Little Darlings...

the smiles returning to their faces...

Here Comes the Sun.

Shaun White... gets a haircut.

The video of the punky snowboarder seems to indicate the man decided it was time to go with short hair.  But change is hard, and he had the Locks of Love donation to explain his reasons...

So he got the haircut, for them.

Uh, huh.  It's ok to grow up and change Shaun, really.  Bet you'll like that thick head of redhair, once it's dry.  Looks nice!

Doubling Down.

Wisconsin Law Prof. Althouse is back again today with lousy homosexual analogies, defending her and Reynolds' ignorant pedophile comparison in the post below,

"What is the gun community going to do about this tragedy?"
"I dunno. What is the gay community going to do about Penn State?”

and now restating Justice Scalia's comparison of homosexuals to murderers.

In his Lawrence dissent (he lost under the Due Process* of the law clause ), which he read from the bench, Scalia wrote:

State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are... sustainable only in light of Bowers’ validation of laws based on moral choices. Every single one of these laws is called into question by today’s decision; the Court makes no effort to cabin the scope of its decision to exclude them from its holding.
 

He criticized his colleagues for taking “sides in the culture war” and railed against those supposedly endorsing “the so-called homosexual agenda.”

For this, Scalia was rightly mocked at the time for his fears: 
"But... but... if we permit consensual sodomy, for gays as well as straights, how can we ban private MASTURBATION based on moral terms??" It was kinda funny actually.  (The gay student group at the Wisconsin law school posted a good cartoon mocking the justice on their group's community bulletin board;  we left it hanging up too, even when it was suggested through the official grapevine that perhaps we should consider removing it, lest someone's feelings be offended.)

Hoping to keep stirring the provocative pot, the Wisconsin professor writes today,

Now, it's rhetoric to act like he equated homosexuality with bestiality. It's rhetoric to say — as the Princeton student did — "Do you have any regret or shame for drawing these comparisons you did in your dissents?"

Remember how Scalia responded to the student?

“If we cannot have moral feelings against or objections to homosexuality, can we have it against anything? I don’t think it’s necessary, but I think it’s effective.” ... 

“It’s a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the ‘reduction to the absurd.  If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?”

That one was rightly mocked too. (622 comments, mostly pushing back...)

Give it a rest, professors.
Keep on making all these negative homo references, and people will think you're deliberately limiting yourself to making that your negative touchstone.

Why keep picking on the queers, just because you're living in Wisconsin and Tennessee, professors? Aren't you clever enough to make these comparisons work using other marginally unpopular groups?

Don't you see the change that's gonna come?
Don't you understand how ignorant such continued "academic" taunting looks to the next generations coming up?

Now I get it: the closer and closer these types come to realizing game over -- their special straight/divorced privileges will be shared with others across the country, even the dread homosexuals -- the more there'll be backlash, especially in the still non-free states with state constitutional amendments affirming gays' second-class status.

Still, even the Pope uses gentler wording to defend his beliefs, which will stand in his private realms. You'd think two supposedly prominent law professors would take care of how they're coming out on this one, continually pushing an anti-gay meme**.  (Solely for rhetorical purposes, of course.)

Ignorance, indeed. Maybe when Scalia goes, he can take the Reynolds and Althouse dinosaur-style thinking with him? Not cool at all...
-------------------------------------------
*   Kennedy, writing for the majoity: 

"Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government.  The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual."
 

 ** I think it has something to do with serving two masters:  They're both primarily bloggers now. Nothing truly fresh in their legal writing work.   Eager to court controversy for page hits -- which is why I don't bother to link. You can find this stuff, if you like.

 Too bad the schools' reputations are being dragged down by their reputations for provoking solely for provocation's sake... That's not good teaching in the first place, never mind creatively limited. Pick on someone your own size, Straight White Entitled Boomers?

How Low Can They Go?

UW Law Professor Ann Althouse links to her colleague Tenn. Law Professor Instapundit Glenn Reynolds:

"What is the gun community going to do about this tragedy?"

"I dunno. What is the gay community going to do about Penn State?”

Those two new media bloggers. Nothing is too offensive (and stupid) for them to exploit for blog hits, I suppose.

Can't we get some early buyout retirement for these law professor types? Haven't they realized their days in the sun are over, and they're just kinda embarrassing themselves and their schools by association?

Heh. Not funny.
Indeed.
------------------
ADDED: The rabble respond:

AF said... Right, because gay people are to raping boys as semiautomatics are to killing people.
Fucking bigots.

Inga said...
Another weird false analogy, such grasping, overreach.

Coketown said...
I wonder how the GRE would frame an analogy question like this.

Gun owners : Murderers ::
A) Homosexuals : Rapist pedophiles
B) Canaries : Birds
C) Pasta : Italians
D) Coketown : Awesome

and AF again:

The reason the gun community has to answer for this tragedy is that the policies they advocate are coming under attack and they have to decide whether and how to defend them. Stigmatization has very little to do with it. I'm sure some lefties have said bad things about gun owners and if they hurt your feelings, I apologize on their behalf. But to draw an analogy between pedophilia and homosexuality on one hand, and guns and killing people on the other, is blatant homophobia. Which will always draw a hearty fuck you from me.

