A meme that didn't make me laugh...

 

... but certainly caught my attention!

I'm guessing nobody got out of that one unscathed...

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 283

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

It's been a while since we've shared some classical guitar music here.  Let's enjoy Joaquín Rodrigo's 1967 Concierto Andaluz.  He composed it for four guitars, at the request of the world-famous Romero guitar quartet:  Celedonio, the paterfamilias, and three of his sons, Angel, Celin and Pepe, who were the soloists at its first performance in San Antonio, Texas.  It's one of my favorite classical guitar works.

Peter

Make hay while the crime shines?

 

I had to laugh at the marketing chutzpah shown by a German company.

A German company inadvertently embroiled in the Louvre Museum heist after one of its lifts was used in the theft is making the most of its free publicity - by launching a new advertising campaign.

Werne-based firm Böcker this week published a social media post, external featuring the now-famous image of its furniture ladder extending up to a balcony outside the Gallery of Apollo.

"When you need to move fast," reads a banner under the image. "The Böcker Agilo transports your treasures weighing up to 400kg at 42m/min - quiet as a whisper."

Video has emerged of the alleged thieves escaping on the mechanical ladder after stealing €88m worth (£76m; $102m) of France's crown jewels on Sunday.

The company's managing director, Alexander Böcker, told news agency AFP on Wednesday that, when it became clear no one was injured in the heist, it had used "a touch of humour" to draw attention to the family-run business.

There's more at the link.

It's almost always fun when companies apply humor to otherwise "difficult" situations as a marketing boost (provided no actual human tragedy resulted).  One of my favorites was back in South Africa, decades ago, when a motorist drove off a steep, unforgiving mountain road behind the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz E200 sedan.  To everyone's astonishment, he survived with only minor injuries (bumps and bruises), although his car was a write-off.  Mercedes-Benz South Africa made a big thing of it, with advertisements proclaiming that his survival was due to his driving a Mercedes, and suggesting he wouldn't have gotten off so lightly if he'd been driving anything else.  BMW South Africa promptly replied with its own advertisements, suggesting that if he'd been driving a BMW, its superior roadholding would have prevented him from going off the road in the first place!  Much amusement ensued.

Peter

Talk about entitlement!

 

Courtesy of Midwest Chick, here's a social media post highlighting just how entitled to free handouts many people think they are in this benighted country.

There's a brief video clip at the link, showing his feelings - no, his absolute conviction - of entitlement.  I urge you to click over there and watch it for yourself.

EBT funds - i.e. the so-called "food stamp" program - are due to run out in November, thanks to the current government shutdown preventing Congress from reauthorizing that expenditure.  There are millions of Americans who are angry, upset, even panic-stricken at the thought of losing them.

My first reaction is that the bloated mess that such food assistance has become is long overdue to be cut back to essentials only - no sodas, no pizza, no lobster tails, no chips-and-dip, just basic supplies of regular, nutritious food that will provide an adequate daily diet for a typical family.  If that gores the ox of the suppliers of soda and sweets, so be it.  Why should my taxpayer dollars support such waste?

My second reaction is that food stamps were intended (back when they were first thought of) to be a temporary means of assistance to families who found themselves suddenly without sufficient income to make it on their own.  They were never intended to become a multi-year freebie handout to people who would never work hard enough to restore their family finances sufficiently to get off food stamps!  Sadly, that's what they've become in all too many cases.  I called an acquaintance yesterday who works in the social services department of a major municipality, and asked her what proportion of EBT recipients there had been getting those benefits for longer than a year.  She reckoned that more than half of the cases in her city had been getting those benefits for longer than five years.  So much for temporary assistance!

I'm not heartless or uncharitable, but it seems to me that requiring 20-odd hours of work per week to qualify for EBT/food stamps is hardly unreasonable.  Any reasonably able-bodied adult should be able to contribute that to his/her support.  To the man refusing to do so - sucks to be your kids, I guess, because they're going to go hungry thanks to your fecklessness and laziness (not to mention your amazing sense of entitlement and superiority).  Buddy, this taxpayer does not work for you, and isn't willing to tolerate your attitude any longer.

I'm sure my readers can cite examples of their own where they've seen this sort of entitled attitude in action.  Let us know about them in Comments.

Peter

Do they call the Coast Gourd if they get in trouble?

 

Looks like the annual Pumpkin Regatta in Oregon last weekend lived up to its reputation.

I wonder what they do with all the pumpkin "flesh" they cut out of the gourds in order to make room for a paddler?  Do they cook and eat it, or throw it away, or what?  I suspect there'd be enough seeds removed to be able to plant half the state with pumpkins!

Peter

Life delivers another warning about financial preparedness

 

We've discussed many aspects of "prepping" over the years in these pages.  Some topics come up repeatedly.  One of them is financial preparedness:  establishing an emergency fund, getting out of debt, paying cash rather than going into more debt, and so on.  Part of that advice has always been to have a certain amount of money available in cash, without needing to go to a bank to get it.  If communications systems go down, you won't be able to verify balances, pay by credit card, etc.  Better have some cash on hand to take care of essentials for a few days.

Monday's Internet outage provided graphic evidence confirming how essential such a cash-on-hand reserve really is.

It’s not just that people couldn’t place mobile orders for coffee at Starbucks or ask Alexa for the weather. Hospitals said crucial communications services weren’t working, and teachers couldn’t access their planned lessons for the day. Chime, a mobile banking service, was down, too, leaving people without access to their money. Ring and Blink cameras, along with most smart home devices, stopped working.

. . .

One expert already estimated the total impact of the disruption will be in the billions of dollars.

“It creates a very large single point of failure that then impacts operations at warehouses, deliveries, people being able to sell their goods and services on websites,” Jacob Bourne, an analyst at eMarketer, told CNN.

. . .

The Doughertys ... stopped for lunch at Cattleman’s Roadhouse, where the manager offered to pay for their meal because the restaurant was unable to process cards.

“He said, ‘This is no fault of yours, and you’re already eating. I don’t guess you all have cash?’” Debi Dougherty said. “And we both looked at each other, and I’m like, ‘Not enough to cover this meal.’”

. . .

Dia Giordano was spending her Monday trying to untangle the mess that the outage made for her three businesses: an Italian restaurant, eight mental health clinics and a couple of rental properties.

DoorDash was “blowing up” her phone starting at 2 a.m., warning that the online ordering system, which is run through Toast, was down.

