A perennial favorite

Tell them [that we're idiots] ... Bring me to this rock, that has the most incredible life.

Chester Arthur vs Barack Obama

The is the content of a note I sent a co-worker explaining why Bobby Jindal (*) is not Constitutionally qualified to occupy the office of US President --

Jindal isn’t a natural born US citizen for the same reason that Obama isn’t - at the time he was born, his parents were not US citizens.

In the case of Obama, what is commonly accepted (*) as the truth about his birth almost mirrors what the Democrats alleged about Chester Arthur when they wanted to disqualify him from being Vice-President (and President).
* Both Arthur and Obama were the sons of men who were originally subjects of the British Crown;
* Both Arthur and Obama were the sons of women who were (natural born) US citizens, each from a long line of citizens;
* Both Arthur and Obama were alleged to have been born outside the territory of the US - not that this matters to the issue of being a natural born citizen:

- In the case of Arthur, it was his political enemies who alleged it;
- In the case of Obama, it was he himself, and his wife, who have alleged it … when it served his purpose;

* A major difference:

- Obama’s father never was a US citizen, therefore, Obama is not, and never can be, a natural born US citizen;
- Arthur’s was a naturalized US citizen - the point of dispute, the point on which the Democrat’s case to disqualify Arthur hinged, was whether Chester Arthur’s father was naturalized before or after Chester’s birth:
. that is, if, as the Democrats alleged, Arthur’s father was naturalized after his birth, then Arthur was not a natural born US citizen, and thus was Constitutionally ineligible to be either Vice-President or President;
. on the other hand, if, as Arthur alleged, his father was naturalized before his birth, then Arthur was indeed a natural born US citizen, and thus was Constitutionally eligible to be both Vice-President and President;

(*) Since he refuses to make the actual records available, no one outside a small circle even knows where he was born … and *where* never was the issue, anyway.

(*) and Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz ... and Barack Obama

So you say you hate the Puritans

Jeremy at Letters to Hannah: So you say you hate the Puritans --

Despite the fact that Oliver Cromwell was vastly superior to Charles I, I have yet to hear anyone praise Cromwell for deposing and killing him. There have been many reasonable objections to his killing of Charles, chief among them being that Charles's death immediately led to the instant popularity and eventual kingship of Charles II -- historically one of the most profligate and useless kings that England ever saw. But people are more likely to complain about Cromwell and the Puritans and unfairly loathe them, despite the fact that Cromwell ruled more honestly and rightly than both his predecessor and his successor; King Charles I is almost forgotten in America, despite his unhappy tendency to mangle and murder his subjects. And the reason we hate the better man and forget the worse is simple. Charles I offended the constitutional liberties of Englishmen; the Puritans tried to get rid of dancing on Sundays. ...

What took you so long?

It seems that Barry Arrington at Uncommon Descent is only just now figuring out something; but it's an important something and he expresses his 'epiphany' well, so I wish to share it with Gentle Reader: Driving a Stake Through the Heart of Rationality Itself

Hillary Clinton's Chipotle Order

Hillary Clinton's Chipotle Order

What *is* it with God-deniers?

What *is* it with God-deniers that leads (or compels?) them to be so incredibly dense about the matter of morality?

Consider this post by David Friedman: Duck Dynasty, Medieval Islam, and Moral Philosophy. Specifically, consider carefully his opening paragraph --

There was a recent public flap, brought to my attention by a post on my favorite blog, over a speech by Phil Robertson, the patriarch of Duck Dynasty. Its claim was that an atheist had no basis for moral judgement, no ground on which to describe horrific acts (described in some detail in the talk) as bad.

I have no idea what Mr Robertson did or did not say, but what Mr Friedman wrote as representing what he said is a fairly common argument and/or claim; so, I have no reason to even suspect that Friedman is misrepresenting Robertson. So, let's go with that statement as being the gist of Robertson's position.

