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PTBC Columnist Team

Columnists -- with bite! We feature conservative-friendly writers from Canada and the U.S. who help clarify the difference between liberals and conservatives. All have personally agreed to be a part of our team here at PTBC.

Mike S. Adams

Mike S. Adams

  posted on Monday, February 08, 2010
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Queer Theories and Theologies

I’ve decided to enter the ministry. And I’m going back to school in order to prepare. My choice of schools is Meadville-Lombard Theological School. I want to go there so I can take the course “Queer Theories and Theologies” under Laurel C. Schneider.

Professor Schneider’s description of “Queer Theories and Theologies” is, to say the least, pretty queer, especially given that it’s offered in a seminary:

“This course is a close examination of the development of ‘queer theory’ out of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered liberation movement on the one hand, and the international development of critical theory on the other. Our particular interest throughout the course will be first in exploring queer theory as a public academic discourse and second in discussing what impact this discourse may have on theology and ministry.”

Professor Schneider’s course objectives are perhaps the most appealing aspect of “Queer Theories and Theologies”:

“1. To get confused and yet not give up on thinking. 2. To improve in critical thinking about the intersections of theory (system of rules or principles) with public action so that we may be better able to recognize the ways in which theory often flies ‘under the radar’ in the public realms of church and ministry, government, social movements, and culture. 3. To make at least one practical connection between queer theory as you come to understand it and public theology.”

I’m pretty confused by some of those objectives. But I’m not quite ready to give up on thinking. There’s hope for me yet.

Whenever one is confused in Professor Schneider’s course he (or she or it or undecided) has an opportunity to submit a “weekly reflection.” This is the part of the reading schedule that includes a “reflection question” meant to help guide reading for the session. The good news is that the student can use the question to frame a one-page response to the reading, or (and I’m quoting directly from the syllabus) the student can “ignore the question and address one of (the student’s) own that emerged for (the student) in response to the session’s reading.”

I can hardly wait for this part of the class because the readings are both godly and scholarly. For example, students read “The Queer God” by Marcella Althaus-Reid. Later, they read an article by Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, which is in “God’s Phallus and Other Problems for Men and Monotheism.” Mark Jordan’s “The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology” also makes the list. But the highlight of the readings is none other than professor Laurel Schneider’s article “What Race is Your Sex?”

I thought about writing a rebuttal to Schneider’s article called “How Tall is Your Age?” But I decided to call it “What color are your brain farts?”

By session nine of “Queer Theories and Theologies” the student is expected to formulate a central question or thesis statement for a project, which constitutes 30% of the final course grade. Mine will take the form of a final paper called “Why Queers Enter the Ministry.”

Some years ago, a man asked for my opinion on why his good friend, an atheist, had decided to go to Yale Divinity School. I told him that the Enemy could do more harm trying to destroy an institution from within than from without.

And so it is with the so-called GLBT (Gilbert) movement. The Gilbert has equal rights. He is not fighting for anything. He is only seeking to destroy anyone or anything that will not validate him. That is why only 4% of gays who live in states giving them a “right” to get married actually do get married. They do not seek to enjoy marriage. They seek to destroy marriage. All because it denies them validation.

Originally, all Unitarians and Universalists were Christians who didn’t believe in the Holy Trinity of God but, instead, in the unity of God. Later, they stressed the importance of “rational thinking” and the “humanity” of Jesus. Since the merger of the two denominations in 1961, Unitarian Universalism has emphasized “social justice.” Hence the interest in the Gilbert movement.

We live in a time when Gilberts are invading Christian denominations in an effort to destroy their core Christian beliefs. I intend to enroll in Meadville-Lombard Theological School in order to reverse this trend and bring the Unitarians and Universalists back to Christianity.

I want to set them straight, so to speak. I want to save them before their symbol, the flaming chalice, is replaced by a flaming phallus.

Nice line, eh

Mike S. Adams's graphic

©2005-09 Mike S. Adams - Mike Adams, PhD, is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and is a regular columnist for Townhall.com. His column appears here at PTBC with Mike Adams’ express permission by special arrangement with him. Dr. Adams is available for speaking engagements.  Mike Adams’ new book, Feminists Say The Darndest Things.


Posted on 02/08/10 at 10:01 PM
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David Warren

David Warren

  posted on Sunday, February 07, 2010
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Safe pregnancies for moms, babies

Like anything that involves killing babies, abortion tends to be controversial, and remains so in Canada more than 40 years after a bunch of white males decided to relax the common-law restraints on this practice. It is controversial in other countries, too: check out the United States, for instance, or the various European countries, in most of which it has long been “open season” on the unborn.

On the other hand, there is no public controversy in China, where abortions are not only legal but, thanks to the “one child policy” of the communist state, often mandatory. The politburo that runs that immense dystopia does not brook opposition to its population control measures, nor otherwise recognize the dignity or independence of born or unborn.

Consider Michael Ignatieff’s little performance this week, in which he demanded that Stephen Harper include support for abortion in his G8 initiative to provide maternal and child healthcare in the world’s poorest countries.

While the prime minister’s spokesman was right to express disgust at Mr. Ignatieff’s cheap attempt to politicize an uncontroversial humanitarian measure, it is important to grasp the more immediate argument against him.

This is a logical proposition so elementary that people get upset when you mention it. Mention what? That killing a baby in no way improves its health. Nor, incidentally, does it improve the mother’s health—except in extremely rare circumstances. This latter is a fussy point, however.

“What do you mean ‘baby’?” I have sometimes been asked. This is a rhetorical question, because the supporters of taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, who ask it, know exactly what the word means.

I have before me a packet of cigarettes with a Health Canada message in capital letters that reads: “Cigarettes hurt babies.” The text underneath this begins, “Tobacco use during pregnancy reduces the growth of babies.” Since an accompanying photograph further shows a pregnant woman smoking, it was unnecessary to specify “unborn.” Similarly, when we are discussing abortion, it is unnecessary to specify that the babies in question are “unborn.”

Indeed, the refusal to use plain language, the substitution of euphemisms and rhetorical evasions, is an infallible indicator that a speaker or writer feels uncomfortable with the truth.

Consider for instance the proposition, “a woman’s right to control her own body.” Not even men believe this, and a pregnant woman, who actually believes that the baby she is carrying is part of her own body, should wait for it to kick. Perhaps she has an astoundingly primitive notion of biology; but I should think even a woman of subnormal intelligence would understand the difference between what is in that bump she is carrying, and what is in the rest of her flesh. To wit: a different person.

I have myself had the experience of sitting inside a car. And yet even in the moment I was doing so, I did not consider myself to be a car, or part of a car. Nor—had the car the mind of a pro-active feminist—would I consider it had the right to do what it wished with its own body, if that involved tossing me out on the highway.

So far I have made no argument against abortion, incidentally. I might be willing to consider an argument in favour of an abortion, at least in extremely rare circumstances. But I cannot engage with, nor otherwise take seriously, an argument based on an obvious lie. No civilized human being has the “right to choose” whether another human being should live or die.

“Women do not give birth to cats,” as a Canadian sage once observed, and any honest argument from what is misleadingly called the “pro-choice” side must begin by acknowledging that we are discussing the slaughter of a human being. And an innocent one, too, at least in the sense that the child has not had an opportunity yet to do anything consciously evil.

The question for Ignatieff, of course, would not be, “What do you mean, ‘baby’?” since as a posturing progressive politician he is careful to avoid using that word, and the word “abortion” on the same page. Rather the question would be, “What do you mean, ‘health’?”

I strongly doubt that he could answer that question with any candour. But he ought to be asked it anyway, plainly, for the record, by an inquisitive press. Perhaps he is sitting on some new medical information, previously unknown to the inhabitants of this planet.

