Category Archives: Men and Women

Relationships, Sex, Marriage, Love, Hate and Dating

It’s Not Them. It’s You.

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Obama’s poll numbers are crashing – as in, post-Fallujah-George-W-Bush crashing.

He’s cratering fastest among women – who were, along with African-Americans, the lynchpin of both of his victories.

Tammy Bruce looks over Obama’s collapse among women:

The unfolding realities of Obamacare and its destruction of health insurance plans and personal, patient-doctor relationships confirm women’s fears that health insurance under Obamacare is not superior, but is quite inferior to health care they were free to choose before this regrettable law was in force. What women voted against in 2010 has come true, and we’re not happy about it. This may come as surprise to Mr. Obama and the people in his inner circle, but women’s health care involves more than sound bites and pithy one-liners.

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With all the bad news descending on Mr. Obama as a direct result of his high-handedness and deceit on Obamacare, surely nothing could come as a greater shock to him than that women, the one constituency he has relied on the most, other than blacks, refuse to be swindled out of their health care freedoms and to be used to help perpetrate this massive fraud on the American people.

Well, I for one will believe it when I see it.  In particular, single women who don’t have children are among the most querulously gullible liberals there are.   They fell for that “vote to protect your lady parts” bilge in epic numbers, after all.

But maybe there’s hope.

Our Person Of Either Gender Implementing The Rights And Responsibilities Of A Spouse And Parent, Who Art In Heaven…

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The big news at the Minnesota Continuing Legal Education Real Estate Institute was same-sex marriage passed this Summer and how does that affect spousal rights in Minnesota?

I thought the biggest laugh was this section of Minn. Stat. 517.201:

“Subd. 2.Rules of construction. When necessary to implement the rights and responsibilities of spouses or parents in a civil marriage between persons of the same sex under the laws of this state, including those that establish parentage presumptions based on a civil marriage, gender-specific terminology, such as “husband,” “wife,” “mother,” “father,” “widow,” “widower,” or similar terms, must be construed in a neutral manner to refer to a person of either gender.

Good news, Mitch, you are no longer a Husband or Father, you now are a person of either gender implementing the rights and responsibilities of a spouse and parent.

Frankly, I prefer “Interchangeable Marital Unit” or since we all know which role men are assigned in divorce court: “Cash Cow.”

Joe Doakes

Conversations I Hope I Hear Someday

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WOMAN:  You’re “mansplaining”. 

GUY: Huh?

WOMAN: “Mansplaining”.  When a guys gives a condescending and inaccurate explanation that the assumption that I’m entirely ignorant on the subject matter or topic.

GUY:  You are utterly ignorant of the subject matter and topic.  Our discussion has shown you haven’t the foggiest clue about the subject.  90 degrees removed from literacy.

WOMAN: You’re doing it again.  You’re mansplaining.

GUY: You’re being a whineanist.  You need to unisexshushupandlearnsomething.

(And SCENE)

Hold The Straw

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One of the least useful arguments against gay marriage was “so it’s about love?  So if you love your goat, or a child, you could marry them?”

Neither goats nor children (age of consent laws notwithstanding) have standing to sign contracts, of course.  It’s kind of a strawman.

But the other, inevitable part of the argument is “so what about polygamy?”

Remember – it’s all about love, and civil rights.  And groups of people most definitely do sign contracts.  So who are we to hold our antiquated “monogamous” standards over polygamists’ heads?

No, it’s not a strawman: 

What’s magical about the number two?

In fact, you could argue that there is an even better argument for polygamy than for same sex marriage. For one thing, there’s a long tradition (just look at the heroes of the Old Testament.) It’s also intimately tied to religious practice, which means that by prohibiting polygamy, we might also be undermining the “free exercise thereof.”

Why should we impose our values on others?

Now, you might say that there is historical evidence to support the fact that polygamy is bad for women and children. This is sophistry. The truth is that right now about half of all marriages end in divorce, and lots of kids are already struggling, so it’s not like traditional marriage is a panacea. Besides, nobody is forcing you to be a polygamist. This is a choice.

And unlike gay marriage, which is entirely a modern Western social construct, Polygamy has occurrred througout human history, including our own. 

