BlogWonks

Amy Chozick at The Wall Street Journal asks the burning question, “Is Barack Obama so physically fit that he makes the 66% of the voting-age population who are overweight feel bad enough about themselves to want to vote for a guy who’s more out-of-shape?”

To quickly test this theory, I went to Michael Moore’s website. Moore makes Jabba the Hut look emaciated, and yet he appears to be backing Obama for president.

So, the extensive data I culled is conclusive: If the obese don’t vote for Barack Obama, it’ll not be because Obama’s skinny, it’ll be because those fat people are racists.

But then there are those overweight people who will back Obama, such as the aforementioned film director who, on any given night, can eat his weight in Funyuns. Why? Because when they see a skinny guy, they don’t get jealous. They instead immediately think, “more food for me.”

So we can now divide all fat people into one of two camps: Racist or greedy. Which are you, fat America?

Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage, and the Family by Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D. examines one of the greatest and most destructive civil rights abuses in America today–our family law system.

In the Taken Into Custody excerpt below, Baskerville asks an interesting question–when judges accept divorcing mothers’ claims of abuse and grant them sole custody of the couple’s children, are they really “erring on the side of caution”? Or, by allowing fathers to be driven to the margins of their children’s lives, are the actually “erring on the side of danger,” as fathers are their children’s natural protectors?

Baskerville writes:

…divorce and single-parent homes are not precipitated by child abuse, as the courts, bar associations, and feminists would have us believe, but the other way around…some maintain that judges who summarily award sole custody to mothers on the merest accusation of abuse, even when they know full well that the father has done nothing wrong, are acting on the principle to “err on the side of caution.”

Yet this explanation is more charitable than tenable, since it is clear that the judges are erring on the side of danger, and it is difficult to believe they do not realize it. Judges are well aware that the most dangerous environment for children is precisely the single-mother homes they themselves create. Yet they have no hesitation in creating them, secure in the knowledge that they will never be held accountable for any harm that comes to the children.

To learn more or to purchase Taken Into Custody, click here.

Baskerville, author of many articles on fatherhood and family issues and a frequent media commentator, is assistant professor of government at Patrick Henry College and an Earhart Fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society.

Parental-Alienation-Awareness.com Stop Parental Alienation–a terrible form of Child Abuse. Nine states have now officially recognized Parental Alienation Awareness Day. To learn more, go to Parental-Alienation-Awareness.com.

No more calls please, we already have a winner for this week’s “Andrew Meyer Golden Taser Award,” and the proud recipients are from just down the expressway from me.

My only regret is that I wasn’t invited to this reception:

The Michigan wedding of Durango newlyweds Andy and Ania Somora came to an abrupt end last weekend after the bride and groom were tasered by local police and spent their wedding night in jail.

According to a news release from the Chikaming Township (Mich.) Police Department, Officer Jeff Enders responded Saturday to the Burnison Art Gallery in Lakeside, Mich., after gallery owner Judi Burnison asked for assistance with unruly guests at the Somoras’ wedding reception.

Apparently a big row developed at the reception when the bride grew cranky after running out of Skoal and the groom refused to put his tank top back on and run down to the 7-11 for another tin.

It’s bound to be a long night when the wedding theme is “As seen on COPS”

The website www.exrants.com has some interesting…well, rants from people about their exes. This one–Being Single Sucks and So Do Men–caught my eye:

Wanna know what blows? Being single.

More specifically, being a 32 (almost 33) year old divorcee (typing that word makes me want to vomit only slightly less than when I say it), single mom with NO prospects sucks.

As I lay here alone, aside from Peter and Phoebe (the beginnings of my soon to be cat lady collection), now is a good time to remember all of the GOOD things about being single.

In no specific order:

1. I can actually get some decent sleep at night. My ex used to snore so loudly that almost nightly I thought about killing him in his sleep. I’m not even kidding. I used to fantasize about smothering him with his pillow. Yes, it might be a little dramatic, but sleep deprivation at 2 a.m. does crazy things to a woman. Now I want to kill him all of the time

2. No more copious amounts of body hair in the shower.

3. I get Tuesday & Thursday evenings and every other weekend off.

4. I can eat cereal for dinner and don’t hear the bitching that went a little something like this, “If it’s not meat, it’s not dinner”…

Ah, f*** this list. Who am I kidding? Being single sucks.

So what was really the problem in the relationship? A few possibilities:

1) He was (sigh) a man who worked no more hours than his wife did but still expected her to cook and clean.

2) He worked substantially more hours than his wife did (as is often the case), and thus expected her to do more cooking and cleaning than him.

3) Their house was messy and it didn’t bother him but it bothered her a lot. Thus where he saw no issue, she continually saw a crisis. She often asked him, “This house is a disaster–what are we going to do about it?” and he didn’t see a problem.

