#2
It's amazing how liberals the world over never get it.
The dems are going to screw you just the same as the other guys. They're politicians, they lie for a living. They will tell you ANYTHING to get elected. Take your raised minimum wage and be happy that you got something out of the deal.
The American mission in Iraq must succeed. Our goal--promoting a stable, accountable democracy in the heart of the Middle East--cannot be achieved by purely military means.
Iraqis need to establish a civil society. Without the support of mediating civic and social associations--the informal ties that bind us together--no government can long remain stable, and no cohesive nation can be maintained. To establish a civil society, Iraqis must rebuild their basic infrastructure. Iraqis must take control of their destiny by rebuilding houses, stores, schools, roads, highways, mosques and churches.
But the constant threat of violence, combined with a high unemployment rate estimated between 30% and 50%, fundamentally undermines that effort. This not only sustains the fertile breeding ground for terrorist recruiters but has the same corrosive effect as it would in any city--raising the likelihood of further violence, civic decay and a crippling sense of powerlessness.
A massive effort must be made to engage in a well organized plan to rebuild Iraq. The goal: an infrastructure to support and encourage a strong, stable civil society.
#2
Idled factories? Based on Mr. Wife's experience with a similar situation in Egypt, may I suggest that the lines be taken apart and carefully cleaned from end to end to remove small rodent skeletons that break up and block things when product is put through. That added months to Mr. Wife's start-up, it did.
BY KAY S. HYMOWITZ Some of my best friends are women--heck, I am a woman-- I don't know Kay, but I suspect we'd get along well. I happen to think women in general - despite the obvious exceptions - are delightful creatures.
but I've come to the conclusion that we've seen too much of the fairer sex. For me, the final straw came last month when Britney Spears jauntily revealed her waxed nether-regions to waiting photographers as she exited her limo. Britney has a pretty smile, and a typically ugly fairly fresh caesarian scar. I'll admit I looked, even though I shouldn't have...
Britney's stunt made her the Internet smash of the season. But in providing America's workers with this cubicle distraction, Britney was doing a lot more than making her own privates public. I'm not certain what it did for her career. She was wildly successful before she took up with no-talent dancing boys and moved into a Beverly Hills trailer house to pop out a couple babies. All she needed to do to reclaim her wild success was to ditch the no-talent dancing boy and move out of the trailer house. She's a pretty enough young woman, especially when she keeps her mouth shut.
In fact, Britney was following to its logical end what has become the first rule of contemporary American girlhood: to show that you are liberated, take it off. Kind of a blow to "equal rights," isn't it? If I flashed my gennies getting out of a car I'd be arrested for indecent exposure. I'll admit that hers are prettier than mine, however, even with the scar.
Liberty means responsibility . . . to disrobe. Paris Hilton, Britney's BFF (Best Friend Forever), taped her sexual escapades with an ex-boyfriend, though even she was tactful enough to pretend that she hadn't meant for the video to go public. Likely she didn't. If we'da had the technology way back when that we do today, I'd have probably taped several of what are today mere fond memories. She was probably going to save a collection of them to watch when she's old enough for Social Security.
Courtney Love, Lindsay Lohan and Tara Reid have also staged their own wardrobe malfunctions. But flashing is hardly limited to celebrities. The girls-next-door who migrate to Florida during spring break happily lift their blouses and snap their thongs for the producers of "Girls Gone Wild," who sell their DVDs to an eager public. I think I may have remarked on an occasion or two that 50 percent of everyone is below average and 80 percent of everyone is middlin'. The lusty peasant wenches of a couple hundred years ago are the lusty spring break babes of today. The difference is that today we don't enforce rectitude. It's the difference between our society and Islamic society, where the girlies in question could be flogged for flashing their honkers, stoned to death for having sex on the beach. Probably we've gone as much too far in one direction as Islam goes in the other.