Here's another, hitting back hard:
garage mahal said...

RE: "InstaPundit thinks that it would be absurd and ridiculous to blame all gays for the minuscule percentage of gays who are serial rapists"

That's the same ridiculous excuse some Catholics use to excuse rapes by priests in their Church. "They were just gay!"

and

Cap'n Chaos said...
I guess nobody has informed you folks that the vast majority of pederasts are in fact hetrosexuals?

one more time for the slow folk...

AF said...
"do the lefties here really not realize that the analogy works precisely because it is false that "all gays are responsible for Penn State" and it is also fault that "all gun owners are responsible for Newtown?"

No, I don't realize that all. Both statements are false, but the analogy is homophobic. Why? Because the premise of the analogy is that guns -- the defining characteristic of the gun community -- bear the same relationship to killing people as homosexuality -- the defining characteristic of the homosexual community -- does to child rape.

Last words:

MadisonMan said...
The analogy works if Jerry Sandusky is a member of the Gay Community. Is he? And if he is, why? (I ask that because he is apparently happily married (to a delusional woman, but still....), which argues against his homosexuality.
---------
"Gays as a community don't support gay rape."

Jerry Sandusky is not part of the gay community, nor is he identified as a homosexual. He's a pederast. The gay community has nothing to do with it, as he never was part of that, nor did they ever advocate any policies that would let you link them with pedastery. It simply does not compare to the NRA advocating policies like rapidload Bushmaster rifles, which are not used by any true hunter, but are just target toys for overgrown boys.

(Cue the NAMBLA comments in 3-2-1...)

The ignorance keeps going and going...

bagoh20 said...
RE. "Sandusky wasn't homosexual.
He was a pedophile."

Oh C'mon, grow up. He was both. He's queer, he's here, deal with it.

Punching back harder:

Palladian said...
RE "Oh C'mon, grow up. He was both. He's queer, he's here, deal with it."

There is no evidence that Sandusky evinced any attraction to or interest in sexually developed men. That's not homosexuality, that's pedophilia.

And how does a supposedly intelligent law professor, or two, put somebody in a "community" that he's never identified with, never participated in or advocated for? If that's their definition of "community", no wonder these affluent folks and their kids are so screwed up... (Hint: you gotta actually be IN the community to be considered a part of it, no?)

It's the End of the World as we know it...

and I feel fine.

Three words I've known to be true, since losing a childhood pal to leukemia at 15.... Life. Goes. On.

Don't let this rattle your faith, or think to blame this one on God. This one's on us, and only we, not our Gods, can do something to stop the next one before it happens.

Stay strong. Don't let the evil win.
We created this mess, allowed it to happen in our modern American society.
We can fix it too. Don't stop believing that.

Gaudete Sunday.

Rejoice in the Lord always...

again I say, rejoice. Let your forbearance be known to all, for the Lord is near at hand; have no anxiety about anything, but in all things, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. Lord, you have blessed your land; you have turned away the captivity of Jacob.

— Philippians 4:4–6; Psalm 85 (84):1

Despite the otherwise somber readings of the season of Advent, which has as a secondary theme the need for penitence, the readings on the third Sunday emphasize the joyous anticipation of the Lord's coming.

I like that our priest today did not deviate from the program; his homily was about rejoicing, and he didn't once address the tragedy out East.

Personally, we're not affected, especially the older people, the young kids awaiting Christmas, and the non parents with no kids in the schools to worry over. The media, including the new media blogs* looking to leach off these "hot" topics have reason -- $$$ -- to stir things up, the politicians not so much.

The more attention we pay the killer, the more trouble we're going to see from this demographic, particularly all the sheltered kids whose parents have been collecting monthly disability checks, plus caregiver supplements, for their child's mental disabilities, who age out and are unable to meet the higer level of adult disability.

Suddenly, all the individualized, specialized education plans the schools had to shield them from reality are gone; it's them and the real world, with a special education that does not prepare them for that. Some fight and fight (with parental help) to gain adult disability, but it takes time, years, to build the medical and vocational case that you really are prevented from ever being gainfully employed in life to justify the continued check until you're 65.

Not Downs' syndrome level disabilities, I mean the behavorial mental ones that the kids have spent their student years regularly medicated for.

I don't know about this latest killer's treatment plan, or alleged mental disability. But imagine all the kids coming up now who won't have a successful transition. Tough love for tantrums is probably easier at 7 or 8, or the teen years even, than it is for little boys in adult bodies at 20 and up.

Will we talk about that? Overhauling the childhood SSI program or addressing those left out at transition to adulthood time? Doubtful.

Will we talk about mandatory relinquishment of rights, so authorities can better monitor the drug.alcohol use of our mentally ill; make unannounced check-up's on them; or even require mandatory institutionalization, if it rises to that level? Doubtful too, even if we could afford to shift the savings from the defunct War on Drugs (it's over; we lost; declare it already.) and its imprisonment to rebuilding smaller and better mental health institutions again.

I represented a man once, who testified during his SSI hearing for alleged mental illness that, "the voices tell me to kill". The judge noted it, ended up awarding the disability, and the man walked out, heading home to his infant son (check for the offspring of a disabled person, too! ca-ching), girlfriend, and a work-free future. Social worker was ok with that. Judge maybe did not know. I didn't stick at that job long...

