No, Status Has Nothing to Do with Attracting Women.
Posted by Fire @ 7:08 AM
Lying About America: Again and Again.
When will it end? Likely never.
You remember all this masochistic trash don’t you?
About us being the world’s real villians and that’s why the WTC got incinerated. I can hear their latte voices to this day (in my case some were relatives): “What are the root causes of the 9/11 attack? What did we do to those people?” The real question is why would anybody feel sorry for the envious, cruel and evil radical Islamists.
Nations that defend themselves tend not to win popularity contests. But that does not imply that the United States has no need to make the case for itself and its policies. For too long, Washington has failed to do that effectively.
Tell it to the mountain!
Posted by Fire @ 6:51 AM
The Cat in the Hat.
Nice little review here. Mike Myers plays the Cat as an old Jewish comic, now that’s funny!
They say it’s a bit risque and not meant for children.
I readily believe that. Things sure have changed since we used to watch Lost in Space as kids.
No, the real question is, what is the cutoff age at which children seeing “The Cat in the Hat” this weekend will connect the dots and understand who Paris Hilton is and why she’s famous at this particular moment?
Posted by Fire @ 6:44 AM
American Women Have Much to Be Thankful For!
Yes they do, and it is not because they live in an imagined patriarchy.
Here’s Carrie Lukas giving us the gratefulness scoop.
Still, this is not 1950. Women today enjoy choice and opportunity, both in and out of the home. Feminist organizations should stop fighting the last war; they should refocus their energies on reforming policies that limit flexibility and stifle economic progress. And they might focus more attention on our sisters overseas, in places like the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
Posted by Fire @ 6:38 AM
U. of C. activists want bathrooms without gender
This shows just how out of teach these freaks are with real women. They’ve tried these kinds of gender integrating things before, and the women themselves don’t like them. I think UOC has an IWF at it.
My comments in bold.
November 26, 2003
BY LUCIO GUERRERO Staff Reporter Advertisement
Transgender, gay and feminist groups at the University of Chicago are asking officials to consider creating more gender-neutral bathrooms, saying some people aren’t comfortable selecting a gender-specific facility.
[Pfft! Let’s ruin thing for everyone because some transgendered freak can’t decide if he wants the boy or girl’s room.]
“Persons who are not easily legible as male or female often experience various forms of intimidation in these places. If a woman in a women’s-only restroom is assumed to be a man, there may be real threats to her comfort and even safety,” [oh, so women are violent now?] warns the Coalition for a Queer Safe Campus, a student group comprised of various organizations supporting equality on campus. “Students have faced gay-baiting comments in our university’s sex-segregated bathrooms.”
The issue is especially of concern to transgenders who attend the university. The coalition said they know of students who don’t use the bathrooms at school to avoid any controversy. [They’ll block off streets, take over buildings, but they can’t use the bathroom? Pfft!!!]
Members of the Feminist Majority, Queers & Associates and the Center for Gender Studies held a panel at the university last week to discuss the issue. Moon Duchin, a graduate student at U. of C. and an adviser to the Queer Safe Campus bathroom initiative, said there is a misperception on campus from some students about the gender-neutral bathrooms.
She said after the panel convened and word spread about the topic, some students posted negative comments on Web sites about the movement. [Kind of like this one.]
“This is a hot-button issue with some people who think that we are trying to do away with conventional bathrooms,” Duchin said. “But that’s not the case. We are trying to create more choices for people.” [Choices! More choices!! There’s that word again!! That’s what we need! Choices!]
In the short term, the group wants to change existing bathrooms on one floor of the Joseph Regenstein Library and one floor of Cobb Hall, a popular student hangout. In the future, the group would like the university to consider gender-neutral bathrooms to be included in the plans for new buildings.
“Access to public, single-occupancy bathrooms would be ideal for undercutting this source of intimidation, but converting existing multi-stall bathrooms to gender neutrality is an excellent, and easy, intermediate step,” the group writes on its Web site.
University officials said they are willing to look at the buildings to see if more bathrooms can be added.
“They have done a great job of raising community awareness of the issue,” said Bill Michel, associate dean of the college. [Oh my god!! Oh how I hate university admin!!! Please take a note of this person’s position in the university] “We are in the process of evaluating these two buildings to see if would be possible to create more bathrooms.”
Michel said the university already has nine gender-neutral bathrooms but none in the two most popular buildings.
But it is more than just a gay and transgender issue, for some feminists the issue of gender specific bathrooms has been a problem for years.
“Some feminists might say that any sex segregation is problematic,” [Ya, like heterosexual women choosing men and not exploring bisexuality, lesbianism, or only going solo] said Mary Anne Case, a professor of law at the University of Chicago who has studied the early roots of feminism and the inequality in sex segregated bathrooms.
Case said that along with creating more bathroom space for women — a typical problem in public facilities — the gender-neutral bathroom would also give men and women less reasons to separate in social functions. [This is blatantly false. The fact is, the more you keep men and women sepaparated, the closer you will bring them. An effective method to keep men and women away from each other romantically is to make them live together or piss together – this is a known fact.] —
I thought this stupid shit died off in the late 90s. I was wrong.
Posted by Amber @ 3:04 AM
Dance, Dance Little Sister Dance!
Posted by Fire @ 6:35 PM
Sylvester Fights Back–Publishes Own Magazine!
Posted by Fire @ 7:07 AM
Men and Pulp Fiction.
Memoir-filled piece from Reason.
It regards men in the fifties to eighties reading pulpy magazines that had basic evolutionary themes: man defeats great evil, damsels in distress must be saved, man finds himself, etc. Amazingly, these themes were always contained within the pages a single book. I never did read that stuff, but you could argue that my loving comic books and The Savage Sword of Conan was not much different.
Posted by Fire @ 7:07 AM
8.2% Growth, the Times they are a’ Booming!
Well, not yet, but soon.
Here’s a piece by the charming Larry Kudlow about Bush’s chances in 2004.
In short, he loves them, but he cautions the president to stay away from protectionism, and he could not be more right. He calls Bush’s steel tariffs “silly,” but I can think of a lot worse words. That bra thing with china is outrageous and hopefully it won’t go through. Free market uber alles!
Posted by Fire @ 6:58 AM
A Complete Explanation of Supply and Demand.
And on not more than 2 pages of print too. Here Lew Rockwell explains the hallmarks of employment in relation to the economy through the question of lost jobs.
Jobs are not “lost.” People in the US can continue to work at whatever they want, but they will do so under the margin of profit. In a true free market, an economy always loses employment in some areas and finds jobs openning in others. It’s inherent to supply and demand. We don’t lament that America is no longer 70% agrarian workers do we?
Posted by Fire @ 2:22 AM
Tom Sylvester, “let’s not get too extreme”
He didn’t say it that way, but I agree with Bernard: He’s a pussy. Here’s what he had to say in his
response
on mensnewsdaily: “I have also argued that fathers’ rights advocates and the “men’s movement” (as represented by Men’s News Daily) undermine any legitimate grievances they might have through extreme rhetoric, conspiracy theorizing, and juvenile name-calling.”
He had just written a few sentences earlier: “Essentially, I have accused him [Bernard] of being an angry, whiny white male victimologist.” He couldn’t even write the word pussy. He had to put a “-” into it. Here’s what he wrote in an article on nationalreview.org: “Welfare policies may have contributed to the rise in out-of-wedlock childbearing.”
Gee, do you think so, Tom? Welfare policies MAY have contributed to the rise in out-of-wedlock childbearing? Wow! He’s really going out on a limb there! Extremists are basically people who say something that offend their opponents. Can’t have that!
Posted by PolishKnight @ 4:36 PM
From spectator.co.uk: Women who won’t
Rod Liddle says there may be good reasons for women to stay at home, but a lot of them do it because they are plain idle
Posted by PolishKnight @ 3:48 PM
W 2004!
Posted by Fire @ 12:14 PM
America: The bland melting pot
What do you get when you mix British, German, East Indian, Chinese, and Italian food all together? I don’t know, but it would probably taste similar to something I ate a sport’s bar last night.
I was amazed. Orange chicken on the menu next to meatloaf, kung pao, fish and chips, and cheeseburgers. I ordered the fish (and regretted it.) I just moved to the D.C. area and I’m looking for a place. Foreigners advised me “This isn’t Europe. These are suburban jails. For 5 acres, there will be nothing but housing and if you want to do anything, you must drive to a strip mall.” Relatives visiting from supposed third world countries said they felt as if they were in jail. In other countries (and in the states in the past) you could walk a block or even around the corner and find a group of small shops to cater to a variety of needs.
