Considerettes

Equal pay for equal work is something I think we can all get behind.  But feminism, at least on the liberal side of the equation, has come to mean that sexual equality is more important than nurturing as a mother.  Originally trying to get men to not think of women as sex objects, today’s liberal feminist is doing precisely that.

Lori Ziganto has the scoop: Empowerment: Women Now Choose Objectification Over ‘Creepy’ Breastfeeding.

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When Sonia Sotomayor was questioned by the Senate before her confirmation as a Supreme Court justice, she sounded positively conservative.  As Don Surber notes:

A year ago, as senators were deciding whether to confirm her appoinment, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy asked: “Is It Safe To Say That You Accept The Supreme Court’s Decision As Establishing That The Second Amendment Right Is An Individual Right? Is That Correct?”

Then-Judge Sotomayor replied: “Yes, Sir.”

NewsBusters has the video.

However, she voted against individual gun rights a couple of days ago.

In her dissent against the finding that the city of Chicago’s ban on handguns is unconstitutional, Justice Sonia Sotomajor said: “I Can Find Nothing In The Second Amendment’s Text, History, Or Underlying Rationale That Could Warrant Characterizing It As ‘Fundamental’ Insofar As It Seeks To Protect The Keeping And Bearing Of Arms For Private Self-Defense Purposes.”

It does establish "an individual right" but doesn’t protect "private self-defense purposes".  Right.  I’m not a constitutional law scholar, but what tortured reasoning can you have in mind when you agree with the first statement, and then make the second statement?  Or is it just out and out lying? 

And now Elena Kagan is in front of the Senate, and Paul Mirengoff notes, "As with Sotomayor’s articulated vision, Kagan’s could have come from the lips of John Roberts."  Is this what we can expect from Obama nominees now and in the future; not just a resistance to being pigeon-holed, but being completely evasive to the point of mischaracterizing their own views? 

I hate to have to wind up with two justices that are not at all what they sold themselves to be in order to find out how true this may be, but this does point out how important elections are.  The enduring legacy of Obama, besides the enormous debt we’ll be saddled with, are Supreme Court justices that are entirely, 100% political, willing to say whatever it takes to get their job.

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Timothy Dalrymple, in his second article of a series on the Tea party, asks this question.  (His first was; is it a social justice movement?  More are coming.)  He asks this particular question because of a similar question asked by Jim Wallis, he of Sojourners and the Christian Left. 

Dalrymple notes that, for starters, that for a guy who doesn’t like to be caricatured (and who does?), Wallis certainly uses it to make his points.  Some excerpts from Dalrymple:

The first sleight of hand comes in the phase, "Tea Party Libertarianism." Wallis poses the question: "Just how Christian is the Tea Party movement — and the Libertarian political philosophy that lies behind it?" Yet not all Tea Party supporters are Libertarians, and Wallis twists the Libertarian "political philosophy" beyond recognition.

[…]

How, then, does Reverend Wallis describe the "political philosophy" of the Tea Party? Wallis likens the Tea Partiers to the murderous Cain, who believed or pretended to believe that he was not his brother’s keeper.

[…]

Finally (I will deal with the racism charge in the third part of this series), Wallis condemns the Tea Party’s "preference for the strong over the weak" through its "supreme confidence in the market" — indeed, in a "sinless market" that has no need for oversight or regulation. The values of the Tea Party do not honor "God’s priorities" but "the priorities of the Chamber of Commerce."

These are powerful claims. They are also patently absurd. Only those who are already conditioned to expect the worst of political conservatives can believe that this represents a fair and honest account of the beliefs and values of the Tea Party movement. Would any Tea Partier — any single one, out of the millions across America who support or participate in the movement — actually accept this definition? It is an astonishing distortion of the Tea Party message to reduce it to "just leave me alone and don’t spend my money."

Rather than painting the movement with the brush of Rand Paul, Reverend Wallis might have consulted the polling data that shows what the majority of Tea Party supporters believe. He would have found a reality that defies the caricature.

