harmonicminer

Western Law Remedies Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman Among Muslim Immigrant Communities.

In 2001, the mother of an 11-year-old girl spirited her out of Gothenburg, in Sweden, and back to Somalia where she had her brutally genitally mutilated (and without anesthesia). The mother and two other women held her down while a man made sure that she would never experience sexual pleasure and would instead, experience a great deal of pain for the rest of her life.

It’s not hard to understand the silence of the American Left, the multi-cultural Left, and particularly the feminist Left, on the matter of Islamic violence against women, whether perpetrated by other women or by men.  Its existence calls into question all the assumptions at the core of the Left’s belief system, about moral equivalence, about who does violence to whom, about whether there is such a thing as an objective standard of right and wrong, etc.

Just as sex-selection abortion in Asia (and, increasingly, other places) highlights the cognitive dissonance for the Left in supporting easy access to abortion — at any time in the pregnancy, for any reason–, Islamic violence by women on women and men on women highlights the fact that some cultures ARE simply better than others, more free and more just, regardless of the putatively equivalent status of all cultures that lies at the root of multi-culturalism and diversity activism.

But the multi-cultural pieties of the Left, and the absence of a moral center based on absolutes of human dignity flowing from a conception of the imago dei, make it impossible for the Left to speak up consistently about this kind of injustice.  It’s far easier to blame white males and colonialism for everything under the sun than to deal with the hard work of challenging — and changing — cultures.

Read the entire article linked above, and thank God that you live where you do, assuming you live in a western-style liberal democracy of some kind.  And, while you’re at it, reconsider any belief you may hold in cultural equivalence and moral equivalence.

Here’s a book that can help you get started.   The author is not a Christian.  In fact, I think she’s an atheist…  understandably, given what was done to her in the name of religion, or at least under cover of it.  You may speculate about why she is not a constantly invited speaker to American feminist groups.  Maybe it’s because American feminism isn’t fundamentally about protecting women, but about pursuing Leftist agendas with feminism as cover.

Reflections On an Age Now Fading… Read it all.

On matter of race, one detects beneath the therapeutic calls for inclusiveness, an unfortunate renewal of identity politics with a new harder edge-we saw that in the campaign with the slips about reparations and oppression studies, the clingers speech, Rev. Wright, and the ‘typical white person’ put down. Then with Eric Holder’s blast about Americans as “cowards” and now with the Supreme Court nominee’s somewhat derogatory remarks about the proverbial white male judge. We are not hearing praise of the melting pot ideal of intermarriage, assimilation, or integration-even if such elites in their private lives do not predicate their daily regimens in terms of racialism. I spent 21 years in a university in which quite affluent elites sought any multicultural patina possible for an edge in professional advancement and general leverage–the hyphenated name, the addition of the accent mark on the name, the non-American accentuation, occasional ethnic dress, the relabeling of one as a designated minority who otherwise had not previously emphasized race, etc.—that would suggest they were not part of the popular capitalist culture-supposedly centered on the white male-around them. Yet I left sensing the industry of race was doomed, due to the power of popular culture, the unworkable labyrinth of racial identification due to intermarriage, the laughable contradictions (the jet-black immigrant from India got no favored treatment, the light-skinned Costa Rican name Jorge piggy-backed onto the Mexican-American experience), the son of the Mexican father who used his name Gomez was authentic, the son of the Mexican mother who carried his non-Mexican father’s name Wilson was not. And on and on with this ridiculous neo-Confederate practice of adjudicating percentages of race to the sixteenth, and drops of targeted minority blood—a racist enterprise to the core. The only constant? The white male was fair game. It mattered little that more women were graduating than men, that under the racial spoils system we were beginning to see white males in less percentages than those found in the general population at the university; instead, it was sort of OK to trash, as in the manner of Sotomayor’s comment, the proverbial white male, as if we are collectively ashamed of everyone from the Wright Brothers to Lincoln to John Wayne to JFK.

When so close an observer of history and modern life as Victor Davis Hanson is this pessimistic, I feel the need to go see an escapist movie or something.

Read his entire article. Then go get a massage or a pedicure and try not to think about it.

CSPAN coverage of Panel on Sanctity of Human Life

Catholic University of America hosted a discussion on “The Obama Administration and the Sanctity of Human Life: Is there a common ground on life issues? What is the right response by ‘Pro-Life’ Citizens?”

The panelists are Professor Robert P. George (Princeton University) and Professor Douglas Kmiec (Pepperdine Law School). Well worth watching. A bit long, but if you’re a Christian who voted for Obama on the grounds that his overall social policies might reduce abortion, you owe it to yourself to watch it. These are two very articulate representatives of their positions, and the issues are fairly laid out. 