Nor is it just young female flashers who are driven to expose themselves to the masses. Older women, whether because of lingering traces of reticence or doubts about the camera-readiness of their intimate anatomy, use the written word to bare all. There are legions of women bloggers who write about last night's bed tricks, their underwear preferences and their menstrual cycles (yes, Virginia, there is a tamponblog.com). The difference is that we used to hide porn away, either hypocritically or politely - pick one, they're both free - pretending it didn't exist.
More sophisticated exhibitionists turn to tasteful erotic memoirs. In "A Round Heeled Woman," Jane Juksa gives us a detailed description of her varied sexual adventures after, at age 66, she advertised for sex in the personals of the New York Review of Books. Jane being 66, I probably don't have quite as much interest as I'd have had if she'd been 30, or even 40.
In "Surrender," the ex-Balanchine dancer Toni Bentley tells of the spiritual transcendence she experienced during the 298 times she had anal sex with a former lover--making this the first transcendent sex ever to involve a calculator. Butts - they're not just for pooping anymore. Nor, surprisingly enough to some, have they ever been. On the other hand, it's only in our "liberated" age that we discuss such things in excruciating detail. And while indulging in the sins of my youth, it never occurred to me to actually keep count of the number of times I did this or that.
Now, this is the point at which the enlightened always begin grumbling: What's wrong with women showing that they are "sexual beings"? Women are sexual beings whether they go out of their way to show it or not. Islamists obsess on that fact. But if women were only sexual beings, if there was nothing else there, then the Islamists would be right, wouldn't they? We men would never be able to concentrate on anything because the temptresses would be swarming all over us, distracting us from manly things like science and technology and intellectual pursuits by making us continually concentrate on bosoms and thighs and buttocks and the exchange of bodily fluids.
In this vein, the show-or-tell-all is an act of bravery, demonstrating a woman's determination to throw off society's taboos against full expression of her sexuality. "Female exhibitionism is . . . an act of female power," Richard Goldstein of the Village Voice has written. "We should redeem the slut in ourselves and rejoice in being bad girls," Naomi Wolf once urged (but has since modified now that she has an adolescent daughter). Amazing, how what feels good to you might not be good for your offspring.
It follows that reservations about self-exposure are a sign of anti-sex, anti-woman prudery. They may just be the first step in a long-planned, mandated return to the missionary position, female frigidity and meatloaf dinners, cooked and served by apron-clad wives. This being a family publication, I'm not going to point out that the missionary position does in fact have its virtues and that meatloaf dinners and female frigidity don't have to be mutually inclusive, assuming neither party overdoes it on the meatloaf. (Having one or both parties come down with the vapors when nekkid can induce frigidity in either sex, especially when bumping bloated bellies in the missionary position.)
But this Puritans-are-coming! stance, validating, as it does, someone as cracked as Paris Hilton, finally implodes. I'm not sure it does, since society's always had room for both the lady and the doxy. I often fear we're seeing the triumph of the doxy, but that's because the doxies go out of their way to draw more attention to themselves. And the doxies have always outnumbered the genuine ladies.
The problem with a Britney or a Bentley is not that they are floozies. The tradition of floozies is a long one, if not particularly honorable...
It is rather that they are, paradoxical as it might seem, naive. They underestimate the magnetic force field created by intimate sexual information and violate the logic of privacy that should be all the more compelling in a media-driven age. People in the public eye always risk becoming objectified; they are watched by hordes of strangers who have only fragmentary information about them. When that information includes details that only their Brazilian waxers should know for sure, it's inevitable that, humans being the perverse creatures that they are, all other facts of identity will fall away. Instead of becoming freer, the exhibitionist becomes an object defined primarily by a narrow sexual datum. Kay kinda loses me here, though maybe I'm just missing her point. Britney, Paris, and all the Trixies and Molls and even the Phrynes of this world have always defined themselves primarily by a narrow sexual datum. Because 50 percent of everybody is below average, that would imply that maybe a majority of that 50 percent of women are in fact limited to what we could impolitely call "breeding stock." From the bacterium level on up, the urge to reproduce is the way the species keeps on speciating. Cows eat grass and they produce milk and veal. That's all they do. The advantage of humanity over the bovine is that we can fit a few other activities into our busy schedule - but we're actually not required to do so.
