J's Cafe Nette

Archive for April 18th, 2007

What talent.
The picture speaks for itself.

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No matter if it is a mom or dad who becomes a part-time parent due to divorce or separation, this post at The Evangelical Outpost speaks volumes.

The Visiting Father

In 1995 I became a “weekend dad.” I was on recruiting duty for the Marine Corps, on an unforgiving assignment that required working fourteen hour days, six days a week. Sundays I’d make the trek from Olympia, WA up to Everett where my soon-to-be-ex-wife had moved. I’d strap my two-year-old daughter into the car seat and we’d set out on our weekend routine: to the park, if it was sunny and warm; to the playland at McDonald’s, if it was rainy and cold. (Everett is always rainy and always cold.)

My interest was peaked and then there was this:

I want to start with a basic premise: When your first child is born, your life stops being about what you want and starts being about what they need. If you disagree, then you can stop reading now. The rest of what I say will only make sense to those who understand that this is the foundation of fatherhood.

Well, I am not a father but as a mother I certainly appreciate the changes and challenges we face with the birth of a child. With divorce rates in this country skyrocketing and many children being raised in one parent households it has become commonplace to hear “experts” shed their light on “parental responsibility” (a wise person once told me “If you don’t live under the roof, pass no judgment”. The author of this piece is an expert. He is a father.

Complete article here.

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In case you are wondering where your last pork chop “really” came from, Don Surber gives us a hint.

The Food and Drug Administration is likely to allow farmers to sell meat and milk from cloned cows, pigs and goats without any special labels. Well, not pig’s milk. I don’t think anyone sells pig’s milk. But I digress.

Congressional Democrats are all upset. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., wants cloned food to carry a label: “This product is from a cloned animal or its progeny.”

Sure, label everything.

Not to be outdown, Democrats in the California legislature are calling for even more explicit labels, the AP reported.

State Sen. Carole Migden, D-SF, (of course) said, “Wouldn’t you like to know if you’re drinking milk from a cloned cow, or feeding your children pork chops from a somatic cell nuclear transfer event?”

More hysteria. This time over somatic cell nuclear transfer events, which I’ll admit sound scary.

After going on with this nonsense for 14 paragraphs, AP reporter Aaron Davis finally gave the opposition — the California Cattlemen’s Association — a chance to chime in.

“We’re sort of a little ahead of ourselves,” said Matt Byrne, the association’s executive vice president. “There’s no meat or milk from cloned animals on the market, and there’s no expectation that this will be an issue any time soon.”

So there you have it. Having solved all of the many real problems in government, Democrats are ready to protect us from imaginary ones.

America will have its label guns ready to fire at the next challenge to freedom: cloned meat — if it ever is produced.

For their next Luddite law, I want them to work to protect the working poor from exploitative fares should time travel ever become a reality.

The original story can be found here.

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The procedure we call partial-birth abortion is something I could never understand because the woman was far enough along to deliver the baby partially vaginally and then the baby’s head would be punctured and the baby would die.

The Supreme Court has upheld the ban on partial-birth abortions.

The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long- awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

The opponents of the act “have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The decision pitted the court’s conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush’s two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.

It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how—not whether—to perform an abortion.

Abortion rights groups have said the procedure sometimes is the safest for a woman. They also said that such a ruling could threaten most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, although government lawyers and others who favor the ban said there are alternate, more widely used procedures that remain legal.

The outcome is likely to spur efforts at the state level to place more restrictions on abortions.

More than 1 million abortions are performed in the United States each year, according to recent statistics. Nearly 90 percent of those occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and are not affected by Tuesday’s ruling

“More than 1 million abortions are performed each year in the United States…”

Can any logical person actually present an argument that these abortions are all medically necessary and not just a means of birth control?

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COgirl from Hang Right Politics has written this post about some words Tammy Bruce had to say on the Bill O’Reilly show.