That women in the poorest countries are endangered in childbirth—like women in all countries prior to the development of antisepsis by Pasteur and Lister—we know. The mother is not endangered by her child, but by the accidents attending its birth. That is why public health measures are required, of exactly the kind our prime minister was proposing.

Nice line, eh

...

David Warren is a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen.  Visit his web site at davidwarrenonline.com.


Posted on 02/07/10 at 09:24 AM
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Doug Giles

Doug Giles

  posted on Sunday, February 07, 2010
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National Prayer Breakfast: Obama Wants Civility Now, Dammit

This week at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama waxed eloquent on the need for more “civility” in the national discourse, to which Rahm Emanuel replied, “That’s effing retarded.”

Later that day Emanuel, in homage to Obama’s exhortation to be more mannerly, stabbed a tarpon in the eye with a butcher knife and had it UPSed overnight to Scott Brown’s D.C. office while screaming, “I got your manners right here, mama!”

When the NBC execs who head up the PR arm of Obama’s political agenda heard the call for courtesy, they cried, “Yes, civility! Finally! We need more of that civility crap and no more of FOX News’ insensitivity!” Feeling good about themselves and their fresh focus on being sensitive to other folks’ feelings, they pranced down to the NBC commissary for a lunch of fried chicken and collard greens to celebrate Black History month. Mmm… mmm… mmm… Barack Hussein Obama!

Mary Landrieu was also reported as being down with Barack’s call for civility at the Prayer Breakfast, stating, “I firmly believe that for our nation to move forward we need more manners in the national discussion.” She went on to say, “Um … by the way, how much do I get if I act polite?”

My sources could not confirm these supposed comments by Landrieu because her phone lines haven’t been working ever since Reid waved $300 million under her snout. What can be confirmed, though, is that Scary Mary told the republicans to “shut their mouths on the senate floor” this week and to quit making fun of her for jumping on a bribe like a catfish on a ball of stink bait.

Additionally, it has been established that she does hate James O’Keefe’s guts for drawing even more attention to how creepy she truly is with her “dead phone BS” that she’s unsuccessfully tried to pawn off on her very savvy and now extremely pissed constituents.

More civility, eh Mr. President?

When I hear the president call out for civility it reminds me of Wile E. Coyote trying to work himself into the good graces of the Road Runner by wearing a Little Bo Peep costume.

Civility? Please.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it your SEIU thugs who called a black conservative a nigger and beat him up? You might wanna reign those guys in if you want the rest of the nation to dial down. It sounds as if they’re still running off the “sharpen your elbows and get in your neighbors’ faces” rhetoric that you fueled them with on September 17th, 2008. Thankfully, fresh communication with SEIU shouldn’t be a problem seeing that Andy Stern frequents the White House more than any other guest.

Furthermore, to get us to do-si-do to the civility call, you probably should have had Holder prosecute Malik Zulu Shabazz and his Black Panther buddies who showed up at the polls last election with their billy clubs and black Doc Martens. It’s just a suggestion. I’m thinking it kinda/sorta sends a mixed message. You might want to pray about it now that the White House says you’re a praying man.

And lastly, I hope that the pastors in attendance at this past week’s prayer breakfast and those who fill pulpits across this God blessed land will take the cue from Christ—who was anything but civil—in the face creepy politicians and terrorists who wish to kill people. In Jesus’ name, amen.

(And check out my new video, “A Time for Anger.”)

Nice line, eh

Doug Giles's graphic

Doug Giles’ new book “A Time to Clash: Papers from a Provocative Pastor” is now available. Ann Coulter says “Doug Giles’ A Time to Clash is a substantive and funny tour de force for traditional values.” Doug’s award winning talk show and video blog can be seen and heard at http://www.ClashRadio.com.

Doug Giles is the creator and host of “The Clash” radio shows, winners of seven Silver Microphone Awards and two Communicator Awards in the last three years. Recent guests on his weekly one-hour show have included Ann Coulter, Ted Nugent, Cal Thomas, David Limbaugh, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Mona Charen, Michelle Malkin and Brian Kilmeade.  In addition, Doug is a popular columnist, minister, and award-winning writer.


Posted on 02/07/10 at 09:23 AM
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Salim Mansur

Salim Mansur

  posted on Saturday, February 06, 2010
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Stifling free speech is not really free

Free speech is not merely an ornamental bauble found in liberal democratic societies. It is the well-fought ground upon which the structures of such societies have been constructed.

It is free speech in practice, or its ideal subscribed to, that has distinguished Europe and western civilization from all others past and present. Its absence or suppression is the main feature of totalitarian culture.

Yet free speech has never been entirely free from siege by special interests.

Except for the United States where free speech is constitutionally protected by the first amendment, the exercise of free speech can still be constrained by the guardians of public interests as we see in the case of the Dutch MP Geert Wilders, indicted and brought to court for offending Muslims in Holland.

The trial of Wilders is as much a step backward from the ideal of free speech as it is indicative of how free people willingly compromise their freedom by forgetting their history.

In indicting Wilders for hate speech, the Dutch, and their Western supporters, have turned their backs to the long line of defenders of free speech as the cornerstone of liberty, from Spinoza and Voltaire to Emile Zola.

No modern thinker has written as clearly and forcefully on liberty, and what it means in the most fundamental sense of freedom of conscience and freedom of speech, as did John Stuart Mill.

All subsequent writings on the subject are mere footnotes or parenthetical circumlocutions of those who have not abandoned the quest of abridging free speech — even as they present themselves as defenders of freedom — by claiming to protect the rights of others.

Mill contended it would be wrong any time for a government, even if it represented completely the will and opinion of the entire people under its rule, to control or suppress the opinion of an individual. Such coercion, in Mill’s view, was illegitimate.

He wrote: “The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exercised in accordance with public opinion than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

Western societies in general have fallen short of Mill’s expressed ideal of liberty, but any infringement of that ideal has smacked of bad faith. In recent years, multiculturalism was propounded as if to ease the conscience of liberals — those who believe in liberty as Mill wrote about — when they do illiberal things such as penalizing free speech.

The irony lost upon those eager to protect others from being offended by the exercise of free speech, particularly when it comes to the subject of religion, is that such offence was the necessary solvent for the reform of Christianity and the church — reforms that contributed to the making of the modern, secular, liberal and democratic West.

In protecting Muslims from those who offend them, the West ill-serves Islam and those Muslims who seek its reform. Muslims need untrammelled free speech to awaken to the awareness of how totalitarian and comatose is their culture.

Nice line, eh

©2005-08 - Salim Mansur, BA, MA, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario.  He is also a columnist at Canada’s Sun Media.  His column appears here with Salim Mansur’s express permission by special arrangement with him.


Posted on 02/06/10 at 10:01 AM
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David Warren

David Warren

  posted on Saturday, February 06, 2010
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Back to the beginning

There was a stop-the-press item in science news this week. I was sorry to see it float by without serious media attention. We are finally out of the “Primordial Soup!” Let me explain.

Around 1929, Darwinists began recovering the ground they lost to the success of Mendelian genetics earlier in the century. Readers acquainted with the history will recall that followers of Darwin—the crusading, anti-religious zealots who formed the “smart set” in later Victorian biology—had no time for Gregor Mendel.

When they mentioned him at all, they dismissed his meticulous cross-breeding experiments as trivial, and mocked the man himself as a Catholic priest. Mendel was working without so much as a microscope, in the obscurity of a monastic garden. What a laugh.

