Brother Jonah gets all of this one:

Where Feminists Get it Right
by Jonah Goldberg

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In Cameroon, some mothers “iron” their daughters’ breasts to delay or prevent them from having sex. The procedure often involves grinding a very hot rock into the chest of the girl, but sometimes kerosene or hot plantain peels will do the trick. The practice, which permanently disfigures the girls, starts in adolescence because that’s when girls start becoming attractive to boys.

And heaven forbid that anyone expect anything like self-restraint from the boys.

I’d never heard of the practice until I read about it in the Washington Post. But the story is all too familiar. Around the world, women — girls — have to pay the price for the barbarity of boys.

In Saudi Arabia, and across the Middle East, men can’t handle seeing a little leg — or even an ankle — so rather than put a blindfold on the men, they throw a tarp over the women. Indeed, throughout vast swaths of the Muslim world, men can’t compute dealing with women as equals, so they lock up the women.

The Taliban in Afghanistan is the most extreme example of the trend. Its members claim they want to keep the “chasteness and dignity” of women “sacrosanct,” but it seems like what they really want is to protect themselves from the apparently hard work of not being savages. So under the Taliban, women couldn’t ride bicycles. They couldn’t wear high heels because the sound of women’s footsteps might excite men. Forget appearing on radio, TV, or at public gatherings. Women couldn’t step out onto their balconies.

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“Feminism” is a loaded word in the United States because it carries so many controversial connotations. Professional feminists often insist that they have a monopoly on the word and its meaning, which forces lots of people to reject the label. Conservatives are the most obvious example of that, but many young people, including very “liberated” young women, avoid the term because they think it means rejecting any traditional understanding of motherhood, courtship, etc.

But if you can lay aside all of those worthwhile arguments about Western society for a minute, the simple fact is that “the feminists” are absolutely right when it comes to the treatment of women in much of the developing world. If women were seen as a religious or racial minority, this would be glaringly obvious. Imagine if a white country refused to let blacks learn to read, never mind go to school or even go outside. I don’t know a social conservative — and I know many — who doesn’t agree with radical feminists when it comes to recognizing the barbarity of female circumcision, wife-burning, breast-ironing, and the rest.

I'll be waiting for Brother Darr to show how this is all hogwash. (Good sense about social issues just couldn't come for a conservative.)

At the top of this page is an article titled "Is Wilders Wrong?" It would be interesting to hear Brother Yabor's opinions on this.

Perhaps nothing better represents the axe-grinding lunatic and even racist mindset of the left (and Obama) than this bit of brilliant analysis from PowerlineBlog:

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The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

The Obama administration's Department of Education has announced that it will crack down on "civil-rights infractions" in public schools, including alleged disparities in the disciplining of white and black students. This means that the administration will identify and investigate situations in which a facially neutral discipline system -- offense X brings punishment Y -- results in blacks being discplined more often than whites. School systems will face the prospect of being punished unless they can explain the disparities, presumably based on a painstaking analysis of each disciplinary decision.

As Roger Clegg points out, the easy way out for schools -- and what school bureaucrat won't prefer the easy way out -- is to make sure the numbers pass muster, i.e., to make discipline decisions based not solely on the merits, but also on the basis of race. And since administrators aren't likely to mete out punishment just to balance the numbers, they will balance them by going easier on black students because they are black.

As a result, school discipline will be further eroded, making it increasinigly difficult for students of all races to learn.

It's bad enough that the Obama-Duncan Education Department is intent on trapping students in bad public schools. Now, it plans, though aggressive "civil rights" enforcement, to undermine whatever measure of discipline these schools have been able to maintain.

Duncan announded his "civil rights" initiative during a speech at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., scene of the "Bloody Sunday" civil-rights confrontation 45 years ago. That's good PR, I suppose. But did the civil rights protesters of the 1960s really march so that school administrators would be intimidated into not disciplining black students who violate the rules?

Naturally, no student should be disciplined due to his or her race. But the way to prevent this abuse is to identify and address (at the local level, I would argue) specific cases where administrators treat minority students differently due to race. Such cases are not likely to go unnoticed given the tendency these days for students and their parents to complain. Imposing a presumptive quota system for discipline and forcing administrator's to justify deviations from the numbers is wrongheaded and corrosive

Once, it was axiomatic that education is a local matter. Today, many believe that there are aspects of the eduational process as to which the federal government has a proper role. But it's difficult for me to see how classroom discipline is one of them.

