Posse Incitatus

The Beatles and Cheap Trick

No, I am not going to comment on power pop, classic rock, the British Invasion or Rick Nielsen's quintuple-neck guitar. Just thought I'd start off today's post, which deals with taxation, by reminding Posse readers of these two great bands' contributions to anti-tax sentiment.

The late Beatles guitarist George Harrison penned a catchy tune -- "Taxman" -- on the masterful 1966 album "Revolver." I love the bitter and sardonic lyrics, and the guitar riffs ain't too shabby, either! Cheap Trick, they of Rockford, Illinois, featured "Taxman, Mr. Thief" on their unheralded, obscure, but kickass debut album in 1977.

Now on to the real purpose of this post -- those who regularly read the Posse realize that I often like to meander circuitously en route to my thesis... So here goes:

Taxes to governments are like alcohol to the alcoholic. The governing bodies, be they local, state or federal, are absolutely, positively, completely, totally ADDICTED to raking in greater and greater amounts of dollars to piss away on their harebrained schemes. Granted, some of the revenue -- in many cases, the majority of it -- goes toward useful and effective programs and necessities such as roads, schools, and public safety agencies.

But far too often, large chunks of budgets go toward pork barrel / crony capitalism projects, bloated public pensions and the like. The same paradigm exists in higher education, in which dreamy academic bureaucrats keep sticking students with higher and higher tuition to fund administrative overhead and pie-in-the-sky construction projects. Folks from sea to shining sea are crying "UNCLE!"

A couple years ago, I warned that Uncle Sam was licking its chops at private pensions, and would soon strive to bleed this source of revenue dry. Well, now we have a state government -- Maine -- that is considering requiring nonprofits such as charities and hospitals to pay property taxes.

Republican Gov. Paul LePage announced in his Jan. 7 inauguration speech that he wants to tax colleges, hospitals and large charities. On the positive side, his purpose is to provide the revenue to cut taxes for Maine families and small businesses. So I cannot say LePage's proposal is without merit.

However, nonprofits of all sizes and types are a vital part of what makes America by far the world's greatest country. Millions of volunteers help these organizations function, providing an array of vital services such as tutoring, delivering hot meals to shut-ins, providing seniors with transportation to doctors' appointments, staffing soup kitchens and homeless shelters, mentoring troubled youths and cleaning up parks. It would be an unnecessary kick-in-the-gut to force these organizations, many operating on shoe-string budgets, to pay property taxes.

It would also be inconsistent policy to those who believe governments in general need to tighten their belts and eliminate waste. If governments don't provide certain services, volunteers often fill the gap. And since their hearts are in it, they are more likely to provide effective, conscientious service with some element of compassion and the human touch -- qualities that can be missing when a government employee is "just doing his job" and cares mostly about collecting a paycheck. (This description DOES NOT apply across the board. I am certain there are untold numbers of qualified, conscientious public employees who really do care about their fellow human beings!)

While it is true that many tax-exempt organizations including churches and labor unions flagrantly and frequently violate the terms of their tax-exempt status by promoting political positions and candidates, that's a discussion for another day. I fear that Gov. LePage's proposal will turn on a lightbulb inside the heads of statists everywhere -- ("Damn, that's a GREAT IDEA! Why didn't WE think of that?)

In fact, I'll go out on a limb and predict that Maine's brainstorm will be taken up by many other governments -- state and local -- in the next couple of years. This definitely is an issue over which the Tea Party groups ought to do battle (along with the likely upcoming pension raids). Remember, the anti-big government, anti-high tax movement is not named simply in remembrance of the Boston Tea Party. TEA is an acronym for "Taxed Enough Already." On that, we can all agree!

Star Trek: An exhausted Hollywood devours itself

Last night I finally got around to viewing Star Trek: Into Darkness.  The concentrated and multi-level awfulness of that film got me to thinking about how Hollywood - that is the American entertainment-industrial complex - is utterly without creativity.  They have gone beyond scavenging and are now reduced to picking through the graveyards to devour the rotting corpses therein.

