I was curious to see what’s happened to churchgoing in this country since my youth, when I remember most people going to church—well, going religiously.
My leading theory was that churchgoing has decreased mightily since then. But I was surprised to see this chart:
Surprisingly (at least to me), it’s only Catholic churchgoing that’s declined since I was a girl. Protestant churches—and I know that covers a lot of ground—have held steady. However, the “steady” they’ve held at is a much lower level of churchgoing than Catholicism began with in mid-twentieth-century. What’s actually occurred is that Catholic churchgoing has declined from its earlier heights to almost exactly match the levels at which the Protestant churches started.
Is it that Catholicism has become more like Protestant churches—less distinctive? It certainly isn’t the child abuse scandals, because the trend started long before those were publicized and has been slow, steady, and relatively even.
…the two men traveling on stolen passports may not have had any relation to the downing of the Malaysian flight, at least if this story is true:
Benjaporn Krutnait, owner of the Grand Horizon Travel agency, said the Iranian, a long-term business contact who she knew only as “Mr Ali”, first asked her to book cheap tickets to Europe for the two men on March 1. She initially reserved one of the men on a Qatar Airways flight and the other on Etihad.
But the tickets expired when Benjaporn did not hear back from Ali. When he contacted her again on Thursday, she rebooked the men on the Malaysia Airlines flight through Beijing because it was the cheapest available.
Their final destinations were Copenhagen and Frankfurt. So it sounds as though no particular flight was specified, they were planning to split up later on, and which flights they would take to reach those European cities was left up to the travel agent, who was instructed merely to book them on the cheapest ones. That would be an awfully strange way to plan an airplane bombing.
What’s more, a person claiming to be friends of the two men says they were young Iranians looking to emigrate to Denmark and Germany, and that one had a mother living in Frankfurt. That ties in quite well with the report from the travel agent about the way the tickets were reserved, including the fact that their final destinations were different, and that there was a shady Iranian middleman. My guess is that the middleman procured the stolen passports, as well.
If this is all true—and I’d say it’s more likely to be true than not, because it neatly fits the fact situation as presented—it’s highly unlikely that these particular men had anything to do with the disaster that befell the Malaysian flight. They were probably just looking for a better life away from Iran, and willing to pay for fake passports to get it. Fate intervened.
[ADDENDUM: This article claims to show a photo of the younger Iranian, the one who had plans to be met by his mother in Germany. Very sad; only nineteen years old. One of hundreds of tragic stories.
The article also contains a strange and spooky detail about cellphones: that relatives claim that many of the passengers’ smartphones are still ringing. I’m wondering how much of what is currently being reported is actually true.]
The Timesreports that a huge chunk of the new Medicaid recipients will consist of the incarcerated. This helps localities and states shift the burden of the cost of their treatment to the federal government.
Just another factoid we’re now finding out about Obamacare, as Pelosi said we would.
In other Obamacare news, a large union that deals with hospitality workers, called Unite Here, has issued a report saying that Obamacare will further exacerbate the Democrats’ new béªte noire, income inequality. The report is entitled, “The Irony of ObamaCare: Making inequality worse,” and its assumption is that this is an unintended (and, by extrapolation, unanticipated) outcome. I wonder. Another irony, of course, is the enormous support organized labor has given Obamacare until recently.
What does Unite Here want? Hint: it’s not the repeal of Obamacare. They want to be in line for the perks they think they deserve:
Having already made efforts to accommodate businesses, churches and congressional staff, it is ironic that the administration is now highlighting issues of economic inequality without acting to preserve health plans that have been achieving the goals of the ACA for decades,” the report concludes. “Without a smart fix, the ACA will heighten the inequality that the Administration seeks to reduce ”¦ We cannot sit idly by as the politicians carve up our health plans while they carve out exceptions for themselves and every special interest feeding at the trough in Washington.”
Let us feed at that trough, too! Our special interest group is very, very special!
Let me make it clear that I am not criticizing Unite Here’s desire to be allowed to keep its health insurance plans (that’s the request made at the end of its report). I think everyone should be allowed the same privilege.
The case remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. My guess, when all is said and done, is that Lanza was a rare combination of Asperger’s and psychopath, and it was the psychopath part that made the difference.
