THIS is National Pizza Month, so please pause for a few moments to look around you and take in the physical devastation caused by mass consumption of one of the most disgusting foodstuffs ever invented by man. I am talking, of course, about commercial-grade pizza, not various forms of the authentic Italian food, which sometimes approaches the sublime. I saw a man the other day who looked about 15 months pregnant and instantly I had a vision of greasy boxes and rubber cheese. This poor man will probably lose 10 years or so of his life because of Papa Johns or Domino’s or some frozen pizza-esque roof tiles he routinely pulls out of his freezer. I found myself pondering his wife. How could she allow such a thing? Well, who knows. She is possibly suffering from pizza-induced Alzheimer’s herself and has stopped cooking altogether.

Do you know even hotels are in on it now? The Holiday Inn in Fargo, North Dakota offers a special pizza package that includes one large Domino’s pizza with two toppings. It is painful for me to remember all the slings and arrows I have sustained over the years in talking about such a controversial subject. I have often been accused of alarmism and absolutism. But when I look at such a glaring and obvious victim of pizza consumption as the man I mention above, when I think of him possibly checking into a hotel room in Fargo, I know that I will never be silenced.

The Pizza Industrial Complex is so vast and, well, complex, it sometimes seems impenetrable. The truth is I have been often operating on hunches and educated intuitions, not real investigation. However, an enterprising and hard-working blogger (Warning: an immodest photo here of her eating pizza) has done some serious research into the ingredients of this manufactured foodstuff. (more…)

  If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself. ---  St. Augustine

JEANETTE V. writes:

We live in evil times populated by fools who declare themselves wise:

Transgender military personnel from 18 countries gather for meeting

The conference attendees, who are all from militaries that allow transgender service, gathered in Washington, D.C. on Monday.

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THE masculinization of students at Wellesley College, the famous women’s institution in Massachussetts, began long before women started openly identifying themselves as men and having surgery to slice off their breasts. Femininity was marginalized in the feminist era in favor of male standards of achievement. Now there are enough “trans men” among students and alumni to create a club and to foster worries that these “men” may represent a threatening patriarchal influence at the tony school, which has an endowment of almost $1.7 billion.

For a glimpse of how mental illness and sexual perversion have gripped an entire institution, read The New York Times recent piece on the school.

Shouldn’t the school be concerned that women students becoming “men” are insulting women? After all, what’s wrong with being a woman? You would think a women’s college would be the first place where women could be talked out of wanting to be men. The spiritual mutilation of women has led logically to their physical mutilation with hormone therapy and surgery.

This whole thing exposes a deep lie behind feminist ideology at Wellesley and elsewhere — it’s based on envy of men.

Pauline and Henry Fowle Durant founded the college in 1870 in order to prepare women for “…great conflicts, for vast reforms in social life.” Their goal has been reached.

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ANN H. writes:

Tucson is full of “art” such as the McCarthy sculpture in Paris. Tucson is a sanctuary city, full of illegal and legal immigrants from many different countries. The schools are the epitome of leftist ideology and the City Council is composed of Pelosi-type Democrats always in the majority. It is near the bottom of cities its size in income and jobs, near the top on crime. For those of us native to the city, it is a cultural, moral disaster.

A few years ago, across from a Catholic high school, the City put a piece of public art. People were outraged. It was pure ugliness and called “Splash.”  It was left brown to imitate the water that runs in the arroyos after rains.  I warned the artist that such a piece next to a Catholic school was a big mistake and suggested that he at least make the “water” blue.  He did not listen and within two days, the piece you see pictured below was “improved,” by the students no doubt. Each of the appendages had a black line painted a few inches from the end and on the very end was a black mark which took no imagination to know was meant to be a male’s urethra.

The piece was removed and put in a poor, primarily Mexican neighborhood, where I hate to think of the fate it met.

But we have gotten better in Tucson.  We do not have such ugly “art” anymore.  The picture below is circa 2010.

