So there's a new book about Obama out and it's quite revealing... but will America care?
The website BuzzFeed obtained a copy of the book, “Barack Obama: The Story” by David Maraniss, and excerpted the parts about Obama’s pothead youth.
Among the highlights:
— Obama was known for his interceptions. This is the act of joining a circle of people passing around a joint, taking a hit and yelling, “Intercepted!”
— Obama and his friends at the Punahou School in Hawaii called themselves the “Choom Gang” — choom means smoking weed — and drove around in a Volkswagen bus called the “Choomwagon.”
— Obama and his crew enjoyed what they called “roof hits,” smoking pot inside a car with all the windows rolled up to maximize the amount of smoke they inhaled.
I don't know at this point if the book details Obama's exposure to cocaine in high school, something he also confessed to in his book Dreams of My Father and certainly, much of this needs to be dismissed as nothing more than youthful indiscretions and poor choices or, to quote the President out of context, it's all about acting stupidly.
What this does seem to point to however is that this time, unlike the last, Obama is getting vetted.
I think it a good thing.
If there's anyone in need of vetting, it's Barack Hussein Obama.
Let's get past the drug use and let's get into what it is that shaped the man's thinking. That's what needs to be vetted. It will explain much.
Or maybe, more accurately, signs of an awakening:
Dave Betras is known in "The Valley" for his colorful language and his political antics and drama. Last Wednesday, however, when Vice President Joe Biden visited a local industrial park, Betras was all about numbers.
"Oh, 'The Valley' is going to turn out big for Barack Obama this year, big!" he said, spreading his arms wide for emphasis. The chairman of Mahoning County's Democrats pointed to local manufacturer M7 Technologies' shipping warehouse filled with people waiting to hear Biden speak. "Turnout like today, a full room," said Betras, 52.
If his job is to turn out Obama supporters on Election Day, he may want to check on their allegiances before he buses them to the polls. Many Youngstown attendees at Biden's event do not support him or the president.
Bob McClain and his wife, Myra, came to M7 Technologies to support their friends' family business. Neither supports the Obama-Biden ticket.
"We are friends of the owners -- that is why we came, to show support for the Garvey family," said Bob. At 71, he's retired but volunteers full-time as a counselor for Mahoning Valley small-business owners.
"Our vote is going for who is best to lead on the economy. That is Romney, for us," said Myra as her husband nodded.
Richard Furillo stood with his son Matthew at his son's workplace; a lifelong Democrat, he voted for Obama in 2008 but won't again. "I don't know why I did it but I cannot stand any more 'change,'" he said, referring to the president's old campaign slogan.
Father and son both said they attended the event to support the company.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a sitting vice president," added Matthew, also a Democrat. He, too, said he will vote for Romney.
Standing beside them, Jeff Cunningham echoed their sentiments: "The biggest challenge in this country is creating jobs that last, jobs that sustain families." The 36-year-old Mahoning Valley native said he will vote for Romney.
Montgomery "Monty" Deruyter sat several rows from where Biden stood to address the crowd. The 43-year-old father of two started working at M7 as a machinist two months ago; uncertainty drives him to favor Romney.
"I hold both parties at arm's length but trust Romney's business skills to lead on the economy," he said.
These were just six of more than a score of people interviewed who said they will not vote for Obama in November; they were the audience members not captured by TV cameras, who sat respectfully during Biden's 30-minute populist speech while the party faithful -- gathered up and bused in by Betras -- leaped up every time Biden's voice rose.
Even so, those faithful voiced discontent -- and worry that some in their community have no reason to vote for the president next fall.
The hope is that what's occurring in Ohio is occurring across this nation.
Let it be so. Let it be so.
With props to Morgan, proving that a picture really is worth a thousand words:
Patterico's frightening experience will educate you.
Read it. Pass it on.
I'm sure Obama will be speaking out against this any moment now.
Absolutely sure of it.
What?!
You're not?
Egregious Twaddle is taking a hard look at the basis for the HHS mandate:
My mother always used to tell me to "consider the source," so I read the NIM study and checked the research on which it (and the subsequent HHS mandate) was based. It was not surprising that every single premise drew on research from the Guttmacher Institute of Planned Parenthood. Nor was it surprising that President Obama, to whom Planned Parenthood is a key donor, would be adamant about enforcing directives based on its agenda.
When this first emerged, I began tracking what I knew would follow: a flurry of MSM op-ed pieces, health blogs, and new studies reinforcing the notion that longterm, compliance-light methods of contraception are the solution to women's health and the country's progress. Another one hit today, in theNew England Journal of Medicine. Based on studies conducted in St Louis, it repeats the claim that IUDs and implants are highly effective in preventing the "disease" of pregnancy, and glosses over the very real health risks associated with these methods. The study was funded by the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (started by Warren Buffett and named for his wife), a major funder of and recipient of donations from--surprise! surprise!--Planned Parenthood. Two of the study's authors are quite forthcoming about being in the pay of the companies that manufacture IUDs and implantables. Ho hum.