Indeed Mendel, who also made significant contributions to physics and meteorology, had to give up science, after his genetic breakthrough, to devote the rest of his life to fighting the Austro-Hungarian tax authorities who were threatening the very existence of monasteries such as his own in Brno. It was not till the dawn of the 20th century that his ideas were exhumed, tested, and found to be brilliantly true and game-changing. They put the older Darwinism into eclipse, since “natural selection” could predict nothing, nor give a single result that could be replicated.

It took the once-fashionable Darwinian atheists three decades to recover from this setback.

They did so by announcing the formation of the “modern evolutionary synthesis”—i.e. pure Mendelism, relabelled as “neo-Darwinism.”

That is one leg upon which our contemporary Darwinism stands: appropriated genuine science. The other is in what has long been known colloquially as the “Primordial Soup.” J.B.S. Haldane proposed this in 1929: that the whole evolutionary process was kick-started by ultraviolet radiation, providing the energy to turn methane, ammonia and water into the first organic compounds.

This murk was desperately needed to cover the scandal of origins.

Darwin had titled his famous work The Origin of Species yet could himself see that he had explained no such thing. He had only told just-so stories about how one sort of pre-existing creature might evolve into another under environmental pressures. Few have ever disputed “common descent,” but many have asked: What sort of “accident” hatched the first reproducing creature?

The sort of environmental flukes on which the Darwinian depends for his salvation are all very well if you have infinite time. But as we began to realize, about the time Primordial Soup was first served, the universe wasn’t nearly old enough—by a factor approaching infinity—for any meandering and purposeless scheme to achieve the sort of results we see all around us.

The alternative, of course, is that the universe was in some sense “programmed,” that biological and ultimately human life was implicit in the Big Bang. This is called the “anthropic cosmological principle,” and it fits with every observable fact of nature. It is resisted by atheists, however, because it is highly suggestive of Creation by God, and is described with great clarity in for example the Book of Isaiah. (See 45:18, for starters.)

In a series of laughable experiments through the 1960s and ‘70s, Darwinian biologists mixed various recipes for this hypothetical soup, then zapped them with energy this way and that, without any success whatever. Frankenstein’s monster simply would not stir from their puddle.

This soup nonsense is still presented in biology textbooks, as if it were true. But in an important paper in the journal BioEssays this week, William Martin et al., of the Institute of Botany III in Düsseldorf, spilled the last drop of it onto the trash heap of history. They summarize effectively why it not only did not work, but could not work, under laboratory or any other conditions.

Instead, following footsteps of the geochemist Michael J. Russell, they guess the first simple cells originated in geothermal vents under the oceans, where concentrated energy could work upon a rich variety of minerals. My reader must go to the sources to read the new “kick-start” hypothesis.

And good luck to it. I wish this hypothesis well, if only because it has long seemed to me, from observing the way nature works, that the seeds of biological life will be found in the earth’s interior, rather than on its surface. God would more likely work that way: out of a womb, as it were.

But wherever we look, let us bid a braying adieu to the Primordial Soup. It was the last thin gruel supporting Darwinist atheism, and we don’t have to drink it any more.

Nice line, eh

...

David Warren is a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen.  Visit his web site at davidwarrenonline.com.


Posted on 02/06/10 at 09:59 AM
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Susan Martinuk

Susan Martinuk

  posted on Friday, February 05, 2010
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Many are to blame for false vaccine-autism link

One of the world’s most prestigious medical journals has gone to startling lengths to demonstrate, supposedly once and for all, that there is no connection between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism.

On Tuesday, The Lancet formally retracted the 1998 paper by Dr. Andrew Wakefield that first suggested the link. The study has long been the source of public concern over the safety of vaccines and is often cited as the reason for a sharp drop in vaccination rates that continues, even today, in Britain, the U.S. and Canada.

For two years, the U.K. General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practice Panel examined the study’s methodology and, last week, it concluded that Wakefield was a dishonest and irresponsible doctor who had provided false information and acted with “callous disregard” for the children in his study. As a result, The Lancet pulled the paper from its published record and Dr. Wakefield must go before the panel in April to determine if he (and two of his colleagues) will lose their licence to practise medicine.

Indeed, there were multiple problems with the study, ranging from methodology to a conflict of interest. But there is plenty of blame to go around and, while Dr. Wakefield should gain entrance to the Hall of Fame for Bad and Unethical Science, I’m not convinced that he is the only one who should be publicly pilloried for perpetuating the claims of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

The study was based on the case studies of just 12 children, suggesting the paper was more anecdotal than statistically significant. Wakefield was cited for conducting invasive tests on the children, including painful lumbar punctures and colonoscopies that were not in their best medical interests. Blood samples were obtained by offering money to children at a birthday party.

More important to the legitimacy of the study, however, was an obvious conflict of interest. Wakefield’s research was funded by $90,000 he received from lawyers who were searching for evidence to sue the vaccine makers. Further, he was also developing his own vaccine for measles and, in June 1997, he filed for a patent for the vaccine. That was a full year before the paper was published.

The conflict of interest was never declared, but the peer review process at The Lancet obviously failed to pick up on, or investigate, the questionable methodology or source of funding.

The paper also openly states that the parents of eight of the children associated the onset of behavioural problems with the MMR vaccine—it doesn’t say the authors make the association. Instead, the authors write, “We do not prove an association between measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described” and, “Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to this vaccine.”

So where are Wakefield’s claims of a link between MMR vaccine and autism? Not in the published paper. Rather, any claims of this association appear to stem from media coverage of the paper and a press conference by Wakefield.

Wakefield is obviously guilty of conducting bad and highly unethical science. But I don’t believe he should be pilloried for single-handedly undermining vaccination programs around the world. He never stated that children shouldn’t be vaccinated—he only encouraged parents to give their children separate vaccinations for each disease and to do so at one-year intervals.

Journalists are the ones who created the story and widely reported it out of its proper context or without the necessary caveats. They are the ones who implied a direct, causal link—not Wakefield. In 2004, three of Wakefield’s co-authors issued a partial retraction stating that they “formally retract the interpretation placed upon these findings.” Again, the problem isn’t the findings so much as the interpretations that have been “placed upon these findings.” The diagnosis, as it were, has been seriously distorted. The overall message of Wakefield’s study seems to have been magnified and sensationalized at the expense of accuracy. Wakefield may well have played along and enjoyed the media ride, but he’s not the only one responsible for perpetuating the vaccine debate.

Nice line, eh

Susan Martinuk is a Vancouver-based columnist.  She is a former medical researcher with more than 15 peer-reviewed publications and a world-first medical breakthrough in the study of infertility.


Posted on 02/05/10 at 10:19 AM
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S. Wray Gregoire

S. Wray Gregoire

  posted on Friday, February 05, 2010
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Are We Too Comfortable?

I love a man in a suit. He looks like he takes himself seriously. He looks powerful. He respects himself, and he respects those he’s with. And if he lets his wife choose his tie, he’s likely colour-coordinated, too.

Few wear a suit these days, and perhaps it’s just as well given the cost of dry cleaning. But until relatively recently suits were commonplace. All self-respecting men donned them, and usually topped it off with a fashionable hat. Pore over pictures of the Great Depression, and you frequently see men, in three piece suits, sitting around playing checkers. Even the poorest owned a suit. Come to think of it, so did gangsters. I guess they figured if you work for Al Capone and you have to take somebody out, you may as well do it in style.

These days suits are passé. Executives and politicians may don them, but we’re a little suspicious of those who seem overly successful. Instead, most of us don’t care about formality anymore; we care about comfort.

Now I have nothing against comfort. In fact, I’m rather attached to my denims. I’m just wondering what happened over the last few decades. T-shirts and camisoles were once underwear, not outerwear. People dressed to show they took pride in themselves. Today, with jeans hanging below one’s nether-regions and bra straps revealing more than they should, it’s hard to see the pride. Maybe it’s there, buried underneath the metal studs, but I’m not catching the vibes.