The Star Trek "re-boot" was in fact a caricature rather than a remake.  Remakes can be done in many ways, ranging from parodies to serious retellings, but Hollywood is so far gone in terms of creativity, that it is only produce parodies of its previous work.

Ed Driscoll has discussed the decline of Hollywood before and it is partly through reading his takes that I've come to the conclusion that Hollywood as we know it is almost done.  Those parts that remain creative (such as Mel Gibson or Clint Eastwood) have been driven into exile - or are so old that their days are numbered and it isn't worth the trouble to black list them.

Before going any further, I think it worthwhile to review the creative scope of Hollywood and learn how we got here.

 The mass entertainment industry is little over a century old and from the advent of silent films up until the 1950s is what I would call the "First Wave"  of Hollywood.  It's a long span of years, but changes in the medium meant that the content was still fresh and vivid.   Silent movies called for their own form of storytelling and when sound and then color arrived, still new ways were available to present the creative form.

If one looks back on the movies of those years, one finds works of incomparable and timeless genius.   Some have argued that we have a skewed vision because only the 'great' movies have survived, but the fallacy of that is made clear when one simply compares the quality of today's Academy Award winning pictures with those of years past.

In a matchup of elite vs elite, the Golden Age wins by a rout.

This creativity had a lot of reasons, but chief among them was the openness of the era in the sense that filmmakers were largely self-taught, inventive and innovative.  They had the virtue of doing things that never had been done before and this gave them tremendous creative power.

Even when they filmed derivative works (like Shakespeare), they did so in new and innovative ways, exploiting the camera to the fullest.

Movies continued to evolve and the challenge of television required bold steps to keep the public paying good money to watch stories they could now see on the small screen.  From drive-ins to massive screens and 3-d, there was a technical attempt to gain the upper hand but the other solution was to push against the Production Code and the restrictions of the studio system.

In addition, a new generation of filmmakers were coming into their own - people who had grown up with movies and took a more systematic approach to the craft.  These were people who began carefully deconstructing the great films and seeing why they worked.  They treated film as a skilled trade.

The first real crop of these folks were the legendary 1970s rebels (educated in 1960s):  Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola and their contemporaries.

This was the Second Wave, where the movies now began deconstructing and dissecting the greatest moments of the First Wave.  They produced a lot of crap of course, but also towering works of art in their own right.

Still for all the wonder of Star Wars and The Godfather, these were still derivative works.  They were very good ones, but they were polished, often ironic versions of what came on before.

Indiana Jones, for example, was a straight-up throwback to the old adventure movies.  The legendary comedies - Airplane!, Animal House, Blazing Saddles - these were also hilarious parodies of the previous period's films. 

Those were the movies I grew up with in the theater and I enjoyed them tremendously.

We are now on the Third Wave, the people who grew up since then.  Their "great" movies are those of the 70s and 80s, which are in themselves derivative.  So they are now making a copy of a copy of copy.

They are essentially caricatures of what came on before.  In order for a caricature to work, you have to know the original.  In order for a caricature of a caricature to work, you have to go even farther back - and by that point the resemblance may be completely lost.

This brings us back to Star Trek:  Into Darkness.  This movie moves quickly and had a decent amount of wit and humor, but all of it presumes you know the back story.  I won't get into too many spoilers, but the names of the supporting characters are introduced in such a way that fans familiar with the older films will immediately get the reference.

In fact, they are introduced with such drama that if one doesn't get the reference, the scene is wasted.

Airplane! is a great movie, hilariously funny, but it is also dated.  A lot of the jokes don't work unless one knows who these otherwise serious actors are - or have watched From Here to Eternity.  Even the scene with "jive" needs the viewer to get the Leave it to Beaver reference.

Now that's okay because Airplane! is a parody.  It was billed as a comedy and it is brilliant.  The world needs parodies - but not when every film is one.

