The Bidens

Joe and Jill ran up Capitol Hill

To fetch a pail of pelf.

Joe came down and broke a frown

Then Jill slinked down herself.



STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

Render unto Caesar …

Pope Francis is taking a left turn for the Catholic Church.  He is attacking Capitalism as being exclusionary and depraved.  And mostly he is right.  Capitalism does pick winners and losers … just like any other economic system. And Pope Francis, with his huge Christian heart, is railing against the winners and gushing angst for the losers.  In a way this is his duty as the leader of the church whose founder taught us to “love thy neighbor as thy self.”

However, Capitalism has one thing going for it that Pope Francis doesn’t deem to acknowledge … it is a wealth-creation engine nonpareil.  And lots of wealth creates lots of largess.  I know that the Pope’s message dismisses “trickle-down economics” (probably a politically-inspired mistranslation), but, in fact, a capitalistic society such as the United States defines “poverty” at a level of possession that someone in the Sudan could only dream of achieving.  For more critical discussion on the Pope’s teaching see: UK Telegraph Opinion Piece.  I wish I could reliably quote the original source, but some wag once said that all other economic systems create as their objective “trickle-up poverty.”

Although there are world problems that I would think Pope Francis might have moved up his list of concerns … such as the wave of Christian killings by radical Muslims … and the depravity that exists within the walls of the Vatican … the injustices of Capitalism do need some attention.  This is particularly true when capitalists form an unholy alliance with the secular state and winners are not picked by the marketplace but in the White House.  Christ did say, when asked about paying taxes (and noting whose visage was on the coinage), “render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.”  But in my mind, it is often the reverse flow of this pelf where the real corruption occurs.

Global Smarming

You would think that this issue of global warming would finally go away.  But no … too many people have too much invested in both ill-gotten money and prestige to let this happen.  I thought the clear frauds that arose out of East Anglia University would put the final nails in the coffin of these climate charlatans.  But, like in The Night of the Living Dead, we are still being threatened by the zombie zealots … and their putrid pundit, Al Gore.

Yes, our climate does change and we have dust bowls and tornadoes and hurricanes, but finding carbon dioxide to be the culprit is only because it is, conveniently, the only possible reason for global warming that man has the (very) remotest chance of controlling.  Ocean currents, the Earth’s tilt and polar wiggle, the thermodynamics of our sun, any small changes in the Earth’s orbit, global levels of volcanism, etc, etc. are all beyond man’s control … so, again conveniently, they cannot possibly be the culprits.  That is they couldn’t be the culprits if, in fact we were warming up … which, it seems, we haven’t been since 1999 (see: Daily Mail Story and Powerline Piece -- Tip o' the Hat to Bill Miller for this last one).

Every time we have slightly warmer weather, the global-warming Clicken-Little's go running around clucking about the end of the world.  When things are abnormally cold (like now), these same alarmists can be found huddled under their electric blankets … counting their pelf from our last warm season.  Wake up you Sierra-Club smarmies!  Climate change is normal and we are just as likely to be getting colder as warmer.

Afterward:  Here is a very interesting story on "global warming": The Australian