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Rembrandt, The Resurrection of Christ |
Quote of the Day
Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.
Voltaire
Feminist Ideology Doesn't Square With The Facts..
Unfortunately, I live in a state with two unaccomplished progressive Senators, Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin. Mikulski and Reid recently reintroduced the Paycheck Fairness Act. There's the usual misleading apples-and-oranges statistics, arguing women only achieve 77 cents on the dollar earned by men, despite posted notices on equitable compensation.
There are several reasons for the observed discrepancy, that involve not "gender discrimination" but, for example, males may have disproportionately sought out higher-paying jobs with difficult lifestyle choices. For example, as a single, never married man without dependents, I've been open to doing the road warrior lifestyle of an IT consultant. I've generally made significantly more as a consultant, but I found myself constantly flying to assignments from weeks to months in duration (5 day weeks, not 4 days on site with a travel day), eating at odd hours in diners or late night fast food, conducting qualification interviews for potential hires in the evening, working on schedules or continuing training requirements, etc. I made more than I did working in a non-consulting role, but I found that I didn't have a social or dating life, I had to fit any visits to relatives around my work/travel schedules, and I was never really off: I might have to log onto a client system during the weekend to do or check on tasks, and check on any interim work emails. Companies often find that they have to pay more to staff these positions. Whereas I did meet female consultants, most of the ones I met happened to be single like me. I think most married women I've met, particularly if they have younger children, don't want to make those quality of life choices, and a number of men I've worked with ended up getting divorced with kids whom barely know them.
There are a couple of relevant quotes from a Time Magazine article posted last September (by a woman) that you PROBABLY would never have learned by politicians pandering to feminist ideologues:
- "A new analysis [by James Chung of Reach Advisors] of 2,000 communities by a market research company, in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the U.S., the median full-time salaries of [unmarried, childless women under 30 who live in cities] are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group... This squares with earlier research from Queens College, New York, that had suggested that this was happening in major metropolises. [Chung] attributes the earnings reversal overwhelmingly to one factor: education... Studies have consistently shown that a college degree pays off in much higher wages over a lifetime, and even in many cases for entry-level positions."
- "Late last year [2009], the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that for the first time, women made up the majority of the workforce in highly paid managerial positions."
Dr. Mark Perry, on his interesting Carpe Diem blog, has a periodic tongue-in-cheek gimmick where he'll mark up some pretentious progressive nonsense, like a recent relevant New York Times editorial. The markup on the editorial backing the Mikulski bill is somewhat amusing.
More to the point, he has another post today pointing out that female ratio of college graduates dominates all but one category (professional) and even that category is less than 1.5%, with an overall advantage of roughly 17%. (In particular, we see lopsided majorities in the categories of African American women and Latinas.)
Trump's 'Sarah Palin Moment' on Abortion
I still remember when I first found out about abortion. I had seen the word discussed in some newspaper and asked my mom, whom described it in clinical, nonjudgmental terms. I was horrified that women would even think about doing that. I remember saying, "But that's murder! What does the (Catholic) Church say about this? They have got to be against this." (Of course, the Church has always regarded it as a grave sin, from the earliest days, including explicit references in the Didache: "you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born" ["The Romans practiced infanticide, contraception and abortion in order to limit the number of children born to the Roman family."])
The pro-abortion choice proponents have attempted to paint it as a religious issue vs. a general ethical issue in a deliberately misleading manner. Christ Himself never specifically addresses the issue, but what is clear is that abortions in Israel were rare during times of Jesus, generally not accepted for reasons (e.g., economic reasons, lifestyle choices, deformity of the fetus, etc.) other than to save the lives of mothers; it's hardly surprising that Jesus wouldn't feel the need to preach against the rare practice of abortion in contemporary Jewish society versus more salient issues: he wasn't preaching to the Roman occupiers.
I have made it clear where I stand on Roe v Wade, and the underlying decision is poorly and wrongly decided. What we do know, from science, is that the unborn child from the moment of conception is biologically distinct from his or her mother. The child is, by nature, directly dependent on the mother for nourishment, just like a child after birth is relatively helpless and demands constant attention by the parents or surrogates. Certainly a woman has the right to have her tubes tied, to engage in preventive contraception, or to refuse sex. (I do think if she's married, certain relevant decisions should be jointly made.) Once a child comes into being, the facts have changed. The mother has a responsibility which reflect the choices she has made, directly or indirectly.