That is where we now are.  Every "franchise" film is chock full of ironic references that render the actual movie you are watching nothing more than a checklist of in-jokes.

I'm picking on Star Trek, but this applies to just about everything out there.  Into the Woods, Wicked, Maleficent, Guardians of the Galaxy (which I liked, btw) - all of them assume you are too cool to take the movie seriously.

That is the great weakness of the parody.   No one gets emotional when the doomed airliner is about to crash, or the frat boys at Faber are expelled.  They are all part of the comedic ride.

Yet when characters in one of the Marvel or DC reboots faces adversity - say the apparent death of a friend or ally - the mood suddenly shifts to one of high drama.  It's hilarious, but unintentionally so.  There is simply no reason to care what happens to the Enterprise, let alone anyone on her because - like a 70s sitcom - nothing will have changed by the end of the show.

I read somewhere that dvd sales are cratering.  I believe it - who would want to watch this crap a second time?

One of the best and creatively interesting films of the last 10 years was the epic 300.

It was fresh, new and totally compelling.  I still watch it with pleasure. 

But it came out in 2006.  Since then the look, feel and even name has been recycled several times and each version gets worse.  Oh, they try to capture the look, grit and gore, but they miss the actual point of the thing.  The message and theme are lost.

That is the problem with modern Hollywood.  They look at a movie like 300 and try to hire similar actors, use similar effects, and tell similar stories - and they fail because all they have done is produce an exquisite copy of a great movie.

One can argue that 300 shows Hollywood can still produce great movies, but it still can't compare to the Golden Age movies.  It's good, but not that good.  It is also only one decent film in a sea of garbage.

It is also worth noting that 300 was utterly trashed by critics and the Hollywood establishment when it came out. 

Today I can look at the alleged best pictures and shrug.  The only decent movies today are made by the British, who still retain a vestigal sense of drama and understand that male leads need more than washboard abs to be compelling.

I will end on a positive note (because I am an optimist):  Television is getting quite good, if one steps outside the network bubble.  Justified is brilliant and many of the micro-series' (shows with only a few episodes in a season) are excellent.

As the line between movie and television blurs, it may be that a new creative energy will emerge.  We can only hope so, because establishment Hollywood has nothing left.

 

 

Warning: GOP Cannibalism = Democrat President in 2017

The 2016 presidential election is about 21 months away, but plenty of Republican candidates appear to be tossing their hats into the ring -- or getting ready to enter the fray very soon.

Admittedly, I have not paid close attention, but so far the names of candidates most likely to vie for the Republican nomination include Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie and Mitt Romney. There are plenty of other possibilities, too, including three prominent governors: Rick Perry, Scott Walker and Bobby Jindall.

I recall getting bored and disillusioned during the spring of 2011 when a slew of GOP candidates conducted what seemed like an endless series of debates. It gets to be a zoo when 8 or 10 candidates (most with  a snowball's chance in hell of getting the nomination) are stationed at their podiums on the same stage taking potshots at each other. The opportunity for substantive debate and equal opportunities to address the issues is diminished.

Although I have long lauded former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for his intellect and impressive achievements as Speaker in the mid- to late 1990s, I will never forgive him for the Democrat-like hatchet job he did on Mitt Romney in 2011-12. Gingrich tore into Romney as a cold-hearted, obscenely rich oligarch who ruthlessly cut jobs and maximized profits. (Remember Bain Capital?) Gingrich sounded like a male, GOP version of far-left Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

What Gingrich did damaged Romney and made it far more difficult for him to win the election. Granted, Mitt was a poor campaigner who put his foot in his mouth numerous times and didn't resonate well with millions of people who were not crazy about Barack Obama but considered Obama the lesser of two evils.

It's a free country, and anyone who meets the qualifications (born in the United States, at least 35 years old) can run for president. But given the disastrous path on which our nation has traveled since 2009, and the threat of a Democrat winning the White House and driving us further into the ditch, prospective GOP candidates ought to think long and hard about how they interact with their rivals.