There are practical reasons, too. It’s harder and harder these days to make ends meet. As a man, I can only imagine how much more efficient it would be to have one wife in the workforce and another wife at home with the kids. This would be much better for the children than shipping them off to some nursery school. And having three parents is a lot better than having just one … or none.

Yesterday’s SCOTUS decision, and last fall’s election in Minnesota, had clear-ish verdicts; “marriage” is “about love” and “civil rights”.

So what – legally - is the difference between a monogamous and polyamorous family unit, since those are the standards?

Tenthers Like Me

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

US Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, in part on the ground that states should have the right to decide the definition of marriage, the federal government has no Constitutional authority to do it.

Glad to hear States Rights making a comeback with the Left. Let’s remember this when Obama, Feinstein and Bloomberg call for national gun control legislation.

Joe Doakes
Como Park

Attention, liberals; now you’re all “Tenthers!”

Where Have You Gone, Sandra Fluke? The Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes To You.

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Australia’s Prime Minster, Julia Gillard, flogs the “Gender War” card…

…with the kind of results the American electorate would do well to heed:

But the ploy has backfired with a poll in Fairfax Media showing male voters are abandoning Gillard and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and there is little sign of more women getting behind her.

The telephone poll of 1,400 voters found that since the last survey a month ago Labor’s standing has continued to slide, led entirely by a seven percent exodus of men.

Under a two-party vote, the conservative opposition would romp home in the September 14 elections with 57 percent (up three points) to 43 percent (down three points) for Labor.

Two possible conclusions:  either 1) there are limits to “war on women” rhetoric, or b) Australian voters are just plain smarter than ours are.

Fathers’ Day

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I’ve written about this in the past.  It’s worth another visit.

I’m very ambivalent about Father’s Day.  I used to say I was of two minds – but it’s more like three minds these days.

On the one hand, I’m thankful for the father I have.  My dad was just about the best father a guy could ask for (and still is), in just about every way.  The part I didn’t appreciate about him until I had older kids of my own?  Most guys  learn about being a father, for better or worse, from their own fathers.  My grandfather died when my Dad was five, though.  My grandma raised Dad, and as good a job as she did, she wasn’t a father.  Fathers bring different things to their children than mothers do – including the whole “How to be a dad” thing.  So Dad was kinda winging it.  And I’d like to think that, in the immortal words of Dr. Perry Cox, “he could have done a lot worse”.  Part of the spirit of Father’s Day for me is acknowleding him.  So thanks, Dad!

As to me?  Having kids, and getting to raise them, was the most important thing in my life.  Still is.  And up through about age 11, it was almost purely wonderful and rewarding.  Now, getting my kids through their teenage years and into their twenties has been - I’ll be diplomatic – a challenge.  But if it were easy, everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they?  On that level, Father’s Day means saying “We survived another year!”.  And that’s not so bad. 

The third thing, though?  Father’s Day makes me angry. 

Our society systematically devalues fatherhood.  It’s the most flagrant in our current urban culture, where a strong majority of babies are born into fatherless homes, where teachers are reporting an epidemic of risk-averse kids afraid to go outside because they’re being raised by risk-averse single women, where entire generations of  young men are growing up with no masculine role models in their lives until they get into their teens – when all the role models are bad. 

But it’s not just in the neighborhood.  It’s all over our society.  Hollywood and Madison Avenue’s model for the mainstream father is Homer Simpson – incompetent, borderline-depraved, saved only by his preternaturally competent, all-enduring and (at least on TV ads) improbably out-of-his-league wife (and sometimes daughter and, occasionally sons before they get the lobotomy that seems to go along with fatherhood in that special little world). 

The current trend in feminist-dominated academia echoes Margaret Mead’s quip from fifty years ago – “men are a biological necessity and a social accident”.  The education system is increasingly marginalizing boys and men of all ages; medicating their masculine traits and treating them as social disorders, shunting boys who refuse to comply and conform onto the “Special Ed” track, making “education” a punitive death march for boys who don’t get the message “go along, get along, conform, keep your butt in the seat and speak when spoken to”.  And that policy is bearing rancid fruit; before long, women will outnumber men in higher education 3:2, with the margin even more grotesque in Education (ensuring the vicious cycle will continue) and the social “sciences” (ditto). 

