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June 8, 2011

He May be a Dog, but Weiner Will be a Winner in 2012

By Selwyn Duke

New York Congressman Anthony Weiner’s sexual impropriety sure does make titillating copy. I mean, take his zipper-like stature, the nature of his transgressions, and combine that with his name, and you have the perfect running joke. And we can add to this a touch of irony. The following is still found on Weiner’s website:

Protecting Children On the Internet — In early 2007 my office did a study that found that over 85% of registered sex offenders in New York City live less than five blocks from schools, and 670 sex offenders live within just two blocks. Some offenders are even closer, permanently residing less than 500 feet away from unwitting parents, educators and children. Along with several colleagues in Congress, we introduced & passed the KIDS (Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators) Act of 2007.

Now, a fellow journalist who used to reside in Weiner’s neighborhood informs me that the congressman’s home “is about two blocks (less than 100 yards) from Our Lady Queen of Martyrs (Catholic) School and about five blocks (less than 300 yards) from Public School 101” and asks, “Does this mean that Anthony Weiner — by his ‘own’ law — will have to register with the police?"

Read the rest here.
May 31, 2011

Desexing Children: The Acceptable Abuse

By Selwyn Duke

“We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? …).” So wrote parents David Stocker and Kathy Witterick after the birth of their third child, who they really did name “Storm.”

This isn’t the first story about parents who don’t want their children to be influenced by others’ sex-role expectations. In 2009, a Swedish couple, citing the feminist philosophy stating that “gender is a social construction,” refused to reveal the sex of their 2 ½-year-old child “Pop” (I have it on good authority, from Snap and Crackle, that it’s a boy).

Witterick says her inspiration came from “X: A Fabulous Child's Story,” a fictional account of a character who hides his biological sex from others. Well, we can only be thankful that she didn’t read a story about Carthaginian infant sacrifice.

Read the rest here.
May 21, 2011

This Is the Article That Will Never be Published

By Selwyn Duke

As you may know, the world will end today at 6 p.m.

Or, that’s the prediction at least by 89-year-old California preacher Harold Camping.

Camping had forecast the Earth’s demise before, in 1994, and thus joined a list of errant end-of-worlders that goes back to biblical times and beyond.

Of course, whether you believe in the End Times in the Christian sense or not, you probably know that one of these days Camping, or one of his doomsayer descendants, will likely be right. The collision of two collapsed stars a thousand light years away could yield gamma-ray bursts that would irradiate the Earth into oblivion, and if a “rogue” black hole, which roams about, happened our way, it would act as a big vacuum cleaner/trash compactor that would suck us in and never spit us out. For a slightly more mundane end, our Sun will eventually become a supernova and incinerate us in the blink of an eye. And, even if we should escape this fate by venturing out into space, we’re told that the Universe, which is now expanding, will reverse that process and start contractions that result not in birth, but death.

Read the rest here.
May 14, 2011

Soviet Style, Facebook Plants Negative Stories about Google

By Selwyn Duke

Sometimes you just wish that both sides in a contest could lose. Such is the case with respect to the latest revelation about Facebook: that it hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about Google. Writes Dan Lyons at The Daily Beast:

For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like the Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.

The plot backfired when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him. It got worse when USA Today broke a story accusing Burson of spreading a “whisper campaign” about Google “on behalf of an unnamed client.”

After learning that the unnamed client was Facebook, The Daily Beast subsequently received confirmation from a company spokesman that it had, in fact, hired Burson. And the company is well-suited to the task it was assigned. Lyons also tells us, “Mark Penn, Burson’s CEO, has been a political consultant for Bill Clinton, and is best known as the chief strategist in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.” In other words, Burson could probably disgorge a 25-page analysis on the definition of the word “is.”

Read the rest here.
May 10, 2011

Barack Obama’s Seven-dollar-a-gallon Gas Ambitions

By Selwyn Duke

“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” said Steven Chu — the man Barack Obama would ultimately tap to be energy secretary — in September 2008. He was explaining to The Wall Street Journal that higher energy prices are the centerpiece of the Left’s energy overhaul. Well, I don’t know if they’ve figured out the Euro-boost yet, but we are halfway to Vienna.

Now, while I’m sure Barack Obama would love it if gas prices declined until November 6, 2012, there’s every reason to believe he shares Chu’s sentiments. And if the fact that he hired such a man in the first place isn’t enough for you, consider his campaign-trail implication that he wouldn’t have a problem with four-dollar-a-gallon gas (hey, it won’t cramp his lifestyle. Golf, anyone?). Consider also that he’s quite willing to subordinate the satisfying of energy needs to symbolic environmental deeds. For example, in 2008, he told the San Francisco Chronicle that his policies would bankrupt the traditional coal industry and said “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket [emphasis added].” It’s amazing what comes out of his mouth — even on the campaign trail — off Teleprompter.