For reference, here are earlier dialogs involving these two academics.

N.Korea nuclear test sparks global condemnation (Read the whole thing for a flavor of the various national responses, all predictably outraged, of course.)

North Korea’s nuclear test explosion has been met by a wave of condemnation from countries around the world, with several leaders calling for sanctions.

I’m sure that the dreams of “the great leader” are filled with great fear of “sanctions” and UN Security Council resolutions.  Iran is watching, of course, and cannot fail to learn that no one (except, just possibly, Israel) will do anything to stop its acquisition of “the bomb.”

Lions, tigers and the UN Security Council, oh my.

Those who advise continued “negotiations” and advocating “pressure from China and Russia” to make North Korea behave had better deal with this:  Japan could have a deliverable nuclear weapon in a matter of months if it thought it needed to do so as a deterrent.  It has excellent missiles, a very sophisticated nuclear power technology, pleny of enrichable fuel, and brilliant scientists and technicians.  South Korea and Taiwan may not be far behind.    Do we really want all of North Korea’s threatened neighbors to ramp up their own nuclear programs, because we haven’t the will to do anything about North Korea’s?

China is playing a dangerous game.  It COULD end North Korea’s program fairly quickly, if it so chose.  But it is using North Korea as a negotiating tool against the US, and specifically Obama, who has displayed none of the strength of will that would convince China that it must end North Korea’s program.  China exports much of North Korea’s food.  China surely has explicit knowledge of exactly where North Korea’s program is situated, and could possibly even sabotage it without direct military action.  China could put an end to this, but continues to use it to weaken the US hand in the area, specifically the USA’s ability to project protection for its democratic allies, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.  It is in China’s interest to display a weak USA to China’s regional neighbors, a USA that is powerless to seriously affect even a pipsqueak, disfunctional power like North Korea.

The underlying message from China to its neighbors:  “The USA won’t protect you; it just talks big.  Your only real choice is to throw in with us.  We’re not such bad guys.  Really.”

Obama COULD make it plain to China that either China takes care of the problem, or he will.  Obama COULD use the economic levers he has on China to pressure it.  He probably won’t.   If he’s true to form for the Left (no reason to think otherwise right now) he’ll keep kicking the can down the road, hoping something will change.  It won’t…  except maybe for the worse.

In the meantime, he continues to reduce funding for USA and allied missile defense.  I’m sure that makes Japan and our other allies in the region feel safe.

President Obama has made it clear that he has no intent of taking any serious action to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and that if Israel does take such action, he will blame Israel, not Iran. Caroline Glick reports. (much more at the link, all worth reading)

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit with US President Barack Obama at the White House on Monday was a baptism of fire for the new premier. What emerged from the meeting is that Obama’s priorities regarding Iran, Israel and the Arab world are diametrically opposed to Israel’s priorities.

During his ad hoc press conference with Netanyahu, Obama made clear that he will not lift a finger to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And acting as Obama’s surrogate, for the past two weeks CIA Director Leon Panetta has made clear that Obama expects Israel to also sit on its thumbs as Iran develops the means to destroy it.

It’s becoming apparent that Obama is bluffing on a busted flush. He has no hole cards (at least that he’s willing to use), and he has no plans to do anything serious to deter or prevent either North Korea or Iran from becoming full-fledged nuclear threats complete with delivery systems. At the same time, he is reducing our commitment to missile defense, and weakening our military commitment to proven technologies that could defend us and our allies.

Iran will not bomb Jerusalem, which it considers to be a “holy city,” but Tel Aviv, Haifa, etc., are obvious targets.  And with its surrogates Hamas and Hizbullah, Iran has ways of getting the bombs into Israel without being the obvious launch site….  just enough to maintain “implausible deniability,” which would not prevent an Israeli response, futile though that response would be to save Israel.  About three or four bombs, and in essence there is no nation of Israel, at least none that could resist the following onslaught of conventional forces rolling in from its neighbors.

The other nations in the Middle East, mostly Sunni, are not in favor of a nuclear armed Iran, but they have even fewer options to do anything about it than Israel.  If Israel does attack Iran to delay its acquisition of nuclear arms, the muslim nations around it will cry publicly, and cheer privately.  They know that Israel presents no danger to them, while Iran clearly does, especially a nuclear Iran.

We are on the cusp of a moral decision, nationally, not very different from the run-up to the Holocaust.   Obama will have to do more than talk and threaten.  He must act, decisively, and soon.  If he does not, Israel cannot be blamed for doing what it must simply to survive.

