Date ►►► May 29, 2012

Perversion of "Compassion": Brett Kimberlin -- Guilty as Sin, Free as a Bird

Hatched by Dafydd

Last, some breaking news involving Aaron Walker, a.k.a. "Aaron Worthing." But I say "last" because I'm stubbornly putting it at the bottom of this post, rather than the top, because it wouldn't make sense else. So read on, and you'll see what I mean...

~

I did not participate in "Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day" (last Friday, May 25th) for two reasons:

  • Nobody told me it was Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day! Why am I always out of the loop?
  • I have no interest in simply parroting what other folks had already said so ably; this is not an "echo blog."

Others -- especially my erstwhile blogboss, Patterico (one of the Kimberlin Klan's not-so-cowed victims) -- have already thoroughly covered the journalistic beat of harassment, cyberstalking, physical stalking, "swatting," libeling and slandering, forging of documents, barratry, violent threats, and general intimidation carried out by convicted domestic terrorist Brett Kimberlin; his toadies, Ron Brynaert and Neal Rauhauser; and the eternal apologists, cheerleaders for violence, groupies, hangers-on, and belligerent leftist thugs that enshroud the Kimberlins of the world like infection and miasma around rotting tissue. I had to wait until I had a completely different angle.

I'm not particularly interested in Kimberlin himself. Throughout the history of civilization, we have always had to deal with sociopaths whose psychology was still stuck at 50,000 years ago, at the dawn of modern Man, when members of one tribe thought nothing of ambushing and killing members of another tribe for no other reason than that. In fact, there are a number of countries today with that mentality built into their entire government and society (Afghanistan, Somalia, Rwanda-Burundi, and the like). If Kimberlin lived in one of those primitive, failed states, he wouldn't even stand out.

I am more interested in how the authorities dealt with him (or failed to deal), because it shines a spotlight on the collapse of the very concept of justice... and especially on the perversion of seeming "compassion," which we see time and again.

All of the following about the public figure Brett Kimberlin can be found in reasonably well-sourced Wikipedia entries (and their sources), including those for the Speedway bombings, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Dan Quayle, Nina Totenberg, and Brett Kimbinlin himself -- assuming that last hasn't been airbrushed from history by Wiki editor Richard Symonds again. It appears that "somebody down there likes" Kimberlin; and one of those "somebodies" is his Wiki pal Symonds. (The terrorist vanishes!)

Kimberlin is not a poor victim of right-wing prosecutors, though I'm sure that's what he and his crew imagine; I'm equally sure that Bill Ayres, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Charles Manson thought the same. Kimberlin was first convicted of felony perjury in 1973, when he was all of nineteen, for falsely testifying to a grand jury about selling LSD at his high school. He was convicted seven years later of the federal felony of conspiracy to distribute marijuana and given a four-year sentence.

But by then, he had already set off eight bombs in Speedway, Indiana:

  • The first three were practice bombs set in dumpsters.
  • The next four were intended to kill or maim ordinary citizens of the city, except for one intended to kill a Speedway police officer.
  • The final bombing was the only one that succeeded at its intended mayhem; it was planted in the parking lot of Speedway High School, presumably intending to kill some unsuspecting students. Instead, it blew off the right leg of Carl DeLong and wounded him in several other places, and also wounded his wife, Sandra. De Long later committed suicide due to his permanent pain and crippling.

In a series of trials, Kimberlin was convicted of illegal use of Department of Defense insignia, illegal use of the Seal of the President of the United States, impersonation of a federal officer, and of the terrorist bombings themselves. He was sentenced to 51 years, six months, and nineteen days.

While in prison, Kimberlin reinvented himself as a leftist activist, instantly drawing the sympathy and championship of liberals, Progressivists, and other socialists, just as Mumia Abu-Jamal -- another darling of the Left, born the same year as Kimberlin -- drew petitions for clemency, impassioned rhetoric for release, and candlelight vigils after murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981.

(The New Left's peculiar perversion, distinct from its Communist forebears, is to stridently insist that ambush murders, terrorist bombings, and "lawfare" directed at people too poor to defend themselve in court are actually acts of heroism -- a freakish belief shared with radical Islamists. One cannot help but wonder how close the New Left has moved towards stoning to death rape victims as "adulteresses.")

Kimberlin was especially lauded when he claimed, however improbably, that he had sold marijuana to Dan Quayle when the latter was in law school, sometime between 1971 and 1974, when Kimberlin was between 17 and 20 years old... and at a time when Quayle was serving as an investigator for the Indiana Attorney General, as assistant to Indiana Gov. Edgar Whitcomb, and finally Director of the Inheritance Tax Division of the Indiana Department of Revenue.

