just a quick little in and out to see between the lines of reporting on politics and culture, to look for ways of viewing the world positively and, when necessary, to call them on their shit.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

filed under: It's a Man's World

Whoever said "it's a man's world" has not been to Family Court. This story from the Huffington Post (link) shows a court run amok, drunk on it own power, blinded by its own policy prejudices, captured by feminist propaganda.  I don't know the particulars of the story, obviously. I don't need to. I have been involved, as too many of us have, with divorce court and family court on occasion. A man walks in the door convicted on all counts. It is not a question of whether he will win... it's a question of how much can he afford to lose. I have had many people tied to the system tell me that a man has no choice. no chance in family court... people who are responsible for enforcing and adjudicating policy. It simply is.

Think I'm overreacting or simply wrong? Consider the following: A man has no say in whether a woman with whom he has had a one night fling and (let's say) the condom broke... he has no say in whether that woman should keep the child or abort, should she become pregnant. Nor should he. A woman has a right to her own body for those nine months of pregnancy. However... should the man not want a child, and the woman decide to keep it, she can sue him for child support and the court can award her part of the man's income for the next eighteen years. And it happens All The Time. So.. no one can tell the woman what to do with her body for nine months, but the court and the woman can tell the man what to do with his body for eighteen years.

Is that just?

Is the court's behavior and the woman's complaint in the linked story just? Does a man who complains about a court and implies without stating outright something about a former relationship owe his conscience to the court and apology to the woman? Especially considering the fact that under a protective order, as in this case, the woman can say whatever she wants about the man and can contact him at will? Protective orders generally don't work both ways and are generally given to the first one to cry foul. o you think the woman didn't say anything at all about the man to her girlfriends? Do you know any women?!

I understand there are two sides (or fourteen sides) to every story. Here the court has said there is only one. The woman's. The man's ability to state his opinion, even if that opinion only tangentially relates to the woman or the court... must be silenced

I know I sound like a crazy person here. Try going to divorce court as a man before you complain. Try going through the court system with a man's junk between your legs. There is an automatic presumption of guilt. How many men get their kids in custody battles? How many women pay alimony? How would you feel about this story if the facts remained exactly the same, but the genders of the party were switched?

Friday, February 24, 2012

filed under: depends on how you look at it, I guess

I'm not a fan of Joe Biden. I find him creepy, stupid, and hypocritical. And often slightly if not outright racist. If he were Republican, he would have been drummed out of town long ago. He gets a pass because he is a Democrat, I think. I'm not a big media conspiracy guy, but I do believe that Joe Biden, with the things he has said and done, would have been murdered by the media years ago if he wasn't a Democrat... Here is a very small and very slight example of one of the things I dislike about Biden -- not criminal or disqualifying, although there has been plenty of that, too -- but just a display of arrogance that I find distasteful... Listen for the last little bit where he says that this is the first time in his life he has had a boss. 

link

Hmmm. Now see... I know there can be different interpretations of what representation means... but I would have thought the people would have been his boss.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

filed under: Why I hate Political Correctness

I saw this little note on Drudge. (link)

Some school board members at a district in Utah don't want a school to have the students' chosen mascot, a cougar, because... it is disrespectful to women.

Wait. What?!

Yup. The board members want to protect the feelings of older women who prey sexually on younger men.

Now. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But still. It's not like the students wanted to call their school the MILFs. And no one is suggesting the school members would not have the same reaction if the students had chosen the Dirty Old Men.

But Come On!

I am sure that there were probably some sniggling teenaged boys who were leading the call for the new mascot. But does anyone really think that the world would see that name and immediately expect a bunch of desperate housewives to come running out onto the field to play the homecoming game?

Of course not.

And, by the way... what did the board members prefer?  The Chargers.

I ask you... Is that an appropriate mascot for a group of impressionable young minds growing up in an age when, before they have even worked a single day in their lives, they are already are on the hook for 15 trillion dollars?

Saturday, December 17, 2011

filed under: She turned you into a Newt?!

This is a beautiful thing. link
This is why Newt may just win. Newt, Not Mitt.

Mitt Romney attacks Newt with his millions and Michelle Bachmann attacks Newt with her minions...

And Newt says, "I'll be happy to hold a free press conference every Tuesday and talk about ideas and have you meet with me personally and answer any questions you may have. Personally. Straight from the horse's mouth... or straight from the horse's ass... whatever you may think of me."

