It’s Tuesday, April 9th, 2013…but before we begin, one quick comment as we’re sitting in the basement watching The Game with the sound off: regardless of the outcome, the lousiest officiating we’ve ever witnessed in an NCAA basketball final was only matched by the incredibly low quality of the announcing courtesy of Jim Nance and Clark Kellogg…which is why we’ll be watching The Masters on mute as well.

Oh, by the way; if Powerade were truly interested in unconventional athletes participating in sports traditionally dominated by certain groups…

…wouldn’t a short white guy playing in the NBA be a truly atypical choice?  Not to mention the short white kid who averaged under 2 points a game kept Michigan in the game the entire first half while Kellogg’s “consensus national Player of the Year” sat the bench…and failed to perform in the 2nd half.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, we honor the passing of Margaret Thatcher with the Heritage Foundation‘s tribute to the Iron Lady a year before her passing:

If, as is often said, you can tell a lot about a person by the friends they keep, note the contrast between Baroness Thatcher…

…and B. Hussein:

And if you’re wondering how the MSM’s treatment of Thatcher’s passing compared to the recent demise of another totalitarian dictator, here’s your answer:

Speaking of The Obamao, he’s the subject of the latest installment of Hope n’ Change:

Sacrificial Lame

As a show of solidarity with the federal workers being furloughed by the Obama Sequester Cuts, the president has announced that he will voluntarily take a 5% pay cut beginning immediately, and double the number of prayers he says each day that he’ll somehow find a way to put bread on the table for his family – assuming he can find his family members at their various five-star vacation resorts.

Although when the president’s “sacrifice” is given greater scrutiny, we can see both the “screw” and the “tiny.” For one thing, he’s not taking a pay cut, but instead voluntarily “writing a check every month” to give back a total of $20,000 per year…out of a combined family income of nearly $800,000 while living with (oh yeah!) all imaginable expenses paid.

And guess what?! Because Obama is one of the evil rich, he can claim a hefty tax deduction of 39.6% for this “donation” to the US Treasury – putting a tidy $7,920 back in his pocket at taxpayer expense.

All of which makes the president’s grand gesture seem like all of his other gestures: a one-finger salute to the American people who are genuinely suffering under the deliberately disastrous effects of the Obamaconomy.

In a related item, courtesy of George Lawlor, writing at The Washington Times, Joe Curl notes…

Obama’s 1 percent lifestyle hits a nerve

Allow us to translate: eat your cake and STFU!

Next up, an amazingly accurate portrayal of the hypocrisy inherent in modern Liberalism, courtesy of James Taranto and Best of the Web:

Party Like It’s 1984

How sexual liberationists torture language and logic.

Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas is set to sign a bill imposing modest restrictions on abortion, Reuters reports: “The bill prevents employees of abortion clinics from providing sex education in schools, bans tax credits for abortion services and requires clinics to give details to women about fetal development and abortion health risks. It also bans abortions based solely on the [sex] of the fetus.”

But as the Associated Press reports, abortion proponents are especially exercised about a provision “declaring that life begins ‘at fertilization’ “:

Talcott Camp, deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said the language could eventually “open the door to extreme interpretation of other laws. It provides something that future bill sponsors would point to, and say, ‘This is already Kansas law.’ “

Holly Weatherford, another ACLUer, frets that the stipulation could “be used as a tool of harassment.”

Hey Holly, did you know the word “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary. Just kidding, it’s there, as we noted in October. You know what else is there? “Fertilization.” Here’s Merriam-Webster’s definition 2(b), the relevant one for this discussion: “the process of union of two gametes whereby the somatic chromosome number is restored and the development of a new individual is initiated.”

This is basic reproductive biology. The assertion that life begins at fertilization is a tautology. Camp and Weatherford might as well be objecting to a legislative finding that A is A or 2+2=4 or a tautology is true by definition.

So why do they find the declaration so discomfiting? Because abortion would be easier to justify if one were ignorant of basic reproductive biology. If one imagines gestation as a process in which an inanimate lump of matter, or a part of the mother’s body, or a parasite (which by definition is an organism of a different species) grows for months before spontaneously generating an independent identity, then it is hard to formulate a moral objection to abortion prior to the moment at which spontaneous generation occurs.