“What that means is one-third of my business is gone for the day,” she told CNN. “At least with the publicity (of the outage), people might be understanding, but I’m still getting messages asking if we’re open, because the website is just gone. It’s just not there.”

Toast, when reached Monday, declined comment.

At Giordano’s mental health clinics, her practitioners and administrative staff members were unable to validate clients’ insurance information because the online clearinghouse for that information wasn’t working.

And on top of that, Venmo was down, meaning she couldn’t receive the rental payments she normally would.

There's more at the link.

I've spoken to several friends and acquaintances who found they were unable to buy their normal purchases because credit card services were down.  Others had a little cash available, but not enough for everything they needed, and so had to make rapid decisions over what to buy, and what to do without.  In one case where little children were involved, disposable diapers and baby food took priority, meaning the car didn't get filled with gas and the family had to make do with less for supper.

I always carry at least $100 in my wallet, and sometimes more, and I've asked my wife to do the same.  If we'd been out and about when the Internet outage hit on Monday, we'd have had enough to get home again, including gasoline, food, etc.  However, I think a lot of people would not have been so fortunate.  (Remember, too, to carry smaller bills.  Offering a $100 note to a small business might bring the answer that they don't have enough change to break it, so it's either give them the extra, or do without whatever you wanted to buy there.  My wallet usually contains a mix of $20 and $50 bills for that reason.)

It's also worth remembering that Monday's outage was resolved within a day.  If it had gone on for a week, there are businesses that would literally have gone bankrupt through being unable to process payments from customers or to suppliers.  If it had lasted a month, the permanent damage to the US economy would undoubtedly have run into at least hundreds of billions of dollars, if not the low trillions.  It might have put many people out on the street, for that matter.  For example, how many companies could keep their staff on the payroll when they have no money coming in to pay them?  How many rental agreements contain clauses allowing the landlord to evict tenants for non-payment of rent, particularly if they're already a few weeks, or a month or two, behind in their payments?  Landlords (particularly the corporate variety) aren't renowned for their loving-kindness and humanitarian instincts.

I've always tried to keep at least one months' routine expenditure in cash on hand (i.e. available immediately, not in the bank), so that I could pay our essential bills if the banking system went down.  After Monday, and looking at the potential for greater disruption from terrorism, economic sabotage, etc., I'm seriously thinking it might be a good idea to increase that to two months' worth.  I can't afford that at the moment, but it's a worthwhile target, I think.

(Also, from a personal perspective, I'm currently undergoing rehab after my surgery last month, and preparing for a bigger operation next year.  What if I couldn't pay for those sessions, or for the medications I need?  I definitely need a medical cash reserve, over and above a general-purpose one!)

Monday's Internet outage should be a useful reminder to all of us.  Emergencies arrive on their own schedule, not ours, and they usually don't provide much (if any) warning.  If we're not ready when they happen, we're not ready.  Period.  It helps to be as prepared as practically possible, to survive the interruption(s) to routine that they bring with them, and come out the other side as intact as possible.

Peter

A thoughtful gesture, but...

 

I had to laugh at this report.

Animal rescuers in California shared security camera stills capturing the moment a foster kitten spiced up her human family's dinner with a special ingredient: a dead mouse.

. . .

"Wendy is a foster failure that was caught on the kitchen cam -- or kitten cam -- adding 'spice' to her mom's dinner," the post said. "We should all be as thoughtful as Miss Wendy!"

Wendy's foster owner said she was out feeding her dogs when the kitchen camera recorded the cat's attempt at cooking. She said the feline's suspicious behavior when she returned to the kitchen led her to check the camera footage and discover the surprise Wendy had left in the pot.

"As you can guess, it was takeout for dinner that night," Wendy's foster mom told KMPH-TV.

There's more at the link.

Our two cats don't try to feed us.  Instead, they're on a lifelong mission to persuade us that human food is really precisely what a cat needs.  Furthermore, there are some foods so cat-worthy that they deserve extra feline attention.  Just drop a small flat tin of tuna on the metal surface of our prep table, and seventeen-odd pounds of black Maine Coon will arrive at near-supersonic speeds, followed closely (and more arthritically) by an older, creakier lady.  Don't bother with seasonings, mayonnaise or anything else - just drain the tuna into cat-size bowls and put it down on the floor.  Kitty nirvana!

Peter

OK, another car question

 

Thank you to everyone who responded to my car question yesterday.  It looks like, thanks to tariffs and other issues, repairs may cost north of $3K, and given that the value of the car is probably not much greater than that, the calculus is leaning in the direction of replacement.

Online research shows that there's virtually nothing worth having under $10K in the used car market.  Either the mileage is as great or greater than our present vehicle, or there are persistent reliability issues, or availability is haphazard.  Moving up to $15K doesn't improve things very much, although there is a greater selection.  At $20K upward, there's plenty of availability, but low-mileage vehicles remain hard to find in good condition:  most are in the 80-140K mile range, with some notable exceptions.  That means, if we want a reliable replacement to use for the medium to long term, we have to look at new vehicles as well.

The cheapest new vehicle I can find is the Kia Soul (which I've driven before, and is OK as an urban runabout), or the Ford Maverick mini-pickup.  The Maverick's ride quality isn't great, but it's a truck, not a car, and can't be expected to be as soft-riding and comfortable as the Soul.  It does have the advantage of reasonably good utility, with a small loadbed and a back seat that can accommodate a fair amount of baggage or household debris.  Both the Soul and the Maverick (in base model configuration) are in the mid-$20K base price range, plus tax, title, license, etc.  If we move up to the $30-$35K range, there are a lot more options, but then, that's a lot more money.

There's also the big disadvantage that some manufacturers are now demanding monthly subscription payments to use even the most basic in-car services (Toyota, I'm looking at you!).  I'm simply not prepared to do this.  There are also dealers who advertise "no-haggle" prices (that always seem higher than those who will negotiate), and others who low-ball trade-in offers.  There are also too many dealers who add gimmicks pre-sale (e.g. windows engraved with an "anti-theft" serial number, nitrogen tire fills, etc.), and want to charge hundreds of dollars for them, and won't sell you a vehicle without them.  There are an awful lot of shysters out there, it seems to me . . .  Any advice on tell-tale signs that a particular dealer may be more trouble than he's worth?  Obvious red flags?