Clothes aren’t the only thing we’ve sacrificed on the altar of informality. People once called each other “Sir” and “Ma’am”, or they at least addressed each other by last names, like Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They wrote thank you cards. Clerks believed in customer service, not in lurking in the automotive department playing on your iPod touch in case somebody might need help in toys.

Teachers dressed formally and expected compliance, even if the kids didn’t like it. Today the emphasis is on making learning fun. And students learn best when they’re comfortable, so the theory goes.

What about family dinners? For most families, dinnertime was a ritual. One child would set the table, and another would clear. You waited until everyone was seated to dig in. You passed the salt. Today many families heat up dinners in the microwave and collapse in front of the TV or computer.

I’m turning forty this year, so perhaps I’m becoming even more of a curmudgeon than usual. But I think a little bit of discomfort and a little more pride may be a good thing. We don’t have to go overboard; after all, I spent several years avoiding some relatives at family reunions because I had forgotten to write thank you cards, and I was mortified that they may remember the infraction. One of my worst clothing memories is of serving as a bridesmaid in a wedding on a day that made hell feel like a cool breeze. I had the good fortune of wearing a short-sleeve dress. The men wore wool suits—complete with vests. I spent the entire service staring into my husband’s sweaty face, willing him, and the other ushers, not to faint.

Nevertheless, I wonder what it says about us as a culture when our highest virtue is not working hard, or respecting ourselves, or taking pride in our accomplishments; it’s instead living a life when we do whatever we want, however we want to, as long as we don’t have to exert any extra effort. Even gangsters took pride in their work way back when. Surely we can again, too?

Nice line, eh

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©2007-08 Sheila Wray Gregoire
Sheila Gregoire is the author of four books and a frequent speaker at women’s conferences across the nation. You can find her in in Belleville, Ontario where she and her husband “tag-team” homeschooling their two daughters, or at SheilaWrayGregoire.com.  Sheila blogs at tolovehonorandvacuum.com.


Posted on 02/05/10 at 10:15 AM
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Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter

  posted on Thursday, February 04, 2010
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Matthews and Olbermann Now Openly Fighting Over Obama

In a “Special Report” on the president’s question-and-answer session with Republicans last Friday, MSNBC’s jock-sniffers Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow produced a museum-quality show:

MATTHEWS: Everybody agrees he could handle everything today. ...

OLBERMANN: It almost felt like watching the stories of John L. Sullivan, the 19th-century boxer, who would volunteer to fight anybody and everybody in the house and knock them all out. ...

MADDOW (imagining Obama thinking): You’ve brought a pet issue here, congressman, who is the ranking member of the Budget Committee, let me tell you 400,000 things about it, and invite you to continue the discussion with me later. ...

MATTHEWS: (T)oday showed me that we do produce probably the best candidate and best president we can in this system you can imagine in the world. ...

OLBERMANN: They had 140 players on the field and the other team had one guy and they lost to him. ...

MATTHEWS: You were so unbelievably hot, Mr. President! You blew away the other team!

OBAMA: Beat it.

MATTHEWS: OK, I’ll go stand in my locker now.

Unlike the jock-sniffers, normal people watching the president’s tete-a-tete with the Republicans only wondered why Obama always responds to imaginary arguments no one made, rather than the questions actually being asked.

That is Obama’s signature move: Invent “people” who are “saying” ridiculous things and then encourage the audience to laugh at these made-up buffoons.

Since Obama’s reformulations of Republican arguments are always absurd, no further response from him is necessary—and none is ever forthcoming.

Thus, for example, Obama’s description of Republican criticism of his plan to nationalize health care was that “this thing was some Bolshevik plot.”

No. No one said it was a “plot,” Bolshevik or otherwise.

Republicans’ objection to national health care could be more accurately portrayed as follows: Obama’s plan to nationalize health care was a terrible idea because it would turn over one-sixth of the American economy to Washington bureaucrats, who would run the system as competently as the federal government runs everything else, from airport security to the post office to FEMA.

How about responding to that argument? (And as long as Obama brought it up, can he explain which part of national health care the Bolsheviks would have objected to most strongly?)

This isn’t how adults conduct serious political debates; it’s how children argue with their parents. Don’t have a cow! Liberals hide conservative arguments from the public like teenagers hide contraband from mother under the bed.

Repeatedly positing imaginary attacks by Republicans accusing him of a “plot,” Obama said that “the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives.”

Again, not a “plot” and certainly not “wild-eyed.” The only person accusing anyone of “plotting” here is Obama accusing the GOP of plotting against him. I guess they don’t teach irony at Harvard Law School.

If Obama is going to keep imagining others accusing him of “plots,” could he provide just one example?

Republicans also did not accuse Obama of trying to “impose huge government in every aspect of our lives.” Just the part of it that determines how long we get to live.

Continuing his fantasy battle with imaginary opponents, Obama said, “What you’ve been telling your constituents is, this guy is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that’s going to destroy America.”

I gather Obama is incapable of responding to his opponents’ actual argument, which is that he is proposing all sorts of things that would be very bad for America.

Since he pleads innocence only on the claim that he is doing “crazy stuff that’s going to destroy America”—an argument no one made—apparently he’s guilty as charged on the claim that he’s merely doing very bad things to America.

Adopting the pose of limpid nonpartisanship, Obama repeatedly accused Republicans of horrible things using his peculiar straw-man technique.

He told Republicans he was “absolutely committed” to working with them, “but it can’t just be political assertions that aren’t substantiated.”

Can Obama please name a single “unsubstantiated” political assertion by a Republican before wasting everyone’s time by instructing Republicans to stop making them?

I can name a few from Obama!

How about the whopper he told about national health care not covering illegal aliens? Or the one about it not covering abortions?

Weeks after Obama made those unsubstantiated political assertions before a joint session of Congress, Democrats were in death-match battles with Republicans (and some moderate Democrats) who tried to exclude coverage for illegals and abortion from the very bills Obama said never contained such coverage in the first place.

How about Obama’s claim in his State of the Union address last week that a recent Supreme Court ruling would allow “foreign corporations to spend without limit in our elections”?

In the case Obama mentioned, the court overruled section 441a of the campaign-finance law, which had banned all corporate spending on elections. The case did not concern, nor did the court address, section 441e, which prohibits foreign corporations from making any “contribution or donation of money or other thing of value ... in connection with a Federal, State or local election.”

History will record that these remarks from his State of the Union address were the only case legendary barrister Barack Obama ever argued before the Supreme Court. And he lost.

Even when presented with a short, straightforward, simply stated question by Rep. Mike Pence, Obama couldn’t help but to formulate a different question.

Pence asked: “Mr. President, will you consider supporting across-the-board tax relief, as President Kennedy did?”

The question Obama wanted Pence to ask was: Mr. President, will you join Republicans in cutting taxes of billionaires?

Luckily, Obama’s reformulation gave him an opening for a killer answer: “What you may consider across-the-board tax cuts could be, for example, greater tax cuts for people who are making a billion dollars. I may not agree to a tax cut for Warren Buffett.”

Republicans should take that answer and run like a thief in the night! OK, let’s cut taxes on everyone except billionaires. I’d even support a specific tax expressly on Warren Buffett. Now, son, how much will you give us for these magic beans?

If only Republicans could maneuver Obama into answering a question on abortion, we could probably get him to agree to ban all abortions—except in the case of teenage girls who have been raped by their fathers. (This is how I assume Obama would rephrase the question.)