Remember Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican. Of course, when competing for the nomination, candidates cannot obey the letter of the law when it comes to the 11th Commandment. But they can and should abide by the spirit of the law, lest they provide valuable fodder to the eventual Democrat nominee.

Our Iranian ally

It is fascinating to examine the state of American foreign policy.  We have lots of journalists and experts who study it, comment on it, but very few who seem to grasp what is actually happening:

The United State is now a de facto ally Iran.

This is a remarkable turn of events.  Since the Islamic Revolution, we have been the Great Satan and returned Iran's contempt with disdain of our own.  Several times during the 1980s it seemed we would escalate into open warfare, but things always cooled down.

Now, however, it is an undeniable fact that our current leadership has outsourced our middle eastern foreign policy to Teheran.

For years the Assad regime was near the top of our list of enemies.  Now we are  bound to keep him in power.  To the east, Iraq is an Iranian proxy.  To the south, Iran has just toppled Yemen's government.

It's almost like Iran has a long-term plan or something.

Map of Middle East in 2016

Some might write this off as naiivete or misguided leadership, but the cause is not as important as the effect.

In any event, once this administration is over, there will likely be a warm welcome waiting in Persepolis.  Maybe Obama can be a satrap.

The Worst Month of the Year

For decades, I have regarded January as by far the worst month of the year. The post-holiday letdown is a bummer, sure, but it goes way beyond that.

This is the month with the worst weather -- here in mid-Michigan, an endless string of dank, dreary days, bitter cold temperatures, ice and snow, treacherous sidewalks and roads, all topped off by annoying, blustery wind. At the end of January, employers face a deadline to send out W2 forms on earnings, deductions and the like. It's an ugly reminder that tax time is upon us, and the April 15 deadline looms.

It dawned on me during the past few days that although there are a few good things going on this month -- the NFL playoffs and the Big Ten basketball season, for example -- the negatives I mentioned are augmented by two other things I despise and avoid like the plague: State of the Union and State of the State addresses. I think I can speak for millions of other Americans: We are sick and tired of egotistical politicians trying to bamboozle us with their endless B.S., braggadocio and empty promises.

I didn't watch a second of President Obama's address Tuesday night. I've read portions of news stories about it, and heard a few comments on talk radio. It sounds like the president lives in an alternative universe. He is absolutely, totally delusional and disconnected from reality. He continues to spout like a broken record his tired litany of how we need to invest in greater infrastructure spending (like the stimulus bill? How's that working out?). Additionally, he neglected to address the world's greatest threat, i.e., Islamofascist vermin butchering people across Africa, Europe and Asia. Listening to him is like indulging a drunkard in the skid row gutter. That's how much sense he makes when measured against the real world. I also was not very impressed with the bland platitudes of Michigan's Gov. Rick Snyder, who seems to want to win the "RINO of the Year" award (and put us to sleep in the process).

I regard state of the political uber-egos and their obsequious, slappy followers with as much contempt as I do awards programs for the self-absorbed "beautiful people" of Hollywood, New Yawk and other centers of hedonism and narcissism. The Oscars and Grammy Awards, both coming up in February, make me ill; you couldn't pay me to watch this swill. As the joke goes, you'd have to hold a loaded gun to my head to force me to watch it, and even then I'd probably beg you to pull the trigger. This pap is what makes February the second-worst month of the year!

There's a lot of garbage about. But take heart: If you're in good health, get enough to eat, don't have a warrant out for your arrest (or a mafia hitman after you), and your head's still intact (i.e., it hasn't been severed by one of Allah's enthusiastic henchmen), perhaps you've got a lot for which to be thankful!

Or, to violate a basic rule of English, "a lot to be thankful for".... (sentence ending with a preposition). As Winston Churchill wryly cracked, "That is a rule up with which I will not put!"

 

 

Pope says sometimes violence is okay

It looks like I spoke too soon regarding Bill Donohue.