But another study is also making news today--one I only learned about from attempts to refute it because it turns the party line on its head.
Must read it all if you want to be educated on what's driving the attempt to diminish liberty.
Or you could stay stupid and nod your head ignorantly the next time a manipulative supporter of Obama or the President himself attempts again to fool you about the reasons for the mandate.
Your choice.
How about puttin' up or shuttin' up:
A group of Democratic female senators on Wednesday declared war on the so-called “gender pay gap,” urging their colleagues to pass the aptly named Paycheck Fairness Act when Congress returns from recess next month. However, a substantial gender pay gap exists in their own offices, a Washington Free Beacon analysis of Senate salary data reveals.
Of the five senators who participated in Wednesday’s press conference—Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.), Patty Murray (D., Wash.), Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.), Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.)—three pay their female staff members significantly less than male staffers.
Murray, who has repeatedly accused Republicans of waging a “war a women,” is one of the worst offenders. Female members of Murray’s staff made about $21,000 less per year than male staffers in 2011, a difference of 35.2 percent.
That is well above the 23 percent gap that Democrats claim exists between male and female workers nationwide. The figure is based on a 2010 U.S. Census Bureau report, and is technically accurate. However, as CNN’s Lisa Sylvester has reported, when factors such as area of employment, hours of work, and time in the workplace are taken into account, the gap shrinks to about 5 percent.
A significant “gender gap” exists in Feinstein’s office, where women also made about $21,000 less than men in 2011, but the percentage difference—41 percent—was even higher than Murray’s.
Boxer’s female staffers made about $5,000 less, a difference of 7.3 percent.
Hypocrisy, Democrat is thy name.
With appropriate props to Bird Dog.
"... or his youthful infatuation with cocaine and Marxist professors, or his long-time association with a radical domestic terrorist, or his membership in a church led by one of the most inflammatory Black separatist pastors in the country. Nah, it couldn’t possibly be any of those things that disinterested voters in the South. It must be because he is half African. Because that’s all we ever think about down here."
That and more from Wizbang colleague Michael Laprarie responding to this WaPo piece “Kentucky, Arkansas primaries: Is it racism?”
Yea... it's racism.
Think for a moment of the soullessness of the nurse involved in this incident:
Volusia County School officials stand by a Deltona High School nurse's decision to refuse a student his inhaler during an asthma attack, citing a lack of a parent's signature on a medical release form.
"It's like something out of a horror film. The person just sits there and watches you die," said Michael Rudi, 17. "She sat there, looked at me and she did nothing."
He said the school dean found his inhaler during a search of his locker last Friday. The inhaler was still in its original packaging -- complete with his name and directions for its use; however, the school took it away because his mother hadn't signed the proper form for him to have it.
School leaders called Sue Rudi when her son started having trouble breathing. She rushed to the office and was taken back to the nurse's office by school administrators and they discovered the teen on the floor.
"As soon as we opened up the door, we saw my son collapsing against the wall on the floor of the nurse's office while she was standing in the window of the locked door looking down at my son, who was in full-blown asthma attack," Rudi said.
Michael Rudi said when he started to pass out from his attack, the nurse locked the door.
"I believe that when I closed my eyes I wasn't going to wake up," he said.
The Director of Student Health Services, Cheryl Selesky, said that parents must sign the medical release form each year, which allows students to carry their prescribed drugs with them in school.This year, the district had no record of his Rudi's signature, said Selesky.
"I mean its common sense if I saw an animal on the street in distress I would probably stop to help, why wouldn't she help a child," Sue Rudi said.
But Rudi is a senior, and his mother said the district has had records of his asthma throughout his years in the school.She thinks her son could have died because of a technicality.
"How dare you deny my son something that we all take for granted, breath," said Sue Rudi. "Why didn't someone call 911?"
Because too many have given over their humanity to idiocy, to apathy, to an inability to put common sense ahead of bureaucratic stupidity.
God have mercy on this nurse because at this point, I could not.
Michelle Malkin has turned me on to something I confess to having missed but that's firing up the 'sphere in big way, and rightly so:
For conservatives online, it is also a time-tested truism that there is great strength in numbers. When bloggers, activists, video content creators, and Twitter users on the Right unite behind common principles — fighting jihadi propaganda, exposing corruption, calling out media bias, following the progressive money trail, holding the Republican Party’s feet to the fire, etc. — we can accomplish uncommon things.
