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Tired, Lame Attacks on Dr. Laura

Speaking of Dr. Laura, if you look for stuff written about her online, you can find all sort of angry ranting about her.  That’s how I found this.  Since it was put online publicly, I feel free to analyze it publicly.

Andrew in southeast Alabama posted an entry entitled “Shacking Up” on his blog. He’s talking about a phone conversation with Rosa, a woman with whom he is fornicating.

She was having a topsy-turvy night -- there is always some drama going on with her and her daughter.

Daughter, eh?  Is her daughter still a minor?  If she is, then Dr. Laura would say Rosa shouldn’t be dating or fornicating, so I can already see that Andrew would not like Dr. Laura.

"I can't even afford a pack of cigarettes, and you want to ask about marriage?" was my callous and terse reply for which I later apologized.  

Why apologize for pointing out the obvious truth?  If Rosa is looking for marriage, she is better off dating men who want to get married and are ready to get married.

Dr. Laura would call Rosa an unpaid whore -- her sleeping over here many nights.  We are "shacking up" in the eyes of the not so humble psychologist.

No, shacking up is when she lives with you.  You’re just fornicating without the shacking up part.  As for the “unpaid whore” label, I think “fornicator” is a better term.  Dr. Laura and many other women imply (some specifying, actually) that women should be compensated for sex.  For some reason, enjoyment is compensation enough for men, but not for women.  I understand that women tend to desire a feeling of security and love and commitment and those things make sex more enjoyable for them.  Actually, they make sex more enjoyable for men, too.  But that is not the point. The point is that some women, as Dr. Laura has pointed out, have no problem having sex with men they’ve barely met.  So clearly they don’t need security, love, and commitment to have sex and enjoy sex.  So if both parties are getting their jollies, why should one require additional compensation?

But I have gone off on a tangent.

Rosa is a fool to fornicate with Andrew in this manner if she wants a lasting, happy marriage.  Fool and fornicator are the labels that fit.

I could also tell Dr. Laura she needs to eat a cheeseburger or two.  It reminds me of that old saying to not throw stones in glass houses.   

This is a common tactic these days.  Fornicators don’t like being told that sex is for marriage, so they point out to the person who says sex is for marriage that they aren’t perfect, either.  This, of course, does nothing to counter the moral proposition that sex is for marriage.  As for Dr. Laura, she has admitted to past anorexia.  So what?  If she needs to put on weight now, she need not eat a cheeseburger to do it.

Now on to the comments after the blog posting, prompted by his casual reference to Dr. Laura.

“Bridget” wrote:
I am NOT a big fan of Dr. Laura AT ALL. That woman has mucho coyones to judge others by her twisted ideas of morality when she was caught having posed topless some years back (remember that scandal?).

(“justLacey” basically repeats this again later in the comments)

Here again is a ridiculous argument.  Because Dr. Laura posed nude for private pictures long ago (this is long before the digital pictures online) taken by someone with whom she was fornicating (and yes, she made mistakes), she can’t point out that fornicating is a bad idea?  That doesn’t follow.  Everyone sins.  So, what these people really want is nobody to ever bring up morality, because everyone has sinned.  Strangely, they think it is wrong to tell people what is right and wrong.  Therefore, we shouldn’t listen to them.

This is 2008, not 1888.

This is a non-argument.  The date on the calendar does not determine morality.

Too many people jump into marriage because it's the "right" thing to do...and then have bigger problems because of it.

This is true.  But it does not negate that too many people also jump into fornicating because they want to, and broken hearts, bonding with the wrong person, STDs, and unmarried pregnancies are the result.

“Anonymous Boxer” wrote:
 Ask Dr. Laura about her Mother and Son, too

This is another stupid “counter” that doesn’t address the issue at hand.  Dr. Laura haters cite a lack of or a strained relationship between Dr. Laura and her late mother.  But you know what?  It takes two to make a relationship work, and Dr. Laura did not choose to be born of her mother.  We don’t really know what was going on there.  As for her son, a MySpace page that may or may not be his had some rough material on it that may or may not have been put there by him, relating to his military service.  Assuming he did put it there, a person should be judged on their behavior, not that of their family members.  Duh.

“Lady Elaine” then treats us to the tired old “open letter to Dr. Laura” that was written by someone in a tizzy over her pointing out the truth that the Bible teaches against homosexual behavior.  This letter was adopted by lazy “West Wing” writers, who had a character go on a diatribe against a talk show host and the Bible.

Here is a decent response:
http://www.equip.org/atf/cf/%7B9C4EE03A-F988-4091-84BD-F8E70A3B0215%7D/DP801.pdf

Anyway, there is no shortage of bad arguments online.  Dr. Laura has helped many people through her show, books, and other means.  If you don’t want to live by traditional morals and values, then so be it.  You don’t have to listen to her, you don’t have to read her books.  Meanwhile, those of us who want godly, lasting, happy marriages where both femininity and masculinity are affirmed and enjoyed and where children are the priority will continue to be thankful for what Dr. Laura and others like her do.
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Dear Playful Walrus

Since I enjoy checking advice columns so I can respond to the letters and analyze the response by the columnist, perhaps I should have a frequent topic on this blog called “Dear Playful Walrus”, where I pretend the letter was written to me.

Anyway, here is stuff from a recent Dear Abby column:

AMBIVALENT IN YAPHANK, N.Y. writes:

I have been seeing "Dawn" for a year and a half. Early in our relationship she cheated on me.