What Bruce mentioned on the O’Reilly Factor was how when she was president of NOW, she had a list of names and phone numbers of people in the MSM. When she wanted to raise an issue, test a theory or just bad mouth someone on the right, all she had to do was pick up the phone and make a few calls. Once the NY [T]imes ran with the story, it was quickly picked up and was all over the news. If people hear a story enough, they begin to think it’s true even though many times the MSM never checked out the facts.

Bruce indicated that this technique is regularly done by the extreme left and they used it to bring down Imus. She wrote on her website, TammyBruce.com:

Keep in mind, Imus is not a ‘conservative,’ but he is also not a leftist. I see this attack on Imus very much like the attempt by Establishment Left to purge Lieberman (and what he represents) from the Democratic Party–there is indeed an ideological war going on, and even before the leftist gestapos out there feel they can turn to silencing conservatives, they have to purge their own house of liberals who don’t pledge allegiance to the leftist worldview. It’s why I get attacked by the left for not being a “real” Democrat and why Imus was one of the first on their Hit List to go.

It’s very Maoist, and very dangerous unless we all speak up. I think we’re a nation which can handle being occasionally offended, and can have that discussion socially. Yet, under the guise of protecting the apparently freakishly vulnerable and sensitive ears of minorities, we’re being asked to punish and destroy only those who dare to question and decry leftism, issue dissent and cause a politically incorrect ruckus (the two usually go together). All of us would prefer a world where certain phrases aren’t even considered as part of the social debate, but what this is really about is how far you are willing to be manipulated, in the name of ‘decency’, to allow and accept Stalinistic control over what can and cannot be heard .

Tammy Bruce is a Democrat who happened to vote for President Bush. COgirl happened to have the TV on when O’Reilly came on and heard it; otherwise she doesn’t listen to O’Reilly (neither do I) or she would never have heard this.

Update:Go to Hot Air to hear Bruce on the O’Reilly show.

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While a crazed gunman went around the campus of Virginia Tech shooting anyone who happened to be in his sight, there emerged a genuine hero.

Professor Liviu Librescu, a 76 year old Holocaust survivor, put his body against the door of his classroom and told his students to escape. This, on the day the world commemorated the Holocaust.

From the Jerusalem Post we read these words:

As Jews worldwide honored on Monday the memory of those who were murdered in the Holocaust, a 76-year-old survivor sacrificed his life to save his students in Monday’s shooting at Virginia Tech College that left 33 dead and over two dozen wounded.

Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter when the man attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, “but all the students lived – because of him,” Virginia Tech student Asael Arad – also an Israeli – told Army Radio.

Several of Librescu’s other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he had blocked the gunman’s way and saved their lives, said Librescu’s son, Joe.

“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”

Jesus said there is no greater love than for a man to give up his life for others.

May you rest in peace, Professor Librescu, and may we never forget the heroism you showed on your last day. He will be buried in Israel.

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Our good friend DJ Drummond has written an excellent essay saying there is hope for journalism.

He focuses on this column written for ESPN by Jemele Hill and has this to say:

Her words are neither trite nor easy. They are exactly what needs to be said, and it shows promise for the future of Journalism. Ms. Hill has done a good thing, and not for her own advancement, nor for a cause, but in simple obedience to Justice and Decency.

Here is some of what Ms. Hill had to say:

I never wrote it, but I felt it — which is just as bad. I said it in private discussions with friends, some of whom tried to get me to see the whole picture, not just the picture I wanted to see.

My being a black woman, my knowing too many athletes who treat women like items to be purchased in a vending machine, and my witnessing enough athlete rape trials where accusers are overwhelmed by their fame and fortune — it all tainted my perception and made me doubt your innocence.

I feel stupid now.

So to Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans, the three Duke lacrosse players whose lives were mangled by an unsupported rape accusation, I say two of the hardest words in the English language:

I’m sorry.

It’s not enough, and I won’t pretend that it is. For the last year, your lives and those of your families have been more difficult than any of us can possibly imagine. I’ll never know what it was like walking around normal society labeled a rapist. I’ll never know what it’s like to lose everything — your school, your program and your life — because of one unproven accusation.