Over the past year, Aaron Walker (who blogged as “Aaron Worthing”), Patterico, Liberty Chick, and now Stacy McCain have been targeted by convicted Speedway bomber Brett Kimberlin because they dared to mention his criminal past or assisted others who did. The late Andrew Breitbart warned about Kimberlin and company.
I have spoken directly with both Patterico and Aaron about their ongoing battles.
The mainstream press, not just the conservative blogosphere, needs to hear and report their stories.
This is a convoluted, ongoing nightmare that combines abuse of the court system, workplace intimidation, serial invasions of privacy, perjury, and harassment of family members. McCain was forced to move with his family out of his house this week, and has just gotten a small taste of what Aaron and Patterico have been enduring over the past year. Aaron and his wife were fired from their jobs after their employer feared the office would be targeted next. Convicted bomber Kimberlin has filed bogus “peace orders” against Aaron, when it is the Walkers who are the victims, not the perpetrators.
And Patterico’s plight will send chills up your spine when he is ready to tell it.
There's more with links to others covering the cause.
It's a travesty and if this butt-wipe Kimberlin is allowed to get away with it, you know there'll be others following in his slimy footsteps.
Pass this on. Do your part. Join the blogburst.
Elizabeth Scalia takes on media hypocrisy:
It is, of course, the usual mainstream media free-assist that should probably be considered a kind of campaign contribution: the LA Times, read by Hollywood folk who air-condition their garages while telling the little people to make sure they hang their laundry out to dry, today tries to help the Obama campaign’s class warfare efforts by talking about Ann Romney’s equestrian hobby, which both the headline and the very first paragraph of the Times’ story points out, is “pricey.”
This is an article, I am sure, that will be of interest to Bruce Spiingsteen, whose daughter demonstrates her own equestrian skills every summer in the Hamptons.
We still do not know much about Barack Obama’s past, or his wife’s — we know only what they want us to, and the incurious media remains…incurious — but we know about Mitt Romney’s misguided hijinks from 50 years ago, his church’s misbegotten “militia” from 150 years ago, and now Ann Romney — who by the way has “never worked a day in her life” — gets an examination of past litigation (from which she was eventually dropped) examined, with a lengthy look at her love of equestrian dressage.
Really, this is a nothingburger of a story, but the examination of past litigation was really just an excuse for the paper to deliver a subliminal message: Oooooo…this wealthy person has a “pricey” hobby, while you’re eating a bologna sandwich and realizing you can’t even afford a “staycation.”
You know what else is a really “pricey” hobby?
She answers that question more than adequately.
Katrina Fernandez is one courageous woman:
The bumper sticker read, “Having an abortion does not make you un-pregnant, it makes you the mother of a dead baby”. The word “mother” struck me because “mother” is such a powerful word. It conjures many meanings, and when a woman becomes one she is fundamentally changed. “Mother” as a verb means to nurture, care for and protect. “Mother” as a noun means a female person who is pregnant with or gives birth to a child; or a female person whose egg unites with sperm, resulting in the conception of a child.
By this definition if you’ve ever been pregnant you are a Mother. Even if you’ve had an abortion you are still a Mother… a grieving Mother.
“A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.” Matthew 2:18
There is no consolation to be had for the mother that loses a child. She will grieve in her heart for the rest of her life. Abortion; however, not only robs a child of it’s life and a mother of it’s child, it also robs the mother of her grieving. She is not allowed to grieve because she cannot publicly claim the title Mother.
Abortion advocates will never admit a post-abortive woman is a Mother because to admit that would acknowledge the existence that there was once a child. Not a clump of cells, but a very real living child. When girls begin menstruating they are not called mothers to a clump of cells, yet so many people really believe an abortion is just like having a heavy period or passing a large menstrual clot. This was how it was described to me when I found myself in their clinic fifteen years ago. Two years later when I returned to have a second abortion the lie had not changed.
You should read the rest.
Really, you should.
A US Airways jet traveling from Paris to North Carolina was diverted to Maine on Tuesday after a French passenger handed a note to a flight attendant mentioning that she had a surgically implanted device, raising security concerns, officials said.
An examination by doctors aboard the plane found that the passenger, a French citizen born in Cameroon, had no scars, said U.S. Rep. Peter King, who was briefed on the matter. The woman was traveling alone without any checked baggage and intended to stay in the U.S. for 10 days, he said.
...
Two F-15 fighters scrambled to escort Flight 787 with 179 passengers and nine crew members to Bangor International Airport, where it landed shortly after noon Tuesday.
Tony Caruso, acting airport manager, told reporters that the passenger was “unruly” and was removed after the jet taxied to a remote part of the airport.