Is our president stupid, misinformed, or just a scam artist? I say "all three." Obama is almost a comical one-dimensional thinker as made plain in this post at Power Line. Sometimes, having noticed how programmed and uninformed liberals are, it's really possible to believe that Obama is this ignorant and sees the world through his narrow Marxist lens. Power mad? Yes. But I do think much harm in this world comes from little more than zealous axe-grinding ignorance.

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Cause and Effect

We already know that Barack Obama is an ignoramus when it comes to insurance. Beyond that, he believes that demagogic attacks on insurers are the way to drum up support for government medicine. It happened again today:

Obama also offered his toughest criticism yet of a health insurance industry that he said placed profits ahead of patients. "Every year, they raise premiums higher and higher," Obama said "They will keep doing this for as long as they can get away with it."

Let's parse that out. What might cause insurers to raise premiums? The obvious candidate is the rising cost of health care. Every time a state adopts a mandate--some states have hundreds--premiums necessarily go up. Every time the federal government chisels on Medicare payments, doctors and hospitals shift costs to non-Medicare patients, that is to say, the ones covered by the carriers whom Obama wants to demonize. It would be interesting to know what percentage of current premium increases can be traced directly to government actions. But that isn't a question Barack Obama wants to ask.

Obama says insurers will raise premiums "as long as they can get away with it." You could say the same about a lot of people, of course. We lawyers have tended to raise our rates as long as we could "get away with it." Obama's labor union supporters negotiate to raise their wages "as long as they can get away with it." The newspapers that made Obama a national figure raise their advertising rates "as long as they can get away with it." Any manufacturer will raise the price of its goods "as long as they can get away with it." To do otherwise could expose management to legal liability to shareholders. What stops all of us from raising our prices indefinitely? Why, at some point, can't we "get away with it?"

The answer is competition. Any company will--and should--raise the prices of its goods or services until they reach the point where they are constrained by competition. Our government has followed a perverse policy with regard to health care, by limiting the extent to which health insurers can compete against each other and thereby constrain each others' prices. The obvious solution, if we want to rein in health insurance costs, is to 1) broaden competition in the industry to the maximum amount possible, and 2) repeal all mandates that require insurance companies to charge for coverages that many people don't want.

If the Democrats took those two basic steps, they would significantly reduce the cost of health care. But they wouldn't dream of doing anything so effective to reduce costs, because they want health care costs to remain high. They need high costs to justify government medicine, which means, at its core, a radical restructuring of the relationship between the citizen and the state.

Please tell me you saw the one hour interview with Eric Massa on Beck.

I can't help but think Beck got his dog wagged. I don't think it a coincidence that Massa ended up on Beck, as he's the most threatening force to anything leftist and progressive. I don't doubt that he's on Rahm's hit list, and so the first thing I thought when Massa started backpedaling and acting kooky: it's all a setup, and the target is Glenn. This was a plant. A con.

But it sure made for some good TV. What a friggin' nutcase. THIS is the best we can elect in congress? A grabass-playing fucktard who's in love with the sound of his own voice? Come on. My aunt Tilly would make a better congressman.

But Glenn played it magnificently. He was having none of this guy. He was ready for him. The left is claiming all sorts of victory now. But it kinda rings hollow, because Beck was too smart for them.

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Please tell me you saw the one hour interview with Eric Massa on Beck.

No I didn't, dammit. I've been hearing about some of the juicy aftermath. Yep. Beck somewhat got wagged, if only by his own over-enthusiam. I was listening to his program the morning of the Massa thing. But few people had ever heard of the guy. But in the wings was apparently Michelle Malkin warning "The guy is a nut." And it's come out that Massa doesn't support the current health care bill because it's not far left enough. And his tirade against Rahm "Dead Fish" Emmanual was about hiding the fact that he's resigning (being blackmailed, no doubt) because of some diddling with some house boys or something and not because he's some kind of Blue Dog Democrat who's finally had enough. More Power Line stuff:

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The Washington Post reports that "conservative activists [have] rallied to the side of" Rep. Eric Massa "after he charged that his party's leaders had conspired to oust him over his opposition to President Obama's health-care legislation." I'm quite willing to believe the worst about Rahm Emmanuel and the Democratic leadership in the House. However, I'm not prepared on the current record to "rally to the side" of Rep. Massa.