Why is this? A variety of reasons I imagine: The un-PC phenomina of “white flight” caused whites and their career wives to flee to the suburbs and build housing that would suit families who were rarely at home other than after work. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that Betty Friedan felt as if she were trapped in a suburban jail only to make it even moreso for such women’s granddaughters? European culture has been labeled as simply “white” and oppressive resulting in a society that seeks to destroy culture. When cultural displays are permitted, it’s entirely for a hidden political demonstration. I almost want to flee to Canada if that weren’t even more dull! At least here, I have a job!
Working class Joe was asking what could be done to turn things around. I have a number of suggestions: the original leftist revolution was funded, make no mistake about it, by the sentiments of working class men and women. People will have to lead by example: Two parent families can have a tremendous amount of resources if they start forming “mom and pop” restaurants that diners will find more enjoyable than bland sports bars. Or teaching piano out of their home. The idea is to bring the community back together and by doing so, demonstrate the values that allow this to happen in the first place.
This is already happening with home schooling. When a leftist tried to have home schooling regulated, home schoolers had their fax machines ready to flood their representatives. That was the end of that. It’s a paradox that for small government to work, it has to become organized. I’m open to suggestions.
Posted by PolishKnight @ 8:42 AM
A Thanksgiving note to Working Class Joe and Common Sense
It’s interesting how both Canada and the current state of education and relationships in the states tie together.
Working Class Joe is dismayed by American society today. I agree with him. Fortunately, it’s not fatal: I’m engaged to be married. My boss is 40 and has two daughters aged 5 and 3. My co-worker is a similar age and just had a baby girl. How do men who would have been labeled “middle-aged” in a previous era have children at such a late age? (Hint: Younger or foreign women.)
Young men are told they have their whole lives ahead of them and it’s true: He cannot rush. It’s a tortoise and hare race. He has to build a career, develop an understanding of the world (and women), fight the tough battles (even if it means possibly getting killed) and find someone. Fortunately, he has a lot of time to do this. Men seemingly mature more slowly because they have many responsibilities.
For young women, the challenges are different. The world seemingly hands them everything on a silver platter and even more so in a post-feminist society. They are told to not only over-consume, but waste. When I was growing up, women were being told even by their elders that marriage for young women was for suckers. A woman could “have it all!” and men who disagreed with them would be abandoned by the sisterhood. Feminism relies, ironically, upon the notion that women are not equal to men.
Times are changing as I observed above. The guys who played the game by the rules of American society are stuck in powerless marriages or in horrid divorces. Sex and the City and Bridgett Jones’ Diary are fairy tales about a syndrome that is becoming all too familiar to aging career women. The smart men and women are those who will form the foundation of a future American society.
Ok, now onto Canada: I’ve been in Toronto and have friends there. It’s very… clean and orderly. Much like Europe. There’s a number of reasons for this: Much of European socialism worked. I love the train system and, yes, their health care system is better than our messy screwed up patchwork. Canada also reaps the benefits of low population and comparatively low immigration (it gets COLD up there!) and it’s not exactly a short bus ride from Mexico.
However, just as the party is ending for young career girls in the states the time will come for them too. My friends in Canada told me about the dark side: Low wages and high unemployment. Institutions that are even more powerful than in the U.S. being taken over by traditionally politically correct forces.
The U.S. has survived through some very hard times that have devastated Europe, Asia, and most of the rest of the world. This is not an accident. The great leaders or “Fuhrers” of the past who promised to give everyone a job and handout are the same guys that people in those countries need the stupid yanks to come in and clean up the mess afterward. Canadians aren’t allowed to own firearms or freedom of the press. I’m not just talking about burning flags. I mean that “hate speech” when someone disagrees with the orthodoxy.
America isn’t the land of the free that’s been promised or bragged about in schoolrooms, but it’s the best thing the world has to go on for now.
Posted by PolishKnight @ 8:37 AM
LIONS
vs. packers.
Well, there truly is one born every minute as I’m about to skate down to the gym so I can be back home to see the game at 11 am. I stayed in last night and feel great this morning, but that will only last until the second or third minute of the first quarter. Now, if any youngsters are reading this, learn from my example. I’m going to my Cousin Vic’s house AFTER the game is over. You see, this is a pro-social move. I know people will be pointing their fingers and laughing at my Lions all afternoon so why be there and make enemies? The wise thing is to wait and scarf up all his whoresdeevorrs (our old college pronounciation) at 3 pm when Dallas comes on.
Posted by Fire @ 8:32 AM
Indymedia.com
This is a shark tank full of radicals, and frontpage offers this top-shelf primer on their odd and strange ideology.
You should read this one and check them out; if only to be grateful you’re not a member. Our Common Sense cut his teeth with these guys. He’d purposelessly write anti-PC stuff and post it there. He was given free daily beatings, but at least had the opportunity to give a little back– the site is not as closely supervised as freerepublic. He’s even, the cheeky bastard, posted a couple of my columns there so I could receive their two minute hate as well.
Posted by Fire @ 8:27 AM
Leftists Put On Rockshow.
And say nothing.
You know, this business with REM, Audioslave, whatever flavor band of the week, does not matter to me but I am sickened at the way Billy Bragg acts. He’s one of my favorite performers of all time. I loved him as a high school student when his love/relationship songs were as outstanding as they are today, and I was thankfully too politically naive to pay attention to the anti-capitalist message. Oh well, some of the music is immortal but his new CD from last year is agitation propaganda. He even writes a song about the “WTO.” How f— gay.
Posted by Fire @ 8:21 AM
Paul Hollander, Weapon of Mass Destruction
.
Judging by the six copies on display at the local Border’s, Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is one of the most popular political books of the last 30 years. Barbara Olson reported that Hillary Clinton read it, and it is widely regarded as being invaluable for leftist activism. On the right, one could argue that David Horowitz’s The Art of Political War is its equivalent, but I would say that Paul Hollander’s Discontents: Postmodern & Postcommunist is a work without peer when it comes to defeating all the “isms” of the culture war.
Discontents is prolonged and efficient siege on the seductive and corrupt ideas that have hypnotized our cognitive elite. He thoroughly debunks the hogwash which poses as scholarship today. Hollander offers no circumlocution. No target evades him and, in a little over 400 pages, his pen turns the dogma of academia to verbose scrapple.
The book is comprised of 25 essays and most of them are brilliant. They should be read again and again. This is particularly true of his introduction, “‘Imagined Tyranny’? Political Correctness Reconsidered,” “Reassessing the Adversary Culture,” “The Pursuit of Identity, Community and Social Justice,” and, lastly, “Marxism and Western Intellectuals in the Post-communist Era.”
The remainder are average or better with the exception being a piece regarding Coppola’s film, “Godfather II.” This was his only offering with a conclusion I disagreed with, and I regard its inclusion in the collection as a mistake.
Unlike Roger Kimball, whose scintillating books offer case-by-case commentaries of intellectuals and their work, Hollander globally undermines the theoretical basis for political correctness, multiculturalism, feminism, and post-modernism. The result is a meticulously footnoted compendium of argumentation that, for the most part, reads without effort.
Without question, Paul Hollander is an expert on the subject of which he writes. He is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a fellow of Russian Studies at Harvard University, but his career is miles from winding down as he will soon release a title on anti-Americanism.
Nowadays, to be a scholar at an average American university means making concessions to certain groups and the unruly goddess of sensitivity on a daily basis. All to often, holding one’s tongue is the most sensible way to gain tenure and secure a pension. Thus, it is amazing how Hollander could have thrived in such an environment–which he referred to as the “Peoples Republic of Amherst.”
Many faculty members contend that PC does not actually exist. Hollander will not equivocate on this topic. He minutely defines political correctness on our campuses, and then explains why these beliefs are logically unsound and anathema to the pursuit of truth. For this reason, I did not exaggerate when stating he was a “Weapon of Mass Destruction.” If only we could have 50 more scholars like him.
Should Hollander be named to a college presidency, cultural Marxism would soon go the way of Khmer Rouge apologists. There would be no where to hide from his supervision. To him, a politically correct campus is one that includes the following: the presence of speech codes, advantages in financial aid, admission or recruitment for designated groups, an allowance for group self-segregation like in dormitories, freshman orientation programs drenched in leftist dogma, the presence of black studies, women studies, or gay studies, required courses in multiculturalism, required sensitivity training for staff, and, lastly, computing the profile of the school’s average commencement speaker and whether they are consistently on the left of the political spectrum.
Oh, how fortunate was I to have graduated with a B.A. in 1991. How the magnolia trees of freedom bloomed plush white flowers and the angels of our founding fathers sang accompaniment!
Well, maybe not, but almost none of the PC elements that Hollander mentions, with the exception of minority scholarships, was a part of my college experience. What a difference a decade makes, however. Last year’s alumnae magazine boasted proudly that racists like Cornell West and Randall Robinson were paid to come to campus, and now my alma mater even has a full-time Director of Minority Relations who contributes a column for the quarterly report (presumably for the benefit of distant graduates who avoided identity politics while they attended).