And while the situation has improved in recent years in many states, the fact is that for many men, “fatherhood” is a legal state of eternal debt and denial; ejected from any meaningful presence in their childrens’ lives by a court system that spent a few decades acting as an agent of Big Feminism and county social service bureaucracies that still largely do, men are relegated to the role of occasional visitors and ATM machines and, often, much worse; a shocking percentage of “domestic abuse” allegations are brought purely to manipulate the system during divorce actions. 

So for a fair chunk of the fathers in our society, “Father’s Day” is a cruel mockery.  And it’s a symptom of the current system that I find I need to hasten to add “I’m not talking about the abusive ones, or the fathers that are nothing more than sperm donors”, as if they’re the majority. 

I focus on the first two views of the holiday, because I’m a lucky guy on both counts.  But let’s be mindful, on this most tongue-in-cheek and pollyannish of all the Hallmark Holidays, that there’s another side to the story.

After The Honeymoon Is Over

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Congrats, same sex marriage supporters.  After five months of noodling non-stop with social policy – gun grabs, forcing daycares into the union racket and so on – Governor Dayton took a few minutes from his grueling day of sitting in his office to come out and sign same-sex marriage into law.

Well, there you go!

Now, when all that wedding excitement wears off, take a moment to think about a few things if you would:

  • Where are the jobs?   Minnesota’s big businesses are doing…OK, provided they’re not in the medical device business.  But while you all were busy campaigning for same sex marriage, Minnesota small-business startups slowed to the worst rate in the entire country.  Which means the small-business jobs of tomorrow, and the mid-sized business jobs a few years down the road, all the coffee shops and repair garages and interior design firms and web design firms we’ll need to run the day to day economy will be…gone.  Nothing.  Bupkes.  They’ll have never existed.  And this is a reversal from recently; it’s a result of policies the DFL has been pushing while y’all were busy watching the same sex marriage debate.
  • Why is daycare so freaking expensive?   Many of you two-income same-sex adoptive couples will be needing daycare (presuming that’s the route you choose at some point or another).   Minnesota’s child care costs are already among the highest in the nation – even higher compared to per capita income.  And yet the DFL majority has been working tirelessly to force childcare providers (and personal care assistants) into a union that six out of seven of them don’t want, that makes no sense (unionizing small business owners? Hello?) and that will do nothing but increase the cost of child or adult care (presuming the providers don’t just eat the cost of the union dues or “fair share” costs).
  • Again – where are the jobs?  The DFL is fixated on raising taxes.  Yeah, yeah, “fair share”, the rich, bla bla bla, but their real plan, the plan to make the actual money, involves raising taxes on business to business purchases and services.  Which means somewhere between 5.5 and 7% of every business’ revenue is going to - poof! – vanish (presuming, again, the businesses don’t pass on the costs, which is a stupid thing to do in a crappy economy).   Do you want a 5-7% pay cut?  How would that work for you right now?

I know – same sex marriage was a big thing for you.  But just as weddings and honeymoons give way to the push and pull of actual married life, the euphoria you feel over getting a legislative milestone passed (I had my moment on my issue ten years ago, so I know how you feel) eventually passes, and you get to dwell on other things.

Like what an unholy has the DFL is making of this state’s economy.  The one we all live in, gay or straight.

Call A Truce In The War On Boys

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Over the past 20 years, society’s largely made it illegal to just be a boy.

For a while, it was an openly-held belief in educational-psychology circles that the niggling traits of typical boyhood – a penchant for rough play and exploratory violence, a disdain, at least through one developmental stage, for verbally-based social interaction (that’s what girls do) in favor of getting outside and mixing it up – were pathologies that needed to be cured, or at least harnessed.  As documented by Christine Hoff-Summers in her classic The War On Boys, “making boys more like girls” became a bit of a crusade in the educational academy during the 1990s and 2000s.  Recess – with all its ritualized rough and tumble – was curtailed, supervised, sometimes abolished.  Via means social, pedagogical and chemical, “educators” tried their darnedest to get boys to sit down, shut up, and get verbal.

