- Richard Cory.
- The other “hard cases.”
- A brief refresher course on Julian Assange.
- The unsung hero of the global economy.
- Division III rules the moral roost.
- Democrats and Civil Liberties.
- It makes perfect sense, so Romney will blow it off.
When I was a young Evangelical, my imagination had trouble with appreciating the difference between facticity and truth.
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
‘Good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Since their stunning and unexpected victory in Roe v. Wade, the friends of feticide have used rape as a wedge issue. The argument goes something like this:
- If you wouldn’t allow abortion to a rape victim, you’re a sadistic bastard/bitch.
- If you would allow abortion to a rape victim, you’re a misogynist bastard/bitch who thinks “forced pregnancy is” the punishment for sluts enjoying sex.
- Gotcha!”
It doesn’t help when an anti-abortion Senate candidate get biological facts wrong and leaves room to argue that he’s soft on rape. And then when national media treat it as the top story of the day, requiring in-depth exploration on how gullible pro-lifers are.
Herewith a bit of balance:
- 1 rape in 20 results in pregnancy (heard on NPR’s All Things Considered 8/20/12)? Really? What’s the rate of pregnancy from unprotected coitus generally? What about rape victims who are too young or too old to get pregnant? What about infertile days in the menstrual cycle? What about rapists who just want to humiliate, not ejaculate?
- Where are the rape abortion statistics coming from (since women need not claim to be raped to get abortions)?
- What’s more common: post-rape abortion or sex-selection abortion?
- Have media pressed pro-choice politicians about their refusal to forbid sex-selection abortion?
- Has anybody noticed the virtual disappearance of people under, say, age 20, with Downs Syndrome? Golly! What do you think happened?
- If they discover the elusive “gay gene,” and it can be tested by amniocentesis or newer techniques of prenatal testing, should women be allowed to abort a gay child for being gay?
- Why aren’t crypto-racist freudian slips by the friends of feticide (e.g., justifying abortion to save on welfare costs – if welfare’s a proxy for race for conservatives, then it is for liberals as well) as newsworthy as Todd Akins’ remarks (suggesting that statutory rape isn’t really rape)?
- Do the friends of feticide rationalize away the evil of abortion with crypto-racist arguments like that because it’s easier than admitting that they are complicit in unjustifiable abortions?
Speaking of rape, can we cut the crap on Julian Assange?
He’s accused of rape. His self-aggrandizing leak of government documents doesn’t give him immunity from charges of rape plausibly lodged in a country whose legal system is credibly independent of geopolitics.
Did you ever notice how important unnoticed things can be? What do you suppose the single most important object in the global economy might be?
His thesis: participation in elite athletics lowers moral functioning. To be sure, this is a controversial suggestion in the world of sports psychology, but two lines of research lend credence to the idea. The first employs a concept of bracketed morality, whereby athletes suspend their own commitment to moral principles in the pursuit of athletic achievement. The second emphasizes the egocentricity inherent in the life of an elite athlete. In other words, at least some research suggests that top-flight athletic programs are less likely to build character than to create self-absorbed egoists who are willing to sacrifice moral principle on the altar of athletic success.
A good reason why NCAA Division III is infinitely preferable to Division I.
Democrats support civil liberties the same way Republicans support smaller government: only in opposition.
More sensible cynicism from The American Conservative blog:
Johnson does an admirable job of making the case that big banks have become government-sponsored enterprises, and that breaking them up through the law is the truly free-market move.
To me this is a no-brainer for Republicans. Combining an attack on privilege and cronyism in a defense of a free and fair market could be extremely effective.
Of course they’ll miss this opportunity.
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Tipsy Teetotaler ن 