from the People’s Commissar for Sexual Enlightenment

The Cleveland Journal of Bourgeois Marxist Culture has taken umbrage at abstinence-based sex ed, in an article entitled “CAN WE TAKE GOD OUT OF SEX ED, PLEASE?”

In her final comment, the only sincere-sounding statement in the entire interview, Huber reveals more than she probably intended: “Teens receive all the information necessary [from abstinence education] to make a good decision regarding their sexual health.” In other words, they get all the information people like Huber believe they should get, in order to make the decision that people like Huber want them to make.

Any sex ed that goes beyond the science of reproduction and reproductive health is similarly prejudiced. Frank Lewis doesn’t want God in sex ed; doesn’t that lead teens to make decisions that Lewis wants them to make?  The problem is in having a state monopoly on education, and using that to teach values. But is abstinence-ed per se a bad thing? Lewis says it’s ineffective. That’s because it’s facing down a cultural tsunami pushed by people like Frank Lewis. If it was so ineffective, then it’s a good thing we aren’t stuck with the illigitimacy and VD rates of the 1950s, right?

Consider this:

Whatta we gonna tell your mama
Whatta we gonna tell your pa
Whatta we gonna tell our friends when they say “ooh-la-la” …
We fell asleep, our goose is cooked, our reputation is shot

The interesting thing about the Everly Brothers “Wake up, little Susie” is that the trouble is more widespread than breaking a parental curfew. There’s a societal rule involved as well…anyone sleeping together all night is obviously sexually active, and that’s a bad thing. There’s peer pressure for chastity. Can you imagine these lyrics in a hit song nowadays? (I’d love to hear a hip-hop group do a cover of this, but you know they’d only do it ironically.)

Hey, I’m a veteran of the sexual revolution, and have the battle scars (2 failed marriages, etc.) to prove it. I was born the year before “Wake up, little Susie” came out, and hit puberty somewhere between the Summer of Love and Kent State. So I’ve seen some history and some changes…which I suspect Lewis has not. Dissing the abstinence message shows a certain lack of perspective and maturity. Neither of us gets a vote on whether any individual is sexually active, though we’d offer different advice.  But the tone is a bit like those Communist countries in which everything not forbidden was mandatory.

Both sides now

Carrying a bag of excrement to a dinner table may fit the community standards of “Borat” actor Sasha Baron Cohen in his new “Bruno” production, but not most of America, according to Movieguide, the Christian Film & Television Commission ministry’s family guide to movies and entertainment.

Organization founder Ted Baehr today announced the group has written local government officials across the nation asking them to assess the content of the movie and consider restricting screenings, which are scheduled to begin Friday.

In the letter, Movieguide asks authorities to seek an injunction pending a local review of the movie to determine whether it fits the “community standards” for the individual cities and towns – as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in rulings on obscenity and pornography.

That’s just those fascist Christers, right? Uh, no…

An NAACP official has demanded the governor of Pennsylvania call out the National Guard, suspend civil liberties and impose martial law to deal with a recent wave of shootings.

As if individuals can’t solve these things by themselves. It’s double-penetration time in the rape of American freedom.

“But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But States got in my way..”

Oh noes! Hawaii hospital does what’s legally required!

WND is all excited about Obama’s alleged birth hospital refusing to verify that Obama was born there. Now, I’m not a medical lawyer (or any other kind), but wouldn’t HIPPA prevent them from confirming or denying that?

I don’t have a lot of patience with Birthers. They’re right, in principle, to ask the question. They may even be right about the answer.  But if we were to find a smoking gun today that proved that Obama was born in Kenya and is ineligible to serve, I can guarantee you that Obama would be president tomorrow… and most likely every day until January 20, 2013. The man is in office, and you don’t want the kind of national crisis that would ensue with any real attempt to get him out.

From the mouth of babes

Amaya considered for a moment. “Well…Barbie’s okay, I guess. But what I REALLY want is a Barack Obama birthday party!”