To the average person, the claim that some lowlife teenager would be Dan Quayle's "connection" beggars credulity. Fortunately, Kimberlin found an astonishingly credulous audience in Nina Totenberg of NPR -- right around the time she was receiving a major award (no, not a leg lamp) for having broken the story that Reagan Supreme-Court appointee Douglas Ginsburg had smoked dope in his past. But of course, that background had nothing to do with Kimberlin's claim, nor Totenberg's eagerness to promote it. Synchronicity!

(Totenberg would later achieve notoriety as traducer in chief in the Clarence Thomas hearings, where she orchestrated Anita Hill's testimony that the black Supreme Court nominee, later Justice, was sexually out of control. Wait, haven't we heard those sorts of accusations against black men before?)

Here is where the perversion of so-called compassion enters the story; for in 1994, Brett Kimberlin was released on parole after serving only thirteen years -- a scant 25% of his sentence.

Why?

Was his crime deemed less severe than those of other inmates? No; according to the decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on Kimberlin's appeal from a federal Parole Commission decision, his crimes related to the Speedway bombings were originally classified as Offence Category 8, the highest (i.e., most severe) type of crimes.

But in a bizarre twist, Kimberlin was given a Salient Factors score of 7, which translated into a "good" probability that he would follow his parole terms if he was released early. Even more bizarre, a federal district court subsequently ordered the Parole Commission to lower the Offence Category to 7, after the commissioners began to waffle on whether Kimberlin was really responsible for Carl DeLong committing suicide due to his continuous severe pain caused by Kimberlin's bomb.

Compassion! How can you blame the poor felon for his victim's suicide, merely because it was due to the crippled, agony-ridden future DeLong had to look forward to for the rest of his life? We shall demonstrate that we are not heartless, unfeeling brutes by giving every benefit of the doubt to a chap convicted by a jury of his peers of planting murderous bombs in public places.

More compassion and crocodile tears: After Kimberlin's release in 1994, he instantly violated his parole, refusing to pay the civil damages levied against him in the DeLong wrongful-death lawsuit.

Parole was eventually revoked -- in 1997. Though the mills of the federal Parole Commission grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding compassionate. Evidently, empathy drove the commission to give him three years indulgence on paying his debt to Sandra DeLong. Then in another burst of compassion for the long-suffering Kimberlin, he was released yet again on parole in 2001. And again he refused to pay the judgment.

This time, however, the Parole Commission decided the poor fellow had suffered enough -- should there no forgiveness for a couple of youthful indiscretions? -- and they let him roam free ever since.

The Kimberlin saga is one of the vilest examples of misplaced compassion in the annals of liberal "justice." A man who should have been charged with murder when DeLong finally succumbed to the pain and took his own life -- a man who had actually been sentenced to more than half a century behind bars, a sentence finally affirmed by the Indiana Supreme Court -- a man who set off a series of eight terrorist bombings in the heartland of America, one aimed at a policeman and another meant to murder high-school students -- morphed into the "victim" in this epic moral farce. He served only one fourth of his original sentence, then an additional four years after he violated parole... and that's it. As of today, he is, as Ayres smirked after his trial for his own series of bombings, "guilty as sin, free as a bird -- what a country, America!"

The last phrase of that quotation is quite misleading, however; sadly, there are many States in the western world where felons convicted of hideous, bloodthirsty, and senseless crimes are let loose for incomprehensible reasons, other than a generalized anti-punishment mentality. The killers and brutalizers are washed clean by a tidal wave of depraved moral inversion: Right is wrong, sin is sacrament, and the end -- full implementation of the Progressivist project -- justifies any means necessary, in particular, hero-worship of the vilest specimens of humanity. I believe the syllogism runs thus:

  1. The values of normative American society (liberty, Capitalism, justice, decency, and community) are so base and despicable that American culture must be utterly purged.
  2. Chaos is good, because people hurled into chaos will clutch at any new order that's offered; even if, in a functioning society, such totalitarian "order" would have been swiftly rejected by the people.
  3. Thus anything that shatters the structure of American culture and society, bringing on chaos, fear, uncertainty, doubt, and desperation, is in reality a moral victory.
  4. Therefore, leftists must approve, applaud, aid, and abet any act, no matter how violent or random, so long as it helps dismantle and disembowel the world we live in.

And that is what I call the perversion of "compassion," as illuminated by the sickening case of Brett Kimberlin and his band of merry lickspittles in the liberal movement, in the press, in the political core, and in Kimberlin's inner spiral.

