you believe that, you also believed the story told by those who opposed the pro-opposite sex marriage amendment last year:

Big Lake Republican Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer, though, suggested some voters were deceived last fall when they rejected a constitutional gay marriage ban. Voters "were told it was OK to vote no because nothing would change. Do they feel lied to? Yeah."

You may now start the countdown before stories like this start coming out of Minnesota.

What with the orgy of taxing and spending and jumping on the gun control bandwagon, with this recent vote on forced social engineering, the DFL is managing to make South Dakota look more attractive every day.

On Changing the Culture

Posted on May 13, 2013 By Jerry Wilson

There is something called BlogCon presently taking place in Dallas. It’s a mix of seminars, lectures and, should it follow the pattern of most every conservative new media conclave, drunken karaoke.

It’s a bit of an oddity that the event is co-sponsored by the Blaze, otherwise know as Glenn Beck’s media creation. Several times in the past Beck has been pilloried in CNM circles for wholesale lifting of material from conservative blogs with neither credit to, nor mention of, its originator. Apparently all is forgiven and “I am Breitbart” is forgotten, since everyone who is someone is reportedly at BlogCon. It’s pretty much needless to say I’m not, but I’ll say it anyway.

One of the overriding mantras of BlogCon, based on its itinerary, is how CNM must reach outside the echo chamber and pursue/promote changing the culture. This is an especially crucial message to deliver at this time, and what better place to proclaim this than at a gathering of echo chamber kings and queens? This guarantees much discussion and emphasis within the echo chamber of the idea that CNM must indeed reach out beyond the echo chamber, said discussion being spurred by leaders of the echo chamber who to date have done such a magnificent job of spreading their message outside the echo chamber no one outside the echo chamber knows they exist. Imagine how much worse off we would all be if they were not scoring such monumental successes unfettered by any limitations of speaking solely to the echo chamber! Why, instead of no one outside the echo chamber knowing they exist it would be absolutely no one outside the echo chamber knowing they exist! Certainly can’t have that, now can we.

Sarcasm aside, there is a deep flaw in the “change the culture” philosophy presently being espoused in CNM circles. What we are hearing from people who have made no genuine inroads themselves into the popular mentality is that we need to identify and support conservative artists, pundits and teachers to counterbalance the liberal stranglehold on entertainment, news and education. Certainly this is a noble ideal, one with much merit. However, it overlooks a key element. Part of this is how the preachers of this culture change gospel have with their own actions not moved the needle one iota even as they tell others how it ought to be done. This duly noted, the main error is their forgetting fundamental truths: without love there is nothing, and without Christ there is no genuine change in the human heart.

Breaking this down, as long as CNM individually view themselves, and collectively views itself, as the superior to mainstream media and liberals (pardon the redundancy) it will never make so much as a dent in either MSM or pop culture’s armor. The genuinely humble artist, pundit or teacher lets their work do the talking. They do not boast; they self-promote with polite confidence in the quality of what they have to present. Their mission is not “look at me,” but rather “consider this.” The problem with being someone whose primary message consists of “look at me” is that at some point in time someone will look and see the one demanding attention not as they wish to be seen, nor as they see him or herself, but rather as they actually are. Which is not always a pretty picture.

The second part of this comes straight from Jesus: “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” Far too often the comment is made that discussing faith and discussing politics must be separated out for fear of alienating those one is attempting to engage with the latter by talking about the former. Really? If faith calls into play the same logic and reason used to formulate political opinions; that is to say, if faith is something other than an emotional rush but engages the mind as well as heart and soul, why shy away from it? Is not the Prince of Peace more important than politics? Is a single soul not so valuable to God that Jesus came to this earth to suffer and die so that one individual soul might have eternal life with Him? Remember, that single soul is you. And me. And everyone else. If faith is interwoven throughout your life as it ought to be for a believer. even as political philosophy is interwoven throughout your thought process, it should be as much a part of your daily discourse as talking about the latest developments in Washington.