I say probe... I hope loon.
This is simply ridiculous, simply stupid. Unless Barack Obama is re-elected, little girls will not be able to live out their dreams.
Shamefully deceptive, shallowly manipulative.
Who buys into this fecal matter? Seriously?
Who?
H/T CMR.
Makes me seriously consider dropping this off on the windshield of the next car I see adorned with an Obama bumper sticker, especially if I've determined that person is of the female persuasion:
Frank Weathers is covering the news barely covered by The News:
I can’t remember the last time I actually watched the evening news. Too many ads from pharmaceutical companies and not enough real news as I recall. But tonight, what with the news that 40+ Catholic organizations sued the government by simultaneously filing a dozen lawsuits across the country, I decided to take a look, and realized pretty quickly that I’m never going to get back that half hour of my life.
I didn’t bother with CNN, or Fox, but I informally surveyed what used to be the Big Three, ABC, CBS, and NBC. Of those three networks, only CBS mentioned the story at all. Deep into the program, ’round about the 25 minute mark, Scott Pelley spent 10 to 15 seconds on the story, er blurb. ABC and NBC? Nothing at all. Nada, zilch, zippo.
Checking their websites, NBC has nothing on the story at all. CBS has a pretty good article, except they give quite a lot of ink to Planned Parenthoods’ president Cecile Richards, though they wrap it up with a wee snippet from Fr. John Jenkin’s of the University of Notre Dame. The article by ABC News included quotes from Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Fr. Jenkins, and much better background information about what has brought us to this point.
This probably is shocking to no one, but the mainstream media doesn’t seem to be very excited about sharing the wealth of information about this story with the general public.
Frank's got more including a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that pretty much explains it all.
No holds barred from the New Jersey Governor:
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told Kentucky Republicans on Saturday that President Barack Obama was “posing and preening” instead of working to resolve pressing issues facing the country.
“He is the most ill-prepared person to assume the presidency in my lifetime,” Christie told some 600 Kentucky Republicans at a Lexington hotel. “This is a guy who literally is walking around in a dark room trying to find the light switch of leadership.”
Christie was in Kentucky to deliver a pep talk to state GOP leaders. The state’s presidential primary is Tuesday, though it will have no significant impact. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
In his remarks, Christie focused entirely on the general election, drawing a standing ovation for his biting remarks about Obama.
“He has sat in the Oval Office and cared more about posing and preening and making partisan politics the rule of the day in Washington D.C. than he’s cared about progress,” the New Jersey Republican, now in his third year in office, said of Obama.
...
Christie urged Kentucky voters to work hard to defeat Obama.
“Now listen,” he said, “this country’s problems are too serious, too serious, to spend another day with a bystander in the oval office.”
More please Governor Christie, we need more.
It's hope and change I can buy into.
Crossposted at Wizbang.
Fascinating happenings coming from many of the nation's Catholics... God bless 'em:
Catholic archdioceses and institutions filed suit in federal district courts across the country Monday against the so-called contraception mandate, in one of the biggest coordinated legal challenges to the rule to date.
Claiming their "fundamental rights hang in the balance," a total of 43 plaintiffs filed a dozen separate lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the requirement. Among the organizations were the University of Notre Dame and the Archdiocese of New York.
...
A statement from the University of Notre Dame said the requirement would still call on religious-affiliated groups to "facilitate" coverage "for services that violate the teachings of the Catholic Church."
"The federal mandate requires Notre Dame and similar religious organizations to provide in their insurance plans abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization procedures, which are contrary to Catholic teaching. It also authorizes the government to determine which organizations are sufficiently 'religious' to warrant an exemption from the requirement," the statement said.
I'm one hundred percent in agreement with the plaintiffs and quite frankly, if you're not, you damned well ought to be.
I don't expect Obama and his minions to take this lying down, in fact, quite the opposite.
Things could get rough for faithful Catholics... not so much for cultural Catholics...
If you consider yourself a Catholic, which are you?
Crossposted at Wizbang.
“We have tried negotiation with the Administration and legislation with the Congress – and we’ll keep at it – but there's still no fix. Time is running out, and our valuable ministries and fundamental rights hang in the balance, so we have to resort to the courts now. Though the Conference is not a party to the lawsuits, we applaud this courageous action by so many individual dioceses, charities, hospitals and schools across the nation, in coordination with the law firm of Jones Day. It is also a compelling display of the unity of the Church in defense of religious liberty. It's also a great show of the diversity of the Church's ministries that serve the common good and that are jeopardized by the mandate – ministries to the poor, the sick, and the uneducated, to people of any faith or no faith at all.”
