It's COLD! It's REALLY, REALLY COLD!

Well, I've been in colder - in the North. But, for the Charlotte, NC area, this is bad. We've got freezing rain, sleet, and some small snow accumulation.

NOT our typical weather. My husband and I got sprung from school early on Friday. We used it to take care of some business with V-----n - we are NOT happy with the changes in our contract, and it looks like, at this point, it's going to the lawyers.

Today, I woke up to snow - yes, SNOW - on the ground. I expect that many people will stay home. The few on the road will either be transplants from the North, or timid souls with no clue about how to drive in the snow.

I got up early to start cleaning the house - I really do try to keep it up, but it's low on my list of priorities, at times. The kitchen is about 1/2-way done; I'll be putting on laundry in a little shile.

I'm not only cleaning up; I'm also tackling the lesson plans. I've been interspersing school-housework for the last 2 hours. I've found that to be the best way to handle it - moving around, sitting down for a quick blitz, then getting up again.

Somehow, I'm not sure how I did it - I lost a post that I'd been working on since early morning. I'm going to take that as a sign from above that I need to blog on different topics.

The controversy about the President using children as "props" for his agenda continues. Yes, it was a cynical exploitation of the young. No, I don't expect any Liberal to agree. But, if you doubt that it was intended to convey that Democrats were the "child-lovers", while bad, nasty Republicans, who favored 2nd Amendment rights, were "child-h8ers", consider this:

By putting those children out front, the President essentially co-opted them to his cause. He sent a message to the country that people who support his measures are gentle folks who love children. Those who oppose his approach do not care about the welfare of our youth.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Gun owners as a class do not have fewer children than gun control types. They do not invest less time and money and energy in their children. In fact, I would love to see someone do an experiment. Take the NRA mailing list and send them a solicitation to donate to Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, then do the same for a list of equal size populated with gun control activists. The results might be instructive.

Leon Panetta has done American women - and men - a real disservice with his latest directive. Putting women into combat positions will weaken, not strengthen, the military. To point out just one, very obvious, objection - we are fighting an enemy that believes the appropriate way to deal with women who are "uppity" is to gang-rape them.

This is a real concern. Women who work forward have a real risk of falling into enemy hands - quite barbarous hands. Yes, Israel did have women in direct combat in the early days. They stopped that when it became obvious that such a practice had directly exposed women to unspeakable horrors, before their deaths.

Military history is ignored. The Soviet Union sent women into battle in World War II. Israel used women combatants in its 1948 War of Independence. Stalin’s experiment was shrouded in propaganda, and the results are unclear, but Israel said never again. Male soldiers lost control when they saw women being blown apart, and women, when taken captive, were brutalized sexually. Women reduced the combat effectiveness of Haganah units, Moshe Dayan said later, because men moved to protect them from capture. The thought of pregnant women in danger would have been insupportable. Responding to both military necessity and moral imperative, Israel barred women from combat.

That's EXPERIENCE talking.

Read some of the arguments here.

Further, more specific, arguments against the change are:

Pentagon figures show that during the hostilities in the Persian Gulf, naval women were 3.7 times more likely to be “nondeployable,” or out of action, than naval men. Moreover, the berthing spaces assigned to women on shipboard can only be filled by other women. Thus the Navy must find a female radar technician, say, to replace the pregnant or otherwise nondeployable radar technician who has departed. If one is not available, the warship must do without.

Look, women in the military have done some wonderful things. Nurses are, in fact, often exposed to danger - some have been captured, wounded, or died in combat. However, we make extraordinary efforts to minimize those risks, for just those reasons mentioned above.

Every woman in a non-combatant position frees up a man to fight. Should we put women into combat, only to use those men in the back offices?

Women who argue for changes in tradition need to be consistent. If women are "just like men" in combat, should we then negate the Violence Against Women Act? What purpose does it serve, if we all are alike? Surely, pro-women-warriors wouldn't want to suggest that women are WEAKER, or need protection?

What WAS That Book?

...Used in the private White House swearing in ceremony?  It certainly wasn't one of the two Bibles used in the public ceremony.

Here's a picture of the public ceremony, on January 20, 2013.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can clearly see that both Bibles are fairly thick, even though they are of different sizes.

