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No, No, it should read “The Three Fairly Sagacious Persons”

The Anglican church, in spite of their assurances to the contrary, have become the latest victims in the political correctness insanity sweeping the world’s supposedly more educated countries. It now seems they do not want to refer to the 3 Magi who showed up at the birth of Jesus Christ as “men.” Why’s that?

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The revision committee said: “While it seems very unlikely that these Persian court officials were female, the possibility that one or more of the Magi were female cannot be excluded completely.” There is no theological dispute about the gifts they brought — gold, frankincense and myrrh — but the prayer has been changed to use the word Magi on the grounds that “the visitors were not necessarily wise and not necessarily men.”

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OK, now let’s get back into reality, folks. First, unless you were physically present at the event, you can’t exclude completely the possibility of a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g. The birth of Jesus Christ might have been attended by a flock of talking seagulls with background music provided by the Mos Eisly Cantina band for all you know. That possibility can’t be “excluded completely”, either. We are, however, pretty confident that it didn’t happen that way. And there’s the crux of the situation, even acknowledged by the Anglican revision committee.

It’s not what’s possible that we consider in our daily lives, it’s what’s probable. It’s a possibility that you’re about to be horribly electrocuted by a weird power spike shooting up through your keyboard, but I’m betting you didn’t just jump away from the computer. Is it possible? Sure. It is probable? Nope. The quote from the Anglicans even notes that it’s “very unlikely” that the Magi were female. If you’ve studied history, you know that “very unlikely” is an understatement. So why, unless you’re simply bowing to some political correctness pressure, would you change how you pray to include items which it is very unlikely were included in the event? No good reason I know.

And that crack about the Magi being “not necessarily wise” is just a cover to make them feel better about the change. “Wise” is a subjective label, and I’d recommend the Anglican revision committee not tarry too long in talking about who’s wise and who’s not. The Anglicans can pray any way they like but it’s “very unlikely” this change has anything to do with anything but some PC drivel.

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Not making tax increases permanent = tax hike?

I’m a Republican and a fiscal conservative and I’m not embarrassed by either association. Unfortunately, I’m also not someone willing to let soundbites serve as rational thought. I’m certainly not going to allow someone to get away with calling a table a chair even if they’re arguing for my side of the fight. That’s what a number of my fellow Republicans are doing these days with regards to this temporary tax cut issue. They claim that if Congress does not make them permanent, then Congress is actually increasing your taxes.

Ridiculous.

Say you walked into my bakery yesterday and bought a dozen donuts for the normal price of $5.00 a dozen. You come in today and see that I’ve offered you a special – today only – on donuts selling them at $1.00 a dozen. Would my charging my normal price tomorrow mean that I raised my prices? Of course not. The normal price is my normal price. I granted you a special lower price for a given period of time, but you can’t say I’ve run a general price increase when I return to my normal charges.

The tax cuts President Bush championed were quite specifically granted for a finite period of time. When that time period runs out, the taxes will return to normal. They will not be raised. All of that is just smoke, anyway. The real question is whether or not the tax cuts have done the job they were intended to do. Have American businesses seen an increase in demand and orders as a result of people having their taxes cut? I believe they have, yes. Speaking from my own profession – which has seen a huge hit in jobs due to the offshoring of IT positions – I am seeing larger numbers of companies increasing their spending on networking needs. They do that because they are able to afford it and they see that it will help them provide their goods and services to their clients. Their clients are consumers who clearly have more money to spend. In general terms, the tax cuts appear to be doing what they were intended to do.

Now, how effective have they been? That’s a question I can’t answer. Have we seen an increase in demand and therefore production that is consumerate with the costs of those cuts? I don’t know yet, but that’s where our debate should be focused. It should not be stolen away by shouted propaganda and misdirection.

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“We were raised like animals,” says DC Sniper’s siblings

Yeah, and he made the most of it, didn’t he? Cry me a river, kids. That his siblings are now saying that John Muhammad, one of the convicted DC Snipers, had a rough childhood does nothing to mitigate Muhammad’s actions over a year ago. I personally know people whose childhood was quite similar and grew to despise their parents. These are people who left home as soon as they were able and have done nothing but spit and flip the bird back toward their childhood homes. Speaking to one of them about my father’s death last year, he offered condolences and said I had been granted a gift beyond price in having a father I could mourn. When his died he didn’t go to the funeral. In fact, he said, he went to a local pub and bought a round for the bar in celebration. I can’t imagine what he must have endured to develop that kind of feeling.

He most certainly did not pick up a rifle and start blowing peoples’ heads off at range.

Muhammad’s lawyers are now asking a judge to set aside both the death sentance and the conviction and are attaching the sibling’s comments by way of giving force to their petition. If this judge has an ounce of sense, his immediate comment is going to be “so what?” That they will come for him one day after a steak dinner or some such and take him down a hall to a gurney where he will drift off peacefully into that long, long night is already too kind a fate. It is my fervent hope that the judge see through this one and toss it out of his office.