Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Why Agnostics Hate Prayers

Posted: February 1, 2020 by ng36b in Uncategorized
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What people would pay for prayers, from PNAS study by Linda Thunström and Shiri Noy.

Would you pay someone to pray for you? That was the focus of a recently published study, which asked this very question to almost 500 people in the wake of Hurricane Florence. The study separated Christians from atheist/agnostic people, and presented each person with the option to pay for prayers and/or thoughts from different people. On average, Christians would pay more for prayers, and specifically from prayers from a priest, while atheists and agnostics would pay for Christians to NOT pray for them.

While we might comically imply there is a new income source for priests, the paying to not pray is disturbing and highlights two issues. First, atheists don’t believe in the power of prayer. While that’s not a surprise in itself, it does mean we (specifically Catholics) have done a terrible job advertising how prayer works. The second, and more troubling side, is it highlights that atheists and agnostics simply don’t like Christian people.

Contrary to what the media would tell you, prayer does in fact change things. The Catholic Church has been rigorously testing for miracles, and especially for medical miracles (the ones most people think of), most don’t survive scrutiny. For the Catholic Church to declare a miracle, prayers have to be offered to one Saint or person, the condition has to have no chance of healing on its own, and the condition must quickly be cured (as in, it can’t take a long time to heal). A good recent example was the miraculous curing of Dafne Gutierrez, who prayed to St. Charbel and had her sight restored.

I bring examples of these up with my friends who are agnostic, and it surprises them, which means that Catholic media is failing to promote these instances. How do we not have a repository of images, miracle stories and the like? How do we not have social media accounts pushing these stories out for the world to read? Catholic miracles are called out in our Catechism to inspire us, and yet we act like the man who buried his master’s talents. Given the prevalence of platforms like Twitter and Facebook, this is inexcusable.

Worse still is the image that agnostic people have of Christians in general. Ask an agnostic person what their image of a Christian is, and you will likely get some flinching. The media has been bashing Christianity forever, and while Christians might ignore it, the effects are playing out now. More people than ever are identifying as atheist or agnostic, and worse, more agnostic people say they won’t associate with Christians. This, despite the fact that many of the same people know lots of good Christians that they see every day. We are, again, poorly advertising ourselves and our lives, allowing the media to make us out to be the boogey man for atheists and agnostics everywhere.

Christianity, and specifically Catholicism, can in fact die out if we don’t fight for it. The media will gladly hide our miracle stories so that prayers become nothing more than good thoughts in most people’s minds. Worse still, the media will continue to incite violence against Catholics, like the attack on St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989. It’s not enough for us to live good lives, but we must also show those that have no faith that our lives are worth living.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, the Catholic Church, or any other government or non-government agency.

The Left is Damn Lucky to Have Pelosi

Posted: February 1, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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This is going to shock a lot of people but I’ve gained a bit of respect for Nancy Pelosi over the last couple of months.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think she backs some of the worst policies that the nation could consider and her pretense of wearing her Catholicism on her shoulder while embracing the intrinsic evil of abortion is an abomination that I wouldn’t want to have to explain to St. Peter, particularly if I was at an age when I’d be likely to meet him sooner rather than later.

But despite all this I’ll say this for her, she’s damn loyal to her party even when they’re not loyal to her.

For months she tried to restrain the impeachment hotheads, trying to explain to these loons that it was a bad and losing strategy, that it would only embolden the President and weaken the party at a time when they needed a better strategy to have a shot at victory in 2020.

For this she was pummeled by the left and the Democrats until finally she relented.

So now here we are, with the President about to be acquired, and the state of the union about to take place where he can rub their face into it and the whole lot of them being made into fools and what is she doing?

  • Is she disavowing impeachment as a mistake that wasn’t of her making?
  • Is she publicly blaming the media and the left for pushing her in the wrong direction?
  • Is she loudly proclaiming to all “I told you so!”?

Nope.