The writer Daphne Merkin offers the perfect cautionary tale about the dangers of giving the public Too Much Information. In 1996 Merkin published an essay in The New Yorker describing the erotic pleasure she found in spanking. Her sensational article hardly stalled her career; if anything it increased her name recognition. Daphne Merkin? She's named after a pubic wig? I thought I recognized the name...
Understandably Ms. Merkin doesn't regret her essay, which she continues to believe to be "both intellectually and emotionally daring." But she kids herself when she says "I'm known more for the rigor of my thinking . . . than I am for revelations about my erotic preferences." Her article is still the major fact of her public identity; she will forever and always be Daphne Likes-to-Be-Spanked Merkin. This is not because the shocked public wants Ms. Merkin to cover herself up. It is because Ms. Merkin has invited us to know her by information that has far more power than her insights into Virginia Woolf. We got news for youse, Daphne: People who've heard of you think of you with red heinie cheeks first and foremost. Then they think of pubic wigs. Then they might give a passing thought to your intellectual rigor.
It was doubtless for this reason that Susan Sontag hesitated to write about her romantic relationship with the photographer Annie Leibovitz. Actually, the thought of the late Susie Creamcheese nekkid is kinda counter-sexual to me...
Some people believe that it is lingering misogyny rather than naive exhibitionism that leads the public to define women by their sexual anatomy and proclivities. Perhaps there is something to that. But the exhibitionism surely doesn't help. It seems that men, despite their reputation as braggarts, actually don't find self-exposure all that appealing. Where are the male counterparts to Britney Spears and "Girls Gone Wild"? Kay goes on for a little while longer, but she brushes by the what should be the central point, despite having led into it with the story of Pink-cheeked Daphne.
There are 24 hours in the day, each and every day. The sex act takes anywhere from five to twenty minutes when performed routinely. If you really buckle down, you can stretch it to an hour or so, not counting the time you spend sleeping like a rock when you're done. That leaves the question: What do you do with the remaining 23 hours in the day? If you're a cow, you spend the time eating grass. If you're human breeding stock, I suppose you can spend the time shopping for erotic outfits, having your nipples pierced, and getting your pubes waxed.
If you've somehow crawled out of the lower 50th percentile of the population, or even into the higher end of it, you actually find yourself with non-sexual things to do. Maslow smiles upon you and reproduction ceases to be the be-all and end-all of your life. You don't have to invent agriculture, since it's already been done and we now have grocery stores. Probably you've got someplace to live, if only a trailer house in Beverly Hills, so you don't have to worry about that. The elusive concept of self-actualization begins to beckon. You may decide to invent things, to write poetry, to gaze longingly upon the stars, or even to go bowling.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/12/2007 13:42 ||
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#1
No pictures?
How the hell am I supposed to digest this article without visual aids?
#2
50% are below average? Sure (Well not where I grew up of course - whether you want to take that as Lake Wobegonish nostalgia or insolent ethnic pride is up to you) But so what? Peasant != trailer park trash. Proletariat =! lumpenproletariat. Working class people, whether in traditional peasant societies, or in working class communities rooted in traditional peasant societies, can be quite dignified. Yes theyll have their bad girls (usually they dont evaluate the boys the same way - Irish, Jewish, some others being exceptions) but the bad girl is distinctive even WITHIN the working class community. Sure, average people wont keep the book morality, but thats not the same as open crudeness. Hypocrisy the homage, etc etc.
This Kay Hymowitz (a distant relation, no doubt) is onto something I think. Something about dignity, about pride, and hence about privacy. About hierarchies of human relations. What you tell your best pal is less than what you tell your spouse/lover. What you tell your other pal is less than what you tell your best pal. What you tell your aquantaince is less than what you tell your pal, which is less than what you tell a stranger. Now every stranger is your best pal. Does that make your best pal a stranger?