But you gotta worry about that. If Newt is able to wield the sword cheaply at Mitt's mighty fortress, he may bring it down and still push the media toward the big show... spinning a narrative that has him, not Mitt...(link) And he's already hacking away at the President. threatening to chase him around and challenge him to debates. (link) He's gonna be, or plan to be, it seems, like George Bush's Purse (link) or Traficant's hair... the albatross in the room... the 900 lbs gorrilla around the President's neck... a gadfly demanding free pressers... Because he, by Gid, has something to say...

And He's Not Mitt. Not Bush. Not McCain. Not Nixon.


Except that he is, in a way. In the sense that he is weirdly and strangely alien to the right and oddly attractive to the left... in a weird flirtatious way, he is offputting but not so bad you won't stand there and listen. You know. Just because it's fascinating to see it in motion, this mind. Like that chick at the party that thinks she's hot and because she thinks it... hell because she thinks at all... she is hot. She suddenly somehow becomes kinda hot, and well, you know the rest... Eventually she fucks you over. ( link...link ...link ...link ...link)

But still you go on believing (link)
But there's that moment that you kinda liked them, you know?

And there's an intellectual quality that I like behind the zaniness...(link link)

And he, Newt, will probably find a way before it's all said and done to run a modern day William McKinley front-porch strategy...(link)

And he's not Bush, but he is. And he's not Obama, but he is. And he's not Clinton, but he is. And he is not Woodrow Wilson, but he is... And he's not your enemy, but he is.

But we're in a difficult time. and we need some heavy thinking. Maybe a little heavy drinking, too. But not with our enemies... And the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And all of that... So we flirt, but we know even as we flirt that he is not one of us.

I remember telling a friend of mine years ago that the evangelicals would turn on Bush when they discovered he was not one of them. And they did, finally, on immigration.

And I see that the left has turned on Obama but in the same way that they turned on Clinton over welfare going into the election... or that the right turned on Bush over prescription drugs going into the election... they don't like what they've seen but they're willing to think about it. But if another pretty girl entered the room? Another brainiac? Another freakshow? Another whatever floats your boat...

That might turn their heads.

What Obama promised and what he became? They hate him for that. And what Newt promised and what he became? They hate him for that. And Clinton and Bush and ...

But there's another reason. They also hate him because he is not one of us...

Because they are not us. That happens more and more with these guys. Hell, with Obama the burden of proof fell on him. to prove that he was one of us... Whatever that means that us, the people.  We always turn for those weirdly alien strangely familiar ones.

And it's the same with Mitt, too. With Mitt, it's because he's Mormom and he has that weird, Baptist coldness about him... He's Bill Henrickson without the wives. And that scares the shit out of some people. Out of Baptists.

But with Newt, it's because he has that quality that Obama has. Newt sees himself as the center of the universe. (link) Obama sees himself as the Transformational President... (link) and also as the center of the universe... (link)

Just think of these two in a debate. teleprompters off or on... (link link link link) and swinging away like boxers boxing over visions for the future...


whereas all mitt can offer is, well, a hardware store and a casino.

Monday, November 14, 2011

filed under: who needs torture

Ignore the fact that CNN's reporter asked a multiple choice question designed to give the President a little wink (Are they rapists, child-molestors or just nazi assholes?)... (link)

The real  issue here is: Who needs to torture them when you can just kill them without trial by a drone for saying things you don't like. (link) It's "not who we are" to waterboard.  But killing them because we don't like what they say?  Well that's just ducky.

Friday, November 11, 2011

filed under: a simple question

Drudge is leading at the moment with a variety of articles detailing crimes and illness that are befalling the OWS movement -- a death in Salt Lake City, lung sickness in Zucotti Park...

These are unfortunate events.  Some in the media have tried to tie even more to the movement, with claims in the NY Post that OWS is responsible for defacing the the 9-11 memorial.  An article in Salon argues that the charge is baseless.  (link)  SFGate has a story that there was murder in Oakland, but many in the movement there claim it had nothing to do with any of their people. (link)  Still, there have been some reports of rapes and lots of suggestion of drug usage, and the footage I posted earlier in the week that shows behavior that would be called bullying in schools.  All very unfortunate.

I hope it doesn't continue.

It was widely reported several weeks ago that Occupy had instituted a no snitching policy in its camps so that the public wouldn't get the wrong idea.  The Washington Times had one version of this story (link), and an officer in NYPD was reported as saying that there is little information getting out about such activities because the people in OWS are trying to handle things themselves.

Uhm. Here's a question:  What is the difference in that -- the no-snitching rule -- and what JoePa and Penn State (or the Catholic Church) have done?