4) She is temperamental and emotionally immature (witness “almost nightly I thought about killing him in his sleep”).

Or some combination of the four above. Do readers have other possibilities to add to the list?

Help for Michigan Dads Michigan family law attorney Mindy L. Hitchcock has experience fighting for noncustodial parents against Michigan's abusive FOC. Her holistic approach to divorce gets results for her clients while avoiding the scorched earth approach to law that leaves families emotionally and financially devastated. Lady4Justice.com

Kathleen Parker’s Save the Males criticizes the way “men, maleness, and fatherhood have been under siege in American culture for decades.”

In the following excerpt from her chapter “Our Fathers, Our Selves,” Parker discusses the damage that divorcing mothers and family law courts do to children when they limit fathers’ role in their lives after divorce or separation. Parker writes:

Seeing one’s dad fifty days a year—the average number of days children of divorce see their biological father—can’t be compared with having a father in-house, day-to-day. It’s an unnatural relationship, often awkward, in which fathers try to jam the month they missed into a single weekend. Never mind the impossibility of consistency in boundaries and discipline.

Experience teaches that we develop our sense of “self” from the ways in which we interact with both our same-sex and our opposite sex parents. Further, our success in future relationships hinges to some degree on how we navigate those first relationships. One does not need to be a psychotherapist to reckon that a girl abandoned by her father will have trouble trusting men or relating to them in healthy ways as an adult.

A boy without a father will have trouble learning that he belongs to the fraternity of men and, in the absence of a strong male role model, may over identify with Mother. How does a boy learn to be a father when he has none to show him?

And finally, if fatherhood doesn’t matter, how can we expect boys and young men to aspire to become responsible fathers someday? The answer is, we can’t.

Daughters have been especially wounded by the men bad/daddy lousy story they’ve heard from their mothers and the wider culture. How does a little girl reconcile her love of her first “hero” with the antihero messages all around her?

Interestingly, we seem to accept that children shouldn’t be raised without mothers, but we regard the contributions of fathers as optional seasoning, as though children are little casseroles, especially tasty with a pinch of Dad, but guests will hardly notice if you leave him out.

To learn more or to purchase Save the Males, click here.

Parker, a syndicated columnist who is published in over 300 newspapers every week, is concerned about the decline of fatherhood, and has favorably covered many of our action campaigns.

These include: Campaign Protesting Fox’s Reality Show Bad Dads; Campaign Protesting Florida DCF’s Mistreatment of Loving Father in ‘Elian Gonzalez II’ Case; Campaign Against PBS’s Father-Bashing Breaking the Silence; and Campaign Against ‘Boys are Stupid’ Products.

Are you or someone you love being abused? The Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women provides crisis intervention and support services to victims of domestic violence and their families in order to help survivors recover from the trauma of domestic violence. Contact them by clicking here.

The lamestream media told you:

Islam is the religion of peace.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

In an AP story that got surprisingly little coverage nationally, nine Iranians are scheduled to be stoned to death for having sex. Eight women and one man convicted of adultery will be buried (women up to their necks, the man to his waist), and be stoned with pieces of rock too small to cause death immediately, which means the guilty parties will suffer, and plenty of pieces can be thrown by those carrying out the sentence.

According to AP, “Six of the nine were convicted based solely on judges’ decisions with no witnesses or the presence of their lawyers during their confessions.” One, reportedly, confessed without understanding what the charge was.

Stoning, very popular right after the 1979 Islamic revolution, is less frequent now, though the ruling mullahs don’t issue press releases when sentences are carried out.

While some in Iran are seeking an end to the practice, “opposition from hard-line clerics has sidelined their efforts,” according to the AP.

The lamestream media told you:

The Olympic Torch went through the capital of Tibet, Lhasa, with virtually none of the protests and demonstrations that marred the fine ritual in some other cities recently, on its way to the grand opening of the games.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

Hundreds of Communist Chinese troops and police kept Lhasa virtually closed during the Olympic torch relay, to avoid the extreme embarrassment the Chinese dictatorship has suffered from protests for its treatment of Tibetans and human rights in general. Several hundred “pre-approved onlookers” lined the streets for cameras, according to The Week news magazine.

The U.S. Olympic shooting team, which had to get special permission from President Bush to bring firearms into the Communist stronghold for competing in the games, may receive some televised coverage from NBC and its satellite stations (MSNBC, CNBC, USA, OXYGEN, TELEMUNDO, more). For broadcast schedules (next-to-the-last link): http://usashooting.org/viewRelease.php?id=170

Complete game schedules, which begin on Aug. 8, 2008, straight from the commie website.