I'm not going to go into the details of Griswold v Connecticut although I have previously mentioned I am sympathetic to looking at issues like family planning to be an unenumerated right (Ninth Amendment). (Does the state have the right to ensure, say, birth control drugs are safe and are marketed with valid claims? Yes.) Note that the Connecticut law restricting contraceptives, like, say, Texas sodomy laws, was an unenforceable law on the books for almost a century before being resurrected for political reasons. Like all rights, the right of family planning can be limited by due process; for example, the incarceration of a spouse will hamper the ability to have additional children. The decision found access to contraceptives to be under the right to marital privacy; it should be noted that Griswold did not expand on that privacy right to include abortion, but Roe v Wade eventually did, using the Fourteenth Amendment to compel conformance of states. In fact, Justice Blackmun did restrict that right within the last trimester, which I find utterly arbitrary and unpersuasive based on a leap of logic that conveniently defines away the human rights of the unborn child.
In fact, I do agree that all things being equal, the state does not have the right to intrude on our private lives. But there are circumstances where the state does have a vested interest in terms of protecting the more fundamental rights of others. If I'm the head of a household, I have certain financial responsibility for family members (food, shelter, health, etc.); I do not have a right to physically abuse them or take their lives. Public safety professionals have often intervened at family homes. The judicial system also is supposed to respect legal traditions, and there had been restrictions on abortion since at least the 1820's and most abortions were outlawed by 1900, in part due to conscientious objections by the medical profession. Whereas certain states or even the country sought to extend laws reflect certain idiosyncratic religious moral teachings (e.g., Texas sodomy and blue laws, Prohibition, etc.), there is a significant moral distinction between contraception and abortion; most people would also recognize there are certain restrictions on a pregnant woman's behavior (e.g., proper nourishment, alcohol and certain addictive drugs). Justice Byron White agreed with the court's decision in Griswold but did not find the same type privacy right in Roe v Wade.
I understand the Roe v Wade decision but fundamentally disagree with the leap of logic subordinating the rights of the unborn child to a woman's privacy rights, for the same reasoning I would oppose infanticide, and I disagree that the rights of a child change by some unspecified arbitrary line in human physical development. Nobody (except maybe progressive social workers) wants to tell parents how to raise their children.
In a recent NBC interview with Savannah Guthrie, Trump fell into EXACTLY the same gotcha trap that pro-life Sarah Palin fell into in the disastrous Katie Couric interview ("[VP Candidate Sarah Palin] was asked: “Do you think there's an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution?” Palin responded, “I do. Yeah, I do.”"):
Guthrie: “Is there a right to privacy in the Constitution?”Trump: “I guess there is, I guess there is. And why, just out of curiosity, why do you ask that question?”When pressed to explain how his position on the right to privacy “squares” with his anti-abortion position, Trump responded: “Well, that’s a pretty strange way of getting to pro-life. I mean, it’s a very unique way of asking about pro-life. What does that have to do with privacy? How are you equating pro-life with privacy? ”Guthrie asked, “well, you know about the Roe v. Wade decision.” Trump responded, “yes, right, sure. Look, I am pro-life. I’ve said it. I’m very strong there.”
First of all, whether you're Palin or Trump, any reasonably intelligent person knows that over the past 40 years, the abortion issue is a predictable litmus test that is routinely played out whenever we discuss a potential vacancy on the Supreme Court. The mainstream media have a very predictable agenda that focuses on two lines of attack: (1) attempt to portray the pro-life candidate as "extremist", by probing their positions on abortion when the mother's life is in danger or in the case of rape; (2) try to undermine the credibility of the candidate by showing how uninformed the conservative is.
Do you really expect for the mainstream media to be even-handed? For example, question the morally incoherent position espoused by some well-known Catholic politicians like Pelosi, Biden, Cuomo and Kerry that they are personally opposed to abortion but don't want to impose their religious views on others? After all, do we also have to throw out laws against theft, perjury, or murder of post-birth humans, because we don't want to impose the Ten Commandments on the rest of society? Or at what magic moment do they believe the fetus becomes a person? They also advance disingenuous arguments, like Exodus does not prescribe the death penalty (but a lesser penalty) for someone whom is responsible for the death of an unborn child or a few early/Middle Age Christian theologians accepting the science of certain ancient Greek philosophers (i.e., Aristotle) whom held that a fetus goes through prior non-human stages of development before ensoulment. What they don't say, of course, is that the same theologians, making a judgment based on obsolete and incorrect science involving fetal development, have never failed to morally condemn pre-ensoulment abortion as frustrating the indisputable Judaic-Christian concept that each child is a gift from God, and rejecting that life is a profound sin, a rejection of God Himself. There is no doubt that if the ancient Jews or Christian theologians knew today's accepted scientific evidence of distinctive personal characteristics from the moment of conception, their source materials would have been written differently.