What does this mean, exactly?  Did both of you expressly agree to be monogamous?  Even so, you are both fornicating.  So it is okay to cheat on God and your future spouse (should you marry), but not okay for Dawn to fornicate with someone else?  Why?  At worst, she broke her agreement to be monogamous – if she did agree to that in the first place.

This was “early on” in the relationship.  Once you are willing to forsake the moral that sex is for marriage, then I don’t understand why people think there is a moral requirement for monogamy “early on”.

I love Dawn more than I have loved anyone before, but I can't bring myself to completely trust her.

Then don’t.  Tell her as much.  Both of you should either commit to saving any more sex for marriage, or start openly seeing other people.

She wants to move in with me now.

Shacking up is one of the worst things you can do.  If you want to get married, it bodes ill for a lasting marriage.  If you don’t want to get married and are just fine fornicating, you are limiting yourself and exposing yourself to all kinds of risks by shacking up.

HAD IT WITH THE SOUND TRACK writes:

I share space with a 22-year-old administrative assistant, and our office is flooded with music throughout the day. I realize that some people "need" noise, but I am not one of them. It's challenging to meet and advise students in this semi-private environment while music is blaring, and even daily tasks and phone calls are an issue. On occasion, the selections are inappropriate for the office.

She is a nice girl, but how do I approach her and/or my supervisor without sounding like a tattletale or a complainer?

Dear Abby responded:

If you haven't already done so, talk with the young woman and explain that while some people love music while they work, others are distracted by it and find it difficult to function, and you fall into that category. If she's unwilling to cooperate after that, then perhaps your supervisor can help her see the light.

If the letter writer is male, this answer is WRONG.  He needs to go straight to the supervisor.  Talking directly to the young woman could open the man to charges of harassment, especially if the young woman isn’t attracted to the man.  Anti-sexual harassment measures in the workplace are based on the sensitivities of women, overly sensitive ones at that, and designed to punish unattractive men.  Usually, claims of harassment are investigated and processed by female-dominated human resources staff, sympathetic to the complaining woman.  It sounds ridiculous, but this is how men can protect themselves.  He should interact with her as little as possible.

The same issue of the column goes on to deal with a child who is acting out because his mother either didn’t choose wisely or didn’t treat kindly, per Dr. Laura, and thus is divorced from his father and out of the home working.
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Racism on the Campaign Trail

When I hear campaign aides talking about their candidate’s “appeal to Latinos” or “appeal to African-Americans”, or even worse, when I hear a candidate specifically address people as these groups, I have to wonder why it is okay to be so racist?  Why do they assume people think a certain way because of their skin color?

With this in mind, I would very much like it if someone would ask a candidate on-camera (and insist on a direct response):

Is it okay for the government or for Presidential candidates to treat people differently based on their ethnicity or gender?

If the candidate says “no”, and yet has addressed “the Latino community” or “the African-American community” with their speeches and campaign materials, I want the questioner to point this out.

Aren’t all voters supposed to be Americans?  Why not address the concerns of Americans, and stop dividing us?

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GOP, Bush-Cheney Live to Crush “Working” People

At least, that is according to a letter to the Pasadena Star-News written by J.O. Fitzgerald of Arcadia.

Fitzgerald writes:

Republican politicians in concert with the Bush-Cheney administration are responsible for the following over the last seven years:

1. Implemented by any and all methods, a persistent series of global trade scams to enrich the few and impoverish the many.

I would be curious to see the specifics of this.  I tend to be for free trade.  True free trade doesn’t really require agreements.  But perhaps the “few” enriched are the people who have the ambition and creativity to take advantage of what is out there.  It is a myth, though, that businesspeople get rich by impoverishing people.

2. Allowed rich campaign donors to take over the Republican party.

What have they done differently in this regard from the Democrats?

3. Made decent health care a luxury item for the American people.

Really?  I have decent health care and I’m not rich.  Walk into almost any American hospital, and you have access to some of the best health care in the world, regardless of who you are.  Health care costs are largely up to health care professionals and insurers, with some costs artificially inflated through red tape from government regulation and from monopolies, including labor union monopolies.  Very little of this is the fault of recent GOP elected officials.

4. Turned a blind eye to the re-emergence in America of sweatshops and child labor in everything from the clothing industry to Wal-Mart.

I’d really like to see some examples of this.  How can Bush-Cheney put children to work when they are busy bombing them, as the Left charges?

5. Subverted the rights of workers to organize.

When are where?  We've had no trouble organizing.  We just organized a Superbowl pool.

6. Unlawfully re-classified millions of employees as "independent contractors," leaving them with no work benefits or labor rights.

Unlawfully, huh?  How do they get away with that? And independent contractors can negotiate their working conditions and enough compensation to cover their lifestyles.  It isn’t the President’s job to do it for them.

7. Converted the National Labor Relations Board into an anti-labor tool for corporations.

I love all of these assertions.  Were they translated from Spanish from the union mailers?

8. Stopped enforcement of America's wage and hour laws.

When and where?  I want to know so that I can open up a business and force children to work for me for $2 an hour for 16 hours straight.

9. Perverted our bankruptcy laws to allow interests to breach their union contracts.

I don’t know where this stuff is coming from.

10. Finally, downsized and off-shored American middle-class jobs.

They did?  As I recall, the only jobs that the Administration and Congress are responsible for are Federal government jobs.  So was the Pentagon moved to Mexico?  If a business CHOOSES to relocate facilities, what is the Federal government supposed to do to stop them?  Businesses are supposed to just stick around no matter how costly and difficult it becomes to operate, when they can do more and do it less expensively elsewhere?