It’s led us to a generation of kids who’ve been medicated to a fine sheen, who remain in a state of suspended adolescence well into their thirties in many cases, and in the worst case who don’t know the limits of roughness and violence, since the rituals by which they used to learn how to process that testosterone – rough play, stylized roughhousing, the occasional fight that usually ended in friends staying friends who knew who not to mess with – have been scolded, punished and drugged out of existence.

I don’t know who the woman is who wrote this piece; she sounds like she could be any of a few thousand middle-aged moms in Edina alone, at least in the first couple of grafs.

So, I think that instead of teaching our kids NOT to be violent we need to teach them HOW and WHEN to be violent. We have so many stories of people standing around watching others getting assaulted or verbally attacked and we don’t know why. We have thousands of self-defense classes all over the country. We have anti-bullying programs that tell us to stop bullying but offer no concise steps telling us how. Honestly ask yourself, if you don’t know that you can physically defend yourself, would you really step in to verbally confront someone who is being physically and verbally threatening? I know I wouldn’t.

If we are to raise boys who are willing to step in when a girl is being attacked or fight back when a boy is being vicious, we are going to have to admit that we DO expect violence in some scenarios and teach them the fine lines to walk within. Why wait to learn self-defense as an adult? Why not let them learn it, as they are growing up, with the guidance of their parents? Maybe not all is violence is so bad after all.

Force isn’t necessarily violence.  And not all violence is bad.

And we have raised a generation kids that don’t know the difference.  And it’s our fault.

And by “our fault”, I mean “all you feminists who banned boyhood’s fault”.  Just so we’re clear on that.

Nothing To See Here

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Sally Jo Sorenson of Bluestem Prairie is – I’ll say it again – one of the tiny list of Minnesota leftybloggers who don’t deserve some sort of police surveillance.

But that doesn’t mean she knows how to tell a complete story – or do much beyond apes John Stewart lite snark at the C-squad level.

About a week back, she took a dig at Senator Dave Osmek and his take on the “Marriage Equality” bill while speaking to a class in Glencoe, in a post titled “Among school children: Sen. David Osmek misrepresents marriage bill in Glencoe class visit”.  Osmek said he opposed Same Sex Marriage on First Amendment grounds.

Sorenson (with a little emphasis added by me):

He must have missed this part of the senate bill. It’s right at the top:

363A.26 EXEMPTION BASED ON RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION. Nothing in this chapter prohibits any religious association, religious corporation, or religious society that is not organized for private profit, or any institution organized for educational purposes that is operated, supervised, or controlled by a religious association, religious corporation, or religious society that is not organized for private profit, from:

(1) limiting admission to or giving preference to persons of the same religion or denomination; or

(2) in matters relating to sexual orientation, taking any action with respect to education, employment, housing and real property, or use of facilities. This clause shall not apply to secular business activities engaged in by the religious association, religious corporation, or religious society, the conduct of which is unrelated to the religious and educational purposes for which it is organized.; or

(3) taking any action with respect to the provision of goods, services, facilities, or accommodations directly related to the solemnization or celebration of a marriage that is in violation of its religious beliefs.

And then this bit here, with more emphasis added: 

Or maybe this language in the bill:

Subd. 2. Refusal to solemnize; protection of religious doctrine. Each religious organization, association, or society has exclusive control over its own theological doctrine, policy, teachings, and beliefs regarding who may marry within that faith. A licensed or ordained member of the clergy or other person authorized by section 517.04 to solemnize a marriage is not subject to any fine, penalty, or civil liability for failing or refusing to solemnize a marriage for any reason.

I mean, that’s mighty big of the legislature, not unilaterally abrogating the First Amendment and all.

And if you’re not  a church, a religious educational non-profit or, I dunno, a supplier of rabbinical wine or communion wafers?

If  you’re, say, a baker?  A photographer?

Of course, Osmek did actually say…

“I’m afraid it will eventually inflict on religious institutions,” said Osmek. “The pilgrims came here for religious freedom, and we need to respect that.”