I hope and pray that, even if he does not care about Israel directly, Obama will recognize the enormous support Israel has in the USA, and realize what a political disaster it will be for him if Israel is destroyed on his watch.

Today the California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, the amendment to the California Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman.  I am grateful the election results were upheld.  I am deeply concerned, however that the the vote itself (a second state-wide vote on the same issue – and with the same results), was not considered conclusive enough to bring the matter to a close.  Instead all of California held its collective breath to see whether or not the court system would overrule the clear will of the majority of California voters.  It is indicative of the degree to which people virtually expect judicial activism as a part of the political process.  It is also indicative of the fact that the will of the majority can be and has been thwarted by a small handful of individuals, sometimes just one person, appointed to the bench.  This, in my opinion, is not a good thing.

No matter your position on the subject of gay marriage today’s decision was an affirmation of the electoral process and for that I am grateful.

I spend most of my occupational time teaching these days.  It is the most recent step in a career evolution that has spanned 33 years and counting.  I was fortunate enough to have figured out ways of making my passion my vocation and thus have enjoyed a professional career in the music virtually all my adult life. There was a brief detour for a couple years in real estate investing or what is now called “house-flipping”.  The one good thing I can say about that is…I survived (just barely).

The full-time teaching chapter of my story has so far occupied about ten years, though I have taught in some capacity pretty much since I got out of college.  I suppose that means I’ve been around long enough to have formed some opinions and perspectives on the subject of learning, particularly in the area of music.  I freely admit the following observations are purely anecdotal, based on nothing more than my own life experiences and would not stand the challenge of academic rigor.

To put it bluntly, many college students with whom I come in contact on a daily basis display a disturbing lack of passion, curiosity, self-motivation or determination. There are very few young people I encounter with any real fire in their belly! Continue reading “E for Effort?”

Olbermann Responds to Limbaugh

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann says he’ll stop talking about Rush Limbaugh for 30 days on one condition: That Limbaugh not talk about himself for a month.

It’s the latest fun media feud. It started earlier this week when Limbaugh said MSNBC was building its ratings by constantly criticizing him. He challenged MSNBC to a 30-day “Rush withdrawal.”

Olbermann responded Wednesday night by saying it appeared MSNBC’s criticisms had finally struck bone. Limbaugh, he said, “has suddenly gone all Greta Garbo on us.”

He said Limbaugh has no right to control who comments about him. But he said he’ll stop talking about Limbaugh provided Limbaugh stop talking about himself.

Limbaugh responded by saying Olbermann’s statement was incoherent.

That’s like saying a particular bark from a dog is incoherent.  Has Olbermann ever barked coherently?

Come to think of it, the big dog here is Rush….  and Olbermann is an annoying flea.

UPDATE:  Based on a critical comment, suggesting that comparing Olbermann and a flea is an insult to the flea, let me just say that he’s really a flea hoping someday to be promoted to full-fledged tick.  He is, after all, a giant intake device for oxygen bearing hemoglobin.

I never thought I’d say this, but it looks like Joe Biden was right last October.

“Mark my words,” Biden told donors at a Seattle fund-raiser Sunday night.

“It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America.

“Watch. We’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.

“And he’s going to need help . . . to stand with him. Because it’s not going to be apparent initially; it’s not going to be apparent that we’re right.”

Isn’t it comforting to know that we have such a far-seeing, insightful man as veep?

In the meantime, pray for Obama.   Nothing in his background shows that he has anything like the toughness that is required to deal with a nuclear-threatening North Korea.  He has never summoned up the will to significantly resist his own party on much of anything.  Pray for him to have hidden depths of strength and will that he has yet to demonstrate, particularly the strength to resist the blame-America-firsters in his own party, and to honor America’s fundamental commitments to Japan and South Korea.  The whole world, indeed, is watching.

And while you’re praying, ask for Obama to have an epiphany about missile defense of the United States, and its allies.  Maybe universal health care for the US should consist of an adequate missile defense shield to deter rogue nations with nuclear tipped missiles, and a bigger budget for searching container ships headed for US ports.