~

Last, at long last, that breaking news I spoke of: According to Stacy McCain, a.k.a., "the Other McCain," Aaron Walker has been arrested -- for violating a "peace order" against Walker that Brett Kimberlin tricked a feeble-minded judge into issuing; the order essentially bars Walker from blogging or writing or speaking about convicted terrorist bomber and obviously public figure Brett Kimberlin.

Walker was released on his own recognizance, but he must presumably endure some sort of hearing... all for the crime of being harassed by the judge's favorite terrorist.

The judge who issued that order, C.J. Vaughey, is an imbecile who evidently has never even heard of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. I hold that judge in utter contempt, and he himself has cast the entire judicial system of Maryland into such contempt that the only remedy would be for Vaughey to be removed from the bench.

And if Kimberlin or one of his leering acolytes manages to get a "peace order" against me, banning me from writing about Kimberlin on this blog or any other venue, I give you my word that I will violate that order the first moment I can. I am perfectly willing to be a test case as to whether a local judge can, with a wave of his magisterial paw, wash away the Bill of Rights.

The stunning fact that a despicable terrorist, arguably a murderer, known liar, and habitual abuser of court proceedings can get a dull-witted judge to grant an order barring people from discussing Kimberlin's public-record criminality, in flat defiance of our freedom of speech, is the apex of the insanity I discuss above. Clearly, Judge Vaughey feels an overflow of compassion for the Speedway bomber... but exactly nought for his victims.

He is a disgrace to his robe; it's time for Judge Vaughey to seriously consider retirement. He is the poster judge for the perversion of "compassion."

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 29, 2012, at the time of 7:00 PM | Comments (3)

Date ►►► May 21, 2012

A Modernist Proposal to Make ObamaCare Better, Faster, and Stronger

Hatched by Dafydd

In the spirit of ObamaCare's mandate on all employers, including religious institutions that don't happen to be churches, to push contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization, Big Lizards hereby proposes a new mandate1.

It is well known that pork has gotten a bad rap over the years for being dirty, poisonous, and loaded with fat; hence the campaign, thwarted by conservatives, to dub pork "the other white meat"2.

It doesn't help that pork is associated with lower-income consumers who live in the South and is frequently cooked in barbecues by hot smoke; science has proven how dangerous smoking is!

Thus we propose the Safe Porcine Alternative Mandate: All restaurants and food stores, regardless of Kosher or non-Kosher status (except for all establishments owned, operated, or frequented by Moslems, which are of course completely and utterly exempt from this mandate), are required by regulation to carry a full line of pork products, both raw and also ready to eat, prominently displayed on the menu and on store shelves; the mandate requires that all employees, servers, owners, customers, and random passers-by enthusiastically cooperate with the mandate by using all forms of rhetoric, persuasion, threats, and brute force to induce consumers to purchase large and expensive lots of these pork products, whether they like it or not3.

The mandate applies to all businesses, corporations, facilities, retail outlets, convenience stores (whether connected to a gasoline service station or not), candy stores, movie theaters, primary and secondary schools whether secular or sectarian, vending machines, and private pot-luck parties4.

We trust this will satisfy those rightwing wingnuts who whine that we're always picking on Catholics; hey, did you know that "Middle Class" Joe Biden is Roman Catholic? And when we dump him from the reelection ticket, that also won't be because we're picking on Catholics again.

And if SPAM + GloTE do not satisfy some fringe religious bitter-clingers, we have re-education centers with full waterboarding facilities ready and waiting to persuade them, calmly and rationally, to see things our way.

---------------

1 There is no need for Congress to act on this mandate; it can be "deemed" (by regulatory fiat) to be an integral part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, and be implemented forthwith pursuant to Executive Order 13666 by President Barack "Very Big Stick, Massive Stick" Obama.

2 Or, if you're one of those vegetarians who insist that fish are just vegetables with eyes, "the other other white meat."

3 If price or inavailability make it difficult to obtain pork products, those subject to the mandate and who earn less than $200,000 and who also pay a higher effective income tax rate than Debbie Bosanek, Warren Buffett's secretary, can substitute products that mix meat and milk (e.g., McDonald's Toyless Cheesburgers™ or Campbell's Cream of Rodent™ soup) on a Global Traif Exchange (GloTE), which is also deemed enacted by Congress pursuant to the same Executive Order 13666 that enacts the SPAM itself.

4 Reform and Orthodox Jewish synogogues are exempted on Saturdays and on High Holy Days; Conservative Jewish synogogues are not exempt because, well, we just don't like their name.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 21, 2012, at the time of 1:51 PM | Comments (3)

Date ►►► May 16, 2012

The Five Top Priorities That Shook the Times

Hatched by Dafydd

The New York Times leads off this Obamic puff-piece with flare and drama:

President Obama is hawking his five-point “to-do list” of proposals he would like to see Congress enact this year, just as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle appear to be digging in for another big showdown over the federal budget.

