BlogWonks

As a necessary counterweight to the excesses of the women’s rights movement, a men’s right movement has developed to fight for equity in the courts, in the family and in the workplace. For instance, in divorces there is significant and insurmountable (unless you have lots of money) obstacles to getting a fair custody decision regarding your children. Restraining orders are given away easily and have been used as weapons in divorce cases even when there is no evidence of abuse. There clearly is a need to stop the abuse men suffer from the excesses of the women’s rights movement.

The problem with the movement, which is the same problem with the women’s rights movement, is that adoption of the victim-enemy moniker that the press imposes on every issue. Anyone who does marketing for television will tell you this is the format to present any issue if you want news coverage: one, pick a victim and tell a sob story. This victim must be presented as angelic, an innocent victim of a cruel and obstinate system without regard for truth. Two, find a villain. This villain is the epitome of moral evil and must be destroyed. For many issues, referring to George W. Bush suffices (which is why political discourse in this country is so worthless).

Villains cannot be compromised with, they must be defeated. They are the bad guys and we need to stick up for the good guys at all costs. The problem is that compromise becomes unthinkable and even seeing the legitimate points of view of the other side is out of the question. To see this play out, see any political debate show talking about the election.

While there are significant injustices the men suffer as documented in Steven Baskerville’s fine book Taken Into Custody, there are injustices that women have and still do suffer also.

Retraining orders are far too easy to get without any evidence whatsoever (go ahead and sit in a courtroom and watch a hearing for one if you don’t believe me), but on the other hand there are men (and women) out there who are physically abusive and could care less about that piece of paper a court order is written on. People go to the system for help and they don’t get the help they need. We can all agree that no innocent woman or man should not be protected against an abuser. Surely there is some middle ground to address both sides.

Therein lies the difficulty. Activist groups, if they want even an ounce of press or public pressure, must adopt from the start that the other side is evil and wants to screw the innocent. Compromise is not only difficult, it’s impossible. All these groups then rank legislators on their absolute compliance with their agenda. Any leeway on their part makes them unacceptable.

So things have settled into a nice little détente where the men’s rights and women’s rights movements resort to outright name-calling instead of reasoned debate to improve the status of all people. With some issues, such rhetoric is not a big deal. In this case, we are dealing with families where peace should reign. Instead we have dueling groups that wage their war and leave the family asunder. Families are the building block of society, and as goes the family, so goes society.

It may be tempting for the men’s rights movement to say “let’s not compromise until they do”, but even from a political standpoint, if it is an all-or-nothing fight the women’s groups have more clout and that is that. Adopting a more holistic approach is also a political necessity if they don’t want to be side-lined.

It is long past time for policy makers and policy advocates to drop the all-or-none attitude and start to find a middle ground to find beneficial policies for what is best for the entire family. In an all-or-nothing fight, one side may win, but in the end we all lose.

John Bambenek is a freelance columnist and writer as well as an academic professional at the University of Illinois. He is on the board of the Illinois Alliance for Parents and Children.

It's over for Hillary. Hulk Hogan has endorsed Barack Obama.

Gee, I sure hope they don't let the Hulkster's kid drive in the inaugural parade.

If Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock also come out in favor of Obama, consider me sold!

"Keep sayin' your prayers, eatin' your vitamins, raisin' taxes, socializin' medicine, punishin' acheivement and supportin' abortion, brother!"

Soon, when you order a Dominos pizza, you'll be able to track it:

Domino's, the pizza-delivery kingpin, today will unveil a technology, Pizza Tracker, that lets customers literally track their pizza from the moment they place the order until it leaves the store en route to them. What's more, Domino's vows that its online tracking system — for phone or online orders — is accurate to within 40 seconds.

When we can do something similar with our tax dollars, I'll finally believe that technology has arrived.

By the way, I just ordered a Dominos so I could help beta test the tracker, and here's where my order is right now.

Well there you have it; the mediator of things is the person of influence (not control) and the person who guides outcomes. To blame the horse because it’s not as fast as a race car is more the blame of the desires of the rider, than it is the horse. It’s unrealistic and the emotional response to the horse’s failure is unwarranted. Of course men are not horses, and analogies are not real, they are educational and communicative tools for transferring information as intended rater than accepting it as assumed.

So rather than the feminist myth that behind every great man is a woman doing the work for him, what this work explains is why behind MOST great men is a woman doing what a good manager does. Support the people in their endeavors, not dictate the actions of them.

Anyway, in this case women manage the state of things among our society, while men manage the production of things and such. What this study shows, is that at any particular time, the current state of society is a product of women doing selecting and managing the resources around them.

Contrary to the notion that the patriarchy is male rule, it turns out that a patriarchy is subtle female guidance, while a matriarchy is overt female control without mutual considerations and equal benefits shared.

Bottom line, her choices, how she structures family, her own life, the children’s life, and how she is willing to wisely accept outcomes, and wisely use those resources. As the men have been saying for a while, they may make the society, but its women that tell them what would be nice. Whether they are right or wrong. and when they are wrong men make hell for them as they ask, and when they are right, we make a better place like they ask.

Ultimately in any time, they are actually getting what they are asking for, even if its not what they want. The more they learned from culture in the past and wisdom and understanding the more effective they were at this.

to compare yesterday to today, yesterday a farmer knew how much they could get out of what they were doing before pushing too hard gave them less. So they were able to maximize things to what those things could do.

Today, the farmer is too busy trying to beat the horse to get more out of it, and doing no where as near as well as the farmers in the past that WISELY used resources at their disposal.

What they don’t realize today, is that a man, and woman, are mutual resources to each other. The one that beats their resource, literally, mentally, operationally, legally, or in any way, destroys the system. And no one can do as much without resources as they can do with them.

Everyone knows bad magagers that blame their employees rather than themselves for outcomes, that refuse to accept that they are part of that outcome. On the shoulders of the manager rests all the responsibility for the outcomes! For to managers, everything is a resource, and outcomes depend on using resources correctly and effectively based on their own requirements and abilities.

As many here will attest, the feminist concept of making men do work that they are not suited for (OR making women do work that they are not suited for), is a manager who is putting the wrong resource to the right task, and then blaming the resource that its not right.

When someone uses a screwdriver for a hammer, is it the fault of the screwdriver that the outcome isnt right?

Below also explains why successful men get married, and how that works in synergy to create better outcomes. In effect she is looking for a good producer, and he is looking for a good manager.

[It also implies why untraditional relationships may have more subtle problems over our darwinistic development and over longer time periods than living beings clearly percieve over their liftimes. Two managers with no producers is not effective (two captains on a boat yelling at each other to do the work. they do it, but they resent each other over time)... nor are two producers with no managers (a crew with no reason to go in a particular direction - why most men dont have a direction till married). A manager that doesnt listen to the producers is ineffective (the crew mutinies - or the captain become vicious thinking the crew is disobediant when the captain is wrong for imagining its equivalent to a Queen - or a god, and ordering the winds but blaming the crew for them not arriving). Also turning a manager into a producer or visa versa will result in substandard outcomes as well]

Ok. the examples below are not from Humans, but the concepts still apply. A group of people in which everyone is leading, or no one, is not effective when goals are important. When they arent, then everyone just lazes around waiting for an outcome.