My reluctance stems from the fact that Massa's story doesn't seem to add up. His claim, as I understand it, is that the charges of sexual harassment against him represent a conspiracy to force him to leave the House before it votes on health care legislation. Massa is a committed "no" vote.

Massa says he's innocent of anything more than a few borderline comments at a party. But he has resigned in order, he says, to avoid an investigation that would injure his family and divide his staff.

But if Massa's version of the facts is correct, then he has little to fear from an investigation. Moreover, any investigation would likely occur only after Massa cast his "no" vote. If he truly believed he was the victim of the vicious plot he alleges, Massa would likely stick around to cast his vote and then leave town. What better way to get back at Emmanuel and company?

We'll be hearing more from Massa in the next few days. So let's keep an open mind; perhaps, his story will gain credibility in the process. But right now, Massa just sounds like another guy who messed up and wants to blame someone else.

Whether the whole thing was a setup of Beck, I don't know. But at this point, by no means can that be dismissed a mere conspiracy theorizing. These are real, live Chicago thugs we are talking about. If Rove was a "thug," then these guys are the real thing.

I heard Beck talking a little about it today and he said to his TV audience "I'm sorry for wasting your time." Beck probably should have done a little background checking on him before devoting a whole show to him, but he was a good story. I can't blame him for jumping on it.

The left tries to claim victory at every turn. They are a bunch of ideological kooks. Dangerous ones. I'll keep my ears perked for any nitty-gritty details or plausible conspiracy theories.

It's so telling that the media machine is calling this a "toppling" of Beck. Oh my god, I've never heard so much gloating. But actually you have to see the SHOW, because Beck was so suspicious of the guy going in... he gave him every opportunity to name names, he just didn't.

To me, the singular best moment was not when he said "I'm sorry for wasting your time, America"... it was when he stopped Massa's bullshit at some point after Massa started playing poor pitiful pearl and preaching that we need campaign finance reform, and Beck said something like (I'm paraphrasing)...

This is like interviewing a first responder on 9/11. The twin towers are ON FIRE, and we citizens come up to you, we need to know what you know, because you've been in the burning building. You can help us decide whether to run in there, or evacuate or whatever, and suddenly you start telling us we need better 911 dispatchers. That's what this sounds like.

It was brilliant.

Massa was either a terrific actor, wagging Beck... or he really is a total screwball. Either way, it gave me a look at some really pathological politician's inner workings. I don't care what anyone says about that show... it taught me plenty. It was FRUSTRATING, sure, but oh my god, it was an eye opener. Welcome to the United States Congress. Baby Jesus help us. The democrats may be breathing a sigh of relief and high-fiving each other. But my god, THIS WAS A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN IN THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. He was one of them. This con of Beck only worked because they all eat their young.

OK, the vein in my forehead finally gave way, thank you. Does anybody have a sponge?

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But actually you have to see the SHOW, because Beck was so suspicious of the guy going in... he gave him every opportunity to name names, he just didn't.

Beck and Company (at least on the radio) are joking all the time about when he's going to self-destruct. Not likely to happen. This guy's been around the block a time or two. He's already crashed and burned before. He knows what to look for. He's got that obsessive-compulsive personality, but with those two friends he has around him on the radio show (Stu and Pat, I think), he's not likely to go around un-teathered and half-cocked. But he's at least a third cocked all the time, which is his charm.

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To me, the singular best moment was not when he said "I'm sorry for wasting your time, America"... it was when he stopped Massa's bullshit at some point after Massa started playing poor pitiful pearl and preaching that we need campaign finance reform, and Beck said something like (I'm paraphrasing)...

What a piece of human wreckage Massa is. And he's a Democrat, of course. He could be a pathological screwball and wagging Beck at the same time.

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Welcome to the United States Congress. Baby Jesus help us. The democrats may be breathing a sigh of relief and high-fiving each other. But my god, THIS WAS A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN IN THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. He was one of them.

Yep. And there really is an alternate realities these Democrats live in. The Republicans, too, to some extent. Arguably a more endemic problem than Marxism is the "administrative state" which just changes hands once in a while between Republicans and Democrats but the same game continues. (If I sound like Glenn Beck it's because I do listen to him quite a bit.) Every single Republican or Republican apologist who comes forth now and crows "See...we're not like them" I just roll my eyes and think, "Yeah, perhaps not today, but soon, and for the rest of your life," to paraphrase "Casablanca" which I hope to hell Rico has finally seen by now.