Below is 22 seconds of Barack Obama saying that we wouldn’t need to drill for any more oil if we’d just keep our tires properly inflated, and if we did so the country would save the same amount of oil we’d get if we did the domestic drilling that Republicans and some Democrats are calling for:

Will somebody please pull the dipstick from Obama’s head and check the lucidity level? I think he’s a few quarts low. I thought the gasoline problems were because of greedy “big oil” companies — now it’s because the left front tire of my Chevy Venture is at 33 psi instead of 35 psi?

“Get more tune-ups”? Somebody’s getting generous campaign donations from the Automobile Mechanics Union.

Environmental nutcase extra: This is an oldie but always worth a mention as long as Gore’s still peddling his hoax: Quiz — Who said it, Al Gore or the Unabomber?

Bonus question and answer:

Q: How come Gore called his movie “An Inconvenient Truth”?

A: Because “Capricorn One” was already taken.

This week’s “I saw Jesus’ face on…” story is brought to you by some people who claim to have a kitten that sports Jesus’ face on its fur. CNN even has a video of it. Here’s that image — use your imagination:

I’m only posting this because it’s an incredible coincidence. It just so happens that I saw an image of the Savior of All Mankind on my cat’s fur earlier this evening:

Creepy.

Via Redstate

Jed Hresko, Deputy Director of Fathers & Families, has an interesting new piece on Clark Rockefeller’s apparent abduction of his 7-year-old daughter during a supervised visitation. The two are pictured.

Like Fathers & Families, I condemn Rockefeller’s actions. However, his possible mistreatment in his divorce also bears mention. Hresko writes:

Boston, MA - Boston Police issued an Amber Alert this Sunday for Clark Rockefeller and his daughter Reigh, after Rockefeller was accused of kidnapping the 7-year-old during a supervised visit.

The dramatic Newbury Street abduction, Rockefeller’s colorful past and the family’s wealthy Beacon Hill lifestyle helped fuel a media manhunt that’s kept the story on the front page throughout the week.

While the media treats the case like a socialite soap opera, they miss the real point. A system that cuts one parent out of the child’s life breeds custodial abductions.

This presumption of “primary custody” in the family courts and our culture made it acceptable for the girl’s mother to move Reigh to London last December, leaving Rockefeller devastated.

Some details are unclear, since the divorce records were impounded at the couple’s request. Prior to the abduction, there is no record of either parent alleging abuse or neglect by the other. And, we’ve confirmed through local sources the reports that Rockefeller was a doting father and the girl’s primary caregiver until the divorce.

Continue reading here.

SAMSONLAW–Divorce Lawyers for Michigan Men & Fathers If you’re a Michigan man faced with divorce, you need SAMSONLAW on your side–SAMSONLAW defends men. Smart Advocacy Means Stopping Oppression Now. INeedSamson.com

From ABC’s Keira Says No to Bigger Bust (7/28/08):

Call it truth in advertising: Waifish actress Keira Knightly has balked at having the digital wizards enhance her breasts in publicity photos for her new film, “Duchess.”

The actress objects to her cleavage being altered in publicity photos.

The sultry star of “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Atonement” feels she doesn’t need cleavage to be sexy and insists on being portrayed as the A-cup beauty that she is rather than being air-brushed into a more voluptuous C-cup.

“Keira Knightly is essentially giving young women permission to stand up in their communities and their schools and their families and say, ‘Look, this is the way I look and it is OK,” said “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters” author Courtney Martin.

The 23-year-old’s chest has been the subjected to scrutiny before. In promotions for “King Arthur” in 2004, the actress’ A-cup was morphed into a C-cup on posters. At the time Knightly admitted, “those things weren’t really mine,” though she still went along with the publicity campaign. “I think that’s incredibly brave and could have a huge impact on young women,” Martin said of Knightly’s decision.

Actress Keira Knightly has balked at having the digital wizards enhance her breasts in publicity photos for her new film, “Duchess.”

One of the enhancements is pictured above. I have to agree with feminist author Courtney Martin on this one, though calling Knightly’s commendable action “incredibly brave” is a bit of an overstatement. I think that unrealistic beauty standards do have a negative impact on women, and also on men.

Raising beauty standards means that men will be attracted to a smaller cohort of women. This increases the competition for the women deemed attractive, and means more men will be lonely and feel rejected. Similarly, as more women are excluded from the “attractive” cohort, they will also feel lonely and rejected.

On this case specifically, if Keira Knightly isn’t attractive enough for you, your standards are way too high.

Courtney Martin’s www.feministing.com post is Keira Knightley Says Get Your Digital Mitts Off My Body. She writes, “It’s important that someone inside the system, someone that has benefited from the system” is taking a stand, and I agree with her.

