Pansy and Peony

SNOWMAGEDDON!

Yes, I went to the grocery store yesterday -- I'd lose my DC-Metro cred if I didn't -- and yes, it was a madhouse. It took twenty minutes just to find a parking spot, and inside the carts were almost gridlocked. One of the staff mentioned that it was "worse than Christmas" and that it had been like that since 7:00 AM.

There was plenty of milk, bread, and T.P. -- the holy trinity of pre-snow panic -- but there were some other items that were completely cleaned out:

• bulk garlic


• bulk red potatoes


• packaged white mushrooms


• packaged cremini mushrooms


• any andouille sausage costing less than $16.99/ lb

Seriously, what is up with the garlic?!

What a mean Mommy I am! I made Hambet study all his spelling words as if he would have his spelling test on Friday before I told him that school would be out.

We've been having wet fluffy snow for around six hours now. The real monster snow is supposed to be starting shortly....

Hambet and I started The Horse and His Boy this afternoon. Although I'd read the Narnia books when I was a child, for some reason only a couple of them "stuck" in my mind, so now I'm getting to enjoy with Hambet the one-more-chapter-pleeease! thrill of reading them for the first time.

Is anybody else watching the new version of Emma that's been on Masterpiece Theater? The conclusion is this Sunday. This version's Emma is growing on me -- I like her liveliness -- and Harriet is very good, but I am sorry to say that I am disappointed by Miss Bates.

I've been invited to be part of a new group blog! Feminine Geniuses launches this weekend. So far, I've only contributed some coding and a little collection of feminine-genius readings, but I hope to have a real post up soon.

via Joe Carter at First Thoughts

Great rant from Bride of Rove:

Have you ever wondered why abortion was eventually approved as the law of the land? It did not begin with Roe vs Wade. It did not begin with women’s rights advocates. It began in a far darker corner of the US legal system building precedent upon precedent. In Buck v Bell the following quote is on record:

“It is better for all the world if . . . society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.”
~Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The story is rather horrifying and you can google it yourself, but what I feel is the important thing people should understand if they did not get this in school is that, as the world wondered at the Origin of the Species and all that it meant for mankind and the planet, there were men and women who decided that natural selection was failing the human race and that, as brilliant, sentient beings, we could do better and that we were actually obligated to play god in the face of plague, poverty and hunger. Killing off the non-contributing members of society for the good of the workers was a kindness in the long run. This was common thinking. The class wars were not pleasant. Abortion was the sound of the educated classes winning round one.

She goes on to quote a letter written in 1992 by Ron Weddington, co-counsel in Roe v. Wade, to President Clinton:

“But you can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country. No, I’m, not advocating some, sort of mass extinction of these unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can’t afford to have babies. . There, I’ve said it. It’s what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited and…well…so Republican… . Condoms alone won’t do it. Depo-Provera, Norplant and the new birth control injection being developed in India are not a complete answer… . No, government is also going to have to provide vasectomies, tubal ligations and abortions…RU 486 and conventional abortions. Even if we make birth control as ubiquitous as sneakers and junk food, there will still be unplanned pregnancies. There have been about 30 million abortions in this country since Roe v. Wade. Think of all the poverty, crime and misery …and then add 30 million unwanted babies to the scenario… . We don’t need more cannon fodder. We don’t need more parishioners, We don’t need more cheap labor. We don’t need more poor babies”

RTWT. Eliminating poverty by eliminating the poor.

Good article on how the pro-life movement is bigger and broader than the media and political focus group stereotypes:

The group most important to contradicting mainstream presumption, in my view, are pro-life Democrats. The progressive liberalism dominating the Democratic Party, which includes a rigid litmus test for being “pro-choice,” is a formidable challenge for the pro-life movement, not to mention, an extreme political calculation on the part of Democrats. The conventional political assumption that people who have pro-life views on abortion are “conservative” is nonsense. If the Democratic Party wants to be successful, it will have to accommodate those with diverse views on this issue.

RTWT. Certain forked-tongued Catholics in public life have claimed that voting pro-life is imposing one's "personal beliefs" on others -- implying that those "personal beliefs" are particular religious beliefs and practices, that protecting unborn life is the equivalent of mandating meatless Fridays and the Apostle's Creed. The broad array of non-Catholic and non-religious groups shows just how silly that excuse is.

With lyrics by Bob the Trousered Ape:

It started with a post at Drawin Catholic:

I'm darkly amused by the picture of a pro-abortion counter-protestor to the March For Life carrying a sign which says, "Won't Get Laid Without Roe v. Wade". Why, precisely, does the bearer think that anyone else should be worried by this?

In the comments, then, one Kyle R. Cupp opined, "Such rhythm, such rhyme! Her sign could start the chorus of a hit pop song."

Like waving catnip in front of a cat...

I’m a girl with great ambition,
Dreaming of a high position:
Who would date a quarterback, a movie star, a politician;
But they don’t get a chance
Of a glance
Into my pants
Unless they meet my one condition,Which is:
They don’t get laid,
No they don’t get laid,
They don’t get laid without Roe v. Wade!

Quoth President "Let me be clear" Obama:

The last thing I will say, though -- let me say this about health care and the health care debate, because I think it also bears on a whole lot of other issues. If you look at the package that we've presented -- and there's some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating. For example, we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your -- if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you're not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.

Now, let me get this straight: "some provisions" just "snuck in there" (as opposed to being written and voted on by members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate), and those random "provisions" "might have" broken promises (and statements) that citizens would be able to...

• keep their existing insurance


• make decisions with their doctors without government interference

Which would imply that all those people who were saying that the health care bills, if passed, would eventually force people to give up their existing insurance and face government interference with private medical decisions -- all those people who were called (and are still being called) "obstructionists", "scaremongers", "teabaggers", and who knows what-all else -- all those people were correct.

And President Obama's administration was calling them liars.

So: allowing random legal provisions that violated previous pledges to magically come into existence; insisting that those legal provisions did not exist and that people who insisted they did were dupes or malevolent liars; berating people who voted against the reform bills because of thse provisions and then, in the same weekend, casually noting that well, yes, those provisions exist but are already being taken out (really? when? and by whom?)....

...that does bear on "a whole lot of other issues," doesn't it?

Pansy's computer is broken and that's why we haven't been hearing from her. She is taking things day by day, and greatly appreciates your prayers.

This weekend, we'll be celebrating the seventh anniversary of the blog! Any nominations for favorite posts from the past to reprint?

Three quotations from the Angelic Doctor:

"Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious. "

"Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures. "

"Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath, and a glass of wine. "

HT: Micki, curatrix of the holy cards

Nifty! You can read this ground-breaking book online here, complete with the original illustrations by G.K. Chesterton.

Afraid of using semicolons? Today's your lucky day; Joe Carter at First Things links to a memorable guide.

(For myself, I might have forgotten a great deal of Ecology 402, but I've never forgotten dear Dr. W's comment on my final paper: "I applaud your correct use of the semicolon.")

An IM conversation from 2004

PeonyMoss: OT, this stinks, I am looking for web citations about that sappy space opera I like and am not finding much
PANSY: which opera?
PeonyMoss: Snow Queen, World's End, Summer Queen by Joan Vinge
:PANSY: oh
PeonyMoss: "space opera" -- soap operas in space
PANSY: ok
PANSY: I was thinking LaBoheme
PeonyMoss: Rudolf and Mimi are not in space to the best of my knowledge
PeonyMoss: but then it's been a while since I saw it
PANSY: lol, you haven't seen the latest version

NFL Team Names in Latin