Who Are the Abortion Radicals?

A few days ago one of the commentators at Althouse wrote something striking about abortion. 

I have pondered the "abortion question" for forty years and I still haven't come to a conclusion - it is that close an argument - other than to believe I shall not express an opinion on the subject.

A person or politician who holds a moderate view on either side is worthy of further consideration. An extremist of either ilk I simply dismiss.

This is a fascinating attitude, and I believe it describes a great number of Americans.  Abortion is a divisive fight over two radically different ideas.  One side sees the unborn as a baby, a human being who has a right to life.  The other side denies the humanity of the unborn.  There is no baby.  It is sub-human property.  

Since the commentator does not want to be a radical--and both sides hold radically different ideas--he is unable to form an opinion or speak on the issue.  So he is silent, and upset by the fight.

Underwater Dog #5

Spy, Spy, Spy

The "Boyfriend Tracker" is an app for smart phones that allow people to spy on their mates.

To install Boyfriend Tracker, suspicious partners have to get their hands on their loved one's smartphones and upload the app. A free version leaves the app's icon visible on the target's phone, while a version that costs $2 a month masks the icon. 

"We are going to have to kill a lot of whites"

That's from a website, War on the Horizon, that you can see here.  The website is run by an Irritated Genie, who may or may not be Ayo Kimathi, an employee of the Department of Homeland Security. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center has an unnamed source for the story, a former supervisor of Kimathi at DHS who discovered his website in June.

A former supervisor of Kimathi’s at the DHS told Hatewatch, “Everybody in the office is afraid of him.”

“This guy is filled with hate,” the supervisor continued. “People are afraid he will come in with a gun someday and go postal. I am astounded he’s employed by the federal government, let alone Homeland Security.”

Gay Politics Seeks to Outlaw Science

Chris Christie has just made it illegal for therapists to treat the sexuality of gay teenagers.  The sponsor of the bill says this speech is "insidious child abuse." 

Bad speaker, bad!

How weird is it to insist that you know all about the sexuality of people you've never met?  How bizarre is it to mandate, by force of law, that gay people must remain gay? 

What if you don't want to be gay?  Is that possible?  What if you were molested as a child and you desperately need therapy to straighten out your sexuality?  I can think of any number of scenarios where people need sex therapy, and would like the heterosexual option.  But that option--that speech--has been criminalized as evil and wrong. 

House of the Rising Sun

Nobody seems to know who wrote the song.  Pete Seeger sang it.  Andy Griffith sang it(!)  Joan Baez put it on her first album, and Bob Dylan sang it on his first album, too.   

And of course the most amazing version is from an English band, the Animals.  A song about a whorehouse, in 1964, here you go.

Glass Ceiling Cracker

Hillary Clinton's twitter account describes her as a "glass ceiling cracker."  Yes, you are a honky, shut up!  

You crazy ass cracker!

She means to talk about "glass ceilings" and how she will crack them.  What jumps to my mind is how oblivious she is to the word "cracker."  She's unaware of any racial taunts or insults, because she lives in a rich, lily-white world where such upsets never happen.

Can you imagine a billionaire so obsessed with being the #1 billionaire in the world?  It's like Oprah whining about that glass ceiling over her head.         

As Camille Paglia has written, modern day feminism is "too narrow and elitist."  Hillary Clinton is a class warrior without any class.  She's talking about herself, thinking about herself.   "Hi, I'm Hillary and I break through glass ceilings.  I'm a Senator!  I'm a Secretary of State!  And I got one more glass ceiling to break through.  Vote for me, the glass ceiling cracker!"           

World Peace!

One of the jokes in Miss Congeniality is that all the women in the beauty pageant want world peace.  Except for Sandra Bullock's character, the undercover FBI agent.  She has a far more realistic goal.  "Harsher punishment for parole violators."  Which isn't popular at all!  And then she adds, "And world peace" and everybody cheers.  

Kathleen Parker is like one of the beauty contestants in Miss Congeniality.  She's writing a column about world peace.  And she thinks it can happen, if we just elect Hillary as our next President.  This is a direct quote.  "She can save the world." 

One of the dangers of the left's disregard for religion is that it keeps coming up with religion-substitutes.  In 1966, Time magazine put up a provocative cover.  Is God Dead?  It upset everybody.  

Now people on the left talk about Obama as if he's the messiah.  And they're not even joking! 

Starry Night

Make Love, Not War

That was a 60's slogan.  "Make love, not war."  And yet one of the problems here is that if you're oblivious to war tactics, you might be unaware of things like deception.  What if he doesn't love you?  What if you don't love him?  What if you're not making love at all?

What if sex is sport?  It's certainly more fun than war!  In a war zone you can get shot, you can get wounded, you can be handicapped for life, you can kill innocent people.  All sorts of awful things can happen.  

While sex is the most fun you will ever have in your life!  