But I did learn enough to know that if you qualify for a monthly check based on a diagnosed mental illness that proves you are unable to work full time to support yourself or function in society, then you shouldn't walk away with the designation, the monthly payment AND the same rights afforded to competent free men and women.

Of course, the whole Social Security program will collapse before we address those things. Another: why does the disabled minor child of a wealthy man (say, Downs syndrome) need a monthly check for support, if the family is not indigent? For that matter, why are even ADULT offspring of the wealthy, again with something diagnostically unquestioned like Downs syndrome say, rewarded with a monthly check once they reach adulthood and the age of independence? Can't people take care of their own anymore?

Making the disabled rich, rich enough not to work yet to live a very, very comfortable lifestyle for their base needs, is not my idea of "safety net". Still, if you had a Downs syndrome child or otherwise disabled child and you were wealthy, I doubt you'd complain.

One mentally disabled man in a little town over (Barron) passed and left tens of thousands -- I forget the exact figure -- to charities around town. Seems with his subsidized housing, food stamps, no travel expenses and minimal needs, he was simply banking the checks and had enought to donate to liberal groups about town once he passed. Hello? That's not a "safety net" program either.

Those are just asides, but the overall "transitioning" troubles -- from minor childhood mental disabilities to the denial of so many 20-something adults coming up with no planned future -- that issue really should concern us more. Mom won't hold his interest at home forever, of course, and some are non- disabled just enough to have excellent planning abilities, and oh, all that free time on their hands.

Follow the money. We should not make it profitable for all these behavior challenged boys to get medicated in the first place, without a solid plan for their futures. Sometimes tough love, discipline, and constant supervision and attention can work wonders, especially early on. Then we can devote more resources to the truly mentally ill -- those who would benefit by specialized housing and care, and don't just qualify for the check and go back to living freely amongst us.

----------------

* This wins the award for the dumbest thing I read online about the tragedy out East, and by a UW law professor nonetheless:

ADDED: Why did Adam, after killing his mother, travel to the school where she worked? Shouldn't some suspicion fall on the mother? She looks like a victim, but could she and her son have been operating together? News reports say the guns were "apparently" hers, and Adam was buzzed past security at the school because the principal "recognized him as the son of a colleague." If she was a "colleague" and had such a troubled son, why hadn't she conveyed this information to them? If she was staying home from work to deal with his problems, why didn't they know it? What were her issues with them?

Oy vey. She was writing seriously, folks! Defended herself even:

Ann Althouse said...
Re. "The reports of the mother working at the school seem to be false. So, your speculation is over the top."

My link goes to the New York Times, the current version of the story. I have seen places saying maybe she didn't work there, but the Times is keeping its version up, including the part about why the killer was buzzed in. I check it out before speculating, which I kept circumspect. You should have been here in person for the conversation if you wanted to hear over the top. When I do over the top here, you will know it.

This is restraint, my faint-hearted friend.
12/15/12 9:45 AM

That is truly scary.
Don't you think?

Thankfully, there was pushback in the comments, though I don't think anyone ever convinced the professor how silly she sounds:

Granny Jan said...
AA: She looks like a victim, but could she and her son have been operating together?

OK, I agree, it's not "over the top".
It's worse than that. 12/15/12 9:57 AM

and

miss j said...
Of course you can be "over the top" on the internet and in your home. That is your right.

Certainly you realize that many find your wild speculations (based on no facts) to be cold-hearted and bizarre, my thick-skinned writer. 12/15/12 10:02 AM

Then today, there was this:

Ann Althouse said...
I know I'll be accused of "blaming the victim." But who is the victim? I'm trying to head off victimhood. At some stage the "mean kids" are perpetrators, perpetrators of non-crimes, of course, and if later they are murdered, we see them as the beautiful, golden children we have lost. Their goodness and the outsider's evil are sharp and clear at that point and that is all we see. I'm saying: look at an earlier point.

12/16/12 8:06 AM

Still no word out yet from the law professor on what exactly she thinks those 20 angel, golden children did that was so mean to set the 20-year-old man off like that. I mean, now that they're dead, we just see them as murdered innocents and all.

Wondering what exactly she thinks transpired between them at an earlier point to set the killer (and his mom???) off like that...

Althouse might want to read Dowd (capital D) on non-helpful hysteria today. ("stirring up hysteria in real life, whether to draw clicks, eyeballs or votes, is not a good idea.)

Ann Althouse said...
And I'm saying that however popular they are, children who are anything but the least popular, are part of a dynamic that has a risk to it. These children should become aware of the risk they are part of creating, If they are "exclusionary and judgmental," maybe they should be more insightful. It would be good for their development too.

12/16/12 8:02 AM

Oy vey, indeed.
---------------
and

Make it a great week!

Check Your Egos at the Door.*

The Feed the World video, of course, spawned the American version the following year.

Let's realize, that a change can only come
when we stand together as one...
There's a choice we're making,
we're saving our own lives.
It's true, we make a better day,
just you and me.

We are the World.
We are the Children.
We are the ones who make a brighter day,
so let's start giving...