Females decide whether ambitious males float or flounder

Aggression, testosterone and nepotism don’t necessarily help one climb the social ladder, but the support of a good female can, according to new research on the social habits of an unusual African species of fish.

The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, highlights the complex relationship between social status, reproductive physiology and group dynamics.

“We found that changes in social status were regulated by the most dominant female in a social group”, says John Fitzpatrick, lead researcher and a graduate student in the department of Biology at McMaster University. “In fact, dominant females seemed to act as gatekeepers, allowing only males larger than themselves to move up in status and become dominant.”

Males rising to a dominant social position, says Fitzpatrick, instantly altered their behaviour, becoming more aggressive. In addition, they dramatically ramped up their reproductive physiology, almost doubling the size of their testes in one week.

Working underwater off the Zambian shores of Lake Tanganyika in Africa, the researchers examined how males respond to changes in social position in the cichlid fish, Neolamprologus pulcher. This species lives in permanent social groups made up of a dominant male and female breeding pair and subordinate males and females that help this pair look after young and defend territory.

By removing the male breeders, researchers created vacancies and provided an opportunity for subordinate males to rise through the ranks.

“Hormones and genetic relationships didn’t necessarily determine who gets to be top dog,” says Sigal Balshine, the senior author on the study and an associate professor in the department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour. “Most folks would have thought that how aggressive you are, how big and powerful you are or how much testosterone you have might be important in understanding status change and dominance rankings. Our study combined several approaches to show that simply isn’t the case – instead, the female and the social landscape are key.”

The last sentence is important, as it can highlight a fundamental change in how Humans are doing something and why things are not working out today.

The work above says or shows that the older human system where the marriage and partnership makes the man, has been overturned as she tries to select one ‘ready made’ for several reasons, when in the past she could make better selections (and have the better outcomes of her ancestors that she wonders why she cant get now).

However, this ignores process as being meaningful. A man, like a soldier, who comes up from the ranks, is a much better and more productive leader. He can lead with compassion, and empathy, pushing down cruelty and extremes. If he is put in charge voluntarily because he was selected for those skills, the same way you select a doctor rather than operate on yourself, he will be a better leader and those under him will be happy with the outcome of his leadership and decisions. (Second guessing the trust leads to a leadership in which nothing gets done, but the arguing as to which direction to go, and then blaming all around to play the next round to advantage. While the one that is upset refused to drive themselves, and refuses to accept the others direction, in effect creating stalemate)

So she is selecting for the attributes of the final product, but is not discerning the difference between a thug and a knight. Our system has removed this distinction and made them equivalent (both fight, but without distinctions, a cop is the same as a criminal, a soldier the same as a terrorist, God and the Devil are equivalent, as is good and bad, and a sociopathic thug is a good husband choice) which shorts out her selection ability (so she then blames outcomes not on her choice I mates, but in the mates inability to be something that they are not). Marrying later forces her to no longer look for a person in which they can create together a future, she doesn’t have that time any more.

All this then serves to make her pick things that appear in costume like the real deal. Or fail the same lesson Shakespeare taught us with the three casks, lead, silver and gold.

When she unwraps the package over time, both find out that neither is what should have been, and under the surface image, are something else. Often the woman is now bitter thinking that the other tricked her by posing, but the truth is that the buyer has to beware, and if they aren’t willing to make a distinction between gold and iron pyrite, the outcome will follow. Blaming iron pyrite for not being gold just skirts the source of the problem shifting the blame, and making it impossible to fix.

In this way a man leads the way the president leads, a professional, or a surgeon, not the way a dictator does. Again removing the distinction makes one throw out good leaders and accepts bad ones. The man from the ranks is more likely to be a leader, not a dictator, like a thug would be. The changes in our selection abilities, has created a situation where the women are selecting males that fulfill feminist ideology by trickery.

She gives up her overt leadership and he accepts his responsibility to LEAD, not RULE.

The return is that she has to listen to him in order to be successful, just as we listen to a brain surgeon rather than use a drill and a spoon in the kitchen to solve our problems.

Her selecting him is like electing him to his post, and his directing then is him fulfilling his job for her, freeing her to be concerned with more important things. Like creating a good person, who can grow and take their fathers place or position in society, and continue the mutual work that their ancestors started. If she fails in this, she fails her lineage and genetic contribution to the world, his lineage, and all our futures.

A good leader is not a tyrant or a despot, so a good father is not what feminists paint all fathers to be again without distinction. Without that distinction one has to accept that all are bad, or all are good. Since it’s obvious that all are not good, then by their simple logical black and white assertion, all are bad. If all are bad, does it matter which she selects?

By removing distinction, and nuance, and twisting leadership by voluntary cooperation, we have removed the ability to discern between the things we choose and the outcomes that arise from them.

The bottom line is that the work above indicates that we are much more complex and nuanced than is practical for ideologies, and double for ideologies like feminism, in which their selection of direction steers followers to horrible outcomes, so they can affix false blame and garner support for false causes, collecting power unto them. In this way, they have figured out that pain, fear, misery, confusion, and such, can get them to topple power that is based in merit.

The rest is the downhill ride to the bottom with no breaks that we have been riding in.

If John McCain is the GOP nominee, the Democrats will be as excited as Kwame Kilpatrick getting a text message. Why? Because no matter which party wins in November, they'll essentially have someone in the White House.

It's no secret how I feel about McCain's solid RINO status, but, just as I was about to explain it yet again, I ran across a headline on the parody news site Scrappleface.com that sums it up: "John Edwards drops out, endorses McCain"

But it's not all parody. Here's a liberal who likes McCain (read: The liberal case for McCain), in part because he won't nominate evil conservatives judges — who have the audacity to interpret Constitutional law rather than invent it — for the Supreme Court.

Michelle Malkin told Glenn Beck she might sit at home on election night if McCain's the GOP nominee.

The Democrats recognize this sentiment among conservatives, which could be why there's a reason McCain's been winning big among "independents." And I'm willing to bet that, somehow, magically, about 75% of these "independents" will be voting for Obama or Hillary in November.

Why get a knock-off when you can have the genuine article for the same price?

Before I begin, I want it to be known, I am saying the following, as a Right of Center, Independent Voter. That is what I am and the owner of this Blog knew this, when he allowed me to contribute here.

John Edwards has stopped his campaign for the White House.

I will be totally honest with you. I liked the guy. I did feel that his message of “Two Americans” was a bit hypocritical, seeing He was very rich.

However, I just thought he was a nice guy. He never allowed his campaign to get ugly, unlike the two other front runners.

I really wish the man, all the best and I hope He is able to do something, that is useful in the Political Arena and I wish John and his family all the best.

Cross posted from my ‘Christian’ Blog. Click here to read.