And yet, sex leads to babies, all the time.

1968 was called "the summer of love."  But why that year?  What made 1968 so special?

1968 was the year abortion became legal in California.  Pregnant women could suddenly pay a doctor to force a miscarriage.  And so the summer of love because the summer of infanticides.      

I agree with the slogan.  Make love, not war!  But you want to watch out for the fucking.  "You're fucked," we say, and that's not a good thing.  For a baby it's like a knife in the head.    

Peace and War

Women are peace and men are war.  Peace needs to soothe war.  War needs to defend peace.  Sometimes war declares war on peace.  And peace is in trouble, real trouble.  But then war steps in, between war and peace.  And war says, "I'm not messing with you, war.  I just want to fuck up peace a little."  And war says, "Fuck you, war.  I'm defending peace."  And war declares war on war.  And after war gets his ass handed to him on a hat, war is like "Oh fuck, oh shit, peace!  Peace!"  And war says, "Fuckin' A, peace.  Peace is awesome."  And peace is standing there all smug, going, "I told you, I told you.  Why don't you listen to me?"  And war says, "I listen.  What the fuck do you think I'm doing?  I'm defending you."  And peace says, "You're using war!"  And war says, "Fuckin' A."  And peace says, "War is wrong."  And war says, "Don't be so cranky."  And peace says, "War is wrong!  War is wrong!"  And war says, "You're not being peaceful."  And peace says, "What the fuck do you know about peace?"  And war says, "It's good.  I like peace.  What do you know about war?"  And peace says, "I hate it!  War sucks!"  And war says, "I know."  And war starts feeling sorry for himself and peace has to give him a hug.   

 

Are Women Superior To Men?

Kathleen Parker is recognizing sex difference and arguing that her gender is superior.

Let’s begin with a working (and provable) premise: Women, if allowed to be fully equal to men, will bring peace to the planet. This is not so far-fetched a notion. One, men have been at it for thousands of years, resulting in millions and millions of corpses...

Parker is voicing her opposition to the feminist dogma that our two sexes are always equal.  She's suggesting men are warriors, not women.  And she's also suggesting that women are naturally more peaceful than men. 

And there's some truth to this!  Women are not biologically suited to war-making, not really.  In the modern age, of course, Hillary Clinton can press a nuclear button as easily as Harry Truman.  You don't have to be big and strong to press a button (or pull a trigger). 
 
Technology has, in many ways, equalized us.  Birth control would be another example of this.  Yet our two sexes remain quite different, even mysterious to each other.  Many of us, both men and women, object to the idea of drafting women for combat.

Our two sexes are quite different, actually, and modern feminists can be glib about how equal we are.  But we should not make the even dumber mistake--the Parker mistake--of assuming one gender is good and the other is bad. 

It's hard to object to the argument that we'd all be better off with love in our hearts, as opposed to war.  Yet women are not immune to war-like emotions such as anger or hatred or pride.  And it's a silly mistake to assume that Hillary Clinton, because she is a woman, is nice or gentle or sweet.   

What's the Worst Obama Scandal?

Victor Davis Hanson does a fantastic job summing up the scandals of the Obama administration.  

Outrageous

American companies are apparently forced, through secret court orders, to share all your search data with the government.  And on top of this they are forbidden to talk about it.  These are blatant and disgusting violations of our Constitution.  Every American should be appalled. 

Here is an e-mail service provider who has shut down rather than comply with the order to provide this information to the government.  Note that Yahoo is suing to ask permission to speak.

    

RNC Declares War on CNN and NBC Over HIllary Movie

The RNC has announced that it will cut off both CNN and NBC from any primary debates if they continue with their plans to produce two Hillary movies.



NBC was working on a miniseries about Hillary Clinton that will star Diane Lane. 



 

Glassholes

Google glass is not even on the market yet and there's already an insult for the people who use them.  Glasshole! 

If Google was smart it might rename the product before launch.  Because that nickname will not go away. 

Fun Fact For the Day

Did you know the Navajo nation is bigger than West Virginia?  I had no idea it was so big.

Jeff Bezos Buys Washington Post

Washington Post reports on its own sale here.

I wonder if he had to pass an ideological test?  It will be interesting to see if there is any shift in coverage.  I would expect him to be a bit more libertarian on economic matters. 

What Was the CIA Doing in Benghazi?

Whatever it was, the Obama administration doesn't want Congress to know about it.

Do You Know the Way To San Jose?

I love this song.  Sweet and sad. 

2nd Degree Attempted Murder Charge For Shooting a Burglar?

In New Orleans. 

As the Daily Mail explains, "The case has national implications in the wake of the George Zimmerman case, as Landry is white and Coulter is black."

And yes, the case is already receiving attention in the UK. 