--------------
* Doonesbury's take.

Nevermind Guns, Can We Talk Crazy?

Chris Rock's routine is a classic. (Don't click if you don't like honest vulgar observation.)

Anybody remember Laurie Dann? North suburban Chicago child killer who also went into her local school with a gun, working-class people could not understand how such affluence could produce such anger at children.

Passing a Constitutional amendment banning guns with hopes that it'd be more effective than the 18th, would be comparatively easy compared to effectively addressing how society deals with the rise of mentally ill who become dangers to others.

Let's hope if the president really intends to address the problem, he can be as courageous as Chris Rock in his diagnosis and observations.

Luke 23:28 + 29

Jesus turned and said to them,

"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children.

For the time will come when you will say, 'Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!'

God bless those grieving parents tonight...

Pray that this time around, the pundits blame not the gun, but focus instead the immature cowardly men evildoers who play at being God, and do so much damage to others.

And in Our World of Plenty...

We Can Spread a Smile of Joy.
Throw Your Arms around the World... at Christmastime.

But Say a Prayer...
Pray for the Other Ones.
At Christmastime, it's hard,
but when you're having fun...

There's a World Outside your Window
and it's a World of Dreaded Fear.
Where the Only Water Flowing...
is the Bitter Sting of Tears.

And the Christmas Bells that Ring There
are the Clanging Chimes of Doom.
Well Tonight, Thank God It's Them,
Instead of You...

The Greatest Gift They'll Get this Year is Life...
Do They Know It's Christmastime at All?

Feed the World.
Let them know it's Christmastime...

Timmy Writes a Christmas Letter.

From today's inbox:

Dear Santa,
How are you? How is Mrs. Claus? I hope everyone, from the reindeer to the elves, is fine. I have been a very good boy this year. I would like an X-Box 360 with Call of Duty IV and an iPhone 4 for Christmas. I hope you remember that come Christmas Day.

Merry Christmas,
Timmy Jones

* *

Dear Timmy,
Thank you for you letter. Mrs. Claus, the reindeer and the elves are all fine and thank you for asking about them. Santa is a little worried all the time you spend playing video games and texting. Santa wouldn't want you to get fat. Since you have indeed been a good boy, I think I'll bring you something you can go outside and play with.

Merry Christmas,
Santa Claus

* *

Mr. Claus,

Seeing that I have fulfilled the "naughty vs. Nice" contract, set by you I might add, I feel confident that you can see your way clear to granting me what I have asked for. I certainly wouldn't want to turn this joyous season into one of litigation. Also, don't you think that a jibe at my weight coming from an overweight man who goes out once a year is a bit trite?

Respectfully,
Tim Jones

* *

Mr. Jones,

While I have acknowledged you have met the "nice" criteria, need I remind you that your Christmas list is a request and in no way is it a guarantee of services provided. Should you wish to pursue legal action, well that is your right. Please know, however, that my attorney's have been on retainer ever since the Burgermeister Meisterburger incident and will be more than happy to take you on in open court. Additionally, the exercise I alluded to will not only improve your health, but also improve your social skills and potentially help clear up a complexion that looks like the bottom of the Burger King fry bin most days.

Very Truly Yours,
S. Claus

* *

Now look here Fat Man,

I told you what I want and I expect you to bring it. I was attempting to be polite about this but you brought my looks and my friends into this. Now you just be disrespecting me. I'm about to tweet my boys and we're gonna be waiting for your fat ass and I'm taking my game console, my game, my phone, and whatever else I want. WHAT EVER I WANT, MAN!

T-Bone

* *

Listen Pizza Face,

Seriously??? You think a dude that breaks into every house in the world on one night and never gets caught sweats a skinny G-banger wannabe? "He sees you when you're sleeping; He knows when you're awake". Sound familiar, genius? You know what kind of resources I have at my disposal. I got your shit wired, Jack. I go all around the world and see ways to hurt people that if I described them right now, you'd throw up your Totino's pizza roll all over the carpet of your mom's basement. You're not getting what you asked for, but I'm still stopping by your crib to stomp a mud hole in you're ass and then walk it dry. Chew on that, Petunia.

S. Clizzy

* *

Dear Santa,

Bring me whatever you see fit. I'll appreciate anything.

Timmy

* *


Timmy,

That's what I thought you little bastard.

Santa

All the Single Ladies*...

and, In Defense of the Childless Couples.

Pity poor Ross Douthat. You wonder at the quality of his friendships. What kind of singles and childless couples he actually knows.

Mr. Douthat argues in the NYTimes -- online, print or both, I'm not privileged to say -- that the aforementioned childless peoples are "decadent", and scolds that Western childbearing populations have a moral duty to reproduce themselves to give those uncreated next generations the same amazing opportunities earlier generations permitted us.

Trouble is, I think he's got things mostly backwards.

Many married with childrens, especially if they are doing it right, stop themselves short right there and put their children or the family unit as a whole first, essentially halting their own intellectual growth and ending the journey of curiosities for the purpose of guiding their offspring.