The Anchoress was asked by a reader to respond to Maureen Dowd's latest anti-Catholic screed and she has obliged.
Oh how she has obliged:
Dowd has demonstrated that she really doesn’t understand much about Catholicism and its unending, beautifully nuanced and constant move toward God’s ever-present “Yes” — a fundamentally sophisticated and paradoxical means toward true freedom. As with many other issues, she has completely bought into the arrested-adolescent perspective, which can only perceive the church as a numbing “no.” Since Dowd is unwilling to plumb the depths of the church in order to seek out its richness, there are absolutely no surprises in the piece, and I was ready to push it aside until she hauled out Mario Cuomo, as she is wont to do from time-to-time.
Just as Nancy Pelosi recently (and badly) tried to give talking points to Catholicswho support gay marriage, nearly 30 years ago Cuomo helped give Catholic politicians and pundits cover and talking points to assist in their dissent on abortion. Now, Dowd was turning to Cuomo again, looking for something cleverer and less ham-handed than Pelosi’s try. Cuomo served up this:
“If the church were my religion, I would have given it up a long time ago,” he said. “All the mad and crazy popes we’ve had through history, decapitating the husbands of women they’d taken. All the terrible things the church has done. Christ is my religion, the church is not.
Oh, heavens, Mario, when did you start channeling Anne Rice? You’re running on the cheap and inefficient fuel of emotionalism, here! There is not a church man or church woman alive — including, I would wager, Pope Benedict XVI — who would not agree that if the institutional church were not surviving by the grace of the Holy Spirit it would have long-sinced ceased to be, because its human administrators have always been faulty, sinful, broken but redeemed people. But to say “Christ is my religion, the church is not,” is both ignorant and laughably self-serving.
She's hardly done so read the rest.
Ignorant and laughably self-serving is a kind way of describing so many who engage in Catholic bashing. They largely base their criticism on false premises and assertions while completely ignoring the good and the holy that makes the church unique.
I have little tolerance for that 'arrested-adolescent perspective'.
That from the bio page of on Pentti Linkola... and this apparently is not farce or satire, this dude is a for real self-described eco-fascist:
Pentti Linkola writes about the apocalyptic climactic changes that will soon effect us here in humanityland, but he doesn't take the easy way out that most authors do. Instead, he chooses to be brutally honest and suggests that we've already missed our chance to curb our damage of the world, so what we must do is to begin the elimination of human and technological excesses now.
Quotations
"What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship's axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides."
"The composition of the Greens seems to be the same as that of the population in general — mainly pieces of drifting wood, people who never think."
"A minority can never have any other effective means to influence the course of matters but through the use of violence."
"Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth."
"The most central and irrational faith among people is the faith in technology and economical growth. Its priests believe until their death that material prosperity bring enjoyment and happiness - even though all the proofs in history have shown that only lack and attempt cause a life worth living, that the material prosperity doesn't bring anything else than despair. These priests believe in technology still when they choke in their gas masks."
"That there are billions of people over 60kg weight on this planet is recklessness."
"Alternative movements and groups are a welcome relief and a present for the society of economic growth."
"We will have to...learn from the history of revolutionary movements — the national socialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades — and forget our narcissistic selves."
"Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed."
"A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life are been organized on basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her...Just as only one out of 100,000 has the talent to be an engineer or an acrobat, only a few are those truly capable of managing the matters of a nation or mankind as a whole...In this time and this part of the World we are headlessly hanging on democracy and parliamentary system, even though these are the most mindless and desperate experiments of the mankind...In democratic coutries the destruction of nature and sum of ecological disasters has accumulated most...Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromizing control of the individual citizen."
"If the present amount of Earths population is preserved and is reduced only by the means of birth control, then:
- Birthgiving must be licenced. To enhance population quality, genetically or socially unfit homes will be denied offspring, so that several birth licences can be allowed to families of quality.
- Energy production must be drastically reduced. Electricity is allowed only for the most necessary lighting and communications.
- Food: Hunting must be made more efficient. Human diet will include rats and invertebrate animals. Agriculture moves to small un-mechanized units. All human manure is used as fertilizer.
- Traffic is mostly done with bicycles and rowing boats. Private cars are confiscated. Long-distance travel is done with sparse mass transport. Trees will be planted on most roads.
- Foreign affairs: All mass immigration and most of import-export trade must stop. Cross-border travel is allowed only for small numbers of diplomats and correspondents.
- Business will mostly end. Manufacture is allowed only for well argumented needs. All major manufacturing capacity is state owned. Products will be durable and last for generations.
- Science and schooling: Education will concentrate on practical skills. All competition is rooted out. Technological research is reduced to extreme minimum. But every child will learn how to clean a fish in a way that only the big shiny bones are left over."