This also applies to what we promote. A personal example. On a very good and quite popular Internet radio station for which the format is 1980s pop music, I have a show on which twice every Sunday I play terrific music; the best of Christian rock and pop from the 1980s with an occasional nod to the 1970s and 1990s as well. This isn’t saccharine schmaltz. It’s real, honest music that was great then and is great now. The show’s purpose is among other things an outreach to those who once knew the joy of life in Christ back in the day when this music was on their turntables and in their cassette decks, but have since seen that joy stripped away by life’s burdens. It is a reminder that Jesus is still there, He still loves them and He is more than willing and able to rekindle their dormant joy. It is changing the culture through the most effective method available: changing people by reviving heart, mind and soul. It also opens a channel through which political discussion can be initiated by talking about the cornerstone of conservative thought, namely the active application of Scripture and Christ’s teachings in everyday life. If this is not the foundation of our politics, then our beliefs have no foundation.

Certainly it is bothersome when I mention the show to CNM people as a possibility for promotion only to be either ignored altogether or told, be it directly or indirectly, there is no interest as it is not a political broadcast; yet these same people are presently gathered at BlogCon shouting to the skies how we must change the culture. Here is a golden opportunity to do so, and it is being dismissed out of hand. However, railing against this either collectively or individually will effect no change in the situation. Waste time, energy and unnecessarily incur hard feelings, yes. Accomplish anything worth accomplishing, not in the least. Therefore, not going there.

What I will say is this. People in CNM say within the echo chamber of their own creation they want to change the culture by reaching outside of the echo chamber. Fine, well and good. However, as long as CNM remains a self-satiated movement unwilling to move past all politics all the time, and as long as it actively excludes those whose cultural outreach is not strictly political in nature, all of its fine words about culture change are so much shouting into the wind heard by no one save those doing the shouting.

Standards Shifted

Posted on May 13, 2013 By Anthony Bialy

A declining country's problems start with failing to recognize that shame is a gift. It may not be fun to feel bad about getting away with something, but responsible people nonetheless instill that urge starting with kindergarteners.

Feeling guilty about having to accept something complimentary should motivate people to begin behaving or earning. But the dangerous unencumbered sensation is bad for both individuals and the whole group. For once, liberals seem uncharacteristically unworried about the latter's state.

Humans used to harness uncomfortableness with an unpleasant situation as motivation. But the Obama administration's goal is to make people feel agreeable with a brazenly unproductive lifestyle that counts on the benevolence of productive suckers. Thanks to the economy, countless Americans have the chance to see if they enjoy not doing much.

Back before dignity was ruled to be an obsolete virtue by a panel of public tweeters talking too loudly in a restaurant, it was considered decent to keep welfare a secret. We quietly provided assistance to those who asked for it. Now in our boisterous times, your government is loudly asking if anyone needs a handout in an effort to weed out all this defiant individualism and profiting.

A warped perspective makes any nonsense seem possible. It's unsurprising that people who are doing okay will think, yes, maybe they could do with a bit of benefits only if hectored enough. That's especially so if the dispensers insist on querying subjects on if they need help until they get the answer they want, namely the one that will get the targets accustomed to the dole. Ask people “What's wrong?” enough times, and the very nature of the phrasing will help them cast their mindset to find something lacking in their finances.

Recall those halcyon days when we used to have enough class to be quiet while offering aid to preserve the nobility of those facing genuine need. But the clamoring emanating from racing to the basement means delusional bastards who think getting as many on public help as possible will mean success.

Real triumph consists of getting participants off welfare, not keeping them on it, unless we're now presuming man's best hope is the security of regular benefits dolloped by case worker saviors. The goal should be to reduce the number or people who have the same proportionate gap between what they make and spend as the federal government.

As the percentage of recipients increase, there are bound to be more shiftless scofflaws taking from both earners and those in peril who could genuinely use a few months of assistance. That's why they shouldn't be a first resort. Nothing's more discouraging than encouraging the replacement of “united” with “welfare” as the modifier of “states.” The White House sees no problem in accepting mediocrity as a sign of greatness if you're wondering why our foreign policy is the way it is.