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My sources told me that their sources told them that Jim Geraghty’s sources at NRO’s “The Corner” told him that their sources in the McCain camp — who are close with sources close to those vetting possible McCain VP choices — that McCain’s list of possible VP’s is down to two people: Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney.

I outlined my problems with Romney in this column from last December, but I do believe he has solid fiscal conservative credentials that are much needed on this ticket — in spite of completely turning me off back when he was challenging Ted Kennedy for his senate seat in ‘94.

Pawlenty might be an attractive choice for McCain, who needs to carry states like Minnesota. McCain’s only down by a couple of points to Obama in a state that pretty much qualifies as nothing more than a refrigerated version of California, which isn’t bad for a GOPer. The downside to Pawlenty: He isn’t well-known nationally. The upside to Pawlenty: He isn’t well-known nationally.

If I had to choose between Pawlenty and Romney, I’d pick ::flips coin:: Sarah Palin.

The lamestream media told you:

Too much.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

Los Angeles experienced a 5.4 magnitude earthquake, no major damage was apparent, no one was seriously hurt, the power didn’t go out, traffic continued to flow, and every major news outlet stayed with the story for hours after the event had ended. With nothing significant to report, reporters took phone calls from people who felt the shaking.

The non-event preempted every other news story for hours, preventing news consumers eating lunch (like me) from getting any news about anything, on regular TV (C-SPAN aired the usual abuse from Congress uninterrupted). The breathless, monotonous hand wringing over nothing happening was abysmal, but just a step below the usual broadcasts.

The lamestream media told you:

Dick Heller, the security guard who won back limited gun rights in an historic decision at the Supreme Court last month, was turned down by D.C. police when he tried to register his semiautomatic handgun. District authorities decided it was not a proper handgun under the new law.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

Defying all logic and reason, D.C.’s new law repeats language from its old law, that says any firearm that could take a magazine with more than 12 rounds — whether you own such a magazine or not — is a machine gun. Blatant lunacy, D.C. bureaucrats are trying to get away with this abuse, to ban anything but revolvers and derringers.

Dick Heller, who successfully registered the 9-shot, 6-inch barrel, Harrington & Richardson “Longhorn” .22-caliber revolver that got his Supreme Court case underway, is using the denial for his semi-auto to challenge the city’s unmitigated gall on the “bottom loading” issue. He also plans to challenge the continued requirement that his gun remains in his home unloaded, and locked or disassembled, rendering it useless, until “it is being used to protect against a reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm to a person within the registrant’s home.”

Two of the finest Second Amendment attorneys in the nation, Stephen Halbrook and Richard Gardiner, are representing Heller in the ongoing case. The city plans to spend buckets of taxpayer money to prevent Mr. Heller from exercising the rights most other Americans have, and which the Supreme Court insisted must be restored to him.

No criminal charges or other indictments against District authorities have been announced.

Captain Ed tells us that while Barack Obama claims that he does not take money from lobbyists or PACs it’s simply  not true.

Last month, Barack Obama announced that “my party” would not take donations from federally-registered lobbyists or their PACs.  Somehow, that news failed to make it to his own campaign.  Roll Call took a peek at lobbying disclosures for the first half of 2008, and discovered $15,000 of donations from dozens of lobbyists:

Why am I not surprised that Obama has been caught lying again?

The Washington Post tries to bail out Barack Obama by claiming that John McCain’s statement that Obama didn’t visit the wounded troops at Landstuhl Medical Center because he couldn’t bring the media with him is false. 

For four days, Sen. John McCain and his allies have accused Sen. Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.

The attacks are part of a newly aggressive McCain operation whose aim is to portray the Democratic presidential candidate as a craven politician more interested in his image than in ailing soldiers, a senior McCain adviser said. They come despite repeated pledges by the Republican that he will never question his rival’s patriotism.

What proof does the Post offer that McCain’s allegations are not true? Well, pretty much all they offer is a statement by the Obama campaign that the McCain attacks are not accurate.

The Obama campaign has denied that was the reason he called off the visit. In fact, there is no evidence that he planned to take anyone to the American hospital other than a military adviser, whose status as a campaign staff member sparked last-minute concern among Pentagon officials that the visit would be an improper political event.

"Absolutely, unequivocally wrong," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in an e-mail after McCain’s comments to Larry King.

 

So that’s basically it. The Obama campaign says the ads aren’t truthful, so the Washington Post attacks McCain for putting out these untruthful  ads. How lame is that?

But you know, it doesn’t even matter whether the McCain ad gets the reason for Obama cancelling the trip right or not. The bottom line is that Obama didn’t visit the troops, and instead either went to the gym, or did an interview with CNN, depending on which version of the story you’ve heard. Either reason is a piss poor excuse for not going to Landstuhl.