But let’s get past the idea that laws, or even the Constitution, actually protect law-abiding people acting in their own conscience, or that the First Amendment actually protects my right to hold government to ccount, or free association, or the right to decide how my children are raised, or the Second Amendment by itself protects my protect my family and property as I, a law-abiding tax-paying citizen, see fit, or that the the Fourth really guards from unreasonable searches and seizures, or the Fifth absolutely protects due process and the right to face my accuser in court, or the Tenth really enumerates powers.  It takes the Constitution and rigorous vigilance.

And it’s not that the left doesn’t see this, although the primary rights for which the left is universally, rigorously vigilant are the “rights” to expel un-gestated fetuses and make dung paintings of the Virgin Mary.

Osmek said that domestic partners are already given benefits by many businesses and corporations, and feels it best left to the private sector to create its own definition of domestic partnerships. . . .

So businesses get to define two committed people’s relationship? Would any married couple accept that?

It depends what marriage is, to you – doesn’t it?

If marriage is a religious thing to you, then you don’t care what government says about it.

If it’s about getting the same rights and benefits that guy/gal couples get, then why would anyone care? Put another way – “so government gets to define two committed peoples’ relationship?  Why would any couple accept that?”

If it’s about showing society who’s boss?

Continuing Abasement

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

To keep our law licenses, Minnesota lawyers must take mandatory training in Eliminating Gender Bias in the Legal Profession, generally “taught” by women lawyers and judges. My most recent session was a disappointment. When a man pays good money to be insulted and humiliated by a powerful woman, she should be wearing fishnet.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

When I got divorced, law required people to take a “co-parenting” class – which amounted to a couple of very angry women telling the guys in the room they’d better not skip out on their kids.  The cherry on the sundae?  My particular session was held at a “women’s center” in Minneapolis, where the guys all got glowered at by large women in Doc Martens as we walked to the bathroom.

I only had to do that once, though.  Every couple of years?  That’d get old.

Chanting Points Memo: The Potemkin Push

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With much fanfare, a few DFL figureheads are introducing a gay marriage bill:

“Minnesotans spoke so loudly during this last election refusing to adopt that proposed constitutional amendment. It was a very clear statement, and I think we’re now ready to take the next step, and it means everything to our families.”

Surrounded by supporters, Clark and Sen. Scott Dibble, who was instrumental in the anti-amendment campaign, said their side is prepared to combat the flood of national money that’s been promised against the proposal.

I’ve been saying since the opening day of the session that the DFL was going to stall on gay marriage – and they have.

And they’ll continue to; even the DFL’s house PR organs (including the MinnPost, from which I quote) note that the DFL leadership is going very slow:

Although DFL leaders have said they personally support same-sex marriage, they haven’t been overly enthusiastic in discussing legislative action with the press.

This is echoed in fundraising letters being sent to gay marriage supporters; outstate DFLers, already alarmed by the DFL’s gun grabs and a DFL tax bill that is going over outstate like a Lindsay Lohan one-woman show in Branson, are queasy about the bill; they remember (even if the media doesn’t) that the Marriage Amendment passed, often convincingly, in most of Minnesota; it was stopped by cataclysmic turnout in the Metro.

Where, unlike greater Minnesota, the issue is a winner for the DFL.

My fearless prediction:  the DFL will introduce the bill with much fanfare (ok, that’s not a prediction, that’s what happened).  It’ll quietly die in committee.  And the Alliance for a Better Minnesota will send its flying monkeys out next year to spin the death as perfidy by a GOP caucus that, in fact, controls nothing.

Final scorecard:  those who prosper from low-information voters: 1.  Gays who wish to marry:  0.

And so it shall stay.

The New Victorians

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The media practices a little Pauline Kael syndrome on the gun issue in this piece, which notes the shocking conclusion that “women” – meaning in this case “wealthy liberal women from the most liberal city in the United States” – don’t like guns much.

And in so doing, we mark the rise of a new breed of victorians:

Gun violence is the kind  of issue, said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, “that has real potential to mobilize waves of women voters and waves of office-holders.”

“What’s different here is Newtown. That cut a lot of different ways to a lot of different women.”

Perhaps.

Smart women – smart guys, too – realized that the only real defense against evil with guns is good people with guns.

Dumb women?  And men…?

Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., a member of the Congressional Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, is eager to get Congress on the record on gun issues. She supports tighter restrictions.

“If we can force votes on these bills on the floor of the House and the Senate, where everybody has to be on record, it’s going to make it very clear to a huge segment of the population — that being women — of where people stand. And I think that will inform the decisions people make at the ballot box,” said Speier.

Yes, Ms. Speier, by all means get those votes on the record.

Because women are the fastest growing segment in the gun-owning population.  Across racial, social, economic and political boundaries, women are buying guns and learning to shoot faster than men are (largely because guys are more likely to have already started).

And maybe in your ofay Bay Area district, a majority of women will snif and vote against the proles with the guns.

East of the Sierras?

The article does, however, cut to the heart of the anti-gun movement:

Behind the scenes, an influential network of female philanthropists based in San Francisco is working to make sure the issue remains prominent, particularly to women.

Shortly after the Newtown shooting, members of the 20-year-old San Francisco-based Women Donors Network began hearing from their 200 members, all of whom donate at least $25,000 a year to progressive causes and individuals and politicians.

Collectively, they contribute $150 million a year to various causes and politicians, the organization says.

And there’s your battle.

The Second Amendment movement is millions of Real Americans who turn out to rallies, testify at hearings, vote for Second Amendment candidates, and above all own guns without incident for their entire lives.

The Orcs?  A few obscenely wealthy crones who write big checks to astroturf groups like “Protect Minnesota” and the “Violence Policy Center”.

Did I say “Astroturf?”

Among the women’s organizations at the forefront of the issue is Moms Rising, the 1.1 million-member activist organization co-founded by Berkeley resident Joan Blades.

“Moms Rising” is a reboot of the “Million Mom March”, the group with “1.1 million members” (no doubt anyone that visits the website is counted as a “member”) that can never muster more than three “members” for an event in the Twin Cities.

Gun violence touches every neighborhood, said Moms Rising executive director Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner. Twice in the past year, her children’s private schools in Seattle have been on lockdown because of the threat of a person nearby brandishing a gun.

“We had a national awakening with the (Newtown shooting),” Rowe-Finkbeiner said. “It is something that a lot of women — and men — could relate to.”

And I love the imagery; a bunch of upper-middle-class crones who can write $25,000 checks and whose kids are snuggled into private schools trying to set the agenda for women in Chicago, on ranches in Montana, in North Minneapolis – many of whom are just starting to realize that gun bans don’t save people; people do.

The Latest Gun-Control Argument: “Women Are Too Weak”

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The same day the Obama Administration moved to open up combat roles to women, Representative Carolyn McCarthy – yet another worthless New York congressorc – appeared with Piers Morgan:

PIERS MORGAN: I have an interview coming up with two young women who wrote a piece in which they said they wanted the rights of the AR-15 weapon at home because they feared they would be attacked and they wanted a gun that would guarantee they would murder or would kill their attacker. How do you respond to that particular argument, which is they believe under their second amendment right they should be allowed an AR-15?

 

Hon? You should try a lighter rifle. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (Orc – NY) says you’re too weak and ineffective.  Oh, yeah – that’s an “M16″, which is like an AR15, but fires full-automatic, like a machine gun, which is shorthand for “more testosterone than Chuckles Schumer has ever had”.

CAROLYN MCCARTHY: I will tell you, if you talk to professionals, hunters and certainly sportsmen, they’ll tell you that’s not the gun to use. A rifle is more accurate. It’s certainly easier for a woman to be able to do that.

Heyyyyy! That’s a woman! And she’s hunting! With an AR15! And she shot a buck – call Naomi Wolf, we’ve got symbolism on aisle 15!

Oops, sounds like someone mixed up her chanting points.  The 2nd Amendment isn’t about hunting.  And while an AR15 isn’t everyone’s first choice for a home defense gun – too much overpenetration for my taste, but I live in the city – it’s not a bad one, either, objectively.

Not only are those women – Israelis, in this case – but those are all M16s, too.  Six women with fully-automatic weapons.  Doesn’t Rep. McCarthy seem a bit like an Iranian Mullah in comparison?