Therefore, I turn to knowledgeable readers again, to ask for your input.  The need is for local transport of one or two older people, with occasional longer-distance excursions (e.g. 300-400 mile round trip in a day).  Economy is important, as is reliability, and the vehicle should not cost an arm and a leg to insure.

1. If you were looking for a lower-cost vehicle for that mission, what would you recommend?  New or used?
2. Has anyone had experience with the Ford Maverick mini-pickup models?  I'd be very interested to hear what they're like to own, particularly reliability, ride quality, etc.  Their overall utility is appealing.
3. Is there any vehicle that you absolutely would not recommend, due to issues, problems, or whatever?

Thanks in advance for your input.  I'm grateful for your help.

Peter

Economic chickens coming home to roost

 

With all the bad economic news deluging us over recent weeks, some people appear to be panicking.  They're running around trying to find a safe haven where they can "ride out the storm" with their money and wealth intact, and get back to normal as soon as the trouble has passed.  Sadly, that's not possible any longer.  We've spoken about this for years in these pages, pointing out the consequences of bad decisions taken decades ago and how they've been piling on top of each other all along.  Today's situation is the culmination of a whole lot of them.

Furthermore, it's not a matter of partisan politics.  Both sides of our political aisle are equally guilty of over-spending, under-saving, and wasting trillions of dollars on policies that have burdened us today with a debt so vast that it can't be adequately envisioned.  Our minds can't grasp the reality of thirty-trillion-plus dollars.  It's too great to conceptualize.  All we can say is, we're broke, and yet our politicians are still bickering over shutting down the government, taxes versus tariffs, and all the rest.  Those matters are now small beer compared to the fire in our economic engine room.

If you haven't been paying attention to the economic news, I recommend you select a few articles from this list and read them carefully.  Some focus on specific areas, such as a business activity or precious metals;  others are more broadly focused.  All are informative.

• "I've Never Seen Anything Like This": One Bullion Dealer Sees A Rupture In Gold And Silver Markets
• Don't look now (money quote:  "The dollar has lost 3/4 of its value in the past decade, 90% of its value in the last 20 years, and 98.5% of its value since we went away from being a gold based currency in 1973. That isn’t the greed of the banks, that’s the greed of our government.")
• Wall Street has been worried about bad loans for weeks. Now those fears are spreading
• The Bizarre Bankruptcy At The Heart Of This Week's Regional Bank Meltdown
• Auto Loan Delinquencies Surge 50% As Cracks Deepen Across U.S. Credit Markets
• 'Nobody's spending $17 on an egg sandwich': Restaurant owners say inflation forcing tough menu choices
• L.A.’s Entertainment Economy Is Looking Like a Disaster Movie
• The Final Crisis: This is Our Future

I'm not posting those links because I want to be alarmist:  I'm doing so because some people still don't seem to grasp the depth of the water flooding in beneath us, and they aren't good enough swimmers to stay afloat when they lose their economic footing.  Some put their faith in precious metals;  others, in index funds;  still others, in stockpiling essentials to help keep the wolf from the door.  Unfortunately, none of those measures will help most of us in the longer term.  We're going to have to tighten our belts and work hard to stay afloat.  That includes abandoning everything that may weigh us down, including excessive possessions, wasteful habits, and a self-centered spirit that says "To hell with everyone else - I'm all right, I've got mine!"

We're all in for a very hard time, friends.  Let's do our best to help each other stay afloat.

Peter

Post-surgery update and car info request

 

As regular readers will know, one of my kidneys was removed in late September.  Close to a month later, things are on the mend, but painfully slowly (emphasis on the "painfully" sometimes!).

Some of the surgery scars are healing nicely, to the point that they're almost closed with minimal scab left.  Others - including the largest one - are unfortunately taking rather longer to close up.  I'm told that's inevitable, due to natural movement of my body as I walk around or turn over in my sleep, but it's nevertheless irritating me with the slowness of the process.  To add to the fun (?), those bigger scars are itching intensely as the skin grows over the areas where it had been cut open.  I'm constantly having to fight the urge to scratch them.  Keeping them covered helps, and keeps out the dirt, but then they don't dry out, either, which appears to prolong the healing process.  Catch-22, anyone?

The internal injuries caused by taking out the kidney appear to be well on the mend.  The initial pain and "hollowness" I felt have largely ended, and the hollow left in my abdomen by the sudden absence of a kidney is "balancing out" with the rest of my belly.  I'm on a lifting restriction of not more than ten pounds for another six weeks at least, and I have to be careful to observe that;  I've slipped up a couple of times, and the sliced muscles let me know very sharply that I shouldn't do that again.  Apparently I'll be allowed to lift up to 20-25 pounds by mid- to late November, which will help me get back to normal in helping around the house.  All being well, the recovery process should be complete early next year.

Thank you, yet again, to all of you who've helped with the costs of this operation, and with your good wishes and prayers.  It's become a cliche to say "I couldn't do this without you", but that's the plain and simple truth of the matter.  I don't have family in the USA, but I have a support network of readers and online friends and acquaintances, and you've all helped me to get over this particular hump.  I remain very grateful to you all.

Now, if I may, a quick question to the car aficionados among us.  Our 2014 Nissan Pathfinder SUV has just begun to show front suspension problems, which I'll have checked out today.  The irritating thing is that this will be the third time that we've had problems in that area (most recently just over a year ago), and fixing them is not cheap (including labor, over $2K in the past, and with tariffs and other increases, perhaps over $3K today).  The vehicle is about to turn over 180K miles, and is running well apart from the suspension issues.  My dilemma is this:  is it worth sinking another $3K+ into a known issue that may well recur in 1-2 years time, and keep the vehicle running, or is it better to trade it in whilst the rest of it is in very good condition, and find a newer and more reliable ride?  I can see pro's and con's either way.  Based on your knowledge and experience of the car market, what would you recommend?  Please let us know in Comments.  (And, just to reassure anyone who's worrying, no, we won't use any funds donated for surgical costs to pay for the vehicle!)

Thanks again, everyone.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 282

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

A Polish animation studio, Egofilm, is producing some interesting short works that are . . . quirky, to say the least!  Here's their squirrel rendition of Queen's "We Will Rock You".

That's one way to wake up on Sundays!

Peter

Giving, and the mentality of giving

 

A few days ago I asked readers to support two friends, James and Tirzah Burns, as James struggles with very serious illness.  Thank you to all who responded.