There is a letter above this one that talks about parental responsibility in education.  Perhaps if someone gets a good education, they can get a job where they won’t be forced to join a union, and they won’t live in constant fear that they’re services are so useless that they need the President of the United States to keep them employed by executive order.
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Women Have Encouraged the “Man-Child”

Why are there now so many guys who party and shun marriage and parenthood into their 30s?

Kay S. Hymowitz, contributing editor of City Journal and the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has created a bit of a stir with her piece entitled “Child-Man in the Promised Land”, with the teaser “Today’s single young men hang out in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood.”

It is about a trend among young men of choosing not to subject themselves to voluntary responsibilities such as home ownership, marriage, and parenting, and instead spending their time, money, and energy pursuing what amuses and entertains them and feeds their physical desires.

But while we grapple with the name, it’s time to state what is now obvious to legions of frustrated young women: the limbo doesn’t bring out the best in young men.

“Limbo” implies that the men want to own homes, get married, and have children (and I've heard her cite studies that most do.)  If men don’t, isn’t it better that they earn enough to pay their taxes, pay their bills, and save up for the future, instead of  buying homes they can’t afford, spending a lot of money trying to impress women, and getting into marriages they don’t want and having children they do not want?

With women, you could argue that adulthood is in fact emergent. Single women in their twenties and early thirties are joining an international New Girl Order, hyperachieving in both school and an increasingly female-friendly workplace, while packing leisure hours with shopping, traveling, and dining with friends [see “The New Girl Order,” Autumn 2007]. Single Young Males, or SYMs, by contrast, often seem to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3, and, in many cases, underachieving.

Women are now capable of leading completely independent lives.  Underachieving is bad, but what do you call it when someone marries the wrong person and has children they can’t raise?  Those are major blunders, not achievements.  I also do not see playing games as any more immature than shopping for things that are not needed or spending more time than necessary on shopping.

Consider: in 1970, 69 percent of 25-year-old and 85 percent of 30-year-old white men were married; in 2000, only 33 percent and 58 percent were, respectively. And the percentage of young guys tying the knot is declining as you read this. Census Bureau data show that the median age of marriage among men rose from 26.8 in 2000 to 27.5 in 2006—a dramatic demographic shift for such a short time period.

That adds up to tens of millions more young men blissfully free of mortgages, wives, and child-care bills.

Some men like that just fine, which is why they are doing it.  Others want it, but allow themselves to end up in situations they didn’t really want.  That isn’t good.

After all, plenty of down-market venues had the sort of bodacious covers bound to trigger the young male’s reptilian brain.

Men are reptilian if they don’t want the home, wife, and kids?  What if the sexes are reversed?  We call women like that "liberated feminists" and "career women".

Maxim asked the SYM what he wanted and learned that he didn’t want to grow up.

Not wanting to the home, wife, and kids does not equal not wanting to grow up.  It only does if that is what the guy really wants, but doesn’t want everything that comes with it or seems mentally incapable of obtaining it.

Whatever else you might say about Playboy or Esquire, they tried to project the image of a cultured and au courant fellow; as Hefner famously—and from today’s cultural vantage point, risibly—wrote in an early Playboy, his ideal reader enjoyed “inviting a female acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.” Hearing this, the Maxim dude would want to hurl. He’d like to forget that he ever went to school.

Not necessarily.  They want an education for earning potential.  And how many women that young men find most physically attractive know anything about serious art or philosophy, much less want to discuss it?

The Maxim reader prefers lists, which make up in brevity what they lose in thought: “Ten Greatest Video Game Heroes of All Time,” “The Five Unsexiest Women Alive,” “Sixteen People Who Look Like They Absolutely Reek,” and so on.

This is a result of shortened attention spans and the fast pace of life as much as anything else.

Still, Maxim is far from dumb, as its self-mockery proves. The Maxim child-man prides himself on his lack of pretense, his unapologetic guyness. The magazine’s subtext seems to be: “We’re just a bunch of horny, insensitive guys - so what?”

Would it be preferable if they were all of those things, and then dishonest about it?  Isn’t it better to be honest so that women who want a marriage-minded man know to avoid these guys?  Do you really want to browbeat someone into doing something they really don’t want to do?

Start with the many movies available in every guy-friendly genre: sci-fi flicks like Transformers, action and crime movies like American Gangster, comedies like Superbad, and the seemingly endless line of films starring Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, and the “Frat Pack,” as USA Today dubbed the group of young male comedians that includes Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Owen and Luke Wilson, Jack Black, and Steve Carell.

What about all of the stuff geared towards women that tells them they deserve to live in luxury created by a man’s earnings or at least have him come along and bail them our of their debts, or tells them that it is okay to cheat on their man, or disrespect him?

This state of affairs is newer than you might think. Apart from sports programming and The Simpsons, which came along in the early 1990s, there wasn’t a lot to make young men pick up the remote. Most prime-time television appealed to women and families, whose sensibilities were as alien to dudes as finger bowls.

Exactly.

Nothing attests more to the SYM’s growing economic and cultural might than video games do.

People adapt to technology.  For example, people have always played cards or board games.  I don’t get this hostility or dismissiveness towards video games.  I’m not a video game player myself, but it is possible for mature, married husbands and fathers to enjoy them without neglecting their obligations and responsibilities.  How is watching a movie or television show or Broadway play okay, but playing video games isn't?

In response to websites targeting these males, she writes:

That sound you hear is women not laughing.