Yup. I'd consider him a most serious ecological activist.
H/T to Fr. Philip Powell
CNN is offering helpful advice to we heterosexuals:
Couples of all orientations find themselves struggling with the same issues, from mismatched libidos to sex ruts to infidelity. “The underlying dynamics are identical,” says Emily Nagoski, sex educator and author of "A Scientific Guide to Successful Relationships."
“They may play out differently because of the differences in gender or because of external social pressures, but the rules are the same – and there's some clear indications that gay couples are actually better at following those rules than straight couples!”
Nagoski pointed me to a 12-year study of same-sex couples by eminent marriage therapist Dr. John Gottman, which concluded that all couple types - straight or gay - have many of the same issues and the same paths to staying happy together.But Gottman’s research also indicated that gay/lesbian couples are more upbeat in the face of conflict and, compared to straight couples, use more affection and humor when they bring up a disagreement.
"When it comes to emotions, we think these couples may operate with very different principles than straight couples,” says Gottman. “Straight couples may have a lot to learn from gay and lesbian relationships."
Studies suggest, for instance, that gay male couples tend to have sex more often than any other type of couples, while lesbian couples tend to have the least amount of sex. Since women often value emotional intimacy over sexual intimacy, low sex drive may not be a concern.
Likewise, two men who have strong libidos may be able to accommodate their sexual desires within an open relationship.
“A number of my gay clients prefer to be sexually open but emotionally monogamous,” says sex and relationship therapist Joe Kort. “They can have lovers on the side and not have it be a threat to the relationship.”
Being sexually open with lovers on the side is something straight couples ought to learn from gay and lesbian relationships as it leads to happiness together.
These same gay and lesbians who apparently think it wise, presumably, to be married and who think this redefinition of the term are simply being prudish, backwards, intolerant and bigoted.
So. Much. To. Learn.
Campbell Brown, former news anchor for CNN and NBC, is talking about Barack Hussein Obama:
WHEN I listen to President Obama speak to and about women, he sometimes sounds too paternalistic for my taste. In numerous appearances over the years — most recently at the Banard graduation — he has made reference to how women are smarter than men. It’s all so tired, the kind of fake praise showered upon those one views as easy to impress. As I listen, I am always bracing for the old go-to cliché: “Behind every great man is a great woman.”
Some women are smarter than men and some aren’t. But to suggest to women that they deserve dominance instead of equality is at best a cheap applause line.
My bigger concern is that in courting women, Mr. Obama’s campaign so far has seemed maddeningly off point. His message to the Barnard graduates was that they should fight for a “seat at the table” — the head seat, he made sure to add. He conceded that it’s a tough economy, but he told the grads, “I am convinced you are tougher” and “things will get better — they always do.”
Hardly reassuring words when you look at the reality.
...
I have always admired President Obama and I agree with him on some issues, like abortion rights. But the promise of his campaign four years ago has given way to something else — a failure to connect with tens of millions of Americans, many of them women, who feel economic opportunity is gone and are losing hope. In an effort to win them back, Mr. Obama is trying too hard. He’s employing a tone that can come across as grating and even condescending. He really ought to drop it. Most women don’t want to be patted on the head or treated as wards of the state.
Yet many women will settle for exactly that.
Here's hoping Campbell Brown's awakening is the beginning of a trend.
Bonchamps at American Catholic cuts to the chase:
In the case of “gay marriage”, the big lie is that there is some desire on the part of conservatives and Christians in this country to actually deny some right, some liberty, some freedom to people who identify themselves and live as homosexuals. As abhorrent, disordered and immoral as I find the “gay lifestyle” to be, the truth is that – and here I speak for virtually every conservative Christian I know or have read – we really are not the least bit interested in micro-managing the sex-lives of our fellow citizens. We have absolutely no desire to have uniformed gendarmes kick in your bedroom doors to make sure no acts of sodomy are taking place in the middle of the night. The only thing more repugnant to me than such acts would be the prospect of becoming comfortable with the sort of routine invasions of personal privacy that would be required to ensure that no one was living out their life as a homosexual.
To be even more specific, to the gay couple we say: we do not care if you visit one another in the hospital. We do not care if you grant one another medical power of attorney. We do not care if you jointly own property. We do not care if you leave property for each other inherit when one of you dies. We do not care if you own a home together and live in it. We do not care if you get dressed up, rent a local hall, stage whatever sort of ceremony you like, and even refer to yourselves as “married.”
We may object, on different grounds, some secular, some religious, to your adopting children. After all, there are now other human beings in the equation- and there seems to be at least some kind of moral consensus across political lines that the interests of children do sometimes take precedence over the rights and privileges of adults. In any case, its something we can safely set aside for the moment.