No conservative argues like this. To the contrary, we’re morose that Nexis archives are not more complete, so we can’t quote liberals directly more often.

Nice line, eh

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©2004-09 Ann Coulter.  Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.

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Posted on 02/04/10 at 08:21 AM
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Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter

  posted on Thursday, February 04, 2010
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Can’t We At Least Get a Toaster?

In the wake of the Massachusetts Miracle last week (“The other Boston Massacre”), President Obama adopted a populist mantle, claiming he was going to “fight” Wall Street. It was either that or win another Nobel Peace Prize.

Now the only question is which Goldman Sachs crony he’ll put in charge of this task.

If Obama plans to hold Wall Street accountable for its own bad decisions, it will be a first for the Democrats.

For the past two decades, Democrats have specialized in insulating financial giants from the consequences of their own high-risk bets. Citigroup and Goldman Sachs alone have been rescued from their risky bets by unwitting taxpayers four times in the last 15 years.

Bankers get all the profits, glory and bonuses when their flimflam bets pay off, but the taxpayers foot the bill when Wall Street firms’ bets go bad on—to name just three examples—Mexican bonds (1995), Thai, Indonesian and South Korean bonds (1997), and Russian bonds (1998).

As Peter Schweizer writes in his magnificent book Architects of Ruin: “Wall Street is a very far cry from the arena of freewheeling capitalism most people recall from their history books.” With their reverse-Midas touch, the execrable baby boom generation turned Wall Street into what Schweizer dubs “risk-free Clintonian state capitalism.”

Apropos of the Clintonian No-Responsibility Era, Goldman Sachs and Citibank became heavily invested in Mexican bonds after a two-day bender in Tijuana in the early ‘90s. Any half-wit could see that “investing” in the dog track would be safer than investing in a corrupt Third World government controlled by drug lords.

But precisely because the bonds were so risky, bankers made money hand-over-fist on the scheme—at least until Mexico defaulted.

With Mexico unable to pay the $25 billion it owed the big financial houses, Clinton’s White House decided the banks shouldn’t be on the hook for their own bad bets.

Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, former chairman of Goldman, demanded that the U.S. bail out Mexico to save his friends at Goldman. He said a failure to bail out Mexico would affect “everyone,” by which I take it he meant “everyone in my building.”

Larry Summers, currently Obama’s National Economic Council director, warned that a failure to rescue Mexico would lead to another Great Depression. (Ironically, Summers’ current position in the Obama administration is “Great Depression czar.”)

Republicans in Congress said “no” to Clinton’s Welfare-for-Wall-Street plan.

It’s not as if this hadn’t happened before: In 1981, Reagan allowed Mexico to default on tens of billions of dollars in debt—Mexico claimed the money was “in my other pair of pants”—leaving Wall Street to deal with its own bad bets.

As Larry Summers expected, this led like night into day to the Great Depression we experienced during the Reagan years ... Wait, that never happened.

At congressional hearings on Clinton’s proposed Mexico bailout a decade later, Republicans Larry Kudlow, Bill Seidman and Steve Forbes all denounced the plan to save Goldman Sachs via a Mexican bailout.

So the Clinton administration did an end run around the Republicans in Congress and rescued improvident Wall Street bankers by giving Mexico a $20 billion line of credit directly from the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund.

Relieved of any responsibility for their losing bets, Wall Street firms leapt into buying other shaky foreign bonds. Soon the U.S. taxpayer, through the International Monetary Fund, was propping up bonds out of South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, then Russia—all to save Goldman Sachs.

The IMF could have saved itself a lot of paperwork by just sending taxpayer money directly to Goldman, but I think they’re saving that for Obama’s second term.

Throughout every bailout, congressional Republicans were screaming from the rooftops that this wasn’t capitalism. It was “Government Sachs.” As Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) put it, the same rules that apply to welfare mothers “ought to apply to rich Greenwich, Conn., investors who are multimillionaires.”

But Wall Street raised a lot of money for the Democrats, so Clinton bailed them out, over and over again.

Before you knew it, once-respectable Wall Street institutions were buying investment products even more ludicrous than Mexican bonds: They were buying the mortgages of Mexican strawberry-pickers.

Why shouldn’t Wall Street trust in suicidal loans no sane person would ever imagine could be paid back? Time after time, when their bets paid off, they pocketed huge fees; when their bets failed, they sent the bill to the taxpayers.

With nothing to fear, the big financial houses bought, repackaged and resold investment products that included loans like the one issued by Washington Mutual to non-English-speaking strawberry pickers earning a combined $14,000 a year to purchase a $720,000 house.

But the financial wizards on Wall Street were trading these preposterous loans as if they were bars of gold. They may as well have bet the entire U.S. economy on a dice game in an alley off 44th Street.

Every mortgage-backed security bundle was infected with suicidal, politically correct loans that had been demanded by community organizers such as Barack Obama—as is thoroughly documented in Schweizer’s book.

On the off chance that mammoth mortgages to people who could barely afford food somehow went bad, Wall Street firms could be confident that their Democrat friends would bail them out.

Even the Republicans would have to bail them out this time: They had strapped the dynamite of toxic loans onto the entire economy and were threatening to pull the clip. Wall Street had infected every financial institution in the country, including completely innocent banks.

But now Obama says he’s going to “fight” Wall Street, which is as plausible as claiming he’ll “fight” the trial lawyers.

As Schweizer demonstrates, whenever the Democrats “regulate” Wall Street, the innocent pay through the nose, while Wall Street swine lower than drug dealers and pornographers end up with multimillion-dollar bonuses so they can run for governor of New Jersey and fund lavish Democratic fundraisers in the Hamptons.

Republicans should respond the way they always have: Support the free market, not looters and welfare recipients on Wall Street, especially the Democrats’ friends at Goldman.

Nice line, eh

Ann Coulter's graphic

©2004-09 Ann Coulter.  Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.

Ann Coulter’s column appears here at ProudToBeCanadian.ca by license, weekly.

Buy all SEVEN of Ann Coulter’s best-sellers! Buying them though our web site generates small sales commissions from Amazon that financially supports ProudToBeCanadian.ca.



Posted on 02/04/10 at 06:51 AM
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Theo Caldwell

Theo Caldwell

  posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010
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The Super Bowl and the Contest of Life

Sunday’s Super Bowl is not just a contest between two football teams. This year, there is an undercard, featuring a clash of beliefs about life and choice.

Tim Tebow, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback for the University of Florida, is set to appear in a pro-life commercial during the game, along with his mother, Pam. The ad tells the story of Pam’s difficult pregnancy, in which she contracted an infection and was advised to abort Tim. Pro-choice activists claim that the ad, paid for by the Christian group Focus on the Family, could lead to violence and have been pressuring CBS to keep it off the air. The broadcaster has said the commercial will be shown, but the imbroglio begs the question: Can the abortion fight ever be resolved?

In Canada and the United States, folks are fond of saying the issue of abortion is “settled,” pointing to rulings by each country’s Supreme Court, in 1988 and 1973, respectively. But the decades of turbulence over this matter have taught us that something so emotional and elemental is not “settled” by a few lawyers.

Other news from recent days proves the point. In Kansas, the trial of the man accused of killing late-term abortion provider George Tiller began on January 22, the 37th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling (Scott Roeder was convicted of Tiller’s murder one week later). At the same time, a new Marist poll shows a majority of Americans, and nearly 6 in 10 young adults, see abortion as morally wrong.

Meanwhile in this country, a recent Angus Reid poll finds, “Only one-in-five Canadians (20%) are aware of the current status-quo of abortion in Canada: a woman can have an abortion at any time during her pregnancy, with no restrictions whatsoever.” In addition, “Respondents are almost evenly divided on whether the health care system should fund abortions whenever they are requested.”