People like to think they could have done better parenting a son such as Adam, but hindsight allows us to think we’re smarter than most of us would be. In retrospect it’s easy to say he shouldn’t have been around guns, for example, but Adam Lanza seems to have shown not a hint of violence in his life until his rampage. His estrangement from his father was at Adam’s instigation, not Peter’s, and if you read the article you will see that Peter had been very involved in Adam’s life prior to that.
There are many many victims of this tragedy. One of them is Peter Lanza, although he’s not asking for pity:
Peter does not think that Adam had any affection for him, either, by [the day of the killings]. He said, “With hindsight, I know Adam would have killed me in a heartbeat, if he’d had the chance. I don’t question that for a minute. The reason he shot [his mother] Nancy four times was one for each of us: one for Nancy; one for him; one for Ryan [Adam’s brother]; one for me.”
…[E]ven with hindsight, [Peter Lanza] doesn’t think that the catastrophe could have been predicted. But he constantly thinks about what he could have done differently and wishes he had pushed harder to see Adam. “Any variation on what I did and how my relationship was had to be good, because no outcome could be worse,” he said. Another time, he said, “You can’t get any more evil,” and added, “How much do I beat up on myself about the fact that he’s my son? A lot.”…
Peter has dreamed about Adam every night since the event, dreams of pervasive sadness rather than fear; he had told me that he could not be afraid of his fate as Adam’s father, even of being murdered by his son. Recently, though, he had had the worst nightmare of his life. He was walking past a door; a figure in the door began shaking it violently. Peter could sense hatred, anger, “the worst possible evilness,” and he could see upraised hands. He realized it was Adam. “What surprised me is that I was scared as shit,” he recounted. “I couldn’t understand what was happening to me. And then I realized that I was experiencing it from the perspective of his victims.”…
Peter declared that he wished Adam had never been born, that there could be no remembering who he was outside of who he became. “That didn’t come right away. That’s not a natural thing, when you’re thinking about your kid. But, God, there’s no question. There can only be one conclusion, when you finally get there.”
Ever since 9/11 and the subsequent attack attempts, airport security has used each new incident to come up with new safety measures. Some of them are rather esoteric, and many inconvenience passengers before every flight: an obvious example would be requiring the removal and placing of shoes in those little bins after the shoe bomber’s attempt.
The justification for all these picayune rules is our safety. Everyone knows that safety can’t be perfect, and that they can’t think of everything. But can they not think of the most obvious things?
Such as for example, checking passenger manifests against databases that list millions of stolen passports?
Apparently not. Apparently this is only done in “a handful of countries,” according to Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble, who seems none-too-pleased about it. After all, why does Interpol go to the trouble to list the passports in a database if most countries don’t check them? With computers, that should be easy enough, shouldn’t it?
No one should be able to travel on a stolen passport, even if they’re just ordinary criminals rather than terrorists. If I report my credit card as stolen, they cancel it soon enough, and everyone seems to get the word immediately. Why would a passport be any different?
It’s not as though the problem wasn’t known about, either. Not only has Interpol repeatedly issued warnings, but there’s a history:
A war crimes suspect who tried to attend a conference in Congo, but was instead arrested; the killer of the Serbian prime minister crossed 27 borders on a missing passport before he was caught; Samantha Lewthwaite, the former wife of one of the suicide bombers in the 2005 attack on London’s transit system, escaped capture when she produced a fraudulently obtained South African passport.
Which countries do check against against the Interpol list? The article indicates that the United Arab Emirates, US, Britain, France, and Switzerland do. Countries that don’t often cite lack of police personnel and privacy concerns.
The stolen-passport market has been enhanced by the development of technology that can alter photos or match people to already-existing photos. The story of one of the men whose passport was stolen and used on the Malaysian plane is chilling:
Maraldi, the 37-year-old Italian, had deposited his passport as a guarantee at a motorbike rental shop. But when he returned the bike, the shop said they’d already given his passport to some guy who looked like him.
Some guy just appeared who looked like him? Seems exceedingly odd. Or was the clerk at the motorbike shop part of a stolen passport ring?