One respondent, Boron, said this in a comment.

It tears at my heart not to be able to be as free with my money (provide to those in need) as I had been was while I was workng.

Whatever money I've put away; we need it most now that I'm retired with disabilities.

The pennies that have fallen through the cracks we use to provide the little extras for our children, particularly in these times.

The remainder we're putting aside for our grandchildren's education.

It is all the more painful for me as a Jew aware of my obligations: tzedakah and more particularly, gemilut chasadim.

The more important question of course, invades my conscience: "Do I take the crumbs from my childrens' mouths to feed a stranger?"

I often wonder what will be my answer to Him.

I've had some long discussions with friends and acquaintances about giving to others;  when it is (or perhaps is not) appropriate, how much one can/should give in relation to what one has or earns, deciding who or what causes deserve our contribution and which do not, and all that sort of thing.  It's been interesting to develop a way of looking at giving that isn't bound to any one religious faith or secular philosophy, but rather to the simple fact of living as a human being.  Here's how I look at it.

I begin by acknowledging the many times I've needed help - and not only economically, either:  emotional support, advice, encouragement, all are "help".  From there, it follows logically that if I have needed help, I should be prepared to offer help to those who need it, because they are human beings, too.  The nature, kind and amount of that help are, of course, open to discussion.  For example, I won't help an alcoholic or drug addict buy more of the poisons that feed their addiction, and I won't give them money to buy those things for themselves.  I will, however, buy them food, and help them get to a place where they can get the physical, mental and spiritual help they need to change their lives (e.g. the Salvation Army).

There are those who object that by refusing to help them do what they want to do, I'm in effect judging them, forcing them into moral or ethical compartments with which they might not agree.  I guess that's right - but by not exercising judgment, by helping them continue with their self-destructive behavior, I would be contributing to the inevitable end of such moral laissez-faire:  their demise.  I won't accept such co-responsibility;  I can't, due to my own moral code.  If that doesn't satisfy some critics, well, I'm sorry about that.  They can help in whatever way seems good to them, and I'll do likewise.

What worries me more than such questions is the number of people today who seem to regard it as a weakness to support anyone.  What's theirs is theirs, and they don't see why they should share it, particularly if they might have to delay or postpone something they want in order to spend their money, or time, or talents on someone else's need.  The concept of giving as a duty, as a way of life, seems foreign to them.  That stands in stark contrast to the unknown sage who said:

“I expect to pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing that I can do, to any fellow human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it; for I will not pass this way again.”

All those points, of course, can be made irrespective of any religious background.  To a Christian, the Bible is filled with admonitions and encouragements to give what one has to help those who have not, and to support one another in the trials and tribulations of life.  Many regard those obligations as fulfilled by contributing to the collection in church on Sunday.  Fortunately, many more go further than that.

My own personal approach to giving starts by thanking God for the many blessings I've been given, some without requests to others, others as a result of asking for help (the most recent example of which being my bleg for help with medical bills last month).  That leads to a direct corollary:  if I hope and expect to receive help when I need it, I must be ready and willing to offer help when others need it.  It's like two halves of the same coin.  I may not be able to offer as much as another person needs, or the precise form of help they need, but I'll get as close to it as I can.  My wife and I don't "tithe" as such;  we rather say that our money is there to meet our needs and those that the good Lord puts in our path.  Some months we may give very little to others.  Other months we may donate a lot more than a tithe.  It all depends what needs present themselves, whether or not we feel led to respond, and our current ability to do so.  However, it's a fundamental rule for us that we should always be willing to respond as best we can.  If we try to hold on to everything we have, why should we expect others to be any different?

It's also true, of course, that we can't possibly meet most of the needs around us.  We're not rich, and are unlikely ever to be so.  Therefore, we donate according to what is practical and possible for us, and trust the good Lord to make up that which we cannot.

A final thought.  I think we would all do well to develop a "mindset of giving".  This is where we look around us, at people and activities close to us, and ask how we can contribute.  There may be nobody needing help with hospital bills, or trying to rebuild their home after a fire;  but our local small-town library may need funds raised, or our old folks' center wants money to upgrade their facility.  A few dollars from enough people can help them a lot.  If we actively look to pick just one project or need each month, and support it with a few dollars or a couple of hours of work, that's a start.  It puts us in the right mind-set to recognize larger needs when they arrive, and be willing to consider helping to meet them.  We don't just dismiss them out of hand, or casually disregard them.  If we all did that, I think a lot more of us would be willing to help out in all sorts of ways that we currently don't think about.

Hope I didn't bore you with this diversion into the weeds.  I just thought Boron's point, and similar comments made by a couple of other readers, deserved further attention.  I'll be interested to read your own perspective(s) in Comments.

Peter

Is it possible for a politician to be even more cretinous than usual? Oh, yes...

 

The politician in question is Cory Booker.  Basically, if it moves, as far as he's concerned it's Fascist, and must be condemned as such.  It would help - greatly! - if he actually knew the meaning of the word Fascist, as illustrated a couple of days ago, when he appeared on a podcast titled "The Anti-Cult Club".  He came up with this gem of political wisdom:

Yes, indeed.  I've never heard of any "old African saying" that "sticks in a bundle can't be broken" - and I'm a damned sight more African (having been born and raised on that continent) than Senator Booker.  However, I do know the meaning of the Latin word "fasces".  According to Wikipedia:

A fasces is a bound bundle of wooden rods, often, but not always, including an axe (occasionally two axes) with its blade emerging. The fasces is an Italian symbol that had its origin in the Etruscan civilization and was passed on to ancient Rome, where it symbolized a Roman king's power to punish his subjects, and later, a magistrate's power and jurisdiction.

The image of fasces has survived in the modern world as a representation of magisterial power, law, and governance. The fasces frequently occurs as a charge in heraldry: it is present on the reverse of the U.S. Mercury dime coin, behind the podium in the United States House of Representatives, and in the Seal of the U.S. Senate; and it was the origin of the name of the National Fascist Party in Italy (from which the term fascism is derived).

So, when Senator Booker uses the image of the fasces to illustrate opposition to fascism, he's heading in precisely the opposite direction to what he means.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.  Far too many of our politicians, on both sides of the aisle, behave in precisely the same way.  It's as if election to office knocks several dozen points off some (but fortunately not all) politicians' IQ scores.