Abortion is morally fraught because we know that’s not how it works. The moment human sperm meets human egg, a new human organism comes into existence. To acknowledge that basic truth is not to resolve the abortion debate, merely to assure that it is based on scientific fact. The rest of the debate is about values and practical questions: At what developmental point between zygote and adult does a human being acquire rights, especially the right not to be killed? If that point is before birth, how does one weigh the mother’s competing rights claims? (Or the father’s, for that matter, though our current legal regime grants him none even if he is married to the mother.) Apart from morality, what are the real-world consequences of regulating abortion in particular ways, or of not doing so?

If your goal is to maximize sexual freedom, then it’s expedient to answer the abortion question in the most permissive way possible. We suppose in that case simply defying science and logic, as Camp and Weatherford do, is a tempting shortcut. But when your position depends on denying a tautology, you may find it a difficult one to defend.

This is only one of three examples we noticed over the weekend of sexual liberationists doing violence to language and logic. National Review’s Wesley Smith notes that in California, “legislation has been filed that would require group insurance to cover gay and lesbian infertility treatments just as they do heterosexual.”

In 1973 the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. That was a value judgment more than a scientific one–an early sign of a cultural shift toward viewing homosexuality as a normal variation of human behavior rather than a manifestation of sickness or evil. As to the scientific question of what combination of nature, nurture and volition gives rise to homosexuality, the jury is still out 40 years later.

But one indisputable fact about homosexual behavior is that it cannot result in reproduction. Thus “gay and lesbian infertility” is either a redundancy or an oxymoron, like “female impotence” or “male hypolactation.” As Smith explains in The Weekly Standard, the proposal would mean that “every gay individual or couple . . . could be construed as infertile, with group insurance required to pay for the individual or couple to have a child.”

Since “infertility” is inherent in homosexuality, what California is proposing to do is once again define homosexuality as a disease–not in order to stigmatize gays but in order to subsidize them.

Our third example comes from NewsBusters.org, which noted that on Friday MSNBC host Chris Hayes criticized the Obama administration for its decree–reversed last week by a federal judge–that only adults (and possibly 17-year-olds) may purchase the morning-after contraceptive known as Plan B over the counter:

Hayes: There is normal politics and then there’s crazy vagina politics. . . . Watch this. You’re going to see two clips of the same president talking about science and medicine from two different political universes. The first is the normal political universe. The second is a crazy vaginal political universe.

Obama: To ensure that in this new administration, we base our public policies on the soundest science. That we appoint scientific advisers based on their credentials and experience, neither politics or ideology. And that we are open and honest with the American people about the science behind our decisions. That’s how we will harness the power of science to achieve our goals.

Obama (second clip): As the father two of daughters, I think it is important for us to make sure that, you know, we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine. And as I understand it, the reason Kathleen [Sebelius] made this decision, was she could not be confident that a 10-year- old or an 11-year-old going to a drugstore should be able, alongside bubble gum or batteries, be able to buy a medication that potentially if not used properly could end up having an adverse effect.

Hayes: Here have you a reasonable pro-science administration making an explicitly, well, know-nothing, Archie Bunker-style argument, because the issue at hand is teenage girls’ sex lives. Even though this administration has no general, ideological, or political commitment to control young women’s sex lives, because the politics in this country get crazy around women having sex. Simple as that.

Well, hang on just a second. The issue here isn’t women having sex; since 2006 the Food and Drug Administration has permitted over-the-counter sales of Plan B to anyone over 18. The issue is children having sex.

If Hayes had said “the politics in this country get crazy around children having sex,” he would have had an interesting point, one that goes beyond tiresome feminist cant. There is, when you think about it, a notable disparity between the ideology of sexual liberationism that dominates elite culture and leftist legal and political analysis and the desire to protect children from growing up too fast.

The 15-year-old whom Hayes thinks should be able to buy Plan B over the counter, for example, is almost certainly (though the laws vary from state to state) a victim of rape. Does Hayes think laws against sex with minors are the product of “crazy vagina politics”? Falsely identifying the Plan B question as involving “women having sex” enables him to avoid thinking about this rather more difficult question.