Now riddle me this: What should logically, journalistically follow in the very next graf? What would any professional journalist write? Or any kid just out of J-school? Heck, what would any pajama-wearing blogger write next?

I maintain the next statement should clearly be: "The president called for Congress to act on priority 1, priority 2, priority 3, priority 4, and priority 5" -- substituting the actual priorities that President Barack "Big Stick" Obama specified, of course.

Too bad the Times doesn't hire any journalists.

To be perfectly fair, the article does at least hint at one of those priorities in the next paragraph:

The president, meeting with Republican and Democratic leaders over lunch at the White House on Wednesday, is pushing Congress to approve a proposal to help small businesses that hire additional workers.

But that's it; that's all we get of Big Stick's vaunted list of five top priorities. No other proposals, not even a hint of a whisper of what else el Jefe demands of our other elected respresentatives. No policies, plans, or pronunciamentos; no offerings or observations. No other piece of legislation. If one gets one's news from the New York Times, 80% of Obama's top five priorities for his alleged second term is a deep, dark mystery.

Or make that 100%, since the paper doesn't even elucidate how, exactly, he wants to "help" small businesses. Tax breaks? Federal contracts? Stimulus grants? Suspending noisome regulations? Inviting them to have a hoagie with the One?

Could it be -- now I know the Times is a reputable newspaper, and surely such manipulation would be beneath its dignity -- but could it possibly be that the rest of the top priorities are such small ball, even compared to the one trivial proposal we get to see, that the New York Times editors realize listing them would only diminish President B.O. even more than he already has? In the teeth of America's greatest post-World War II fiscal crisis, the One We Are Still Waiting For has become the incredible shrinking POTUS.

Other than running interference for the Big Schtick, the only other explanation I can imagine is an eruption of sheer, molten incompetence. Like, you know, the Times was going to list them, but it forgot.

I refuse to accept what that would imply; I cannot imagine that anyone could believe that America's newspaper of record, whose very motto is "all the news that's fit to print," would in reality be a worthless, amateurish, subliterate, biased, toadying, dishonest rag fit only for aging leftist stoners and adolescent, Occupier-catering, ideological self-abusers.

Can you?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 16, 2012, at the time of 3:05 PM | Comments (4)

Date ►►► May 14, 2012

Am I Hallucinating? Again?

Hatched by Dafydd

Newsqueak has proudly dubbed Barack "Big Stick" Obama America's first gay president.

No, really.

Now, I understand la Rive Gauche calling Billery Clinton America's first black president; since it's patently obvious that Clinton is not actually black, everyone took it as a metaphor that meant Clinton grew up with many of the same culture and deprivations that liberals imagine all blacks endure.

But calling someone "gay" is very different from calling a white man black or a black man white; because sexual orientation is not generally obvious at a glance, more idiots will take Newsweek's cover literally than ever took the Clinton claim literally. Bluntly put, hundreds of thousands, even millions of potential voters who see -- or hear through the grapevine about -- the absurd claim will believe that Barack H. Obama is actually homosexual.

That's simply the nature of stupidity, and a population of 310 million necessarily includes an awful lot of stupid people.

Does Newsweek or the Left or even Obama himself think this will improve his vote on November 6th?

Heck, I don't even think the similar claim about Clinton helped him; I suspect being so strongly identified with one out of many minority races hurt Clinton at the polls, just as Obama's relentless support for blacks over everybody else hurts him at the polls.

But if now they ladle yet another outré, bizarre label over Obama's head -- America's first gay president! -- won't that help him to lose marginal states even faster than will his mere support for same-sex marriage? Did Andrew Sullivan and Tina Brown think they were doing the Occupier of la Casa Blanca a blasted favor?

Are the Left utter fools? Or perhaps they have simply abandoned the Obama experiment and switched back to their own agenda... at President B.O.'s expense.

Big Lizards: Speaking the unspeakable for over 705 years!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 14, 2012, at the time of 2:41 PM | Comments (4)

Date ►►► May 13, 2012

A Tale of Two Job Markets - Obamic Optimists vs. Responsible Realists

Hatched by Dafydd

According to the Associated Press, the job market this year for recent college graduates is simply booming! Clearly, the economic policies of President Barack "Big Stick" Obama are finally succeeding, and only a lunatic would even consider ousting him in favor of that dour economic fool and former high-school tormentor and bully, Mitt Romney:

The class of 2012 is leaving college with something that many graduates since the start of the Great Recession have lacked: jobs.