[NOTE: All this talk of fake and/or stolen passports makes me think of one of my favorite movies, the 1973 “Day of the Jackal.” Passports and identity theft are featured prominently in this chilling portrait of an international assassin-for-hire:
If you’ve never seen it, you’d do well to rent it.]
[ADDENDUM: Authorities say they now know the identity of one of the fake-ID passengers. He’s a non-Malaysian, but they’re not announcing the identity yet. What’s more:
During a Monday press briefing, a reporter asked [Malaysia’s Transportation Minister] Hussein about reports that a media personality received an open letter from the Leader of Chinese Martyr Brigade claiming responsibility for the incident. When asked about the letter, a Malaysian official said, “Yes, there is sound ground to say it is true, but again, we have said from the beginning that we are not taking anything for granted.”.
Also, according to a “senior police official” in Kuala Lumpur:
“We have stopped men with false or stolen passports and carrying explosives, who have tried to get past KLIA (airport) security and get on to a plane,” he said. “There have been two or three incidents, but I will not divulge the details.”
Terrorism would seem an odd choice for a Malaysian flight traveling between Malaysia and China. But China was the seat of a recent terrorist attack in a train station. Although it was a low-tech one in terms of weapons—knives—it killed a lot of people, and the suspected perpetrators were a separatist group in China who happen to be Muslims. Malaysia, of course, is a predominantly Muslim country, although certainly not one that’s usually a seat of terrorism (although see this).
Facts that argue for terrorism as the most likely or at least a strongly possible cause are: the catastrophic and sudden nature of the catastrophe, and the time and place (while cruising, and over the water—bombs are often timed to go off over water, if possible). The fact that two passengers were traveling on passports stolen in Thailand may be an entirely unrelated glitch but adds to the sense of suspicious doings, and recent reports are that the tickets were purchased together, and there may have been other suspect passengers as well. If this is related to a terrorist attack, it would represent something new in air terrorism; stolen passports are not the usual m.o.. But terrorism keeps morphing in an attempt to keep ahead of security.
There’s also a report that the plane tried to turn back, but it hasn’t been confirmed, and it’s not clear that that would be related to terrorism, anyway. Could indicate some sort of perceived trouble by the pilots, although the fact that they did not contact the ground argues against it. The type of plane involved has been an unusually safe one, the weather was excellent, and the pilot a trusted veteran. The disturbing possibility of purposeful pilot involvement cannot be ruled out, of course, but that’s not my leading theory at the moment.
I find forums such as this one (supposedly composed of professional pilots) to be a fount of speculation that contains interesting technical information on situations such as this one.
My guess is that the plane’s wreckage will be found, the suspect passengers will be identified (50/50 on whether they were involved), and some but not all of the mystery will be solved over a period that may take years. The answer, however, will probably be terrorism.
I was listening to this song on my iPod yesterday. The video’s got almost 350 million pageviews on YouTube, which is an astounding number, although I do think it’s an excellent song.
One of the curious things (at least to me) about Adele is that her singing and songwriting is very traditional, and yet she’s highly popular in this age of obscene lyrics and artificially-enhanced voices and instruments. But her song is a timeless one—lost love, and how to recover from it. Will her efforts to find “someone like you” be successful? Her words in the chorus sound brave, but her voice tells us it’s all bravado:
That song lyric makes me think of this one from the 60s. It’s got over 9 million views, which isn’t bad for a relatively obscure oldie—we’re not talking “Light My Fire” here. But although this song is linked in my mind with the theme and title of Adele’s, it is also its direct opposite. The singer here is still in a relationship with the loved one, and her “I Know I’ll Never Find Another You” envisions the sad and unresolvable aftermath of an imaginary breakup rather than a real one (at least, any breakup that might happen is as-yet-unrealized).
Yes, we try to move on, and often we do. Sometimes we even move on to something better—someone far more suited to us, with whom we can be happier. Whether we can imagine that replacement at the time of great loneliness or the time of great togetherness is beside the point, although it doesn’t seem that way at the time. But the truth is that we never do find another you—each person, and each relationship, is wholly unique.
I highly recommend Michael Totten’s excellent—and very sad—article on Cuba. Pay special attention to the story that Alfred Cuzé¡n (whose family fled when he was a child) tells about the early years of Castro’s regime and how the leader initially fooled people and then clamped down.