But whats positive is we can learn. Let the Paris Hiltons do what they do, and provide object lessons. We neednt follow their extremes, but we DO need to figure out what the minimum of the technology does to us.
#4
The pubic wig is so well established that there is a formal name for it? My education had been more circumscribed than I knew. I'm going to try to forget that now, confident that Fred will remember for us both.
(TW, please don't make me have to explain across the teacups why the guys all break out into loud, coarse laughter at the name of that small Far-Eastern terrorist cell who goes by the initials 'MILF')
Just pass me another cup of tea. Milk, one sugar, please.
#8
But so what? Peasant != trailer park trash. Proletariat =! lumpenproletariat. Working class people, whether in traditional peasant societies, or in working class communities rooted in traditional peasant societies, can be quite dignified
Liberalhawk - are you implying that all working class people are all below average intelligence? haha. You need to get out of your little ivory tower more often.
I read Fred's comments of "peasant" to mean the women who were below average intelligence. But then of course, I don't equate income or education level with intelligence as you seem to be doing. Britney and Paris - just your average working class girls, eh?
#9
MILF? That one I do know, Sgt. Mom. Mr. Wife explained that to me a few years ago, although he didn't guffaw about the Moro terrorists. Here's a nice cup of freshly brewed decaffinated Earl Grey (so as not to keep you up tonight), milk and one sugar as you like it, dear.
Oath of Office or Religious Test?
By Hassan A. El-Amin
Associate Judge
5th District Court of Maryland
Thursday, January 11, 2007
On Jan. 4, the Honorable Keith Ellison became the first African American from Minnesota, as well as the first practicing Muslim, to be sworn into the Congress of the United States. The first of these two firsts that Ellison is Black and is representing Minnesota has gone relatively unnoticed. But the second, relating to Ellisons identity as a Muslim, has garnered headlines all over the world. The Quran (Pig Crap Be Upon It) is a fiction, concocted by Mohammad The Pedophile for the purpose of getting more wives (including a 6 year old girl) and creating a band of thieves who would deliver him the "prophet" tax (khums 20%) of all booty. The Quran is a record of the deranging effects of power, and a manual of terror.
The story exploded exponentially into a full-blown controversy when Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia fatuously declared that for a congressman to be sworn into office in America using a Quran instead of a Bible was un-American and downright dangerous.
Goode warned that unless immigration laws are tightened, more Muslims might be elected to office, threatening Americans entire way of life. A plethora of mouthy zealots joined the chorus. Muslims are cleansing members of minority religions out of their own pig pens, while expecting the West to take in the human shells of their homeland junk piles. The Quran is not a source of justice; it is the vomit of tyrants.
Never mind that Americas founding fathers, speaking specifically on oaths of office in Article VI of the Constitution of the United States provided, in pertinent part, that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
How fitting it was, then, that in a fateful bit of irony (the kind that seems to happen only in the good ol U.S.A.) a senior staff member of the Library of Congress invited Ellison to use a translation of the Quran from the private library of Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence, for Ellisons swearing-in. It was a master stroke, a coup de grâce. Ellisons detractors were dashed cut to the quick, their bigotry and irrational fear of Islam exposed for all to see.
No such controversy swirled around me when I was sworn into office in July 2000 as the first Muslim judge in the history of the state of Maryland, and one of only three Muslims in the United States who had ever so served. Near the conclusion of that memorable occasion, my wife proudly held our Yusuf Ali translation of the Quran as I placed my left hand on it and raised my right hand to take the long oath of office prescribed for Maryland judges.
My choice to use the Quran was strictly a private one, as it should have been. My investiture was certainly historic, but no one seemed to notice or care that I was using the Muslim holy book. And whats the big deal? As Ellisons experience clearly shows, what matters is not which book the left hand is placed on but the words one utters when he or she takes the oath...
