Catholic Cardinals

They have these lines in the sand they have drawn over which they will not cross on women’s independent control over their own bodies.  They don’t want women to be able to have sex without the possibility of conceiving their precious “life.”  They place fetuses so high above anything and anyone else that they even force women to face the risk of death in order to prevent the abortion of the fetus.  I also suspect that this is the drive behind their homophobia.  Every gay sex act means that sperm is not joined with an egg.  If men aren’t allowed to have sex with each other, apparently they will have sex with women.

Women, to these moralists, are in the final count to be considered as baby-factories and whatever else women may contribute is secondary to that.  Women are not to have self-determination, they are to continue the species while under the watchful and careful eye of men.  Celibate women aren’t even allowed to choose which social efforts to which they dedicate their time.  Catholic sisters are apparently only allowed to fight against gay marriage and contraception.  If they have a little time left over to work for impoverished people, fine, as long as they practice their daily sex hate.

For the past three years, Mother Mary Clare Millea has been scouring convents, checking up on nuns. The matronly American, who has a doctorate in canon law from Rome’s Pontifical Lateran University, was given the mandate as part of a Vatican-ordered investigation called Apostolic Visitation. Millea’s task was “demanding, but equally refreshing,” she reported in a summation of her findings a few months ago. The “enduring reality” at the 400 religious institutes she visited, the nun said, was “one of fidelity, joy, and hope.”

Not so fast, says another Vatican group, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Those findings, submitted to Cardinal William Levada, head of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for a final, yet-unpublished, report approved by Pope Benedict XVI, claim that vast majority of American nuns are pushing “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” But rather than preaching against Church doctrine, the sisters are often just staying silent on the church’s pet issues of abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, and the ordination of women. Their silence is interpreted as endorsement so by not speaking out against such evils, the report says the sisters are effectively showing their approval.

As a Catholic, I was taught that the “sin of omission,” or failing to act to prevent sin, is as grave as sins of commissions.  And now, a prominent cardinal has been found with both sins of omission and sins of commission leaving black marks on his soul.

I

t seems that the Milwaukee archdiocese made a series of under-the-prie-dieu payments to criminal priests in order to get them to leave the church quietly. It also seems that Dolan presided over this program of hush money. It also seems that, yes, Timothy Dolan, with his very evolved conscience and his predilection to lecture presidents on the sanctity of that evolved conscience, lied his pectoral cross off about the whole business….

Questioned at the time about the news that one particularly notorious pedophile cleric had been given a “payoff” to leave the priesthood, Cardinal Dolan, then the archbishop, responded that such an inference was “false, preposterous and unjust.”

Also, apparently, true.

Of course, Dolan was obviously following the advice in the Gospels to make sure that the Mystical Body Of Christ is on the hook for a criminal’s annual checkup….

The first known payment in Milwaukee was to Franklyn Becker, a former priest with many victims. Cardinal Dolan said in response to a reporter’s question at the time that the payment was “an act of charity,” so that Mr. Becker could pay for health insurance. According to church documents, Mr. Becker was accused of abusing at least 10 minors, and given a diagnosis of pedophilia in 1983. The church paid more than $16 million to settle lawsuits involving him and one other priest.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/timothy-dolan-milwaukee-history-9312791#ixzz1wXl7AFbl

That they shield and protect these rapists from the law is bad enough, but the fact that they pay them to leave quietly tells you how much value should be place in the Moral Authority of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

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• Cardinal Dolan Authorized Payments To Pedophile Priests(lezgetreal.com)

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• President of Catholic Bishops Conference Cardinal Dolan bribed pedophile priests to go away quietly(dailykos.com)

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• Timothy Dolan and the System of Eternal Rewards(esquire.com)

  ---

• Cardinal Dolan, Brazen Liar?(andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)

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• You: In Milwaukee Post, Cardinal Authorized Payments to Abusers(nytimes.com)

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• Cardinal Dolan Accuses Obama Of “Strangling” Catholic Church(lezgetreal.com)

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• Cardinal linked to payments to abusers(upi.com)

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• Timothy Dolan Authorized Payments to Abusive Priests, Documents Show(wnyc.org)

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• Birth control suit: Catholic flock not flocking to N.Y. cardinal(seattlepi.com)

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English: A woman hold up a sign stating her opposition to the proposed construction of a mosque by the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, USA. The sign states her concerns over the mosque's financial backers. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Judge Halts Building of Murfreesboro Mosque

Opponents of the mosque have long been fighting construction, arguing that the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro “has terrorist ties” and that “Islam does not deserve First Amendment protection.”