Meanwhile, if you're logged into X, go enjoy the whole thread in which Sen. Booker's gaffe is discussed.  It's giggle-worthy.

Peter

Quote of the day

 

From a reader over at Larry Lambert's place:

"I like to think that my Scots-Irish ancestors came to America in the early 1700s because it later gave them one more chance to shoot at the British."

Now why is that so instantly believable?  Could be because I have Scots and Irish ancestors as well . . .

Peter

Yay pemmican!

 

A few years ago I mentioned Steadfast Provisions and their pemmican products.  Earlier this year I boosted their fundraiser, aimed at building a brand-new, much-updated commercial kitchen to produce much larger quantities of pemmican and other products.  I'm very glad to report that the new kitchen is up and running, and their pemmican is better than ever.  If this article sounds like I'm shilling for them, well, I guess I am, because I really like to see small businessmen come up with a good idea and make a living out of it - and I just plain like pemmican anyway!

(In case you didn't know much about pemmican, there's a very informative article about it at their Web site.  Recommended reading.)

The new product is similar to the old, but more finely ground, producing a powdery rather than a granular substance when crushed or folded into other foods.  I find the flavor much improved, too.  Last time I ordered the salted-only pemmican, without seasoning.  It was fine, but very bland, designed more to be added to other foods (e.g. soup or stew), or supplemented with flavorings if eaten alone.  In this way it would taste more like the main dish, but provide added protein.

This time I ordered the seasoned version, and find it's much more palatable to eat on its own, even without adding anything else.  The texture appears much closer to Plains Indian descriptions of it, where it was eaten by the pinch out of a parfleche rawhide bag.  I tried some yesterday flavored as the Indians did, with honey dripped over it - delicious!  One can also add dried or fresh berries for a fruitier, sweeter flavor.

I plan to keep several bricks of this stuff in stock as an emergency supply.  One could exist by eating only pemmican, if one had to, but that would get boring fairly quickly!  I regard it as an excellent "bug-out" food, energy-rich and nutritious, easy to get to while walking or driving.  The new version tastes good enough that I'll probably be eating some as a snack on a regular basis, too.  I don't think one could possibly get foods that are more "keto" than pemmican, so I'll take advantage of that.

I prefer to buy the "brick" package of pemmican, containing 2.2 pounds of concentrated beef.

It may seem expensive, with a price tag of $97 for 2.2 pounds of pemmican, but bear in mind how greatly the "raw" weight of meat has been reduced in the production process.  One of those bricks contains over 10 pounds of raw beef, and given the price of good-quality beef today, that's a bargain in anyone's language.  If you'd like to try something smaller and lower-cost, the company also makes a pemmican bar for $17.  Expect them to be hard to find for a few months as the word spreads about the company's new production and new flavors.

To all my readers who contributed to Steadfast Provisions' fundraiser, thank you very much.  IMHO, it's been worth the wait to get their new premises into production.

Peter

The Ukraine war is increasingly equipping and empowering drug cartels

 

South American drug cartels are deliberately sending some of their best fighting men and women to Ukraine, to learn how to use drones against an enemy, and how to convert ordinary civilian models into killing machines.  Because this is a growing danger within the USA as well, I'll provide an extended quote from the article.

Mexican intelligence officials tipped off their Ukrainian counterparts in July.

They warned Kyiv that cartel members were infiltrating Ukraine’s foreign ­fighter cadres to learn how to fly first-person view (FPV) kamikaze drones, which give pilots a bird’s-eye view of the target as they close in with an explosive payload.

Mexico’s warring drug cartels, who are engaged in their own drone arms race, now appear to be adopting the technology.

Last week, footage emerged for the first time of Sinaloa cartel sicarios, or hitmen, brandishing a new “fibre-optic” FPV drone, a model pioneered in Ukraine that is controlled by cable rather than radio signal to evade jamming devices.

“Ukraine has become a platform for the global dissemination of FPV tactics,” a security official in Kyiv told Intelligence Online, a French security website that first broke news of the investigation into Eagle 7.

“Some come to learn how to kill with a $400 drone, then sell that knowledge to whoever pays the highest price.”

Quite how many cartel hitmen have gone to Ukraine for drone “training” ­remains a mystery. The investigation in the summer is understood to have discovered at least three former members of Colombia’s disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerrilla movement, heavily involved in cocaine trafficking.

It would not be hard for a cartel member to blend in these days in Ukraine, as the International Legion is ­increasingly relying on Latin American recruits.

Most are from Colombia, where large numbers of former security personnel have found themselves jobless in the wake of the landmark 2016 peace deal with the Farc.

. . .

It is thought that several thousand have served in the International Legion over the past three years, with up to 300 killed.

Cartel members are understood to be taking advantage of the fact that Kyiv has limited means to vet overseas recruits properly.

“We’re seeing reports in recent months that both Mexican cartels and Colombian criminal groups are trying to infiltrate the Ukrainian military to learn techniques that they can take back to Latin America,” Alexander Marciniak, a Latin American intelligence analyst for Sibylline, a private intelligence firm, told The Telegraph.

“The cartels can use drones for all sorts of purposes, attacks and surveillance on each other and on the security forces, and for smuggling contraband.”

Mexico has seen a huge surge in the use of attack drones in recent years, from just a handful of incidents in 2020 up to more than 40 per month by 2023. It reflects a growing militarisation of the drug gangs, with cartels hiring professional ex-soldiers, many of them from Colombia, to give them an edge.

. . .

As well as getting access to vast ­arrays of weaponry, foreign volunteers can also learn a range of techniques for building home-made attack drones, many of them circulated on DIY-style instruction videos.

Meanwhile, both Colombia and Mexico face growing US pressure to crack down on cartels, following Donald Trump’s announcement that designated Mexican cartels would now be treated as “narco-terrorist” groups rather than street gangs because of their growing firepower.

Four suspected drug boats have been destroyed by US drone strikes in the Caribbean, and Mr Trump has also hinted he could send US troops into Mexico. Colombia is considering a bill to outlaw its soldiers from enlisting as mercenaries.

Critics, however, say that banning them from legitimate work could simply drive more into the ranks of the cartels.

There's more at the link.