In remarks widely reported everywhere, His Holiness took almost the same position as the smug Donohue, qualifying his condemnation for the Charlie Hebdo massacre:

“One cannot react violently, but if [someone] says something bad about my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s to be expected,” the pontiff said. “There are a lot of people who speak badly about other religions. They make fun of them. What happens is what happens with my friend [who insults my mother]. There is a limit.”

Well okay then.

Like many Catholics, my first reaction to this was dismay and then anger.  However, I have since come to agree with Pope Francis and actually welcome this shift in Vatican policy.

Hitherto, the Catholic Church could always be relied on to be an advocate for peace.  No matter what the provocation, the  Holy See was there to urge prayers for peace and reconcilation.  No dictator was too vile, no terrorist group too cruel to escape the benefit of the doubt.

Despite the doctrine of Just War, the Vatican had become identical to radical Christian pacifists, always claiming that war was the worst possible choice in every circumstance.

I strongly disagreed with this, particularly in the case of Israel, where the violence was one-sided and continuous.  The Palestinians could kill in any and every way, openly advocate genocide yet whenever a new atrocity occured, there was the Holy See, urging Israel to seek yet another round of pointless negotiations.

So I welcome this change because it perhaps foreshadows an understanding that yes, sometimes war IS the answer.

Perhaps it is the wholesale slaughter of Christians in the Middle East and Africa and the realization that organizations like ISIS and Boko Haram have no intention of compromise.  Perhaps it is also an a recognition that refusal to confront evil is neither moral nor constructive.

Either way, I am hopeful that the Church may finally be open to the notion that sometimes the sword must be drawn to protect the innocent.

Incompetence in Lansing

My co-blogger and I spend a fair amount of time criticizing the rampant incompetence of our federal government (and rightfully so, under our current Narcissist-in-Chief and his merry band of hacks & lackeys).

Today, I am going to illustrate the end results of gross incompetence in my neck of the woods – involving the publicly owned Lansing Board of Water and Light (BWL) and idiocy by the state of Michigan under the woeful former governor, Jennifer Granholm.

K.N. McBride did a nice job summing up the bloated scam that is BWL (Hint: It’s another case of the tail wagging the dog, thanks to clueless liberals!)

Long story short: The BWL did not have an adequate emergency operations plan in place when a devastating ice storm hit in late December 2013, and the resulting chaos was widespread and painful. Thousands of households were without power for up to two weeks; the utility didn’t have the technology to pinpoint where the outages were; and BWL relied on customers either sending emails, calling, or stopping by its service centers to inform them if they were without power.

On Tuesday, the BWL board of directors canned CEO J. Peter Lark  “for cause,” just six months after they granted him a lucrative, multi-year contract. Lark plans to sue the BWL. The board also canned BWL chief administrative officer and second-in-command Susan Devon this week, but I won’t get into that.

The huge question is: WHY didn’t the board oust the inept Lark immediately after his bumbling utility botched the ice storm that struck central Michigan just before Christmas 2013?

It’s bad enough that Lark went ahead and flew out of state with his wife to be with his son's family on Christmas Eve, then returned Christmas day as all hell broke loose in his absence. What’s even more alarming is how the board voted 7-1 six months ago to offer Lark a five-year contract at $258,000 per year. Then this week the board turned around and voted 5-3 to can him. How could they not have been aware of his many deficiencies six months ago, or a year ago when the ice storm hit? What happened in the past six months that caused the directors to have a change of heart?

Lark might have bamboozled the board; perhaps he’s the ultimate slick B.S. artist. Or maybe the board failed to do adequate due diligence, which would have included speaking with (or surveying) BWL employees and customers to get their input. If the directors had done this, methinks they never would have extended Lark’s contract, and probably would have fired him in early 2014.