The idea of Freedom of Religion is that people have the freedom to follow their religious beliefs or not to and I don’t know how this is so complicated.  If certain religions don’t deserve First Amendment protection, then none of them do; because to make exceptions for some religions puts the government in the awkward position of judging on theology and the idea of a free society is that the government isn’t supposed to do that (which works handy for Scientology.)  It’s really stupid statement for someone to make, to say that the government can recognize rights for one religion but not another.

But, that isn’t what irritates me about this quote.  What bothers me is that the reader has no idea who said this.  Who was the reporter quoting?  Did anybody really say this or was this just something that a bunch of people heard a bunch of other people saying?  Why would the reporter use quotes if not attributing the quotes to any specific person?

I don’t know, and I realize that this is just a news brief.  If the copy space is too short to specify who is being quoted, don’t include the quote.

I blame the copy editor.

Related articles

• Judge’s ruling stops construction of Tenn. mosque (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Murfreesboro Tennessee Absurdity (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Victory! Judge rules Murfreesboro mosque construction must stop (creepingsharia.wordpress.com)
• After lawsuits and arson, judge’s ruling derails plans for Tennessee mosque (cnn.com)
• Judge rules in favor of Murfreesboro mosque opponents on The Murfreesboro Post (aboriginalpress.wordpress.com)
• Judge halts construction of Murfreesboro monster mosque (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
• Judge Says Murfreesboro Mosque Construction Must Stop (paulmarcelrene.wordpress.com)
• Judge’s ruling stops construction of US mosque (dawn.com)
• Judge’s ruling stops construction of Tenn. mosque (wtvm.com)
• Judge’s ruling stops construction of Tenn. mosque (miamiherald.com)

Russian icon with 5 themes: The Holy Trinity of New Testament; Good Felon enters in Heaven; Adam, Eva and others follows Jesus from Hell to Heaven; Harrowing of Hell; Entombment of Christ Пятичастная икона: Новозаветная Троица, Шествие праведников в Рай, Благоразумный разбойник в Раю, Положение во гроб, Сошествие во ад. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I don’t have all the answers, I just don’t understand your religion very well.  I have some questions and doubts.  To be fair, I don’t think that other religions do a much better job of convincing me of deities and guided creations.  I have a background in Christianity, and so these questions have been nibbling at me for a while:

1. When faced with an ethical dilemma, do you really need to ask yourself “What Would Jesus Do” in order to make a decision as to the most ethical response?
2. How do you decide what Jesus would do, considering at times he would lose his temper and vandalize temple merchants’ stands, or curse fig trees and at other times tell his followers that prostitutes are people and deserving of respect?
3. Where do you go for guidance on these questions, since the New Testament can be interpreted in thousands of ways, that there are no plain meanings to it?  Don’t you realize that each person interprets it differently based on their experience and education?  Do you then go to a preacher who may have studied theology in college, then started a church based on the fact that only they have the true interpretations?
4. Do you consider that those who don’t share your religious beliefs might have ways to answer ethical dilemmas without seeking to find out what Jesus would do?
5. Do you ever find that what Jesus would have done is what you would have done without stopping first to ask that question?
6. If you hadn’t been taught that Man was created perfectly but because of the Sin of Adam and Eve leading us to imperfection, would you be grateful that Jesus died and was reborn?
7. Why are you angry at the Jews for killing Jesus, when if they hadn’t done so he could have never died for your sins and been resurrected?
8. Are all men sinful and born short of the Glory of God?  Why does God demand perfection since he foresaw all of this in the first place?
9. If Hell is real, why would it have been created?  Why an eternal punishment for a short term decision?  Is Hell just to scare people into believing in Jesus and it is the most scariest thing that they could come up with?
10. Who laid the rules down to force God to sacrifice himself/his son so that we might have eternal life with him?  Just who does God answer to here, himself?  Why didn’t he just change his own rules for the New Testament?
11. Do you really believe in Free Will?  Why would humans be punished for exercising it?
12. Do you think that babies are unworthy until they have been saved by their own free choice?
13. Isn’t Hell a coercion to believe that contradicts the idea that we have free choice?  It’s no more of a choice than “The lady or the tiger.”
14. How are two days of torture and death a significant contribution for an eternal being?  Small payment for a small crime, and yet for me to ignore both the Apple and the Cross I am to be punished for eternity?
15. What really happens to those unpreached savages?  Do they go to Hell for just being born and never getting the chance to be saved?
16. If God is a Just God, why does he make people gay in a world that thinks that they shouldn’t be able to be happy?
17. Why do you think the government should be an enforcement mechanism for your religious beliefs?  Isn’t your God more powerful than the government?
18. Why can’t your people prevent wars?  Why are you so gung-ho to start them?
19. Why is it so important to keep women in their places as wives and mothers with hidden sexuality?  Why are you afraid of them?
20. Why can’t women be priests (directed at Catholics?)
21. Why is torture for national security okay when Jesus said to “Love your enemies as yourselves?”  Do you want to get tortured?