In my mind, the book’s strongest passage is Hollander’s dissection of what is known as “selective determinism.” I acknowledge that some readers were already aware of this concept, but I was unaware of it until reading Discontents. Selective determinism suggests that, for some blessed members of the population, nothing they do is their fault.
This minority, which strangely makes up 70% of the population, is excused and forgiven because they are deemed oppressed and were embroidered with a pink letter “O” at birth. They are not individuals. Their lives have been steered by societal forces that, like a powerful undertow, drags them in directions they never intended to go.
Yet, for those of us who happen to be without the benevolent protection of theoretical fairies there is no quarter. We are always responsible for our crimes. Society never mitigates our level of culpability. Under this theory, the non-oppressed group, often white males, have enduring characteristics beyond nurture’s impact. Hollander elaborates:
“The feminist version of selective social determinism proposes that nothing about men is ‘socially constructed’ because that would ‘let them off the hook, so men get heavy doses of essentialist attributes’ a professor of women’s studies observed.”
The author makes his discussion of selective determinism quite topical as its underlying fallaciousness makes any consideration of hate crimes legislation worthless as social considerations do not apply if one is unlucky enough to commit a felony or misdemeanor against a chosen person.
The left internalizes this view and cannot say a bad word about evils committed by “oppressed” victims. This particular quote may be one of most telling and humorous about the pathological leftist mindset:
“A student of social work at Columbia University in New York strikingly personified such beliefs. Having been ‘struck in the head with a chunk of concrete’…she expressed concern for her attacker, speculating that he must have had a troubled childhood.”
It’s really a shame that such statements don’t come with a laughtrack.
The conservative intellectuals who possess Paul Hollander’s ingenuity, while also being reader-friendly, can be counted on one hand. Should you doubt my sincerity, let’s examine the firepower of the following simple paragraph:
“It may also be argued (pessimistically) that a better understanding of human behavior and social institutions is essentially incompatible with the activist disposition because better understanding leads to the realization of the limits of benign and purposeful social action and especially their proverbial unintended consequences…more information may confirm the kind of skepticism highly uncongenial to the activist.”
Did you feel the tremors from the explosion? With that short analysis Hollander obliterates the smug, self-assurance of the radical. He confirms what we all know to be true; radicals are radicals because they never stop to consider how things can get worse, and they also have no knowledge of human nature or the human condition.
I should also warn, as I am fully aware of how educated the average toogoodreports.com reader is, that there are two flaws in this work. First, there are a great many typos. I counted more than 30, but I wasn’t looking that closely. Second, the price of the book may be prohibitive. Indeed, I spent almost 40 dollars for my copy– which is one of the many reasons why I’m on buying restriction until February 1st 2004.
In summation, Paul Hollander’s Discontents documents the humane need to triumph over lies wherever we encounter them. The contributions of this exceptional man invigorate our side in the culture war; a side that stands for free speech, liberty, and honesty. As for me, I will not sell my personal copy nor loan it out, but, should I ever awake to find a Swedish PC Inspector armed with several pens and an assistant at the door, you can be sure I’ll toss the text into a pre-constructed secret panel before inviting them in for a microscopic tour of Abba records and Jessie Jackson Cat in the Hat books on tape.
Posted by Fire @ 6:22 PM
Our Neighbors to the North
No, not Wisconsin, but Canada. A Canadian friend sent me the following articleand it makes one think about the liberatrian roots of our country.
From the Pittsbugh Post-Gazette
You live next door to a clean-cut, quiet guy. He never plays loud music or throws raucous parties. He doesn’t gossip over the fence, just smiles politely and offers you some tomatoes. His lawn is cared-for, his house is neat as a pin and you get the feeling he doesn’t always lock his front door.
He wears Dockers. You hardly know he’s there. And then one day you discover that he has pot in his basement, spends his weekends at peace marches and that guy you’ve seen mowing the yard is his spouse. Allow me to introduce Canada.
The Canadians are so quiet that you may have forgotten they’re up there, but they’ve been busy doing some
surprising things. It’s like discovering that the mice you are dimly aware of in your attic have been building an espresso machine.
Did you realize, for example, that our reliable little tag-along brother never joined the Coalition of the Willing?
Canada wasn’t willing, as it turns out, to join the fun in Iraq. I can only assume American diner menus weren’t angrily changed to include “freedom bacon,” because nobody here eats the stuff anyway.
And then there’s the wild drug situation: Canadian doctors are authorized to dispense medical marijuana. Parliament is considering legislation that would not exactly legalize marijuana possession, as you may have heard, but would reduce the penalty for possession of under 15 grams to a fine, like a speeding ticket. This is to allow law enforcement to concentrate resources on traffickers; if your garden is full of wasps, it’s smarter to go for the nest rather than trying to swat every individual bug. Or, in the United States, bong.
Now, here’s the part that I, as an American, can’t understand. These poor benighted pinkos are doing everything wrong. They have a drug problem: Marijuana offenses have doubled since 1991. And Canada has strict gun control laws, which means that the criminals must all be heavily armed, the law-abiding civilians helpless and the government on the verge of a massive confiscation campaign. (The laws have been in place since the ’70s, but I’m sure the government
will get around to the confiscation eventually.)
They don’t even have a death penalty! And yet .. nationally, overall crime in Canada has been declining since 1991. Violent crimes fell 13 percent in 2002. Of course, there are still crimes committed with guns brought in from the United States, which has become the major illegal weapons supplier for all of North America — but my theory is that the surge in pot-smoking has rendered most criminals too relaxed to commit violent crimes. They’re probably more focused on shoplifting boxes of Twinkies from convenince stores.
And then there’s the most reckless move of all: Just last month, Canada decided to allow and recognize same-sex marriages. Merciful moose, what can they be thinking? Will there be married Mounties (they always get their man!)? Dudley Do-Right was sweet on Nell, not Mel! We must be the only ones who really care about families. Not enough to make sure they all have health insurance, of course, but more than those libertines up north.
This sort of behavior is a clear and present danger to all our stereotypes about Canada. It’s supposed to be a cold, wholesome country of polite, beer-drinking hockey players, not founded by freedom-fighters in a bloody revolution but
quietly assembled by loyalists and royalists more interested in order and good government than liberty and independence.
But if we are the rugged individualists, why do we spend so much of our time trying to get everyone to march in lockstep? And if Canadians are so reserved and moderate, why are they so progressive about letting people do what they want to?
Canadians are, as a nation, less religious than we are, according to polls. As a result, Canada’s government isn’t influenced by large, well-organized religious groups and thus has more in common with those of
Scandinavia than those of the United States, or, say, Iran. Canada signed the Kyoto global warming treaty, lets 19-year-olds drink, has more of its population living in urban areas and accepts more immigrants per capita than the United States.
These are all things we’ve been told will wreck our society. But I guess Canadians are different, because theirs seems oddly sound. Like teenagers, we fiercely idolize individual freedom but really demand that everyone be the same. But the Canadians seem more adult — more secure. They aren’t afraid of foreigners. They aren’t afraid of homosexuality. Most of all, they’re not afraid of each other.
I wonder if America will ever be that cool.
Posted by CommonSense @ 3:13 PM
Rebeling Against the Black Mafia
Is Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition really any different than any other organization that has promised protection to a specific ethnic group? I’d say no. And is the case with those same groups, a crack in their veneer has to start some where. Well, Jackson’s veneer has started to crack right here in Chicago, in his own back yard. A group of protesters disrupted a Jackson rally yesterday saying he wasn’t doing enough to help the group he proports to represent.
Posted by CommonSense @ 1:12 PM
Political Correctness at the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is arguably one of the best Universities in the world. There are more Nobel Prize winners on staff than at any other school. In fact, I think I read once that the Physics Department has more Nobel winning full professors than non-Nobel winning full professors. And yet, the school is not immune from the irrational blight of Political Correctness.
It seems that there is a group of students at the illustrious U of C that is lobbying for more “gender neutral” bathrooms. Apparently, the picture of a woman in a skirt, to connotate the of all things, a woman’s bathroom, is sexist. It assumes that a woman identifies with the picture. Judging by the all the lesbians in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood where I do my grocery shopping, very few lesbians wear skirts so I guess I understand the argument. Perhaps a picture of female and male genitials should be on bathroom doors instead?
Unfortunately, that won’t work either. That doesn’t take into consideration the feeling of our transgendered friends. What the hell is transgendered anyway? And do I want to be standing at a urinal next to something with breasts? The old Foreigner album cover for “Head games” comes to mind but the picture probably won’t be that pretty.