As I explained in my recent co-authored column Restraining Orders Can Be Straitjackets On Justice (Newark Star-Ledger, 7/28/08), there is a controversy over a recent New Jersey court ruling which raises the evidence standard needed to obtain a domestic violence restraining order. Evidence shows that the orders are often applied for to get an advantage in custody litigation, and that many of the domestic violence claims made to get the orders are fraudulent.

The current controversy brings to mind an amazing article in the New Jersey Law Journal in 1995 which accurately reflects the mentality which is sometimes behind the issuance of these restraining orders. The article “New Jersey Judges Told to Ignore Rights in Abuse TROs” (4/24/95) details a judges’ training session given by the Administrative Office of the Courts. The article is excerpted below–after that, see the kicker:

On Friday, at a training session at the Hughes Justice Complex in Trenton, novitiate municipal judges were given the “scared straight” version of dealing with requests for temporary restraining orders in domestic violence cases. The recommendation: Issue the order, or else.

Failing to issue temporary restraining orders in domestic violence cases, the judges are told, will turn them into fodder for headlines.

They’re also instructed not to worry about the constitution.

The state law carries a strong presumption in favor of granting emergency TROs for alleged domestic violence victims, the new judges were told at the seminar run by the Administrative Office of the Courts. Public sentiment, mostly due to the O.J. Simpson case, runs even stronger.

The judges’ training is rife with hyperbole apparently designed to shock the newcomers. It sets down a rigid procedure, one that the trainers say is the judges’ only choice under a tough 1991 domestic violence law and its decade-old predecessor. Since the Legislature has made domestic violence a top priority, municipal court judges are instructed that they can do their part by issuing temporary restraining orders pronto.

“Throw him out on the street,” said trainer and municipal court judge Richard Russell at a similar seminar a year ago, ‘give him the clothes on his back, and tell him, ‘See ya’ around.’”

This napalm approach to implementing the domestic violence statute has some state judges talking. No one disputes the presumption in the law of granting a TRO, and there have been no serious court challenges to the statute’s ex parte provisions.

The strident teaching, however, doesn’t always sit well with some judges, even those who characterize the instruction as deliberate verbal flares directed at a worthy goal.

“[It's] one of the most inflammatory things I have ever heard,” says one municipal court judge, who asked not to be identified, about a presentation held last year. “We’re supposed to have the courage to make the right decisions, not do what is ’safe.”‘

At the same time, even former and current municipal and Superior Court judges who are critical of the seminar have words of admiration for the candor of trainers Russell, Somerset County Superior Court Judge Graham Ross and Nancy Kessler, chief of juvenile and family services for the AOC. One municipal court judge says that while the statements reflect an incorrect approach, “I wouldn’t be real keen to inhibit the trainers at these sessions from exhibiting their honest opinions.”

For their part, Russell and Kessler say they are doing what the law says they should do — protecting victims, which in turn can save lives. Ross didn’t return telephone calls about the training. He, Russell and Kessler were scheduled to conduct Friday’s program for new judges, a program Kessler says the trio has conducted for judges at least five times since the law was passed.

The law, N.J.S.A. 2C:25-17 et seq., requires judges to be trained on the issue of domestic violence, a requirement that women’s rights advocates say is unique. The TRO provisions also were reemphasized three years ago, encouraging the use of such orders after a municipal court judge hears from one complainant.

The kicker? Judge Richard ”Throw him out on the street [and don't worry about the constitution]“ Russell apparently still serves on the New Jersey Supreme Court’s State Domestic Violence Working Group, the Executive Committee of the State Bar’s Family Law Section, and the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Family Practice Committee. He currently is the chair of the court’s Child Support Subcommittee.

Thanks to Richard Smaglick of www.fathersandhusbands.org for the information.

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Looks like Senator John Kerry is picking up the party slack while Teddy’s on the D.L.

According to TMZ, John Kerry left a Nantucket restaurant and a group of **drunken college kids (**today’s redundancy brought to you by Oxi Clean, the stain specialist!) on a boat asked the senator to take some pictures with them.

At least that’s what he told Teresa.

One of the girls was so honored to meet a U.S. Senator that she broke out the crazy eyes and penis straw for the occasion (the latter being a gift from Bubba the last time he was on the island, but she sold the dog-eared copy of Leaves of Grass to the student book store for beer money), and another was so overcome by Kerry’s powerful presence that she nearly fainted:

But of course, Kerry’s visit wouldn’t have been complete without a lesson in American history for the kids:

“We used to drink Bud Light when I served in Vietnam. Did I mention that I served in Vietnam?”

Note: In case Photobucket gets overwhelmed, the partyin’ Kerry photo gallery can be viewed here.

So maybe it isnt him?