She’s is still on the attack on the President and pretending that all of the disasters that she predicted didn’t happen.

Or put simply she’s showing more loyalty to the party than they’ve shown to her and making the best use of the bad hand she was dealt.

Given the backstabbing nature of DC that’s pretty damn impressive, but I doubt she will get any gratitude from those leftists for getting out front of a cause she thought was foolish instead of letting them take the blows.

Her pals on the left might not be impressed by I sure in hell am.

Update: John Nolte disagrees, his piece is here, I’l answer it tomorrow.

Licensing Laws do far more harm than good

Posted: January 30, 2020 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Licensing laws, and similar regulations, are a product of the progressive era which began around 1913.  These laws are meant to protect society as a whole, and individuals in particular.  A careful study of these laws will demonstrate that they have produced far more negative effects than positive effects.   This is explained in great detail in the Mises Institute article The Deception behind Government Licensing Laws

The primary justification for these licensing laws and regulations is:

One of the favorite arguments for licensing laws and other types of quality standards is that governments must “protect” consumers by insuring that workers and businesses sell goods and services of the highest quality.

There is one great flaw in that argument:

The answer, of course, is that “quality” is a highly elastic and relative term and is decided by the consumers in their free actions in the marketplace. The consumers decide according to their own tastes and interests, and particularly according to the price they wish to pay for the service.

Individuals are far better than a government bureaucracy, especially a gargantuan one at the federal level, at determining what constitutes a quality product.  Word of mouth and other forms of reviews by actual customers is a far better way of regulating the quality of products.  When potential customers hear that a product is no good or harmful then they won’t buy it resulting in the company losing money and possibly going out of business.

Licensing laws most always limit competition which is why they are championed by established large businesses.  That is why they spend so much money lobbying for them.

How much these requirements are designed to “protect” the health of the public, and how much to restrict competition, may be gauged from the fact that giving medical advice free without a license is rarely a legal offense. Only the sale of medical advice requires a license. Since someone may be injured as much, if not more, by free medical advice than by purchased advice, the major purpose of the regulation is clearly to restrict competition rather than to safeguard the public

Regulations meant to ensure quality products quite often stifle innovation.

Other quality standards in production have an even more injurious effect. They impose governmental definitions of products and require businesses to hew to the specifications laid down by these definitions. Thus, the government defines “bread” as being of a certain composition. This is supposed to be a safeguard against “adulteration,” but in fact it prohibits improvement. If the government defines a product in a certain way, it prohibits change.

Regulations imposed by government bureaucracies stifle private sector innovation for the following reason:

A change, to be accepted by consumers, has to be an improvement, either absolutely or in the form of a lower price. Yet it may take a long time, if not forever, to persuade the government bureaucracy to change the requirements. In the meantime, competition is injured, and technological improvements are blocked.

Licensing laws make it difficult for individuals to find jobs in a particular field. Take hair dressers for instance. It takes a lot of schooling to become a hair dresser, approximately 1500 hours.. Is it all necessary? The same holds true for many fields.

Here is the proper free market solution to low quality or harmful products and services:

In the free economy, there would be ample means to obtain redress for direct injuries or fraudulent “adulteration.” No system of government “standards” or army of administrative inspectors is necessary. If a man is sold adulterated food, then clearly the seller has committed fraud, violating his contract to sell the food. Thus, if A sells B breakfast food, and it turns out to be straw, A has committed an illegal act of fraud by telling B he is selling him food while actually selling straw. This is punishable in the courts under “libertarian law,” i.e., the legal code of the free society that would prohibit all invasions of persons and property.