I’m further perplexed by the term “gender neutral.” Either a person is male or female, right? There’s no in between. Well, not according to the members of the U of C’s “Feminist Majority, Queers, and Associates” student group. While the group doesn’t define “transgendered,” it does say that in choosing which bathroom to use bathrooms will be called gender-neutral, rather than co-ed, because, “this terminology is generally used to refer to two sexes while the gender-neutral tends to be associated with more diversity and fluidity within the sex-gender continuum. As our aim is to make everyone, no matter what their gender and/or sexual persona is, more comfortable, we are using the term gender-neutral.”
This has all come about because, as Mary Anne Case, a panelist in a discussion on the topic of bathrooms said, “Going to the bathroom is a moment where definition is very important in choosing a door.” That definition has struck Nate Claxton and Red Vaughan Tremmel, other panelists personally. Tremmel knows someone who to travel across country, purchased an RV so he or she, Tremmel doesn’t say which, wouldn’t have to go through the stress of choosing a bathroom at rest stops. Claxton knows people, apparently more than one, who had contracted bladder infections because choosing a gender bathroom bothered them so much that they did not go to the bathroom all day.
Let me get this straight, there are people out there that are willing to spend over $50,000 and get bladder infections because they can’t decide which public bathroom to use? What a bunch of fucking losers. I’d suggest investing in some serious therapy rather than wasting everyone’s time on such an absurd problem as their waste discharge hang ups.
What utterly amazes me is that these people were smart enough to get into the U of C, but not smart enough to know if they should pee standing up or sitting down.
Posted by CommonSense @ 1:03 PM
Democrats Are Socialists First.
[I’ll add his name if the author asks me too]
There is a black hole out here among the rank and file flyovers.
You and I understand that the “Democratic” party is socialist beyond all
argument but when I typically use the word socialist to my democrat
acquaitances they shriek with horror(horror!! Mind you) at the term.
I now use the word “socialist” when speaking of Democrats ALL the time….I
never use the “D” word. They just go ballistic, rant and rave, start calling names and swearing and questioning my ancestery. I love it ! Most, however, don’t even know the meaning of the word and usually say something profound like “huh”,
“duh”…….”what do you mean….socialist”?? Followed by “huh” again.
A state congressman( a Republican) I write to frequently did not know the
meaning of “right wing” and “left wing”…..but this is Iowa and you really
can’t expect too much from our state politicians. Honest to God, he REALLY
didn’t know !!(He’s a friggen pig farmer who graduated from the fourth
grade) God Help Us !! But, seriously, when I see members of the Democratic Socialists of America trotted out TV and they are just identified as “democrats” something is wrong. There are about 40 members of DSA in Congress presently and the democratic mainstream simply don’t identify themselves as “socialists”
because they are NOT MEMBERS of a socialist organization. If I was a Republican( and also a member of the Club for Growth) I am sure I would not… JUST… be identified as a “republican”. Just a thought, but we have a real terminology problem out here that needs to be seriously addressed.
Posted by Fire @ 5:22 AM
Thanksgiving Joke.
A young man named John received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad
attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of the bird’s mouth
was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.
John tried and tried to change the bird’s attitude by consistently
saying only polite words, playing soft music and anything else he could
think of to “clean up” the bird’s vocabulary.
Finally, John was fed up and he yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled
back. John shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even ruder.
John, in desperation, threw up his hand, grabbed the bird and put him in
the freezer. For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed.
Then suddenly there was total quiet.
Not a peep was heard for over a minute.
Fearing that he’d hurt the parrot, John quickly open the door to the
freezer.
The parrot calmly stepped out onto John’s outstretched arms and said :
“I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions.
I’m sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully
intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behavior.”
John was stunned at the change in the bird’s attitude. As he was about
to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change in his behavior, the
bird continued, “May I ask what the turkey did?”
HAPPY THANKSGIVING !
Posted by Fire @ 5:14 AM
With Bush We Trade Conservative Principles for Power.
Boy, I’d like to argue with this guy but I can’t.
Spend, spend, spend. The idea of this medicaid bill is giving me heart palpitations. What the heck? Get government out of the economy. Oh, Lordy!
Another such example of supply-side abandonment is government spending, encapsulated by the recent passage of the mammoth Medicare prescription drug bill. The political payoff from this entitlement beast appears to be substantial. The American Association of Retired Persons endorsed the bill, and judging by the Democrats’ apoplectic reaction, it is a big coup for Bush. As a result, Bush may very likely expand the GOP coalition to include more seniors.
Posted by Fire @ 5:10 AM
The Rich Party Through 9/11.
Or at least shop and get cosmetic alterations. This is a piece of work of a piece.
I can’t believe this woman from the Hollyweird elite. She’s suing her plastic surgeon over his Botox injections. The surgury was on 9/11 and she says in her complaint that he caused her to miss a trip to Maui due to pain and trauma. Yet, she could never have taken it due to the airports being closed. No logic will stop this lawsuit though.
Posted by Fire @ 5:04 AM
Letter to Sylvester the Pussycat.
By Steven B
I just finished hearing you talking on His Side with Glenn Sacks. I admire Glenn very much and I appreciate you taking the time to speak on his show. I am writing you a letter and I hope you take the time to read it. I will try, from my perspective, to show you why the Men’s Movement is very important to a lot of guys out there. Again, I know you must hear from a lot of angry, immature, and just downright rude people. I will be as reasoned and as detailed as I can. I tend you write like I speak and for any grammatical errors I am sorry.
First off I will tell you my opinion as to why I think many men have joined the men’s movement, but in doing so I might shed some light on why so many you “hear” from seem to be the angry ones. There may be some stereotyping here, but go with it, you may end up seeing my logic. Women are better at networking than men. They seem to do it as often as breathing, whereas men seem to have different types of friendships. The men who often come to the internet seeking to find others like them have found it frustrating trying to explain their anger/disappointment to their friends. Most men I know tend to tell a few good friends and that news is not put out to the public. Women tend to network on problems better. Also, most men, including myself, have no idea what discrimination we are facing until it hits us head on. I will go into specifics, but hold on. Most men I have met don’t want to share how they have been wronged as openly as women seem to do. I guess it’s our wiring or upbringing or both. I came into the men’s movement after being pretty badly burned by the PC culture out there. I had told people in my personal life what had happened to me and they listened, but after a short bit of time, they basically told me to “get over it”. Many things can be ignored, but some are life changing events that affect you day to day for years, and that makes ignoring “it” pretty hard. So many men turn to the internet. Why the internet? Most problems men face are pretty embarrassing socially, legally, and economically. There are few support groups out there for men, and men tend not to go to support groups as often. Again, in comes the internet. So the people you are going to meet on the internet are usually people who have been burned by “the system” and finally have a place to rant. Now, common people sense will tell you if someone has been bottling up their anger for a while they are going to spout off when they finally have the cork pulled from the bottle. Also, the internet allows anonymity that interpersonal interactions do not. Many men come to the Men’s Movement for a while, vent, and leave. In some ways it’s healthy, but in others it is not. You asked in one of your articles what basic rights were being taken away. I will be happy to delineate.
Divorce:
Many men have gone through a divorce. The courts are heavily weighted against fathers and husbands. 80% of divorces are initiated by a woman, but a man, who did not want the divorce, is now going to pay to subsidize this ex-wife’s life style until she gets remarried (when most alimony ends). Also, many women are told by their divorce attorney’s that if they claim DV and get a restraining order they pretty well close off many of their ex-spouses options both in the divorce and in child custody. Also, most of the time (about 65-90% depending on the state) the women will get the children from the marriage. While child support is enforced, for good reasons and bad, visitation is not. Child support, from everything I have seen or read, is completely done without any verification as to where the money is going.
Child Support:
Child support, in it’s current form is very unfair to fathers. The amounts set are often based on what his “projected potential” earnings are, instead of what he may actually make. Also, many times when a NCP (Non Custodial Parent) gets remarried the child support can be raised to include his spouse’s income as well as his in the figuring what the man should pay. I know that many men complain about the amount having to be paid as being unfair. I should address this. In Michigan, for instance, the state deems that $18 a day is all a child needs. How do I know this? That is the amount the state pays to people who foster care for children. Either the state is not following the law, as it is written that child support is for the “best interests of the child”, or the child support above that is excessive. It can not be both. Either the state is guilty of financial neglect or dad’s are being overcharged. And since mom is 1/2 of the equation (she does not get a free ride) the amount should be $9 a day. $270 a month is legal for the state, why not for dads? Also, there is the problem of a lack of accountability within the system. I have heard various solutions proposed for this: a 10% slush fund, but the rest must be accounted for in receipts, and one idea I really thought had merit was a DEBIT card. Just like the ones you and I use. This would allow complete accountability. Cigarettes, alcohol, payments for beauty products for mom, and other things would be able to have a visibility. Child support is for the child. And misuse of the money should be treated as any other kind of FRAUD that it is. Right now the mother can spend the money on whatever pleases her, and there is no accountability nor deterrent for fraud. That is a situation that is ripe for misuse and often is the case. Also, many times child support is excessive to the point of absurdity. Often it is just extra alimony. If the child does not need the money, it is not mom’s to spend. Put the extra back in dad’s pocket or into an unbreakable trust ONLY for the child’s education, health, or until they hit 21.