Police say the teen, who has a history of burglary arrests, did not pose an 'imminent threat'  

I have mixed feelings about the press attention in cases like this.  I think the press wants to stoke racial fears, and so the press plays up the racial angle.  On the other hand, charging somebody with attempted 2nd degree murder for shooting a burglar seems like (yet another) over-charge by the state.

The Seen and the Unseen

Ann Althouse writes... 

because gay people could and did hide from public view for a long time, many people felt comfortable with oppressing them, which gave them all the more reason to hide. That dynamic changed over the past 5 decades or so, and as more and more gay people became visible, more and more people grew uncomfortable oppressing them. That has had a big effect on public opinion, to the point now where the holdouts — the ones who would continue the oppression — have resorted to crying that they themselves are oppressed.

I think we will see a similar dynamic in regards to abortion.  Liberals can and do "hide from public view" the appalling infanticides that take place every day.  So right now many people feel comfortable with supporting abortion rights. 

But what happens if and when that dynamic starts to change?

As more and more abortions "become visible," more and more people will be uncomfortable supporting abortion.     

Abortion relies upon invisibility.  Here Althouse writes brilliantly on the "morality of the seen and unseen."    

This is a shallow morality that infects our lives. If the human entity is inside the womb, and it is cut into pieces that is one thing, but if it's "partially born" so that a nurse sees it clenching and unclenching its fists as it meets its demise, it's another. And if it slips entirely out, and everyone sees a living child and then the doctor severs its spine, then everyone is supposed to know it's murder. From the inside, these deaths are all the same.

Yes, that's right.  Infanticide is infanticide is infanticide.  And our society cannot allow mothers to kill unwanted children.  We flinch from this.  We hide from it.  We know it's wrong.   

More Althouse...

increased visibility was an essential part of the political dynamic we have witnessed. Glenn Loury, in that clip, openly admits that the dynamic made him switch sides. I'm glad that happened and is happening in our political culture, but I think the argument based on principle should have been enough.

What will happen to the pro-choice movement when the AP and the Washington Post and CBS and NBC and ABC and Fox and all the rest of our Pravda media actually start showing abortions to our people?  Of course we will be shocked ("shocked!") that abortion looks like a baby that's been ripped to pieces.  But the truth is that this is precisely why the media hid these photographs from our people in the first place.
     

 

Masters of Sex

That's a new show on Showtime this fall, about Masters and Johnson and their studies of human sexuality.  The show sounds like fun!

Interesting to compare Masters to our first sex "researcher," Alfred Kinsey.  All you need to know about Kinsey is that he was pen pals with a pedophile and into "urethral insertion."  Which makes me go, "Ahhhhhhhhhhh!"

I always thought Masters was just a boring respectable scientist.  But it turns out he was a peeper who used to spy on prostitutes for research.  Also he told Johnson that she should have sex with him for "research."  Oh yeah, that sounds scientific. 

I swear, sex reduces us all to animals.  We think we're in control and we're just deluding ourselves.  Sexual freedom is nice--I like it--but you have to recognize that release of our controls is like releasing the hounds. 

Our Federal Government At Work

The DEA invades a house suspected of distributing ecstasy.  They arrest several people, including Daniel Chong, who was in the house to smoke pot.  They decide not to prosecute Chong, and tell him that he will be released shortly.

They left him in a holding cell, and forgot about him for five days. 

He had to drink his own urine to survive. 

I can't wait for Obamacare!

Why is James Clapper Not In Prison?

I believe perjury is a felony. 

Why Not Set Our Minimum Wage At $100 an Hour?

I was listening to NPR yesterday and they were going on and on about the minimum wage and how it needs to be raised.  It should be $15 an hour.  It should be $22 an hour.  It definitely needs to be higher than $7 an hour.  They could not understand why our minimum wage is so low.  Raise the minimum wage!

And yet there was so little discussion of negatives, of unintended consequences.  And these are smart people!  But they could not get beyond their emotional belief that poor people should be paid more money.  And rich people are paid too much! 

They feel the market is unfair and unjust.  And their reaction to this unfair and unjust market is to pass a law. 

Okay.  What would happen if we raised the minimum wage to $100 an hour?  We would all be making $200,000 a year.  And what is the problem here?

The problem is economic reality.  Your ideology gets smacked in the face with economic reality.  In real life we have to fire people so that we can pay our remaining workers $100 an hour.  So unemployment goes up.  And inflation shoots up.  That $100 is not worth a hundred dollars anymore.  You can't buy all the cool stuff that you want to buy.  The value of the dollar is destroyed by economic illiterates. 

Here is Paul Krugman proposing that the government mints a trillion dollar coin and put it in the bank.  He is a Nobel prize-winning idiot.  Do you really think that if you counterfeit a coin that you have somehow added to the wealth?  We cannot mock this enough.     

Reality!  Take your head out of your ass and take a whiff of reality!  Thank you.