To reiterate, this time specifically to the radical homosexual: on all the issues that concern the consenting adults only, we don’t care. Of course we care in the abstract that you are leading lives of grave sin in open defiance of God, but then so do millions of “heterosexuals” who fornicate, commit adultery, use artificial contraception, sterilize themselves, and so on. Not every sin can or should be a matter for the state to concern itself with, and we are content to let God judge in these matters; but no sin, and this brings us closer to the main point here, can ever be called a virtue, no evil can ever be called a good, by any Christian with a conscience, or by any citizen who cares about the integrity of society.
You can live as you want, engage in whatever sort of contracts you like, conduct any sort of ceremonies you please. But there is one thing you cannot have, and it is the one thing you seek through this radical political agenda, these hysterical protests and complaints about Christians: our approval. It cannot possibly be about anything else, because it is really the only thing you are missing. You want to live in a world in which everyone regards what you do and how you live not only as normal, but as a positive good. And your attempts to legalize “gay marriage” are about this and this alone. It is not about “equal rights” that you already possess, it is not about the freedom to openly identify as gay, which you already have. It is about using the power of the state to force society to recognize your living arrangements and lifestyle choices as legitimate. It is about policing the thoughts and opinions of the American people. It is about sharing prestige with properly and truly married couples. It is about envy and resentment, and a deep, abiding hatred of religion in general and Christianity in particular.
Let me be blunt: your disordered lifestyles are not equal to the traditional marriage or the traditional family, which have served as the foundation of civilization since its very beginnings. You do not deserve equal prestige, and nor, for that matter, do “straight” couples who actively choose not to procreate. And you have no right to such things. You have no right to have the state give you extra benefits, tax breaks, or anything of the sort – you have no right to have your romantic choices ratified by society. You don’t have the right to go through life without being heckled or bullied, as you heckle and bully the Christians you hate, as you mock with the most disgusting outrages imaginable all that we hold sacred.
In the face of your tyranny, your bullying, your mockery, your boundless hate, we will continue to persevere.
H/T Mark Shea who adds:
It’s ironic really. The draconian demand for approval that cannot settle for mere tolerance shows that, at some level, that the gay “marriage” movement which holds Christians in such deep contempt hungers–with the hunger of a child eager to hear a word of praise from her Father–to hear praise from exactly the people that movement claims to despise. And above all, it seems to me that this, in turn, demonstrates that such folk hunger to hear a word of love and welcome from God (as do we all).
We Christians, it seems to me, need to find a way to communicate that the homosexual is loved and welcomed by God–just not the sin of homosex. But that requires that both we and they regard them as something more than their appetites and grasp that they are not identical to or co-terminous with those appetites.
God grant us wisdom.
Mother Mary, pray for us.
I have no problem whatsoever with this coming our way via The Anchoress:
I love our priests, and honor them, but it’s hard to argue that an unfaithful straight priest is better than a faithful gay one. I would rather see a homosexually-inclined happy, celibate priest be able to live in honesty about who he is, than learn about a hetero priestliving a lie. A faithful priest is a faithful priest. A happy, joy-filled priest serves the body of Christ in a powerful way.
Allow me to anticipate the argument that the priesthood cannot be open to people the Eastern religions call “imbalanced” and our church calls “disordered.” Find me a priest who doesn’t have some sort of disorder, whether it’s an eating disorder, or an attention-seeking disorder, or a disorder of social ineptness, a hearing disorder, or even a learning disorder. Our priests are human, imperfect, faulty and sometimes broken, just like the rest of us. I think as a church we do ourselves and our dear priests a disservice by pretending that one particular disorder is not represented among them — and we do our gay brothers and sisters a disservice, too, by rendering them only partly visible.
Listen to me carefully.
I am disordered. I need Christ and His Church to bring order to my disorderedness.
But what I don't do is attempt to have my readers, my family, my friends and coworkers or anyone within earshot, affirm my disorderedness, celebrate my disorderedness, cajole you into thinking that there's nothing wrong with my disorderedness.
A priest who considers himself gay but who is celibate and who is fulfilling his God ordained role as pastor and shepherd is a priest I'll have no problem with.
And let me change those words just a little.
A man or woman who considers himself or herself gay but who is celibate and who is fulfilling his or her God ordained role as a child of God I'll have no problem with.
Period.
Thank you Elizabeth for this much needed post and the opportunity it avails me to set the record straight.
Melissa Clouthier has the most plausible of posts up explaining the Obama was born in Kenya stories bolstered by recent revelations uncovered by Breitbart:
Barack Obama’s promotional materials, as late as 2007, said he was born in Kenya. Read about it here and then, come back.