Now, consider Friedman's third paragraph, wherein he imagines he has spotted a logical flaw in Robertson's position --

I see a logical problem with both Robertson's position and the position of his Ash'arite predecessors. You encounter a powerful supernatural being. If you have no ability to distinguish good from evil on your own, how can you tell whether he is God, the Devil, or, like the Greek and Norse gods, a morally ambiguous being, no more consistently good than the rest of us?

Friedman isn't even talking about the same thing Robertson is talking about.

When you get down to it, Friedman is merely making the same old, tired "rebuttal" to Robertson that the village atheists with ethernet cables always make, to wit: "Robertson is asserting that I can't be moral" ... which accusation has no relationship to what Robertson actually said.

And let's not even start with Mr Friedman's supercilious final paragraph.

Compare and Contrast

A couple of weekends ago, I managed to find some movies on Hulu that I was willing to watch ... or, at any rate, watch most of (I skipped the last several minutes of the third one mentioned herein). Anymore, Hulu just doesn't offer that much I'm willing to watch.

I think the best way to categorize all three of these movies is "light-hearted romantic comedy". The point of this post is to compare the underlying ethos of the three, the 'moral' so to speak. Hollywood does not come out looking good.

1) a non-Hollywood offering Griff the Invisible -- Griff, Our Hero, is a mild-mannered, much put-upon geek by day, and a crime-fighting superhero by night. In his imagination. One thing I thought was very good about *how* the movie was made is that the viewer is well into it before realizing that the superhero part is all in Griff's imagination.

In the end, Our Hero does Win The Girl. I wasn't entirely pleased with how that worked out, for in the end Griff had a choice:
1) put his fantasy behind him, and finally grow up ... and Lose The Girl;
2) stay planted in his fantasy life, not really grow up ... and Win The Girl;
Still, on a positive note, the ending implies that Our Hero and The Girl do at least channel their (now shared) fantasies in ways that won't turn them into crippling delusions. That is, while they choose to continue to be 'odd' or 'misfits', at least they won't be 'crazies'.

Now, here's the thing: this is a interesting story, well told ... and the movie has no nudity, no sex scenes, no profanity, little violence (the small bit of violence fit the plot), and no social engineering "message".


2) a Hollywood offering Please Kill Mr Know-It-All -- In which Our Heroine is A Writter. But, to pay the bills, she must deign to write a newspaper advice column, 'Ask Mr Know-It-All' ... But also, and which is important to the plot, to put it bluntly, she is a slut (as is her best-friend/business partner/roomate). She just hasn't yet found the "right" situation in which to "let her freak flag fly". This is a Hollywood movie, after all: the so-call Sexual Revolution must be advocated ... and protected from rational evaluation.

The Right Situation presents himself in the form of a murderer-for-hire whose face she inadvertantly makes nationally recognizeable ... which then leads him to need to murder 'Mr Know-It-All' -- that is, Our Heroine -- to regain his anonymity. But, by the time The Right Situation understands that it's Our Heroine whom he needs to murder, he is too smitten by her magical Snowflake Uniqueness to go through with it.

Of course, the story needs some tension before the resolution, so Our Heroine is temporarily put off ... not because she has learned that The Right Situation is a murderer, but because she learns that her magical Snowflake Uniqueness didn't so overwhelm him as to leave him no choice but to not murder her. That he consciously *decided* to not murder her is the intolerable part.

Still, in the end, in true Hollywood fashion, True Love, which is to say, raging hormones, prevails. After Our Heroine wounds The Right Situation and then kills the hit-man trying to kill him (she was aiming for his leg, but blew off his head), everyone who is still alive lives happily ever after.


3) a Hollywood offering Fetching -- In which, again, to put it bluntly, Our Heroine is a slut. Poor thing, it has been eight whole months since she broke off her engagement to "a great guy", quit her job as a lawyer to pursue her dream of running a doggie daycare ... and, most importantly, "got any" (that is the most delicate way to put that ... believe me, I considered writing something considerably more earthy that conveys far more accurately what I really think about her "problem").

This being a "light-hearted romantic comedy", the problem to be resolved in the movie is how Our Heroine and The Dreamy Guy are going to "get together" (OMG! He's soooo cute, they just have to get together!), especially after his advice to restructure her business loan lands her banker in her bed, and his coming to terms with that lands him in the bed of the too-rich doggie-person whose spending on her dog essentially keeps Our Heroine's business afloat.

