Ocean Liners

For those who share my interest in archaic forms of transportation you may wish to check out Georg Link's YouTube channel. He has uploaded scores of short videos dedicated to passenger ships, both old and new, that are filled with photographs presumably from his private collection.

A liberal decries heresy

The time has come for a schism regarding the issue of women in the church. Those of us who know that women should be accorded full participation in every aspect of church life need to visibly and forcefully separate ourselves from those who do not. Their subjugation of women is anti-Christian, and it should be tolerated no longer.

Read the rest here.
HT: MCJ 

A foreshadowing of things to come.

More on Neo-Reaction

There has been some considerable response to the Geeks for Monarchy post which I had linked on A/O (here). See this longish post over at Unqualified Reservations and another post by the Anti-Gnostic. Both are worth a read and contain a number of related links.

Illinois: Lawmakers announce plan to save state pensions - but no details

CHICAGO — Leaders of the Illinois legislature on Wednesday announced that they had found, at long last, a way to repair the state’s deeply troubled pension system, which has been deemed among the most underfunded public systems in the nation, has jeopardized the state’s financial stability and has become a political risk for state leaders. 

The leaders declined to make details of their plan public as they privately sought support from rank-and-file lawmakers before a special session called for Tuesday. Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, praised the leaders — a group of top Democrats and Republicans — for what he described as a “critical agreement.” He said, without providing more details, that the deal met a crucial standard of eliminating the unfunded debt and fully stabilizing the system, which has an estimated $100 billion in unfunded liability. 

Read the rest here.

Churches should perform gay blessings, CofE says

The Church of England is poised to offer public blessing services for same-sex couples in a historic shift in teaching.

A long-awaited review of church teaching by a panel of bishops recommends lifting the ban on special services which will amount to weddings in all but name. 

Although the Church will continue to opt out of carrying out gay marriages, when they become legal next year the landmark report recommends allowing priests to conduct public services "to mark the formation of permanent same sex relationships". 

The report repeatedly speaks of the need for the Church to "repent" for the way gay and lesbian people have been treated in the past. 

Read the rest here.

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing you all the joy of the feast!

Reflections on the Birth Control Mandate

Anti-Gnostic has some reflections up in response to this post. Among his observations...

Insurance is the pooling of risk of unanticipated casualties. Outside the rare event of rape, coitus is entirely voluntary. Thus, there is no way to "insure" birth control. The mandate is equivalent to requiring your homeowner's insurer to cover your gambling losses in Vegas. The only way to avoid moral hazard would be to charge you for the entire amount of your own money you're prepared to risk. So, premiums must rise to cover the cost of these purely voluntary outlays, er, expenses.

Read the rest here.

Microsoft, suspecting NSA spying, to ramp up efforts to encrypt its Internet traffic

Microsoft is moving toward a major new effort to encrypt its Internet traffic amid fears that the National Security Agency may have broken into its global communications links, said people familiar with the emerging plans. 

Suspicions at Microsoft, while building for several months, sharpened in October when it was reported that the NSA was intercepting traffic inside the private networks of Google and Yahoo, two industry rivals with similar global infrastructures, said people with direct knowledge of the company’s deliberations. They said top Microsoft executives are meeting this week to decide what encryption initiatives to deploy and how quickly.

Read the rest here.

Supreme Court to Rule on Birth Control Mandate

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has agreed to referee another dispute over President Barack Obama’s health care law, whether businesses can use religious objections to escape a requirement to cover birth control for employees.

The justices said Tuesday they will take up an issue that has divided the lower courts in the face of roughly 40 lawsuits from for-profit companies asking to be spared from having to cover some or all forms of contraception.

Read the rest here.

Karzai moves to scuttle Afghan troop agreement

The man is a complete flake thank God. He has issued new demands that are unacceptable to Obama and may force a complete withdrawal of US forces by the end of next year.

For those still harboring doubts...

MCJ has still more evidence.

Consecration of a Village Church Near Moscow

24 November 2013

Geeks for Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries

Many of us yearn for a return to one golden age or another. But there’s a community of bloggers taking the idea to an extreme: they want to turn the dial way back to the days before the French Revolution.

Neoreactionaries believe that while technology and capitalism have advanced humanity over the past couple centuries, democracy has actually done more harm than good. They propose a return to old-fashioned gender roles, social order and monarchy.

You may have seen them crop-up on tech hangouts like Hacker News and Less Wrong, having cryptic conversations about “Moldbug” and “the Cathedral.” And though neoreactionaries aren’t exactly rampant in the tech industry, PayPal founder Peter Thiel has voiced similar ideas, and Pax Dickinson, the former CTO of Business Insider, says he’s been influenced by neoreactionary thought. It may be a small, minority world view, but it’s one that I think shines some light on the psyche of contemporary tech culture.

