Forcing Catholics to buy birth control is assault on liberty

    If you want another reason to be against Obamacare, consider the debate over whether the Catholic church should be forced to buy birth control for its employees.
    Official Catholic doctrine is that the use of artificial birth control is a sin, a position I disagree with. Most Catholics disagree, too. But that doesn't matter. It's still the position of the church. Most Baptists have had a drink or two, but that doesn't mean the government should be allowed to force the sale of beer in Baptist churches.
    The new government regulations will require all health insurance programs, including those of the Catholic church, to provide free birth control pills with so much as a co-pay. Not only is the government trampling on religious freedom, but they are depriving all of us of our financial freedom as well.
    Birth control pills certainly cost money, anywhere from $20 to $50 per month. I'm sure one can spend more, and will once these are completely covered by insurance. I've found that when doctors know I'm covered, they only write prescriptions for the most expensive medicines.
    Some women forget to take their birth control pills, and after a while realize it's not worth buying them if they aren't going to use them. So they use another method of birth control. No need to throw money away! Does anyone think that these women will make the same decision when its other people's money being wasted?
    If you look at what the government is doing with health insurance, it is requiring employers and insurers to provide all sorts of coverage at "no cost" to consumers. Of course, these costs must be paid, and the only way to pay them is to raise insurance rates on everyone.
    The whole purpose of insurance is to help us handle life's unexpected expenses. Birth control pills, which a woman will take every month for years, can hardly be called an unexpected expense. Would it make sense to require auto insurers to cover the cost of gasoline? Of course not! Everybody knows they need to buy gas, so let them buy their own instead of shifting the cost to their neighbors. It's the same with birth control pills.
    I'm not saying insurance companies should be prohibited from covering birth control pills. I'm just saying it should be the employer's choice.
    The Obama plan, which requires all employers, including churches, to hand out free pills without even a co-pay is not just an assault on religious freedom; it's an assault on economic good sense that undermines our health care system.

Cars.com ad shows how car dealers market to blacks

    I found the Cars.com ad that ran during the Superbowl a bit disturbing. I'm not sure how many picked up on it. Steve Sailer did.
    Good salesmen know every trick. One of those tricks is to be aware that people don't like to admit that they can't afford the item being purchased. Zig Ziglar, who I love to listen to on tape, describes this in his tape series and book, Secrets of Closing the Sale, when he describes his experience of buying a Cadillac from master car salesman Chuck Bellows.
    This is especially true of black buyers. Studies have shown that blacks pay more for cars. Other studies have shown that at any given income level blacks are more likely to pay for first class plane tickets. Blacks seem to be far more prone to attacks on their ego than do white buyers.
    Make no mistake, the ego attack works on everyone, as illustrated by Ziglar's response to Bellows' question, "Is it too much?" But marketers use the attack with especial effectiveness on black customers. There's no racist design behind this. Salesmen just size up each customer and then squeeze out every dollar they can. They are doing nothing wrong. But as a society we ought to educate everyone on how to be better consumers.
    In the Superbowl cars.com ad, a black customer is in a car dealership while a "confidence puppet" is screaming "Oh baby, I want that car!" The black customer explains to the car salesman that he's researched the GAS MILEAGE, of all things, on cars.com, and therefore is ready to make a choice, and so "I'll take that one." There's no reference whatsoever to him having bargained over price, which in the final analysis is likely more important than the gas mileage.
    I'm sure I've been to the cars.com website before, but in the future I'm going to try not to use it. They have made it clear that they don't want to provide the type of information that consumers really need, which is the lowest price we have to pay to get the car, not the gas mileage.
    Based on their commercial, I can only conclude that the cars.com people are out to hoodwink us, not to help us.

(The link I've provided to the Ziglar book should take you directly to the Ziglar description of the car buying experience I described. I urge the reading of as many pages before and after as Google will permit. It's a great story!)

If the Super Bowl coin flip is "heads," Papa Johns is handing out free pizzas

    Papa Johns pizza has a lot riding on Sunday's Super Bowl coin toss. If the toss comes up "heads" they're giving every "Papa Rewards" member a free pizza and Pepsi MAX. You can learn more and enroll in Papa Rewards here.
    My guess is even if the coin toss comes up "tails" they'll offer some type of consolation prize.
    I signed up tonight. You have until 6 p.m. Eastern Time (that's 5 p.m. here in Oxpatch) on game day to sign up.
    I'm signed up. Forget the Patriots or the Giants. Go Heads!

Mississippi ranks Number One in conservatism

    A new Gallup survey ranks Mississippi as our nation's most conservative state, with 53.4 percent of respondents identifying themselves as conservative. Almost making the grade, in order, were Utah, Wyoming, Alabama and Louisiana.
    Wearing liberal dunce hats were the most liberal states, based on personal identification. Actually, most liberal of all wasn't a state but the District of Columbia, which makes sense as they produce nothing and merely feed off the rest of us. 39.8 percent of D.C. residents identify themselves as liberal. The federal district is followed by Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington state, and New York.
    Also of interest is that Mississippi had the fewest people identifying themselves as "liberal," with 10.9 percent claiming that benighted title (compared to 39.8 percent of D.C. residents). 31.2 percent of Mississippians called themselves "moderate." Of course, we all know that most "moderates" are merely liberals in sheep's clothing, but it doesn't affect Mississippi's No. 1 ranking.