Dalrymple proceeds to deal with these caricatures one by one, showing that Wallis either has no idea what the Tea Partiers really stand for, or who they really are.  Dalrymple does a good job of being moderate in his pronouncements, noting, in many places, that neither side, Wallis nor the Tea Partiers, inhabit the extreme positions they each are often accused of, and does a great job of explaining what’s really going on in conservatives’ heads.  Example:

What also needs to be refuted is the notion that resistance to higher levels of taxation is necessarily selfish. To resent a tax hike (or the prospect of one) is not to neglect the needy, and to wish to retain control over the funds one has secured in order to care for one’s family is not necessarily selfish. Conservatives generally are more generous with their giving than liberals, yet they resent it when a distant bureaucracy extracts their money in order to distribute public funds to the special interest groups on whose votes and donations they rely. Conservatives would prefer that care for the needy remain as local and personal as possible. Jobless Joe is more accountable to use the money he is given wisely, and to strive to become self-sufficient as swiftly as possible, when he receives that money from the members of the church down the street. This is not to deny that government services are needed, but it is to refute the notion that "taxed enough already" is a slogan of economic narcissism.

So, is this a Christian movement?  Dalrymple’s answer is a solid "yes and no".  I’ll let you read the whole thing to get his complete take on it, but answering this provided another point of moderation between the two sides.

In the New York Times poll, 39% of Tea Party supporters identified themselves as evangelicals or "born again," and 83% identify as Protestant or Catholic. If Wallis were correct in his description of the philosophy that undergirds their movement, then these conservative Christians would be abandoning the essential ethical principles of their faith. Yet this is hardly the case. What separates Jim Wallis from the Tea Partiers is not a difference of moral quality, or the presence and absence of compassion, but a different vision of the society that biblical love and justice require.

This is a much more sober description of the differences that in Wallis’ article.  In it, he labels some of the (supposed, caricatures) values of the Tea Party as "decidedly un-Christian", while at the same time saying he wants to "have the dialog".  In reality, he’s made up his mind already.  Dalrymple, arguing from the Right, gives both sides a benefit of the doubt that Wallis doesn’t seem to be willing to do.

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We had a big discussion about this issue 3 years ago, but the Boy Scouts will not be evicted from a building they built but lease from Philadelphia for $1 a year.

A Philadelphia jury has ruled in favor of the Boy Scouts, meaning they will not be evicted from their home or forced to pay rent, at least for now.

Outside the courthouse, a lawyer for the Boy Scouts, Jason Gosselin, told Fox News the Scouts won on the most important issue, that of First Amendment rights.  The jury found the city posed an unconstitutional condition on the organization by asking it to pay $200,000 annual rent on property it was leasing for a dollar a year, in a building the Scouts built and paid for themselves, all because the city felt the Scouts were in violation of Philadelphia’s anti-discrimination laws.

"What we really want is to sit down with the city and resolve this matter once and for all" Gosselin says.

The Supreme Court ruled years ago that, indeed, the Boy Scouts can decide who is allowed to join.  Thus to purport to be shocked about the policies of a 100-year-old organization is incredibly disingenuous. 

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Remember that full-page ad that MoveOn.org took out to condemn General Petraeus (or as they called him, "General Betray Us")?  You may have forgotten, but MoveOn certainly does.  They kept that ad up on their website every since then.

Well, that is, until just the other day when it became clear that Petraeus would be replacing McChrystal.  Then all of a sudden >poof< the page itself, and one describing their rational for the ad, magically disappear from their site.  See, now that Obama has tapped him for a job, he’s not so bad after all.

Remember how the Soviets used to airbrush people out of pictures who had fallen out of favor with the Communist party?  You may have forgotten, but MoveOn certainly does. Inconvenient memory?  Scrub it away.

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As much as General Stanley McChrystal’s comments in his Rolling Stone magazine interview may accurately reflect the military’s view of Obama as Commander-in-Chief, he was wrong to make them to the news media.  He’s not the policy maker; Obama is. 

I disapproved of this sort of behavior under George W. Bush, and I want to say for the record that I disapprove of it under Barack Obama. 

That is all.