Of course they aren’t.  Some women aren’t laughing because they want to find a marriage-and-family-minded man, and these things give them the mistaken impression that all men want to stay unmarried and childless.  Others are not laughing because they have used and abused males to feed their egos, cater to their every whim, pay their way, be sperm donors, and be their bodyguard/mechanic/furniture mover/chauffeur and these males are learning how to avoid being manipulated into doing things they don’t want to do.  I’d be upset, too, if I was used to being put on a pedestal and still able to act any way I pleased, and someone was making it tougher for me to find people to go along with this.  As for the women in the first category, isn’t it better that these males have clear thinking about what they want and how to get it, so that these women don’t end up with one of them?

In Internet chat rooms, in advice columns, at female water-cooler confabs, and in the pages of chick lit, the words “immature” and “men” seem united in perpetuity.

The truth is, some males will do whatever they can get away with as long as they can still find a woman to sleep with them.  It also feeds the situation when males are raised by their mothers without a father to show them a happy, functional man who is a married father.  So, when women engage in casual fornication and deliberately raise a male without a father, or end up doing so because they choose their own male poorly, they are perpetuating the conditions that bring this about.

Women complain about the “Peter Pan syndrome”—the phrase has been around since the early 1980s but it is resurgent—the “Mr. Not Readys,” and the “Mr. Maybes.”

For some males, it isn’t a matter of “not ready”.  Some don’t ever want to marry or have children.

The SYM with a taste for Maxim or South Park may not like Gloria Steinem, but neither does he care for anyone who tells him to behave—teachers, nutritionists, prohibitionists, vegetarians, librarians, church ladies, counselors, and moralists of all stripes.

Is this surprising when we have raised people with moral relativism, instant gratification glorification, and the idea that we’re all the products in purposeless accidents of nature?

For whatever reason, adolescence appears to be the young man’s default state, proving what anthropologists have discovered in cultures everywhere: it is marriage and children that turn boys into men.

A male can be a man without getting married and having children, and women should not get into the idea that nagging a man to marry them and getting pregnant will really change a man who doesn’t want these things.

Not only is no one asking that today’s twenty- or thirtysomething become a responsible husband and father - hat is, grow up - but a freewheeling marketplace gives him everything that he needs to settle down in pig’s heaven indefinitely.

Welcome to the world that feminism and the sexual revolution created.

Most guys have lots of other things going on, and even those who spend too much time on TuckerMax.com will eventually settle down.

While some of these males will buy homes, get married, and have children, it is best that they do so because that is what they truly wanted.  But not all will decide to do these things, and some of those males will “settle down” as men without getting married or having children.

For the problem with child-men is that they’re not very promising husbands and fathers.

So stop trying to make them husbands and fathers.

They suffer from a proverbial “fear of commitment,” another way of saying that they can’t stand to think of themselves as permanently attached to one woman.

For many of them, it isn’t a fear of commitment.  It is a lack of desire to commit, and a lack of trust that their commitment will be matched and rewarded.  They ask how it can really be commitment when it is so easy to get a divorce, when so many of these “commitments” do end in divorce, and when their spouse can cheat on them with impunity.  This is especially true for men who have seen their fathers, uncles, cousins, coworkers, and friends in marriages to women who do not care about their needs and then end up getting ongoing financial support if they divorce.

For Will, women are simply fleshy devices that dispense sex, and sex is just another form of entertainment, a “fantastic carnal alternative to drink, drugs, and a great night out, but nothing much more than that.”

What should we expect in a society that no longer maintains that sex is for marriage?

Why are we surprised that some males have changed their behavior when the women with whom they are interacting have changed, and the world they live in has changed?  The man living by traditional morals, owning a home, and becoming a devoted husband and father in his 20s was more strongly reinforced in his behavior when women were “mature” and ready to be devoted wives and mothers with all of the traditional roles that went with that in their late teens and early 20s, when sex outside of marriage was shamed by society, when a man could afford a home and have a great career without ever moving out of his hometown, and when he was respected as the head of that home.

But we no longer live in an agrarian society where having children meant having more on the farm and having someone to take care of you in your old age; where your entire life would take place in the same town; where homes were more affordable and you weren’t likely to have to move in order to advance in your career.  We now in a society where children aren’t put to work; when a parent can be sued because their child, who is out of their supervision for most of time, hugged a classmate; where we expect the government to take care of us in our old age and we can save and invest so we can pay others to take care of us; where males as young and unestablished as middle schoolers can get sexual gratification with no commitment or shame.  Children go to school for at least thirteen years instead of learning their parents’ trade.  We commute for jobs, and move for career boosts.  Women go to college and have their own careers and earn their own income, and many will happily encourage a date to treat them to a night on the town knowing full well they won’t marry him or give him sexual gratification, and then will cap off their night by calling over a booty call who never treats her like a lady or to a night on the town.   Many refuse to stay home to raise children.  Most women who marry do so to men who earn more than they do, and our legal climate dictates that they thus can cheat on their husbands and divorce him, and then exact alimony from him – sometimes for the rest of her life - and the social climate does not punish them.

Is it possible for a male to be a real man without a steady “professional” career, owning a home, getting married, and raising children?  It is possible for him to contribute to society without doing these things?  Yes.  But a male who has worked in an honest job, owns a home, gets married, and raises a child is more likely to contribute to society in greater ways and more likely to take an interest in the long-term effects of his decisions and behavior.  Also, being a husband and a father makes it much easier to grasp certain truths about his own relationship with God, which the Bible often compares to marriage and parent-child relationships, and that definitely is better for society.  You can't expect the godless to grasp this fact.