People find it far easier to justify being entitled to entitlements once you've dispensed with the stigma of resenting those who have achieved more. Such hatefulness used to be dismissed as a sad approach to life that only made the holders of the views have pitiably dark outlooks.

But now, unambitious envy is encouraged as the only path to retribution after mysterious Wall Street goons who must not have names ripped off the common man, namely by trying to do something with the toxic mortgages the government handed them. The only actually guilty parties are those who also advocated such deleterious policies. Look for them in Obama's cabinet.

It's one thing to be broke and entirely another to be bitter about it because existence owes you a living. There's a whole world where nothing feels guilty, leading to claims that an imperceptible decrease in the growth of the rate of unfathomable spending can be classified as austerity.

The ulterior motives of a feckless administration selling a perverse pride in heedlessness are clear. It's understandable that people who junked the economy and thought submission would end bloodshed prefer a world where nobody faces repercussions for their decisions. But that doesn't mean we should accept the White House's standard for subsidized fading.

Don't act surprised that uninhibited behavior is so commonplace. An economy kept wretched by Obamanomics is cited as proof Americans can't care for themselves, if you're looking for a handy example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The sick pride in being comfortable at the expense of whichever crazy workers fund the beast is manifested by nonchalantly swiping federally-issued plastic magically loaded with currency. You're considered a fool not to take a card.

Old-school reactionaries claim people used to have to subtract money from your own earnings or at least promise to pay it back. The Obama administration seeks control through petty bribes of the underclass. The only people they try to make feel bad are earners. Wait: will that make the last workers stop?

Lesson for the Media: How Not to Be Dumbasses

Posted on May 13, 2013 By Meep

1 Comment

This post has been bubbling around in my mind since Easter, because of this:

The New York Times published a fairly straightforward story about Pope Francis’ first Urbi et Orbi message. With this paragraph:

Easter is the celebration of the resurrection into heaven of Jesus, three days after he was crucified, the premise for the Christian belief in an everlasting life. In urging peace, Francis called on Jesus to ”change hatred into love, vengeance into forgiveness, war into peace.”

Yes, the professionals at the New York Times are confused about what Easter marks. If you were satirizing the poor state of the Grey Lady’s understanding of religion, this would seem over-the-top. And yet it’s real. My favorite part is the correction to the piece — yes, it was corrected to drop the “into heaven” and replace it with “from the dead.” The correction is:

An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the Christian holiday of Easter. It is the celebration of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, not his resurrection into heaven.

To be clear, not only is Easter not about Jesus’ “resurrection into heaven,” Christians don’t believe Jesus “resurrected into heaven” period. There are some ancient creeds that could be quickly accessed (for those who have never heard them) that explain all this. Those creeds confess Christ’s ascension into heaven, not “resurrection.”

Some have called for "diversity" (aka hiring actual Christians) in the journalistic ranks to prevent such base errors, but it wouldn't fix the problem. After all, the putative Christians can get stuff wrong, too, because they are ill-catechized. Or they're being asked about a denomination they know nothing about. Ask me about the dietary habits of Seventh Day Adventists…. I'm not going to be able to answer off the top of my head.

But I would go and ask, because I know I don't know about them. And no, Wikipedia isn't sufficient if you're a journalist (for a blogger, sure. We're not getting paid.)

A few other stories:

I grew up in the Bible Belt. I had no clue what the evangelicals thought about the Church until I got to high school (and we were doing world history and discussing the Reformation) — everyone who went to my church was Catholic, after all. I didn't even pick it up at the fundamentalist Christian summer camp I went to because: 1. we mainly did camp stuff like shooting rifles and 2. the religious content was rather non-denominational. I was a bit confused about all this "born again" talk and asked my ma when I got home. "It's like confirmation," she told me (which is not correct, but close than the NYT got about the central concept and holiday of Christianity.) As an adult, I have learned just to ask people what they believe rather than assume anything about it.