And one wonders if Rep. McCarthy knows that not only is the AR15 a rifle, and one of the most popular hunting rifles in most states, but also one of the lightest, lowest-recoil and easiest-handling rifles anywhere in the gun business?

It’s Lyudmila Pavlichenko. And she’s carrying a “real” rifle, a Nagant M93. Which has about double the hitting power of an AR15, and is great for going after elk, but not normally ideal for inside-the-home defense. However, I wouldn’t invade Ms. Pavlichenko’s home; she had 309 confirmed kills in under a year during World War 2. The USSR, like the Israelis, used female snipers alongside the guys. Pavchenko was the top scorer.  I bet she could pick your nose with an AR15, too. Oh, yeah – and she had a masters in literature!

At any rate, Rep. McCarthy, leave the thinking to the smart women.

Women of the 101st Airborne with, you guessed it, M16s.

Many of whom are shooters.

Why Does The DFL Hate Gay People?

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The legislature’s been in session for a week, now.

And after running a fierce, lavishly-funded campaign telling Minnesotans that gay people were just like them, and that we “don’t have popularity contests with civil rights”, there is still no bill to undo Minnesota’s gay marriage ban – because Tom Bakk and Paul Thissen are worried about losing a popularity contest over gay rights.

Gays are planning a Valentine’s Day rally…:

They will hold a “Freedom to Marry Day Rally ” on February 14, kicking off what is expected to be a massive effort to rescind the current law banning same-sex marriage and replace it with a law blessing same-sex unions.

The Capitol effort comes after a multi-million dollar campaign last year that successfully turned back a ballot measure that would have constitutionally banned gay marriage in Minnesota.

Opponents say Minnesota may be the first state in the nation to vote against a same-sex marriage ban but that doesn’t mean the state will accept gay marriage.

…but they’re barking up the wrong tree.

Let’s make sure we’re clear on this; from 2006 to 2010, the DFL and its’ supporters whinged that while they controlled the legislature, they didn’t own the governor’s office, so there was no point to passing the legislation, since it’d just get vetoed.  Which is a lame excuse; if most people did, in fact, favor gay marriage, the futile vote on principle would redound to the DFL’s benefit in the next election.

But that was then.  This is now. The DFL controls both chambers and the governor’s office.  There is absolutely no political reason not to push a gay marriage bill – and if there were a political reason, it should be swept aside because, remember, we don’t have popularity contests with civil rights.

Except guns.

But I digress.  Gays – why aren’t you demanding the DFL get off its ass?

Abolishing Gender

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Katherine Kersten takes on a bill that will likely get fast-tracked in this unicorns-and-rainbows legislative session; “anti-bullying” legislation:

But what if the antibullying campaign now unfolding there has little to do with protecting the traditional targets of bullies: kids who are pudgy, shy or “vertically challenged”? What if it’s driven instead by a political/cultural agenda that’s not so much about stopping bad behavior as it is about using the machinery of state education to compel children to adopt politically correct attitudes on “the nature of human sexuality,” “gender identity” and alternative family structures?

What if a new antibullying law would require private religious schools — along with public schools — to enforce this agenda, so families who don’t want to subject their kids to indoctrination in state-approved views of sexuality have no educational refuge?

In the 2013 legislative session, you’ll hear lots of warm, fuzzy language from lawmakers and public officials about protecting “all kids” from bullying. You’ll read about hearings designed to break every legislator’s heart with tearful stories about bullying.

But every Minnesotan with a child in public or private school should understand that there’s more going on here than meets the eye. Antibullying legislation is coming early in the session; its final shape is unknown. But the legislative goalposts were set in August 2012 by Gov. Mark Dayton’s Task Force on the Prevention of School Bullying, whose report announced recommendations on the shape a new law should take.

What it basically means is that Minnesota’s kids – in every school, religious freedom be damned  - will be systematically taught that gender doesn’t matter.  That there’s no difference between men and women, and that having a traditional (also scientific) view of gender is, itself, a form of bullying.

And, by the way, it won’t prevent a single case of what most of us think of as “bullying”.

And since it’s “for the children”, it’ll skate through with scarcely a speedbump.

It’s Good To Know…

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…even as Congress flagellates our grandchildren with debt and inflation looms around the corner, that some things never change.