A government entity that is insular and unresponsive to real world market conditions, that seeks to feather the nests of its top officers and blithely pass rate hikes on to long-suffering consumers, is a prime example of liberalism in action. You might say the BWL is a microcosm of the arrogant and imperious Obama administration. Lansing taxpayers ought to be furious, and Mayor Virg Bernero had better fear for his job.

While we’re on the subject of Lansing, let’s discuss the musical chairs or “building shuffle” involving the Michigan State Police and several other state agencies.

In 2009, the state police moved into a spanking new, $71 million headquarters building in downtown Lansing. This Taj Mahal was constructed under the auspices of Gov. Tinkerbelle, despite many lawmakers and state police employees opposing it. As is typical, the builders and real estate folks involved in the deal had close connections with the Democrat  Party. (Surprise, surprise!)

Now the state police is moving out of the building and into the “secondary complex” in nearby Dimondale, Mich., consolidating its headquarters with other operations. The Michigan Department of Community Health will move from a building it leased into the state police building, and several other state agencies will be shuffled around.

Former Gov. Granholm has something in common with our current imperial president: The damage she did will keep wreaking unpleasant and costly consequences for Michigan long after she’s gone, just as the O-man’s bull-in-a-china-shop routine is doing irreparable harm to the nation.

 

Interest Rate Misery

Thirty-five years ago, in the throes of Jimmy Carter's ineptitude. the prime rate hit 21 percent. Conventional mortgages were virtually nonexistant, in large part because no one could afford them even IF lenders had been willing to offer them. If you were going to buy a house, the seller would be the financier, an arrangement known as a land contract.

In response to usury lending levels and a 13 percent inflation rate, gold hit $875 per ounce in January 1980; that would be about $2,500 in today's dollars, but the current actual price of gold is around $1,230 per ounce. Today, we have the exact opposite problem: Interest rates have been at rock bottom for several years as part of the Federal Reserve's Quantitative Easing.

Ten or 15 years ago, seniors and others with a nest egg could count on 5 percent interest or higher for investments such as CDs or money market accounts. Bonds, IRAs and other conservative investments would pay more than the rate of inflation. But since the Federal Reserve began its funny-money policy, interest rates on these investments have dropped to abysmally low levels.

Indeed, the Fed’s policy of keeping interest rates near zero is probably the single biggest cause of the booming stock market. Millions of people have purchased stocks despite the greater risk because they believe that dividends and/or appreciating stock prices will greatly exceed what they would earn with more conservative investments. They are willing to risk declining share prices because they are desperate to get some kind of return on their hard-earned dollars.

But as the sickly economy struggles along, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that the ever-rising Dow Jones Industrial Average is a precarious house of cards. Like so much of the Obama economy, it’s smoke-and-mirrors legerdemain, and the coming collapse will be catastrophic.

Senior citizens also have been hammered by steadily rising premiums for long-term care insurance. Insurers invest premiums in safe investements, but since returns are so low, they don’t earn much on their premium reserves and thus must raise prices.

McKinsey & Co. concluded in a 2013 report that from 2007 to 2012, defined benefit pension plans and guaranteed-rate life insurance plans lost $270 billion of income due to the Fed’s low-interest-rate policies. Too, artificially low interest rates have encouraged people to borrow when they otherwise wouldn’t have, and/or to borrow more than they ought to based on their incomes and debt levels. 

At the same time, Uncle Sam has been a big winner, running up gigantic deficits without incurring massive interest costs. Paradoxically, this administration can run deficits that are greater as a percentage of the federal budget than those of previous administrations, yet a much lower portion of these deficits goes toward interest, so the actual deficit spending, i.e., the amount of money being pissed away on wasteful, useless programs, is much greater than under previous administrations.

Low U.S. interest rates discourage foreign lending to the United States. The Fed has had to buy large amounts of Treasury notes because people around the world are not interested in buying them only to receive a pitiful return on their investment. When interest rates rise, this will be like a powerful electric shock to our economy, and will cause deficits to balloon.