There are other Political Bloggers talking about this, here’s the list: Captain’s Quarters, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Gun Toting Liberal™, The 7-10, Washington Monthly, Liberal Values, Middle Earth Journal, Rox Populi, Comments from Left Field, Taylor Marsh, Scobleizer, Say Anything, The Reaction, skippy the bush kangaroo, Blue Crab Boulevard, Greatscat!, TalkLeft, MoJoBlog, Shakespeare’s Sister, The Corner, The Carpetbagger Report, The Crone Speaks, The Sideshow, The Democratic Daily, Booman Tribune, Open Left, Wake up America, Outside The Beltway, Cadillac Tight, QandO, PoliBlog (TM), michellemalkin.com, The Newshoggers, The Campaign Spot, JustOneMinute, Sister Toldjah, BuzzFlash.org, Minnesota Monitor, Political Machine, The Glittering Eye, New York Times, The Impolitic, Wonkette, The Swamp, Scholars and Rogues, PoliGazette, TPM Election Central, The New Republic, Power Line, The Carpetbagger Report, The Caucus, and Matthew Yglesias

Global warming isn't just going to melt the polar ice caps, it's going to make the Denver Broncos, Washington Redskins, Chicago Bears, New England Patriots, Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets, New York Giants, Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers, Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers lose more in the future.

From the "Guy who runs 'Environment Today' was trying to give some busy-work to his deadbeat son-in-law so he assigned him an asinine article" department comes this:

As Americans gear up for Sunday’s Super Bowl, Environment America today highlighted how global warming could affect the future success of the Patriots, Giants and other cold weather teams across the country. Specifically, the group highlighted the threat of rising winter temperatures lessening the cold weather that has historically given cold weather teams an edge over warm weather rivals.

Here's a breakdown of the "findings":

Environment America’s analysis found that:

–All 14 cold-weather teams’ cities—including those of the Super Bowl-bound New England Patriots and New York Giants—saw an increase in winter temperatures from 2000-2007 as compared to the previous thirty years.

–The Green Bay Packers had the largest temperature increase during the last seven seasons, a 4.1 degree Fahrenheit increase as compared to the previous thirty years.

–The New York Giants and New England Patriots saw temperature increases of 1.7 and 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit respectively during the last seven years, as compared to the previous thirty years.

And what's happened to these teams as their weather has warmed a fraction of a degree? Let's see… the Packers lost their edge so much that they went to the NFC Championship game, and, if memory serves, global warming was not a factor in Green Bay that day.

The Giants, another cold weather team who are nearly playing in a capitalism-induced blast furnace, then beat the Packers after beating the Cowboys in Dallas and, a week before, the Bucs in Tampa Bay — in the kind of heat that is supposed to steal their edge.

The Patriots, a cold weather team whose "edge" is at risk of disappearing, are poised to win their 4th Super Bowl in the past 7 seasons.

My semi-beloved Detroit Lions are traditionally the suckiest team in the north, and they play in a dome. 'Splain that one, Environment America.

Pretty much the only thing this "report" is going to accomplish is to convince fans of warm weather teams to fire up their SUV's and lawn tractors, and burn huge piles of tires to try to gain an "edge" that doesn't even exist. Well done (literally), Environment Today!

Question for Al Gore: Does this mean that the next time I bet on the Denver Broncos to beat the San Diego Chargers, I can count it as a carbon credit?

It's not just football, either. According to Sports Illustrated, global warming will also give the Florida Marlins an edge:

The presidential campaign has claimed another casualty — but at least this one can chase his own ambulance: John Edwards, super-wealthy self-anointed spokesman for poor people, is dropping out of the race today. He was still in it?

Pundits say Edwards is exiting the race so he can spend more time with his frivolous lawsuits.

This comes from Mitt Romney's concession speech in Florida tonight, where he lost by about 4% to John McCain:

"We're not going to fix Washington by sending the same people back to sit in a different chair."

'Nuff said.

So, next Tuesday will be for all the marbles. Rudy's gone now. His speech spoke of his campaign in the past tense. Nobody saw this coming a few months ago.

Have you noticed that nobody carries Ron Paul's speeches after a primary election, even if he's close to somebody else whose speech they do carry?

But this isn't all just about Republicans. The Obama campaign got some great news today: Jimmy Carter did not endorse him.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
and seizures, shall not be violated
— Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law
— Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

It is an interesting read when a police officer, makes commentary on how a major program of our government is an assault on the basic rights of individuals.

In this case, the article is by Russ Jones, a police officer with more than 30 years experience. When I read the article I couldn’t help remember another book that described things and gave reasons, as well as all the quotes on rights and privacy, and that made me wonder. Were the reasons the same?

Mr Jones full article can be found here Nightmare in Lima, Ohio

It has been 220 years since the Bill of Rights. Our nation’s founders would be disappointed with what we have done to their legacy in the last 40 years with the war on drugs. By its very nature, the war on drugs is a war on the Bill of Rights. That was most evident in what occurred in Lima, Ohio, on Jan 5, 2008.

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter — but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of that ruined tenement.
Sir William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, on the right of an Englishman to be secure in his home (1763)

Prior to the war on drugs, law enforcement executed search warrants with police officers dressed in their normal, readily recognizable uniforms. They knocked on the front door and announced their presence and purpose. They then waited for someone to come to the door. Only if it was clear that someone was attempting to evade, was present and refusing to open the door, or no one was home did they force entry.

Today, police on narcotic search warrants are dressed in black SWAT uniforms, often wearing ski masks, looking more like military commandos than officers out to protect and serve. Without warning, they set off stun and flash grenades and simultaneously break out windows, knock down doors and burst in with automatic weapons at the ready.

As many as 40,000 such raids occur each year in the U.S. bringing unnecessary violence and provocation to small time nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. These raids have resulted in hundreds of needless deaths and injuries, not only to drug offenders, but to bystanders, children, police officers and suspects later found to be innocent. See http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

From another famous older work on “arrests”…

The kind of night arrest described is, in fact, a favorite, because it has important advantages. Everyone living in the apartment is thrown into a state of terror by the first knock at the door. The arrested person is torn from the warmth of his bed. He is in a daze, half-asleep, helpless, and his judgment is befogged. In a night arrest the State Security men have a superiority in numbers; there are many of them, armed, against one person who hasn’t even finished buttoning his trousers. During the arrest and search it is highly improbable that a crowd of potential supporters will gather at the entrance.

The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings, and of his intellect.

To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting in Olmstead v. United States (1928)

They operate according to a large body of theory, and innocence must not lead one to ignore this. The science of arrest is an important segment of the course on general penology and has been propped up with a substantial body of social theory.

Arrests are classified according to various criteria: nighttime and daytime; at home, at work, during a journey; first-time arrests and repeats; individual and group arrests. Arrests are distinguished by the degree of surprise required, the amount of resistance expected (even though in tens of millions of cases no resistance was expected and in fact there was none).

Arrests are also differentiated by the thoroughness of the required search; by instructions either to make out or not to make out an inventory of confiscated property or seal a room or apartment; to arrest the wife after the husband and send the children to an orphanage, or to send the rest of the family into exile, or to send the old folks to a labor camp too.