To the relief of graduating seniors - and their anxious parents - the outlook is brighter than it has been in four years. Campus job fairs were packed this spring and more companies are hiring. Students aren't just finding good opportunities, some are weighing multiple offers....

On campuses across the country, spirits are more upbeat this spring, and the employment outlook is especially promising, according to interviews with three dozen seniors and career center directors.

"It's just been such a dramatic change from what we saw in 2008," says Mercy Eyadiel, who oversees career development at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. Back then, openings disappeared overnight and companies were calling recent graduates to rescind offers. "It was a very bad, ugly situation."

Darn that George W. Bush!

On the other hand, according to the Associated Press, the job market this year for recent college graduates is still horrific, with more than 50% unemployed or underemployed; for the latter, although they are technically employed, it's not in a job that takes advantage of their degree, nor are they making anywhere near as much in constant dollars as recent graduates did a decade ago. Clearly, the economic policies of the Big Stick are failing miserably; only a lunatic would consider giving him another four years in which to muck up the economy so badly, we might never recover:

The college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work.

A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge.

Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans....

About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.

Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.

Darn that Barack H. Obama!

Alas for Obama's Happy-Pill Warriors, a recent study at Rutgers University comes down decisively on the more pessimistic side of this epic AP on AP battle:

Just half of the college students who graduated during the Great Recession and its aftermath currently have full-time jobs, a new report says.

The survey, called "Chasing the American Dream: Recent College Graduates and the Great Recession" and conducted by Rutgers University’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, spoke to 444 people who graduated from college between 2006 and 2011.

Fifty-one percent of respondents had full-time jobs, the survey found, and 20 percent were in graduate school. Part-time workers made up 12 percent, while 11 percent were unemployed.

Of those employed, 36 percent say their current job is just to get by, while 30 percent are on their career path. The median starting salary for the whole group is $28,000, though those graduating from 2009 to 2011 made $3,000 less on average than their pre-recession counterparts.

Student loan debt in 2010 exceeded the amount that Americans owed on credit cards, topping $1 trillion, the report said. Nearly six in 10 students surveyed borrowed from a government program or private banking institution, and the median debt was $20,000 -- enough to force more than a quarter of respondents to live with their parents or relatives.

Surprise!

Progressivists will note that this study ran from 2009 to 2011, while the first AP story is talking about this year's graduates, as if that makes all the difference. Obamunism is roaring!

Is it possible there has been a huge but hitherto undetected surge in employment prospects for the class of 2012? It's hard to tell: First, such crosstabs, as they're called in the biz, aren't usually available until months after the original Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey; and second, the class of 2012 hasn't even graduated yet.

However, we can take a look at some proxy measurements from the BLS. Consider table 10 (unpublished) by the BLS, quoted by Curran Career Consulting:

Unemployment rate for bachelors’ degree college graduates under the age of 25 was 6.4% in April, 2012 vs. 6.7% in April, 2011 vs. 7.5% in April, 2010 vs. 6.1% in April, 2009 vs. 3% in April, 2008, a 113% increase over the past four years.

That would be a 113% increase in unemployment among recent grads from the end of the Bush administration to what we all hope is the end of the Obama administration. So Mercy Eyadiel in the first quote above is correct: It certainly is "such a dramatic change from what we saw in 2008;" the 2012 college graduate unemployment rate is double what it was back then!

So yes, the job market is not quite as dismal as it was in the depths of the Obama recession; on the other hand, unemployment among recent college graduates is still, as of last month, more than twice the rate it was in 2008, Bush's last year in office.

The discrepency in reporting almost makes me think AP has gone into full campaign mode.

Too, much of the recent "drop" in overall unemployment has been caused, not by an improving job market, but rather by more workers becoming discouraged and exiting the job market (which removes them from the official unemployment statistics), as even the Obama administration is forced to admit. Among recent college graduates, we see a corresponding behavior pattern:

  • Graduate;
  • Hunt for job;
  • Fail to find anything better than grocery-store bagger or waiter;
  • Make courageous decision to head back into university for graduate degree;
  • ...While Mom and Dad pay for it all. (It's a more dignified version of moving back home.)

This has the same effect as older workers becoming discouraged and ceasing to look for work; it takes them out of the category of unemployed or underemployed, even if their major is one that won't be marketable even with a PhD. It's not that there are more people working, it's just that the labor pool is now smaller than before. But the unemployment rate drops, giving Team Forward a nice talking point for the reelection; and after all, that's what really counts.

