God's Own Crunk

Just kidding – it’s just another brick in the wall graffiti’d with the phrase ‘Why I’ve never been interested in marriage.’

When I was younger, I didn’t want to get married because I knew I wasn’t ready to settle down – I couldn’t even settle on a town to live in or a field to pursue, much less a woman.

By the time I hit 30, I knew I didn’t want to get married because if it ended in divorce and a separation from any inevitable children, I would never be able to attain any kind of happiness.

Now, at 37, I have no interest in getting married because the economics motivate a dissatisfied woman to file for divorce. Although laws vary by state, family court and the various cottage industries surrounding it are codified evil. As this isn’t an area of expertise or particular interest to me, I’ll leave it with this: the first comment reacting to the post is probably the most thought-provoking of all the commentary I read in response.

A long piece, but a good one:

The same issues of life and death emerge in the matter of kosher slaughter, which is now banned in Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Switzerland, and is under threat elsewhere. All of these require electric stunning before slaughter, which under Jewish law is effected by a single cut by a trained specialist that severs all the major arteries and causes near-instant loss of consciousness. But stunning renders the animal unfit for consumption under religious law. The Dutch have been debating a similar ban for the past year under pressure from animal rights activists, and a dubious compromise is now under discussion. The Dutch ban almost certainly would have passed, if not for the serendipitous publication of an Israeli scientific study showing that electric stunning of animals causes them pain. Well and good: but what if someone were to invent a method of stunning that made slaughter entirely painless? Would that constitute grounds to outlaw a method of slaughter that Jews have employed for more than three millennia?

Kosher slaughter is consistent with the Torah’s concern for the welfare of animals, including not only their physical well-being but also their feelings (one can’t muzzle an ox that is threshing grain, for example, or kill a calf in the presence of the mother cow). I wrote about that here in Asia Times during the Dutch debate. It may seem quaint, or even primitive, to enlightened secularists that we refuse to eat some animals (although one might ask why they do not eat dogs, cats, or chimpanzees, and by what criteria they draw the line). And it may seem strange that we require animals to be slaughtered through the severing of the major arteries. It happens to be the case that kashrut is consistent with the most stringent requirements for humane treatment of animals, but that is not the main point: Our consumption of meat is bound up with the mysteries of life and death, and observant Jews consume animal life for our own sustenance only with divine sanction, and under the supervision of religious authorities.

via Spengler » Memo to Jews: After They Come for the Catholic Church, They Will Come For Us.

If, as I do, you live in the country, you have dozens of neighbors like Miss Strader – nice high-school girls who babysit your kids; you lose touch, they move to the next town, and you bump into them a couple of years later doing the late shift at the diner or the general store; they’re 23 or 24, with three kids by three different guys. And they’re still nice, and still kinda pretty, if aged beyond their years. But life and its opportunities are fled. If you’re Britney Spears and you wake up after an almighty bender next to some guy you’d rather not face the grey morning after with, there are high-priced lawyers and managers and minders to make all the bad stuff go away. If you’re Britney at the KwikkiKrap, it’s not so easy. “Free love” is free in the same sense all those government programs funded by Chinese debt are.

This is a legitimate subject for debate – especially when Obama’s Leviathan has chosen one side in the debate, and is funding it lavishly. It’s very difficult to have a functioning economy with dysfunctional human capital – that’s as true for America as it is for Greece. A country in which Foster Friess’ line rouses more concern than that New York Times headline is not one you’d want to bet on.

via Re re re: Bad Jokes – By Mark Steyn – The Corner – National Review Online.

The POTUS’s budget as a word cloud.

One excellent part of a brief statement from Bill Quick:

As for me, I believe in myself just fine, thanks – to the point that I don’t even need some imaginary, yowling thundergod to celebrate or justify my own existence. Finally, I’m not really very big on “belief” (with its connotation of taking something on faith) as a method of making political decisions.

via Little Bit of This, Little Bit of That | Daily Pundit.

It’s a perfect, pithy expression of much of what I stand for. SoCons, who I’ve blithered and blathered on about a bit too much of late, creep me out in part because of their no doubt sincere belief that their monotheism imbues within them a moral authority those who reject said mono- (or, what the hell, poly-) theism will never understand.

I’ve shed no tears for the plight of the Catholic Church and other religious organizations since El Presidente decided to make rubbers/z’Pill/et al an issue. A great many of our “moral” betters were quite happy to hop in bed with hope-n-change when it came to the suicide pact of Obamacare and wealth-redistribution cloaked as “charity.” As even half-clever Conservatives should be able to understand, taking money from me and giving it to another because a leading figure in an ancient parochial dispute said it’s the right thing to do is not only not moral, it is pathologically insane ie the meek inheriting the Earth was supposed to be a metaphor, not the economic policy of a nation of relatively free men.

Just because Rick Santorum appears to be a devout man committed to a culture of life does not make him a Conservative. I’m not saying he’s not, but if one’s religious beliefs are the lead horse in your Conservative-credentials wagon, I may not call bullshit but I’ll put my sniffer on high alert.

In the 10 years I have been at MSNBC, the network has taken heat for what I have written, and faithfully honored our contract.

Yet my four-months’ absence from MSNBC and now my departure represent an undeniable victory for the blacklisters.

The modus operandi of these thought police at Color of Change and ADL is to brand as racists and anti-Semites any writer who dares to venture outside the narrow corral in which they seek to confine debate.