Paternity Fraud:
Paternity fraud is a major problem to many men. I am in the military. Military members are targeted because of their steady paycheck and ease of collection. Many times a man does not even know he has been named as a father until his paycheck is garnished. I cite the case of Taron James as an example. But, not to cite only an easy one, how about all the laws that prevent a man even after proving not the father having to pay for the child. There are cases where a boy is statutorily raped and forced to pay for child support. Or man given oral sex into a condom, and the sperm being implanted into the woman, and then he was ordered by the courts to pay child support. Or men who are in a marriage, and in good faith sign a birth certificate, only to find out later they are not the father. Or women who claim to take oral birth control, but in reality are taking fertility pills. On and on it goes where a man had NOTHING to do with the child being conceived, was under the age of consent, or was lied to with the intent to create a child for whom it is very unlikely he will ever have any rights concerning, but has an eighteen year commitment for money towards. The rights of fathers is just as fundamental as the rights of mothers, but often men are treated as human wallets and sperm banks. Each of the above examples is from a famous case and I would be happy to provide you with the link to it. If you DON’T know of them, and you are writing as an informed opinion on men’s rights, you should ask yourself WHY you don’t know them.
Domestic Violence:
Domestic violence is portrayed as a syndrome of men beating women. If you think that is too general then consider that there is a VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) but no corresponding Act for men. There is study after study to show that men are abused almost or about 1/2 the time as compared to women. You could say that women do less damage, but often when we hear about women being abused it is also the psychological abuse of being beaten by the one you love. I would submit to you that abuse is abuse and humiliation, degradation, and pain are the same for all genders. If I just slap my wife is that ok? Is it then ok for a woman to slap a man or to do other demeaning and violent acts upon his person. The Domestic Violence laws in some states are written in coded phrases so that it almost ensures a man will be the one arrested. Written into the training manuals are phrases that tell the officer to look for in the batterer: “more in control” (emotionally, financially, or physically). If a man is just been hit by his wife and calls the police, should he be screaming or yelling or crying? Or he may try to control his feelings to show credibility and try to give his version of events. But this can be seen as though he is somehow guilty. Also, even if a woman is the batterer (and many times it is mutual and not clear cut) when the police arrive and the tears flow the chances she will be arrested are not great. Often the people training law enforcement are DV “experts”. The “experts” are Duluth Model trained women’s advocates. Often they will ride with police to “help them interpret” the situation. This “expert” has a vested interest in only one outcome and is not impartial. And often when a police officer arrests a woman for DV he is highly scrutinized for it. This being a short letter and not a thesis, I will not even go into what happens after a man is arrested and caught in the DV industries system. That in and of itself would take a few pages. The DV industry has known for years that men and women can both be abusive, but the radical feminists have kept the argument one sided. There are few shelters for men, police are given false and long debunked numbers, legislation is written that has clear gender bias in funding and interpretation, and most important, there is NO DETERRENT for false allegations. I can hear it now, how someone will be cited for filing a false police report. Not even on par for what happens to a man who is falsely arrested for DV and proving one’s innocence is not an easy thing to do when the system is loaded against you. And the other topic that would take a few pages is the fact the DV system is a money making industry that must self-perpetuate itself to survive.
False Allegations:
This is where I came into the picture. I was falsely accused of rape. Twice. I know this may or may not raise your eyebrows, but I am beyond trying to prove myself. The first time the woman’s story fell apart, but only 6 months after my college threw me out. She later confessed as her own parents realized something wasn’t right. The second time the ADA herself told me that the story was so implausible that she would recommend against charges. But the new college I was at had the old colleges play book and threw me out. Many people on the internet know this, but my friends and colleagues now don’t. I have learned the hard way that people don’t hear “false” allegation … they just hear “rape”. Men’s whole lives can be destroyed on the word of a woman. I understand we need to be sympathetic and understand the nature how rape happens. Even after what happened to me, I still believe in that. But the problem is that we have so systemized the way in which men are charged that the deck is stacked against you. The “victim” (I thought whoever told the TRUTH was the victim) has advocates, ADA’s, and a whole array of help. The problem is also that the “advocates” often coach the “victim” so that she is more credible. You could say a man’s lawyer does this to prepare him. Ok, but the advocates, the support groups, and the ADA’s are FREE. A man of little means is pretty well on his own. And the bar for evidence, even just a credible story, has been place so low that the man accused is pretty much guilty unless he can prove his innocence. If a prosecutor thinks a DNA test will help their case, then it’s ordered up like fast food. But if there is a chance it won’t, the DNA test can become “non-essential” for the case. And the man has to pay for the testing. There ARE ADA’s who are honest, as in the one I dealt with, but many are scared to appear weak on rape and will take a half baked story before a jury and risk a person’s freedom and what most of us call a “life”. And the machinery is again in place. Many times to get out you HAVE to confess. Otherwise you are considered a danger to society. You can go years beyond your original sentence because you wont confess. And when you get you register as a sex offender. Now, we have not covered the other side of the coin. The other problem, besides the long debunked “stats” on rape that have been put upon the public, is that there is no DETERRENT to this crime. Charging someone with “filing a false police report” is a joke when your life has been shattered. Even if cleared you are a social pariah, you are more than likely economically devastated, and you have been psychologically whipped to where you fear women. Again, there is no deterrent. A woman is more likely to stick with her story realizing the worst she faces is embarrassment at getting caught and paying a fine or community service. And with Rape-Shield laws, often you are hindered when trying to defend yourself. The whole system is set up to convict you. Early on the “advocates” polish the “victims” story (I wonder if my friends tried to “polish” mine what it would be called). Then the police arrest you and your name goes into the paper. You could likely lose your job, either from being in jail or from the stigma. The ADA’s do all the evidence searching, but only for things that convict you. ADA’s live and die for their conviction rate. The jury can’t believe that a woman would go through all this if she wasn’t telling the truth. You are sent to jail. You are more than likely raped there. And not once, oh no, you get that treatment many many time over the years. Even avoiding that even other criminals won’t have anything to do with you. You might be given to an HIV positive “daddy” before you get out, to give you a fond goodbye. And then you get out to sex registries and a low income job with little to no prospect to elevate yourself in your chosen life. And if the woman is caught lying, she gets community service and a stern look. As I said, there is no deterrent.
Colleges that indoctrinate:
You mentioned in Glenn’s show that you are attending college. Tell me, does it have a women’s studies program? If it does, and I believe you mentioned going to such a class, does it teach an unbiased, but positive towards women, view of history? Are the professors empowering women and teaching them to be strong, but full of joy about being a woman? Teaching them that men, most men, are nice, gentle, law abiding citizens, who are just as capable of loving, feeling, and rational thought? Do the words “Patriarchy” or “male-privilege” get used to explain most of the bad things in life today and in the past. Today on most campus’ the false rape statistics are still shown (heard of 1 in 4?) even though they have been disproved for over 20 years. Even someone who can do simple math can figure it out. And that false allegations of rape are rare? The stat most used is 2%. It came from Susan Brownmillers “Rape: Against Our Will” (1981 or 1982) (p14). Less than 2 years after publications she had to admit it was not accurate. Heard the refuting evidence? And how come each incoming class is indoctrinated on date-rape, but not on false allegations. Why are the staff and faculty taught about date-rape, but not life-rape? With Homosexuality and BI-sexuality being accepted on campus’, why are there not gay and lesbian rapes discussed? Why is it that the women don’t fear sexual-harassment laws. Ever hear of a woman who got a “no” during sex, but managed to change the guys mind? Wonder if she was afraid of jail? If the man had ever been told it was ok to say no? Men are being taught that there behavior is suspect, but women are being taught that their behavior is “in context” or “has an underlying behavior” that exonerates them. There is a privileged class, and it’s not men.