The myth of Harvey Milk, “martyr for gay rights” (not), and his relationship to mass murderer Jim Jones, are detailed in Drinking Harvey Milk’s Kool-Aid

Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk is as real as Toby Maguire’s Spider-Man. Who has time for the sordid details of purportedly staged hate crimes and boosterism of America’s most prolific mass murderer when there is a gay Martin Luther King to be mythologized? Even the fervent atheist Milk understood the need for patron saints. When confronted by a jaded supporter over his fabricated tale that the Navy had booted him out because of his sex life, Milk responded: “Symbols. Symbols. Symbols.” He understood his movement better than his movement did. When the facts didn’t fit the script, both Milk and his present-day admirers adjusted the facts. As the elected sponsors of Harvey Milk Day realize, Californians are more likely to remember the celluloid hero they saw depicted by Sean Penn earlier this year than the obscure city official who walked largely unnoticed in their midst three decades ago.

The advocates of a Harvey Milk Day know box office. They don’t know the real Harvey Milk.

I’ve never tried putting Kool-Aid in milk.  Sounds yucky.  California doesn’t need another holiday, even one where people still have to go to work.  We don’t need to commemorate anyone else this year.  Or next year.

The Minnesota senate election results are still being contested and a final winner has not yet been declared.  At this point democratic challenger, Al Franken (of Saturday Night Live fame), leads incumbent Republican, Norm Coleman by a margin of just over 200 votes.  And to absolutely no one’s surprise Mr. Franken now wants the recount process halted.  Could it be because he has somehow miraculously overcome a 700+ vote deficit to take this slim lead?  Or does he feel that all recount efforts have been concluded fairly and completely?  What do you think?  Is there ANYONE who thinks the outcome of this election still lies in the process of simply counting votes?  I know I don’t.

As soon as the initial results showed a close finish this race became the domain of lawyers and judges.  And anyone following the recount soap opera knows there is a statistical impossibility in the way additional votes were picked up by Franken, virtually all from heavily democratic precincts!  Go figure.

Now I am no fan of Al Franken. Someday maybe someone can tell me how in the world this nouveau-burlesque comedy writer ever got even one vote.  Oh, wait…. I live in a state that elected a body builder turned movie star, whose most famous utterance is, “I’ll be back”.  Never mind about the comedy writer…

But aside from the individuals involved there is a greater issue at stake-the electoral process.  Once again we see the relative ease with which our process of electing leaders can be usurped.  All it really takes is a couple of politically motivated people in key positions with a win-at-any-cost mentality.  An elections director here, a Secretary of State there…. (see Ann Coulter’s article on this for more details).

The complex legal challenges in this case may go on for many months, maybe even longer.  But it seems to me that no matter who is ultimately declared as winner, the loser is the Minnesota voter who will be left to ponder once again…why bother to vote?

Cheney’s speech contained omissions, misstatements

And Obama’s didn’t? This is just the very model of selective reporting.

In any case, when was the last time you saw ANY report in the major media that simply went down a list of Obama’s statements in a speech, and then quoted someone else contradicting each one with contrary information and perspectives, without then giving Obama’s side a chance to rebut THOSE positions?  What, you say you can’t remember that EVER happening?

I can’t either.

The media could start with fair reporting on what he’s doing to the economy, and plans to do to health care.

But that would be in some alternate universe where the major media wasn’t made up of Obama groupies.

In any case, note that most of the “contradictory evidence” reported by the article comes from people now in Obama’s pay or sphere of influence.

Gingrich Opens Up on Catholic Conversion

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has opened up about his March 2009 conversion to Catholicism, revealing: “The whole effort to create a ruthless, amoral, situational ethics culture has probably driven me toward a more overt Christianity,” according to a report in U.S. News & World Report.

All very interesting and worth the read.

In the 2008 elections, a bit over 13 million people voted in California.  Obama won about 8 million votes, while McCain won about 5 million.

On May 19, 2009, California held a special election to decide if taxes were to be raised to the tune of about $15 billion dollars (to try to close an enormous financial deficit for the state government), or if the state politicians would have to do the hard work of cutting spending.  About 4 million people voted, with 2 to 1 margins _against_ the tax increases.

Therein lies a tale.  Given that Obama was well known to have favored enormous government spending programs, and tax increases that would be needed to support them, how is it that so many people voted for him, but against the same policies for the state?  It’s actually pretty simple.  A very large number of people who voted for Obama didn’t know much about his policies or stances on important issues, nor about his history as a politician and activist.  The media put forward an attractive image, acting as his unpaid campaign staff, and the public bought it, but professional polling has demonstrated that Obama voters were disproportionately ignorant of fundamental facts about Democrats, Republicans, Obama, McCain, Palin and Biden.

So why didn’t it work this time, too?  Why was the turnout in California less than a third of the presidential election’s turnout?  Why did those who did turn out vote 2 to 1 not to raise taxes in California?

