BlogWonks

As a necessary counterweight to the excesses of the women’s rights movement, a men’s right movement has developed to fight for equity in the courts, in the family and in the workplace. For instance, in divorces there is significant and insurmountable (unless you have lots of money) obstacles to getting a fair custody decision regarding your children. Restraining orders are given away easily and have been used as weapons in divorce cases even when there is no evidence of abuse. There clearly is a need to stop the abuse men suffer from the excesses of the women’s rights movement.

The problem with the movement, which is the same problem with the women’s rights movement, is that adoption of the victim-enemy moniker that the press imposes on every issue. Anyone who does marketing for television will tell you this is the format to present any issue if you want news coverage: one, pick a victim and tell a sob story. This victim must be presented as angelic, an innocent victim of a cruel and obstinate system without regard for truth. Two, find a villain. This villain is the epitome of moral evil and must be destroyed. For many issues, referring to George W. Bush suffices (which is why political discourse in this country is so worthless).

Villains cannot be compromised with, they must be defeated. They are the bad guys and we need to stick up for the good guys at all costs. The problem is that compromise becomes unthinkable and even seeing the legitimate points of view of the other side is out of the question. To see this play out, see any political debate show talking about the election.

While there are significant injustices the men suffer as documented in Steven Baskerville’s fine book Taken Into Custody, there are injustices that women have and still do suffer also.

Retraining orders are far too easy to get without any evidence whatsoever (go ahead and sit in a courtroom and watch a hearing for one if you don’t believe me), but on the other hand there are men (and women) out there who are physically abusive and could care less about that piece of paper a court order is written on. People go to the system for help and they don’t get the help they need. We can all agree that no innocent woman or man should not be protected against an abuser. Surely there is some middle ground to address both sides.

Therein lies the difficulty. Activist groups, if they want even an ounce of press or public pressure, must adopt from the start that the other side is evil and wants to screw the innocent. Compromise is not only difficult, it’s impossible. All these groups then rank legislators on their absolute compliance with their agenda. Any leeway on their part makes them unacceptable.

So things have settled into a nice little détente where the men’s rights and women’s rights movements resort to outright name-calling instead of reasoned debate to improve the status of all people. With some issues, such rhetoric is not a big deal. In this case, we are dealing with families where peace should reign. Instead we have dueling groups that wage their war and leave the family asunder. Families are the building block of society, and as goes the family, so goes society.

It may be tempting for the men’s rights movement to say “let’s not compromise until they do”, but even from a political standpoint, if it is an all-or-nothing fight the women’s groups have more clout and that is that. Adopting a more holistic approach is also a political necessity if they don’t want to be side-lined.

It is long past time for policy makers and policy advocates to drop the all-or-none attitude and start to find a middle ground to find beneficial policies for what is best for the entire family. In an all-or-nothing fight, one side may win, but in the end we all lose.

John Bambenek is a freelance columnist and writer as well as an academic professional at the University of Illinois. He is on the board of the Illinois Alliance for Parents and Children.

It's over for Hillary. Hulk Hogan has endorsed Barack Obama.

Gee, I sure hope they don't let the Hulkster's kid drive in the inaugural parade.

If Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock also come out in favor of Obama, consider me sold!

"Keep sayin' your prayers, eatin' your vitamins, raisin' taxes, socializin' medicine, punishin' acheivement and supportin' abortion, brother!"

Soon, when you order a Dominos pizza, you'll be able to track it:

Domino's, the pizza-delivery kingpin, today will unveil a technology, Pizza Tracker, that lets customers literally track their pizza from the moment they place the order until it leaves the store en route to them. What's more, Domino's vows that its online tracking system — for phone or online orders — is accurate to within 40 seconds.

When we can do something similar with our tax dollars, I'll finally believe that technology has arrived.

By the way, I just ordered a Dominos so I could help beta test the tracker, and here's where my order is right now.

Well there you have it; the mediator of things is the person of influence (not control) and the person who guides outcomes. To blame the horse because it’s not as fast as a race car is more the blame of the desires of the rider, than it is the horse. It’s unrealistic and the emotional response to the horse’s failure is unwarranted. Of course men are not horses, and analogies are not real, they are educational and communicative tools for transferring information as intended rater than accepting it as assumed.

So rather than the feminist myth that behind every great man is a woman doing the work for him, what this work explains is why behind MOST great men is a woman doing what a good manager does. Support the people in their endeavors, not dictate the actions of them.