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KARL D. writes:

Yesterday morning, I decided to go out to a local cafe for a late breakfast. My intention was to have a peaceful bite while reading a guidebook for a vacation I am taking shortly. Big mistake. I forgot it was Sunday which means that the place would be packed with families with young children, which is understandable. What eventually made me flee, however, was the way these parents simply let their children run wild and would themselves do things that my parents would never have dreamed of allowing.

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SGT. DALE TERRY (above), of the Chesterfield, Virginia sheriff’s department, discovered on Saturday the skeletal remains of what is unofficially believed to be the body of missing University of Virginia student Hannah Graham in Albermarle County. It was an uncanny discovery, according to interviews with Terry, because he was just about to suspend search of the abandoned property when he saw bones and a skull in a creek bed and the black pants Graham was wearing that night.

Graham’s pretty face has been flashed around the world since she disappeared while walking home drunk in tight blank pants and a sequined midriff on the night of Sept. 13 and encountered Jesse Matthew, the black “gentle giant” (he has actually been described as such) who is now believed to be a serial killer. (more…)

  THE required two-thirds majority of bishops at the "Extraordinary Synod on the Family" has rejected three of the most controversial paragraphs in a draft midterm report, including one paragraph that spoke of the special "gifts" of homosexuals. However, the original wording will still be published and disseminated to dioceses around the world for discussion. And the parts of the report which offered nuanced, touchy-feely support for cohabitation, civil unions and contraception reportedly remain. (So far the final report is only available in Italian.) Francis in his final address spoke glowingly of the "animated discussions" that characterized the meetings, all of it so much pseudo-Catholic theater staged to achieve his revolutionary goals. So what is the ultimate effect? To sow confusion. To desensitize. To make it seem as if the moral law is up for debate, a matter of personal opinion. In his final speech, Francis criticized "traditionalists" and "intellectuals" who do not allow themselves to be "surprised by God." Here is the humble "pontiff" on live screens before the gathering.

GORDON writes:

Have you posted an entry on contemporary trends in breastfeeding yet?

Today, on an overseas flight, I was seated in proximity to two new mothers who seemed to have no qualms about blatantly exposing their nude breasts for all passengers to see.

This seems to be a rather curious and shameless phenomenon of recent years.

Thoughts?

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Paul McCarthy’s sculpture “Tree” (it’s supposed to be a Christmas tree) in the Place Vendôme in Paris was inspired by a sex toy, according to the “artist,” who is famous for acts of Marxist pornographic obscenity and who isn’t an artist at all but a well-funded public vandal. Many hate the sculpture and someone cut the cables yesterday. It’s hard to believe that the controversy wasn’t expected by those who commissioned the work and that they don’t even welcome the controversy. One doesn’t commission, or give a permit for, a Paul McCarthy sculpture unless one wants to be provocative and express chic nihilism. Supposedly, the “sculpture” will be re-inflated.

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JON D. writes:

As a Portland, Oregon resident, I think you and your readers should know some interesting facts about the liberal dystopia here:

1) Portland, Oregon has (or had) the most sex shops and strip clubs of any U.S. city. The concept of marriage being a sacrament is completely disregarded by Oregonians. They live promiscuously, like barnyard animals.

2) Portland is extolled as wonderful place for lesbians to live. Your readers can Google that. Of course little is told about lesbian couples penchant for domestic violence.

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BUCK writes:

Charlie Rose, Norah O’Donnell, and Jane Pauley interviewed Cardinal Dolan whose responses reminded me of Baghdad Bob’s unshakeable, counterfactual art of the spin: “On this occasion, I am not going to mention the number of the infidels who were killed and the number of destroyed vehicles. The operation continues.”

My transcription:

Charlie Rose:  Is this an example of Pope Francis trying to take the church in new directions, open it up without changing or assaulting doctrine?