“Bweeda, I think I’m gonna thwow up!”

“Please, Jeffrey, not in the library. Let’s go to the bathroom, mkay?”

If this is what’s coming out of 6 year olds…we are freaking doomed.

After the circus

Mr. Beck passes on this charming allegory for the recent festivities.

I directed a local community band for the first time this year. There’s a tradition, you know, so of course we had the usual patriotic music and ended with the Star-Spangled Banner. But we also did “See the USA in Your Chevrolet” as “a tribute to GM”. That was as subversive as I dared get, first year, and maybe as far as anyone should go. We’ll see how the program mix develops, if any of us are here next year. The gig went pretty well; people enjoyed my “local march”, “The Hi! in Hiram”, and the members thought I did a pretty good job overall. Working with non-auditioned amateurs is tricky: you want to keep standards high, but you can’t do it by going “full-auto” on them, because they’ll leave. Figuring that out is definitely a work-in-progress, and I hope we’ll do better next year.

Meanwhile, here in the ‘hood, people celebrated with fireworks and ’shine, and prolly some other drugs too. That’s the way to celebrate Independence Day: by breaking the law.

Then there was that curious act by Mrs. Palin. She talked to God about it, but God hasn’t let me know what’s going on. (On the upside, He doesn’t share our conversations with Mrs. Palin either.) The corner of me that seeks a political messiah (like the poor dolts who asked the real One, “When will the kingdom be restored to Israel?”) wants to believe that she realized that, in terms of fixing what’s broken, politics is a total non-starter. Somehow, I doubt that; you don’t get to be governor without faith in the system. But then, Saul of Tarsus was pretty highly-placed, too. I wish the woman well, in any case. Russ at Ace wants to steer her between Ron Paul and McCain, with plenty of disrespect for both. Over there, they think there’s still a Republican brand worth salvaging. Now all we need to do is to wait for Obama to ruin the Democrat brand.

In Cleveland, it’s already shot. The local Journal of Bourgeois Marxist Culture covers (if anything could cover that bulk) my wife’s class president Jimmy Dimora and the county reform plan, which is portrayed as a Plain Dealer plot to foist evil Republicans on us. Dimoron is his usual paranoid self:

I don’t think the Democratic Party has anything to do with any of this. That’s been The Plain Dealer’s spin on things. ‘We’ll make the perception that the Democratic Party has ruined county government,’ which is totally ridiculous. Just because I’m party chairman and a county commissioner?”

Well, duh. County government is ruined. It’s been run by Democrats forever. QED

I’m not convinced by the reform plan though. I have a better one: scrap the present structure and replace it with…nothing. Seriously, the only purpose in having a county is to provide justice services to unincorporated areas. Are there any such in Cuyahoga? If there are, could they partner with nearby communities for law enforcement?

“The county exists to do things that cities don’t want to do or cannot do themselves,” says [planning commission director Paul] Alsenas,

So maybe some things are better left undone… like feeding and breeding monsters like these.

Enough insomniac talk already….

The first thing you need to know in choosing a PC

Taiwan’s Acer Inc.-the world’s No. 3 PC maker-Sony Corp. and China’s Haier Group said they were shipping Green Dam on disks with computers for sale in China. China’s Lenovo Group, the No. 4 producer, said it would offer the software pre-installed or on disk. Taiwan’s Asus Inc. said it was preparing to supply Green Dam disks with PCs. Taiwanese laptop maker BenQ Inc. said the system was on the hard drives of its computers.

Acer was supplying Green Dam because disks were already packed with PCs before the government postponed the plan, that had been due to take effect Wednesday, said a company spokeswoman, Meng Lei. Lenovo said it also was going ahead with plans made before the Green Dam order was postponed.

Hewlett-Packard Inc., the world’s top PC manufacturer, said it was working with the U.S. government to get more information and declined to comment further. No. 2 Dell Inc. said it was not including Green Dam with its PCs.