Given this attitude, it’s not surprising that oil rigs, denied permits to drill by the Obama administration, have been leaving the Gulf of Mexico for foreign shores. And don’t expect to see them back anytime soon, either. After all, moving a Walmart-size rig is no small feat, and not all countries have a national death wish that causes the afflicted to kill the golden goose like ghetto criminals who ensure that businesses will leave their neighborhoods.

Read the rest here.
May 9, 2011

Austria’s Geert Wilders Rails against Immigration and Muslim Influence

Is this footage of the best statesman in Europe? This is a video of Austrian parliamentarian Ewald Stadler violating every tenet of political correctness and giving the Turkish ambassador to his nation a dressing down the Turk will never forget. It’s chicken soup for the soul for anyone who is sick and tired of how Western nations subordinate the interests of their native citizens to those of unassimilable foreigners.

I don’t know much about Stadler’s general ideology, but on this issue our politicians could certainly take a leaf out of his book. Geert Wilders, you have some competition.
May 9, 2011

Do You Really Want Constitutional Government?

By Selwyn Duke

There is a simple reason why we don’t have constitutional government: By and large, most Americans don’t want it. In fact, most don’t even know what it would entail.

This is true even of most people who preach adherence to the Constitution.

Just recently I lunched with a fellow commentator, an extremely nice man (he really is) who is part of the conservative blogosphere. As you might imagine, politics, religion and philosophy were the stuff of our conversation, and we found ourselves largely in agreement until….

That is, until the issue of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) somehow arose and my amiable colleague started singing its praises.

This prompted me to aver that, good idea or not, the act is unconstitutional. My lunch mate didn’t deny this — but nor did he accept it. Instead, he provided a few reasons why he believed it was necessary, despite my pointing out that constitutionalism is not a pick-and-choose proposition.

Read the rest here.
May 3, 2011

Importing Disaster: Demographic Changes Mean Democrat Future

By Selwyn Duke

At a gathering some years ago, I had a political conversation with a man who had recently arrived here from Denmark. He was advocating his home country’s socialist system, which, of course, led to profound disagreement. He was good natured and cordial, however, so the debate ended on a polite note. Yet it also ended on an ironic one: When asked if he wanted to return home, his answer was no.

This is a common phenomenon. We see it, for instance, in liberal northerners who move to the South for the lower taxes and cost of living and greater freedom but then continue to vote for the kind of politicians who made the Northeast a nice place to leave. And while this befuddles many, it’s simply man’s nature. Of course people want that which is good, such as a better lifestyle, but wanting and attaining are two different things. Everyone wants good health, for example, but many nevertheless are too attached to unhealthful foods and practices to relinquish them. Oh, they might move into your healthy body if they could, but they would likely do to it what a government–subsidized project does to a good neighborhood.

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April 29, 2011

Up from Mexico Way: A Lawsuit Against U.S. Gun Manufacturers

By Selwyn Duke

In the early days it was Pancho Villa, then it was undocumented Democrats and drug runners, and now we have the latest incursion across our southern border: The Mexican government is poised to file a lawsuit against our domestic firearms manufacturers over U.S.-made guns that are finding their way into Mexico. Writes CBS News:

"Sources say Mexico's frustration with U.S. efforts to stop the flow of weapons has pushed them into this novel approach. The law firm [that has been retained] is looking at charges that may include civil RICO. The contract was signed on November 2, 2010 by a representative of Mexico's Attorney General, at their Washington embassy.

"On November 5, 2010 President Felipe Calderon expressed his frustration to CBS News correspondent Peter Greenberg: 'We seized more than 90,000 weapons…. I am talking like 50,000 assault weapons, AR-15 machine guns, more than 8,000 grenades and almost 10 million bullets. Amazing figures and according to all those cases, the ones we are able to track, most of these are American weapons.'"

Frustration with efforts to stop a cross-border flow….

Wow, we wouldn’t know anything about that.

Read the rest here.
April 25, 2011

No, Beauty is Not in the Eye of the Beholder

By Selwyn Duke

The American Thinker’s Rick Moran recently wrote a blog piece about how some Catholics in France destroyed two of Andres Serrano’s creations, excreta that some euphemistically refer to as art. Moran opened by saying that his topic would make for lively debate among commenters, and he was right. And it has also provoked a lively response from me.

In his piece, Moran states, “Art, as we learned when growing up, is in the eye of the beholder.” Yes, most of us did learn this growing up—and we learned wrong. That is to say, unless “art” doesn’t really exist.

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