The bottom line to all of this is that life has changed.  Males can be happy and keep busy and feel fulfilled without getting married and having kids, just like the feminists demanded for women.  Males can find regular sexual gratification without marriage.  Since people in general seem to be having more dysfunction in their lives, males who “settle down” with a woman not only have to deal with their own problems and dysfunctions, they have do deal with hers as well, and they decide they are better off not becoming emotionally and financially invested and subjecting themselves to the drama.  They have enough "step" family and half-siblings to deal with without marrying a woman who brings along her own.  But the good news is – there are still healthy, “old-fashioned” people out there who want to build a nest, marry, and raise children and be devoted to their spouse and devoted to parenting and take on complimentary roles.  The trick is to keep those males and females interacting with each other, and separate from the males and females who focus on hedonism, who should be interacting with each other and not us old-fashioned types.

Choose wisely.  Treat kindly.
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Edwards Out

We can all give a sigh of relief about Edwards being out of the running.  Now we just have to make sure he doesn't end up as Attorney General or a Supreme Court Justice.  That's a very real possibility if we get a Democrat administration.
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What Do They Know?

The "objective" mainstream news media that I saw on television this morning seemed positively giddy that John McCain won Florida.  Why would that be?  Hmmmmmm.

Are there any credible surveys that show McCain beating Clinton or Obama in a general election?
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This is What Could Go Wrong

A sad story is playing out in Orange County.

Doug Irving and Maria Chercoles of the Orange County Register report on teen mothers who went out partying and ended up dead.

A sidewalk memorial to two dead sisters took shape Monday while investigators and family members tried to make sense of the car crash that killed them – and to explain the canister of laughing gas found in the wreckage.

The two women, young mothers from Santa Ana, died early Sunday when their car veered off Euclid Street and slammed into a tree. A third woman in the car was hospitalized with major internal injuries, broken bones in her face and severe burns.

The impact was so crushing that it tore the car almost in half. Police found the speedometer more than 100 feet away; it was stopped at 60 mph, but police said there's no way to know whether that's how fast the car was moving.

It’s a good thing that nobody else was killed or harmed.  This could have been a lot worse.

Police also found a half tank of nitrous oxide – the laughing gas of dental offices – on the floor of the front passenger's side. The gas is sometimes used at rave parties to induce a brief high that some users have compared to floating; police said they were still not sure why it was in the car.

An autopsy of the two women killed in the crash – Blanca Lopez, 19, and Carol Lopez, 18 – concluded that both died of multiple and severe traumas. Coroners requested special tests for nitrous oxide in addition to the standard toxicology tests, but those will likely take several weeks to complete.

Someone was using that container for either unneeded speed on the road, or a high.  Either way, it is bad news.

Blanca Lopez had two daughters, ages 2 and 5 months. She had begun to talk about marriage with her boyfriend, Armando Nuñez.

So let’s review.  Blanca got pregnant at what – 15 or 16?  She had a baby.  Then, she got pregnant again at 17 or 18, and had another baby.  Without the benefit of being married.  She had “begun” to talk about marriage with Armando Nunez.  The article doesn’t say if he was the father of either or both of those children.  He may not be even if he thinks he is.  Lovely picture, isn’t it?

Her sister, Carol, had a 5-month-old girl and was studying to become a nurse.

So this sister, who got pregnant at about 17 because she didn’t learn anything from her older sister, is studying to become a nurse?  I wonder where she finds the time, taking care of a 5 month-old, and all.

But it gets better.

The third person in the car, Martha Ochoa, 17, was their cousin.

The three women were returning home after partying at an underage event at a nearby nightclub, according to police.

So these teenage mothers were out partying it up instead of taking care of their children.  Lovely.

Blanca Lopez was driving and lost control of the car, crashing it into the tree. Police think she was speeding.

"I've been a cop for over 18 years," traffic investigator Chris Wasinger said. "This is the most spectacularly damaged vehicle I've ever seen."

Again, it is a good thing nobody else was hurt or killed.

On Monday, seven bouquets of red and white roses decorated the sidewalk near where Blanca and Carol Lopez died.

I wonder if ANY of the people who are leaving roadside memorials ever once told these girls that 1) “partying” is a bad idea; 2) driving fast is a bad idea; 3) keeping children as unmarried teenagers is a bad idea; 4) once you are a parent, you shouldn’t be out partying; 5) intercourse as an unmarried teenager is a bad idea; 6) "dating" or having intercourse when you are already an unmarried teen parent is a bad idea; 7) there are a dozen forms of effective contraception; 8) plenty of people want to adopt babies and give them a good home; 9) California allows you to “surrender” your newborn baby to a hospital or fire station or police station with no strings attached and no obligations.

Now, these children, who were already facing tough odds, have lost their mothers.

Actions have real and lasting consequences.  Even if the person committing the act is a teenager.

True to form, online readers of the Register are leaving comments, and some people connected with the Lopez girls are defending them.  It’s not that these girls aren’t worthy of being mourned.  It is that their mistakes should be used as lessons to others, lest other people make the same mistakes.  It is precisely because these girls made some bad choices that this story is as sad as it is.  Those who “judge” these girls hold them to a higher standard than those who are defending their mistakes.
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What’s Wrong With Hillary?

Someone in my family said she liked what Senator Hillary Clinton was saying and she asked me what’s wrong with her, as in – why not vote for her?  This person is not a partisan and not a staunch conservative.