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In his (always excellent) column yesterday, James Taranto noted that, earlier this month, President Obama was calling small-government conservatives hypocrites for expecting the government to lead in the Gulf oil spill issue.

In an interview with Politico, the president said: "I think it’s fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful spending."

The president also implied that anti-big government types such as tea party activists were being hypocritical on the issue.

"Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much," Obama said. "Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms."

Got that? If you didn’t support Obama’s effort to take over the health-care system, you’re a hypocrite if you expect him to lead in a crisis, and the oil spill is the fault of the minority party in Congress for its hypothetical opposition that hypothetically deterred Obama from taking hypothetical preventive measures.

Obama makes it clear that he has no idea at all what the Tea Partiers are all about (or he does, and feigns ignorance to make some political points).  Small government types are actually more correctly labeled "right-sized government" types.  It just doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily. 

Our Constitution enumerates the powers of government, and was written with a particular role of government in mind.  Our Founding Fathers, understanding man’s fallen nature as revealed in the Bible and seeking to restrain the inevitable power grab that all governments throughout history had tended towards, tried to restrain the beast while still providing enough power to do the job it was intended to do.

And so the Tea Partiers seek to restore government to that role and restraint.  It so happens that this proper size of government is quite a bit smaller than what we have now, so "smaller government" is a good enough label for now.  And the health care takeover is just the latest and most blatant attempt to "super-size" this beast.

But comparing opposition to the health care bill with criticism of the federal government’s handling of the Gulf oil spill is like comparing apples with prime numbers.  One is not what our Constitution intended (and some are making the case that it doesn’t allow it at all), especially requiring all citizens to purchase something and penalize them if they don’t.  The other is an interstate crisis that the federal government is specifically for. 

In this case, Obama has been dithering while Louisiana tried to get booms or barrier islands to block the oil.  He didn’t use a well-tested and very effective method to clean things up early on.  He turned down offers of help from 17 countries.  He’s used this disaster to push for ethanol subsidies that have been panned by both Republicans and Democrats alike for, among other things, shrinking the food supply in poor countries.

Are those of us "small government" types hypocritical to suggest we get leadership from our President in a time of crisis?  No, we’re not, and either the President knows this but is willing to use this situation to score political points, or he’s hopelessly ignorant about his critics. 

In the meantime, we’re stuck with a community organizer in the Oval Office who won’t or can’t or doesn’t know how to lead.  BP deserves what it gets (and likely more) as the fallout from this spill continues, but President Obama is likely to be protected by his party and what supporters he still has left.  (Hey, when you’ve lost James Carville, you’ve lost a lot of the Left.)  It’s a teachable moment.  Is the President in class?

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Thomas Sowell reviews the book "Out of Work" by Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallawa, which, among other things, counters the idea that it was the depression that cause the subsequent unemployment problem.  But as Sowell notes, the historical stats say something completely different.

Those who think that the stock market crash in October 1929 is what caused the huge unemployment rates of the 1930s will have a hard time reconciling that belief with the data in that table.

Although the big stock market crash occurred in October 1929, unemployment never reached double digits in any of the next 12 months after that crash. Unemployment peaked at 9 percent, two months after the stock market crashed– and then began drifting generally downward over the next six months, falling to 6.3 percent by June 1930.

This was what happened in the market, before the federal government decided to "do something."

That "something" was government intervention.

What the government decided to do in June 1930– against the advice of literally a thousand economists, who took out newspaper ads warning against it– was impose higher tariffs, in order to save American jobs by reducing imported goods.

This was the first massive federal intervention to rescue the economy, under President Herbert Hoover, who took pride in being the first President of the United States to intervene to try to get the economy out of an economic downturn.

Within six months after this government intervention, unemployment shot up into double digits– and stayed in double digits in every month throughout the entire remainder of the decade of the 1930s, as the Roosevelt administration expanded federal intervention far beyond what Hoover had started.

Oh, and there was another stock market crash, more recently, that did not result in huge unemployment.  Quite the opposite, in fact.

The very fact that we still remember the stock market crash of 1929 is remarkable, since there was a similar stock market crash in 1987 that most people have long since forgotten.