Anyway, in this case women manage the state of things among our society, while men manage the production of things and such. What this study shows, is that at any particular time, the current state of society is a product of women doing selecting and managing the resources around them.

Contrary to the notion that the patriarchy is male rule, it turns out that a patriarchy is subtle female guidance, while a matriarchy is overt female control without mutual considerations and equal benefits shared.

Bottom line, her choices, how she structures family, her own life, the children’s life, and how she is willing to wisely accept outcomes, and wisely use those resources. As the men have been saying for a while, they may make the society, but its women that tell them what would be nice. Whether they are right or wrong. and when they are wrong men make hell for them as they ask, and when they are right, we make a better place like they ask.

Ultimately in any time, they are actually getting what they are asking for, even if its not what they want. The more they learned from culture in the past and wisdom and understanding the more effective they were at this.

to compare yesterday to today, yesterday a farmer knew how much they could get out of what they were doing before pushing too hard gave them less. So they were able to maximize things to what those things could do.

Today, the farmer is too busy trying to beat the horse to get more out of it, and doing no where as near as well as the farmers in the past that WISELY used resources at their disposal.

What they don’t realize today, is that a man, and woman, are mutual resources to each other. The one that beats their resource, literally, mentally, operationally, legally, or in any way, destroys the system. And no one can do as much without resources as they can do with them.

Everyone knows bad magagers that blame their employees rather than themselves for outcomes, that refuse to accept that they are part of that outcome. On the shoulders of the manager rests all the responsibility for the outcomes! For to managers, everything is a resource, and outcomes depend on using resources correctly and effectively based on their own requirements and abilities.

As many here will attest, the feminist concept of making men do work that they are not suited for (OR making women do work that they are not suited for), is a manager who is putting the wrong resource to the right task, and then blaming the resource that its not right.

When someone uses a screwdriver for a hammer, is it the fault of the screwdriver that the outcome isnt right?

Below also explains why successful men get married, and how that works in synergy to create better outcomes. In effect she is looking for a good producer, and he is looking for a good manager.

[It also implies why untraditional relationships may have more subtle problems over our darwinistic development and over longer time periods than living beings clearly percieve over their liftimes. Two managers with no producers is not effective (two captains on a boat yelling at each other to do the work. they do it, but they resent each other over time)... nor are two producers with no managers (a crew with no reason to go in a particular direction - why most men dont have a direction till married). A manager that doesnt listen to the producers is ineffective (the crew mutinies - or the captain become vicious thinking the crew is disobediant when the captain is wrong for imagining its equivalent to a Queen - or a god, and ordering the winds but blaming the crew for them not arriving). Also turning a manager into a producer or visa versa will result in substandard outcomes as well]

Ok. the examples below are not from Humans, but the concepts still apply. A group of people in which everyone is leading, or no one, is not effective when goals are important. When they arent, then everyone just lazes around waiting for an outcome.

Females decide whether ambitious males float or flounder

Aggression, testosterone and nepotism don’t necessarily help one climb the social ladder, but the support of a good female can, according to new research on the social habits of an unusual African species of fish.

The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, highlights the complex relationship between social status, reproductive physiology and group dynamics.

“We found that changes in social status were regulated by the most dominant female in a social group”, says John Fitzpatrick, lead researcher and a graduate student in the department of Biology at McMaster University. “In fact, dominant females seemed to act as gatekeepers, allowing only males larger than themselves to move up in status and become dominant.”

Males rising to a dominant social position, says Fitzpatrick, instantly altered their behaviour, becoming more aggressive. In addition, they dramatically ramped up their reproductive physiology, almost doubling the size of their testes in one week.

Working underwater off the Zambian shores of Lake Tanganyika in Africa, the researchers examined how males respond to changes in social position in the cichlid fish, Neolamprologus pulcher. This species lives in permanent social groups made up of a dominant male and female breeding pair and subordinate males and females that help this pair look after young and defend territory.

By removing the male breeders, researchers created vacancies and provided an opportunity for subordinate males to rise through the ranks.

“Hormones and genetic relationships didn’t necessarily determine who gets to be top dog,” says Sigal Balshine, the senior author on the study and an associate professor in the department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour. “Most folks would have thought that how aggressive you are, how big and powerful you are or how much testosterone you have might be important in understanding status change and dominance rankings. Our study combined several approaches to show that simply isn’t the case – instead, the female and the social landscape are key.”