This is my response.
=== === === === ===

Should Senator Hillary Clinton get the nomination to be the Democrat candidate for President, I will be voting for whomever the Republican candidate is – Mitt Romney, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, or Mike Huckabee.

You mentioned that you liked what Clinton was saying.  The problem is, she has demonstrated time and again that you can’t rely on what she says.  This is a woman to voted to use force again in dealing with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, but then turned around and criticized the effort for political gain.  I can’t rely on someone who plays such politics when it comes to military matters.

The President has some basic responsibilities.  He or she is Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces, nominates judges, and signs or vetoes legislation developed by Congress, and thus has some sway in setting the legislative agenda.

There is no bigger threat to Americans right now than terrorists motivated by their Islamofascist ideology.
  They hate us more than they love their own children.  We need a President who is willing to kill these terrorists, disrupt their plans, and keep them from wielding weapons of mass destruction.  Any one of the four Republicans is likely to be more aggressive in that area than Senator Clinton.

Part of defending our nation is securing our borders are much as possible.  Any one of the four Republicans is more likely to secure our border than Senator Clinton, even John McCain.  The public has spoken very clearly on this – we want the border secure before – or whether or not – any kind of amnesty is offered to illegal aliens currently here.  Clinton’s base contains people who do not want the border secured.  She is less likely to listen to those who have demanded the border be secured.

Since we have many public amenities and tax-supported programs, such as health care, public schools, infrastructure, and various forms of public assistance, border control is also a financial issue.  In southern California, our emergency rooms, schools, jails, and roads are crowded with illegal aliens and their children.  This lowers the quality of life for citizens and legal immigrants and residents.

Speaking of spending and taxes – each of the four Republican candidates has a strong commitment to slow government spending and to keep taxes down.  Senator Clinton is more likely to support tax increases and even more government spending.  She is more likely to support centralizing even more power and control in Washington D.C., while the Republican candidates are more likely to allow states more freedom and control.

Judicial appointments are another significant concern.  Senator Clinton is more likely to nominate activist judges who cite foreign laws, thereby imposing the laws and judicial decisions of other countries on us against our will.  It is the job of legislatures, who are elected by us, to make and repeal laws.  Judges who serve for life should stick to interpreting and applying law, not making law.

Finally, if Congress remains, as it is now, in the control of liberal Democrats, it is very important to have a more centrist or conservative President who can issue a veto when they clearly go too far.  Senator Clinton, if elected President, is less likely to veto what a liberal Democrat Congress sends her.

Mitt Romney was elected Governor of Massachusetts, and so is clearly not an extreme conservative.  He has a proven history of leadership as Governor, in making the 2002 Olympics a success, and in business.  I’m no fan of Mormonism as religious truth, but Romney appears to be a sincere Mormon, and sincere Mormons believe they are accountable for their actions, live cleanly, and they are very patriotic about the U.S.A.  These are good qualities to have in a President.

John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Mick Huckabee are far from being my ideal candidates for President, but any of them would be significantly better President than Clinton.
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California Rent Control Coming Up For a Vote

Shouldn't a property owner be able to charge what the market will pay for use of their property?

Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, reports on a ballot measure that would phase out rent control laws in California.

Having toiled in machine shops during World War II and worked for decades in other manual jobs, 84-year-old Mary Kubancik felt entitled to live out her years in a pleasant mobile home park in Sylmar.

Instead, the frail Kubancik is preparing to move out after 19 years. Her $919 monthly Social Security check won't cover her essentials and the $702 that her mobile home space will cost when the latest double-digit increase takes effect in April.

"I worked since I was 14 years old, and this is all I have," she said, tears vying with anger in her eyes. "I had to sell. And this was supposed to be my golden years."

It is typical for these stories to pick “hard luck” stories.  But I have to wonder what Ms. Kubancik did with her earnings, since she was working since age 14?  Why wasn’t she living within her means with some money left over to save and invest?  It’s too bad she was paying into Social Security.  She would have been better off investing that money herself.

Across town is Robert Kubota, 66, a pharmacist and chief executive of a family firm that operated a mobile home park in Chula Vista for 44 years. He blames rent control laws for six years of financial losses on the park. A Bankruptcy Court judge agreed that the business was not sustainable and approved a plan that led to the closure of Jade Bay Mobile Lodge last year.

So the place gets closed down entirely.  How does that help anyone?

In the spring, voters will decide whose interests prevail. More than 100 owners and operators of apartment buildings and mobile home parks spent nearly $2 million to put an initiative on the June 3 ballot to phase out California's rent control laws. About 1.2 million people statewide are covered by such laws.

Los Angeles, which has 626,600 rent-controlled residential units, could be affected more than any other city if the measure passes.

There is a private way to control rent.  It is called leasing or buying.

Proponents tout the measure as one that would limit government's use of eminent domain, preventing the taking of private property for private development. Although that is the first provision of the measure, it goes on to phase out rent control. Opponents have dubbed the measure the "Hidden Agenda Scheme," in part because rent control is not mentioned in the ballot title.

"Homeowners want true eminent domain protections but will not be duped into enacting harmful and deceptive provisions that have nothing to do with eminent domain, said Ken Willis, president of the League of California Homeowners.

It’s all a matter of protecting property rights.

The measure says rent control laws enacted before Jan. 1, 2007, would remain in effect for tenants who were living in the controlled units as their principal residence. When the tenant leaves, rent control would be removed from that unit.

See – that is an important aspect of this.  People won’t be thrown out onto the street, although I can see landlords doing whatever they can to encourage people to leave.