What was the difference between these two stock market crashes? The 1929 stock market crash was followed by the most catastrophic depression in American history, with as many as one-fourth of all American workers being unemployed. The 1987 stock market crash was followed by two decades of economic growth with low unemployment.

But that was only one difference. The other big difference was that the Reagan administration did not intervene in the economy after the 1987 stock market crash– despite many outcries in the media that the government should "do something."

Hat tip to Don Sensing, who has some charts and graphs to help point this out.

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A typical reason couples live together before getting married is that, supposedly, this will allow them to find out if they are compatible and thus ensure their marriage lasts longer.  But a new study says, nope, they are less likely to stay married.

Read my lips; no new taxes on those making $250,000 or less.  Well, we may soon add to the many exceptions since that promise was made, "unless you own a home".

The revolving door between the MSM and the Democratic Party.  Oh, that liberal media.

If the Gulf oil spill had happened on Bush’s watch, do you really think the environmental groups would be as virtually silent as they are now?  (Me neither.)

Remember how the UN climate change panel was supposed to be the result of boatloads of scientists in agreement?  Turns out the boat was a dingy.

And from the "Beware of Governments Bearing Gifts" department:

Churches and other faith-based organizations that receive government funds, beware. In an agreement that will be enforced by a federal court, government agencies in New York have agreed to monitor the Salvation Army to ensure that it doesn’t impose religion on the people its serves through its tax-funded social services.

The agreement just effects the Salvation Army’s social work in New York, but it’s more than a cautionary tale for religious groups in this era of government-backed faith-based initiatives. "With this settlement, government is watching out," co-counsel Deborah Karpatkin of the N.Y. Civil Liberties Union said in a statement. "It will not fund religious organizations to proselytize to recipients of government-funded social services."

The Salvation Army’s social services are intended to be an expression of faith in God and love for fellow man, but if they are prevented from doing the former while performing the latter, they’re being hobbled.  My suggestion has always been to avoid government money at all costs.

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Which country’s citizens see it as more socially just; the capitalistic United States, or the bit-more-socialist Germany?

70 % of Germans polled consider their economic system hardly or not at all socially just. "A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters finds that 24% believe American society is generally unfair and discriminatory".

The very of embodiment of capitalism, the U.S., fares better in the category "social justice" than welfare state Germany, based on the subjective judgement of each population?

Makes you wonder whether Germany shouldn’t turn to American style capitalism in order to improve social justice in the country…

Hey, Michael Moore, do you hear me? Michael?

As German blogger David notes, this is a subjective measure, but it’s very interesting to see the huge disparity.  Part of this is likely due to what each country’s people consider "socially just", so that standard may be different.  But I think that’s an important issue.  I find it very likely that Germans, who have come to expect more hand-holding by their government, don’t see what their government does as enough, mostly because government can never do "enough".  At some point the individual has to own their situation, but growing up and living in a culture where this is expected, any time the government falls short (and it will fall short, a lot) is perceived as "unjust", and contributes to an overall disappointment with a government that is quite possibly redistributing much more wealth than the United States.

In the US, the pendulum can swing the other way, too.  In a country built on individualism, it’s possible that most might see the economic system as being just fine, might see those not making it as moochers, and thus consider it more "just".  But as has been noted before, the same folks who defend capitalism the most (i.e. the center-right in this country) also give more in charity personally, in both time and money, and don’t expect the government (i.e. everybody else) to do it for them.  They own their own social justice issue, and thus, I believe, see it as just.  Not perfect, because neither situation is, and people will fall through the cracks under both systems.  But they do own it themselves.

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This is the title of a post by Phil Cooke on his blog "The Change Revolution".  Phil is a Christian media consultant (that is, a consultant to Christian media) and has had some big name clients.  His bio is impressive.

But I think he’s not giving churches and other Christian organizations enough credit.  As to why the changes in movies are happening, why the reduction in sex and nudity, this is his answer:

Wal-Mart.

That’s right. In 2007, the major Hollywood studios made $17.9 billion in DVD sales. The catch? $4 billion (nearly 25%) was made from selling to Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world. But Wal-Mart actually has a policy that forces any movie with high sexuality and nudity away from the areas of highest visibility in their stores. They take those DVD’s and put them in an "adult" section that’s much harder for customers to see.