This would also help to explain why the USA is ramping up its operations against drug cartels in several South American countries, including (that we know of) Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela.  If US forces and law enforcement agencies can "get ahead" of such technological advances, they can keep the danger at arms' length, so to speak.  However, if cartels are already carrying out tens of operations every month (again, those are just the ones we know about), it may be too late for such delaying tactics to succeed - and drones may make such operations a lot more dangerous for those tasked with them.

This points to a growing internal security problem inside our borders.  What if the current Antifa/BLM/far-left/progressive demonstrations are suddenly augmented by attack drones aimed at law enforcement trying to control the unrest?  Our police aren't equipped or trained to deal with such weapons, and it's hard to see how civilian law enforcement could be so equipped without transgressing a number of constitutional rights and issues.  Nevertheless, I'd say it's increasingly likely that they will face such dangers.  It's in the cartels' best interests to disrupt law enforcement, for different reasons, but towards the same end - making parts of the country ungovernable, so they can take advantage of that for criminal rather than political advantage.

Those of us who regard personal preparedness and willingness to resist crime and violence have some hard thinking to do here.  We don't (generally) have access to such technology;  but without it, we'll be several plays behind the game, and much more vulnerable.  That applies particularly to larger cities within which the users of such drones will find it easier to conceal themselves and operate untraceably.

Matt Bracken has written extensively on the growing danger of drone warfare within the USA.  I highly recommend that you read his article on the subject, complete with many photographs.  I think all of us will do well to consider how this danger may affect us, in our own regions and circumstances, and plan accordingly.

Peter

President Trump and the Nobel Peace Prize

 

I've been getting awfully fed up with the brouhaha over whether President Trump should/should have/ever will win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the first place, previous winners of the Prize have comprehensively dishonored and discredited it merely due to their inclusion on the winners' roster.  Lawdog puts this nicely in perspective, so I won't repeat the details here.

My main objection is simply that the Nobel committee has demonstrated, repeatedly, that they're merely a collection of politically correct idiots.  I remember how disgusted I was when former President Obama received the award.  He had done (and has never done) anything even remotely justifying his receiving it.  He was (and remains) a political hack, a tool in the hands of those manipulating him, and they never allowed him to achieve anything positive.  It was a cretinous move to award him the Peace Prize, because anyone with a couple of working brain cells to rub together could figure that out for themselves;  and if he had any personal integrity at all, he should have refused the Prize, to demonstrate that he wasn't completely a puppet of outside forces.

Since his acceptance of the Peace Prize, it's been irredeemably dishonored in my eyes, and in the eyes of many around the world.  I don't want President Trump to be awarded the Peace Prize, and if he is, I want him to refuse to accept it.  Why would anyone with any self-respect want to be numbered among a bunch of losers like that?

Peter

A school massacre narrowly averted

 

Full marks to two Florida teens who came across a TikTok video last month, and in the process averted a tragedy.

The video included a five-second clip of the interior plans of an unidentified building, along with disturbing elements suggesting violence.  After talking with a friend, the teens contacted the authorities in Florida and told them about the video clip.  The authorities had nothing to go on except the clip, but from the video the FBI were able to identify the building as a school in Kennewick, Washington.

The federal authorities immediately contacted law enforcement, and a combined team tried to narrow down the identity and location of whoever had posted the video clip.  The story of how they did so is interesting detective work in itself.  Through hard work and some lucky breaks, they were able to identify and arrest the fourteen-year-old would-be perpetrator, Mason Bently-Ray Ashby, before his planned attack.

A screenshot that was deleted about 7 p.m. Sept 20, about 45 minutes before the search warrant of Ashby's home was executed, had the beginning of a manifesto, according to court documents.

"Hey, you found my manifesto I am sure you will all be laughing at me by the time you figure out who I am and why I did what I did ...," it said. "I'm sure my Discord and other social media will be released nearly instantly after the massacre."

The manifesto said he had sent photos to friends and, "Hell, maybe, I'll even record the attack and send it to a select few."

There's more at the link.

If convicted of the offense, Ashby can only be incarcerated until the age of 21, because he's still too young to be charged as an adult.  That's a whole new set of problems for the justice system to deal with as the case progresses.  There's also the issue of why parents weren't given more warning, and more information, as soon as the danger was known.  Some of them are asking very pointed questions about that, pointing out that it left their children in danger.  I find it hard to disagree with them.

Whatever the ultimate outcome, I hope somebody acknowledges and rewards the initiative shown by those two Florida teens.  I think it's beyond reasonable doubt that they prevented a school massacre.

Peter

Antifa: smoke and mirrors, gaslighting and astroturfing

 

All the attention being paid to Antifa and its minions and associated organizations is clearly making the organization very uncomfortable indeed.  One of its leading lights (such as it is), Prof. Mark Bray, has fled to Europe to avoid what he will doubtless categorize as "persecution", and other leaders are either "taking the gap" with him or trying to avoid public identification in the USA.

Another tactic is to issue "talking points" to left-wing commentators to deny that Antifa even exists.  It's so blatant it would be funny, if it weren't so dishonest.  See for yourself in this montage of TV commenters all agreeing with each other.  It's a tactic we've seen many times before - gaslight the opposition, pretend something isn't so when it very clearly is, and try to obfuscate the issue at every turn.  (A helpful question to deniers:  if it doesn't exist, why is Prof. Bray's book about the organization still a best-seller?)

As a general rule of thumb, I think the safest approach is to assume that any far-left-wing progressive source, or claim, or allegation is a lie from start to finish.  They can't be trusted, because they can't be truthful.  It's like some pathological obsession with them.  When presented with conclusive video evidence and eye-witness confirmation, they simply reject it as false rather than engage with it.  They're what Robert Heinlein would have referred to as "yammerheads", trying to talk over and drown out the opposition and defy reality.

The lies and confrontations are only going to get worse from now on.  We have a very difficult period ahead of us as the present Administration tries very hard to remove the excrescences that have defiled the US body politic, and return us to the rule of law.  Let's not allow excrescences like Antifa to disrupt public understanding of what's really happening out there.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 281

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

We lost another big name from the 1960's last week.  John Lodge, guitarist and backup vocalist for the Moody Blues, passed away.  He had a pretty profound impact on the group, based partly on his poetic lyrical vision of music and partly on his unabashed Christian faith, which he refused to hide despite the rest of the group not sharing his views.

In memory of Mr. Lodge, here are three tracks that he composed and/or performed.  First up is "Blue Guitar", composed and recorded with Justin Hayward during a five-year hiatus for the Moody Blues.