Media Stereotypes:
And lets not forget the bombardment of anti-male attitudes in the media. Clara Harris was touted as a victim because her husband was having an affair. Only on Glenn’s show did I ever hear about HER having an affair too. Why is that? Former Governor Ann Richards made the joke (its not exact): “We in Texas understand the hard times you in Californian are having, in Texas the price of gasoline is so high that we have to carpool to run over our husbands”. Would a male politician ever make such a comment on a women being run over by her husband for having an affair while he also had one? You must have seen dozens of shows where men are portrayed as incompetent, bubbleheaded, and just plain mean. The sight of a man getting kicked in the testicles is used as a sight gag. Slapping, punching, and kicking men is considered, at best, deserved, and at worst, funny. I don’t see any shows portraying violence against women that way. And to bring up and earlier point: humiliation and degradation are not gender exclusive. A man may not be crippled by a woman hitting him, but he is humiliated, has few legal recourses (as SHE could claim to be the VICTIM), and he is often derided by society for “whining” as Glenn’s show points out. In a movie it’s an old trick to get the audience to not like a male character by showing him arguing vehemently with a woman. The conversation is unimportant, just that he does it. Women are made to be the feminine, but tough underdog who overcomes while men are shown to be shallow, uneducated, and unsophisticated. Sure, there are EXCEPTIONS, but that is what they are.
Tom, in each of these cases I could write a long set of pages full of states, anecdotes, use links, and media reports to back up my assertions. I am not given to making broad statements and not backing them up. If any of these interest you let me know. Yes, you are going to find men in the Men’s Movement who are angry, bitter, and venting. It’s the only place they can. Largely we men have been driven underground and must put on a “good face” during the day. We see the injustices and most of us, a very large majority, don’t dislike women at all. I dislike women who hate or have contempt for men. I feel no intrinsic guilt for being born with my reproductive organs on the outside or for past crimes that I did not commit, would not have approved of, and was not there to witness against women. But women today are being taught that a phrase: “that’s different”. It’s a brand of moral-relativism and self-justification that is being packaged and sold to the public. You asked in your article (if you want the link I have it) what rights are being taken away. The above list is just some of our rights that are being infringed upon. And there is the deeper issue of our self-esteem, our acknowledgement for our hard work, and our value as a useful member of society that is being attacked. And those who are not attacking are giving their tacit approval to our plight. I hope this letter has helped you to get a better insight into why, for myself anyways, many men are using the internet to educate each other, as a place to vent, and to spread the word that “you are not alone”. I appreciate you taking the time to read this and hope to hear from you. I thank you for your time.
Posted by Fire @ 3:35 PM
I, Tom Sylvester, Shallow B-tch.
I verbally met Tom Sylvester last night on Glenn Sacks’ excellent LA radio show. I had seen his name before on this site but didn’t know anything about him before last week. When the debate was over, I got into my Central time zone bed and managed less than five hours of sleep before getting into my car at 5:45 am and driving to work. I briefly checked my emails before I left and saw an message from Mr. Sylvester.
It seems that he had the late night desire (4:30 am) to bait me some more on the issues Glenn put forth. This email may not have irritated me as much had I got more sleep or it been a Thursday instead of Monday.
Tom condescendingly expressed a desire for us to have more discussion. He’s got it. In fact, I’m glad he decided to add me to his enemies list. To Tom, I say, “I’m your man, Huckleberry.” I kept this response as short as I could, but don’t fear, I’ve got a few more missiles in the silos ready to be launched should I have the need.
He specifically stated:
“My basic disagreement with your writing boils down to tactics. After all, I don’t like Maureen Dowd’s columns either, but I think that calling her a bitch isn’t the best way to voice such disagreement. At one point you write that people like yourself ‘are rarely present to offer logic and reality as an antidote.’ Maybe that’s because you also regularly offer up insults like bitch, reptile, and so on.”
He has brought up an integral issue in debate by mentioning name-calling. We can all agree that pointless insults do not enrich debate in any way. Furthermore, the words he mentions are not fabrications. I’ve wrote them. I have used these words in articles and will repeat one of them in this piece. Yet, even though I used denigrating language in the past, I often excoriate the politically correct for their relentless name-calling. Is there a contradiction in my tactics? Is Tom right? Absolutely not.
You see, what people like Sylvester do not realize is that labeling someone with an accurate word of description may or may not be an insult, but the one thing it is certain is the truth. The truth can be beautiful, mundane, revolting, or obscene, but, for this reason, if you limit yourself to only pursuing the truth with sterile language then you will never find it.
I do not call my enemies what they are not. If I use inflammatory words it often helps to describe someone in a meaningful way. Let’s take the example he sited, Maureen Dowd. Quite frankly, Maureen Dowd is a shallow b-tch. This is a logical conclusion based on the reality of her writing.
In fact, I know no one who would dispute such a statement. My mother actually likes some of her columns but she’d never say that she wasn’t b-tchy and shallow. It’s just my mother, unlike me, thinks that she’s funny.
There are numerous justifications why Maureen Dowd is a b-tch. First, she tries to blame the Bush administration for everything that has ever gone wrong within a five thousand mile radius of The New York Times building. Second, she called Arnold Schwarzenegger a metrosexual. Third, her chronic attacks on men are both shallow and b-tchy. She despises men as they do not have all the interests and emotions that she has, which is a very shallow and far from tolerant. She’s venomous over the fact that her career girl choice was foolish [at least in her case judging from the rhetoric] and, like the grasshopper in its tale with the ant, Dowd knows a cold winter lies ahead, and she hasn’t done a darn thing to prepare for it. She also gloated about the male sex’s impending extermination [which she got wrong by the way] in a column from last July.
Was I right to use polemical language in my response to her published chortling about man’s impending doom? You bet. Calling her a shallow b-tch is best practice. However, it was also used in the title as an attention getter, and, other than this column, I would rarely use such an everyday word for the purposes of description.
On the show Sylvester made reference to my calling politically correct individuals, “Stalinists.” He’s right about that. I have and will continue to do so. “Political correctness” can be traced directly back to the communists. Some attribute it to the Frankfort School, some to Mao, and others relate it back directly to the former editor of Pravda, (Nikolai Bukharin, whom Stalin eventually had killed). Regardless, of when or where it exactly began, it came from the communists and the methods of Stalinism are alive and well in the universities, which Sylvester, believes hold no barriers for men:
“In the heyday of Stalinism, the accusation of ‘class bias’ was used by communists to undermine and attack individuals and institutions with whom they were at war. This accusation magically turned well-meaning citizens into ‘enemies of the people,’ a phrase handed down through radical generations from the Jacobin Terror through the Stalinist purges and the blood-soaked cultural revolutions of Chairman Mao. The identical strategy is alive and well today in the left’s self-righteous imputation of sexism, racism, and homophobes to anyone who dissents from its party line. Always weak in intellectual argument, the left habitually relies on intimidation and smear to enforce its increasingly incoherent point of view.” Horowitz, Hating Whitey, pp.11-12
Sylvester’s objection to this stems undoubtedly from his own lack of education. He probably wouldn’t know Stalin from Samsonov, but we should not be surprised that recent college graduates know so little about history.
What do we call a person who has no knowledge of the roots of the political correctness but parrots it anyway? Shallow. That’s a perfect description. What do we call someone who tries to bait you at 4 o’clock in the morning because he needs more attention? B-tchy,…and a whole lot of other things too. Q.E.D.
Anyway, like many others with worthless pieces of paper as a means to depict their achievement, Tom does not possess the basic knowledge necessary to realize how little he knows. Indeed, he has been so thoroughly indoctrinated that he appeared to not even be aware of the how ideologically skewed our universities are (which many a study has documented). In summation, my use of the word “Stalinism” was erudite and important. Two words that will never apply to Sylvester or Dowd.
The politically correct person uses a conveyer belt method in which attack others. Unlike me, they care not for truth. In contrast, they look to see what way they can cram their foes into their limited understanding of the world. They see enemies and look left to scream: “Homophobe!” Then they look right and yell: “Racist!” “Sexist” might be what they keep in reserve and “oppressor” is what they say to those before them.
They can say it with as much emotion as they want, but none of it means anything. I’ve been called a fascist a million times by these automatons. Yet, no name could be less descriptive of my views. If I were asked to redo the budget of the United States, when I was finished it would come back to Congress 70% smaller than it was the day before they submitted it. I am dedicated to small, defense-oriented government. Those who have called me a fascist are too ignorant to fathom that omnipotent central government is the lynchpin of fascism. [By the way, in case Tom’s wondering, my use of the word ‘automaton’ is astute. The PC masses have never thought for themselves.]
Lastly, the most shallow and b-tchy thing I can say about Tom Sylvester is to site the reason why he has chosen to attack us. It seems that the situation which caused him to become upset with Mensnewdaily was due to some of our members insulting him online. To this, I say “waaaahhhhh.”
Forgive me, but what a p-ssy. Anyway, I can defend using the p word as well because only a neutered housecat would write articles on the internet and then be mad when he gets negative responses. [Indeed, has he met any radical feminists before?] Nasty emails are part of the game. One has to accept that when you begin writing. If you expect only positive regard from your readers, then you, without a doubt, are a p-ssy.