Generally, the laws allow landlords to raise rents by a limited amount -- in many jurisdictions by the amount of the consumer price index. Whenever a unit is vacated, the landlord can reset the rent at market level. But while the unit is occupied, rent increases are subject to controls.

"That sets a perverse incentive for landlords to charge the highest rent when an apartment is vacated," said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

Coupal said the long-term effect of rent control laws is to reduce the amount of affordable housing because developers won't invest in it.

Artificial government controls can have negative effects, no matter how good the intentions.

Tenant-rights advocates say that if rent control is phased out, many poor and elderly people will have no place to live.

How so?  People can remain where they are and still have their rent controlled.  Lifting rent control won’t suddenly make more people.  There are only so many “wealthy” and “young” people seeking a place to rent.  While the “poor” and “elderly” new to an area may not be able to live exactly where they want with as much room to themselves, they’ll likely still have a place to live.

A more free housing market will mean more investment in housing.
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Looking for Hand-Outs in Anaheim

Amy Taxin of the Orange County Register reports on the usual band of “I want you to pay for me” protestors in Anaheim.  If you go the story, you can see by the pictures that the groups love to exploit children.

Whipped by chilling winds and rain, about 150 community activists and residents marched Sunday to urge the city of Anaheim to provide affordable housing and park space in a new development slated near Angel Stadium.

The rally, organized by a coalition of community groups, churches and unions, aimed to pressure the city Anaheim to include a "community benefits agreement" in its plans for a 51.4-acre city-owned plot north of the stadium where developer Archstone-Smith plans to build hotels, offices and retail space.

So why don’t these groups buy the land and do with it what they want?  Why do they demand that “someone else” do it for them?  Churches have a command from Jesus Christ to care for the poor, not government.  Let’s remember - separation of church and state.

There would be more people counterprotesting, but they are too busy being productive.  Notice how much time unions have to protest.

The groups want the agreement to include child care facilities, park space, adequate wages and low-cost housing.

Child care?  Why are these people having children they won’t raise themselves?  Who defines “adequate wages”?  It seems to me that if someone agrees to the wages, they must be adequate.  Why aren't the unions negotiating "adequate" wages?  “Low-cost housing” almost always means high-cost housing that someone else subsidizes.

"This is to show our strength, to give us a voice so the council will listen to us," said Jaime Ramirez, an unemployed auto parts distributor from Anaheim who joined the march.

Unemployed, huh?

Archstone-Smith, which is in an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city to buy the property, has met with members of groups that have been lobbying for these standards, but has not promised to follow their criteria. Archstone-Smith expects to forge a purchase agreement with the city early this year.

The only reason the company should meet with the group is if the group is willing to buy the rights to the site.

Councilman Harry Sidhu said the city was better off selling the site for between $150 million to and $200 million and then using a portion of these funds to build affordable housing and park space elsewhere in Anaheim – in large part because the Angels' lease on the stadium forbids the construction of any residences on the property.

Angels' owner Arte Moreno has refused to alter the agreement to allow any housing there.

"You cannot force us to do certain things right on this piece of property because we have no control," Sidhu said. "We have a certain lease and we will honor that."

Most of the whiners can’t think critically, though, so they fail to grasp such realities.

"When this property is sold, we will have quite a bit of money in the redevelopment agency and we will take that money and build somewhere else in the city a redevelopment project," he said.

How about using the money to fight crime, boost emergency services, and fix infrastructure?

Eric Altman, executive director of Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development, said the coalition's hope is to be included in talks between the city and Archstone-Smith.

How annoying.  What’s with people who insist on letting other people do the work and put up the money, and then butting in where they have no right to?
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State of the Approval Rating

D.R. Tucker over at Human Events blogged a defense of President Bush.  Bush’s approval ratings are around 30 percent.  But why is that?  The drive-by media tries to make it look like Bush is too far right, and that most people don’t approve of Bush because they are “progressive”.

The truth is, however, that there are a lot of conservatives and libertarians who have a hard time giving Bush a blanket job approval.

We knew in 2000 that Bush wasn’t very conservative, and certainly not libertarian.  That has been shown to be true with all of the spending and new programs during his administration, and his willingness to interfere with the mortgage situation.  The border control and amnesty situations have angered many, too.

But as far as the Democrats and Leftists go - let’s be honest.  They hate him because he is a Republican.  Some of them see hating Bush as justified payback for how Republicans reacted to President Clinton.  And while politics has always involved some vitriol for opponents, we now have generations raised with a short attention span, an entitlement mentality, and a global, mobile, around-the-clock, ubiquitous media spin machine.  Pop music mocks Bush.  Television shows and movies of all sorts attack Bush.  What do we expect the wishy-washy independents to think?

There are way too many people who think it is the President’s job to make sure they are happy with their job and their pay, happy in their marriages, happy with their local schools, happy with their education, and happy with their medical care.  There is no pleasing such people.

Go ahead and ask some of these Leftists who insist Bush is a horrible President and that everyone agrees exactly why they disapprove of Bush.  Very few can cite a specific reason.  Even fewer can cite a reason based in reality.

The 9/11 conspiracy nuts hated Bush anyway.  Their hatred of Bush (and for some, any President) feeds their willingness to believe in a conspiracy, not the other way around.

Such people are likely to cite a “loss of civil liberties” under Bush.  Has anyone noticed any loss of their civil liberties?  Being inconvenienced at the airport is not a loss of a civil liberty.  If we’re talking about guerrilla terrorist combatants in foreign lands who are interrogated at Gitmo – our Constitution does not apply to them.