The AP "happytalk" story doesn't even address the situation of "desperation grad-school," nor the chronic underemployment and mounting indebtedness of our recent graduates; those points do not constitute the story they want to tell. So expect months more of "it's morning in America!" ads... at least until Wednesday, November 7th, when reporting abruptly becomes more responsible, as they no longer have anything important to lose, like an election.

(The antique media no longer attaches any importance to "credibility," so that loss doesn't count.)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 13, 2012, at the time of 3:59 PM | Comments (1)

Date ►►► May 10, 2012

Lizards' Rationale

Hatched by Dafydd

Huge Hewgitt is spending the three hours of his show today to discuss same-sex marriage (he's agin' it). He would have done so yesterday, because of President Barack "Big Stick" Obama coming out on national TV; but Hewitt was too busy spending the three hours of his show promoting Dennis Prager, who has a new book out.

Not being a religious person or even a believer -- I'm a true agnostic, not an atheist tarted up as an agno -- I get frustrated when the religous argue against same-sex marriage (SSM). I'm frustrated that the argument always begins and ends with "God said so," with only a small forray in the middle towards a non-religious reason, that children are best raised with one male father and one female mother.

Which is certainly true; alas, however, that one secular argument still has a gaping hole: What about same-sex couples who have no intention of having children, which probably encompasses most of them? The government can't mandate traditional marriage on the basis that "God said so;" so if the lone non-religious argument is the welfare of children, then what is the "rational basis" for saying that two guys or two gals who don't want kids cannot marry?

(For that matter, what is the rational basis for denying marital status to a triplet comprising two women and one guy who's had a vasectomy? Or to a gaggle of swingers, male and female, whose only religious impulse is that they all religiously use condoms and the Pill?)

We need a solid and secular rational basis to restrict marriage to the traditional definition. A truly activist court can still ignore the basis and overturn it; but with such a rational basis, the odds are much greater that a supervisory court will overturn the lower court.

With this much buildup, you won't be surprised that I have just such a solid and secular rational basis to propose. Here we go:

Premise 1: The United States (and most of Western civilization) is based upon several premises, one of which is that males and females are of equal value in our societies.

Premise 2: Another traditional American premise is that, unlike, e.g., Afghanistan, we do not live in gender-segregated societies.

Men and women interact with each other all the time, and per above, should be able to do so on a basis of equality. American men are not supposed to treat women as property or prisoners, nor vice versa (though that's rare to the vanishing point, except among feminists).

These conditions may not prevail in every family, but they are organizing principles of American society. They set the standard we should all strive to meet.

Ergo, the rational basis of recognizing only the traditional definition of marriage is that it is the best marital system ever created for promoting gender integration and the full valuation of women in society.

Every other form of marriage either devalues and degrades women, leads to gender segregation, or both -- without exception. So if we want to promote equal value of both genders and a gender-integrated society, we have only one realistic choice: traditional marriage, regardless of the individual's personal sexual preference.

(Do I mean that gay men should nevertheless marry women, and lesbians should marry men? Yes, you betcha! That is exactly what I mean: It's better for society, better for kids (if they have any), and even better for the two individuals in the marriage.)

Why is this so?

  • SSM, by its very nature, promotes gender segregation: A man married to another man is not forced into constant contact with a woman he is expected to treat as his equal; the same is true for a marriage of two lesbians, vis-à-vis men.

Most gays and lesbian naturally organize themselves into all-male or all-female groups: A gay man dates other men, hangs out with other men, goes to gay bars full of men, and may only come into even casual contact with women at work... and even that is iffy, since it's easier to avoid someone at work than avoid someone who lives with you.

Men who have no significant contact with female equals (wives, committed girlfriends) tend to be far more violent than men who do; women generally civilize men. Similarly, women who have no significant contact with male equals tend to be unambitious, unsuccessful, poor, and dependent upon welfare; men generally encourage women to become stronger, more confident, and more independent. (If the men in your life don't do that, replace them with men who do!)

Either of these conditions is horrifically destructive of American society. It's entirely rational that states wish to avoid them both.

  • Then what about polygamy, polyandry, and group marriage? Don't they force men and women to live together?

Yes they do; but by its nature, polygamy devalues women, because you always have another woman waiting in the wings; you can "freeze out" the uppity wench who dares to think she's an equal. (Observe Moslem and African polygamous societies and how the women are treated.)

And by its nature, polyandry simply hasn't worked in any society in history I've ever heard about: Men are aggressive and jealous, and they will invariably start fighting each other for "bed rights" with the girl.

Finally, group marriage has the problems of both polygamy and polyandry, plus an increasingly attenuated and fragmented sense of being married; when everybody's "married" to everybody else, then nobody's really married to anyone.