This is a Hollywood movie, after all: the so-call Sexual Revolution must be advocated ... and protected from rational evaluation. So, this movie has it all: the hot-to-trot Mexican "hottie" who is there is teach Our Heroine to let her freak flag fly"; the flaming queen who is there to teach Our Heroine to *how* to be a Real Woman (that is, a slut), and The Dreamy Guy With The Soulful Eyes (OK, they're more unfocused than soulful) who will magically not even care that she is a slut and who will Be There when she's ready to use him.

=========
Women: despite what movies and your "education" have told you, there is no man on earth who is going to be OK your being a slut. To be more precise, the sort of (so-called) man whom my grandmother would have called a "whoremonger" will be OK with you being a slut, for that's your whole use to him. But a man who wants a woman he can cherish will never be OK with it -- much as you will never forgive a man for being "boring" (that is, for not making you horny), a man who wants a wife will never forgive you for being a slut. Moreover, when you do finally "land a man" via sluttishness, you will never forgive *him* for having been "caught" in that way.

If you want to be happy in marriage, you will greatly increase your odds of happiness if you come to the marriage a virgin. If instead, you follow the current practice of using premarital sex to manipulate a man into proposing marriage to you, what you will end up doing is poisoning your whole attitude and approach to sex and thus poisoning the marriage. Instead of sex with your husband being the loving self-giving God intends it to be, you will have made it into tool to manipulate and control him. And you will never forgive him for being the sort of man who can be controlled by his dick.


Men: despite what movies and your "education" have told you, you will never be OK with the woman you want to love and cherish being a slut. Oh, sure, because your "education" has beat in into you that your desire that the woman you love be chaste is "primative" or some-such twaddle, you try to pretend that it doesn't bother you that your woman is a slut. Nevertheless, it will always eat at you ... and you will never forgive her for it. And, when the inevitable conflict arises, you will throw it in her face.

If you want to be happy in marriage, you will greatly increase your odds of happiness if you marry a virgin. Oh, but it's so much worse than that -- if you want to be happy in marriage, you will greatly increase your odds of happiness if *you* come to the marriage a virgin. too.

Let's assume that you are a young man, still a virgin, and have determined to remain a virgin until marriage. Or, if not a virgin, you've determined at least to be chaste from now on. Weird, huh? And, let's assume that the young woman you are "dating" (I grow to despise that term) has begun to make noises about "taking it to the next level". What you need to understand is that this is the female version of "if you loved me, you'd put out" -- women pressure men into premarital sex just as surely as men pressure women into it.

So, finding yourself "dating" a woman who is making noises about "taking it to the next level", you have a few options --
1) you can, indeed, "take it to the next level" ... and thereby guarantee that when the two of you do marry, that: you will marry from inertia, rather than from a deliberate decision that *this* is the woman whom you have decided to love and cherish for the rest of your life; and that she will never respect you (and that is what you want from her, after all); and that she will eventually divorce you, and spitefully take your children from you along with as much of your future income as she can get;
2) you can attempt to have a real discussion with her about what "taking it to the next level" really means and entails, which is that taking that route is not compatable with future happiness in marriage;
3) What?! Taking about marriage would be "weird"? Look, if you can't *talk* to your (presumed) beloved about these things, then you (singular and plural) are not ready to *do* these things;
3a) if you can't *talk* to her about what "taking it to the next level" really means and entails because she becomes irrational, then dump her. If you don't, then you'll invariably end up at option 1)
3b) if you can't *talk* to her about what "taking it to the next level" really means and entails because your're "too shy", then you need either to grow some balls, or stop wasting her time.

Here there be dragons

The Other McCain: News Flash: Liberals Hate Christianity

‘Humans Smile With So Little Provocation’

The Verbose Stoic: ‘Humans Smile With So Little Provocation’

There is just no consequential difference

overheard, here

There is just no consequential difference between Islam and progressivism at this point.