Women end up less happy than men

Less able to achieve their life goals, women end up unhappier than men later in life – even though they start out happier, reveals new research by Anke Plagnol of the University of Cambridge, and University of Southern California economist Richard Easterlin.

 Plagnol and Easterlin’s study, forthcoming in the Journal of Happiness Studies, is the first to use nationally representative data spanning several decades to examine the role of unfulfilled desires in a person’s sense of well-being.

As the researchers explain, expectations of success may vary among those raised in different generations (i.e., an economic depression). Data sets from a range of time periods may also have different demographic compositions.

In their analysis, the researchers control for birth cohort and demographic characteristics such as race and education. They find that women are, on average, happier than men in early adulthood – but the glow wears off with time. Specifically, after the age of 48, men’s overall happiness exceeds women’s happiness.

These gender patterns of overall happiness correlate to patterns in two significant aspects of life satisfaction: family and finances.

As Plagnol explains: In later life it is "men [who] come closer to fulfilling their aspirations, are more satisfied with their family lives and financial situations, and are the happier of the two."

Women and men have fairly similar life goals when it comes to love, the study reveals. Nine out of 10 people of both genders reach adult life wanting a happy marriage.

"Differences between men and women in aspirations for marriage and children are fairly small," says Plagnol, who received her Ph.D. from USC in 2007. "Gender differences in satisfaction depend largely on attainment."

The saddest period of the average man’s life – his 20s – is also the period when he is most likely to be single.

Young men are also more dissatisfied than young women with their financial situations, not because they are worse off, but because they want more and therefore experience a greater "shortfall," the researchers explain.

But age alters many things, including men’s money woes and lackluster love lives.

After 34, men are more likely to be married than women, and the gap only widens with age, mirroring men’s growing satisfaction with family life.

Men also become more satisfied with their financial situations over time, as reflected in their increased spending power. The researchers found that men tend to covet big-ticket items that might not be within reach until later in life, such as a car or vacation home.

(A notable exception: women want more "nice clothes" than men, the researchers found.)

These findings are consistent with an earlier study by Easterlin showing that recent generations are less satisfied than previous generations, despite having more.

"Of course, one doesn’t have to be married to be happy, but if that’s something you really want – and it is for most people – then the failure to attain it can have an impact on your overall happiness," Plagnol says, adding that those in a relationship also tend to be in a stronger financial position than those who must depend solely on their own resources.

Some age milestones:

– 41: Age at which men’s financial satisfaction exceeds women’s financial satisfaction
– 48: Age at which men’s overall happiness exceeds women’s overall happiness
– 64: Age at which men’s satisfaction with family life exceeds women’s satisfaction

Citation: Plagnol, Anke C. and Richard A. Easterlin, "Aspirations, Attainments, and Satisfaction: Life Cycle Differences Between American Women and Men." Journal of Happiness Studies; DOI: 10.1007/s10902-008-9106-5.

Source: University of Southern California
 

It may also stand to reason that those who have unrealistic desires, and a less accurate view of the world and how it works, would end up more unhappy. "You can do it all" becomes a socialist cry to equal misery under these kinds of results. Add to this the fact that women are happier married than not, and what does the advice of mostly lesbian feminist leaders has done for the general happiness of women today?

Of course since this goes against the prevailing political wind, the information will not be used to address how we can be happier. Instead it will be mostly ignored, that way the crisis that befalls women can be molded by some pretty ingenious leaders.

“On behalf of white people everywhere, sorry about that whole slavery thing. Okay, now can I keep my job?”

From MSDNC… er, I mean, MSNBC:

The House on Tuesday issued an unprecedented apology to black Americans for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow segregation laws.
[...]
The resolution, passed by voice vote, was the work of Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen, the only white lawmaker to represent a majority black district. Cohen faces a formidable black challenger in a primary face-off next week.

The next step will be to take money from people who didn’t enslave anybody, and give it to people who weren’t enslaved, with the government of course skimming 2/3 off the top.

The only plantation massa that still exists is in Washington, DC, but unfortunately it doesn’t look like Congress is in any hurry to apologize for their slavish policies that keep people trapped at the bottom but somehow still voting for the same politicians who peddle those oppressive policies (evil genius on the part of Democrats).

If Cohen is re-elected and faces a tough challenge in the next election, this sketch from Chappelle’s Show could become reality.

“Reparations”:

Update: Mother Nature is racist too.

Feminists are criticizing this Guinness beer commercial, and as much as I like Guinness, I have to agree with them.

I’ve no problem with sexy commercials (though feminists often do), but this just seems degrading to the woman depicted. Is there some point to the ad I’m missing?

To watch the ad, click here.

