Extermination and War

Chilling piece from Joe Carter in Culture11 about how China and India, among other countries, are exterminating shocking numbers of baby girls in the womb. Hey, if abortion is legal and accepted, what right do any of us have to tell Indian and Chinese mothers they may not kill their baby daughters -- sorry, female fetuses -- because they'd prefer to have boys? Right, feminists?

Beyond the confluence of feticide and sexism, Carter foresees violence in the womb leading to violence elsewhere:

Even if we set aside the moral horror of a world that is killing its daughters, this oft-ignored trend of female feticide could pose a greater threat than many of the high-profile concerns that are touted by the media. For instance, the Chinese government says that by the year 2020 the men in that country will outnumber women by 300 million--roughly the entire population of the United States.

Imagine hordes of men, numbering in the hundreds of millions, who will never be able to have sexual contact with a woman, never be able to marry, and never leave a descendant to carry on their lineage. Think about the level of anger and frustration that will be generated. Now consider the fact that the number of males fit for military service (ages 18-49) in the U.S. is currently and remains steady at 54 million.

Pious Hand Wringing

Further proof that the Catholics are getting it more right all the time and why the Evangelicals flounder and spin their wheels under the banner of "conversation."

Truth hurts, truth divides, and truth is love. Truth is not judging. Truth is compassion and not tolerance. Hurt and divide are the ugly results of truth, the difference is that the glory in truth is to far outshine the ugly. Too many times, we focus on the ugly and not the glory.

The Roman Catholic arhcbishop of Denver, Charles Chaput, is someone I'd be a dummy for when it comes to the issue he writes about in this magnificent teaching document. He sets the Speaker of the House - Nancy Pelosi, a self-described "ardent practicing Catholic" straight about what her Church actually teaches and expects its communicants to believe on abortion. Rarely do religious leaders of any church speak so clearly and forcefully about faith and morality in public life. Here's a characteristic passage:

Ardent, practicing Catholics will quickly learn from the historical record that from apostolic times, the Christian tradition overwhelmingly held that abortion was grievously evil. In the absence of modern medical knowledge, some of the Early Fathers held that abortion was homicide; others that it was tantamount to homicide; and various scholars theorized about when and how the unborn child might be animated or "ensouled." But none diminished the unique evil of abortion as an attack on life itself, and the early Church closely associated abortion with infanticide. In short, from the beginning, the believing Christian community held that abortion was always, gravely wrong.

Of course, we now know with biological certainty exactly when human life begins. Thus, today's religious alibis for abortion and a so-called "right to choose" are nothing more than that - alibis that break radically with historic Christian and Catholic belief.

Abortion kills an unborn, developing human life. It is always gravely evil, and so are the evasions employed to justify it. Catholics who make excuses for it - whether they're famous or not - fool only themselves and abuse the fidelity of those Catholics who do sincerely seek to follow the Gospel and live their Catholic faith.

Magnificent. Of course many Catholic Democrats and Christian Democrats will continue to vote and serve the Democratic Party. Earlier he wrote:

But [Catholics who support pro-choice candidates] also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it. What is a "proportionate" reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It's the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life--which we most certainly will. If we're confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.

And further

Carter lost his bid for re-election, but even with an avowedly prolife Ronald Reagan as president, the belligerence, dishonesty, and inflexibility of the pro-choice lobby has stymied almost every effort to protect unborn human life since.

In the years after the Carter loss, I began to notice that very few of the people, including Catholics, who claimed to be "personally opposed" to abortion really did anything about it. Nor did they intend to. For most, their personal opposition was little more than pious hand-wringing and a convenient excuse--exactly as it is today. In fact, I can't name any pro-choice Catholic politician who has been active, in a sustained public way, in trying to discourage abortion and to protect unborn human life--not one. Some talk about it, and some may mean well, but there's very little action.

"Pious hand-wringing." Exactly so.

Where's the humanity in a "Pro-Choice" stance?

Fantasy Football Update - Draft Results

Muhahahahaha, Muhahahahahahaha, Muhahahahahahaha........

That's all I can say.


1st round - Randy Moss
2nd round - Marques Colston
3rd round - Tony Romo
4th round - Thomas Jones
5th round - Edge James
6th round - Fred Taylor
7th round - Chester Taylor
8th round - Jeremy Shockey
9th round - Hines Ward
10th round - Patrick Crayton
11th round - Matt Schaub
12th round - Packers D/ST
13th round - Chris Johnson
14th round - Colts D/ST
15th round - Mason Crosby

I debated Drew Brees over Tony Romo, but having Colston, I'm not a fan of pairing up Qb's and WR's. It works great when they have a 2 TD game together, but when one is slow, usually the other is to. So Romo was the call in the 3rd.