Licensing laws and government regulations have affected me personally in a very negative way.  For the past several years I have been attempting to raise money to open a nano brewery.  I have created and perfected a large number of recipes that rival the best craft breweries.  Because of government interference the start up costs for this type of brewery is many times higher than what they should be.  The approval process for opening a brewery is about one year.  The beginning step is establishing a location before you begin the licensing procedure.   That means you have to rent or buy a location, before you begin the paperwork.  That is a whole year you have to pay rent when you are not taking in any money, and there is a good chance you could get turned down at the end.  Before federal government regulation put a stop to this, many started a brewery in their kitchen, then opened an actual brewery after they sold enough beer to afford this.  Because of the nature of beer it is a product that it is virtually impossible to make someone sick if you brew bad quality beer.  It is very expensive to outfit a startup brewery to meet federal standards, standards imposed by bureaucrats rather than brewers, There was no need for this change except to limit competition.

Five Impeachment Realities: Appeasement, Indifference, Inevitability, Outrage and Panic

Posted: January 30, 2020 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, elections, politics, primaries, Uncategorized

As I get older I’ve become more experienced and thus cynical but what I’ve also become is more amazed that people, particularly people in power don’t see things as they are.

1. This is all Appeasement for the Liberal Activist Class

The entire impeachment exercise from the hearing tin the house to every single “we’re gonna get Trump this time” meme that we’ve had since day one. To satisfy the activist class who were making primal screams on election day.

To that end they have insisted that each book, each event, each investigation is the one that is going to bring Trump down if they just stick with them and keep sending cash.

It’s a big con and impeachment is just about keeping it rolling.

2. Polls Don’t Matter if most People Aren’t Watching

I’ve seen people quoting various pols concerning impeachment and the desire to have witnesses called polling quite high.

The problem is that if nobody except the activists (see #1) is paying attention it does’t matter how high witnesses poll. The people who aren’t paying attention now aren’t going to suddenly think impeachment is important based on if the Senate calls witnesses.

Anyone who thinks their election or re-election is dependent on the senate calling is paying consultants too much.

3. The Democrat/Media story is already written:

It isn’t often that Allahpundit hits the nail on the head these days but he managed to do so inadvertently in this post concerning the calling of Witnesses at the impeachment trial:

They seem to be calculating that they’d rather get torched by nine months of Democratic “COVER UP!” attack ads than put Bolton on the stand, which is cynical but rational. Those “cover up” ads are coming no matter what, after all. They could call Bolton, Mulvaney, Pompeo, even Giuliani, and so long as they vote to acquit Dems will accuse them of being Trump’s co-conspirators. 

The stories are already written and the blame is already assigned and the faux outrage is already and the ads are already prepared with only the video to be spliced in.

No matter what the GOP and/or Trump does it will be the greatest outrage in history since the last thing the gop and Trump did, which was also the greatest outrage in history.

Why play their game? Why give them anything?

4. Liberal Outrage is the GOP’s Friend

As I noted in item three the left/media repeatedly has been crying havoc for three years assuring us that the tax cuts, the wall, net neutrality, the death of Soleimani etc etc was the end of the world that was going to kill millions while resulting in every single group of the left into labor camps.

Instead the country has gotten rich, Black, Hispanic and female unemployment is at historic lows with only the places run by the left like Baltimore, Chicago and San Francisco being danger zones.

The More outrage that the left proclaims while the country is and the people in it are doing well the more likely that people will turn out for, rather than turn on the president, and given the lengths of fraud they are going to unleash this time around, every mistake we can help them make is worthwhile.

5. Desperate People Make Mistakes

It’s very possible that once the President is re-elected that the political class might decide that all they have to do is wait him out and then business as usual will return.

However it’s also possible that the president will be able to fundamentally change the way business is done around here. That means the era of good stealing, the way that Joe Biden lived under all his political life (which is why he still thinks he did nothing wrong) and the gravy train for tens of thousands of consultants, bureaucrats, and their useless children who would never amount to anything otherwise might be over.

This eventually is a course of abject fear among the political/media/leach class and the more fearful they are the more the mask slips and the more their true nature is revealed.

And the more that American voters see them as they are the better the chance of defeating them.

the only question is, are there enough members of the GOP who want that?

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