The growth of drug-related crime is a far greater evil to society as a whole than drug taking. Even so, because we have been seduced by the idea that governments should legislate for our own good, very few people can see how dangerously absurd the present policy is.
-John Casey

In Lima, Ohio, police used similar tactics where they knew children were present. The results were that an unarmed Theika Wilson, a mother of 6, was killed and her 1 year old child, held in her arms, seriously wounded. Both were shot by police who had rushed into the home to insure that no one destroyed any evidence, small as it may be.

Chief Garlock said that these dangerous situations occur “when a high risk search warrant is executed.” This was not a high risk search warrant because of some small time drug user, part time drug dealer, who had a small amount of cocaine and marijuana.

This was a dangerous situation because the police were uniformed, equipped, trained, and expected to act as if this was a war on people; which is exactly what the war on drugs has become. The Chief and the Mayor offered their condolences. The nation shrugs and Mrs. Wilson and her baby are chalked up as collateral damages in this war.

Milton Friedman said in 1990 that “Every friend of freedom . . . must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the U.S. into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.” His nightmare became a reality in Lima, Ohio.

What was it that Stalin said? “To murder one is a trajedy, to murder a million, a statistic”

You make men love their government and their country by giving them the kind of government and the kind of country that inspire respect and love; a country that is free and unafraid, that lets the discontented talk in order to learn the causes of their discontent and end those causes, that refuses to impel men to spy on their neighbors, that protects its citizens vigorously from harmful acts while it leaves the remedies for objectionable ideas to counter-argument and time.
-Zecharian Chafee, Jr

Oh, and the source of blockquote writing other than Russ Jones was courtesy of
The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
(New York, NY: Perennial, 2002)

The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen — a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life.
-Justice William O. Douglas

Rod Serling should be the spokesman for the Democrats this primary season.

Think about what's happened in recent weeks. Hillary Clinton, baby-momma to our nation's "first black president," has been thoroughly denied by black voters at the polls in favor of Barack Obama, a real black person — who was then promptly transformed into a Kennedy. Psych!

Obviously the Dems don't really want a black president. Carolyn Kennedy said that Obama is "just like my father." Well, we know that JFK proposed tax cuts and Obama is the exact opposite. Besides being relatively young, about the only remaining way they could be alike is if Obama gets sexually aroused whenever Some Like it Hot is on AMC.

"You've entered a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of pandering, race baiting, socialism, chameleonic color changes and drunken endorsements — you've entered, the Democrat Zone"

Regarding the new Bush Administration tax cutting stimulus package, professor George Reisman warns,

Today, we have a credit crisis emanating from the collapse of the real estate bubble that the Fed launched in order to cope with the effects of the collapse of the stock market bubble that it had launched only a few years earlier. Now, in order to cope with the effects of the collapse of the real estate bubble, the government and the Fed are looking for yet another program of monetary "stimulus." This time it's to be in the form of cutting taxes while financing an undiminished, indeed, an increased amount of government spending by means of the creation of still more new and additional money.

Little surprise right? This is Compassionate Conservatism at its best: compassionately cut taxes to ease the very economic crisis their Keynesian tricks caused, only to increase the national debt, raising the inflation rate (by printing and circulating these unbacked - by gold - dollars), and ultimately crushing us with the debt, but more especially with the interest, both of which ultimately must be paid back.

When in doubt about all this, remember what J. Reuben Clark Jr., warned years ago: "interest never sleeps."

Read: A Creditors' Protection Bill - Mises Institute

The Liberty Letters are a project of the Latter-day Center for Moral Liberalism

Liberty Counsel. Long Beach, CA – The Long Beach District School Board has approved a
settlement agreement with Christopher Rand, a high school student who
was denied credit for community service hours he completed at his
church. Chris has now received full credit for the hours. The district
administration also rewrote its community service learning policy to
allow students to complete mandatory community service hours at either
secular or religious organizations, including churches, on the same
terms.

In October 2007, Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit against the
district because Chris’s school refused to grant credit for more than
70 hours of community service, solely because it was performed at Long
Beach Alliance Church. He interacted with the children in the church’s
programs, answered questions, assisted with crafts and art projects,
supervised activity time to help ensure safety, and performed other
duties.

After Chris submitted the required documentation regarding his
volunteer service, he was denied credit because the district’s prior
community service learning policy stated, “Service to your religious
community does not count.” If Christopher had given the same service in
a secular school or in a nonreligious childcare program, his service
would have been credited. Shortly after Liberty Counsel filed suit, the
district agreed to award Chris credit for the full 72.5 hours that had
previously been rejected.

In addition to giving Chris credit for his community service, the
district accepted input from Liberty Counsel in revising its policy to
comply with the First Amendment. Under the new policy, religious
organizations will receive the same treatment as other nonprofit
organizations in terms of the types of community service work that is
permitted. Students are expressly allowed to supervise and assist with
leading organized children’s activities, such as those performed by
Chris. The district also agreed to pay attorney’s fees and costs to
Liberty Counsel.

Mathew D. Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty
University School of Law, commented: “When community service is a
graduation requirement, schools cannot limit service to secular venues.
Discrimination against performing community service for religious
organizations violates the First Amendment and offends the rich
religious heritage that made this country great.”

Used with permission of Liberty Counsel

The Liberty Letters are a project of the Latter-day Center for Moral Liberalism

I'm sitting here with the flu and not much better to do, so here we go…

The speech got underway just after 9 p.m. e.t. It's Bush's final State of the Union before he gets a tearful goodbye from the Democrats and some Republicans.

From my count, there were $892 quadrillion worth of proposals made by the president. He's dangerously close to being over $900 quadrillion, a level which would require him to switch parties. Careful, Dubya, you don't want to turn into a spendthrift.

The biggest surprise of the night? Hillary stayed awake. Yep, she must be running for president all right. Too bad they didn't sit her next to Teddy — I was looking forward to the bloated Pope of Massachusetts getting busted over the head with his own Dewars bottle.

What's no surprise is that, on one side of the aisle, we saw real support of the troops, and on the other we saw what amounts to aid and comfort to the enemy. When Bush spoke of conducting the war, the Democrats sat. When he said "this enemy must be defeated," they rose and applauded. This is where the point of disagreement resides. The Republicans support the troops, and the Democrats want to let the "war fairy" defeat the enemy.

Nancy Pelosi was blinking so much that she's been offered a job as sign outside a Nevada brothel. I think she's sending some kind of code. For anybody who cares to try to decipher it, here's a tape loop taken from a network feed:

I think she's Morse coding "Oil can… oil can!" but I can't be sure.

Oh, also, one last time, Mr. President. I beg you… it's "Nu-klee-er"… NU-KLEE-ER… not Nu-kew-ler.

After Bush's speech, the Democratic response (by Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who opted for a less confrontational approach and more for a hypnotic tone) consisted of the usual two key points: "Nuh-uh!" and "Shyeah… as if!"

Whoever said "A house divided against itself cannot stand" never saw a building in which a State of the Union speech was being given.

For a case of better families and so forth… it seems like the new ideas are designed by Three Stooges Incorporated!

