Sunday, March 25, 2012
And I thought they were a coffee company
On January 12th, 2012, Starbucks issued a memorandum declaring that same-sex marriage 'is core to who we are and what we value as a company.'
Starbucks also used its resources to participate in a legal case seeking to overturn a federal law declaring marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Word of the day - ruderal
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Who needs jobs
We have the High Line - a fine tool for getting rid of blue collar jobs and replacing them with parking lots.
Deal or
NO DEAL! It isn't easy being schismatic, what with the Pope getting all up in your business.
However, the prospect of an agreement now appears remote. Informed sources at the Vatican say that Pope Benedict, who has sought for years to end the split between the Holy See and the SSPX, made the final decision to reject the SSPX position.
Labels: catholic
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Women oppressing women
Stand up to all those women who hate women and want to control women's bodies!
Clearly women are out of touch with the needs of women and shouldn't have an opinion on this women's issue, as Ms. Fluke points out:
We certainly can't pay heed to these women who want to silence women.
Thank you to Mr. Shea for this find.
If the Times says women were “split,” you know that must mean they were actually narrowly against the NYT‘s preferred position. Sure enough, when asked, “Should health insurance plans for all employees have to cover the full cost of birth control for female employees or should employers be able to opt out for moral or religious reasons?” women favored opting out by a 46-44 margin. The margin increased to a decisive 53-38 for “religiously affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university.”
Clearly women are out of touch with the needs of women and shouldn't have an opinion on this women's issue, as Ms. Fluke points out:
These attempts to silence women and the men who support them have clearly failed. I know this because I have received so many messages of support from across the country -- women and men speaking out because they agree that contraception needs to be treated as a basic health care service.
We certainly can't pay heed to these women who want to silence women.
Thank you to Mr. Shea for this find.
Labels: contraception, morality
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Valet parkers liable for drunk drivers?
Boston, drivers are also divided. Some, such as student Andrew Berg, bristle at the idea of valets sitting in judgment. "Their responsibility is to park your car in the garage while you eat dinner," Berg says, "not to police your sobriety or your ability to drive."
But as others, such as Josue Pavone, see it, enlisting valets or anyone else in a position to help is something we can't afford not to do. "Yeah, it's more money," Pavone says. "But hey, you can't put a price on life."
Car manufacturers are in a position to help. Ban driving. Problem solved. After all, you can't put a price on life.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Rights without limits
Entitlements, really, but I'll take it.
But reproductive rights? They are the only rights where there are no limits. Suggest limiting abortions to legal adults? You hate women. Suggest that parents, who have to fill out forms in triplicate to get their minor children’s ears pierced or allow the school nurse to give them a Tylenol, also be notified if their minor child receives the invasive medical procedure that an abortion is? You hate women, and worse young women.
Labels: contraception, morality, prolife
Pretend Marriage
No, it is heterosexual.
A fine explication from CALI, as usual.
Our culture has spent the better part of the last hundred years dismantling marriage. Contraception appeared to remove the necessity for couples to abstain from sex until they were ready for a child while divorce declared marriage a temporary arrangement to be ended once the shine wore off. The new definition of marriage is a mirage. It looks a bit like marriage from the outside (dresses, rings and lots of flowers) yet it has no substance. It has ceased to be the system of rights and duties on which our civilisation depends and has become something altogether different.
A fine explication from CALI, as usual.
Interest rates
The Fed lets banks have money at almost 0% supposedly to encourage them to make loans and thus stimulate the economy, but they don’t make loans necessary to a healthy business climate. Instead they prefer to take 0% money from the Fed and invest it in government bonds that pay 3 to 4%, thus collecting risk-free interest on Uncle Sam’s money.
Nice.
Labels: economics
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Trying to control other people's bodies?
Maybe just trying to control your own wallet.
So a fake testifies before Congress with fake testimony about her fake need for Catholics at a Catholic university to simultaneously stay out of her bedroom, yet subsidize her birth control.
Labels: catholic, contraception, politics
Monday, March 05, 2012
Due process
Originally enacted in 1863, the False Claims Act was the Lincoln Administration’s reaction to “a spate of frauds upon the government” by defense contractors during the Civil War. In a 1986 revision, Congress increased the law’s punitive fines and removed the requirement of specific intent to defraud the government. This revision turned the law into a sword of Damocles dangling over the heads of so many well-meaning doctors. For any reimbursement form with a single mistake, a doctor can be forced to pay a $10,000 fine plus treble damages (three times the actual damages). The False Claims Act’s penalties are so severe that it is essentially a de facto criminal law.
. . . .
The judge announced that he would hold them liable for any claims submitted in excess of “nine patient-treatment hours” per day. An article about the case noted that on the “billing side, Krizek won one battle, but he lost the war.”
The nine-hour threshold resulted from the testimony of a single psychiatrist about his normal workload. The court ignored evidence that Dr. Krizek routinely worked long hours and had occasionally worked around the clock when filling in for an absent colleague.
Working more than nine hours a day - apparently a federal offense if you're a doctor who takes poor or elderly patients. What a wonderful system. Oh well, at least the prosecutors got to put another notch in their belts.
Labels: law, morality, politics