Easy money has been tried and found wanting in Japan and various European nations. But like so much of what the Obama administration does, the funny money policy is not based on a successful track record or solid metrics. It is simply something weak-minded leftists believe will somehow, some way, work. It’s that good intentions thing again, and we all know where that road leads.

Garden variety incompetence and wrong-headed policies are bad enough -- and Lord knows, we’ve had plenty of both under this and previous administrations. But Quantitative Easing goes beyond that, ignoring the plethora of evidence that it WON'T WORK. This is truly maddening to anyone with a brain and some sense of history. 

 

Why Catholics must repudiate Bill Donohue

I have given little thought to the Catholic League over the years.  Mostly I’ve heard of it when someone slags the Church and then its leader, Bill Donohue, issues a news release.

Yesterday, Hugh Hewitt had Donohue on his radio show to give him hell for his brain-dead column on the Charlie Habdo massacre.  As I mentioned in my previous post, a statement of principle cannot be qualified.  One cannot with true intellectual honesty say “Killing some for a cartoon is inexucusable” and then proceed to say “But those cartoons were really offensive and no one should be surprised if they get killed.”

I paraphrase of course.  Here are Donohue’s actual words:

Killing in response to insult, no matter how gross, must be universally condemned.

 But neither should we tolerate the kind of intolerance that provoked this violent reaction. [Emphasis added]

What was I saying about the tell-tale "but"?

During the course of the interview, Donohue never actually spelled out what this lack of tolerance would mean.  Legal action?  Societal shunning?  No public funeral after the inevitable assassination?

Hewitt rightly hammers the guy – particularly when Donohue plays coy about whether any cardinals or bishops endorse his view.

This is a key point.  We are dealing with religion and ethics.  What does it say about the clergy that they would keep their private feelings hidden from the public on a matter this important?

Donohue fancies himself a good Catholic, but he’s done more to trash the Church in his column and this interview than a warehouse full of blasphemous artwork.

One thing I wish Hewitt has brought up is that this whole concept of protecting the Church from blasphemy is misguided and a betrayal of the Church’s history.  If you are Catholic (as I am) then you accept that the Church is eternal.  The satire offered by bunch of French cartoonists is beneath notice. 

If, on the other hand, your faith and in fact your entire religion can be brought to its knees by caricatures, then your faith is weak and your religion is pathetic.

I’d love to ask Donohue if he thought the Church would have been stronger if she had no martyrs, no saints, endured no suffering and no persecution.  Maybe instead of mocking Him on the cross, the Romans could have gently chided Jesus and thrown pillows at him while He settled into a cozy bath.

The Church is a rock, not a soft-boiled egg to be handled with extra padding. 

I think there is some virtue in documenting people who heap abuse on it and also on warning people about sucker-punch movies that look like they will respect faith but then insult it.  That’s a good use of free speech.

Demanding that people shut up is a poor use of it and if he had any self-awareness Donohue would quit his day job – or at least stop using the “Catholic” label.

To claim that a Church that endured the fall of Rome, the Black Death, and centuries of war and suffering now needs to be protected from naughty words is an insult to every believer.

I didn't even know about Charlie Hebdo, but the question is no longer whether their art is in good taste, blasphemous or even funny. 

Just as with the Mohammed cartoons, all defenders of free speech must raise their voices in defiance.  For too long the burden of free speech has fallen on the few.  The Posse will do its part to ensure that these insults do not fade in the face of fear and indimidation:

It is time for the West to take a stand. 

Too Much Tolerance Can Get You Killed

Paris, where fundamentalist Muslims killed 12 people at a satirical magazine, held hostages and killed/wounded others during the past two days, is the latest dateline for religious bigotry. Sadly, it won’t be the last, but rather, just another in a long string of violent incidents involving adherents to the “religion of peace.” At this writing, three of the four suspects are believed dead, and another is on the run.

While these vicious killers demonstrated intolerance -- to views different from their own, some would say the victims at Charlie Hebdo, whose publication ran satirical digs poking fun at the Prophet Muhammad and Islam, were just as guilty of intolerance. Truth be told, tolerance -- too much of it -- is where it all started.

