David Carr of The New York Times has a lovely rant about the unlovely Craig Dubow, the incompetent enemy of the public who, in the course of helping to destroy American journalism and undermine American democracy, also laid off me and 20,000 other people while collecting millions in “performance” bonuses: Craig A. Dubow resigned as Gannett’s chief executive. His short six-year tenure was, by most accounts, a disaster. Gannett’s stock price declined to about $10 a share from a high... Read more
The big news last week on climate change wasn’t news at all, just more of the same. A lot more of exactly the same. The Guardian reports: “Global warming study finds no grounds for climate skeptics’ concerns: Independent investigation of the key issues skeptics claim can skew global warming figures reports that they have no real effect” The world is getting warmer, countering the doubts of climate change sceptics about the validity of some of the scientific evidence, according to... Read more
Halloween is, among other things, an excuse for the Slacktivixen and my daughters to dress the dog up in costumes. Willow is a patient dog, and can be bribed into complying with almost anything in exchange for a treat. But Halloween is also, according to Herbert Hoover Fan Club President Amity Shlaes, a Pagan ritual promoting “necromancy” and the undermining of monotheistic hegemony. Jason Pitzl-Waters responds to Shlaes’ complaint that the holiday is a threat to christianamerica. “Halloween isn’t secular.... Read more
Micah 6:6-8 ‘With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’ He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require... Read more
Separate items, common thread: 1. “Evangelical conference preaches support of immigrants” Evangelicals are gathering at Cedarville University to talk about the importance of showing compassion to immigrants, whether they are documented or not. The evangelical Christian college in Greene County, east of Dayton, is hosting the G92 Immigration Conference, headlined by a list of high-profile evangelicals. The conference began last night and continues today and Saturday. The name G92 comes from the 92 passages in the Old Testament in which... Read more
W. Scott Poole’s Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting is just exactly that — a history of monsters in America. We’ve got a lot of them — some came to the New World as immigrants, refugees or colonists, some were dragged here in chains, some were born here or conjured or summoned through hideous rites or assembled in the laboratories of mad scientists. America and its history are filled with monsters. Poole believes in... Read more
Today, once again, is the day that Harold Camping says the world will end. And this time he really, really means it. Camping is not altogether wrong. For some of us, this will be true. The world will end today, Oct. 21, 2011, for tens of thousands of us — about 150,000 on average. But then the same thing happened yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and every day before that. And the same thing will happen... Read more
Steve Benen notes that Herman Cain “may not know what ‘pro-life’ means” — or at least may not understand what most anti-abortion voters mean by that term. If the Republican presidential candidate doesn’t believe the government should interfere with personal decisions on “sensitive issues,” Cain may think he’s “pro-life,” but opponents of abortion rights are going to draw a very different conclusion. Benen is responding to these comments Cain made last night during an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan: [I]t... Read more
“Backlash from man’s remarks making namesake miserable,” reports the Standard Speaker of Hazleton, Pa. A former Hazleton man says his life has become a nightmare after racially insensitive remarks made by another man with the same name went viral on the Internet this week. Richard Peter Yanoski Jr., 39, said he had to take down his pages on Facebook and LinkedIn, and his company received derogatory emails because of the remarks. A different man, Richard Mark Yanoski, 53, of McAdoo,... Read more
Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is winning cheers on the campaign trail for telling the poor and the unemployed that they have only themselves to blame: “Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks — if you don’t have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself!” G.K. Chesterton offered a different perspective: “The old tyrants had enough insolence to despoil the poor, but they had not enough insolence to preach to them. It was the gentleman who... Read more
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