In high school, I got my first militant atheist friend. Pretty much nobody would argue with him because he was tiresome and ignorant (like many a militant atheist). I enjoyed argument as a form of entertainment, but I liked having actual arguments (as opposed to mere contradiction or abuse).

I was embarrassed by his ignorance — he had been brought up in an atheistic household, and didn't even know the most basic of Bible stories. So one year, I gave him a KJV Bible – and told him the good bits to read. I had given him two reasons. First, most obviously, so he could know what he was arguing against and not come off as a dumbass. The second was more important: the KJV Bible underlies much of English language literature, and not having that as a reference point means you miss so much in classic English literature, in terms of phraseology as well as allusions.

(I also gave him a copy of a Rush Limbaugh book – which was funny. We were both standards liberals at the time. I found Rush amusing, but unconvincing. But it was important to listen to him – he was definitely influential.)

The point was that both my friend and I had gaping areas of knowledge in the religious sphere, and we worked to correct this problem as we got older. If we had reported on one of the groups of which we were wholly ignorant, substituting our own assumptions, we would have been exposed as ignoramuses. But we were just kids, and had no reporting responsibilities.

A two more items for inspiration, both from JammieWF:

1. Exhortation from Mrs. Obama on being exposed to new ideas:

Such helpful advice to the close-minded bigots on the left.

'First lady Michelle Obama urged Eastern Kentucky University graduates on Saturday night to reach out to people with different political beliefs, saying the country would benefit from the conversations.

“If you’re a Democrat, spend some time talking to a Republican,” Mrs. Obama told about 600 education, business and technology graduates at the third and final commencement ceremony of the day. “And if you’re a Republican, have a chat with a Democrat. Maybe you’ll find some common ground, maybe you won’t.”'

2. A journalist whining that they suck:

A bad few months? Try decades, Scotty.

'“These have been a bad few months for journalism,” he added. “We’re getting the big stories wrong, over and over again.”

The CBS newsreader was quick to take at least partial blame. “Let me take the first arrow: During our coverage of Newtown, I sat on my set and I reported that Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school. And that her son had attacked her classroom. It’s a hell of a story, but it was dead wrong. Now, I was the managing editor, I made the decision to go ahead with that and I did, and that’s what I said, and I was absolutely wrong. So let me just take the first arrow here.”'

Perhaps the can make amends by covering any of the myriad Obama scandals. There’s something called Benghazi. You might want to look into it. One of your colleagues is just itching to cover it. Granted, there could well be a conflict of interest there.

Now here's my advice:

DO YOUR FUCKING HOMEWORK

It's that simple. It used to be a basic tenet of journalism to go find out stuff. To ask questions. To know enough to know what kind of questions to ask, as opposed to merely running lightly-edited press releases.

No, you don't actually have to hire people with a diversity of viewpoints. What you do need are people who understand the danger of confirmation bias and have some integrity to fight against it.

You need people who understand that people might lie or just make shit up for a variety of reasons, and how to dig into that.

You need people who have memories that last more than a few months.

You need people who recognize something is truly newsworthy, and run with it even if their first instict is to hide (aka integrity).

You need people who realize when they don't actually know or understand something and who will work to amend that ignorance.

A journalistic staff, unless it comprises the entirety of humanity (and even then, it's iffy), will not have all knowledge or viewpoints covered. Making "diversity hires" is an easy answer that doesn't fix the core problem.

To reiterate:

GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS

DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Hmm, looks like an extra piece of advice slipped in there. I must fire my editor.

Remembering Those Who Could Not Be Mothers

Posted on May 12, 2013 By Dan Collins

4 Comments

Felicitations to all the moms on Mother's Day. The vast majority of you deserve the attention, and I hope your day is filled with love.

Let's remember too, all those women who would have liked to have been mothers, but whose circumstances prevented them.

Remember to keep them in your thoughts and prayers. This is often a hard day for them. Reach out, if that description fits anyone you know.