BBG Watch Commentary Fired Radio Liberty Russian journalists delivered some of the best in depth analysis of the links between the Boston bombings, violent jihadism and Chechnya. Known as Radio Liberty in Exile, journalists fired last year by the former management of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) turned to their still employed RFE/RL [...]

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It’s Holy Week here in the Philippines, which means lots of church going and Manila is emptying out for folks to go home for the Easter Holidays. First Things magazine discusses how Americans should view the crucifixion: not as an event to be watched, but as the result of our sins. They even quote Luther [...]

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One only has to scan the news papers or listen to comments about religion to see anti religion is now in style: not just of Catholics, of course, but hatred of all men of good will who follow traditional values. How dare they think that some things are actually right and some things are wrong [...]

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Well, today we Filipinos woke up and found we wouldn’t be losing Cardinal Tagle to Rome: Apparently an Argentinian bishop was picked for the next Pope. But choosing a name usually is a hint on what the Pope plans to do when in office, and it is interesting that Cardinal Bergloglino chose the name of [...]

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This week we Catholics celebrate Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. A lot of good Catholics were slightly hung over from too much Mardi Gras on Tuesday, but never mind: The idea is that “there is a time to party and a time to fast”, and now the time to fast has arrived. Traditionally, at [...]

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Welcome to the First Virtual Church of Our Lord and Savior, Steve Jobs. As you enter the sanctuary, please do not make eye contact with anyone. Keep your eyes focused on the screen of the mobile device of your choice. We are relevant and practice diversity here, which is easy since no one will even [...]

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It is the fearful, unthinking herd instinct and the forces that exploit it that are making us such a polarized nation. You don’t have to have a sick religion or be a right wing Republican to be delusional. Twitter is dripping with delusionalism in politics and atheism. And just try to convince me that Oswald [...]

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We read about one incident of a lunatic shooting people in a theater, a lunatic shooting people at a school, a lunatic crashing jetliners into skyscrapers. Then we conclude that all strangers are lunatics, too dangerous to connect with. So we stay alone, unconnected, and slowly we become a nation of benign lunatics.    I see [...]

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The fight between the NRA and the Obama administration is just political fog. The “excuse” is because of several high profile mass murders, yet the real problem is that the press publicizes and glorifies such murders, leading to “copy cat” crimes by the unstable. One has to wonder at dear old Joe Biden’s remark, justifying [...]

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NO ONE else in America is put underneath a law that dictates how you are supposed to spiritually raise your kids. The 1st amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”… but the ICWA Congress enacted comes dangerously close to doing just that.

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Every Christmas Eve, before the kids go to bed, we listen to Mannheim Steamroller’s “Silent Night” as the last thing in the day. Usually I’ll say a little something about remember family far away, or about soldiers deployed during this time. It’s usually short. However this year, with the Newtown shooting, and getting some inspiration [...]

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Part one discussed the way the Philippines went along with American pressure to pass a US style family planning program whose aim (denied by the president) is to limit population control. Reality check: every “discussion” of the bill by the Manila elites includes lamentations about the high population growth, and even a few politicians have [...]

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Neocolonialism anyone? The Philippines passed an RH bill, a “Reproductive Health Bill” that requires medical personnel to push birth control on their patients, and all the US newspapers are rejoicing. The bill had the opposition of the powerful Catholic church, but in a country where the average number of kids per woman has fell from [...]

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Ah yes. It’s time for the yearly “War on Christmas”. Right wing rhetoric? Well, it’s a way to sell newspapers…. What has changed in the last ten years is that it is now politically correct to ridicule Christian belief. Yet the latest report is over the top: One NBC Medical Expert named Dr. Snyderman has [...]

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If you ever saw the movie “LaStrada”, there is a quick glimpse of a retarded child with a huge head. I can’t remember why it is in the film, which is sad enough without it:: probably for shock value.But when I worked at a retarded institution, we had one such child, actually a man: Tommy. [...]