To be sure, whenever the topic of abortion is broached, people become angry almost at once. But before everyone gets their sticks up (to expand the sporting analogy), let’s suppose for a moment that there is, in fact, common ground on this issue. One finding of the Reid poll gives us a starting point:

“A large majority of Canadians (79%) would back an initiative in their own province that would make it mandatory for health care workers to offer information to pregnant women about alternatives to abortion.”

It is often said that it is more effective to change hearts than to change legislation. In this case, while the finding speaks of a “mandatory” initiative, the underlying sentiment may, in fact, be most helpful. To wit, while abortion may never again be illegal, it is broadly undesirable.

Common parlance bears this out. Politicians who believe abortion should be available any time, for any reason, rarely speak in plain terms. They talk of “choice” and “reproductive freedom” and “women’s rights.” Indeed, it would take a hard person to say that abortion, as an act, is a good thing. If we can agree on that, it means most of our hearts are in the same place.

So, what if we agreed that, as long as public money subsidizes abortion, an equal or greater amount should go toward a mechanism to find homes for unwanted babies? If you really wanted to be controversial, you could add a bit about preventing unplanned pregnancies in the first place – that is, letting young people know that abstinence isn’t only about Bible-thumping and promise bracelets – but that might be too big a leap right away. For now, let’s just suppose that citizens made it a priority that every little person gets a chance at life and no young woman goes through the misery of abortion.

This is less a function of writing laws than of changing priorities. Nothing gets banned in this scenario, but possibilities are opened. If we shift our default response to an unwanted pregnancy from contemplating abortion to offering support, great things could happen.

Add incentives for religious and private-sector organizations to provide money and means for young mothers who want to raise their babies themselves, and we’re starting to get somewhere. Again, if we stipulate that abortion itself is a tragic act, wouldn’t a robust and ubiquitous network of alternatives be helpful? When you offer people good choices, bad laws become irrelevant.

The hardship of anyone contemplating an abortion is something that cannot be denied. Pam Tebow knew this fear all too well. And the perspective from which the decision is undertaken makes all the difference.

Ironically, one of the world’s foremost experts on death, the late Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, provides a quotation applicable to this fundamental question of life: “Mankind’s greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.”

Folks can always choose, but with love and support, it becomes easier to choose wisely. What a wonderful thing that would be for women and families. And, not for nothing, millions of little people would get a chance at life, with all the choices it has to offer.

Nice line, eh

Theo Caldwell's graphic

Theo Caldwell, president of Caldwell Asset Management, Inc., is an investment advisor in the United States and Canada.  His columns regularly appear in the National Post and Sun Media papers.  You can visit his web site at TheoCaldwell.com.

Buy his new book Finn the half-Great—A great kids’ book!


Posted on 02/03/10 at 08:40 PM
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David Warren

David Warren

  posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010
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Resisting temptation

Yesterday was Candlemas, and therefore also Groundhog Day. Punxsutawney Phil, the weather-prognosticating groundhog of Gobbler’s Knob, predicted six more weeks of “global cooling.” I use that term with the same abandon as might the IPCC, of course: technically, the animal only predicts six more weeks “of winter.” I’m not sure how far away from his location in Pennsylvania the prediction is meant to apply.

In fact, I’ve never been able to get a clear answer to this, just as my reader will never get a clear answer from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—which, together with Al Gore, an immense groundhog-like creature who crawls frequently out of a hole in Tennessee, constitutes our chief media source of climatological “settled science.” (A contradiction of terms.)

We’ve been given some clear answers that weren’t serious, ranging from the famed “hockey stick” diagram, that entirely misrepresented planetary temperature trends; to smaller assertions such as, “all the glaciers in the Himalayas will have melted by the year 2035.” This latter we now know was made up from whole cloth, like the polar bear die-off, and a great deal of nonsense about Arctic and Antarctic ice cover.

To my survey, there is not a single aspect of the “anthropogenic global warming” hypothesis that has been left standing by recent revelations, and more shoes drop every day.

It’s better than that: Sir David King, the British government’s former “chief scientist,” has even had to abandon his arguably paranoid claim that “highly sophisticated” foreign intelligence services and/or wealthy rightwing Americans were behind the e-mail leak from the University of East Anglia, that touched off the bottomless “Climategate” scandal in November. For as he admitted to the Guardian on Monday (hardly a rightwing newspaper), he had simply failed to follow the story.

All the e-mails were hacked through a single server. They included e-mails saved from as far back as 1996, and various data sets that fatally undermined the credibility of the whole international “anthropogenic global warming” research effort—by illustrating conscious selection of statistics, and direct manipulation of reporting in scientific publications, by major players.

From what I can see, I doubt Sir David was dishonest. He had simply averted his eyes from inconvenient truths. This is a very common human foible, and scientists are, I insist, human beings. Had he been following the story he would have grasped that everything came through one server, that the information had not been cherry-picked by some nefarious spy agency over 14 years.

I might almost say the same for the disgraced Dr. Phil Jones, the former boss of the East Anglia operation, now implicated in various cover-ups, attempts to intimidate and silence skeptics, and purposeful breaches of Britain’s freedom of information act. I’m sure he “believed” in what he was doing.

Like communist apparatchiks in the good old days, a global warm-alarmist may “honestly” think he is serving a higher purpose, that he is on “the right side of history,” that he must cut a few corners for the greater good, that the end will eventually justify the means. Read Dostoevsky on this. The book is Crime and Punishment, and the character is Raskolnikov. By subtle increments a failure of candour degenerates into major-league crime.

Not only all the numbers, but all the assumptions behind “AGW”—not “most,” but all—have depended on the manipulation of facts by persons who had an interest in manipulating them. Often the specific incident is small, but the falsehood is cumulative. Investment in the illusion grows, the stakes become too large to forfeit. Yet the reality remains: that we still don’t know any more about long-term human influence on climate than Punxsutawney Phil can know by observing his own shadow.

This should have been obvious to climatologists from the beginning. At the simplest level, they could observe that global temperature estimates depended on a slur of constantly changing thermometer locations and time sequences. NASA’s recent admissions are the more pathetic for that reason: from the top down, these were men who should have known better than to think they could fly beyond the end of such a limb.

I have argued previously for chastity: not limited to the sexual sense, of keeping one’s pants on. The virtue of chastity requires us to look at the world without immediately engaging our desires. Those desires are often not sexual at all; some of the most powerful involve justifying one’s livelihood. A scientist with an interest in getting a result is under huge temptation, compounded by the huge public funding on which his research depends.

Our mysterious capacity for chastity can put us above the animal level: for if we try, we can actually remove the blinkers of, “What’s in it for me?”—and discover truths larger than ourselves. The highest arts and sciences require alike the highest conditions of chastity. It is what lifts us above the groundhogs.

Nice line, eh

...

David Warren is a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen.  Visit his web site at davidwarrenonline.com.


Posted on 02/03/10 at 12:25 PM
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Mike S. Adams

Mike S. Adams

  posted on Tuesday, February 02, 2010
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Deep Thoughts on Coexistence

I’m having difficulty understanding why the last two parking spaces in the parking lot in front of the Cameron School of Business were taken up by a single car this morning. It’s even more perplexing that the car is a Prius. If you can’t fit a Prius into one space, should you really be driving at all?

I understand why people buy the Prius. It’s because they want to preserve Mother Earth for future generations. You don’t want to hog up everything for yourself. So, why can’t you fit that little car into one parking space? Isn’t single parking a better way to make sure you aren’t hogging up more scarce resources than you should?

And what about that bumper sticker that says “Coexist” on the back of the Prius that is currently double parked in front of the business school? How can we coexist if you can’t keep your Prius in a single parking space?