These are just some questions that occurred to me this morning while I was waiting for the dryer to finish eating my socks.

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The Fourth Amendment

Mark always looked older than he was.  He had long hair and a beard even when he was 14.  He looked like a damn hippie, according to my dad, which filled Mark with a bit of pride since that was the “look” he was going for.  We really did quite a few things together, but being observant and good Christian kids, we never did anything illegal or immoral, and that is the story I am sticking with regarding any activities in which we may have engaged prior to me achieving the age of majority.

Read the rest at Quiche Moraine

In 1985 I was working in the office of a large car dealership in San Francisco.  The business is closed now, but at the time it was the only Ford dealership in the city proper.  Our office manager had secured the proper requisitions to purchase a coffee maker for the office.  Since I was the main consumer of coffee, I was pretty much the guy who made it most often.

A safe way to get hot water

The water source was a drinking fountain that had two water taps; one heated for people who wanted tea and the other was refrigerated for those who just wanted to drink cold and refreshing water.  Since I knew a bit about the laws of physics and heat transference, I often poured hot water into the coffee maker reservoir to speed the process of making coffee.

The process of making coffee may look like magic to those who are not well-acquainted with physics.  The water needs to be poured through the ground coffee, which is easy to understand.  To absorb the coffee from the grounds, the water should be  piping hot.  Cold water doesn’t seem to work in making good coffee.  The reservoirs for the coffee maker are designed to be at the same level as the pot that the coffee drips into from the filter.  Somehow the water needs to go up and over the pot and drip through the basket down into the pot.  Gravity would seem to prevent this process, no?

No, gravity is strong but it is weaker than the forces at work in the expansion of hot water.  Let the good person at Crazy Builders explain how the physics work here:

Surprisingly, a coffee-maker works much the same way as a natural geyser! First, cold water is heated until it starts to boil. The bubbles then push the water above the boiling section up and water comes shooting out of the top.

At boiling temperature (100C) at atmospheric pressure, the density of liquid water is 958 kg/m^3 and water vapor is 0.6 kg/m^3. This means as the liquid turns to gas, it will take up 1600 times more room than the liquid phase. In the coffee machine, it makes sense that some of the liquid water is forced out of the top, as there is not enough room for the liquid when even a small amount of the liquid water turns to gas. Pretty cool!

I knew that when boiling water at home for cooking, making tea or bouillon or soup or whatever, to take the water from the cold tap. I never understood why. I had assumed that this was because cold water tastes better than hot water, but I had never examined the question up until the day that I told someone else how I make the coffee.

“Sandy” normally didn’t drink coffee, but on the morning in question she wanted some and I hadn’t made any yet.  So, she asked how to use this coffee maker and I told her how many scoops to use, where the filters were and that I filled the carafe from the hot water tap in the drinking fountain.  She objected and said that cold water is better, but I told her if she wants it to drip faster that the hot water would do the job more quickly.  (I suspect she was hung over and just wanted a damn cup of coffee  ASAP!)