Why do they do it? They don’t want to offend moms. They know mothers are there to get family oriented DVD’s for their kids, and they represent a huge market for Wal-Mart.

OK, fair enough.  And here’s what he says isn’t working.

Although it might be hard to believe, sexuality and nudity is actually going down in movies today. And a number of Christian organizations are taking the credit. Some raise money based on telling the public they work in Hollywood "consulting" the studios, and others say they boycott or apply pressure from the outside. I don’t need to mention them, but they jump to the forefront when statistics indicate that sexuality in movies have dropped over the last number of years, and are the first in line to take credit. But the truth is, that’s bunk.

His conclusion:

Is it religious ministry organizations making the difference? Nope. Studios are discovering that it’s simply good business.

I’m not sure that the conclusion necessarily follows. He zeroes in on Moms making good choices, but if we zoom out just a tad, isn’t it very likely that many of those moms are actively participating in a boycott of some sort?  Isn’t it at least possible that knowledge of certain religious organizations’ views influence their choices? 

And what of Wal-Mart itself?  The Walton family has a background in the Presbyterian Church USA and have given millions to that church.  I find it highly likely that their decisions for the stores is influenced by their church and other religious ministries.

Are bees responsible for the production of fruit on trees?  Nope.  Each individual bee is just hungry.  OK, not the best analogy, but hopefully it serves to show that if you look too closely, you can miss a much larger picture.  I’m surprised that a guy like Cooke can miss something like this.  Perhaps the influence of religious organizations isn’t as big as those organizations themselves think.  But Cooke’s analysis by no means proves they have no influence.

Salt and light work.

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A couple of encouraging pieces recently regarding the abortion issue in American and the world.  First, Ramesh Ponnuru notes that 2010 looks to be the Year of the Pro-Life Woman.  Having little to show for itself in Washington, DC, the pro-life movement is getting some allies.

Two pro-life women won Republican nominations for the Senate this week. A Tea Party favorite, Sharron Angle, and the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina are running for the Senate from Nevada and California, respectively.

A third pro-life woman, Susana Martinez, became the party’s nominee for governor of New Mexico, and a fourth, Nikki Haley, a South Carolina state legislator, is expected to be a gubernatorial nominee in her state. If they win their primaries, Kelly Ayotte, the former attorney general of New Hampshire, and Jane Norton, the former lieutenant governor of Colorado, will also be pro-life Senate candidates in November.

None of these candidates is a single-issue pro-lifer. But these women have not been shy about discussing the issue, either. Neither Ms. Fiorina nor Ms. Haley would have been likely to get Ms. Palin’s endorsement — valuable in a Republican primary — without firmly opposing abortion. Likewise, Ms. Angle would not have been able to unite populist conservatives and beat the party establishment’s candidate had she been pro-choice.

Why this is happening is seemingly paradoxical, but read the whole thing for his excellent analysis.

In other news, the United Nations is having trouble forcing the issue overseas.  Seems its reasons for funding abortions worldwide has fallen apart under scrutiny\.

Deep divisions with top United Nations (UN) officials and abortion activists on one side and maternal health researchers on the other became public this week during the Women Deliver 2 conference in Washington DC.
The dispute threatens to derail hopes of raising $30B for family planning at international development conferences in the coming months. These include the Group of Eight summit this month and the UN High Level Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Review in September.

The medical journal The Lancet published a study in April refuting UN research claiming 500,000+ annual maternal deaths has remained unchanged for decades. The new study put the figure at 342,900 with 60,000 of those from HIV/AIDS, and said the number has been declining since 1980.

[…]

Scientists flatly refused to back up the 20 year-old claim by UN agencies and activists that family planning improves maternal health. The Guttmacher Institute’s president, Sharon Camp, asked Murray whether his study’s finding linking declining global fertility rates to better maternal health supports the idea that more family planning will reduce maternal deaths. Murray replied that "there is no scientific way to prove that."