More disturbingly, Sylvester never denied that this was the reason for going after us. He said in an article that men’s righters have flooded people with angry emails and mentioned that he had been called lots of names by us last night. So what! This guy’s a prima donna. I think our readers should contact Jennifer Lopez because she just got a new soul mate.
It’s like Sylvester expects everyone to form a prayer group and chant his name a few minutes after he writes something. I just cannot relate to any of this. After my piece on Rush Limbaugh six weeks ago I was battling angry leftists online for ten days in a row. Had I been Tom Sylvester I would have contracted for the exclusive services of the nearest sensitivity counselor just so I could make it out of bed in the morning. “But, boss, I can’t go to work today–somebody said something bad about me. Can you send home my cat nip?”
Just like many other receivers of progressive education, Tom Sylvester is someone with a tremendous amount of confidence, but there’s no reason for it whatsoever.
Posted by Fire @ 5:41 AM
Justice In Quebec.
Now this looks like a riveting film.
As many of you know, James Bowman is my favorite reviewer, and I think he points out many a reason here why this film would be worth taking a gander at. Any time the rebels from the sixties look stupid, it is well worth the admission fee.
Remy has long been estranged from both Louise and Sebastien, but both have returned to his side to be with him as he is dying. Yet he is still able to enjoy being a rogue and a ladies man by reputation a reputation accentuated by the presence among those who now visit him daily of not one but two ex-mistresses, both of whom also appeared in Decline. He is trying to impress this young girl with whom, even on his deathbed, he has tried to put on the old charm.
Sounds like the life of Johnny Q-bacca to me–especially with “Barbarian” in the title.
Posted by Fire @ 5:34 AM
Separate But Equal.
Here’s joke, Steve Deluca sent me:
A heart-warming story of the advances of women in achieving equality throughout the world…
Barbara Walters of 60 Minutes (USA) did a story on gender roles in Kabul several years before the Afghan conflict. She noted that women customarily walked about ten paces behind their husbands.
She returned to Kabul recently and observed that the men now walked several paces behind their wives.
Ms Walters approached one of the Afghani women and said. “This is marvelous. Can you tell the free world just what enabled women to achieve this reversal of
roles?”
“Land mines,” said the woman.
Posted by Fire @ 4:55 AM
Health Care and the U.S.
Commonsense is on the right track, but I’ll try to add some additional observations:
For one thing, health education is a bit overrated. I think most people know to eat more healthy food and exercise, but politics and culture encourages people to drive a block to buy a gallon of milk rather than walk. I’m searching for a place in D.C. and the ‘burbs here are similar to prisons: Unless you drive outside of your complex, there’s nothing to do. (This culture is also incredibly lonely. People from third world countries often choose to go back to enjoy freedom!) The only way out of this is good ol’ European socialism (which I’m sure suits some people just fine) but to do so would involve upheavals of a nature similar to what the Eastern bloc is going through and that road doesn’t appear very rosy considering France is having a strike every week or so.
Next, there’s the issue of insurance reform: These are the most powerful lobbies around and actually serving a function to keep us out of full blown socialist medicine (see above.) It’s similar to having plaque on our teeth to keep away more dangerous bacteria… Next, the pharmaceutical companies really are producing some incredible drugs. The problem is that they are just so darn useful. It’s the paradigm that’s the problem: A certain class of people (seniors) expect to live forever beyond 65 at taxpayer expense along with Europe and Canada milking our research and development. (A friend of mine in the industry claims that some of these countries have threatened to just outright STEAL these patents if the products aren’t sold to them at bargain prices.)
Price controls might have the benefit of both reducing the price of drugs and helping to impose some indirect discipline on spending: The senior lobby can’t demand higher taxes to pay for drugs that the companies don’t bother to develop because they think it’s not price effective.
Something else I have considered is that seniors tend to be old FDR loyalists who refuse to see or accept the consequences of their policies. They see their grandchildren working 80 hours a week to pay taxes and not having any great-grandchildren, but hey! who cares! They get their check every week! All of this is moot because it’s doubtful the course can be changed: medicare will go belly up and help take the federal budget along with it. I’m reminded of this joke:
http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/87/4343.html
Posted by PolishKnight @ 5:42 PM
Moving Towards Socialized Medicine
This past weekend I listened to Health Secretary Tommy Thompson on the radio talk-up the new health care initiative that is working its way through Congress. Thompson, the former governor of Wisconsin, who helped reform welfare in that state, stressed how this initiative is bipartisan and will greatly benefit our seniors. He even had a nifftly little catch phrase: Seniors can lower their bills, not their number of pills. Seniors will be able to do this because the government will start subsidizing the cost of perscription drugs under the medicare program.
The problem with this plan is that it does not address the issue of why health care is so expensive in our country. Instead, Thompson, who rallied against welfare in Wisconsin, is attempting to expand a federal welfare program. And the only way to pay for this will ultimately be through higher taxes.
Here in Illinois, the Governnor has proposed buying prescription drugs from Canada because drugs are cheaper there. The only problem with this is that Canada, being representative of the industrialized world, subsidizes drug costs for its citizens by having higher taxes.
The bottom line is that drugs are more expensive in the U.S. because the government doesn’t subsidize the cost of drugs or has not placed price controls on the companies selling the drugs as has been done in the rest of the world. The result is that U.S. is paying for drug research and medical break throughs while the rest of the world benefits. We pay the cost, they reap the rewards.
As we try to move towards free markets, as far as healthcare is concerned, the rest of the world doesn’t believe in free trade. Instead, we are essentially being forced into becoming a socialized healthcare state.
The burden for paying for healthcare falls on employers because it is employers who benefit from healthy workers. The government does not benefit by paying for its citizens healthcare costs. I for one, would like to keep it that way.
While Thompson may have cleaned up welfare in his state, he is creating welfare at the Federal level. If we want to lower our healthcare costs, we need to be serious about health education, reforming the insurance industry, and freeing the prescription drug markets in the rest of the world.
Posted by CommonSense @ 5:29 PM
Free trade strikes again
November 24, 2003, a Chicago Tribune Editorial
The Bush administration is capping imports of some textiles and clothing from China. This is intended to benefit textile companies and workers–and not incidentally the president’s political fortunes–in the southeastern U.S. Everyone else in the country will pay for it in higher prices and fewer buying choices.
Happy holidays from the Bush White House.
Specifically, the administration is limiting imports of bras, robes and knit fabric like that used in T-shirts to a 7.5 percent increase over the next year because the surge in such products is hurting the U.S. textile industry. The industry and its workers blame those imports for the loss of more than 300,000 manufacturing jobs over the last several years.
The administration insists this action does not signal more protectionism ahead, and that it continues to resist congressional pressure to impose even more Draconian trade measures on China. This is merely a temporary “safeguard” measure, it says, to give a beleaguered domestic industry breathing space.
Talking up free trade in the abstract while stifling it product by product (farm goods, steel, and now bras, dressing gowns and T-shirts) is what passes for policy in the White House these days. China has broken no trade rules. As a condition of its entry into the World Trade Organization nearly three years ago, it agreed to allow the U.S. to impose just these kinds of temporary “safeguard” measures to protect against import surges that hurt U.S. industries. But that doesn’t mean they’re wise or a solution for what ails the textile industry.
When the subject is China, though, U.S. policy is downright schizophrenic: China is stealing our jobs–and making cheap stuff that we can’t live without. We love China. We hate China. We can’t get enough Chinese goods.
And to top it off, China insists on helping to finance our mammoth deficit by investing in U.S. Treasury securities. Chinese exports have tripled over the last decade, but 65 percent of those exports come from companies based in the U.S. and other foreign nations that have set up operations in China.
Ten of China’s top 40 exporters are U.S. companies such as Motorola and Dell. The growth of such chains as Wal-Mart and Target would be inconceivable without low-cost goods from China. Is this good or bad? Depends on whether you work for one of those exporters or for a North Carolina textile mill. We have a symbiotic economic relationship with China that has pluses and minuses for both countries.
Some U.S. leaders accuse China of cheating by manipulating its currency, the yuan, so it remains pegged to the dollar at an undervalued level, fueling the country’s export surge. If the yuan were free to float, critics insist, it would rise as much as 40 percent. That would make Chinese goods more expensive and U.S. goods cheaper.
Ultimately the Chinese must free up the yuan. It’s in China’s interests to do so, and not just because it would help defuse escalating trade tensions with the U.S. Pegging its currency to the dollar, as it has since 1994, “is not appropriate for a major economy like China,” said a U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress last month. But Treasury also found no evidence that China is technically manipulating its currency, as so many in Congress have charged. According to the report, “A currency peg or intervention does not in and of itself satisfy the statutory test” for manipulation. It also noted, as have many economists, that a precipitous decline in the yuan could be catastrophic, hurting American companies that import and sell Chinese goods and destabilizing China’s troubled banking sector, along with its entire economy. That would be bad news all the way around.