I had a talk with a black friend of mine yesterday and it's just possible that he dislikes Obama even more than I do. He's predicting really major bad shit coming down the pike. It's what we're all thinking: What will happen when the checks to the freeloaders (aka "the disadvantaged") stop? I don't see a rosy scenario.

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Originally posted by thalo:
OK, the vein in my forehead finally gave way, thank you. Does anybody have a sponge?

LMAO. I thought that might burst a vein or two.

I think this is just a brilliant bit of opinion and analysis by Kevin Williamson:

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Liberal Fascism Alert: Sean Penn Edition   [Kevin D. Williamson]
I note that an earlier subtitle of Jonah's book referenced "the totalitarian temptation ...." Sean Penn is feeling the temptation:

First Amendment be damned . . . If Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn had his way, any journalist who called Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a dictator would quickly find himself behind bars.

Penn, appearing on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" on Friday, defended Chavez during a segment in which he detailed his work with the JP Haitian Relief Organization, which he co-founded.

"Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it" said Penn, winner of two Best Actor Academy Awards. "And this is mainstream media, who should — truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies."
It was just the beginning of a busy weekend for Penn. When asked on CBS' "Sunday Morning" about those who question his motives for his humanitarian work in Haiti, he said:

"Do I hope that those people die screaming of rectal cancer? Yeah. You know, but I'm not going to spend a lot of energy on it."

Beyond the obvious "imagine a conservative had said it" observations, these remarks are important to notice. Sean Penn is a buffoon, of course, sort of Tim Robbins meets Daffy Duck, but his line of thinking can be found, in only slightly more sophisticated form, among those who wish to use the "Fairness Doctrine" to muzzle Rush Limbaugh, hate-speech codes to stifle religious expression, campaign-finance laws to restrict the ability of disfavored advocates in the political arena, etc.

Sean Penn wants to put people in prison for refusing to follow his speech code — but, ultimately, so do the Fairness Doctrine gang and the campaign-finance cops. So do Nancy Pelosi and Dick Durbin. The fact that elected Democrats are marginally less obvious about it, and willing to operate at a slight remove, does not make their desire to restrict speech and muzzle debate any less authoritarian.

getting... faint... losing... more... blood...

it's squirting... squirting...

I'll try to take it easy on those veins and give them some time to heal.

Beck scares me sometimes. Not that I think that he's wrong but that I think he could be right. One friend of mine sees civil unrest and riots coming. Another thinks we need another revolution. (I noted to him the Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence provided us with just such a loophole). All see some kind of financial collapse coming, especially after that last guy (a Democrat) got shouted down in Congress for daring to suggest that if they want to extend unemployment benefit, they ought to cut something else (or take it out of the unspent "stimulus" money).

I can't read the mind of the rest of my friends and acquaintances. I think more of them than I'm willing to admit are politically correct indoctrinated useful idiots. No, I probably wouldn't say that to their faces. But I also know many people who don't have their head up their asses. They're not paranoid, by any means. It's just that they know how to count. And that's all it takes to understand where the Democrats (and more than a few Republicans) are taking us. Right off the cliff.

The only positive thing (assuming I still have the money for an internet connection sometime in the future) is that I will be able to come to thalo.net and elsewhere and see the shocked libs come out of the closet and – wait for it – they will come out of the closet and blame this all on George Bush. Their theology is thick, very thick. If you look at the idiots in DC, the idiots in the State of California, or (much closer to home) the idiots in Olympia, you see people who are some combination of clueless, evil, arrogant, power-mad, pseudo-religious (and real religions), and/or just don’t give a damn.

I look around more and more and I'm shocked with just how deeply anti-American Marxism (in all its various guises) has penetrated. Now the Fed is apparently talking about restricting fishing…all under the guise of protecting the environment. I guess Beck is going to discuss on his show tonight the land grabs the Feds are also currently undertaking.

Here's the point. Here's the kicker. Here's the thing. Yes, I'm pleased about the Tea Party movement. I'm pleased many of the polls suggest that the Democrats will be handed their asses come November. But the scary thing is that, even so, people are getting used to these Marxist-socialist anti-Constitutional outrages by the left (and, I'll admit, the Republicans these last few decades have also done a splendid job trodding all over the Constitution). We are at a tipping point, and not just economically. We are not that far from a complete authoritarian government. Most seem to barely notice the aspects of the one we have now. Anyone with an ounce of honesty and a drop of integrity can see in the eyes of the Democrats during all of this past year as they've often done Orwell one better.