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A lot of  the news about the Middle East is politicized in the US press, but today’s reports are not good. The Reuters news agency Religion section has this article, that cautions: The fabric of Middle Eastern society has fundamentally changed. Being Muslim has replaced being Arab as the primary identifying factor. The consequences are [...]

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Ninety-five years ago, a bunch of ignorant hoi polloi went out into the fields of a small rural town to see a predicted miracle, and the big city MSM was there to laugh at them and to record how the fools would respond when they found nothing happened. Whoops: (photo Via Tea at Trianon) Yes, [...]

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There was a big story by National Geographic last week about illegal ivory being used by Philippino Catholics to make statues. They even named one of our more dubious priests as being involved in the practice. Corruption is not new in the Philippines, where winking at the law is a way of life and bribes [...]

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There are a lot of blog-posts trying to bash the LDS church as not being “Christian”, usually to encourage Evangelical voters to vote against him. As a Catholic, I am old enough to remember when a similar stealth campaign was done against John Kennedy. The more things change the more they stay the same. I [...]

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Another big “story” in the news, saying that a big shot Harvard professor has found proof that Jesus was married. And if you believe that one, here is a copy of an ancient papyrus that I’d like to sell to you: this one is from the ancient book of LOLCATBIBLEexodux 32 What? There was no [...]

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The kerfuffle of China’s land grabs against it’s Asian neighbors is not the only story that the MSM in the US is ignoring. This is the photo being ignored in the US Press: (Pope Benedict XVI waves to the faithful from his Pope-mobile upon his arrival to conduct an open-air mass service at Beirut City [...]

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There is a big kerfuffle about some asinine politician whose naive comments on sexual assault are being spun to prove there is a “war on women”. I made quite a few clinical comments on several web pages,(wonder how many of them were printed) but as a woman doc who has done quite a few “rape” [...]

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Forget the soap opera about the coddled rich of Downton Abby. Move over reality shows like the Kardashians or Tots and Tiaras. If you want a slice of reality, you might want to check on the latest BBC miniseries on PBS: Call the Midwife. Call the Midwife is a moving and intimate insight into the [...]

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Something of a brouhaha got started recently around a statement by Chick-fil-a CEO Dan Cathy. The company invests in Christian growth and ministry through its WinShape Foundation (WinShape.com). The name comes from the idea of shaping people to be winners. It began as a college scholarship and expanded to a foster care program, an international [...]

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This morning I rose and read the “sermon of the day” before I went to church, and sure enough, another highfalutin sermon on the Good Samaritan. For those who are not Christian, this is one of Jesus’ stories about a man beaten by robbers who was helped by a passerby who belonged to a rival [...]

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This report from an Iranian blog on Global Voices, says they have such a chicken shortage the price of .chickens have soared. So someone decided to censor films and TV programs that show…chickens (!) Against a backdrop of lengthening food queues, Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam, the head of Iran’s law enforcement forces, has warned that films depicting [...]

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Lots of  hyperbole and finger-pointing in the news this week about the Health Care bill, so  let’s look at a few facts. One: While you weren’t looking, medicine has morphed into big business. The days when your friendly family doc could throw away the bill and give you free medicine are long gone. If I [...]

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Yes, Children, he says it would have been okay for Sarah to kill Trig and sex with animals is okay too (as long as it is not cruel). But never mind: Being green means never to say you are sorry. So Peter Singer has been rewarded by being given a major government award by Australia, [...]

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In Syria, the war is getting nasty. One recent massacre of women and children is being touted as the reason for someone (NATO? Turkey? The UN?) to step in and stop the killing. And news reports of the government bombing civilian areas make many shudder. StrategyPage points out that a lot of the massacres are [...]

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Yes, contest fans. You too can win a free trip to New York City, and a dinner with the President, the first lady, a snotty British editoress from Vogue magazine (what, no good American gay fashion editor to tell us what to wear?) and someone named Sarah Jessica Parker (who is so thin it looks [...]

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