In any case, one should give the author and newspaper credit for asking the most important questions. Too bad the parties involved didnt actually care about their charge half as much as they cared about their selfish selves.

When father makes it four

TO THE disgust of some, medical technology is not quite up to making men redundant in the baby-making business. Despite the promise of burgeoning new reproductive opportunities, increasing numbers of women who want to go it alone are finding sperm does not come without strings.

A case in point was the SBS documentary 2 Mums And A Dad, which aired last week, depicting the fraught attempts by two Melbourne lesbians, Kellie and Fiona, and clucky gay sperm donor, Darren, to become a parent threesome.

Before Fiona goes into her bedroom to impregnate herself with a syringe full of Darren’s bodily fluids, the trio draw up a non-binding parenting contract stating that the women are the permanent carers but that Darren has limited visiting rights, which increase with the baby’s age.

The women clearly don’t know Darren, 39, very well. He becomes resentful of perceived slights during the pregnancy and his behaviour goes from fawning to passive-aggressive. His desperation to be a father is almost unnerving.

“Look at this bundle of joy I’ve got for the rest of my life,” he crows to his mother in England via computer video-link, the day his son Marley is born.

Not long into the pregnancy the women realise they have a big problem with Darren, a work colleague with whom they have not socialised and have little in common. The more they see of him, the more controlling and needy he becomes.

One excruciating scene has Darren reading the silent women a laundry list of petty grievances, when suddenly he dashes to heavily pregnant Fiona and proprietorally lays his head on her swollen belly. The look of disgust on her face as she endures his intrusion is sad.

It is one of the conundrums of the turkey-baster approach - a woman will have the most profound lifelong intimacy with the man whose genes are mingled with hers in their child, and yet she will never have been physically intimate with him, and may even find his very touch repulsive.

A few weeks after Marley is born, Darren arrives for his scheduled block of father time and the look of trepidation on Fiona’s face as he takes the baby away is understandable. But Marley is as much his baby as hers.

The women have been clear from the start: they are the family unit, “mum and mum”, and Darren is a marginal extra. In other words, it’s all about them. But they don’t seem to have thought about how Darren might feel about his incidental role.

And how will the boy feel, later, when he comprehends his father’s lowly standing within his family?

At one point Darren threatens to go to the Family Court when the women renege on the parenting deal, but a sensible lawyer advises him to work out the issues privately. It’s not the law that’s the problem. It’s people and their messy relationships.

It’s at least to the women’s credit that they wanted the baby’s father involved in his life at all rather than selecting an anonymous sperm donor.

To Darren’s credit, he wants more than the crumbs of fatherhood. Let’s hope they work it out.

Others are not so lucky in the minefield we create as we redefine the concept of family. Advances in medical technology have outstripped society’s ethical and legal ability to deal with reproductive choices available to people who previously would never have been parents.

We now have a market in babies as the fashion accessory du jour. A new American book, Knock Yourself Up: No Man? No Problem! is the most celebratory of a new genre of how-to books for lesbians and single women wanting to have a baby without the messiness of a man.

In interviews with this “new breed of single mums”, author Louise Sloan exposes a deep well of selfishness from women who aren’t willing to make the sacrifices necessary in marriage and disregard their child’s right to know his father.

“There’s a reason I’m single,” single mother Eva tells Sloan. “Relationships involve a lot of compromise and I want to keep my voice.”

How then will she cope with motherhood, which requires boundless selflessness?

The audible snickers you hear are coming from the Washington Post's headline writers concerning Ted Kennedy breaking loyalty with Bill Clinton:

"Kennedy Will Endorse Obama in Blow to Clinton"

Using the word "blow" in the same headline with "Obama" and "Clinton" is a chuckle-inducing three-way of homonyms and suggestive wordplay for the more immature among us, including me.

I personally would have written "Kennedy Leaves Bridge to 21st Century, Makes Big Splash with Obama Camp," but that's just me.

Today's column at WorldNetDaily is all about the buzz that surrounded a possible Thompson candidacy in the summer of '07, what happened after Fred announced in September, and why, in a way, I'm glad he ended up dropping out.

Read a swan song for the Thompson campaign in "Fred: A political requiem."

You can give it a "Digg" by clicking here.

How many people can honestly say they think for themselves?  When viewing the various areas of the lives of many Americans, it would seem to indicate that many people do not.

There exists a segment of Americans who raptly listen to crooked politicians who clearly do not have their best interests at heart.  These Americans sadly lack the ability to stand firm in their thinking and discern who would be the best person to fill leadership positions.  When it’s time to vote, many voters let others make the decision for them.

When it comes to the 2008 presidential election season, many Americans allow celebrities to tell them who they should support. Oprah Winfrey touts Barak Obama for president before adoring fans who, like lemmings, shout Obama’s name and follow up with a vote for him at the polls.  Chuck Norris has endorsed Mike Huckabee for president, but will I rush to fall in line behind him and vote Huckabee?  No thank you, I have a mind of my own.

Conservative Republicans were livid a few years back when John McCain caved and compromised with Democrats, allowing only a few of Bush’s judicial nominees (instead of allowing a full vote on all of them) a vote after what seemed like an endless filibuster mounted by Democrats.  And let’s not forget, McCain supported President Bush’s weak “amnesty” immigration bill.  Remember, conservatives and concerned Americans against illegal immigration, shut down Congress switchboards in protest of the ”amnesty” bill. 

John McCain took his place as one of the more notable RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) in the Senate who conservatives were railing against, but now it seems that he’s in clear position to possibly take the lead for the Republican nomination.  Very surprising indeed.

In the black community, politicians are free to play the race issue.  The Clinton/Obama tug of war has caused the most talk about race during a campaign season that I’ve ever seen.  Former President Bill Clinton seems to think that race and gender will play a key role in what candidate a voter supports.

He believes it “is understandable” if someone would vote based on gender and race “because people are proud when someone who they identify with emerges for the first time.”

Read more: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080124/D8UC7BEO1.html

As we come fresh off the Martin Luther King holiday, how can we support the type of viewpoint Bill Clinton holds in regards to race and gender when Dr. King talked of judging a person by his/her character and not his/her skin color (or gender)?

Why do blacks (I’m not African-American. I was born in America, I’m solidly American) and women continue to let politicians exploit them in their search for power?  Can we not use our own heads and shun such divisiveness? For anyone to suggest that blacks will automatically vote along the lines of color or that females will automatically vote for the female candidate in a presidential race is absurd.

What happens when people vote simply because of a person’s skin color or gender and dismiss character altogether? They risk not recognizing the underlying flaws that may otherwise prevent a candidate from progressing in a presidential race.  As a result, the same contentious and perverse people running for office end up getting further and possibly winning the race, and nothing ever changes.

Let me be clear, as a black woman, I will identify with a candidate regardless of race who will stand up for conservative values that are important to me. I will back a candidate who honors our nation’s Christian heritage and who will not work to unravel those honored Christian traditions that are rooted in this nation.

Also, I will not vote for top-tier candidates because they are touted most by the media, have the most money, or have earned celebrity endorsements. We cannot be that shallow when it comes to picking our next president. 