China has become the convenient scapegoat on the job front, even though the U.S. textile industry has been losing jobs for decades–many to other low-cost developing countries in Asia and Central America. Countries that once profited from exporting low-cost goods, such as Honduras and the Dominican Republic, have been hurt most by China’s export surge. Trade experts predict those nations will be the beneficiaries of these quotas.
This initial action covers just under $500 million worth of textile and apparel, but the industry and its principal union, the Union of Needletrade, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), are unabashed about wanting more. Ultimately they would like to apply “safeguard” quotas to all $10 billion worth of Chinese textile and apparel imports into the U.S.
Other U.S. manufacturers–of furniture and handbags, to name just two industries–claim they too are suffering because of China’s surging growth and are waiting in the wings to file their own grievances.
China has turned up the heat on the administration as it weighs a decision on those disastrous steel tariffs imposed in March of last year. If the U.S. retains the steel tariffs in the face of a WTO ruling that they violate international trade regulations, China says, it will impose its own punitive tariffs on some U.S. exports. Against this ominous backdrop, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan warned last week that “creeping protectionism” could hurt America’s ability to finance its huge trade deficit.
“This decision demonstrates the Bush administration’s commitment to our trade rules and America’s workers” and will serve to open a “dialogue” with the “goal of achieving a mutually beneficial result,” Commerce Secretary Don Evans said in announcing the quotas.
Look for that “dialogue” to lead to voluntary export restraints, similar to what Japan agreed to in the late 1980s when it was the focus of U.S. anger over lost jobs and rising imports. The Japanese limited their exports of steel and cars to the U.S. It didn’t save either industry from competitive pressures and then, as now, American consumers paid for the protectionism.
Posted by CommonSense @ 4:59 PM
This is Why Abortion Should Remain Legal and Safe
Over the weekend, the Chicago Tribune printed a story that said nationwide, about 3% of women use illicit substances duing pregnancy, while about 54% of women use legal substances that could be harmful to a fetus, including alcohol and tobacco. A California study showed that 11% of pregnant women take illegal drugs and the drug of choice seems to be methamphetamine better known as speed, or crank, or the poor man’s cocaine. Other studies show that just one drink of alcohol per week for a pregnant women translates into an increased chance for deliquent and agressive behavior in the child.
States are starting to prosecute these women once the child is born, sometimes for murder if the child is born dead. My contention is the child should have never been born in the first place. However, if a women is so strung out that she kills her kid though speed laced breast milk, one could argue she isn’t going to be responsible enough to get an abortion to start with, let alone not get pregnant. But the option of an abortion should remain. With increased public health awarness, that is speed and booze are harmful to babies, something in these pregnant women may click and they may realize that while they don’t want to quit taking drugs, they have the option of sparing a baby a great amount of pain and agony only to die a short time later. An abortion now will stop a whole lot of pain and agony later. Plus, the women can spare herself from going to jail for murder if the kid dies.
Posted by CommonSense @ 12:51 PM
The Failure of the International Community
Iran burns off more natural gas per day as a waste by product from its oil industry that could be used for energy production than the energy the Iranian nuclear reactor will generate.
Weapons grade nuclear material has been found at the Iranian nuclear reactor.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has sited Iran for violating international treaties in relation to the pursuit of nuclear weapons for the past 20 years.
Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world today.
Iran is clearly pursuing nuclear weapons.
The UN sits idle, the Europeans shrug their shoulders, and only the Israelis have said they are prepared to destroy the Iranians pursuit of the ultimate weapon.
We have seen this before. Twenty years ago, when Iraq explicitly said it was going to build a nuclear reactor for the purpose of creating a nuclear weapon to destroy Israel, the French sold Iraq the materials with which to build.
Israel of course destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor before it was finished. For the past 50 years, Israel has had the dirty job of fighting terrorism on a daily basis. Basically, Israel has been left to do the world’s dirty work. For both of these Israel has largely been condemned. As Israel once again prepares to fight a battle no one else is willing to fight, in a post 9/11 world, will the world condem Israel for destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons bid – weapons that will certainly target Israel first?
Why does the international community basically not give a damn about terrorism when iterrorism targets the Jewish state?
Posted by CommonSense @ 12:08 AM
Tonight’s Debate:
Hi there, writing during this debate tonight. I started off fine, then got nervous and recovered at 10:15. Unfortunately, I haven’t got the chance to say much since. If I get a chance I’ll keep stepping it up. Nice Guy, thanks for reminding me about the prison rape issue. That’s a winner. Oh, and I meant what I said about me writing circles around that guy.
Posted by Fire @ 11:38 PM
Wise Words from a Working Class Joe:
[I’ll post his name if he says it’s okay]
As a father of two lovely daughters and a married man ( to the same woman of 23 years) it dismays me much to see the current trend that has been wrought by feminism in today’s society. I want my daughters to marry strong young men and enjoy the kind of marriage my wife and I share. I want this for all young people. Never have I seen the dichotomy between men and woman so great. Its even more depressing to see that men today are no longer interested in being married and refuse to do so in large numbers. Although they cannot be faulted given the times which they live in and how much hatred is being aimed at them. Several articles were written about this but the most disturbing one was a feminist take on this stating that it was woman who at 80% are opting not to get married. It did state however that part of it was men’s refusal to commit, but can you see that negative take on this?
Its sad that so many women are allowing their thoughts to be shaped by a few who have nothing in common with them whatsoever.
The best that I can do as a father is show my daughters what men are really like in the way I carry myself to offset any images being fed to them whether it be in the media or academia. It appears to work since my daughters are somewhat conservative in thought and values and seem to refute many feminist dictates. They are self efficient, intelligent young ladies who appear to know what they want but are fully aware that there is a different role both men and woman play in relationships. One that is not better than the other but compliments instead.
It’s important that men take a proactive approach in combating the hogwash that is being fed into the minds of woman today especially in the media and universities. Its strange to see that movie tickets no longer sell and the dearth of young male viewers..hmm…coincidence? The same with television. As men we need to boycott these institutions that promotes bad images of men. However its alarming that young men are not going to colleges at the same percentage as that of women which could be attributed to the feminist policies that are being enforced in many of our universities that somehow are creating a hostile learning environment for men. Another thought. This must not be allowed and we as a society must take all types of measures to see what we can do to bring men back to our institutions of higher learning.
Posted by Fire @ 8:47 PM
Keeping an Eye On America’s Enemies
According to an article on Yahoo this morning, the FBI has collected extensive information on the Anti-War movement.
Civil Libertarians are leary of the FBI’s “true” intentions because the memory of the FBI watching such 1960s groups as the Black Panthers, the Students for a Democratic Society, or even Dr. Martin Luther King’s organization are still relatively fresh.
There is no doubt that the 1960s were turbulent times. Well so is right now. The question therefore is, what action should the Government take, if any?
The International A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition is an umbrella organization that encompasses much, if not all of the Antiwar movement as well as the Anti-globalization movement. It is a radical socialist organization that hates capitalism and essentially everything the American system stands for and supports. ANSWER has organized numerous Anti-globalization protests that have resulted in riots and the distruction of property both nationally and internationally. They have protested in support of U.S. actions against known terrorist organizations and legally supported people responsible for terrorist activity. And they conducted one of the most successful propaganda campaigns since Goebbels by creating the Jenin Massacre myth in order to slander the Israeli government in support of people who want to finish what Hilter started.
Why shouldn’t the authorities watch an organization like that? It clearly supports what we as Western Civilization do not. By supporting what is ideologically opposite of us, ANSWER is attempting to destroy the United States from within. The government is not preventing ANSWER and its allies from meeting but saying “don’t cross the line.”
ANSWER certainly has a right to free speech and political debate should not be stifled. The problem is, when push comes to shove, ANSWER’s past tactics have led to violence and supports further violence. The government has a responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
Posted by CommonSense @ 12:07 PM
Men and Women Think Differently.
What a shock, but so many people resist the notion that there is a biological basis for our thoughts and behavior.
This is a nice short course on the subject that is devoid of bias or incendiary materials.
Use it in discussions with all your “social influences determine everything” associates.
Posted by Fire @ 8:47 AM
VAGO MANIA!
Here’s a review from a leftist who pokes fun at another leftist in the fashionably chic leftist, London Review of Books.
I don’t agree with most of the article but I found that I agreed with the reviewer more than I think I’d agree with the author of the book. Oh well, it concerns a new “history of the vagina” and was sent to me by our friend Steve Deluca. Yawn! “Did you just yawn when mentioning the vagina? Now you’ve entrenched the partriarchy!”
Posted by Fire @ 8:40 AM