So, my question is, what is the book that was used yesterday, shown in the picture below?



 

 

 

 

 

 

It can't be the top book; it's too big.  It doesn't really look like the book on the bottom.  There's another picture that shows it more clearly.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It looks a book inside a book cover.  What book was it?

Noooo, There's No Problems That Might Arise If Veiled Women Can Interact Without Showing Their Identity

Except, there is. I believe that women have a right to veil. I also believe that, if they want to participate in our society, they must reveal their faces and prove their identity in necessary situations, such as:

• Airports and other transport spots


• Voting


• Applying for public benefits


• Using public benefits


• Cashing a check or using a credit card


• And, of course, in this case

Post-Election, Post-Holiday Slump

There is a lot on my mind right now:

• Fast & Furious fallout continues. But the media treats the whole thing like a closed issue. Where is Congress on this? Please, PLEASE - write your Congressman, urging them to add their voice to continued hearings - INCLUDING getting access to all of the "privileged" communications.


• Then, right after that, you let them know that SOME of us care that over 300 Mexican nationals, and at least 1 Border Patrol agent, were killed by guns that the Obama administration authorized to sell to "straw purchasers". In fact, they didn't just AUTHORIZE the sale, they PRESSURED gun dealers to allow them.


• The Debt, and the non-existent Budget - 4 years without one - are crushing our economy - at least, that part that remains after the Obamacare juggernaut rolls on by. What is interesting is that the majority of the Tea Party is OLDER Americans - in contrast to the seniors of the AARP - who care more about not leaving debt to the grandchildren than for their own comfort.


• Voter Fraud - it DOES exist, and we need to start doing something about it NOW, before it causes yet another election to be questionable. Begin with:
  
• Voter PHOTO ID. ID must show full face. Obviously, states must provide photo ID for those people who don't drive, or free for those who can't afford it otherwise. The ONLY other ID that may be acceptable, and it will be the STATE'S decision, is fingerprint ID, coupled with indelible ink. If it's good enough for the Middle East, it's good enough here.


• The assault on the Catholic Church must be stopped. Government is forbidden to interfere with the religious practices of citizens, unless they violate the criminal law. Civil law is bound to respect the religious principles of church members. Heck, they even work overtime to make sure that obscure or odd religions can practice freely, even holding that Native Americans can use peyote and other similar substances in the practice of THEIR religion, even though that violates criminal drug laws.

This is just a short list of the things I'm concerned about.

Jus' Chillin'

I was just reading about Kathy Griffin's stunt with Anderson Cooper on New Year's Eve (she, ahem, performed a mock-BJ on him). There are people who are referring to this, coyly, as a Monica L----------, but I'm not one of them. That poor, confused girl has had enough negative attention. She's conducted herself in an acceptable manner since she grew up, and seriously made an effort to re-make her life. Leave her alone.

But, AMAZINGLY enough, Kathy G is facing no negative - dare I say - BLOW-back for her actions. They were stupid. They were crude beyond imagining. And she gets NO complaints about treating a Gay Man like her personal Boy Toy.

But, an announcer gets considerable criticism for commenting on a good-looking woman's appearance?

Ridiculous.

Hey, Dad, I Need Money - But I Don't Want to Tell You What For!

Would you give your kid money, if approached like that?

I wouldn't.

Like most of you, I suspect there would be some hard questions:

• What do you want to do with it?


• When will you pay me back?


• Can't you manage your allowance better?


• Get a job (not YOU, HIM).

So, why should our Washington children (well, they really do, at times, act quite irresponsibly) get a pass on accountability?

How about a NEW RULE?

No Budget, No Money.

Separating the Liberals From the Leftists

I was reading Victor Davis Hanson (a writer who worked as a Professor for many years, runs a family farm, and is a pick-up truck kind of guy), and thought some of his words were worthy of repeating. He writes about a college professor who advocates:

As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

Hanson answers that by writing:

Note Seidman’s use of “evil,” which tips his hand that our great moralist is on an ethical crusade to change the lives of lesser folk, who had the misfortune of growing up in America — a place so much less prosperous, fair, and secure than, say, Russia, China, the Middle East, Africa, South America, Spain, Greece, Italy, or Japan and Germany (in the earlier 20th century history) . When I lived in Greece, traveled to Libya, and went into Mexico, I forgot to sigh, “My God, these utopias are possible for us too, if we just junked that evil Constitution.”