The last sentence is important, as it can highlight a fundamental change in how Humans are doing something and why things are not working out today.

The work above says or shows that the older human system where the marriage and partnership makes the man, has been overturned as she tries to select one ‘ready made’ for several reasons, when in the past she could make better selections (and have the better outcomes of her ancestors that she wonders why she cant get now).

However, this ignores process as being meaningful. A man, like a soldier, who comes up from the ranks, is a much better and more productive leader. He can lead with compassion, and empathy, pushing down cruelty and extremes. If he is put in charge voluntarily because he was selected for those skills, the same way you select a doctor rather than operate on yourself, he will be a better leader and those under him will be happy with the outcome of his leadership and decisions. (Second guessing the trust leads to a leadership in which nothing gets done, but the arguing as to which direction to go, and then blaming all around to play the next round to advantage. While the one that is upset refused to drive themselves, and refuses to accept the others direction, in effect creating stalemate)

So she is selecting for the attributes of the final product, but is not discerning the difference between a thug and a knight. Our system has removed this distinction and made them equivalent (both fight, but without distinctions, a cop is the same as a criminal, a soldier the same as a terrorist, God and the Devil are equivalent, as is good and bad, and a sociopathic thug is a good husband choice) which shorts out her selection ability (so she then blames outcomes not on her choice I mates, but in the mates inability to be something that they are not). Marrying later forces her to no longer look for a person in which they can create together a future, she doesn’t have that time any more.

All this then serves to make her pick things that appear in costume like the real deal. Or fail the same lesson Shakespeare taught us with the three casks, lead, silver and gold.

When she unwraps the package over time, both find out that neither is what should have been, and under the surface image, are something else. Often the woman is now bitter thinking that the other tricked her by posing, but the truth is that the buyer has to beware, and if they aren’t willing to make a distinction between gold and iron pyrite, the outcome will follow. Blaming iron pyrite for not being gold just skirts the source of the problem shifting the blame, and making it impossible to fix.

In this way a man leads the way the president leads, a professional, or a surgeon, not the way a dictator does. Again removing the distinction makes one throw out good leaders and accepts bad ones. The man from the ranks is more likely to be a leader, not a dictator, like a thug would be. The changes in our selection abilities, has created a situation where the women are selecting males that fulfill feminist ideology by trickery.

She gives up her overt leadership and he accepts his responsibility to LEAD, not RULE.

The return is that she has to listen to him in order to be successful, just as we listen to a brain surgeon rather than use a drill and a spoon in the kitchen to solve our problems.

Her selecting him is like electing him to his post, and his directing then is him fulfilling his job for her, freeing her to be concerned with more important things. Like creating a good person, who can grow and take their fathers place or position in society, and continue the mutual work that their ancestors started. If she fails in this, she fails her lineage and genetic contribution to the world, his lineage, and all our futures.

A good leader is not a tyrant or a despot, so a good father is not what feminists paint all fathers to be again without distinction. Without that distinction one has to accept that all are bad, or all are good. Since it’s obvious that all are not good, then by their simple logical black and white assertion, all are bad. If all are bad, does it matter which she selects?

By removing distinction, and nuance, and twisting leadership by voluntary cooperation, we have removed the ability to discern between the things we choose and the outcomes that arise from them.

The bottom line is that the work above indicates that we are much more complex and nuanced than is practical for ideologies, and double for ideologies like feminism, in which their selection of direction steers followers to horrible outcomes, so they can affix false blame and garner support for false causes, collecting power unto them. In this way, they have figured out that pain, fear, misery, confusion, and such, can get them to topple power that is based in merit.

The rest is the downhill ride to the bottom with no breaks that we have been riding in.

If John McCain is the GOP nominee, the Democrats will be as excited as Kwame Kilpatrick getting a text message. Why? Because no matter which party wins in November, they'll essentially have someone in the White House.

It's no secret how I feel about McCain's solid RINO status, but, just as I was about to explain it yet again, I ran across a headline on the parody news site Scrappleface.com that sums it up: "John Edwards drops out, endorses McCain"

But it's not all parody. Here's a liberal who likes McCain (read: The liberal case for McCain), in part because he won't nominate evil conservatives judges — who have the audacity to interpret Constitutional law rather than invent it — for the Supreme Court.

Michelle Malkin told Glenn Beck she might sit at home on election night if McCain's the GOP nominee.

