Category: Uncategorized

Vatican III?

The Vatican is discussing the possibility of married priests… and other things:

This Sunday kicks off a three-week meeting of bishops at the Vatican to discuss, among other things, ordaining some married men as priests to help alleviate a shortage of Catholic clergy in the nine countries of the Amazon region.

Pope Francis convened the meeting, called a synod, to discuss environmental and religious issues in the Amazon and give special attention to the needs of indigenous communities there. The region includes parts of Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam and French Guiana. The Vatican has invited 184 bishops and priests from those countries and from around the world to participate in the synod and vote on measures. Thirty-five women, mostly religious sisters and nuns, have been invited but will not have voting rights.

There will be 17 representatives of the Amazon’s indigenous populations, including 9 women, will attend as well.

But before it even begins, the synod has become the center of controversy for both conservatives and liberals.

The Pope told bishops from the region to “be bold” in their proposals for the meeting and Bishop Erwin Krautler, the church’s Secretary for the Commission on the Pan-Amazon Region, says he hopes the meeting will address not only ordaining married men, but women too.

“We don’t just speak about men because it’s exclusionary,” Krautler told CNN. “We also want to include women.”

The possibility that centuries of Catholic tradition of a celibate priesthood might be overturned has caused conservative outrage.

Since I’m not a Catholic, I don’t believe my opinion matters here. But, for those who happen to be interested, I don’t think the abandonment of the traditional celibacy requirement for priests would be a bad thing. Married priests, even with the concomitant risk of nepotism, are vastly to be preferred to gay priests, which has been the reality since at least Vatican II.

Furthermore, the Biblical requirements for a deacon not only don’t preclude marriage, they actually require it, and the fruits of priestly celibacy have not been generally positive.

Considerably more troubling is the possibility that this Amazonian synod will be used to push the ordainment of women, which would mark the beginning of the end of the Roman Catholic Church.

Fake impeachment proceedings

I was wondering why all the sound and fury about impeachment didn’t seem to show any signs of leading to an actual vote on an impeachment inquiry. It’s because all the activity is just kabuki meant to stir up excitement and distract the electorate, not actually investigate anything concerning Ukraine.

It’s quite obvious what the Democrats are doing. They have not had a vote on the floor of the House to start a formal impeachment inquiry because if they were to have such a vote, under the House rules for impeachment, the Republicans would get subpoena power.

In order to avoid giving the Republicans subpoena power, they are doing impeachment lite with these six different committees who are claiming it’s an impeachment inquiry, and they are trying to subpoena people and get documents without having an impeachment vote on the floor. That is why the White House said we are not going to cooperate with this kangaroo court.

The reason they don’t dare give Republicans subpoena power is that the corruption of the Obama administration, particularly that which surrounded the then-Vice President and then-Secretary of State would be exposed and placed on the record.

Of course, Captain Underoos doesn’t get it, and with his impeccable sense of timing, has concluded that his big moment has finally arrived at last. At this point, I think we can all agree that despite his copious flaws, the stoner-in-chief Obama actually proved to be a less horrific president than either McCain or Romney would have been.

Mailvox: crushing in Indiana

An early and succinct report of last night’s show in Indiana:

Drove 3 hours to attend the Hobart, Indiana show yesterday.
It. Was. Awesome.

When people put in this kind of effort to attend a Big Bear show and afterwards conclude the effort was well worth it, you know he’s crushing it. On a not-entirely-unrelated note, if you haven’t picked up a Signed, Limited Edition Collector’s DVD with the Special, the Documentary, and additional footage yet, there are still 143 left.

I’m particularly pleased to hear this because the theatre in Hobart was the target of the most concentrated SJW attacks and it was the primary candidate for the Special.

So stop negotiating, champ

Well, he wasn’t wrong. President Trump needs to stop listening to his “aides”:

President Donald Trump erupted at aides in an F-bomb-laden rant a week before Christmas last year, fuming over headlines that announced he was giving up his campaign promise of making Mexico pay for a border wall – and instead handing the country a 10-figure check.

The administration had made a deal with America’s neighbors to the south, one that Trump hated, that would send $10.6 billion to four countries. More than half would go to Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. But Mexico would collect $4.8 billion.

The money was meant to help governments tackle poverty, drug trafficking and other violence – the root causes of the illegal immigration wave the president campaigned against. But on December 18, 2018, the national news media he loves to hate framed it as a surrender.

‘My f***ing friends are calling me,’ the president yelled at aides who had convinced him to make the deal. ‘This is the stupidest s**t you’ve ever done. Why the f**k would we do this?’

‘I’m not getting $5 billion for the wall, and instead I’m paying Mexico $5 billion? What the f**k am I getting out of this?’ he boomed.

It was incredibly stupid. But it’s ultimately Trump’s fault for caving constantly instead of following through on his threats. This is the problem with a negotiator. They never grasp that sometimes the best deal is no deal.

Giving up a major campaign promise “because Mexico won’t cooperate” is entirely retarded. The US has the largest military in the world. Mexico doesn’t need to cooperate; there are many other ways to keep invaders out than relying on the Mexicans to do it.

Diversity & Comics reviews Alt-Hero Volume One

It’s a fair and detailed review of the six issues collected. I disagree, of course, with the idea that comics must be relentless BIF! – SOCK! – POW! action, as I see no problem with what is described here as “the talking head problem”, or as we novelists refer to it, dialogue and character development. And while I understand that not everyone is interested in current events, I am, and it would be very strange indeed if a fictional battle between globalists and nationalists did not bear some resemblances to the real-world version.

Indeed, as some have noted, the events taking place in the Alt-Hero world have even been observed to have anticipated events taking place in the real one. I also found it interesting that D&C so strongly preferred the US-based story to the Europe-based one, as it’s been my vague impression that a majority of AH fans tend to prefer the latter.