So if you believe women and men should have equal value in our society and that they should not segregate themselves by gender, then rationally, you must support only traditional marriage. It is equally true for religious and irreligious, and for families with and without children.

And that forms the rational basis for the laws: to bring the female and male principles, the yin and the yang, together as equals in American society.

If that's not what you want to see in America, then go be a tribal chief in the Congo or a slaver in Sudan. Or join Occupy Wall Street, where rapists and woman abusers are celebrated!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 10, 2012, at the time of 4:47 PM | Comments (5)

Date ►►► May 9, 2012

President Comes Out

Hatched by Dafydd

With mounting pressure on President Barack "Big Stick" Obama from mounting activists, protesters, and Occupiers among his White House staff, and with mounting slumping in his poll numbers in an election year, the president has reversed his life-long opposition to same-sex marriage and now embraces it:

President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president....

"I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don't Ask Don't Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told [Robin] Roberts, in an interview to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday.

Many political analysts believe the president is now poised to capture the powerful gay-activist vote.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 9, 2012, at the time of 1:01 PM | Comments (0)

Date ►►► May 3, 2012

A Crisis Obama Might Let Go to Waste

Hatched by Dafydd

Finally, at long last, President Barack H. Obama has a chance to show off that big stick he totes.

See, the tragedy is that he has not yet had any real opportunity to prove that he could be a real, honest to goodies wartime president, like his idol, Franklin Roosevelt. Oh, sure, there are those two petty, vainglorious wars he inherited from his predecessor, may the flies eat out his eyes; but those wars were plodding, dreary affairs that simply had no dash, no shining White-House moment, no sex appeal at all.

They don't count. No future historian is going to point to Afghanistan or Iraq circa 2009-2013 and gush about how courageous Big Stick was in winding down those wars with neither victory nor even closure. That's just straight out of the Democratic playbook; Obama doesn't get any brownie points for doing what everybody expected him to do: snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Similarly, it's hard for even Mr. O. himself to get all het up about more drone attacks; heck, the very word "drone" sounds like your boring neighbor who just goes on and on about his pets, and how delicious they are in hollandaise sauce.

Of course the president did make a tremendous impact on the deadly military emergency in Mexico; but, well, for various reasons he can't really use that to burnish his national-security credentials.

But today, Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov, the highest ranking soldier in the Soviet in the Russian Republic, has given Barack Obama manna from Moskow: Makarov has issued a serious and credible threat to launch a preemptive strike on our ballistic missile defense (BMD) system in East Europe, unless we agree to negotiate it into the dustbin of history:

Russia’s most senior military officer said Thursday that Moscow would preemptively strike and destroy U.S.-led NATO missile defense sites in Eastern Europe if talks with Washington about the developing system continue to stall.

"A decision to use destructive force preemptively will be taken if the situation worsens," Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov said at an international missile defense conference in Moscow attended by senior U.S. and NATO officials.

Should Obama save our commitment to BMD? Admittedly, the current system was initiated by that same vile predecessor, may he find scorpions in his breakfast cereal; but Big Stick already took care of that problem: He changed the previous system from the more powerful, effective, and versatile Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle atop our existing Ground Based Interceptor -- the system envisioned by the warmonger -- to the old Standard Missile 3 (SM-3), the same, off-the-shelf missile used by the Navy for shipboard BMD, emplaced in "Central Europe" by 2015. So you can see that the new system is totally different from the worthless piece of junk developed by the hateful hating hate-monger who ran the previous tyrannical regime.

Thus, President Stick has a golden opportunity to go toe to toe with the Russkies and tell them to just "bring it on" -- if, that is, they want to precipitate a shooting war between Russia and NATO. Show 'em who's boss! Grab that big stick, Mr. President, and throw it over your shoulder like a Continental soldier!

All Obama need do -- it's so easy! -- is instruct "Ellen Tauscher, the U.S. special envoy for strategic stability and missile defense," who "insisted the talks about NATO plans for a missile defense system using ground-based interceptor missiles stationed in Poland, Romania and Turkey were not stalemated," to stand firm, arms akimbo, look her counterpart in the eye (stepstool may be required), and say, "Yo' bubbie!"

If more elaboration is needed, she can add, "Just try an attack on American military forces, vodka breath, and after our Aegis ships shoot down your impotent missiles, we'll expand the BMD system to Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, South Korea, Japan, and not to forget Nome, Alaska. Stick that in your babushka and smoke it!"

Dear gentle readers, this is it: This is the chance for which the president has been waiting lo these many years. Let this be Barack "Big Stick" Obama's three a.m. phone call.