As she was pouring the hot water from the carafe into the reservoir, “Roger” walked through the office and said “What are you doing, Sandy? Everyone knows that when you make coffee you have to start with cold water. Even I know that.”  Roger was the new car sales manager.  He had a real “man’s job,” and I suspect he didn’t think that my job in the office was a “man’s job.” Clerical work was feminine and sales was manly.

“But Mike (my real name even for this story,)” Sandy explained, “told me to use the hot water.  He makes the coffee all the time so I assume he knows what he is doing.”  I should note that when I made the coffee people remarked at how good it tasted.

Roger retorted “But Mike doesn’t wear a skirt, does he?”  He laughed and walked out of the office to do his manly stuff.  Sandy dumped the hot water into a sink and filled the carafe with cold water to make the coffee Roger’s Way.  I kind of shrugged my shoulders and went back to work.  I wondered at why Roger was now an expert, since he “doesn’t wear a skirt” either and why Sandy suddenly took the word of a guy who never made the coffee anyway.

More importantly, I wanted to find out why it is so fucking important to start with cold water when the cold water has to heat up and there was a source of ready-heated water available. To me, it seemed like starting with water hot enough for tea would save energy and time in the coffee maker’s reservoir.

Did you know that lead was used in most pipes in office and building and homes until the 1930′s?  Lead is handy to use for plumbing because it bends more easily than other metals.  The malleability lends itself to fitting through the different paths that pipes follow in order to get to taps and faucets.  The problem is that the elements dissolved in the water corrode the pipes from the inside (yes, even in soft water,) and the lead will slowly make its way into the our bodies through the water we drink.  It absorbs much more slowly into cold than in hot water.  So, there was good reason to start the boil from cold water from the tap.  It protected us from lead poisoning.  Back when home plumbing was lead-based, it was always important to run the tap for about 15 seconds to clear standing water into the drain before taking on water for human ingestion.  Heated water would take on fresh lead (we are talking minute quantities, but lead accumulates in our tissues.)

Builders and plumbers switched to copper plumbing from lead, because it, too is malleable.  However, the joints between copper tubes and pipes is often lead and so there is still a bit of danger of lead ingestion from hot water, but the amounts are greatly reduced.  The fountain had a built-in heater that took in cold water from the pipes and heated it to a temperature hot enough to steep tea, and the short pipe from the heating reservoir to the faucet was copper that was shielded from lead joints.  I had no expectation that the tea water would be any more dangerous than cold water and this is why I used hot water when starting coffee.

But, “everyone knows” that water for coffee is supposed to be cold.  I don’t know if everyone “knows” why, it is just one of those things that people accept without questioning.  In the brief office exchange about making coffee, Roger was in a hurry to go about his manly work and didn’t seem interested in hearing my reasoning and so I never explained it to him.  I explained it to Sandy later, on a break, but she kind of shook her head and decided it wasn’t important enough to defy the boss when he had made himself clear that when she makes the coffee she should use cold water.

I sometimes think about this little incident when I look at human dynamics.   These are the elements that I see at play:

• “Common sense.”  It is common sense to start with cold water, because there is a factual basis for the use of cold water.  Lead poisoning is dangerous because of lead’s cumulative effects.
• Transfer of Authority.  Roger had power over us clerks, and extended his authority over work matters to the making of coffee.  Even though he was incorrect in his assessment of how coffee should be made, he was the boss.
• Sexism,  Roger was telling Sandy that she shouldn’t take advice from a male on how to make coffee, since making coffee was “women’s work,”  Strangely enough, she should take his advice even though he was a male.  This is the most interesting part, because he was contradicting himself and using a false fact to tell her what to do.
• Racism.  This is more tenuous.  Roger was white and Sandy was black.  Sandy followed our instructions as authoritative, I don’t know about this one, since two people were telling her how to do something and she followed each of our instructions even though the instructions were in conflict.  Did race having anything to do what that?  It is hard to say.

I didn’t press the matter, but like I have said, I told Sandy my thinking when we were on our break later that morning. She got what I said, but never made coffee in the morning.  I let it go, because I would never be able to make my case with Roger.  It was too small of a thing to worry about.  The “skirt” comment was what has stuck with me for years, because it was sexist on so many levels.  By the 1980′s women regularly wore pants to work, but the skirt thing is a lasting carryover through societal change.

