Category: Uncategorized

The Evangelical Outpost points to an interesting article in The Atlantic, entitled How Serfdom Saved the Women’s Movement. It was interesting to me primarily as a voyeuristic experience in wading through the morass of what passes for feminist thinking, which, like the entire history of American liberalism, could be entitled Getting Bit in the Butt by the Law of Unintended Consquences.

Pity the poor upper-middle class working mommy, who is outraged that she can’t Have It All. She can’t figure this out, apparently, until she hits 30 and has already spawned, while even the most benighted boy is capable of figuring out that he is not going to be an NFL quarterback and an NBA point guard by the time he is 12, and those few who might actually have the talent to do both – New York Knicks fans, please note I said might – are generally quite willing to choose between the two without railing against the cosmic unfairness of it all.

The irony is that these overeducated self-indulged women actually want three things, because it’s quite possible for a high-powered career woman to marry, have children, and then park them at home with Daddy all day. There’s plenty of men who’d be delighted to sign off on such a deal. Stay home, play with the kids, do a little laundry while watching ESPN – it’s all good! The problem is that this idyllic arrangement totally precludes her marrying the even higher-powered Alpha male that sets her greedy little heart atwitter.

Freud once asked the famous question, what does woman want. The correct answer in this case clearly is: woman has no clue. Read the article, it’s astounding. If she stays home, she wants a career. If she has a career, she wants to stay home. In either case, and with every permutation in between, she’s unhappy. This is grass-is-greener syndrome on steroids.

The notion of playing the hand that’s been dealt has obviously never entered these pathetic little minds; even the notion of having to play the cards that they’ve personally selected is, somehow, offensive and “oppressive”. I’d say that I was unsympathetic to their plight, except that the word is inadequate. What a contemptible lot! The only people I feel sorry for are their children and nannies. I’d feel sorry for their husbands too, except based on this article, those men are clearly smart enough to spend every waking hour at the office or anywhere else that will afford them escape from these obnoxious creatures.

The irony is that it is these very careers which have forced their less fortunate sisters – whose plight some of the authors have attempted to coopt in a vain search for sympathy by proxy – to enter the workforce as well. As I have previously demonstrated, the influx of women into the workforce had two consequences. 1) allowed men over the age of 65 to retire en masse. 2) lowered the average real wage rate. Combined with increased taxation, a working class man can no longer support a family on one salary, thereby depriving working class women of any ability to choose between work and home. No wonder working class women hate the Sisterhood. They may not understand the fullness of who has put them in this difficult situation, but they have an intuitive grasp of the truth.

I once wrote that “being romantically involved with an intelligent, educated, upper-middle-class American woman steeped in 20 years of feminist indoctrination is about as desirable as being flayed alive and rolled in salt.” I doubt I have the words to express the torment that must result from marrying one of these creatures, and I am ever so delighted to know that I will never need them.

Patrick J. Buchanan writes: On the dust jacket of his book, Richard Perle appends a Washington Post depiction of himself as the “intellectual guru of the hard-line neoconservative movement in foreign policy.” The guru’s reputation, however, does not survive a reading. Indeed, on putting down Perle’s new book the thought recurs: the neoconservative moment may be over. For they are not only losing their hold on power, they are losing their grip on reality.

An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror opens on a note of hysteria. In the War on Terror, writes Perle, “There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust.” “What is new since 9/11 is the chilling realization that the terrorist threat we thought we had contained” now menaces “our survival as a nation.” But how is our survival as a nation menaced when not one American has died in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11? Are we really in imminent peril of a holocaust like that visited upon the Jews of Poland?

“[A] radical strain within Islam,” says Perle, “ … seeks to overthrow our civilization and remake the nations of the West into Islamic societies, imposing on the whole world its religion and laws.” Well, yes. Militant Islam has preached that since the 7th century. But what are the odds the Boys of Tora Bora are going to “overthrow our civilization” and coerce us all to start praying to Mecca five times a day?

I never bought the notion that neocons were more loyal to Israel than the USA. But in light of some of the hysterical and nonsensical accusations of anti-semitism made against those who criticize them, I start to wonder if perhaps they are not protesting too much. What the hell is that “two democracy” argument anyhow, especially considering that WE’RE NOT A FREAKING DEMOCRACY! I’m all for Israel, but I don’t think that it should be a major factor in our foreign policy nor can I imagine why it would be.

