Friday, June 28, 2013

Pot Pourri

Miscellaneous thoughts on sundry topics:

Glen Beck called Senator Marco Rubio "garbage" the other day. He didn't call his immigration reform proposal garbage, a claim which would have been almost an understatement, rather he called Rubio himself garbage, and that is reprehensible.

Glenn, you can dehumanize people with insults or you can assure your audience that you're a Christian, but you can't do both. Please either apologize to Rubio or stop giving Christians a black eye by telling your listeners that you yourself are one.

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The military and our congresspersons are aghast that sexual assaults and other rudenesses are occurring in the military services. Why is anyone surprised? We hypersexualize our culture, marinate our young men in a pornographic view of women from the time they're in kindergarten, raise them in families without fathers, take them at an age when they're in hormonal overdrive and throw them together with women in close quarters in the military, putting some in positions of authority over women, and then we're shocked that they don't respect women. What did we expect would happen when we decided a) that fathers are unnecessary, b) that a sexualized culture is healthy and cool, and c) that it'd be a great idea to integrate women into the armed forces?

Heck, when the Commander in Chief (President Clinton) can abuse, molest, and even rape women, and his entire party, most of the mainstream media, and half the country is eager to give him a sly wink and a pass why should we be shocked that the same thing happens in the ranks?

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The Boy Scouts of America have decided to admit openly gay young men into their organization. Other than opening the door to one day having gay scout leaders and one day unifying the boy scouts and girl scouts and thereby destroying what has heretofore been a great pair of organizations I don't have too much of a problem with the BSA's move, but I do have a question. Part of the Boy Scout oath is that the young man swears to be "morally straight." Has the morality of homosexuality been settled, and I didn't hear about it? If it hasn't been settled then isn't there a bit of a problem with boys whose sexual morality is still problematic promising to be morally straight? Just wondering.

I also wonder what the substantive difference is between allowing post-pubescent boys who are sexually attracted to other boys to join the scouts and allowing sexually maturing boys who are attracted to girls into the Girl Scouts.

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George Zimmerman is on trial for being a racist. The formal charge is 2nd degree murder but the reason his case is national news when hundreds of interracial crimes are committed every month in this country without every popping up on the national radar is that Zimmerman is (relatively) white and he killed a black kid named Trayvon Martin. Usually in these interracial affairs it's the other way around so the novelty of this case leads some to the conclusion that Zimmerman must be a racist otherwise why would he have shot a defenseless black kid. Black kids shoot each other, or they shoot whites, but whites don't shoot blacks unless they're racists.

Turns out though that Trayvon told his friend on the phone shortly before being shot that he was being watched by a "cracker." The term "cracker" may sound innocuous to you and me, but it is, in fact, a racially derogatory term used by blacks to describe whites. So, it sounds like maybe young Trayvon had some racial hangups himself, and may consequently have been motivated to do exactly what Zimmerman alleges he did, which is beat the bejabbers out of Zimmerman until the "cracker" managed to employ his gun to save his life.

Speaking of racial hangups among blacks read the tweets here and ask yourself in which racial community in this society most of the racism resides.

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And since I'm on the topic of race what's up with this Paula Deen story? Why does she feel the need to grovel in pursuit of expiation by society's arbiters of correct thinking for having used a racially insensitive expression? Why not just say you're sorry and that people should just get over it instead of making an embarrassing spectacle of yourself?

It's a strange world in which we live. Congressman Anthony Weiner can tweet pics of his private parts to underage girls, say he's full of regrets, and then run for mayor of our largest city and secure a commanding lead in the race, but if he'd tweeted a racial epithet he'd be the subject of our daily three minutes hate and would never, ever get a single vote from anyone in New York.

Well, maybe not, now that I think of it, since Weiner's a Democrat and Democrats are allowed to do pretty much anything they want. Deen, on the other hand, must not be a Democrat or her public abasement would have been over long ago, if indeed it had ever gotten started.

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Is Edward Snowden a hero or traitor? I don't know what I think about what he did, but he sure is providing us with a vivid illustration of the maxim that no one respects weakness. The Obama administration, determined to appease just about everybody and offend nobody except our closest allies, requests cooperation in extraditing Snowden first from China, then Russia, and now Ecuador and all three tell Mr. Obama and his Secretary of State to please be so kind as to take their request and stick it where only a colonoscopy will find it. They've done their assessments of Mr. Obama, evidently, and concluded that he's an inconsequential lightweight.

Mr. Obama, for his part, has assured everyone that he's not going to "scramble jets" over the Snowden affair and there's every reason to believe him when he says it. After all, if he wasn't willing to scramble jets during the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans we can certainly believe he's not going to scramble them over Snowden.

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When pro-choice Democrats resorted to mob rule and filibuster on Wednesday to prevent passage of a bill in the Texas state legislature that would impose some sensible restrictions on abortion President Obama sent a tweet that essentially gave the mob a big attaboy. Here's what the Texas bill would have done:
  1. Increase abortion facility safety standards to the level of ambulatory surgical centers to shut down Gosnell-like abortion providers in Texas,
  2. Require the 18,000 RU-486 abortions performed each year be done according to FDA safety standards,
  3. Require physicians who perform abortions to be qualified to treat life-threatening complications after botched abortions and have privileges at a local hospital, and
  4. Ban abortions on unborn children beginning at 20 weeks after fertilization, when scientific evidence clearly shows babies can feel pain.
The Democrats, including the president, evidently think that it's just hunky-dory to have abortions performed in Gosnell-level sanitary conditions and after the child has reached the stage when it can feel pain. Anything that gets the deed done is good enough for Democrats who ironically tout themselves as the party that cares for the weak and underprotected.

Imagine the media reaction had this been a pro-life mob and the filibuster were conducted by, say, Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin. But, since they were pro-choice Democrats acting like barbarians to bring the legislative process to a halt, and since it was a Democrat president egging them on, hardly a ripple of concern was expressed by our supine media.

It's easy to fall into the fear that we're living in the twilight of representative, democratic government and every day is darker than the day before.

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