Next is the short number "Send Me No Wine" from the Moody Blues album "On The Threshold Of A Dream".

And to close, one of the Moody Blues' most famous songs, co-written by John Lodge.

May he rest in peace.

Peter

Another bleg for two dear friends

 

Tirzah and James Burns are close friends of my wife and myself.  If I recall correctly, we met Tirzah even before she met James.  I officiated at their wedding in 2013, and baptized their son and daughter a few years later at Libertycon in Chattanooga, where they live.

James has developed severe problems with his pancreas, to the point that a few weeks ago, doctors weren't certain whether he'd be able to survive them.  They've managed to get things back into some sort of balance, but there's a long way still to go.  Meanwhile, of course, James' income has dried up.  We and other friends have helped as best we can, but more is needed.

Oleg Volk, also a long-standing friend of the Burns, has therefore started a fundraiser for their medical and other expenses.  May I ask you to help the Burns family in their great need?  They're very good people, and are beloved of Dot and I.  Thanks in advance.

Peter

Temporary tags being misused? Say it ain't so...

 

I noted this report with cynical amusement.

The general manager of a DeLand car dealership was arrested Oct. 7 on a warrant after failing to appear in court in September on charges he did not register temporary tags on vehicles he was selling, court documents show.

. . .

Florida troopers started investigating the dealership's temporary tags after an unregistered one was found on a vehicle during a traffic stop March 3.

The report states that the driver of the Ford Escape stopped by a trooper said she bought the vehicle with the unregistered temporary tag from DeLand Reliable Cars and Trucks.

The driver of the Ford Escape was cited for not having a vehicle registration.

Troopers said the temporary tag was not registered and the Department of Motor Vehicles did not have any information on file for the tag attached to the Ford Escape.

Troopers towed the Ford Escape and requested an audit be done on DeLand Reliable Cars and Trucks, according to court documents.

. . .

Investigators discovered that the dealership had issued four different unregistered temporary tags to the driver of the Ford Escape, an arrest report shows.

Investigators said they also found 20 temporary tag numbers issued to DeLand Reliable Cars and Trucks that were never registered to a person or vehicle but were found attached to cars at the dealership.

"(The vehicles) were driven on public roadways throughout the state of Florida," investigators noted in their report.

There's more at the link.

It reminded me of multiple incidents after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  I reported at the time:

I've ... heard reports from Texas, Alabama and Tennessee of brand-new high-end motor vehicles (e.g. Cadillacs, Lincolns, BMW's, etc.), with New Orleans dealer tags, being driven through various towns on their way North and West. The drivers were described as "gang-bangers" (and sundry less complimentary terms). However, there have been no reports of stolen vehicles from New Orleans, because there are no workers to check out dealer lots, or report thefts, and no working computers to enter VIN's, etc. into the NICS database of stolen vehicles - so officers have had no choice but to let these vehicles proceed. Draw your own conclusions.

Many of those vehicles turned out to have been stolen, but in the absence of any way to check on the validity (or otherwise) of their temporary tags, they couldn't be detained by local cops as they were ferried to whatever their final destination might be.  I understand many ended up being sold on the West Coast or in the Midwest.  Still others, I'm sure, found their way to Mexico and points south.

Do I believe the dealer's manager when he protested his innocence about the misuse of dealer tags?  Like hell I do!  It's a common tactic when a dealer - even an employee at a dealer who has access to the tags - makes a deal with criminals.  If they have 24 to 48 hours to get a head start, they can evade or avoid detection and pursuit until they and their stolen vehicles are safely out of the original jurisdiction.  In the case of Florida, a 48-hour period without questions being asked will allow the thieves to drive the vehicles all the way to Mexico - and once they're across that border, say goodbye to them for good.

Another problem is that if such vehicles are involved in accidents, they frequently have no insurance coverage at all.  If you're in a fender-bender with a car with a temporary tag, make sure to call a cop to the scene, and ask them to verify the tag number and insurance status.  If the other driver does his best to stop you doing that, be very suspicious.  If you fail to do that, your own insurance company might say that you're partly to blame for the costs of repairing your own vehicle, because you didn't check that the other driver's information was valid.

Something useful to file away in the old memory banks . . .

Peter

Automotive chickens coming home to an illegal alien roost?

 

If you've been following the cascade of bankruptcies in the sub-prime auto loan sector, you'll know that Tricolor Auto's collapse has precipitated all sorts of third-order consequences.  Ace has the details.

Tricolor Auto Group, the nation’s seventh largest used car dealer (and 3rd biggest in Texas and California), just filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy – e.g. liquidation. Its target customer had been illegal aliens, and with President Trump deciding to start enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, there has suddenly been a major “market correction” in that market segment. Not only has the customer base largely evaporated, but so have loan repayments, which Tricolor also serviced.

The “tri colors” that the name references are the colors of the Mexican flag – red, white, and green.

While the sudden loss of customers and loan repayments was the catalyst that caused the final collapse of Tricolor, its failure has revealed so much more, including securities fraud, Wall Street ESG gimmickry, race-based federal programs, etc.

Tricolor has securitized more than $2 billion of its very high risk auto loans over the past seven years. The most recent issuance was in June of this year, with JP Morgan Chase and other money center banks peddling more than $200 million of “social bonds” to credulous investors. These securities are certified as “social bonds” by the US Treasury’s CDFI (“Community Development Financial Institution”) program because Tricolor focuses on selling its cars and financial services to underserved communities, specifically Spanish-speaking non-citizens. Tricolor’s CEO, Daniel Chu, was quoted by Barron’s in 2022 as stating, “No one else is providing meaningful dollar credit to an illegal immigrant.”

. . .

You may recall that a major contributor to the financial crash of 2008 was Wall Street wizards packaging up a bunch of sub-prime mortgages, securitizing them, and then selling those “mortgage backed securities” to investors as something other than perfumed garbage. That is effectively what Tricolor has been doing with its auto loans, with the help of Wall Street.

. . .

Per Car Dealership Guy, Tricolor’s bonds have collapsed to a value of 12 cents on the dollar, virtually wiping out the investors who bought those bonds. But as bad as this all sounds so far, it’s actually worse. There was massive fraud by Tricolor, which is causing losses to all parties who did business with it.

There's more at the link.  It's worth reading in full if you've missed recent developments.