There can be little question that neoconservativism is, as Buchanan approvingly quotes, “liberalism with very sharp teeth”. The article is long, but it is one that you must read. It actually inspired me to write to Mr. Buchanan and tell him that as he had done everything but sow the neoconservative earth with salt, I imagined Mr. Perle and Mr. Frum now had a very good idea of what Carthage must have felt like once Rome was finished with it.

The Washington Post reports: The White House on Thursday struggled anew to contain the fallout over an overly optimistic forecast that 2.6 million jobs will be created this year and some Republicans expressed concern about the damage being done to President Bush. The chairman of Bush’s re-election campaign, Marc Racicot, continued a general Bush administration retreat by saying the forecast of 2.6 million jobs was only a “stated goal.” “It was a theoretical discussion by an economist,” he told NBC’s “Today” show. White House spokesman Scott McClellan called it “a snapshot in time by economic forecasters.”

Since 112,000 jobs were created in January, to meet the goal would require adding an average of about 335,000 new jobs each month over the course of the year — well above the 166,000 jobs a month predicted by a recent survey of forecasters by the Blue Chip Economic Indicators newsletter. In fact, the White House had implied that 3.8 million jobs would be created this year by projecting about 3 percent growth in the number of jobs in 2004.

How quickly they retreat. This macro economics merde is why I didn’t even bother buying the textbook when I was forced to take the class for my econ major. After one test, the professor asked me if I hadn’t read a certain chapter, as my incorrect answer on an otherwise decent test indicated to him that I hadn’t read it. He was astounded when I told him I didn’t even own the textbook, and furthermore, I had no intention of wasting any precious time or brain space on something that was obviously wrong in the theoretical sense and manifestly inaccurate in application.

Mogambo quotes John Crudele’s demonstration of how most of those 112,000 jobs were fictional anyhow: “By now my readers should have a PHD (pretty high disdain) for Capitol Hill math. This one, though, is a cake taker. I’ll translate: Included in the 112,000 new jobs in January were 76,000 jobs that supposedly exist because people who weren’t hired in December couldn’t be fired in January. Got that? They didn’t get hired in December, or fired in January, so they showed up as new employees in January as a statistical fluke. So, really there were only an abysmally small 36,000 new jobs in January. “

I guess that means the economy only has to produce 345,455 new jobs per month in order to meet the White House’s prediction. Well, if they can find 76,000 jobs that don’t exist, I’m sure they can find another few million. The exposure of Saddam Hussein’s secret printing operations should blow the entire notion of official government economics statistics away once and for all. It won’t, but it should.

K-Lo of NRO’s Corner quotes John Podhoretz and writes: “America has done some extraordinary and wonderful things these past three years” under the leadership of George W. Bush. There are miles to go and there are things that have not gone quite right–or which some of us may disagree with for some very real reasons–but the accomplishments are substantial and critically important.

Now, if that doesn’t make you pull the lever for a third party, nothing will. Increasing central government power faster than anyone since FDR, and there’s still miles to go? Apparently George Delano isn’t the quasi-socialist I believe him to be, it seems he’ll settle for nothing less than outright communism.

The thing that bothers me most about George Delano isn’t the War on Terror, even though I have massive reservations about it and how he’s handled it. I freely admit that there may well be aspects to it that we do not know and may never know – no, I assume there are. But if he’s so focused on it, then why does he just hand everything else off to the Democrats? Why not say, look, we’re declaring war, we’re in a war, and you’re either with us or against us. Then abolish half of the Cabinet departments and slash domestic spending in half. Or three-quarters, whatever.

But this war that isn’t a war and handing the Democrats their platform on a silver platter… I don’t buy it for a second. Perhaps it’s George Delano, for all his clumsy diction and seeming average Joe-ness, and not the sophmoric Bill Clinton, who is the unusually good liar.

A week before Mel Gibson’s movie about Jesus Christ hits theaters, his father has gone on an explosive rant against Jews – claiming they fabricated the Holocaust and are conspiring to take over the world. “They’re after one world religion and one world government,” Hutton Gibson, 85, said in a radio interview that will air Monday night. “That’s why they’ve attacked the Catholic Church so strongly, to ultimately take control over it by their doctrine.”

In the bizarre interview, Gibson also said Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan should be lynched and called for the government to be overthrown.