[Late note: No suprrise--apparently it's not a real ad but instead a viral one by a Youtuber. I had wondered about it but Salon.com discussed it as a real ad and I figured what the hell. Now how about a Guinness?--GS]

Fathers & Families: Advocacy for the Child-Father Bond Fathers & Families is a non-profit organization advocating for the right of every child to have two parents. Fathers are an essential part of a child’s life–divorce or separation should not change this. www.FathersandFamilies.org

Wayne Gibbs is being vilified for breaking off his engagement, and now he’s been hit with a $150,000 judgment. Sounds like the guy’s only crime might have been to decide not to marry the woman when he found out he’d be taking on more debt–her debt–than he previously believed.

Yes, she suffered economic losses due to relocating to be with him. But he helped pay her debts down. Can you imagine an indebted man being able to successfully sue a woman who broke off her engagement to him? He’d be laughed out of court. And why isn’t this “jilted bride” being criticized for apparently lying to the man amount the amount of money she owed?

There may well be more to this story than we’re being told, but it doesn’t sound quite right. I could see being forced to pay for the cost of canceled wedding plans where the money has already been paid and is non-refundable, but not for simply breaking off an engagement.

From Jilted Bride Awarded $150K After Wedding Called Off (WSBTV.com, 7/23/08):

HALL COUNTY, Ga. — The jury has awarded a Hall County woman $150,000 after she sued her former fiancé for calling their wedding off.

RoseMary Shell sued her ex-fiancé, Wayne Gibbs, after he broke off their engagement in 2007.

Shell argued her fiancé’s promise of marital bliss amounted to a binding contract. She said she left a high-paying job in Florida to be with Gibbs and she said she has suffered financial losses since their break-up. She also said she has suffered emotionally.

Gibbs testified that he had taken Shell on trips and paid $30,000 of her debt while they were engaged. He said when he found out she had even more debt, he canceled the wedding by leaving Shell a note in their bathroom.

Closing arguments were heard Wednesday morning and the jury awarded Shell $150,000 by Wednesday afternoon.

“People shouldn’t be allowed to do that and hopefully he’ll think twice before he does it to someone else,” said Shell.

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No wonder so many “musicians” are against the war — the artists aren’t getting any royalties when their songs are used to torture people, and a Canadian lawyer says certain songwriters might be owed money.

Good idea. Nothing makes a left-wing artist gain ready acceptance of actions they formerly disdained like a nice, fat royalty check.

If we take into account torture methods throughout history, the band that’s probably owed the largest royalty check is Iron Maiden.

According to the Guardian, as of February of this year, the top 10 torture songs were:

1. F*#k Your God - Deicide
2. Die MF Die - Dope
3. Take Your Best Shot - Dope
4. White America - Eminem
5. Kim - Eminem
6. Barney Theme Song - Barney the Dinosaur
7. Bodies - Drowning Pool
8. Enter Sandman - Metallica
9. Meow Mix TV Commercial - Meow Meow Meow
10. Sesame Street TV Theme

Personally, I’d vote for this song as the best torture tune of all time.

If the history of space exploration is of interest to you, there’s a very long but interesting read at the Fortean Times UK. It’s about the Russian space program in the late 50’s and early 60’s, and the two Italian brothers who intercepted radio transmissions to and from orbiting Russian spacecraft who allege they heard some of the missions end in disaster (disaster for the cosmonauts — the Soviet government didn’t seem to give a damn about anything other than finding the eavesdropping brothers).

What really happened to the missing cosmonauts?:

There are those who believe that somewhere in the vast blackness of space, about nine billion miles from the Sun, the first human is about to cross the boundary of our Solar System into interstellar space. His body, perfectly preserved, is frozen at –270 degrees C (–454ºF); his tiny capsule has been silently sailing away from the Earth at 18,000 mph (29,000km/h) for the last 45 years. He is the original lost cosmonaut, whose rocket went up and, instead of coming back down, just kept on going.

Read it all here.

Incidentally, today marks the day that NASA was established.

“I thought ‘my God, I am the only one that can save her’, so I ripped off my shoes and shirt and jumped off the bridge towards her.”

From Teen saves woman from suicide in river rescue (Nine News [Australia], 7/23/08):

A 14-year-old boy has become a hero after diving 15 metres off a bridge to save a woman who was trying to commit suicide on far north coast of NSW.

Corey Warburton was walking across the Grafton Bridge when he spotted a neatly folded jumper with a note on top.

The note read: “Sorry boys, the struggle has become too much.”

After reading the note, Corey looked into the river to see an elderly woman’s body floating face down.

“At first I thought she was already dead, but then I noticed her moving her arm towards her face,” Grafton’s The Daily Examiner newspaper quotes Corey as saying.