Another popular and annoying tactic I’ve seen mostly of Democrats running for office: seeking out votes in the churches (mainly black churches).  The media is proud to flaunt Democrat candidates who seek votes from the pulpit before black congregations on Sunday.  Sundays are strictly for the Lord Jesus Christ.  The focus should be on Him.  It’s HIS day.  It’s NOT a day for a candidate to rally votes from the pulpit!

At times, candidates run after a certain segment of the population because they think they will secure awesome numbers at the polls from that certain group of people.  They tailor their speech to reflect who they are speaking to.  Enticing rhetoric is thrown out to get the crowd revved up. That is another slap in the face. And the rhetoric is completely hollow, folks. It means nothing.

Voting requires that we as a nation, act responsibly. We must cut through the slick talk from politicians and allow our vote to represent who we believe is the candidate closest to our moral standards and our stand on other important issues. Therefore, a thorough review of all of the candidates’ background is in order.  

The American voter should not let presidential candidates with high status and charm influence how they view the world and vote.  We forget we are individuals with a mind of our own who are capable of making important and rational decisions.   

Presidential candidates need to remember…the office of the presidency should not be sought as a quest for power or an opportunity for a certain party to take back the White House.  It isn’t a chance for an individual to ”make history.”  It is a position of service to the people of this great nation.  

America will be on the way to healing when those citizens who have been swayed by slick politicians and political “talking heads” learn to think for themselves.  Vote wisely America. Take time to review a candidate’s past and decide whether they deserve to hold the most important office in the nation.

When voters start thinking and acting this way, we will then see a more positive result of the awesome power the American people have at the polls.

*Felicia Benamon is a conservative columnist who writes from a political perspective, but occasionally deviates to write about other concerns facing her country.  A patriotic American, Felicia hopes to motivate others to be more conscious of the current state of affairs in America, and to hold true to the wonderful traditions that make America great.Felicia comes from a military background and is proud to support the men and women who put their lives on the line daily to protect American citizens and who reach out to help those in need across the globe.

Write to Felicia at: FeliciasDesk@aol.com

“Black women are being raped daily in Darfur, Sudan, in the Congo and in Sub-Saharan Africa. That doesn’t make news,” “One 18-year-old white girl from Alabama gets drunk on a graduation trip to Aruba, goes off and ‘gives it up’ while in a foreign country, and that stays in the news for months!”, “Maybe I am missing something!” Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Read all about it, Right Here

I ask you now, Who is really the one making this election about race?

I hope this story catches on. This sort of thing is totally uncalled for.

I mean, I’m no racist, but this sort of thing is why there’s division among the races in this country.

Obama should either condemn these remarks or distance himself from this Church, once and for all. 

If you're just too busy this year and don't have time to study up on all the candidates, let VoteChooser.com make the pick for you.

Just answer these ten simple questions, hit "submit," and you'll have your candidate.

It says I have the most things in common with Mitt Romney. Obviously net worth isn't taken into account.

By the way, if you're in Palm Beach County, Florida and it says you should vote for Pat Buchanan, you made a mistake… again.

Brothers, here is Volume 9 of Chapin’s Inferno—a wandering cauldron of conservative commentary—and it concerns Tiger Woods and PC.

Today marks two big anniversaries. First, it's the 10th anniversary of the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy":

Ten years ago Hillary Clinton (then the First Lady) went on television with Matt Lauer and said:

"This is the great story here for anybody willing to find and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."

Thus was born the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Our baby is all grown up now. Pardon me if I get a little verklempt.

But our celebration of a decade of VRWC isn't the only 10th anniversary celebration today. No sir.

Today marks ten years since Congress was warned that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear, biological, and other "weapons of mass destruction." That such weapons had indeed been found by inspectors, had been used in the past, were a threat to be used in the future, and that Hussein must be stopped before he could become and even greater threat to the free world.

Who said that? Bush? Nope. Republican warmongers? Negative.

President Bill Clinton himself said these very things to a joint session of Congress ten years ago today.

Why this doesn't cover Bill under the anti-war left's "going to war under false pretenses" conspiracy umbrella, I have no idea:

Governor Rod Blagojevich has done something remarkable in Illinois. He has managed to unite people across the political spectrum to create consensus that he absolutely stinks as a governor. Illinois deserves better than Rod Blagojevich.

Because of his low approval in both parties and the budget fiasco of last year, legislators (even those in his own party) are talking about amending the constitution to allow recall votes of sitting politicians. The timing for such talk is opportune because on the November ballot this year there will be a question on whether to have a constitutional convention for Illinois to rewrite or amend the state constitution.

The ability to throw a politician out of office after he or she has be shown unwilling or unable to govern according to the public interest is popular among the voters and is growing popular among politicians who want to take revenge against Blagojevich. Yet a convention should include more than just recalls. While throwing public officials out of office that has shown themselves to be a complete failure is a good start, revising the constitution should produce an overall solid framework for good governance.

There are many good reforms that should be considered and factor into a complete rewriting of the Illinois Constitution. The practice of gerrymandering needs to be eliminated. There are disturbingly few uncompetitive races throughout the state. Democrats have their seats, Republicans have theirs and often they do not even try to compete for the other party’s turf. Politicians should not be able to choose their voters; it should be the other way around. Take a look at the map of Illinois Congressional District 4 to see how ridiculous gerrymandered maps can be.

Along with gerrymandering, it is time to consider term limits for every elected and appointed office in the state. Far too many politicians rule “for life” without any real means for the voters to make them responsive to their needs. Every elected office on all levels should be limited to a maximum of 2 terms or 8 years. Likewise, appointed officials who hold a great amount of party who are not directly accountable to the people need to have their terms of office limited as well.

Open ballot access should be implemented. Every person should have equal ballot access regardless of political affiliation or non-affiliation and a true democracy requires nothing less. The freedom to vote does not mean much if there is no real choice. Independents and third-parties often have to get over 10 times the amount of signatures as established parties do. This system has led the federal courts to repeatedly rule against our election system.

Citizens should be allowed to put binding referenda on the ballot. When state lawmakers refuse or are unable to come up with solutions to problems, the citizens should have a means to bring them up directly. Such referenda, to be effective, need to be binding and not subject to overturning except in rare circumstances.

There are those who are against a constitutional convention because they think the current constitution is fine. To show how the current constitution is not “good enough”, take a look at Article VIII Section 2 of the Illinois Constitution which requires that the budget for the state be balanced.

Yet, according to the Commercial Club of Chicago, a prominent business group, the State of Illinois is in about $106 billion worth of debt. Being thoroughly disabused of the notion that a balanced budget requirement in the Illinois Constitution has produced a balanced budget, we can go forward with discussing rewriting the document.

This November, the citizens of Illinois have a great opportunity to take bake their government from the corrupt and entrenched politicians who rule with their “pay-to-play” politics. A convention, however, should not touch on solitary reforms but to reform the entire constitution to create a foundation and framework for good governance in Illinois. Illinois deserves better than this.

John Bambenek is co-founder and advisory board member of the Illinois Citizens Coalition and a freelance columnist.