Now in terms of dealing with the media, as soon as a conservative hears a news reporter talk about "right to privacy", it's basically progressive shorthand for the unrestricted legal right to an abortion. I realize Donald Trump hasn't officially announced his candidacy yet, but it doesn't seem prudent for him to be discussing politics in the interim, before he has fully fleshed out his political positions and worked with some political consultants to prepare him for exactly these type of gotcha interviews.
Donald Trump has considerable skills, particularly in self-promotion. Unfortunately, he doesn't have knowledge and experience in the political arena. He needs to have a healthy respect for his limitations, and definitely, in this case, he was unaware of Sarah Palin's interview problems. There is simply no excuse for improper preparation at anything, including a run for the Presidency. Donald Trump certainly wouldn't do that going into a business deal. It's almost insulting to the American that an otherwise intelligent man like Trump would launch a Presidential bid so casually and bombastically. It comes across to me like he looked at the election and thought, "What do I need to need to do to become the GOP nominee? Well, they don't like Obama, they have questions about his birth certificate, the base is pro-life; they are for the traditional definition of marriage; they think too many Mexicans are illegally crossing the border; ..." So he goes out and delivers on those talking points. If you look at the exchange above, he's not really concerned about the interviewer revealing he didn't know about key arguments made in the Roe v Wade decision; he's not even thinking of the general election campaign right now. He knows to face Obama, he must capture the GOP base. (Keep in mind that there are also a number of pro-abortion rights Republicans, e.g., Colin Powell.) Most of the faithful aren't that concerned with the reasoning behind what they consider to be a fundamentally unjust decision. That's why Trump is intent on hitting his marks: he's pro-life, against Roe v Wade.
The fact of that matter, like Sarah Palin, Trump doesn't have much of a political public record, and there are going to be interviews where, as in the case of 2008's Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric interviews with Sarah Palin, interviewers are looking for a career-making takeaway, perhaps casting doubt on a candidate's fitness for office: his command of the issues, his general character, intelligence and temperament, his qualifications for the office, etc.
There is nothing wrong with having self-confidence but in some cases, "less is more". He's barely touching on the key issues of the 2012 campaign: an out-of-control, intractable budget, federal bureaucracy, and entitlements, a smoke-and-mirrors health care law and super-bureaucracy, an all-but-certain train wreck with the Baby Boomer tsunami only in the initial stages of being played out. Instead, he's suggesting steps which potentially could set up a dangerous confrontation with Iran, trade wars with China: we have overextended our military, we've exhausted our finances.
I personally find it embarrassing to see that a large plurality of Republicans and/or Tea Party members claim to believe that Obama was not born in the US, despite compelling evidence otherwise. Maybe it's Corsi's most recently published flawed research or the constant hyping of conspiracy theories by the angry media conservatives. Every time I point out the facts my readership seems to decline. (I don't really think that many Republicans or Tea Party members are really that stupid; I think they see it as some sort of referendum on Obama, and the poll is really reflecting their rejection of Obama, period. It's what we behavioral researchers sometimes call a 'halo effect'.)
Anyone reading this blog on a regular basis knows that I am a sharp, persistent critic of Obama. Trump and I agree on one thing: Obama is, without question, the most incompetent, worst President in the history of the United States; it's not even close. There are only two reasons he has a shot of reelection: first, American voters personally like him, despite of the fact they disagree with his policies; second, I think they like the fact the nation proved it would vote for an African American to the Presidency in the aftermath of divisive racial politics throughout American history. Moreover, there will always be voters reluctant to admit they voted for the wrong person.
Fukushima Nuclear Incident Update
No new posts on the major blogs I follow. Presumably the reactor pressurized vessels 1 through 3 and spent fuel pools 1 through 4 are replenished with coolant on as-needed basis, temperature and pressure in the RPV's are declining/stable, and contaminated water from the reactor 2 turbine building is in process to the rad waste storage tank.
Political Humor
A few originals:
- President Obama had a Passover Seder at the White House. VP Biden was there as well, telling the Orthodox rabbi sitting next to him about the great hot dog he had at the last ballgame he went to and how he was particularly looking forward to the succulent Easter ham he would have this Sunday dinner, topped with Obama's Own pineapple glaze.
- Donald Trump is getting competitive in the upcoming GOP race with Mitt Romney. Not only does he think it's relevant being the first billionaire to run for the GOP nomination over a mere multi-millionaire like Romney, but he is clearly more in favor of traditional marriage, having married three women (tied with Newt Gingrich) to Romney's one, and has more experience dealing with bankruptcies, having had four of his own. But his worst attack ad notes that Romney has earned a Harvard law degree (like President Obama) and a Harvard MBA (like President Bush). Trump proudly notes that, like Sarah Palin, he stopped with just one college degree, and he would be the first American President since 1988 without a Harvard or Yale degree.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
ABBA, "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do"