I have a bumper sticker that says “Protected by Glock” on my Honda. Am I more or less likely to be car jacked than the guy who has a “Coexist” bumper sticker?

Is there really any better way to coexist than having a concealed weapons permit? Don’t these permits have a better track record of preventing crimes than the United Nations does in regard to preventing wars?

Recently, one of my students asked his professor whether the United Nations could have prevented World War II if it had been established prior to 1945. She got mad and refused to answer his question. How can we coexist when our progressive professors refuse to answer questions calmly and without anger?

Woodrow Wilson was a progressive. He also went into World War I thinking it would be the war to end all wars. How is that working out so far?

Why did Woodrow Wilson undo years of Republican progress on race by re-segregating the civil service? Did he think we could all get along better if blacks and whites were segregated? Did he think that was best because blacks are intellectually inferior to whites?

If Woodrow Wilson were alive today would he drive a Prius with a “Coexist” bumper sticker? Would he double park his Prius in front of the United Nations building in Manhattan?

Why is the guy who sports a “Coexist” bumper sticker always the same guy who wants to ban a nativity scene from the public square?

Do you mind if I put a “Honk if I’m paying your mortgage” bumper sticker next to your “Coexist” bumper sticker? How about a “Keep honking, I’m reloading” sticker? Could my bumper stickers coexist with your bumper stickers?

How can we coexist if you keep trying to force me to buy into a government health insurance plan I do not want? Why do you insist that I say “yes” when I keep saying “no”?

Would the world be a better place if rape victims would just say “yes”? Would it help them “coexist” with rapists?

Aren’t rapists, like all other criminals, just victims of society? Don’t they deserve treatment in a single payer system just like the victim of rape?

A Muslim-American called my office screaming one day because he thought I called the prophet Mohammad a “queer.” But I didn’t call Mohammad a “queer.” I probably called him a pedophile. Regardless, how can we coexist if you think you have a right to live in this country but have no corresponding duty to learn English?

The angry Muslim started to use threatening language when he called me on the phone. I told him that if he came after me I would let him choose the weapon I would use to protect myself. I asked whether he would prefer a .44 magnum or a .45 ACP. He hung up and never called back. That day, my Smith and my Springfield helped make the world a better place. You could say they helped promote coexistence.

Isn’t a woman who drives a Prius more likely to get an abortion than a woman who drives an SUV? Why can’t the feminist coexist with the fetus? What is all this “my body, my choice” nonsense?

My neighbor is opposed to the Second Amendment. He used to have an “Obama” sign in his yard. Now he has a “Coexist” sticker on his car. I plan to put one of those signs in my yard that says “My neighbor wants to ban all guns. His house is unarmed. Out of respect for his views I promise not to protect him” with a big arrow pointing to his house.

I think people with “coexist” bumper stickers are probably the people Muslims would most like to kill – because of their views on gay rights and abortion. So, maybe they should take the Muslim portion off their “Coexist” stickers.

Maybe “O-exist” is the best kind of sticker for today’s progressives. Doesn’t it make sense given the name of their true Messiah?

Nice line, eh

Mike S. Adams's graphic

©2005-09 Mike S. Adams - Mike Adams, PhD, is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and is a regular columnist for Townhall.com. His column appears here at PTBC with Mike Adams’ express permission by special arrangement with him. Dr. Adams is available for speaking engagements.  Mike Adams’ new book, Feminists Say The Darndest Things.


Posted on 02/02/10 at 10:01 PM
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Rebecca Hagelin

Rebecca Hagelin

  posted on Tuesday, February 02, 2010
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Teen Pregnancy Hype

The mass media is a-buzz over the Alan Guttmacher Institute’s “news” on teen pregnancy. Guttmacher and those who advocate free sex for teenagers seem almost gleeful as they misuse the statistics in an effort to destroy abstinence education programs and promote their condom cure-all mantra. To cause as much public panic as possible, the pro-teen-sex activists would have you believe that the teen pregnancy rate has increased across the board for all teenagers ages 13-19. But it is not so.

In their latest attempt to kill abstinence education, Guttmacher activists use sweeping statements to intentionally mislead the media and general public that they know will never peruse the full report of the latest statistics. Thank the Lord for Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation. He actually read the study (as did I) and provided analysis from a deep knowledge of what works. Rector calls their bluff when he wrote in the National Review Online, “In the decade after the federal government began its meager funding of abstinence education, teen pregnancy fell steadily. Safe-sex experts never linked that decline to abstinence education. But when the news went bad, they swiftly identified abstinence programs as the culprit.”

Here are a few of the key stats missing from the Guttmacher “sound bites”: When they make the sweeping statement that “teen pregnancies have increased by 3 %”, what they aren’t telling you is that among girls 14 years and younger, the pregnancy rate actually continues to decrease. When they say that the pregnancy rate for 15-19-year-olds has increased for the first time in a decade, what’s missing is the fact that the sharp increase was actually for 18 and 19 year-olds. (Not coincidentally, that is the precise time many in that age group head to the great world of relativism and free-sex known as “college” where abstinence education is non-existent.)

After ten years of falling teen pregnancy rates that correspond to the rise in the teaching of abstinence education, there was a slight rise in teen pregnancies among 15-17 year-olds in one twelve month period - from 38.2 per thousand in 2005 to 38.9 per thousand in 2006. But such a small increase in a one-year period after a decade of success isn’t enough to garner massive media attention or justify throwing abstinence education out the window, is it? So that’s why they employ the hype - to make it sound as if the sky is falling.

It is critical to realize that Guttmacher, et al preach “sexual rights” for teenagers. That is their worldview, and it is what drives their policy agenda. They are not interested in reducing teen sexual activity - they want teenagers to be free to have sex yet somehow magically escape the biological consequences that often come with living a life of promiscuity. And their magic wand is the condom.

For the record, here’s my worldview on the subject: If we truly love our teenagers, we will equip them to say no to sex until marriage. I believe that our teens should be absolutely free from the fear of getting pregnant, or from suffering with a sexually transmitted disease, and from the psychological and emotional trauma that comes with having out-of-wedlock sex. I believe that our young people are capable of self-discipline and great displays of maturity when they are encouraged to develop them.

I also believe that teens are getting a wee-bit tired of the “free love”, aging hippies who control the pop culture, and of the Planned Parenthood/Guttmachers of the world pushing their morally bankrupt 60’s self-centered lifestyle on this intelligent and thoughtful younger generation. Our teenagers know they are capable of greater things – and they are waiting for someone – anyone – to tell them that.

Let that someone be you. Recently I asked a beautiful teenage girl I know about what motivates her to remain sexually pure, she said simply, “My sense of morality, which is based on my faith and the values my mother and father have taught me.” When I asked if there are any other reasons she said, “Respect. I know that I will have more respect from my peers if I uphold high standards.”

There you have it in a nutshell. To learn how you can teach this superior lifestyle to your teens and encourage educators to back your efforts by using abstinence education materials in the classroom, visit abstinence.net.

Nice line, eh

Rebecca Hagelin's graphic

Rebecca Hagelin is a vice president of The Heritage Foundation.  Get her newest book,
30 Ways in 30 Days to Take Back Your Home.


Posted on 02/02/10 at 08:43 AM
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Mike S. Adams

Mike S. Adams

  posted on Monday, February 01, 2010
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Mosque University

Dutch politician Geert Wilders is being tried in Amsterdam over some controversial remarks he made about terrorism and Islam. I’m glad I live in the United States of America, where such a trial would be prohibited by the First Amendment. I’m also glad I don’t teach at Temple University in Philadelphia, where students now have to pay an unconstitutional after-the-fact security fee levied by the university. This fee was for hosting none other than Geert Wilders.