I’m so glad I have a Dell…at least for now, they aren’t Chicomm suckups.

Pig breeding

OK, granted, it’s a bad idea to get physical with your subordinates, or to fool around on company time. But what was so bad about Perry Township police chief Timothy Escola making out with part-time office Janine England in the cruiser? Did the presence of a prisoner in the back turn it into “cruel and unusual punishment” (”You won’t be getting any of this for awhile”)

iPod lobotomy

There are reasons I haven’t been posting much. I’m very busy at work with some projects, and at home I’m trying to catch up the garden, direct Hiram Community Band, and get my face ready for Madison a week from now. But mostly, I’ve been depressed. The world is so screwed up that I don’t want to hear about it.  And when I do… Last night, I saw a picture from Iran. I’m not going to link to it, for your own good and mine, but let’s say that it was the aftermath of the Basiji literally behaving like dogs, a most Islamic thing to do. And I felt absolutely hopeless in a world where anyone would do that in the name of religion.

I pray. Most of my prayers are emotional and inchoate, “God, make them STOP IT!”  When I get calmer and pull it together, I pray for the conversion of Iran, because that’s the only think that I think will ultimately work. And I’m sure some of you more rationalist types out there think I’m nuts. But, consider:

1. Correct or not, if religion gets me through this, do you get an opinion?

2. It has been quite some time since Christians tortured in the name of religion (sorry, lefties, Gitmo isn’t about religion).

3.  Do you have a better idea? Is there any other overarching idea that is likely to put an end to violence?

I also find that I’m very fragile about listening to music. I can’t listen to my usual medieval/Renaissance stuff. Phrygian cadences make me twitchy, and I get reminded that the Luge to Lucifer stops at Dark Ages Station. Modern music is right out. I have to be careful about bluegrass; a good fiddle tune is fine, but if there’s words about divorce or sin, forget that. Polkas are very reliable: fast and happy. So I’m listening to stupid 3 chord music with stupid words, because somehow it helps.  And a bit of Koechlin, who also tends toward innocence. La la la, I can’t hear you…

Ohs boys! I kin haz policy tools?

Steve Malloy busts Cato senior fellow Alan Reynolds for wanting to use an excise tax against SUVs:

Where in the Constitution does it say that the government has the power to discourage legally made and sold transportation choices?

Cato supports your right to use recreational drugs but not your right to purchase the sort of car or truck you want without government interference?

Uh, Steve, where in the Constitution does it say that the government has the power to make any transportation choices legal or illegal? And what is a libertarian doing citing the “goddam piece of paper” anyway?

You’re right to call him out on that, but the trouble with minarchism is: how min is min? Apparently, at Cato all you have to be is to the right of Obama, whereas Malloy thinks you should be to the right of the Republicans. That’s a good start, but it’s a long and winding road.

Sauce for the gander

You know, it’s really hard to feel sorry about this: California woman has a fundraiser for a Democrat Congressbitch-wannabe, somebody calls the cops about noise (at 9:33…c’mon, it’s barely dark then…and the guy obviously had issues…not to mention that the cops ruined any chance he may have had to sleep). Cop gets needlessly confrontational, and soon there’s pepper spray, 2 arrests, 8 cruisers and a helicopter.

Busby wants an investigation. Good; there needs to be one. But Busby needs to take a stand in her campaign against militarization of the police. More to the point: the threat of such violence is what enables her entire platform. It’s about time she and her toney buds got a taste of the police state, and decided honestly whether they want it anymore. The one bright spot is that Abbott’s ham is sure to be in a sling over an attack on the politically connected, unlike what happens when the Susine-Americans go after those of us who are less equal.

Thank you, Mr. Balko.

UPDATE: Maggie’s Farm (HT: Right Wing Nation) has a slightly different take on what went down, emphasizing Barman-and-guests non-cooperation and Busby’s loony politics (even for California). So apparently they “got the government they deserved”, in the Mencken sense.