One is a political ideology disguised as religion and the other is [a] religion disguised as a political ideology. At any given moment, they are interchangeable.

'How is it not like that' I ask. 'Shut up,' they explain.

Douglas Wilson: On Taking Your Chimp to the Beautician -- Many others (including yours truly) have made the same point about "Jim Crow" that Mr Wilson makes so well here --

Liars are usually clever - you have to give them that. And one of the things the really smart ones know how to do is to use the last lie you caught them in as a basis for getting you to believe the lie they are currently telling. Take the specter of Jim Crow laws and the current “scratch a liberal, find a totalitarian” frenzy that we have going on right now. Or, as Iowahawk aptly put it, “Hey, great job, ‘coexist’ bumper sticker community.”

The enabling problem with Jim Crow laws was the fact that they were LAWS. The sin involved was bigotry. The crime involved was coercion by the state. Bigots focus on the fact that people are white or black, and they run screaming to their first refuge, which is “there oughta be a law” that mandates the imposition of their bigotries. Entrepreneurs notice that everybody’s money is green, and they don’t demand that anybody do anything. And in a mixed community, where the free market is allowed to work, the general result is cosmopolitan.

So Jim Crow laws did not simply allow bigoted business owners to refuse service to those they detested. You don’t need a law for that. Jim Crow laws required non-bigoted business owners to act in a way contrary to their consciences. Sound familiar? And Jim Crow laws enshrined bigotry in the law, such that institutions governed directly by the state (e.g. schools) maintained and enforced the currently approved bigotries.

Got that? The problem was the government. If you were a white restaurant owner in Alabama, and your conscience said that you should be able to serve anyone who came in your one and only front door, well, then, too bad for you.

“It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment.”

Now why do people make such laws? They do it because if they didn’t make them, then other people would start to do the thing prohibited. Bigots don’t believe in argument because they consistently lose them. They routinely have bad experience with arguments. And so if you want to identify the bigots in any situation, then look for the screechers. Look for the people who are shouting everyone else down. Look for the coercion. In response to this the liberals say, “It is not like that at all.” “How is it not like that?” I ask. “Shut up,” they explain.
...
And even if these people were entirely wrong about it - which they are NOT - why the coercion? Leave the fellow alone, and quit trying to get your ham sandwich at the kosher deli.

So whatever they say (to the extent you can make it out under all the yelling), whether they like it or not, the current crop of progressives are the heirs of Jim Crow. They are the ones using the law to violate honest consciences. That’s just how they roll.

If I remember correctly, way back when the so-called Civil Rights Laws were being enacted, Barry Goldwater (*) warned that the way in which the GOP was using the Federal Government to invalidate the Democrats' "Jim Crow Laws" was contrary to liberty, and specifically to the right of freedom of association. Allow me to emphasize that -- contrary to some lies that Democrats continue to spread about Goldwater, he wasn't objecting *that* the Democrats' "Jim Crow Laws" were being invalidated by the Federal Government, he was objecting to the anti-liberty and anti-Constitutional *manner* in which they were being invalidated.

But the Republican Establishment of the day -- "progressive" then as now -- was giddy on sticking it to the Democrats. And now, the Democrats (who have since devolved into full-bore leftists) have figured out how to use the Republicans' sticking it to their grandfathers to stick it to everyone.


(*) Who, ironically, would probably be in favor of the current regime of using governmental force-and-violence to impose the "Gay Agenda" upon the nation.

Death threats are only publicized to the extent they can portray the left as sympathetic victims. When the left threatens to murder political opponents, the media covers it up.

I haven't lived there in forever, but South Bend is my native town --

The Other McCain: TV Reporter’s Cheap ‘Gotcha’ Story Incites Hate Mob Against Indiana Pizza Shop

In that post, Mr McCain duplicates a tweet he'd made at some time - "Legalize sodomy, and next thing you know, it's illegal to disapprove of sodomy. How long until taxpayer-funded compulsory sodomy?" -- and that is exactly what the future holds, unless Big Gay, and Leftism in general, is smacked down and driven back into the dank places from which they slithered.