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

That's a sensible caution. I remember another time, in my youth, when feminists did just that, heedlessly.

• They fought for women to have alternatives, if they were pregnant without a husband. Then, some of them, once they'd achieved that goal went further.


• They declared that father weren't necessary. Then, they insisted that fathers were positively detrimental to their children's future. Last, they insisted that ALL fathers could pay enormous sums of money to support their children - and made it a CRIME to fall behind on payments, for ANY reason.


• They insisted on women having a right to get an abortion. They flat-out made up statistics about the numbers involved. Then, they started to advocate for completely divorcing sex from reproduction, and, worse, love. They cheered for the "Girls Gone Wild" behavior as "helping women to be sexually free". They didn't stick around for the heartache that followed.


• Women who needed to work needed reliable day care. All right. Then, they insisted on changing the rules, so that women who didn't want to leave their pre-schoolers with a sitter for 10+ hours a day were vilified as "leeches". The tax laws were changed, and are still being changed, to favor the dual working couple. (Did you know that Obamacare is allowing employers to subsidize worker coverage to make it affordable, but then allowing them to price coverage for the rest of the family at a high level? And making it OK to refuse to cover a spouse who can get coverage elsewhere - even if the coverage is lousy. Check it out)


• Oh, BTW, that feminist complaint about women not working being a drain on society? Doesn't apply to mothers on welfare.


• And talk about making ONE of the pregnancy "choices" more likely - Obamacare WILL cover an abortion for a child, up to age 26. What it WON'T cover is pregnancy for that same "child".


• There's a "rumor" that Muslims will be exempt from Obamacare. Snopes.com says that's FALSE. What you DON'T see in that statement is that, no, the Muslims weren't exempted in the original bill, but a provision WAS made for groups to be exempt due to religion. Even Snopes admits that the rules regarding this option aren't in place. In other words, the government hasn't YET made them exempt, but could, anytime they like. And Muslims have a LONG history of spurning insurance products.
  
  Here's the specific words from Snopes:
  
  

  Whether Muslims would qualify for an exemption from the health insurance requirements is more difficult to define, as Islam is a much larger religion with practices that vary according to sect and region. Although Islam does have a tradition of barring conventional insurance products because they "involve an element of uncertainty, gambling and the charging of interest, which are prohibited by the Koran," some Muslim groups make exceptions for insurance which is required by law (such as automobile insurance), and some Muslim groups do not have objections to medical insurance. Most likely, though, Muslims would not qualify for an exemption from U.S. health insurance requirements because U.S. Muslims do not have a tradition of spurning Social Security (which is viewed more as a form of caring for those who are unable to meet their own needs than as something which involves elements of uncertainty, gambling, and interest payments), and no Muslim group has ever qualified for an exemption under the guidelines which define which religious groups would be exempt from the health care law.
  
  The PPACA does not specifically "deny special exemptions to Christians and Jews," but it is unlikely that either of those groups would qualify for the religious conscience exemption, as neither of those groups has a history of disdaining or prohibiting the use of insurance among their membership.
  Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/exemptions.asp#owqlFtJHxbBEbSsC.99

  
  
  

Many Liberals - MANY - have admirable and compassionate intentions. Leftists, on the other hand, don't give a rip about the truly horrible consequences of their acts. At this point, the Liberals - both Democratic and Republican - are being led around by Leftists, who speak softly of a wonderful future, IF ONLY:

• They give up their Constitutional protections - which were designed to protect the Citizens from Government.


• They change the culture COMPLETELY, and eliminate any interference by parents, churches, and non-multicultural peoples.


• They give up control over what their children are taught.


• They accept restrictions on what they do in the privacy of their homes - smoke, own a gun, listen to talk radio, teach their children, whether it's academic, or how to have a relationship with God.

There's more - much more - in the Hanson article. I suggest you read it in full

There's a Change Coming - But It Won't Be What the Leftists Anticipate

Rand Paul is, to my surprise, shaping up as a reasonable possibility for leadership of the Republican Party. His dad's followers would be wise to consider moving their support to the son.

Here's what he has to say about Harry Reid's latest Power Play.