The Democrats recognize this sentiment among conservatives, which could be why there's a reason McCain's been winning big among "independents." And I'm willing to bet that, somehow, magically, about 75% of these "independents" will be voting for Obama or Hillary in November.

Why get a knock-off when you can have the genuine article for the same price?

Global warming isn't just going to melt the polar ice caps, it's going to make the Denver Broncos, Washington Redskins, Chicago Bears, New England Patriots, Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets, New York Giants, Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers, Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers lose more in the future.

From the "Guy who runs 'Environment Today' was trying to give some busy-work to his deadbeat son-in-law so he assigned him an asinine article" department comes this:

As Americans gear up for Sunday’s Super Bowl, Environment America today highlighted how global warming could affect the future success of the Patriots, Giants and other cold weather teams across the country. Specifically, the group highlighted the threat of rising winter temperatures lessening the cold weather that has historically given cold weather teams an edge over warm weather rivals.

Here's a breakdown of the "findings":

Environment America’s analysis found that:

–All 14 cold-weather teams’ cities—including those of the Super Bowl-bound New England Patriots and New York Giants—saw an increase in winter temperatures from 2000-2007 as compared to the previous thirty years.

–The Green Bay Packers had the largest temperature increase during the last seven seasons, a 4.1 degree Fahrenheit increase as compared to the previous thirty years.

–The New York Giants and New England Patriots saw temperature increases of 1.7 and 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit respectively during the last seven years, as compared to the previous thirty years.

And what's happened to these teams as their weather has warmed a fraction of a degree? Let's see… the Packers lost their edge so much that they went to the NFC Championship game, and, if memory serves, global warming was not a factor in Green Bay that day.

The Giants, another cold weather team who are nearly playing in a capitalism-induced blast furnace, then beat the Packers after beating the Cowboys in Dallas and, a week before, the Bucs in Tampa Bay — in the kind of heat that is supposed to steal their edge.

The Patriots, a cold weather team whose "edge" is at risk of disappearing, are poised to win their 4th Super Bowl in the past 7 seasons.

My semi-beloved Detroit Lions are traditionally the suckiest team in the north, and they play in a dome. 'Splain that one, Environment America.

Pretty much the only thing this "report" is going to accomplish is to convince fans of warm weather teams to fire up their SUV's and lawn tractors, and burn huge piles of tires to try to gain an "edge" that doesn't even exist. Well done (literally), Environment Today!

Question for Al Gore: Does this mean that the next time I bet on the Denver Broncos to beat the San Diego Chargers, I can count it as a carbon credit?

It's not just football, either. According to Sports Illustrated, global warming will also give the Florida Marlins an edge:

The presidential campaign has claimed another casualty — but at least this one can chase his own ambulance: John Edwards, super-wealthy self-anointed spokesman for poor people, is dropping out of the race today. He was still in it?

Pundits say Edwards is exiting the race so he can spend more time with his frivolous lawsuits.

This comes from Mitt Romney's concession speech in Florida tonight, where he lost by about 4% to John McCain:

"We're not going to fix Washington by sending the same people back to sit in a different chair."

'Nuff said.

So, next Tuesday will be for all the marbles. Rudy's gone now. His speech spoke of his campaign in the past tense. Nobody saw this coming a few months ago.

Have you noticed that nobody carries Ron Paul's speeches after a primary election, even if he's close to somebody else whose speech they do carry?

But this isn't all just about Republicans. The Obama campaign got some great news today: Jimmy Carter did not endorse him.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
and seizures, shall not be violated
— Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law
— Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

It is an interesting read when a police officer, makes commentary on how a major program of our government is an assault on the basic rights of individuals.

In this case, the article is by Russ Jones, a police officer with more than 30 years experience. When I read the article I couldn’t help remember another book that described things and gave reasons, as well as all the quotes on rights and privacy, and that made me wonder. Were the reasons the same?

Mr Jones full article can be found here Nightmare in Lima, Ohio

It has been 220 years since the Bill of Rights. Our nation’s founders would be disappointed with what we have done to their legacy in the last 40 years with the war on drugs. By its very nature, the war on drugs is a war on the Bill of Rights. That was most evident in what occurred in Lima, Ohio, on Jan 5, 2008.

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter — but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of that ruined tenement.
Sir William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, on the right of an Englishman to be secure in his home (1763)

Prior to the war on drugs, law enforcement executed search warrants with police officers dressed in their normal, readily recognizable uniforms. They knocked on the front door and announced their presence and purpose. They then waited for someone to come to the door. Only if it was clear that someone was attempting to evade, was present and refusing to open the door, or no one was home did they force entry.