Many of the childless, by contrast, are indeed monk-like or even monomaniacal in their continued solitary pursuits -- the single aunts and uncles, I am thinking of;  the childless by choice married couples -- pursing their careers by growing their skills, not just putting in the time, but actually contributing to the growth -- and quality -- of their chosen professions.  It's a sacrifice, but a knowingly made one.

Some parents, often those working for the paycheck to provide for the growing large and extra-large families that Douthat encourages, necessarily end their pursuit of higher knowledge and competitive growth of their own  -- through time, dedication, cost and just plain variety of experiences -- to put storybook reading, bathtime, playdates, zoo and childrens' museum trips first. If you're doing it right in maximizing the young ones' growth potential.

That's wonderful, and it's great that men like Douthat these days have the opportunity to choose the big-family route if it appeals to his personal satisfactions, and to spend time with their offspring, helping shape their individual family's futures.  But not everyone is willing to make such a tradeoff.**

Not for decadence's sake (really, the decadent and willfully risky individuals in the lifestyles he imagines and describes are exactly the ones we don't want to currently reproduce themselves.)

We want men, and women, to go beyond the 40-hour weeks, putting in the time to earn the paycheck and find family balance. But we also need those who have no Saturday soccer games scheduled, who have no Sunday family visiting time, or early evening homework checks, play outside teaching time, or simple reverting to childhood ways to meet their own children on their own ground, wherever it is they stand this year.

I wonder if Douthat knows those people: who take up their tasks Saturday and Sunday mornings, as they do the weekdays, and I don't mean simple weekly home chores and seasonal house maintenance. Adult reading, delving further and further into one's field(s) of choice -- it's hard to justify that when your creations are calling for you to be there in the present, today, while they are still growing themselves and need your simple presence.

Truth be told?
I think many of the ones who choose home and hearth in 21st Century America can be considered amongst the decadent. Registering for the gifts prior to the wedding, and the birth of the offspring. Collecting material goods that someone needs to work solely to pay for. The necessary childhood accoutrements -- the trips, the toys, the activities, the joys...

No one can deny the intrinsic rewards of parenting, but Mr. Douthat seems to think it's all noble sacrifice and austerity to raise children these days. If only.

For every man (or woman) coming home to a stay at home spouse and children -- like George in It's a Wonderful Life -- you probably now have three or four single ladies opening their own doors after a week at the salt mines, making their own meals, taking care of routine household chores*** AND managing to live the "decadent" lifestyle Douthat so enviously imagines. Which is to say: time to one's self. More freedoms of choice, to do with one's time and treasures, rather than putting the future first.

That's not decadence. That bachelorhood and spinsterdom done responsibly. (Again, we don't want the continuously rutting males reproducing and running, anymore than we want to encourage the party girls to begin reproducing just to qualify for this proposed tax credit or that, with all the free daycare and assorted incentives we can imagine...)

How can we get the "good ones" -- the Western women and men who have maximixed their opportunites in the land of plenty -- to choose children more and more? I'm afraid to say, we can't. (Most studies show these hyped incentives to essentially pay people to breed more fail, again and again.)

Nor should we.
Mr. Douthat needs to recognize that in nature, botany or biology/breeding say, many species essentially "spend" themselves. That is, like so many of today's Western families, as the stock gets richer and richer, the quality doesn't necessarily increase correspondingly. (See Dharun Ravi, or talk to any "good" students at competitive public high schools about the culture of success. I often think that what turns many off to corporate careers and supposed cultural advantages is the poverty of personal values in such places.)

I think in so many of today's "advantaged" children, society is trading character development for expensive opportunity. Plus, more is not necessarily better, as any grown child of an extensively large family could probably tell Douthat.

[The columnist comes from a small family himself, and is a newcomer to the Catholic faith, whose tenets who believes he touts.]

More and more singles, and childless couples, are choosing to sacrifice parenthood not to pursue decadence, but to practice simplicity -- something generally not very affordable in the competitive Western parenthood game these days. Ok -- you win.

We'll turn away from the parenthood tracks, the tax breaks and the emotional rewards, so that we can sacrifice our time and talents in other ways for the future. If this means people in other situations have an advantage over Western countries in breeding, well what exactly does Douthat think happened to the WASPy generations of natives and pre-WWII Roosevelt-types when the immigrants and Catholics came in greater and greater numbers last century to our shores?

In short, Douthat is sensing a "problem" only because he hasn't put in the time, or doesn't have the natural skills, to envision an alternative future. One in which, quality not quantity, matters most. One in which some plants flower out, while others interbreed, expand, and vary their range. Meanwhile,  it's true:  some garden species indeed lose their dominance.

One of the best gifts Mal and I ever gave ourselves was to call off our wedding a few weeks -- days? -- before the ceremony was set in 1998. I simply could not do that to him: make a "family" man out of someone so uniquely special and still growing, not yet ready to set his own pursuits aside to provide. For my part, I had the Alice Cooper-like realization: walking down the aisle in a fancy dress with all eyes on me was not what I'd been dreaming of since girlhood; it would be welcoming others to my nightmare.