Like the excitement America feels for the marriage of Hugh Hefner and Brittney Cummings Ashlee De La Tata Desirée Van Hondestijl ”Crystal Harris”:

Hefner, 86, married fiancée Crystal Harris, 26, in front of family and a few close friends at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles on Monday, the magazine publisher confirmed on Twitter.

“Crystal & I married on New Year’s Eve in the Mansion with Keith as my Best Man. Love that girl!” he Tweeted early New Year’s Day.

The bride wore a floor length strapless gown in soft pink and the groom wore a traditional black tuxedo, Playboy Enterprises said in a statement.

After the ceremony came a private reception with a champagne toast and the bride and groom cut the wedding cake.

And then the incident zone wedding was put under quarantine as the guests and all furniture were sprayed with emergency disinfectant.

Just look at the lovely couple:

The dog is the only one of the lot that should be voting, if you catch my drift.

Still, after a decade (?) of hearing about Kardashians and “Real Housewives”, Hef almost seems…wholesome, doesn’t he?  In comparison, I mean?

And the pre-nup has to be a work of engineering not unlike the Verezzano Narrows bridge.

It’s Time To Start Legalizing Gay Marriage!

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Yesterday, I noticed that even some of the brighter leftybloggers are figuring out – or drifting in that direction – that the DFL majority in the Legislature isn’t going to knock itself out to legalize gay marriage.

But there’s another angle to this.

The DFL (or, more accurately, the various non-profits that control the DFL’s entire messaging effort) created an unprecedented turnout against the Marriage Amendment.

The rhetoric was crude, zoomed in on the lowest common informational denominator; “Marriage is about Love!”   “Who are we to get in the way of Love between two people?!”  ”Say no to hate!”

If you are a gay MInnesotan, who no doubt turned out in excess of 100% against the Amendment and for the DFL last month?

If you are one of the mass of Minnesotans who was inveigled into feeling warm fuzzy feelings about same-sex marriage by the parade of celebrities, washed-up ex-Republicans and model TV families?

If you’re one of those libertarians who figured “what can it hurt?”  Who believed that  the issue was truly about “no hate!”, and who didn’t wanted to be called a “bigot?”

Here’s the deal:  if the DFL doesn’t, on the first day of the session, put forth a repeal of Minnesota’s anti-gay-marriage law, and ram it through committee and to the Governor’s desk like Jared Allen chasing down a quarterback, then you were all played for suckers.   You and your vote were nothing more than pawns in the DFL’s political power grab.  And their inaction will mean that the DFL has no more use for you that for a used condom; you’ll get about the same treatment.

And if you are a DFLer – say, a DFL blogger or tweep – who doesn’t push, relentlessly, for the DFL to get the anti-gay marriage legislation repealed, and a gay marriage law enacted immedately, then you are not only aiding and abetting the DFL’s hypocrisy, but you are hypocrites yourselves.

So what’s it gonna be?

If you’re not complete hypocrites, you should have this done by March.

Continue reading →

You Read It Here First

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Gay marriage is worth more to the DFL as a permanent wedge than it is as policy.

I predicted right after the election: defeating the Marriage Amendment, to the DFL, was about waving a bloody shirt to get out the vote; not  a prelude to doing anything to legalize gay marriage.

Legalization would galvanize conservative opposition to the DFL on an issue where the currently-rulling party doesn’t need the friction – and, more importantly, would deprive the DFL of one of its bloodiest waving shirts.

Some on the left – Sally Jo Sorenson at BSP, Aaron Rupar at the City Pages – are finally figuring out that the new DFL majority are talking out both sides of their mouths, although neither will, or knows to, put it in those terms yet.

So mark my words (and if you don’t, no worries; I’ll mark them for you); there will be no repeal of Minnesota’s statutory ban on gay marriage. Oh, there may be a token bill; Scott Dibble and Karen Clark will submit a proposal, which will die in DFL-controlled committee (with the DFL’s noise machine doing its best to paint it as “GOP obstructionism”).  By 2014, gay marriage will be exactly as illegal as if the Amendment had passed.  And by 2016, whatever the results of the 2014 House elections, the DFL-controlled Senate will have blocked it as well.