I would have rather had McFadden in the 5th over Edge but he was sniped right before me.

I may have been able to get Chet Taylor in the 8th but my second goal of this draft (Doing the Opposite being 1st) was to make sure I came out with the biggest, most important handcuff in the draft.

This is "Doing the Opposite" to perfection.

Fantasy Football Update - 1

Well, I do practice what I preach.

I will be doing the opposite this year afterall. I traded my 1st, 2nd, and 4th round draft picks to the guy who had the 5th pick in the first round for his 1st, 2nd, and 4th round picks as well. I benefited big time by the fact that the guy is a big RB-RB guy and he knew in the 5th spot he wasn't going to get an elite back. So I am able to keep my 3rd and 5th round picks where they are (2nd in each round) as well as all rounds till the end. While my 1st round pick fell down only 3 spots, I moved up in the 2nd and 4th rounds, guaranteeing that I will get a top 5 pick in round 1, top 6 picks in rounds 2 and 4 and the second pick in rounds 3 and 5.

WOW!!!!

So I am most definitely going QB-WR-WR in some kind of order like that in the first 3 rounds. I haven't decided if I am going to draft Brady or Moss at 5. If I take Moss in the first then it's Romo or Brees in the 3rd with another top WR in the 2nd (Wayne? Colston?). Then it is all RBs in rounds 4-8. If I take Brady in round 1, then it is WR-WR in rounds 2 and 3 with, yep, RBs in rounds 4-8.

But maybe. I'm actually thinking of going TE in round 4 or 5 if Witten, Shockey, or Clark are on the board and I am comfortable with the RBs left on the board will make it to me

As last year, I'll track my progress for all to see just how right this strategery is.

My draft is 7pm tomorrow night, so results will be posted that night or the next morning.

Stayed tuned and see what I pull off.

Fantasy Football Time!!!

For you faithful readers out there, you know I wax poetic on "Doing the Opposite" in Fantasy Football at your draft. Meaning, instead of RB-RB in rounds one and two, you go WR-QB or even both WR in one and two, and then go a step further and coming out of round three you have both your WRs and your top QB.

You can read a whole bunch more about this here and follow the links to track my progress last year. I ended up the Regular Season league champion and finished 3rd overall during the playoffs (damn Brady and New England D, as well as Kolby Smith...who...exactly....going for a buck 20 and 2 touches.....ugh). And when you read the article, look who I had listed as "sleeper" picks last year: AP, Lynch, T. Jones (he had 7 100 yard games last year), and Brandon Jones (if only he could have stayed healthy).

Well, this year, I landed the #2 pick. Doing the Opposite works best and ideally when you are not in the top 3 (most years). My league doesn't allow trading of draft picks, so I have number 2. Which is the highest I have ever drafted (last year was number 5 and that was the highest ever to that point). Having had the bottom of the 1st and top of the 2nd round for so many years, I started doing the opposite and cornering the market on WRs and QBs in the first 3 rounds, and then swooping up all RB's in rounds 4-8 trusting one will hit. And last year that was AP, 3 years ago that was LJ, 4 years ago it was Westbrook. You gotta do your research a little bit more on the middle of the pack RB's but the elite QBs and WRs are always the same, so you need time researching them, spend it on the middle of the pack RBs.

I could go on and on and on about follow the link above you can read all about it.

But this year, with number 2, I going RB in the first round. But do not fail....it's going to be all WRs and QBs in rounds 2,3,and 4. Then back to "middle of the pack" rb's in rounds 5-8.

I hate to disappoint all of you, but at number 2 I may get LT or Westbrook. My personal top 2 in all of fantasy football land. AP has been hurt every year of his collegiate and now NFL career, S-Jax has never lived up to the hype, and Addai doesn't touch the ball as much as Westbrook does and he too gets hurt...a-lot. Also, the guy holding 1 says he's taking AP #1, which leaves me LT!!!!! I'll find out next Friday (22nd) at the draft.

I am aiming for something along the lines of this coming out of the draft:

QB - Derick Anderson (Cleveland has the best O-Line in the game...take in round 4)
RB - Brian Westbrook (rd 1)
RB - Jonathon Stewart (rd 5)
WR - Marques Colston (rd 2)
WR - Larry Fitzgerald (rd 3)


How could you not like this team?

Do the Opposite!!!

BIG DAY TODAY!!!!!!

ACTUALLY IT IS A HUGE DAY TODAY!!!!

A DAY LIKE THIS ONLY COMES AROUND LIKE:

3.28542094455852E-05

PERCENT OF THE TIME A CENTRURY





AFTERALL

TODAY IS

08.08.08

Whoa, trippy dude