From our ever-busy "With friends like these…" department, this just in: The New York Times has endorsed two candidates this primary season: one Democrat, and one… nearly Democrat.

Hillary Clinton and John McCain are the paper's choices going into the "Super Tuesday" primaries in about ten days.

Normally candidates tout newspaper endorsements, but for a candidate who's trying to bring the conservative base of the GOP on board, getting a nod from The New York Times is like Weight Watchers being pleased to have Michael Moore as their spokesman.

Not to worry, conservatives — The Times endorsed McCain in 2000 also, and you know how that turned out.

Other Republican candidates are taking advantage of the Times' endorsement of McCain. This is evidenced in the following rather effective Romney ad that showcases the fact that McCain's been doing smoochie-smoochie with more Democrats than the chick working the kissing booth at Mills College's "Put Mikhail Gorbachev on Mt. Rushmore" fundraiser.

Unlike teenage mutant ninja turtles, these monsters are real.

An interesting part of the article comes when one of the attackers lawyers said that the murder appeared to be sensless, sadistic, and without justification.

To which, he then gives a justification - “his client was partly motivated by a desire to dispel Stasinowsky’s jealousy about Stacey, who walked around the house scantily clad in a bikini. ”

Well, that settles, it. Everyone can understand such thinking, no?

Sick lesbian vampire killers

TWO lesbians who kissed over the body of a girl they killed to prove their love smiled today as a Perth court heard it took the teenage victim half an hour to die.

The pair bludgeoned 16-year-old Stacey Mitchell with a concrete block, strangled her with a chain and then videoed her blood-splattered bedroom and semi-naked body while they mocked her English accent, a court in Perth heard.

One of the girls was a member of a vampire sub-culture, interested in violence and drinking blood.

But the sentencing hearing for Jessica Ellen Stasinowsky, 20, and her girlfriend Valerie Paige Parashumti, 19, was told the murder they have pleaded guilty to stemmed from their obsessive need to prove their commitment to each other.

Prosecutor David Dempster told the West Australian Supreme Court the pair had killed Stacey, who they had known for three days, because she had been “so f king annoying” after moving in with them in late December 2006.

The girls attacked Stacey at their Perth home after giving her alcohol containing a sleeping pill.

Mr Dempster said Parashumti repeatedly bashed Stacey in the head with a concrete block as the teenager tried to flee.

Because Stacey was taking a long time to die, Stasinowksy then wrapped a belt chain around her neck while Parashumti continued to beat her with the block, the court heard.

They monitored her pulse after she fell unconscious and then kissed each other over the body after she died, he said.

The two girls grinned at each other in court today as Mr Dempster said it took their victim more than half an hour to die.

Their behaviour in court earned a number of warnings from Justice Peter Blaxell.

Footage shot on a mobile phone showed the lovers mopping blood and pulling a blanket back from Stacey’s semi-naked body.

“She is then abused by both offenders and they both mock her English accent,” Mr Dempster said.

The two-minute scene ended with laughter and Parashumti saying: “When I was beating the f k out of her with a rock.”

The pair dumped Stacey’s body head first in a wheelie bin behind the house and were still discussing ways of disposing of her body several days later when police arrived looking for the teenager, who had been reported missing by her parents on December 17.

The girls had been angry with Stacey over a breach of confidence, but admitted they would have killed her anyway because she was annoying, Mr Dempster said.

Parashumti’s lawyer, David Edwardson, QC, said the murder appeared to be senseless, sadistic and without justification.

But he said his client was partly motivated by a desire to dispel Stasinowsky’s jealousy about Stacey, who walked around the house scantily clad in a bikini.

“Both women appeared to be obsessed with proving their commitment to each other,” Mr Edwardson said.

Parashumti had a violent upbringing and did not believe anyone from a cherished background like Stacey, who had talked about killing herself, had a right to live, he said.

Parashumti had no remorse about killing Stacey but asked her lawyer to apologise for the distress her actions caused the teenager’s family.

The prosecution called for strict security life imprisonment.

The girls’ lawyers asked for their youth and early guilty pleas to be considered.

Stasinowsky and Parashumti will be sentenced March 7.

David Ross John Haynes, 27, was sentenced to two years jail last year after pleading guilty to being an accessary after the fact to the murder, which took place at his father’s house.

More can be found here Lesbian killers rebuked for smiling as details of murder revealed

“It was never my intention to cause harm to Geoff and the fact that I have caused him injury will live with me forever. I am in no way a violent person.”

“I have challenged myself to explain what has happened but still I just cannot remember. This has caused much anguish to me and will do for the rest of my life.”

Do note that she is in NO WAY A VIOLENT PERSON, and IT WAS NEVER HER INTENTION TO HURT SOMEBODY. Do you feel safer now?

Let’s take a peek as to what she did, that wasn’t intentionally hurtful or violent.

Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage when Geoffrey Jones, 37, rejected her advances at the end of a house party, Liverpool Crown Court heard.
She pulled off his left testicle and tried to swallow it, before spitting it out.
A friend handed it back to Mr. Jones saying: “That’s yours.”

Imagine if this pacifist had had an intention, or was violent. Good thing that she is all sugar spice and everything nice. However, the article is noteworthy for more than that, it has a rogues gallery of “Notorious Penis Slashers and Victims” filler link.

Here you can travel memory lane.

It’s an interesting journey, given their first selection. The first on the list, was Brenda lee Reimer, the victim of Dr. Money and feminists with an agenda to prove tabula rasa, and that culture is everything. I didn’t expect him to be on the list. Do note that they don’t point out the name of the doctors involved. The woman doctor who used a cauterizing machine (the wrong instrument) to circumcise a boy (thereby incinerating the poor dears equipment upon touching it) and then later the ‘expert’ that proceeded to destroy David’s life for his own gain, and leftists ideologies. David ended up committing suicide.

They only cover four cases, Riemer, Bobbit, Tran Tu Tran, and Jessu Cleland…

Jessu was a police liaison officer, and Fiona major thought he gave her an STD.

Bobbitt’s wife claimed his philandering was the reason

Tran Tu Tran tried to do in “the little general” of her husband with scissors, but they made up and he dropped the charges. She too thought he was cheating.

With so few in their ‘gallery’ and such passing reports, it kind of makes it seem like it’s a extreme rarity… But a cursory look will find that such behavior is not as rare as one may think. In fact the rarity is that a person actually serves serious jail time. After all, Lorena became woman of the year.

Remember, that many of these actions are claimed to be justified by some behavior of the male, however in many of the cases, the statements “she believed” often precedes the alleged justification. Oooops, her bad, a mistake, sorry, didn’t mean it, want it back? can I have a do over?”.