“I thought ‘my God, I am the only one that can save her’, so I ripped off my shoes and shirt and jumped off the bridge towards her.”

The woman initially put up a hard struggle when Corey tried to drag her toward the shore, pushing the young boy away and dragging them both underwater.

“I told her to keep her head up, but she kept pushing me back under and we were both swallowing a lot of water,” Corey told The Daily Examiner.

“When she realised I wasn’t going to give up on her she turned over and allowed me to drag her 80 metres back to shore.”

With the help of police, and a mother and son who later passed by, the woman was pulled up onto the banks of the river.

Sergeant Stephen Marshall told ninemsn Corey was a hero who had gone to an “awesome effort” to save a woman without a thought to his safety.

“It is some leap off that bridge, about 15-20 metres, and a pretty blind jump too,” he said.

“To do it instinctively like that is just amazing.”

Sgt Marshall said it is likely Corey will be given official recognition for his actions, but a final decision will be made by the police local area command.

The woman was treated in hospital and is in a stable condition.

Thanks to John, a reader, for sending the story.

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Even the liberal newspaper The New York Times  takes Barack Obama to task for calling off his scheduled visit to visit wounded American troops at Landstuhl, and finds Barack Obama’s excuse for why he didn’t go to be lacking credibility.

Robert Gibbs, a senior strategist for the campaign, said Mr. Obama thought he could carry out the visit without being perceived as politicizing it.

But two days before the visit, Pentagon officials told the campaign that only Mr. Obama would be allowed inside the medical center in his capacity as a senator. The adviser who had intended to join Mr. Obama, Scott Gration, a retired major general in the Air Force, was told he could not go along because he was a volunteer campaign adviser.

Mr. Obama was asked by reporters to explain the matter on Saturday in London.

“That triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political, and the last thing that I want to do is have injured soldiers and the staff at these wonderful institutions having to sort through whether this is political or not or get caught in the crossfire between campaigns,” Mr. Obama said. “So rather than go forward and potentially get caught up in what might have been considered a political controversy of some sort, what we decided was that we not make a visit and instead I would call some of the troops that were there.”

[...]

Assertions in early news reports that the Pentagon had told Mr. Obama he could not visit the medical center were incorrect, said Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman. He said the military personnel in Germany had made arrangements for Mr. Obama’s visit and were surprised when it was called off.

The cancellation provided one of the few sour notes in an overseas trip that otherwise seemed to be well orchestrated. It offered an opening on a subject, military affairs, that the McCain campaign believes Mr. Obama is vulnerable on.

If the story behind the story of the canceled troop visit has run its course, one question remains: Why didn’t Mr. Obama leave his aides behind, even the retired general, and make the visit by himself?(emphasis mine)

 

Barack Obama’s entire foreign trip was highly politicized. So, the claim that Obama didn’t want to carry out his scheduled visit to Landstuhl Medical Center because he was afraid his visit would be politicized is crap. Obama would be only too happy to politicize the event.  Obama called off the visit because he would NOT have been able to politicize it, and felt that it wasn’t going to be worth his time. And that speaks volumes about Obama’s  character, or lack thereof.

Richard Cohen of The Washington Post writes today that Barack Obama is cleverly packaged, but that there’s really no substance to Obama at all. Obama is good at making pretty speeches, but that’s about it.

"Just tell me one thing Barack Obama has done that you admire," I asked a prominent Democrat. He paused and then said that he admired Obama’s speech to the Democratic convention in 2004. I agreed. It was a hell of a speech, but it was just a speech.

On the other hand, I continued, I could cite four or five actions — not speeches — that John McCain has taken that elicit my admiration, even my awe. First, of course, is his decision as a Vietnam War POW to refuse freedom out of concern that he would be exploited for propaganda purposes. To paraphrase what Kipling said about Gunga Din, John McCain is a better man than most.

But I would not stop there. I would include campaign finance reform, which infuriated so many in his own party; opposition to earmarks, which won him no friends; his politically imprudent opposition to the Medicare prescription drug bill (Medicare has about $35 trillion in unfunded obligations); and, last but not least, his very early call for additional troops in Iraq. His was a lonely position, virtually suicidal for an all-but-certain presidential candidate, and no help when his campaign nearly expired last summer. In all these cases, McCain stuck to his guns.

 

 

 

 

You’d have to go back a lot of years to find a presedential candidate that has less experience and less substance than Barack Obama.

If you’re running for president and are designing your campaign buttons state-by-state, always give the button manufacturer the first and last name of the local person you want on the button with you — otherwise you could end up with a picture of the wrong Larry:

Here’s what went wrong.

In related news, Barack Obama now leads John McCain by 40 points among men accused of cruising airport men’s rooms — the much oft-courted “stall dad” voting bloc.