Enough has been written on neoreaction already to fill at least a couple of books, so if you prefer to go straight to the source, just pop a Modafinil and skip to the “Neoreaction Reading List” at the end of this post. For everyone else, I’ll do my best to summarize neoreactionary thought and why it might matter.

Read the rest here.
HT: The Anracho-Monarchist

Orthodox Constructions of the West

Dr. Adam deVille really likes this book.

Major Nuclear Agreement Reached With Iran

GENEVA — Iran and six major powers agreed early Sunday on a historic deal that freezes key parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for temporary relief on some economic sanctions, diplomats confirmed.

The deal was reached after four days of marathon bargaining and an eleventh-hour intervention by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and foreign ministers from Europe, Russia and China, the sources said.

Read the rest here.

Liturgy on the Birthday of Patriarch Kirill

From Christ the Savior Cathedral 11-20-2013

Ukraine's hard line president rejects EU membership - will persue closer ties with Russia

MOSCOW — Prime Minister Mykola Azarov of Ukraine told enraged opposition lawmakers on Friday that the government’s decision to walk away from far-reaching political and free trade agreements with the European Union was prompted by excessively harsh terms demanded by the International Monetary Fund in a debt refinancing plan. 

In response to the decision to abandon the accords with Europe, which were due to be signed next week at a major conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, opposition leaders called for the resignation of the Ukrainian government and for the impeachment of President Viktor F. Yanukovich. 

 

Kiev was pulsing with emotion that officials and commentators said they had not experienced since the Orange Revolution of 2004. On Thursday night, more than 1,000 people demonstrated against the government’s decision, waving European Union flags, and chanting “Ukraine is Europe!” 

Read the rest here.

Venezuela’s Maduro resorts to state-sponsored looting

LIKE A slow-motion car crash, the unraveling of Venezuela’s economy and political system is a fascinating, as well as sickening, spectacle. Last month we noted the attempt of Nicolás Maduro, the would-be caudillo who succeeded Hugo Chávez as president, to distract public attention from world-beating inflation, shortages, power outages and crime by expelling several U.S. diplomats who he claimed were engaged in nefarious sabotage. Now, with prices still rising as fast as his popularity is dropping, Mr. Maduro has adopted a drastic tactic: state-sponsored looting.

This month, Mr. Maduro, a former bus driver whose ignorance of economics is shockingly obvious, ordered the national guard to invade electronics stores and drastically lower the prices of goods. Mobs soon besieged the outlets, carrying away televisions and other appliances, sometimes without paying; even some of the soldiers helped themselves. More than 100 shop owners and other small businessmen were rounded up and jailed.

Read the rest here.

A leftist paradise on the rise.

The NY Times flip flops on the filbuster... again

Back when Mr. Clinton was President the New York Times fumed about the threat of a filibuster to some of his appointments and argued on its editorial page for the abolition or at least severe curtailment of the weapon of last resort for a minority party. Later (coincidentally after Mr. Bush took office) they reflected and in yet another op-ed admitted that they had been wrong. The filibuster, they said, should be preserved to prevent a president from appointing judges who were "outside the mainstream" of American jurisprudence and political thought. Now they are again flipping. As of tonight the filibuster is undemocratic and being abused by the minority party to advance its political agenda.

And in the latter case they are to some degree right. Although I think it could have near term negative consequences, limiting the filibuster was the right thing to do, even if it is being done for all the wrong reasons. Both parties have abused it, especially over the last ten years or so. And yes, the minority GOP was way over the line in their attempt to unilaterally reduce the size of the most important Federal Appeals Court just to prevent the president from appointing judges.

Memo to the GOP: That's his constitutional right. Elections have consequences.

But Democrats take note... One day, maybe sooner than you'd like, you will be in the minority and a Republican will be in the White House. And on that day, you had best fasten their seat belts. Because what comes around goes around.

The End of Roe v Wade?

Could the Democrats have just signed the death warrant for the worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott? Quite possibly. Although the Democrats exempted Supreme Court nominations from today's sweeping curtailment of the Senate Filibuster, the Republicans have understandably made it crystal clear that they will not respect that limitation once they regain the majority. The threat of a Filibuster is the only thing that kept Republican presidents from nominating openly anti-Roe judges to the high court.

Of course we have to get through three more years of Zero's presidency. But I don't see any voluntary retirements from the more conservative members of the Supreme Court in that time frame. In any event me thinks things are about to get interesting in the courts.