Also of great interest is the tale of Garland Grant, a Black Panther from the US who believed the leftist hype about Cuba, hijacked a flight there in 1971, and got the surprise of his life on arrival. He ended up saying things like “Believe me, I’m all for the United States now. I’d even wear a Nixon button.” And that was after Watergate.
Actually, the whole thing is of great interest. Just read it.
The IRS is going to turn over to Congress’ House Ways and Means Committee all of Lois Lerner’s emails during the Obama administration and a little bit earlier.
Thanks very much. But who in his/her right mind implicates him/herself in emails that never disappear and can be rather easily accessed in a situation like this?
Well, the Bridgegate people do, and I’m sure they’re not the only ones; some of the Climategate folk come to mind. But even a non-conspiratorial type like me knows that if a person is engaging in some activity that might later need covering-up, that person should not use his/her official email address to conduct that business. More likely, he/she will use that address to create a false picture of innocence, and some other method of communication will be utilized for the shady stuff.
Carrier pigeon? Courier? Word of mouth? A different email account? I seem to recall that General Petraeus, while engaged in his sexual dalliance with Paula Broadwell, created a private email account that they thought was safe but really wasn’t. But at least he understood the principle of the clandestine operation.
Of course, Petraeus was only dealing with one person, and on business that was decidedly unofficial. So it was relatively easy to set up such a thing. Lerner was trying to communicate with a much larger group of people who worked under her in her official capacity, and the things she might be asking them to do would be highly illegal and controversial. So any alternative email setup would be a way of admitting to all recipients that what was about to go down was clandestine, a highly risky and self-incriminating thing to do. I assume, however, that if Lerner had originally received the order/suggestion from a higher-up in the Obama administration, that would have been accomplished through word of mouth in a face-to-face meeting.
Those of you with experience working in government bureaucracies—an experience I don’t share, although I’ve never before had cause to lament that fact—might be able to shed more light on how this all could work. Computer experts, please chime in, too.
…was named “Blogger of the Year” at the annual Blog Bash held near the CPAC conference.
Many congratulation to Professor Jacobson! And as one of the members of the Legal Insurrection team (I cross-post there, usually several times a week), I’m especially pleased to read the news.
It’s the glasses that got my attention. Kudos, excellent!:
And for those who say this is superficial trivia, of course it is, but it’s the sort of superficial stuff that goes to make an image that people respond to one way or another, and one of those ways is politically.
Mayor Bill di Blasio of New York has wasted little time in his attempt to destroy the charter schools which serve the low-income minorities of New York and provide at least some children of their number with a good education:
The very existence of charter schools is an implicit rebuke to the public schools. It means they are not succeeding, and something new must be tried. That something new won’t be perfect””no charter school is, and some are more imperfect than others””but people still line up to get into them. And there’s something to the wisdom of crowds. When a school exists for the students, you can tell. When it exists for the unions, you can tell that too.
A lot of this is about the unions; in New York City they are especially powerful and especially leftist, and have been for a long, long time.
There’s also an interesting blue-on-blue element shaping up:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is not politically inept, made clear this week that he will stand with the charter schools. Mr. de Blasio had come to Albany Tuesday on what is called lobbying day. He brought more than 1,000 people and held a rally to press state lawmakers to increase city income taxes to pay for prekindergarten education. Mr. Cuomo, who had already told Mr. de Blasio that he backs pre-K but not a tax hike, decided to hold his own rally. His crowd, full of charter school students, teachers and families, was much bigger than de Blasio’s. Mr. Cuomo had fiery words. “They say it’s cold out here, but I don’t feel cold, I feel hot. I feel fired up,” he said. “You are not alone. . . . We will save charter schools.”
There is not, and has never been any question, who and what di Blasio is. He’s a hard lefist. Period. New Yorkers elected him, and they will reap what they sowed, including the minorities of New York who supported him in overwhelming numbers.
[*NOTE: The charter schools di Blasio is trying to destroy are part of a group called “Success Academy Charter Schools,” of which there are 22 in the city. The woman who runs the schools is Eva Moskowitz, an old political foe of di Blasio and the teachers’ unions.]