You deserve all of that back and then some, but unfortunately, you won’t get it. You have every right to not trust anyone and think less of people. Duke University abandoned you. An overzealous prosecutor tormented you. A community, a nation, didn’t believe you. Journalists everywhere, sensing ratings and salivating over the salaciousness of black strippers and white athletes, chose to keep you under attack.

Check out the rest.

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi has for the second day since returning from a two-week Easter break postponed naming conferees for the reconciliation of the military supplemental spending bill.

She says it’s because a lot of Representatives from the Northeast were unable to get to Washington due to the recent storms and because some lawmakers attended services at Virginia Tech, but they could at least have been named without being there.

“We need the conferees in order to make progress on the bill,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who will join Mrs. Pelosi and other congressional leaders at a White House meeting with President Bush today.

Patience also wore thin among Senate Democrats assigned two weeks ago to the conference committee that will reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of the $100 billion bill.

“We are going to be talking about that and trying to put some pressure on bringing that [conference committee] about,” Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii Democrat and member of the conference committee, said on his way to the party’s weekly policy luncheon.

“I’m hoping we can do that sooner because it is something that we need to decide,” said Mr. Inouye, chairman of the Appropriations defense subcommittee.

You know this bill is going to be vetoed and time is of the essence to get a new bill that everyone can live with.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of watching this contest of seeing who can pee higher on the wall.

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My first question is how do they know if their fares have alcohol in their luggage without digging through it to find out?

At any rate the Muslim cabbies in Minneapolis have been told to carry all fares or lose their cabbie license.”

The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport will begin suspending licenses of Muslim taxi drivers who refuse for religious reasons to provide service to passengers transporting alcohol.

The Metropolitan Airports Commission voted unanimously Monday to suspend a driver’s airport taxi license for 30 days for the first offense and revoke it for two years after a second offense. The policy goes into effect May 11.

The action “will strengthen compliance with our taxi cab ordinance and ensure people who seek taxi service receive it,” commission Executive Director Jeff Hamiel said.

“Some Muslims believe that it is inappropriate not only to drink alcohol, but to carry or transport alcohol,” said Jeff Hassan, a lawyer representing the Muslim cabdrivers. “Some would interpret that to mean carry or transport for hire or for profit, so there are a few different interpretations on prohibitions.”

Previously, cabdrivers who refused to transport customers were sent to the back of the line, a punishment that has been handed out in nearly 5,000 instances since 2002, commission spokesman Patrick Hogan said.

“Sometimes they asked if [the passengers] are carrying alcohol, or they will see it,” Mr. Hogan said. “One person saw a stuffed animal and thought it was a decanter and denied the person service because they thought it contained alcohol.”

Another 300 incidents have been recorded in which individuals were refused transport to destinations near the airport.

Mr. Hassan said his clients are considering whether to file a lawsuit against the commission to overturn its decision.

The ruling sounds fair to me, but the fact they want to take it to court is about par for the course, especially if CAIR is involved.

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Barack Obama spoke to a crowd in Milwaukee on Monday and seemed to wander all over the place while discussing violence.

“There’s also another kind of violence that we’re going to have to think about. It’s not necessarily the physical violence, but the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways,” he said, and goes on to catalogue other forms of “violence.”

There’s the “verbal violence” of Imus.

There’s “the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job is moved to another country.”

There’s “the violence of children whose voices are not heard in communities that are ignored,”

And so, Obama says, “there’s a lot of different forms of violence in our society, and so much of it is rooted in our incapacity to recognize ourselves in each other.”

I fail to see how the murder of 32 people compares to what Imus said, or someone losing his job because it went off-shore. I’m sorry but I just can’t connect on that.

I also listened to the speech and he sounded very monotone. It certainly didn’t sound like a stem-winder to me, but maybe he was deliberately solemn due to the deaths of these students.

Go here to listen to his 23 minute speech. It has been reported some people with IE7 can’t hear it and they should right-click the link and save to the desktop to listen to it.

I have IE7 and have had to wait a minute or so for the audio to come up but I haven’t had to save it to my desktop.

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