The notion that it is permissible to charge a student group extra fees for security simply because a speaker’s views are controversial (read: not approved of by university administrators) might be acceptable at the University of Havana or the University of Beijing. But it should never happen in America.

Geert Wilders came to Temple University on October 20, 2009. Wilders was invited in the wake of a controversy surrounding his film “Fitna” which was released in 2008. The film was controversial because it features passages of the Koran interspersed with scenes of violence on the part of Muslims. The movie was shown during the presentation at Temple. Extra security was provided and there was no disturbance.

On December 3, Temple University Purpose (TUP) – the group that hosted Wilders -was surprised with a bill from Temple for $800 for a “Security Officer.” This came with the explanation that the charge was for the costs “to secure the room and building.”

TUP Interim President Brittany Walsh pointed out that Temple had said – prior to the event - the university would pay any extra security costs. But, after repeated emails, she has received no substantive reply. This is odd because, as one can see from their mission statement, TUP is not a conservative group – the type most likely to be singled out for such treatment:

“The mission of Temple University Purpose is to advocate for justice and equality of oppressed and underrepresented populations. The Temple University Purpose welcomes the whole of the student body of Temple University’s Main campus schools. Demonstrated through advocacy, on behalf of vulnerable populations, towards the eradication of oppression, and guided by the NASW Code of Ethics, the Temple University Purpose honors diversity and is dedicated to social change, social justice, and social unity. The Temple University Purpose provides an open forum in which conventional and unconventional views are exchanged and challenged to enhance understanding of and appreciation for others’ strife, values, devotions, and passions. The voice of every member is most valued, shall always be heard, and genuinely considered, as it is the foundation of the Temple University Purpose. Through active participation in the community, it is possible to contribute to the development of not only one as an empathic human being but, also, to the growth of our immediate and surrounding society. The Temple University Purpose firmly believes in embracing and challenging scholarly discussion of most-critical issues and debates on present developments concerning the open field of social work and society in all parts of our country and world.”

Obviously, this group is being punished financially because it hosted a speaker likely to offend a particularly volatile segment of the population. As a consequence, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has written to the president of Temple. In that letter, FIRE cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement (1992), which says, “Speech cannot be financially burdened, any more than it can be punished or banned, simply because it might offend a hostile mob.”

Temple is a public university and is bound by the Supreme Court’s decisions. If they are smart, they will go the way of four other public universities—the University of Colorado at Boulder; University of Massachusetts Amherst; University of California, Berkeley; and University of Arizona—and abandon such security fees before they get sued.

Two years ago, Temple’s speech code was struck down by the Third Circuit. That lawsuit was handled by my friends at the Alliance Defense Fund. If the university does not begin to respect the First Amendment, additional humiliation and litigation are certain to follow.

My message to Temple University President Ann Weaver Hart is simple: You have been warned. Reverse your course of action or face the consequences. If you do not think I am serious, just ask former Georgia Tech President Wayne Clough.

Nice line, eh

Mike S. Adams's graphic

©2005-09 Mike S. Adams - Mike Adams, PhD, is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and is a regular columnist for Townhall.com. His column appears here at PTBC with Mike Adams’ express permission by special arrangement with him. Dr. Adams is available for speaking engagements.  Mike Adams’ new book, Feminists Say The Darndest Things.


Posted on 02/01/10 at 10:01 PM
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David Warren

David Warren

  posted on Sunday, January 31, 2010
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Laughing in the face of danger

Hardly anyone likes banks. I have a sneaking contrarian regard for them, because I think of bankers as droll people, and enjoy bankerly dark humour, which looks at any human enterprise as a wild dance atop the cliff of bankruptcy. At least, this used to be the case, though I must admit the bankers I’ve known have been mostly French, Dutch, or British.

I think of one blue-shirted gentleman named John, who presided over a little Barclay’s branch in Covent Garden, London, a generation ago. He didn’t even have to say anything to errant shopkeepers seeking short-term loans. They’d just look at him and change their minds. He was as generous as the day was long, but never with the bank’s money. He told riches-to-rags stories, with the relish of a country vicar reciting the misfortunes of his parishioners: a rich, internalized, cello duet between sincere compassion and slapstick farce.

Insurance underwriters I have also loved. One in particular, a gentleman I shall call Neville, for that was his name, I used to take walks with en route to some bar in a certain Asian city. He was a delight to walk with. As we would pass down a street, he would point to all the physical hazards.

He could spot which roof tiles were likeliest to blow off; which walls might collapse from cumulative traffic vibrations; bolts on fire escapes waiting to rust through. He could explain the kind of ankle injury a pedestrian could sustain from an irregular sidewalk, that would leave him a lifelong cripple. How the cab driver idling between fares might die unaware of carbon monoxide, and the legal fallout on the ownership of his taxi licence.

And then, at the bar, how a miscalculation by the brewmaster could by-produce formaldehyde enough to fill a hospital ward with customers suffering esophageal burning and cardiac arrhythmia.

Neville made the world a brighter place.

Doctors can also make fine companions, and I like neurologists the best. There’s one named Jeremy who once put me in view, in a church basement, of the ways in which a slight bump to the head, of no apparent immediate consequence, could turn one into a human vegetable. Conversely, of shrapnel injuries that had been survived. How I wished to introduce him to Neville.

There is some form of dark humour appropriate to persons of every rank and class. Among journalists it used to be de rigueur to joke about perfectly unreliable sources; about the stupidest lie one ever fell for. Not that malice has ever been required, for one might also recall how he was led, innocently and plausibly, from one misunderstanding to another, into writing a piece of reportage that would go down in the annals of journalism as the most embarrassingly mistaken scoop ever to appear on a front page. One might even embellish such stories, for the sake of warning one’s younger colleagues.

Nor can I pretend no such thing ever happened to me. I was once asked to fill in for an ulcerous movie reviewer, by an editor who could not be convinced that I knew nothing about the cinema. The plot summary I then provided for a rather complicated Italian movie began to go wrong about the beginning when I did not grasp the opening scene was a “flashback.”

My reader may perhaps be aware, from his own line of work, of immense fields of tragicomedic potentiality. God in his wisdom gave us dreams to cope with our secret forebodings; with the many slips between cups and lips. Even the sleeping birds seem to dream; and to compensate for our comparatively greater endowment of foresight, we have humour, including the very darkest kind, to get us through the daylight stretches.

Indeed, I have long observed a disposition towards “black humour” is a reasonably accurate predictor of orthodoxy in religious belief, and soundness of political judgment. Add an indubitable propensity to self-deprecation, and you might even be able to trust the fellow. (Or the girl, as case may be.)

Returning to bankers, who are now under the gun from legislators in both America and Europe—for having crawled out on limbs of different sorts—my sense is that they need more than merely adequate reserve requirements.

They are made the scapegoats for a whole society that has been going out on limbs of credit, without sufficient reserves. They also have a better excuse, for American bankers in particular were put under legislative requirements to provide mortgages and other credit to customers they did not traditionally fancy, and they invented some of the wilder postmodern risk-management schemes directly in response to such political pressure. It is a cold, cruel world for politicians’ scapegoats.

It is made colder not only by the societal tendency towards rank irresponsible consumerism. For the visitation of grim, atheist “political correctness” on every aspect of human life has been taking its toll. It acts, for instance, as a poison to kill dark humour. The effect is bankers and others less and less able to see risk, because they less and less dare to joke about it.

Nice line, eh

...

David Warren is a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen.  Visit his web site at davidwarrenonline.com.


Posted on 01/31/10 at 08:20 AM
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