I find power dynamics, especially in the workplace, to be fascinating.  This was a negative, but not shattering experience with weird dynamics.  I was correct on my reasoning, but lost the exchange due to other forces at work that had nothing to do with facts.  Authority counts for more than truth.  ”Common sense” in the hands of those who use their advantage carries more weight than reason.

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This is an assertion only, that somehow marriage of straight people will be affected by the granting of civil rights to same-sex couples (or the chosen marriages of transsexuals.) It is an assertion with no facts to show how straight marriage will be in any way harmed or affected.

Forget even the mention of facts, just tell us HOW it affects straight marriage. Expand a little bit on your claim, Minnesotans for Marriage, so that we can figure out what the hell you are upset about if it has nothing to do with bigotry against GLBT’s who just want to have the right to divorce like the rest of us have.

Maybe it is the loss of the traditional “asking the father’s permission to wed.” They are afraid that if same-sex people married, no one will know who is supposed to ask for permission! I mean, if daughters are the property of their fathers until they get married, where does that leave gay men? Don’t they belong to someone who has to give them up for marriage in a wedding? Chaos! Cha-fucking-os if the celebrant doesn’t know who to ask if it is “okay” for one of the parties to get married (only one of the parties, not both, mind.)

Or, thinking into the future, what if a gay couple adopts or brings into their marriage a girl who grows up to get married to a young man? To whom will the young man go for permission? One dad, both dads? What if the girl’s parents are women? The poor couple will never be able to get married because no one will have the authority to give their daughter away!

Seriously, though, my divorces have nothing to do with homosexuals. I only wonder if the proponents of gay marriage are afraid that people like Marcus Bachmann will decide to divorce their Christian wives because they will have the legal right to get married to a member of their own sex. Is that what they fear?

Other people besides myself have wondered why reproductive imperatives and raising children are the reason that straight marriage is sanctioned while non-straight marriage is banned. There is no legal requirement that straight people have children if they want to get married, or even have sex (unless the Catholic Church gets its way.)

I wonder if they will next move to ban marriage for straight men who have had vasectomies, or straight women who have had hysterectomies or gone through menopause. What about people who are infertile for other reasons? We must ban marriage for them, too. If we want to “protect marriage,” perhaps there should be an amendment to raise the marriage age to 25, when people are able to make more patient decisions about who they want to spend the rest of their lives with?

We should prevent marriages among people who are likely to be sexual or physical abusers, if we want to protect marriage. We should only let “Good People” marry, people who will be ideal parents and make the rest of us be celibate so that other people can fulfil the societal mandate to raise children in healthy, loving homes with a mother and a father. Any of you in my readership raised by step-parents? You were fucked up by your biological parents even if you are happy and your step-parents were aces, and you should sue society for ruining your lives.

Kalley says that the only way that children can be brought up healthy and happy is in a heterosexual family. Even if that were true, it would have nothing to do with all of the straight people who have no children, or those who have no intention of having children. If marriage as an American Institution™ has problems, those problems are completely unrelated and can’t be “fixed” by denying same-sex couples the legal right to divorce or to inherit the estate of their spouse.

The “Save Marriage” people need to explain exactly, or even vaguely, how gay marriage would have a negative effect on straight marriage. They just say “it’s bad for marriage” but don’t say how.

I love babies and kids.  They are the Citizens of Tomorrow!  I don’t dispute that.  I just don’t know what MFM mean when they say formalizing and legalizing existing relationships will cause problems for kids.

Kalley doesn’t make a rational case.  She makes an assertion and doesn’t back it up, or even explain what she means.  We could have a debate about marriage if we knew what they are talking about, but we just don’t.

Leaving the question blank on the ballot is the same as a “No” on this stupid amendment.  If we leave it no, we can register a protest vote and win at the same time!

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• How Equality Helps Straight Marriage (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• “How Changes in Straight Marriage Paved the Way for Legal Gay Marriage.” (althouse.blogspot.com)
• How Sacramental Is Marriage? Wills and Manson Offer Perspectives (newwaysministryblog.wordpress.com)
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This isn’t because conservatism is hostile to blacks and mestizos. Very much the contrary, especially in the case of Conservatism Inc. They fawn over the occasional nonwhite with a puppyish deference that fairly fogs the air with embarrassment. (Q: What do you call the one black guy at a gathering of 1,000 Republicans?  A: “Mr. Chairman.”)