Oxford Film Festival is Feb. 9-12, so be there!

    If you’re looking for something to do, the Oxford Film Festival is next weekend, Thursday through Sunday, Feb. 9-12.
    It’s one of those events that you ought to come out and support just because it’s in Oxford. With that said, I viewed a few of the films last year and really enjoyed them. My only complaint was that I thought the schedule wasn’t put together as well as it could have been. Essentially anyone wanting to see the Mississippi films was precluded from seeing many of the other films due to some 20-minute overlaps. In particular I wanted to see The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: an Urban History, but the schedule was set up to prevent moving from one track to another. Merely moving all the films in one of the tracks up by about 20 minutes last year would have allowed people to see more films of interest.
    Last year I really enjoyed the Mississippi Innocence film as well as When Cotton Blossoms, a biographical feature on the founder of the Piney Woods School.
    So what looks interesting this year? Clearly Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians is one to catch. Patriot Guard Riders features a motorcycle club which travels the country attending military funerals. Rhino Resurrected is the story of Rhino Records and a reunion of sorts that was held when that stores founder opened a new store.
    The Mississippi Documentaries are what I’m most interested in, and I’m not alone. To see these get in line early. There is a 30-minute interview with Dean Faulkner Wells, which I predict will pack the house. I get search hits on my blog every week from people doing Google searches for her obituary, a portion of which I published, so there is interest in her story.
    To Live and Die in Avoyelles Parish is a Southern Foodways Alliance film featuring a 30-hog roasting. Others include a feature on the Proud Larry’s music scene; Yocna, a feature on Yocna Bottom Farms; The Beacon, which features the restaurant; The Fifty-Nine Team, which looks at the personalities behind the 1959 Ole Miss National Championship football team, plus lots more.
    There are lots of other films. I’ve just listed a few that look interesting to me. Everyone will have their own favorites.
    For more information or tickets, visit the Oxford Film Festival website!

If this is global warming, count me in!

    It was a beautiful Feb. 2 in Oxford, Mississippi today. I switched from a long-sleeve shirt to short sleeves and did some outdoor chores.
    It's been a very mild winter in the lower 48 states. The Global Warming crowd seizes on this and similar weather events as "proof" of man-made global warming. Of course, these people were silent a few years ago when it was so cold all summer long that I rarely could take my kids swimming.
    Just to share my opinion, I think it makes perfect sense that carbon dioxide could cause temperatures to rise. I also believe cyclical heat patterns from the sun have a lot to do with the climate here on Earth. And there is evidence that we may be headed for a period of global cooling, not warming.
    But let's accept for now the claim that all the warm weather we've been having is "proof" of global warming. We often hear of the terrible things global warming will bring, but clearly warm weather isn't all bad.
    In fact, one of the terrible things global warming is supposed to be causing is melting in the Arctic. No need to worry about that this winter. It's 50 below zero right now in most of Alaska, so it will stay frozen for quite a while.
    Meanwhile, let's consider this year's mild winter. If it is indeed man-made, what a wonderful thing we've done! Flu and other infectious diseases thrive on cold weather. That's why we haven't had much of a flu season this year. We don't enjoy paying our power bills, but we've hated it a lot less this winter. At our house, savings are likely to be well in excess of $1,000.
    Let's multiply that out. The United States has more than 114 million households. Let's assume a savings of $800 per household. That's a energy savings of almost $92 billion this winter alone. And it doesn't include another $30 billion or so that's been saved by commercial customers.
    Add up the energy savings and the time not lost to sickness -- not to mention death -- and it wouldn't surprise me to find out that our warm winter has saved our nation $400 billion or more this year.
    I'm sure global warming has a downside. But sometimes that's all we hear about. For example, they tell us that the increased carbon dioxide levels are likely to make poison ivy grow more aggressively. Okay, but if true it is also likely to increase corn and soybean yields and make trees grow faster (which will reduce carbon dioxide levels). So the bad is offset by the good.
    The real truth is that as the planet gets warmer or colder some areas will benefit and others will suffer. For now, we seem to be doing pretty well!

Sharing pizza best at Old Venice

    Lucy and I went out last night to Old Venice Pizza in Oxford. I had a $20 gift certificate that I had won from the eatingoxford.com Food Fest that was held a few months ago, and figured I needed to use it before I lost it!
    I have to confess that I've been disappointed in Old Venice in the past. I like the atmosphere, but I just wasn't satisfied with the food.
    For this trip we agreed that we would just get a large pizza and share it. Ash didn't come (algebra project), so we figured a large would be big enough for us to take him a couple of slices.
    Our plain pepperoni pizza was just great. We ran up the tab a little bit by starting with salads, which were nice. I had a glass of wine. The total bill was $33, and there was plenty of pizza left over to take home. If we had left off the salads and the wine the total would have been under $20.
    I had the same experience with Soulshine Pizza around the corner. I really didn't like their specialty pizzas and found it expensive. They I insisted that the children just share a large pepperoni and mushroom pizza with me. Not only was the plain pepperoni better than the fancy stuff, but one large pizza was a whole lot cheaper.
    I never have figured out the "Old Venice" name. Venice isn't known for pizza at all; their cuisine is sea based. "Old Naples" might be a better name.