The things we've done -- together and apart -- since those days are not exactly decadent. Him: Caring -- properly -- for elders. (Like children, there is no substitute for time, listening, and repetitive performance of routine tasks.) Travelling abroad, reading ahead, visiting museums and cultural sites, befriending others and growing from exposure to different cultures. Risk taking, absorbing losses and watching dedicated efforts pay off. Living simply, but according to one's dictates, rather than being directed by a hierarchy of others. Me? Law school, moving about, time with my sister's family, and practicing more than one career. Suffice it to say, we're both happy with the sacrifices we've made in rejecting the safety and security of home and hearth as Douthat sees necessary to collectively build a democratic American future.

If the Ponzi scheme of Social Security is eventually ended, our generations (late Boom, and early-mid X) will end up bearing the burdens twice: paying in for our elders, and taking care of ourselves too in the long run, if the safety net gives out. We also paid into the tax fund for the generous childbirth/rearing entitlements that many -- perhaps not the families Douthat is rallying to breed -- of today's growing generation needed simply to get to tax-paying age themselves.

It's all good. It's not complaining, or asking for thanks or recognition. Just the opposite in fact. A quiet pursuit of the future that need not entail reproducing ourselves to extend the journey. Simply allow us to continue further and further on the path of adulthood, unencumbered with expectations of slowing down to accommodate children, and instead seeking other, perhaps ultimately more effective, ways of influencing the future and preserving some of what we enjoyed as the simple freedoms of responsible personhood for those yet to come.

---------------------
* For purposes of this essay, "single ladies" refers to nevermarried childless women.

** Perhaps that is why Sean Duffy (6), say, is not in the political limelight like Paul Ryan (3). Sometimes more in one arena means less in another.  Like women, men are learning they really can't have it all if they want to perform several tasks simultaneously and successfully.   Something's gotta go, whether it's quality "being there" time, or specialized personal growth.

*** Single career women who live alone and still manage to feed/clothe/shelter themselves compared to their career fatherhood counterparts remind me of Ginger Roger's quote about doing everything Fred did, but backwards and in heels. This is not decadence, it's discipline, self reliance, and decent planning.

Robin Yount joins the Dick Cheney club.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Chicago Cubs manager Dale Sveum says he's OK after former teammate Robin Yount accidentally shot him in the right ear and back with pellets during a recent quail hunt in Arizona.

Sveum brushed off the bloody mishap Tuesday at the baseball winter meetings and said he didn't need stitches.

Cubs manager Dale Sveum can laugh about a hunting accident involving good friend Robin Yount. (AP Photo)

"You don't get hit very often," Sveum said. "It's not that big a deal."

Sveum and Yount played together in Milwaukee and are hunting partners. Sveum said he was about 50 yards ahead of the Hall of Famer went the accident occurred.

"The bird got up in front of him, and he lost track of where I was and pulled the trigger," Sveum said. "I was just looking for birds myself. It was behind me, so I got drilled with pellets in the back and one stuck in the ear."
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From the comments:

Don Skolinsky · Wappingers Falls, New York:
Oh no watch out for the comment by Bob Costas.

Mike Nicholson · Sparks, Nevada:
No runs, one hit, one error.

Glenn Kadas · Burbank, Illinois:
Maybe Dale could ask if Robin could teach the Cubs to hit something.

Hagel for Defense Secretary?

Not that anyone's soliciting my opinions, but this is some of the best political news I've heard in a long time. Chuck Hagel is a pragmatist, with military and political experience, that is sorely needed in the world right now...

Plus, I think he understands something about playing defense, not continually going on offense in this seeming state of permanent war. He has a realistic attitude about sovereignty.  From the previous Subsumed blog posts(scroll) mentioning Hagel:

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

But Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska broke with most of his Republican colleagues in endorsing a timetable and opposing the Cochran amendment. “There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq,” Mr. Hagel said. “There will not be a military solution to Iraq.”

“Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there,” Mr. Hagel said. “It doesn’t belong to the United States.”

Tuesday, August 1, 2006

 And, although pro-Israel sentiment runs deep in Congress, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., broke with the president on Monday and said Israel's pounding of Lebanon was hurting, not helping, America's image in the Middle East.

"The sickening slaughter on both sides must end now," Hagel said. "This madness must stop." Hagel has also been critical of the administration's Iraq policy.

Monday, July 10, 2006

by Tom Blackburn
Palm Beach Post Columnist
...
It should be added that this White House puts down Republicans when they don't sing in its Amen chorus. That would include, on the war, Sens. Graham and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. Sen. John McCain got a law against torture passed. Mr. Bush signed it along with his "finding" that the law doesn't mean what lawmakers who voted for it thought it means.

Mr. Bush's admirers like to say that he is a fan of Winston Churchill and sees himself in a similar position in his war to Mr. Churchill's in World War II. But Mr. Churchill formed a coalition with Labor Party members and worked with Josef Stalin, whose ideology Mr. Churchill abhorred, and President Roosevelt, who didn't share Mr. Churchill's regard for the British empire. As British historian Stuart Ball reminds us, some Conservatives felt that their leader wasn't doing enough for the party, and, indeed, they lost the 1945 elections. But Mr. Churchill, Mr. Ball writes, wanted "most of all to succeed as a war leader, and all else was secondary."
 

In short, for what it's worth,
I fully endorse this cross-party nomination myself, because it perhaps might take us on a new path -- a better path -- with the proper attitudes toward America's defense.