It’s just that conservative ideals like self-sufficiency and minimal dependence on government have no appeal to underperforming minorities—groups who, in the statistical generality, are short of the attributes that make for group success in a modern commercial nation.

Of what use would it be to them to embrace such ideals? They would end up even more decisively pooled at the bottom of society than they are currently.

Too bad we have the weight of the world on our shoulders.  If not for that, we would be able to have a lot more fun just kind of hanging around.

White Man's Burden

Hat tip to Drift Glass

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The Kindness of Strangers

Out of the more than 400 episodes, one scene in one show has stuck with me most of my life because of one line I had never understood until recently. One of the boys found some squatters in the horse barn. They were a family who had fallen on hard times and were on their way to California to make their fortune, but had no money for the trip, apparently. So they camped out in barns and sheds along the way, hoping each time to leave early in the morning before they were found by the landowners.

Read the rest at Quiche Moraine…

OFFICIAL LETTER FROM FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION FBI

ROBERT MUELLER III EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FBI FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

FBI.WASHINGTON DC.

Email: federalbureaudept112@hotmail.com

FBI SEEKING TO WIRETAP INTERNET

ATTENTION: BENEFICIARY

FROM: ROBERT MUELLER III EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FBI FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION WASHINGTON DC. FBI SEEKING TO WIRETAP INTERNET

The federal bureau of investigation (FBI).Through our intelligence-monitoring network has discovered that the transaction that the bank contacted you previously was legal.Recentlythe fund has been legally approved to be paid via Central Bank of Nigeria.

So, we, the federal bureau of investigation (FBI) Washington Dc, in conjunction with the United Nations (UN) financial department have investigated through our monitoring network noting that your transaction with the Central Bank of Nigeria legal. You have the legitimate right to complete your transaction to claim your fund US$10.7,000,000.00 (Ten million Seven Hundred Thousand united states dollars) Because of so much scam going on in Nigeria.We the federal bureau of investigation decided to contact the FedEx Courier Service Company in Nigeria for them to give us their procedures on how to sent this money to you without any further complain or delay. We just got an information from the Central Bank of Nigeria and they have loaded your US$10.7,000,000.00 in ATM CARD and submit to the FedEx courier service company for immediate delivery to your doorstep.

You are required to choose one option, which you will be able to pay and also convenient for you, for quick delivery of your parcel containing your ATM CARD and other two original back up documents.

Service Type | Delivery Duration | Charges/Fees

—————————— —————————— —————

Premium Express (24hrs Delivery)

Mailing $200.00 00.00

Insurance $150.00 00.00

Vat $100.00 00.00

TOTAL $450.00

$450(Four Hundred and fifty US Dollars Only).

………………………… ………………………… ……….

Special Express (2 Days)

Mailing $180.00 00.00

Insurance $50.00 00.00

Vat $150.00 00.00

TOTAL $380.00 00.00

$380(Three Hundred and Eighty US Dollars Only).

………………………… ………………………… …………….

Economy Express (3Days)

Mailing $100.00 00.00

Insurance$?150.00 00.00

Vat (5%) $50.00 00.00

TOTAL $300.00 00.00

$300(Three Hundred US Dollars Only).

………………………… ………………………… ……..

You are hereby required to advice us, on your parcel delivery option by filling in the required form stated above. Please note that the deadline for claiming your fund is exactly one week after the receipt of this email. After this period, your fund will be return back to the ordering costumer. That is the instruction given to us .So take note.

We request that you reconfirm your mailing address to ensure conformity with our record for immediate dispatch of your parcel to you. Only valid residential/ Office address and postal address are certified OK.

I somehow doubt that the Director of the FBI would use a hotmail address, but perhaps I am a bit too skeptical.

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My TVs Still Work

I only have one TV with a Comcast Digital Converter box.  I have two other lines that run straight into their respective sets.  I was worried, but Max made it all better:

Yawn. The revolution has started, and I didn’t even shed any blood.

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