I think rather than a violent collapse we'll go out with a whimper. We'll just all becoming poorer. Everyone. Every place. Some are rightly outraged that Marxist-socialist economic meddling has led to near 20% unemployment. But the next generation could get used to chromic 10 to 15% unemployment as normal. That's the way it is in large parts of Europe and has been for decades. They are way ahead of us in the welfare state mentality, and if you look at Greece, you'll see that Europe will be the first to collapse. In fact, some of my friends (and I think rightly so) expect to see some really ugly stuff happening in Europe once the government checks stop. Say what you will about religion and faith, but people who believe there is more to life than iPods and planning their next vacation (to paraphrase Mark Steyn) are not as ready to riot. In Europe, what else is there to do but buy the latest gadgets? And we're getting that way too. (Luckily Brothers Yabor and Smithz avoid the rot by using their gadget to produce art. Finding beauty, and even ugliness, in nature and in civilization is a true meaning.)

But the rest of the yutes out there, good god. I look them in the eye and I see cattle. Quite literally, if they couldn't achieve an orgasm, I don't think their lives would have any meaning to them. If they couldn't stuff their faces with cheap fast food and fries while text messaging about what some dumb ass said or did on some reality show, I don't know that they'd be able to even roll out of bed and face life. And oh yes, you can bet Brother Brad is projecting some. The search for meaning affects us all. But still, I'm just amazed sometimes how cow-like many people are. It's as if the castle they are in is being stormed and all they can think of to want to do is go swimming in the moat.

Speaking of wagging the dog, there's this story of the guy in a Prius doing 94 mph on the freeway who couldn't slow down. They just played the 911 tape on FOX and it sounded somewhat fake. If it's not fake, if it's not a Rahm Emmanuel plot to bring down a non-union car company, couldn't you just shut off the car's ignition and/or put it in neutral? What are the options?

Page 2.

Did you see the meltdown by Patrick Kennedy? He obviously didn't get the JFK charisma gene. He got the Murtha gene.

Page 3.

My new favorite quote. I may make it my new tagline. It's courtesy of Eric Massa: "Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil's spawn. He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive."

A moment of truth from a Democrat, for sure.

Page 4.

Right now the Democrats in the House are meeting with the end to forever turn America into a mediocre dependency socialist state. No less. Oh, and if you need major surgery, just get in line. But it will be free.

It was a man driving the Prius. He was 61. He's of the age to know all about putting a car into neutral. Sounds like someone wagging the dog. I'm very suspicious about this story.

Another option is that the Prius driver was some liberal nut who was trying to stick it to Toyota while getting his 10 minutes of fame. But the 911 call sounded a bit phoney. And I really don't know any 61 year old men who could think to dial 911 on his cell phone but could not think of putting the car into neutral.

I said the same thing about the Prius story... hoax. No way. No way it would go on that long to the point where a cop would have to help out. I don't believe he was standing on the brake, either. I don't believe he didn't know to use the emergency brake too. Plus neutral. Doesn't add up.

Seriously, I'm turning into a kooky conspiracy theorist. I literally don't believe any news story anymore, if it's dramatic. S.E. Cupp said something last night about political theater, and she wants her politics to be CSPAN boring. That's how we'd know they were getting shit done. The same with the news. The more sensational, the more you can't believe it.

Er, unless we're being set up for some REALLY dramatic shit that the left is trying to bury... and so they're wagging our asses to try and camouflage what's coming.

My current top wish is not for a news Rolls Royce or an island in the Caribbean but to have a live webcam (or better yet, be there in person) when thalo is listening to Glenn Beck (assuming he listens to his morning radio show). I imagine that his whiplash muscles get a serious workout. Beck can go from zero to Jesus in about 5 words. He cracked me up this morning when he was talking about how JESUS was the equalizer and how the liberals were trying to make government the equalizer. (A smart analysis that is also completely in tune with Sowell's description of the left who he sees as trying to create a heaven-on-earth perfect "cosmic" justice). But when Beck lets loose with the whole Jesus schtick, and is deep into it before connecting Him to his political point, I would pay good money to see the look on thalo's face. Just one of those small little nothings that makes life worth living.