“Leaders have to adjust to the world we live in, and must have two important traits: courage and character,”
says Hagel, R-Neb

Thank you sir ! May I Have Another?

By Associated Press.

JERUSALEM — Israel on Sunday roundly rejected the United Nations’ endorsement of an independent state of Palestine, announcing it would withhold more than $100 million collected for the Palestinian government to pay debts to Israeli companies.

It was the second act of reprisal since the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to support the Palestinians’ statehood initiative. The following day, Israel announced it would start drawing up plans to build thousands of settlement homes, including the first-ever residential developments on a sensitive piece of land near Jerusalem.
...

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas returned home Sunday to a hero’s welcome in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Some 5,000 people thronged a square outside his headquarters, hoisting Palestinian flags and cheering. Large posters of the Palestinian leader, whose popularity had plummeted in recent months, adorned nearby buildings.

“We now have a state,” he said to wild applause. “The world has said loudly, ‘Yes to the state of Palestine.’”

Abbas warned of “creative punishments” by Israel. Referring to the latest settlement construction plans, he said, “We have to realize that your victory has provoked the powers of war, occupation and settlements because their isolation is deepened.”
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We now have a state.
And all the withheld money in the world will not change that...

Heh. Go Palestine!

Advent 2012.

The word Advent derives from the Latin word meaning coming...
Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

Deeper and Deeper into the Mix...

Walter Pincus in his column WaPo column Fine Print turns up something interesting in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recent request for bids:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to supervise construction of a five-story underground facility for an Israel Defense Forces complex, oddly named “Site 911,” at an Israeli Air Force base near Tel Aviv. Only U.S. construction firms are being allowed to bid on the contract and proposals are due Dec. 3, according to the latest Corps of Engineers notice.

Site 911 is the latest in a long history of military construction projects the United States has undertaken for the IDF under the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program. The 1998 Wye River Memorandum between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has led to about $500 million in U.S. construction of military facilities for the Israelis, most of them initially in an undeveloped part of the Negev Desert. It was done to ensure there were bases to which IDF forces stationed in the West Bank could be redeployed.

As recorded in the Corps’ European District magazine, called Engineering in Europe, three bases were built to support 20,000 troops, and eventually the Israeli air force moved into the same area, creating Nevatim air base. A new runway, 2.5 miles long, was built there by the Corps along with about 100 new buildings and 10 miles of roads.

Over the years, the Corps has built underground hangers for Israeli fighter-bombers, facilities for handling nuclear weapons (though Israel does not admit having such weapons), command centers, training bases, intelligence facilities and simulators, according to Corps publications.

Within the past two years the Corps, which has three offices in Israel, completed a $30 million set of hangars at Nevatim, which the magazine describes as a “former small desert outpost that has grown to be one of the largest and most modern air bases in the country.” It has also supervised a $20 million project to build maintenance shops, hangars and headquarters to support Israel’s large Eitan unmanned aerial vehicle.

Site 911, which will be built at another base, appears to be one of the largest projects
...
The well-known Israeli architectural firm listed on the plans, Ada Karmi-Melamede Architects, has paid attention to the aesthetics of the site design as well as the sensibilities of future employees. The site, for example, will be decorated with rocks chosen by the architect but purchased by the contractor. Three picnic tables are planned, according to the solicitation.

The Corps offered a lengthy description of the mezuzas the contractor is to provide “for each door or opening exclusive of toilets or shower rooms” in the Site 911 building. A mezuza (also spelled mezuzah) is a parchment which has been inscribed with Hebrew verses from the Torah, placed in a case and attached to a door frame of a Jewish family’s house as a sign of faith. Some interpret Jewish law as requiring — as in this case — that a mezuza be attached to every door in a house.

These mezuzas, notes the Corps, “shall be written in inerasable ink, on . . . uncoated leather parchment” and be handwritten by a scribe “holding a written authorization according to Jewish law.” The writing may be “Ashkenazik or Sepharadik” but “not a mixture” and “must be uniform.”

Also, “The Mezuzahs shall be proof-read by a computer at an authorized institution for Mezuzah inspection, as well as manually proof-read for the form of the letters by a proof-reader authorized by the Chief Rabbinate.” The mezuza shall be supplied with an aluminum housing with holes so it can be connected to the door frame or opening. Finally, “All Mezuzahs for the facility shall be affixed by the Base’s Rabbi or his appointed representative and not by the contractor staff.”

What’s the purpose of Site 911? I asked the Pentagon on Tuesday, and the Corps on Wednesday said that only an Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman could provide an answer.

This may be a trend-starter. The Corps is also seeking a contractor for another secret construction project in Israel in the $100 million range to awarded next summer. This one will involve “a complex facility with site development challenges.

Holy religious war, Batman.
(I wonder if U.S. taxpayers approve of their continuing to finance the follies of religious extremists determined to fulfill The Book.)
-------------------------------
In related news,
The drone warfare project, including those conflicts contracted out, is not proving so successful either. Good to know, as these toys might soon be coming to U.S. airspace, to keep us all safe here at home, of course:

The U.S. Air Force drone, on a classified spy mission over the Indian Ocean, was destined for disaster from the start.