I don’t agree with him on the Jews, although I’m just as opposed as he is to everyone who is after global government, be they Jew or Gentile. But Mr. Gibson is certainly sound on Greenspan. Mogambo has already predicted on numerous occasions that future generations will dig up Greenspan’s body and hang it due to the massive hardship his abominable stewardship of the Fed will put them through.

I do find it intriguing that a New York paper should get so upset over Mel Gibson’s dad denying the Holocaust, considering that the New York Times still won’t return the Pulitzer its correspondent won for denying the Soviet forced famines that killed more people than Hitler ever did. The elder Gibson is obviously no military historian, though. The German economy was never on a serious war footing, which was one reason why they had plenty of resources to devote to the Endlosung. Also, from what I’ve read, the bodies were usually disposed of by burial in mass graves with layers of quicklime spread between them; they usually weren’t burned.

Hal Lindsay does not have the world’s greatest track record when it comes to predicting future events. However, in his column today on WND, he did point out something important. If our generation sees the building of a new Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, currently the site of an important Islamic mosque, one will have to be either a fool or willfully blind to miss the eschatonic implications.

Indeed, this is the only reason that the continued move towards global governance does not concern me overmuch. It is evil, to be sure, but it is an expected evil, and one which many previous generations of Christians might well have rejoiced to see. I daresay even a cynical non-believer could see profit from knowledge of the apocalyptic prophecies.

When all the world is become one

Then will the time of Man be done.

And so another one bites the dust. I’m a little disappointed to see Howard go, as he would have been the most entertaining Democratic nominee by far, barring the unlikely enshrining of the cartoon that is the Reverend Al Sharpton. He’s ending with a whimper, not a howl, another disappointment as I was hoping for at least one last fiery speech punctuated by his now-trademark HYEEEAH! Maybe he’ll do us right at the Democratic convention in Boston, although I’m guessing he’ll be overshadowed by newlywed drag queens appearing courtesy of the Massachusetts Supreme Court.

It makes absolutely no difference to me if John Francois or George Delano wins the Presidency, nor will it make any difference to the ultimate fate of the United States. Clearly we will have to go further along the road to global citizenship before the American people wake up, if they ever do.

The Star Tribune gets optimistic: Another conservative caller asks accusingly, “Do you believe socialism is superior to capitalism?” “No,” Schultz says, but he’s irritated. “You get so stuck in a rut, hung up in this philosophy,” he tells the caller, his throat tightening and making him sound a little like Rush again. “When does dealing with the real problem overrun your fixation with ideology?”

What an intellectual zero. This guy is the ultimate media ho, the only good thing is that his dedication to conservativism was probably no more genuine than his newfound love of leftism. If he had any knowledge whatsoever, he’d know that there is no separation between ideology and real problems. A foolish question like the one above is an evasion, although it’s probable that he couldn’t define the difference between capitalism and socialism if his radio show depended on it.

US combat losses subsequent to:

Fall of Baghdad – 106

Kuwaiti restoration – 247

Invasion of Afghanistan – 76

US losses in combat, accident and suicide in the Iraqi occupation:

437

So, wouldn’t have probably cost fewer American lives to take out the Saudi and Iranian regimes than to leave our troops sitting in Iraq and accepting their attacks by proxy?

From the Washington Times: Monday’s vote by the Virginia House of Delegates to increase taxes by $500 million suggests that state politicians are moving toward some kind of consensus in favor of higher taxes. The legislation, passed by a 59-36 vote, was opposed by just six of the 61 Republicans in the 100-member House. The bill increases taxes by taking away sales-tax exemptions from a variety of industries, including airlines, railroads, telecommunications, utility companies and dry cleaners…. Although we would have preferred to have seen Republicans stand firm against tax increases, the reality is that there is no significant number of tax-increase opponents left in Richmond today. Thus, the main order of business for Republicans should be to try to mitigate the damage from tax increases by negotiating with the governor for some off-setting cuts in spending.

So, if they’re for bigger, sorry, STRONGER government and tax increases, what is it that separates Republicans from Democrats again? Note that Republicans have a 61-39 majority in the Virginia House, and that’s still not enough to cut government spending. Can you seriously argue that if only they had a 71-29 majority, or an 81-19 majority, Virginia Republicans would then be motivated to embrace the reality of small government for which they supposedly stand?

I think perhaps we need a 12-step program for Republicans. Step one: I admit that politicians do not always mean what they say….