Scientists also undercut UN staff’s use of the world’s slow progress toward MDG 5 as a basis for urgent pleas for family planning funds. Boerma and Murray both said that its aim of reducing maternal deaths 75% by 2015 was unrealistic since it was not based upon "historical trends." The world would need an 8% annual drop, whereas 4% has been the best so far.

Downplaying the remarks, Guttmacher’s Camp defended a joint Guttmacher-UNFPA report which was based on the now discredited UN figures, and which calls for a doubling of family planning funds in order to reduce maternal deaths by 70%. Camp did not explain why the same amount of funding would be required for a smaller overall reduction.

Leftists have so much pull at the UN, and hence big (really big) government solutions have been all the rage.  It’s just that their appeal to science has pretty much failed.  Of course, that doesn’t mean they’ll stop pushing their agenda, but it’s interesting to hear this from liberals who accuse conservatives of being anti-science.

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Isn’t government supposed to enforce the laws it makes?   Well, it looks like the Obama administration has a bit more leeway.

How’s that Gitmo-closing promise coming along, 5 months after its due date?  "The House Armed Services Committee has dealt a blow to President Obama’s hopes to shutter the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by unanimously approving legislation that would prohibit creating a detention center inside the United States."  Aren’t there one or two Democrats on that committee?

The Hollywood Left just loves their socialists.

American filmmaker Oliver Stone said Friday he deeply admires Hugo Chavez but suggested the Venezuelan president might consider talking a bit less on television.

Promoting his new documentary "South of the Border" in Caracas, Stone heaped praise on Chavez, saying he is leading a movement for "social transformation" in Latin American. The film features informal interviews by Stone with Chavez and six allied leftist presidents, from Bolivia’s Evo Morales to Cuba’s Raul Castro.

"I admire Hugo. I like him very much as a person. I can say one thing. … He shouldn’t be on television all the time," Stone said at a news conference. "As a director I say you don’t want to be overpowering. And I think he is sometimes that way."

(We’re not entirely sure whether Stone said "director" or "dictator" at the end there.  Either can be overpowering.)

When the director of the Congressional Budget Office directly refutes cost-saving claims of the President and his Budget Director, it’s worth noting.  Even the NY Times (finally) notices.

How’s that "smart diplomacy" workin’ for ya’?  Please remember; speeches are no substitute for sound policy.

Marry a Jew, lose your citizenship.  Can armbands with the Star of David be far behind?  Tell me again, who are the bad guys in the Middle East peace situation?

How did the pollsters do predicting the recent primary results?  About as good as expected, which isn’t saying much.  And the Daily Kos fired its official pollster, Research 2000.  Turns out they skewed left.  Now who would have thought that?  This time, however, it was downright embarrassing. 

And finally, Chuck Asay on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  (Click for a larger image.)

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The question of where Saddam Hussein’s WMDs went that the whole world believed were there has been knocked around since at least 2004, with the most popular answer being Syria.  There was some evidence of it, that the MSM cheerfully ignored, but it’s back in the news today because President Obama’s pick for replacement of the Director of National Intelligence believes this is true. 

Ryan Mauro of Pajamas Media has an article today about new satellite imagery that is lending new credence to this thought.  Worth a read.

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Apparently, this story has legs like I never would have imagined.  Even after video comes out showing that the "peace" activists were armed with, among other things, knives, you’d think that folks would see through this little charade. 

Anyway, here are some relevant links from the past few days.

In preparation for sailing, a few harmless Jihad chants and hopes for martyrdom.  Then, after cheerfully ignoring warnings about the blockade, preparing for violent confrontation.  (The very first link also has a video of the attacks on the soldiers.)  The reason that the IDF soldiers were taken advantage of initially, I believe, is that they didn’t think "peace" activists would try to stab them to death. 

There are some photos, taken by the activists terrorists themselves showing downed IDF soldiers.  Reuters, in two different cases, decided that they should crop out the part of the picture that shows knives in the hands of those peaceful protestors.  Ruins the narrative.

Is the blockade against Gaza legal?  Why yes, yes it is.  And if you have more questions about the blockade in general or the flotilla in particular, this is a great resource.

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