An inexperienced military contractor in shorts and a T-shirt, flying by remote control from a trailer at Seychelles International Airport, committed blunder after blunder in six minutes on April 4.
...
The drone crashed at a civilian airport that serves a half-million passengers a year, most of them sun-seeking tourists. No one was hurt, but it was the second Reaper accident in five months — under eerily similar circumstances.

“I will be blunt here. I said, ‘I can’t believe this is happening again,’ ” an Air Force official at the scene told investigators afterward. He added: “You go, ‘How stupid are you?’ ”


The April wreck was the latest in a rash of U.S. military drone crashes at overseas civilian airports in the past two years. The accidents reinforce concerns about the risks of flying the robot aircraft outside war zones, including in the United States.

A review of thousands of pages of unclassified Air Force investigation reports, obtained by The Washington Post under public-records requests, shows that drones flying from civilian airports have been plagued by setbacks.

Among the problems repeatedly cited are pilot error, mechanical failure, software bugs in the “brains” of the aircraft and poor coordination with civilian air-traffic controllers.

On Jan. 14, 2011, a Predator drone crashed off the Horn of Africa while trying to return to an international airport next to a U.S. military base in Djibouti. It was the first known accident involving a Predator or Reaper drone near a civilian airport. Predators and Reapers can carry satellite-guided missiles and have become the Obama administration’s primary weapon against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Since then, at least six more Predators and Reapers have crashed in the vicinity of civilian airports overseas, including other instances in which contractors were at the controls.

The mishaps have become more common at a time when the Pentagon and domestic law-enforcement agencies are pressing the Federal Aviation Administration to open U.S. civil airspace to surveillance drones. The FAA permits drone flights only in rare cases, citing the risk of midair collisions. The Defense Department can fly Predators and Reapers on training and testing missions in restricted U.S. airspace near military bases. The pressure to fly drones in the same skies as passenger planes will only increase as the war in Afghanistan winds down and the military and CIA redeploy their growing fleets of Predators and Reapers.

and what was over there, is over here...

In Djibouti, the Air Force drones operate from Camp Lemonnier, a fast-growing U.S. military base devoted to counterterrorism. The base is adjacent to Djibouti’s international airport and shares a single runway with passenger aircraft.

That has led to miscommunications and tensions with Djiboutian civil aviation officials. One unidentified U.S. officer told investigators last year that he often had to sternly remind his fellow troops that civilians were in charge of the site.

“There is a need to understand the urgency that this airport doesn’t belong to us,” he said. “Every time that we cause a delay or they miss flight times and connecting flights, there’s a big backlash and repercussion.”

In addition to the five Predator wrecks in Djibouti, the officer said he had witnessed three emergency landings that narrowly avoided catastrophe. “I have no illusions that this won’t happen again, whether it’s an MQ-1 or otherwise,” he said, referring to the military code name for a Predator.

Meanwhile, U.S. drone crews complained to investigators about the Djiboutian air-traffic controllers, saying they speak poor English, are “short-
tempered” and are uncomfortable with Predators in their airspace.
...
In the Seychelles, an idyllic archipelago that lured Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, for their honeymoon, the U.S. military began flying Reapers in 2009. Crews set up shop at an unmarked hangar at the international airport outside the capital, Victoria, named after another British royal.
...
Normally, Reapers and Predators are flown through satellite links by pilots based in the United States, while local ground crews handle the takeoffs and landings. In the Seychelles, however, the flights did not require a satellite link; details of the new technology remain classified.

Starting in September 2011, records show, the U.S. Air Force took the unusual step of outsourcing the entire operation to a Florida-based private contractor, Merlin RAMCo. By then, the Seychelles operation had dwindled to two Reapers after the other aircraft were redeployed.

The military drew up the surveillance missions, but Merlin RAMCo hired its own remote-control pilots, sensor operators and mechanics, and dispatched them to the islands.

The arrangement was overseen at a distance by the Air Force’s secretive 645th Aeronautical Systems Group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. The unit, also known as Big Safari, develops and acquires advanced weapons systems — many of them classified — for Special Operations Forces.
...
The contractor was subjected to little direct oversight in the Seychelles, records show. The Air Force posted two officials on the islands to coordinate flights and serve as a liaison with the contractor, but neither had experience operating drones.

Underscoring the secrecy of the operation, neither official was allowed to have a copy of Big Safari’s contract with Merlin RAMCo.

“You can imagine it’s awful hard to hold somebody accountable for compliance with a contract that you physically can’t see,” one of the Air Force representatives told investigators.

I wish I had more confidence in the U.S. leadership here.
(No wonder Sec. of State Hillary Clinton is headed for the exits, mid-job*, without sticking around to see how how the foreign policies she helped to purchase actually play out...  Oy.)

-----------------
* Perhaps she understands it takes a steady hand on the tiller when the seas portend to turn rough, and thinks John Kerry would do a better job than she at this trying time.  Like they say, anyone can play at captaining the ship, with a hand on the tiller in calm waters.  When things begin to churn though, it really does take an abler hand, not just a pretty face...  

(That's the message I think she is perhaps unintendedly sending, much like Sarah Palin retreated and resigned her position to further her own safer political career. )