It’s worth noting that the left has its own rigid prescriptions regarding the sexual behavior of young people, even adults. As we saw last week, feminists–the group to whom Hayes is pandering with his puerile “vagina” talk–get crazy at the thought of adult women, even those well into their 20s, getting married.

While that’s silly, it seems to us there is fairly broad agreement that a completely unregulated sexual marketplace would be bad for minors. If one looks past the rhetorical and logical deceptions of the liberationists, one may find the clarity to ask if it’s necessarily all that good for adults.

As we’ve often observed, gay marriage isn’t an issue, but rather the means to an end.  The goal is the complete and utter elimination of ethics and morality; the redefinition of sin.  Almost as if it were deliberately and personally planned by…

…Satan himself.

And since we’re on the subject of Satan, his work is the subject of this recent item from the Washington Free Beacon via The New Media Journal:

Defense Dept. Classifies Catholics, Evangelicals as Extremists

“Yeah, you…with the Bible!”

The Defense Department came under fire Thursday for a US Army Reserve presentation that classified Catholics and Evangelical Protestants as “extremist” religious groups alongside al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan. The presentation detailed a number of extremist threats within the US military, including white supremacist groups, street gangs, and religious sects.

The presentation identified seventeen religious organizations in a slide titled “religious extremism.” They include al Qaeda, Hamas, the Filipino separatist group Abu Sayyaf, and the Ku Klux Klan, which the slide identifies as a Christian organization. “Religious extremism is not limited to any single religion, ethnic group, or region of the world,” the slide explains, in language that closely resembles the text of a Wikipedia page on “extremism.”

While outfits such as al Qaeda and the KKK are explicitly violent, the presentation also lists Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism as extremist groups. More than half of all Americans identify themselves as members of those two Christian denominations. National Public Radio reported in 2005 that 40 percent of active duty military personnel were evangelical Christians.

“Men and women of faith who have served the Army faithfully for centuries shouldn’t be likened to those who have regularly threatened the peace and security of the United States,” said Col. Ron Crews, a retired Army chaplain and the executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty. “It is dishonorable for any US military entity to allow this type of wrongheaded characterization,” Crews said in a news release.

Crews also criticized the presentation for citing the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center to support its findings. The SPLC has dubbed organizations “hate groups” for promoting Christian teachings on morality and sexuality.

A SPLC map of “hate groups” was used by a gunman in 2012 to target the conservative Family Research Council for its position on gay marriage. The gunman shot a security guard at the FRC’s headquarters. The SPLC has refused to comment on its role in the shooting.

The Archdiocese for the Military Services, a Catholic organization that trains and endorses military priests and chaplains, said in a release that it was “astounded that Catholics were listed alongside groups that are, by their very mission and nature, violent and extremist.” The AMS called on the Pentagon “to review these materials and to ensure that tax-payer funds are never again used to present blatantly anti-religious material to the men and women in uniform.”

An Army spokesperson said the presentation “was produced by an individual without anyone in the chain of command’s knowledge or permission.” The Army removed the offending slide after receiving complaints. The person responsible for the presentation, the spokesperson said, “was not a subject matter expert, and produced the material after conducting Internet research.”

Yeah, on the SPLC website…and with a predetermined agenda!

On the Lighter Side…

Finally, in the “Your Tax Dollars At Work” segment…

Virginia Builds $1 Million “Super” Bus Stop

It expects to build 23 more at over $900,000 a piece

The city of Arlington just recently opened an impressive bus stop with a not-so-impressive price tag of $1 million. The “super stop” in Arlington, Virginia is unlike any other bus stop. It has a custom designed roof made of glass and steel; a wall of etched glass; heaters in the floor; gorgeous landscaping, and concrete/stainless steel benches.

The bus stop has 10-inch high curbs, 90 feet of concrete and can shelter 15 people at a time while waiting for buses to arrive – all at a cost of $1 million.

The cost comes down to $575,000 for construction/fabrication and $440,000 for construction management and inspections, where federal/state money took care of 80 percent of the total price tag.

Yes, Virginia, there is…

…a Santa Claus!  At least in Arlington.

Magoo