Plenty of Bush critics point to situation in Iraq.  Many of these people only approve of military actions when a Democrat is President, so there is no way Bush can please them.  Some of them are disappointed that Saddam didn’t unleash WMDs on our soldiers.  They dislike Bush for having the guts to follow through with enforcing the terms of the cease fire agreement with Saddam, for having the guts to act on even what most of the Democrats believed.

Some cite the initial response to Katrina, but state and local authorities have the responsibility for disaster preparedness and response.  FEMA comes along and pays some of the bills.  It isn’t FEMA’s job to be first responders.  People concerned about this should be upset with the local and state authorities, not Bush.

The “man-made global warming” faithful would never think a Republican is doing enough.  It’s a religion to them, and Republicans are the devil.

There are people who cite Bush’s strong faith as a problem, yet they are hard-pressed to cite how his faith has impacted them negatively or caused him to do something they don’t like.

Some people cite Bush’s move to deny Federal tax dollars to fund the destruction of human beings for new embryonic stem cells.  But if such research is so promising, why the need to tax money anyway?  Private funding should be plentiful.  Washington, D.C. does not have a Constitutional mandate to fund such research.  Besides, other advances are showing promising research without the need to kill human beings.

Finally, some haters may cite “world opinion” – that people in other countries don’t like Bush.  This is a little like saying a Pepsi factory worker isn’t thrilled about the CEO of Coca-Cola.  So what?  It is President Bush’s job to defend us and our Constitution.  The evidence shows he’s doing a great job in that respect, and people still want to come live here.

Bush’s failings have largely involved his attempt to please the Left and to grow government.  Let’s hope we’re not choosing another soft conservative to be our candidate for President.
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Marriage Trouble in Dear Abby Again

Let's return to Dear Abby.

“Seaching for the Right Words” says she has been dating a guy for more than two years, but that they do not want to get engaged without her parents’ approval.

In the meantime, Trav and I are constantly confronted by people who are eager to see us tie the knot. I wish I had a dime for every person who has asked, "So, where's the ring?" or, "Why don't you just elope?"

I’d bet that most of the people doing that are women.

We used to try explaining that we're waiting for my parents' blessing (and for Travis to finish college), but nobody seems satisfied with our reasons for waiting. I respect my parents' opinion, and do not feel I must defend it to others.

One of the problems here is that these two have tied themselves down to each other before they should have.  They should be dating other people and should not be serious and steady until they are old enough and done with school.  Travis should be focusing on school anyway, and not what to get her for Valentine’s Day.

As far as pressure from other people - it is none of their business.

Dear Abby’s advice is...

Smile and say, "We'll set a date when we're ready, and we're not ready yet." Then change the subject.

That’s perfectly fine.  There are also some other good lines to use, but most of them don’t work if you have already tied yourself down to one person.  Most women expect a relationship to “go somewhere”, as if they aren’t happy with the way things are (and, if they are dating to marry, they should look for a “progression”).  So, once you have tied yourself down to one person, expect other women to nag.  They all want to be invited to the associated parties.  They won't be the ones doing the hard work when the going gets tough.

Then there’s Broken-Hearted in Washington, who asks…

Is it possible for a wife of eight years to have a baby from another man and three "flings" after that, and still say she loves her husband? This is killing me.

It is possible she still likes the security, the financial support, and the “relief pitcher” in case the other men aren’t around.  Love is shown by what someone does.  Her actions were not loving.  And at some point, you have to ask yourself – what is her pledge of love worth anyway?

Dear Abby responded...

It's possible, if the wife is a sex addict who can't control her behavior. More important is how you feel about her, because you would have to be a masochist to allow the situation to continue unless she gets some much-needed help.

I really wonder what the response would be if the sexes were reversed.  I think it would be more along the lines of “throw the bum out and live off of his alimony.”

By the way, in most places, that child is the legal obligation of the husband, and if Washington is like California, once they hit ten years, he’ll have to pay her alimony for life in addition to child support for a kid that isn’t his.  Nice, huh?  Is it time to recriminalize adultery?  Men: choose your wife wisely.  Treat her kindly.
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ABC Tries to Have It Both Ways

ABC television network stations are facing FCC fines over showing "multiple, close-up views" of a woman's behind on the television show NYPD Blue.  What I found interesting was that the network tried to defend itself by insisting that the part of the body shown is "not a sexual organ".

That is a very interesting claim, because ABC, like most other television networks and "Hollywood" businesses, has a history of voluntarily promoting homosexual behavior as normal sexual behavior and depicting or alluding to "anal sex".  ABC and parent company Disney, like any other company in the industry, has supported open homosexuals throughout the ranks, including in high executive positions, and has not only promoted homosexual behavior in its media offerings and theme park "weddings", but to its employees.

So, which is it?  Is it a sexual organ or not?  You can't have it both ways.

Just to be clear - I'm not advocating Disney or ABC punish employees for private homosexual behavior.  But it is a little funny to see the company make such an argument.
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We Need a Republican President’s Veto

Is it just me, or are the usually loudmouthed Leftist Dem Congressional leaders keeping relatively quiet these days?  Perhaps they are trying to stay under the radar in the hopes that voters will forget that if a Democrat is elected President, and the Leftists remain in control of Congress, Leftists will control both the Legislative and the Executive branches?

Is it them, or is it the drive-by media?

I think even they know that most Americans would not be happy with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid having more power.

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