It also seems that a man shouldn’t date a Tran. In another case of the same name, another Tran was having an affair with a man who was married to her aunt. The man wanted to end the relationship with Tran, and somehow they had sex one more time. She tied him down, and then showed him her Ginsu work. Police spokeswoman Anita Shell had this to say about having your sexual organs severed “This was, if anything, more of a mental anguish”. Another nice person.
You can read about this Trans handiwork here:
http://dwb.adn.com/front/story/6196470p-6070768c.html

Then there was poor a poor guy in Houston Texas. He was 34 at the time, his lady was 49 year old Delmy Margoth Ruiz, and she clamed he was cheating on her and she was physically abused. So while he slept, she severed 80% of his penis. It was the woman’s daughter that took him to the hospital. The penis was never recovered in this incident either. http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/woman-faces-20-years-after-cutting-off-lovers-penis/2005/07/23/1121539190612.html

Jay Godt was not so lucky, if you can call it that. JoAnn Godt, who by the way pleaded guilty, basically beat the 68 year old ex-husband to death with a baseball bat, and cut off his penis. In a rare instance “Authorities have said Jay Godt had been the victim of domestic violence at the hands of his former wife for some time.” Knowing how things are, he had no shelter to go to, but she did. Where can a 68 year old man go for help? And if this was “for some time”, then why allow his former wife to do this?

Then there was Andree Rene, a 44 year old woman from Montréal who was sentenced to 4 years (counseling, and more). In this case, she was dating a man named Guillaume Pengu, when they got into an argument. Later, as Pengu slept, she poured fondue fuel over his crotch and lit his penis on fire. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2007/02/28/qc-andreerene.html

And don’t think that it’s just sleeping boyfriends that run afoul of such women. no, not at all, you can find articles in which the no good man is a small boy or even a baby!

Katherine Nadal, a 25 year old woman, tried to pan her crimes off on the family dog, but in this case, “he ate my homework” just didn’t stick. She claimed that when she woke up it had been her Dachshund that had attacked her son. She had mutilated the 3 Month old boy’s genitals and severed his penis. The attorney for the father Camden Gothia said “The baby has years of reconstructive surgery and other operations ahead of him”.

Given the internet one could spend a week finding cases after case, and with all manner of outcomes.

However, does anyone remember the 1995 Camile Paglia playboy interview?

PLAYBOY: What’s next in the battle of the sexes in an era of Lorena Bobbitt? What’s the significance of that case?
PAGLIA: A woman cutting off a man’s penis is the ultimate castration for 5000 years of human history. Someone finally did it, right? It was revolutionary. But I abhor the fact that she struck a sleeping enemy. It’s cowardly to attack your enemy while he’s sleeping. If she had attacked him while he was awake, or stabbed him in the chest with a knife while they were arguing, that’s different.

Is it any wonder that such things are the way they are today?

The original article with links can be found here. Testicle-tearing ex jailed
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23106952-5013016,00.html

Al Gore reminded the attendees at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland (seems like they'd at least pick someplace hot so this would be an easier sell — it's 28 degrees in Davos right now) that "climate change" is much worse than he initially feared.

Okay, how much money do you want now, Al? If we get shaken down any more we're going to have to beg Hillary to make sure we all get free Parkinson's medication after she's elected.

Gore told the panel that "there are now forecasts that the North Pole ice caps may disappear entirely during summer months within five years."

I hate to quote myself, but I wrote a column about Gore a couple of years ago for The American Spectator and here's my opinion of his forecasting abilities:

Gore-style meteorology, specifically climatology as it concerns global warming, seems to be one of those rare sciences for which the percentage of accuracy of predictions rises as the distance from the date in question increases.

To buy into this scientific convenience takes the same blind confidence required to believe an archer who tells you he can put an arrow through a soda can at 500 yards — the same person who you've noticed can't hit a bale of hay from 10 feet away.

Ask the night sweat-suffering Gore what the world will look like in 100 years if the United States doesn't sign on to the Kyoto Protocol, and you'll be drawn a gloomy, and very specific, picture of our final days. Then ask him what the overnight low will be in Chattanooga two weeks from Thursday, and you'll get an unresponsive stare. At some point during the conversation, Gore will excuse himself and go burn thousands of gallons of jet fuel to fly to an emergency summit meeting on ozone depletion.

Gore spastically warns, and increasingly so, the planet is in dire jeopardy, it's your fault, and claims the most serious threat to the world isn't terrorism, but rather global warming. There's a good reason he says this: Gore hasn't made a movie or written a book about traditional terrorism.

There's one way to tell if global warming is actually a greater threat than terrorism. If we start seeing al-Qaida switching from car bombs and hijackings to aerosol hairspray and leaving an SUV running instead of blowing it up, then we'll know.

Is our time up? I'm afraid to look now… are we still alive? Oh no! The water is rising! God help us! Oh wait, it's just the bathtub overflowing. Whew!

This is what New York will look like in five days unless you buy carbon credits from Al Gore

Yesterday Dennis Kucinich dropped out of the running for the Democratic nomination, and today the Internet is abuzz with stories about a "human-like figure" on the surface of Mars that was photographed by NASA's rover Spirit.

This just can't be a coincidence.

Yes, I know I don't say that often, but credit where credit is due.

In the GOP debate last night that was sponsored by Sominex, the topic turned to the economy, and Mike Huckabee knows what he's talking about on that topic. After all, as governor of Arkansas, Huck was in charge of a place with a Gross State Product of well into the hundreds of dollars (just kidding, Earl).

In the debate, Huckabee pointed out a hideous detail in the "Economic stimulus package" that's going to send most Americans a check. Here's that little known item: $150 billion of it is probably going to be borrowed from China.

That means that there's a good chance we'll get our checks and go buy something that was made in China.

Huckabee said that this package will indeed provide a great "Economic stimulus"… for China. It certainly won't provide economic stimulus to our kids and grandkids who are going to be trying to pay all of it back — and to a nation with the long-term goal of wiping the U.S. as we know it from the map.

Great idea once again, Washington DC.

You can catch several clips from the debate, including the Huckabee warning, here at Hot Air.

Many Americans, with the definite exception of Willie Nelson and Wesley Snipes, are going to be getting a check from the IRS fairly soon.

The zookeeper has decided to throw back a few scraps in the form of what the government laughably calls an "economic stimulus package":

Under the deal, nearly everyone earning a paycheck would receive at least $300 from the Internal Revenue Service. Most workers would receive rebates of $600 each, or $1,200 per couple. Families with children would receive an additional payment of $300 per child. Workers who earned at least $3,000 last year — but not enough to pay income taxes — would be eligible for $300.

Rebates would be limited, however, to single taxpayers who earned up to $75,000 or couples with incomes of as much as $150,000.

If the government was genuinely concerned with economic stimulus, they wouldn't have taken the money in the first place.

You can't help but admire the tactic, though. Instead of admitting that just leaving the money at the source via lower taxes is the best way to stimulate the economy, both political parties create the illusion that the government handing out money is a primary stimulator of the economy. Too many people believe it. "Repeat a lie often enough…" and all that sort of thing, you know.

So of course it follows that only high taxes can put the government in a position to stimulate the economy. I mean, if the government doesn't have all the money, how can they give it back so we can grow our economy?

This kind of government "reasoning" actually makes sense to the likes of America Ferrera (see one post below).

You and I may know better, but politicians who need votes en masse live and die by the words of Homer Simpson: Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.

We're screwed.