Too much tolerance can get you killed.

I remember posting that on a sports forum a few years ago (yes, it was a sports site, but many of us wandered into politics, music, movies or restaurants, from time to time). An outspoken poster who was renowned for his leftist leanings went ballistic when he read my comment and began arguing with me.

Not being one who enjoys tit-for-tat on Internet forums or social media, I managed to defuse it and vowed never to discuss politics on that forum again. But my belief remains unchanged: The naïve people who drive around with the COEXIST bumper stickers and hold simpleton “We are the World” views, don’t appreciate western civilization, American exceptionalism, or the achievements of Christianity, and are not aware of the very real dangers of totalitarianism – whether it’s from governments or religious dogma.

Unbeknownst to them, by being extremely tolerant of other cultures, religions and political beliefs, we contaminate our own countries and endanger our communities. Perhaps you’ve heard the term “creeping Sharia.” This phenomenon, of Muslims gradually but persistently implementing their customs (incuding sharia law) in traditionally western, free republics, is more pronounced in Europe than in the United States, but it is happening here, too. It cannot be allowed to proceed too far, or freedom will be strangled.

England and France have certain deadly neighborhoods overrun by extremist Muslims -- often in London, Paris or other big cities and their suburbs, where the police won't even dare to venture. To some extent, major American cities suffer the same malady, but it is gang bangers and drug dealers, as opposed to bomb-loving jihadists, who represent the threat. We have enough problems to deal with. We must not continue letting more hateful Muslims into our country, but the evidence shows some of them are crossing the border from Mexico.

Europe has learned in recent years that welcoming large numbers of Muslim immigrants with open arms leads to trouble down the line. London is rife with hateful imams preaching against the West and indoctrinating their youth with anti-western venom. Given the high birth rates of many Muslims, this bodes ill for Great Britain’s future. The London bus and subway attacks of 2005 killed 52 people and wounded hundreds, and followed by a year several train bombings in Madrid, Spain that killed 191 people and wounded 1,800.

France has dealt numerous times with restive Muslim youth rioting in the Paris suburbs, including widespread riots in November 2005 involving hooligans torching cars and buildings, widespread fires, looting and vandalism. France even had to implement a law prohibiting female students from wearing burqas.

Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot and killed in 2004 by an Islamofascist who took umbrage at van Gogh's films critical of Islam. This followed by several months the assasination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, who also was shot and killed by a lunatic jihadist. Here in the United States, we had a woman beheaded by a Muslim in Oklahoma City and two New York police officers shot and killed by another deranged Muslim.

Tolerance can only go so far. You might tolerate a house guest leaving a few dirty dishes lying around, watching TV late at night or tracking a little mud on the carpet. But you certainly wouldn’t tolerate him firing up a joint in your living room, hitting on your daughter or having loud drinking buddies over to watch the football game.

Tolerating hatred and extremism from Muslims, and indeed, welcoming large numbers of them into your country knowing full well they cannot and will not assimilate, is a prescription for disaster. Moreover, it does no good to be in a permanent state of denial as is the Obama administration. The Teleprompter in Chief doesn’t hesitate to use loaded language (enemies, hostage takers) against Republicans who won’t kiss his ass, but refuses to use the words terrorist or terrorism when discussing heinous incident perpetrated by Muslims. This is simply twisted.

The War on Terror was given the Orwellian name, “Overseas Contingency Operations.” This kind of delusional thinking is downright dangerous. Alarmingly, a huge chunk of the American population is brain-dead when it comes to how outrageous the president's heedless, delusional attitude is.

While it is true that most Muslims do not support terrorism, it's also true that there's a way-too-large minority of Muslims that do. And of those that don't, most seem reluctant to denounce it, perhaps in fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Islam is a sick, dysfunctional religion. The sooner people acknowledge that, the sooner we can begin the long, hard road of reform.