#1
I am reminded of the old "loyalty oaths" that many people had to sign as a condition of employment even back in the 1960s. Typically, they were something like this:
"I further swear (or affirm) that I do not advise, advocate or teach, and have not within the period beginning five (5) years prior to the effective date of the ordinance requiring the making of this oath or affirmation, advised, advocated or taught, the overthrow by force, violence or other unlawful means, of the Government of the United States of America or of the State of California and that I am not now and have not, within said period, been or become a member of or affiliated with any group, society, association, organization or party which advises, advocates or teaches, or has, within said period, advised, advocated or taught, the overthrow by force, violence or other unlawful means of the Government of the United States of America, or of the State of California. I further swear (or affirm) that I will not, while I am in the service of the City of Los Angeles, advise, advocate or teach, or be or become a member of or affiliated with any group, association, society, organization or party which advises, advocates or teaches, or has within said period, advised, advocated or taught, the overthrow by force, violence or other unlawful means, of the Government of the United States of America or of the State of California..."
However, there is no reason in the world that a loyalty oath cannot be expanded to include renouncing activities that are clearly illegal in the United States.
Things beloved of Islam, like slavery, polygamy, honor killing, unlawful discrimination, utterance of threats, forced marriage, and membership in organizations that promulgate these things.
#3
No such controversy swirled around me when I was sworn into office in July 2000 as the first Muslim judge in the history of the state of Maryland, and one of only three Muslims in the United States who had ever so served.
Uh, two things here...(1) 9/11 happened between this guy's swearing in and Ellison's, and (2) he was a STATE judge...not exactly something that'll make National News, like Ellison did.
It would be interesting to look into Judge El-Amin's rulings. Maybe ExJAG or someone in the legal realm can investigate? And, in the meantime (Chuck Darwin), I'll google him.
Posted by: BA ||
01/12/2007 10:22 Comments ||
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#4
Interesting. He was born (1949) in Charleston, WV (not exactly a hotbed of terror). Yale undergrad, Univ. of Maryland law school. Member of Blue Knights Int'l Law Enforcement Motorcycle Club!
Posted by: BA ||
01/12/2007 10:26 Comments ||
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#5
So will the testimony of an infidel be worth 1/2 that of the master religionists in Judge Amin's court?
Posted by: ed ||
01/12/2007 10:27 Comments ||
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#6
An Islamic oath may not mean quite what an infidel might think
for example (from the Bakhari hadith collection)
-----------------
Narrated Aisha:
Abu Bakr As-Siddiq had never broken his oaths till Allah revealed the expiation for the oaths. Then he said, "If I take an oath to do something and later on I find something else better than the first one, then I do what is better and make expiation for my oath."
--------------------------
expiation typically means giving to charity or setting a slave free or equivalent
#7
He probably doesn't have many opportunities to write opinions. MD district courts deal with ash'n'trash like traffic tickets, misdemeanors, and small claims. Unless he refuses to issue protective orders against abusive Muslim men or blows off female witnesses, I think shari'a is mostly silent on the matters he deals with.
Besides, this "what's the big deal" business? The fact that he's a Muslim would seem to be less important that the fact that he's just a dick.
#1
Once again, what they quote in outrage I quote in earnest. Besides, if it's the truth it ain't slander.
1899 Winston Churchill How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).
#2
I followed the link in the artilce above to The American Muslim website. There're you'll find a compilation of statements about Islam made by public figures dating back to Churchill. The authoress offers these statments as evidence of islamophobia.
What I did not find was a compilation of statments made by muslims providing evidence of their vitriol toward the infidel.
I guess I'll just have to rely on the complilation of statments set forth in the koran, ahadith, and sunnah. That should be sufficient.
Posted by: Mark Z ||
01/12/2007 10:39 Comments ||
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#3
If they don't like free speech then they shouldn't stay in America. Do they think that they would be allowed to spew their antisemitic antiAmerican bilge if Americans had the same reactions that muslims do to anything that offends them? They'd be bleeding in the street if it weren't for the First Amendment.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Some of my best friends are women--heck, I am a woman--