A new wrinkle has been added to the fiscal mess Tricolor has left behind.  According to a friend who works with this sort of fraud, many of Tricolor's illegal alien customers - and similar customers at other sales companies and/or lending institutions - bought their vehicles relatively recently, because they could see that Trump was going to make America less than welcoming for their ilk.  They've now taken their vehicles across the border to Mexico and points south, still owing pots of money on them, and - of course - they're no longer paying the monthly note.  It looks as if multiple billions of dollars in auto loans are suddenly non-performing.

If banks and lending institutions are required (as they should be) to list these non-performing assets on their books, it would trigger bankruptcy proceedings for many of them.  The banking sector is terrified that this may happen, and Real Soon Now, so they're (behind the scenes) begging and pleading with the financial authorities to give them some breathing room before forcing them all to come clean.  Since most of those banks are the ones that were behind de-banking and de-funding many of President Trump's supporters and sympathizers, I understand they're caught between a rock and a hard place, to put it mildly.

Pass the popcorn . . . and if you're planning to buy a motor vehicle on credit, it might be a very good idea to do so quickly, before the lending market dries up.  The same might be said of other large loans (e.g. housing, etc.), because they, too, may be affected by this mess.

Peter

Yet again, grievous moral sin hides behind legal smokescreens to avoid responsibility

 

Regular readers will know of my own struggle with the clergy sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.  I've documented it in some detail (see the sidebar for links).

Now comes news that the Catholic Church has once again chosen to behave like a business organization rather than as the Body of Christ on earth, as it is called to be.

On October 1, 2020, with sexual abuse lawsuits piling up, the Rockville Centre diocese filed a “voluntary petition for reorganization” under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

“This decision was not made lightly,” said Bishop John O. Barres in a statement at the time. And perhaps that is true. But as a legal strategy it was a no-brainer, since its primary effect was to undermine the purpose of the Child Victims Act. Bankruptcy gave the diocese the upper hand, while the victims became creditors who will be lucky to get a fraction of what a jury might have awarded them.

As of July, 41 Catholic dioceses and religious orders have used Chapter 11 filings to deal with the decades of horrific crimes committed by thousands of priests. Those filings have stopped lawsuits in their tracks and forced victims to accept pennies on the dollar, a Free Press investigation has revealed. To put it bluntly, long after the Church looked the other way at clergy sexual abuse, it has now found another way to deprive the victims of justice: the bankruptcy courts.

It has long been standard practice for companies facing massive numbers of lawsuits—for manufacturing asbestos, say, or marketing OxyContin—to file for bankruptcy. A Chapter 11 filing does not require companies to be insolvent; they simply need to show “financial distress,” allowing them to restructure their debts while continuing to operate.

Chapter 11 shuts down all litigation, halting discovery, the process by which litigants gather documents and witness testimony to support their claims. It prevents additional lawsuits from being filed. It eliminates jury trials and instead shifts the ongoing cases to federal bankruptcy court, where any settlement requires a process of mediation between the bankrupt company’s lawyers and lawyers for the creditors. That mediation often takes years. Although additional claims can be made, they too are routed to the bankruptcy court, where claimants fill out standard claim forms rather than filing lawsuits.

Early on, said Marci Hamilton, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania who represented abuse victims in many early clergy sex abuse cases, dioceses used some unorthodox defenses to wriggle out of their obligations to sexual abuse victims. “They argued that it was unconstitutional for them to have to provide discovery,” she recalled. “It was unconstitutional to interfere with any kind of exchange between a bishop and a priest. They called it the formation privilege. And they argued that you couldn’t punish them for doing nothing but forgiving. Because forgiveness was what their faith required.”

In court, recalled Hamilton, “I dismantled all those arguments.”

But when states began passing laws like the Child Victims Act—ultimately, 21 did so, as did the District of Columbia—many dioceses decided that their best course of action was to adopt the bankruptcy playbook.

“It was a brilliant tactic because the bankruptcy system makes it about saving the debtor,” Hamilton said. “So they were able to flip the lawsuits from the victims being at the center of it, to them being at the center. And the victims just became collateral damage.”

In New York alone, nearly 5,000 people claiming to have been abused by clergy or staff came forward during the two-year exemption period from the statute of limitations. In September 2019, just one month after abuse victims were allowed to file lawsuits, the Rochester diocese sought Chapter 11 protection. Rockville Centre was second. Overall, six of the state’s eight dioceses have filed for bankruptcy. (The only ones that haven’t are the Archdiocese of New York, based in Manhattan, and the Diocese of Brooklyn.)

“Bankruptcy eviscerates the whole architecture for ferreting out the truth,” Paul Mones, a plaintiff’s lawyer who has represented dozens of victims in Rockville Centre diocese cases, told me. “By removing cases from the civil justice system, there is no cross-examination of church hierarchy, and all the ways to tease out the injurious behavior of church abusers gets whitewashed. It’s all about how much money the entity has to distribute, and nothing else. Lawyers are reduced to being financial managers.”

There's more at the link.

I think this is utterly horrendous in moral terms.  The Church claims to be the Body of Christ, yet uses completely non-Christian secular tactics to avoid accepting responsibility for the damage it has done to so many people.  Personally, I don't care if bankruptcies were to reduce the Church to meeting in private homes and hired halls, giving up all its luxurious properties and accumulated assets.  Isn't that what the early Church did?  Isn't that how it took root and grew?  However, the Church has become utterly focused on itself as a business.  Its bishops (and, to a certain extent, their subordinate clergy) see themselves as "defending the Church against secular attack" when, in fact, they are focused on defending the Church's assets - not its teachings, not its eternal mission, and most certainly not the victims of evil acts on the part of some few of its ministers and other members.

Every time I read reports such as this, I quail inwardly.  Every Catholic - every Christian - knows the judgment that awaits all of us, when we must give account of our lives to the Righteous Judge.  How is it even possible to think of justifying such attitudes and actions to Jesus Christ?  "Oh, I saved your Church a few million dollars, by denying justice to a few of its victims."  How many bishops and priests dare to think of trying to excuse that to the Christ who said, "It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones."

I have committed many sins in my life, and I'll have to accept responsibility for them when my turn comes to face the Judgment . . . but I do most sincerely thank God that I won't have to account for that sort of sin.  The thought of trying to plea-bargain my way out of that is just too ghastly to contemplate - and, absent the most radical repentance and conversion, I doubt very much that it will succeed.

Peter