Why would he do this? It seems crazy.
Imagine you’re a hippie kid. Your dad is some Kenyan big wig. Your mom is a self-important sociologist doing such important work that you, Barack Obama, must be left home with grandma and grandpa.
You are boring.
You are a mixed race kid on Hawaii in the sixties which is not a big deal because everyone has Hawaiian blood and has mocha skin. You are relatively wealthy and end up at a prep school with other wealthy kids.
You have to justify your existence.
No mom. No dad. Rather provincial, if privileged, Hawaiian life, but lots of questions from peers.
What do you do?
Well, nothing, other than smoke dope, do cocaine (expensive – but no big deal for rich kids), and hang out acting like a badass.
And then, there’s privileged college where you lead a rather mundane and calculated existence.
You don’t find yourself there. You just find out how you don’t want to self-identify.
Like Elizabeth Warren, it’s really not enough to be a white, privileged kid. Or even a mixed-raced privileged kid.
It takes some resume juicing to be really legit in the diversity crowd.
So, you lie.
You pretend you’re a man of the world. You tell people you were born in Kenya. You brag about your time in Indonesia.
You don’t talk about Hawaii.
You don’t talk about your white mother.
You don’t talk about your white grandparents who raised you and gave you a conventional, privileged upbringing.
You pretend you’re part of the victim class.
You pretend you’re worldly wise.
Given this President's penchant for lying, his penchant for pretending, this I think at this point makes the most sense.
But boy oh boy will the birthers take this story and run with it... and who can blame them.
When the evidence for that charge is so scant?
Two police reports written the night that George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin said that Zimmerman had a bloody face and nose, according to police reports made public today.
The reports also note that two witness accounts appear to back up Zimmerman's version of what happened when they describe a man on his back with another person wearing a hoodie straddling him and throwing punches.
It has been such a contentious case that even the evidence is being disputed.
The police report states that Trayvon Martin's father told an investigator after listening to 911 tapes that captured a man's voice frantically callling for help that it was not his son calling for help.
...
Two police officers reported that when they arrived at the scene of the shooting, Zimmerman seemed to have a battered nose and bloodied face. One wrote that his "facial area was bloodied," and the back of his clothing was soiled with wet grass.
"Zimmerman was also bleeding from the nose and the back of his head," Officer Ricardo Ayala wrote.
Another officer wrote, "I saw that Zimmerman's face was bloodied and it appeared to me that his nose was broken."
Witnesses, whose names were redacted from the report, also lent support to Zimmerman's version of what happened.
"He witnesses a black male, wearing a dark colored 'hoodie' on top of a white or Hispanic male and throwing punches 'MMA (mixed martial arts) style,'" the police report of the witness said. "He then heard a pop. He stated that after hearing the pop, he observed the person he had previously observed on top of the other person (the male wearing the hoodie) laid out on the grass."
A second witness described a person on the ground with another straddling him and throwing punches. The man on the bottom was yelling for help, the witness told police.
The documents state that Zimmerman can be heard yelling for help 14 times on a 911 call recorded during the fight.
Yet another witness described the confrontation in emotional terms.
The witness heard "someone yelling, almost crying. Then I heard a gunshot." The witness wrote that he or she "saw a man on top of a guy laying on the ground. He was putting his hands on his neck or chest."
The man asked the witness to call 911.
"He stood up and took a couple steps away and put his hands on his head and then walked back over to the guy on the ground. He looked at him for a minute, then started to walk away toward the road. That is when the police walked up," the witness wrote.
The lead investigator on the case, Officer Christopher Serino, wrote that Zimmerman could be heard "yelling for help as he was being battered by Trayvon Martin."
...
The autopsy also shows that Zimmerman shot Martin from a distance of between 1 inch and 18 inches away, bolstering Zimmerman's claim that he shot Martin during a close struggle.
Martin's autopsy report also revealed that there was a quarter-inch by half-inch abrasion on the left fourth finger of Martin, another indication of a possible struggle.
The teen, who lived in Miami, was in Sanford while serving a suspension for a bag of marijuana being discovered in his possession. Martin had THC, the drug found in marijuana, in his blood on the night of his death, according to the autopsy.
The prosecution better have some blockbuster stuff in their hip pocket or this will prove, once and for all, that the only reason we're even to this point is because a political agenda is at stake.
And a quick final note. Yesterday, I wrote about NBCs scandalous headline as to Zimmerman shooting Marting at 'intermediate range'.
ABC deserves some credit. In their report I've excerpted here at length, they cite the autopsy report as showing Zimmerman shooting Martin from a distance of 1 inch to 18 inches.
More heads should roll at NBC.
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