But regardless, I appreciate the review, which is one of the first to look at the entire volume one omnibus.

A game designer gets it

The designer of Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story has some excellent advice that sounds rather familiar:

Widdowson then puts forth four tactics, “never apologize,” cease any support for “people that engage in this behavior (on all sides),” minimize “engagement with these people,” and speak “with your wallets,” and states that these tactics are “the only way to stop this stuff from happening”:

“– Never apologize to the mob, if enough people stop doing the corporate non-apology, or the “I’m sorry, I’m woke now”-apology then the mob loses it’s power and the “game” stops being exciting for the hangers-on. An apology is a vindication, a self-defeat, a statement saying you acknowledge you did something worth an apology. Don’t do it.

– Stop supporting the people that engage in this behavior (on all sides), and stop supporting the companies that employ them. Money talks, eventually…

– Minimize engagement with these people. Starve them of attention; make them feel like they are screaming into a void of exactly 0 people that care. Remember, these people subsist purely on outrage, anger, and discomfort. You don’t have to. So if you really need to engage with these people though, make sure you do it in a way that benefits you. We’ve connected with some great fans and new customers thanks to this.

– Speak with your wallets, if you see a large company bend the knee to the mob, stop giving them your money at all. You don’t need the next AAA  EA/Activision/whoever published game, but they certainly need your money. You guys have 100{20631733b5a15c3694dbfcf360b60a1948a54005354f1d1bb00d126531fe1735} of the power. Never, ever forget that you determine actual success regardless of what those in “power” redefine that word to mean.”

Minimizing engagement and voting with your wallet are the two most important points. The evil power of the Devil Mouse would be significantly reduced if idiot conservatives would simply stop going to Disneyland and buying tickets to Disney-produced movies. Hollywood would be significantly less able to influence minds all over the planet if the people it hates would stop paying for its increasingly horrendous products.

No wonder they harbor such contempt for the men and women of the West. Far too many of us not only materially support, but actually pride ourselves on, destroying our own interests and our own societies.

No-evidence debunked disinformation propaganda

We haven’t seen the Democrats this publicly shook since they claimed Pizzagate was “debunked” about thirty seconds after news of it broke:

Democrats say the State Department watchdog used a closed-door briefing on Wednesday to give them “conspiracy theories” tied to Ukraine, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and former Vice President Joe Biden.

“It’s essentially a packet of propaganda and disinformation and spreading conspiracy theories. Those conspiracy theories have been widely debunked and discredited,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told reporters after an hourlong briefing with State Department Inspector General Steve Linick.

The closed-door, hour-long briefing was part of a hastily assembled meeting requested by the State Department watchdog.

Ahead of the meeting, there had been speculation that it could be tied to a whistleblower complaint about President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president, which is at the forefront of the impeachment probe.

Instead, Democrats say the packet of documents handed over by the State Department watchdog mentions Biden and his son Hunter Biden, Yovanovitch and CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that investigated breaches at the DNC in the lead up to the 2016 election.

“They appear to contain long-debunked theories and false statements about the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and one of President Trump’s political opponents,” said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), whose staff attended the briefing…. A Democratic source familiar with the briefing said that the documents came from the White House to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The paperwork was organized in multiple Trump Hotel folders and included together in an envelope labeled “White House.”

“Those folders contained notes from interviews that took place at Rudy Giuliani’s NYC office with various Ukrainians about debunked conspiracies related to Ukraine. This was just another attempt by the White House to peddle Rudy Giuliani conspiracy theories,” the source added.

Republicans have doubled down on calls for an investigation into Biden’s role in the ouster of a Ukraine prosecutor in 2016, despite no evidence of wrongdoing.

The media seems to think that if it just says the magic words often enough, the problem goes away. We already know that Creepy Joe lied. We already know that his adulterous, crackhead son who banged his brother’s widow was being paid ludicrous sums of money for doing nothing by the Ukrainians.

The word “debunked” clearly no longer means what it used to mean. But what level of truth can you reasonably expect from people who also claim that “man” means “woman”, “cat” means “dog”, and the number six means “purple”.

SFWA member arrested for child porn

SFWA member and convicted child molester Ed Kramer has gotten himself in legal trouble again:

Former owner and co-founder of Dragon Con, Edward E. Kramer, was charged with possession of child pornography again. This comes after an investigation into Kramer et al for attempting to hack the court’s computers.

According to WSB-TV Atlanta, Kramer had a warrant issued against him on Monday, September 30th, 2019 for having multiple pictures of child pornography.

The warrant was issued after investigators began scouring Kramer’s computer and found that he and a private investigator, TJ Ward, attempted to hack into a county’s computers because another judge – Kathryn Schrader – suspected a prosecutor of monitoring her computer. Kramer, Ward, and Schrader were apparently all working together to hack into the county’s systems, but the trio’s plot was foiled when a wiretap and additional investigators began investigating Kramer, Ward, and Schrader, as detailed in a separate report by WSB-TV from back in mid-September.

Kramer’s fellow SFWA members, including the current president, tried to pretend he wasn’t a member the last time he was in the news, back in 2014. But, then as now, he was merely inactive, which meant that he hadn’t paid his dues while he was in prison; he was still listed in the online member’s directory.

To the best of my knowledge, he has still not been expelled from the organization, which has a long and sordid history of defending him.

This is pure essence of Gamma

SullyRob goes full gamma-rage because he didn’t get the attention he craved.

This is probably the last time vox will let me post here, I tried being nice to him for a while and that never got me anywhere with him or anywhere else on this blog. So since he refused to ever engage with me when I tried being respectful to him in the past. I see no reason to exit gracefully.

Gamma meltdown. Quelle surprise. Anyhow, comments are now locked-down, as per usual.