Simply, the only people who voted this time were people who were reasonably aware of the issues, enough to have an opinion about them.  Given that public employees in California, whose jobs and pay are imperiled by cuts in the state budget, probably voted 4 to 1 FOR the tax increases, and given that there was probably a higher percentage turnout OF those employees than the general electorate, the result is even more decisive.  If you aren’t a public employee (including teachers, bureaucrats and staffers, etc.), the odds are overwhelming that you voted NO on the tax increases, if you voted at all.

There are a number of reasonable observations:

1)  People who are aware of what’s actually happening in government, who care enough to vote their opinion about it, and who don’t have a personal agenda (i.e., they work for the government), are overwhelmingly likely to vote more conservatively in fiscal matters.

2)  It is likely that the large majority who voted NO on tax increases also voted for McCain.  Of course, there will be a few examples to the contrary….  but not many.

3)  California’s fiscal future is being shaped, at least to some degree, by McCain voters, not Obama voters.

4)  It is likely, given the size of this sample, and the generally leftward tilt of California as a state, that if a national election were held today to raise taxes in order to “balance the budget,” but no other issue was on the ballot, the result would be similar.  With no _face_ on the ballot, many of those new, Obama-smitten voters would be hard pressed to make an appearance at the polls.  And the generally better informed conservative electorate would be more likely to vote.

5)  The media, and Democrats, will do their very best to keep anyone from noticing the implications of the California rejection of higher taxes.

6)  The job of the Republicans is to continue to tie the Democrat party, justly, to high taxes and high spending, in the public mind.  This will require some courage and resolve, and a refusal to succumb to the minor guilt that remains over excesses of spending by Republicans during the Bush years.  At this point, they are like someone who merely stole a car being afraid to point out the people who are robbing Fort Knox.  Obama and the Democrats are preparing to spend us into deficits FOUR TIMES the size of anything Bush every dreamed about, and that will have to be paid for, sooner or later, with higher taxes.

7)  Expect the media to have very little to say about California’s rejection of higher taxes, with national Democrats saying even less.  (On the other hand, if the high tax initiatives had passed, you can imagine the result being trumpeted far and wide as representing “the public will,” can’t you?)

The simplest way to explain all this:  the people who have jobs in the private sector (and who know something about what’s going on in state government) voted overwhelmingly against higher taxes.  Public employees voted for them, mostly.  People who fit in neither category couldn’t be troubled to turn off Oprah and get to the polls….  which is likely why they were watching Oprah in the first place.

The Buck Stops Elsewhere (well worth reading in its entirety)

The president insisted in his speech that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and enhanced interrogation techniques (which he characteristically referred to as “torture,” a term both legally inaccurate and morally obtuse) increased terrorist recruitment. In fact the leading driver of terrorist recruitment is successful terrorist attacks. That is what convinces the fence-sitters that radical Islam can win, and that Osama bin Laden is correct when he argues that the United States is a weak horse that will retreat when things get tough enough. The counterterrorism policies of the Bush administration prevented new terrorist attacks and assured the world’s bin Ladens that the United States was committed to their defeat. We hope that assurance still holds; if it does, it is only because President Obama, for all his unseemly disparagement of his predecessor, has picked up the tools George W. Bush left him and made them his own.

Read it all.

There’s an old saying:  “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

I’m thinking a revision is in order:  “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over while pretending to be doing something different, but hoping for the same results.”

Or maybe that’s just lying.

UPDATE:  The media continues to give a free podium to Obama-boosters, while giving little exposure to equally prestigious opinions in support of Cheney’s positions.

For example: Gates defends decision to close Guantanamo prison

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the Obama administration had no choice but to order the shutdown of the prison at Guantanamo because “the name itself is a condemnation” of U.S. anti-terrorism strategy.

These people who are now being held in Guantanamo have VERY high visibility in the Islamic extremist world. It is not the fact that they’re being held in Guantanamo, but the fact that they’re being held at all that is the focus of Islamo-fascist extremists…. not to mention European elites. Will either of these groups think that it’s all better now if the same people are still being held, but just in a different prison?

I would be nervous, if I was a guard, with a family, working at the Supermax prison in Colorado, if the Guantanamo prisoners are moved there.  We know there are many Al Qaeda sleeper cells in the USA.  Exactly what level of security is maintained about who works at the prison, in what capacity?  If you were a prison guard at Supermax, would you want those sleeper cells to know who you were guarding?

The funny thing is this:  those prisoners at Guantanamo have it MUCH nicer now than they will in any US prison.  I wonder if they’ll thank all the lefty activists for doing them the favor of moving them out of the tropics into a concrete block?