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IF Oregon’s First “Lady” Cylvia Hayes had been discovered to have formerly been in a sham marriage with another woman, instead of with an Ethiopian man who wanted U.S. citizenship, she’d probably be enough of a star to the Portland elite to survive politically. As it is, she has had to appear before cameras in very moving tears, apologizing for her fraudulent marriage for cash, explaining her purchase of a parcel of land to grow pot and answering charges of ethics violations with regard to consulting contracts with the government. She just can’t get a break, which is shocking given her strong environmental convictions.

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HEATHER MAC DONALD writes at The Weekly Standard about the campus rape controversy and the spate of new regulations:

If campus rape were the epidemic that the activists allege, there would have been a stampede to create alternative schools for girls. Instead, every year the competition among girls (and boys) to get into selective colleges grows fiercer. Sophisticated baby boomer mothers start their daughters’ preparation for college earlier and earlier. The Obama White House asserts that campus rape “survivors” suffer a lifetime of psychological and physical trauma, yet females are graduating from college in ever more disproportionate numbers, after which they go on to have lucrative careers, with no evidence of crippling mental injury. (more…)

PAUL writes:

I was told in the last year that New Orleans was the only place in America where people in casual conversation with a newly met person routinely will ask what high school they went to once both know they are fellow Orleanians. We might get a clue as to their breeding/class and the people we both might know. Unusual considering the cosmopolitan nature of New Orleans.

The next question usually is, “When?” Pretty cheeky, but it happens more often than not. I don’t ask the year of a female unless she is significantly younger, my age, or older. Males always ask it of one another. And everyone, I am not exaggerating, knows several people you know. The metro area is a big small town of over one million. Louisiana has by far the highest percentage of people who have never left.

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  JAMES N. writes: It's very important to understand why those in power are opposed to stopping arrivals of passenger aircraft from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. On October 1, 2014, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an opinion paper co-authored by Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D., Rahm's brother and an important Obama adviser in his own right. It was titled "Why Should High-Income Countries Help Fight Ebola", and it contained the following language: "...there are obligations of global justice to combat Ebola and strengthen health systems and infrastructure in affected countries in the longer term. Advocates of so-called cosmopolitanism - a key position in the philosophical debate about global justice - argue that national borders have no significance and that all people, regardless of where they live, are entitled to the same education, health care services, and other social resources..." The people in power have been creating a borderless world for at least sixty years. They have achieved functional borderlessness in the U.S.A., using the covert revolutionary tactic "think of it always, speak of it never." Most Americans still believe we have the ability to close our borders on short notice, when clearly we do not. In any event, Obama, his Health and Human Services secretary, his Labor secretary, his acting Surgeon General, his Centers for Disease Control Director - all of them would DIE before they agreed to stop the flights, because doing it would affirm our borders as actual physical…

  FROM Novus Ordo Watch: It is an absolute theological freak show in Rome at this point. Finding “positive” aspects in fornication, adultery, sodomy? Poor St. John the Baptist (see Matthew 14) — he could have kept his head attached to his neck if only he had known about what the “Holy Spirit” would be telling the Vatican in the future. You see, if he had only avoided such “insensitive” language against King Herod, language that clearly “discriminated” against him, making him feel “unwelcome” and “judged”, oh, how much more could have been accomplished! If only the Baptist had recognized the “good elements” in the king’s adultery, all would have been well! .... Likewise, our Blessed Lord: Instead of “encouraging” the woman at the well to strive for the “ideal” of a valid marriage, He flat-out told her, "For thou hast had five husbands: and he whom thou now hast, is not thy husband” (Jn 4:18). That is so insensitive! What about the positive aspects of her adultery? What about the “fidelity” and “love” she was surely showing to her “Husband No. 5”? Wasn’t she making sacrifices and such? Didn’t she cook him meals? Clearly, the Holy Spirit of 2000 years ago hadn’t yet “smelled the scent of the people.” Good thing we’ve got Bergoglio now to straighten it all out!