All the while prattling about their love of dissent and devotion to the First Amendment, they seek systematically to silence and censor dissent.

Without a hearing, they smear and stigmatize as racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic any who contradict what George Orwell once called their “smelly little orthodoxies.” They then demand that the heretic recant, grovel, apologize, and pledge to go forth and sin no more.

Defy them, and they will go after the network where you work, the newspapers that carry your column, the conventions that invite you to speak. If all else fails, they go after the advertisers.

via The new blacklist – HUMAN EVENTS.

Jeebus this is funny:

This was obvious enough, and I thought about all the other Green Room contributors – including a few friends of mine — who were also obviously about to be passed over for this full-time gig. Believe it or not, some of them actually applied for the job, although I knew that the mere fact that Hot Air was advertising this opening meant that the Green Room contributors (all of them) had already been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Shortly after my initial conversation with that friend, one of my fellow rejects from the Green Room called to talk about the advertised job, and I predicted, “They’re gonna hire a chick. Somebody with the ‘face for Fox,’ a candidate for the Red Eye leg-chair they can use to ‘brand’ the blog.”

via Who Wants to See Tina Korbe’s Thighs? : The Other McCain.

I’ve been on Twitter for about a year, and today made it worthwhile. The above excerpt is from a much longer piece by Robert Stacy McCain, the subject of which is meta by this point – two non-issues diverged in a wood, and here at z’GOC, I chose to merge them.

Read the rest of this entry »

RSM sums up a theme that’s suddenly become, er, annoying on my Reader:

My pre-CPAC advice to Cody is kind of interesting, in light of the post-CPAC commentaries offered today by Erick Erickson and Melissa Clouthier, both of whom express concern that too many young people at the conference were getting hammered and trying to get jiggy. This is actually something that has worried me at least since 2007, the year when an especially rowdy bash hosted by the Maine College Republicans got shut down.

Do we worry too much about these kids? I don’t know. While some of them were obviously enjoying the Adult Beverages with tremendous gusto, it is impossible to estimate how much “getting jiggy” was going on. Probably a lot less than us old folks might fear, given the 3-to-1 male-to-female ratio amongst the college-age contingent. And probably not enough to worry about an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.

via Cody’s Totally Excellent CPAC : The Other McCain.

My headlines would’ve been better if tangential was spelled tangenital in more than a UD sense. Whatever. On a slightly related note, I get an email every-other week from the Ayn Rand Institute – years after I either donated money to them or signed up for their newsletter, they’re still looking for a volunteer coordinator.

Read the rest of this entry »

Although I hate weighing in on this subject the night before The Super Bowl, I shall nonetheless pontificate…

As a fairly dogmatic ProLifer, regardless of what reality is when the dust settles on this, here is what I’ve learned from the Komen-PP dustup: The Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity, which has raised in excess of $2 billion presumably to fight breast cancer, gives grant money to Planned Parenthood, an organization rooted in eugenics, racism, abortion and infanticide – this is something I, and I’d wager most others sympathetic to SGKC’s cause, did not know.

PP is one of the most despicable and evil organizations in America, if not the most despicable. I put PP in the same category as NAMBLA, only NAMBLA has very little political power unlike PP.

Why SGKC ever thought it wise to award grant money to the group, I have no idea. PP is dishonest in its missions, totalitarian in its politics and continues to practice the most vile form of eugenics – locating its clinics primarily in the poorest, blackest neighborhoods in the country and snuffing out what its founder, Margaret Sanger, would no doubt consider undesirable, sub-human life.

As I was telling a friend who is largely indifferent to the abortion issues, “If you are donating money to any organization dedicated to women’s health, chances are a portion of your money will wind up at Planned Parenthood.” The closest I get to donating money to anything is buying Girl Scout cookies each year, and I have no doubt that a few cents of every $3.50 box goes to PP, which sort of makes me a hypocrite.

Anyway, here’s James Taranto at WSJ:

But Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, parses the statement for LifeNews and finds it actually reflects no change in policy: “We have known and have reported that they are continuing five grants [to Planned Parenthood] through 2012. This is a reference to that. The second clause about eligibility is certainly true. Any group can apply for anything. It does not mean they are going to get anything.”

Of course, it also doesn’t mean they’re not going to get anything. The Daily Caller reports that Komen’s donations doubled in the two days after the Planned Parenthood assault began, presumably because lots of people wanted to support its apolitical work against breast cancer but did not want to give money to a group that was subsidizing a group that both performs and advocates for abortion.

via Big Sister Is Watching You – WSJ.com.

Works for me – I’m a Paul agnostic, although that’s entirely the wrong term for it:

Fundamentally I believe it comes down to faith in the markets and whether or not one is playing for the future, or if one is clinging to the past.Young people have much to lose in the economic quagmire we find ourselves in, namely their future. They recognize that times have changed, that the old economic regime is corrupt, and in order to get things going in any real way not government stimulated fundamental reforms must be implemented. Many, including myself would embrace a gold standard or a standard based on a basket of commodities. This is a radical departure from the Fed centered fiat currency regime. It would disrupt the current economic order, but a reset is needed and many young people recognize that it is vital that we head in this direction before it is too late. The economic hubris of the 20th century has come home to roost. We would like a real economy.

via » Why Many Young People Love Ron Paul and Why Many Older People Despise Him – Big Government.