Today, police on narcotic search warrants are dressed in black SWAT uniforms, often wearing ski masks, looking more like military commandos than officers out to protect and serve. Without warning, they set off stun and flash grenades and simultaneously break out windows, knock down doors and burst in with automatic weapons at the ready.

As many as 40,000 such raids occur each year in the U.S. bringing unnecessary violence and provocation to small time nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. These raids have resulted in hundreds of needless deaths and injuries, not only to drug offenders, but to bystanders, children, police officers and suspects later found to be innocent. See http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

From another famous older work on “arrests”…

The kind of night arrest described is, in fact, a favorite, because it has important advantages. Everyone living in the apartment is thrown into a state of terror by the first knock at the door. The arrested person is torn from the warmth of his bed. He is in a daze, half-asleep, helpless, and his judgment is befogged. In a night arrest the State Security men have a superiority in numbers; there are many of them, armed, against one person who hasn’t even finished buttoning his trousers. During the arrest and search it is highly improbable that a crowd of potential supporters will gather at the entrance.

The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings, and of his intellect.

To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting in Olmstead v. United States (1928)

They operate according to a large body of theory, and innocence must not lead one to ignore this. The science of arrest is an important segment of the course on general penology and has been propped up with a substantial body of social theory.

Arrests are classified according to various criteria: nighttime and daytime; at home, at work, during a journey; first-time arrests and repeats; individual and group arrests. Arrests are distinguished by the degree of surprise required, the amount of resistance expected (even though in tens of millions of cases no resistance was expected and in fact there was none).

Arrests are also differentiated by the thoroughness of the required search; by instructions either to make out or not to make out an inventory of confiscated property or seal a room or apartment; to arrest the wife after the husband and send the children to an orphanage, or to send the rest of the family into exile, or to send the old folks to a labor camp too.

The growth of drug-related crime is a far greater evil to society as a whole than drug taking. Even so, because we have been seduced by the idea that governments should legislate for our own good, very few people can see how dangerously absurd the present policy is.
-John Casey

In Lima, Ohio, police used similar tactics where they knew children were present. The results were that an unarmed Theika Wilson, a mother of 6, was killed and her 1 year old child, held in her arms, seriously wounded. Both were shot by police who had rushed into the home to insure that no one destroyed any evidence, small as it may be.

Chief Garlock said that these dangerous situations occur “when a high risk search warrant is executed.” This was not a high risk search warrant because of some small time drug user, part time drug dealer, who had a small amount of cocaine and marijuana.

This was a dangerous situation because the police were uniformed, equipped, trained, and expected to act as if this was a war on people; which is exactly what the war on drugs has become. The Chief and the Mayor offered their condolences. The nation shrugs and Mrs. Wilson and her baby are chalked up as collateral damages in this war.

Milton Friedman said in 1990 that “Every friend of freedom . . . must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the U.S. into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.” His nightmare became a reality in Lima, Ohio.

What was it that Stalin said? “To murder one is a trajedy, to murder a million, a statistic”

You make men love their government and their country by giving them the kind of government and the kind of country that inspire respect and love; a country that is free and unafraid, that lets the discontented talk in order to learn the causes of their discontent and end those causes, that refuses to impel men to spy on their neighbors, that protects its citizens vigorously from harmful acts while it leaves the remedies for objectionable ideas to counter-argument and time.
-Zecharian Chafee, Jr

Oh, and the source of blockquote writing other than Russ Jones was courtesy of
The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
(New York, NY: Perennial, 2002)

The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen — a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life.
-Justice William O. Douglas

Rod Serling should be the spokesman for the Democrats this primary season.

Think about what's happened in recent weeks. Hillary Clinton, baby-momma to our nation's "first black president," has been thoroughly denied by black voters at the polls in favor of Barack Obama, a real black person — who was then promptly transformed into a Kennedy. Psych!

Obviously the Dems don't really want a black president. Carolyn Kennedy said that Obama is "just like my father." Well, we know that JFK proposed tax cuts and Obama is the exact opposite. Besides being relatively young, about the only remaining way they could be alike is if Obama gets sexually aroused whenever Some Like it Hot is on AMC.

"You've entered a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of pandering, race baiting, socialism, chameleonic color changes and drunken endorsements — you've entered, the Democrat Zone"