Is he going to knuckle under? Or worse, is he going to let the phone just ring and ring and ring? Heck no! My money's on the Stig the Stick to flex those Popeye muscles and give that dadburned Bluto Putin what for. Our man in la Casa Blanca certainly won't let this crisis go to waste; surely he'll swing for the fences at the low-hanging fruit.

Who's with me on this? Who's with me on this? It's time Obama draws his foot in the sand. If he stands up to the Russian bear on this point, if he tells them that we will consider any attack on our bases in Poland or anywhere else "casus belli," a justification for full-blown war against Russia, then nobody can call him a wimp, a mushmouth, an unprepared, dimwitted, poorly educated, godless, Castro-loving, commie prevert affirmative-action president ever again. So there.

All he need do is shut off the teleprompter, square up, and take a full-throated stand for America... and that will be Barack Hussein Obama's finest hour. (What's the over-under?)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 3, 2012, at the time of 5:30 PM | Comments (2)

Date ►►► May 1, 2012

Big Stick's New Slogan: Forward to Nowhere!

Hatched by Dafydd

I reckon by now everybody has heard that Barack H. Obama's new campaign slogan, unveiled to great fanfare for the media to parrot until it goes viral, is -- wait for it -- "Forward."

No, that's not a misprint. Obama's entire campaign will be based upon the word "forward."

Yes, yes, I know what the conservative press and the dextrosphere have been saying; but forget about all those Socialist and Communist movements and States that have used the word "Forward!" as part (or all) of their slogans, names, or publications. As even Newsmax has pointed out, everybody and his unkie's monkle has tried to appropriate the future at one time or another, including the state of Wisconsin and the Jewish Daily Forward. (Of course, the latter is published by and for New York Jews, so maybe it should count as one of those radical Socialist publications...)

The first problem with the slogan is that it is utterly devoid of any meaning whatsoever -- "forward" to where? To what? Forward means only going in the same direction you're currently pointing; which at the moment is the wrong direction, according to a supermajority of Americans, as measured by Rasmussen, NBC, CBS, and Reuters. Reverse full, reverse full!

The second problem is that, being so vacuous itself, this silly slogan easily lends itself to parody and mockery. Here's the first cartoon I imgained: Barack "Big Stick" Obama striding boldly off to the left, fist raised high, the caption reading "Forward!" -- directly towards a cliff over a yawning chasm. This sort of mirth at the president's expense practically draws itself.

Third, it's pompous, playing directly into voters' perception that Obama sees himself as the smartest guy in every room and the center of the known universe. Doesn't it recall, in its delusional grandiosity, those Greek columns that surrounded him during the spectacle of his nomination?



Obama nomination Greek columns

Forward to the dubious and imaginary golden age of Progressivism!

Sure, Obama is already ripe for mockery; here's Mitt Romney on the president's upcoming renomination in Charlotte, North Carolina -- remember when the Democrat's irrational exuberance led them to believe that North Carolina would become a permanent blue state? -- and what you won't see in Charlotte:

My guess is by the way, the Democratic Convention, he will not be appearing in front of Greek columns like in Denver. He won't want to remind people of Greece.

And dig those ginormous, left-facing portraits of Obama, each about a quarter-mile tall: Big Stick is watching you! Add that to the ludicrous slogan, and you've got a real winner there -- for wits and comics across the globe.

Finally, when you hear the word "Forward" -- what is your immediate word-association-football for the next word? For an awful lot of American males (and an increasing number of American females), the obvious next word is: ...march! Which sounds an awful lot like Barack Obama is (literally) issuing marching orders to the citizenry of the United States. Achtung!

My understanding was, and maybe I'm just being naive, that the legal and political reality is the exact opposite: We're supposed to give our representatives, including the POTUS, orders, not the other way 'round.

Remember those words from Abraham Lincoln (does the Big Stick even know who that feller was?) from his Gettysburg Address: "And that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." He didn't say government of, by, and for  the One   the Light Bringer   the Big Stick  the Supreme Leader.

But Obama's imperious nature (I'm the king, and I want my noodles!) and condescending opinion of the American people (we're just not good enough for him) tells me that the association of "Forward, march!" may be unintentional, but it surely is not unwarranted.

The cement-headed new slogan isn't a disaster; it's not like his new slogan was "You want mustard on that dog?" But it's yet another lost opportunity, in a lengthy chain of such lost opportunities, to try to bridge the gap between Obamunism and Americanism. It is a blunder... and I'm profoundly grateful: For every such foolish misstep brings us one sure-foot step closer to real hope and change in November.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, May 1, 2012, at the time of 9:37 PM | Comments (0)

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