Victor Davis Hanson; Women at the Front (Discussion follows)

Victor Davis Hanson  "One way or another, we have now apparently made a number of assumptions: that in the next war we will see overtly gay men and women fully integrated in small ground units amid firefights and carnage at the front; that this will not affect negatively, but more likely improve, US combat efficacy; and that those intolerant reactionaries who object and feel less safe or simply less comfortable will shun the military — and that the military will not suffer as a consequence of their absence, but more likely improve. If all true, then we are onto the brave new world!"
Liberals say that not all women can be in a combat unit, but all should have the chance. I say not to believe a word o[f] that."
The history of US liberals is that a certain percentage of combat platoons MUST consist of women to reflect the population and therefore physical requirements will have to be lowered to make that happen.

Blackfive

We've covered this before: Does Sexual Equality Require Preferential Treatment?

....As recently as last Saturday; Dempsey considers lowering standards for women in combat

In case you think any Democrat administration will keep the quality of the US military its main priority, keep this in mind always:
US military despised by Progressives

On her MSNBC show today, Melissa Harris-Perry stated that the U.S. military is "despised as an engine of war by many progressives."

" She was speaking about the military being a leader (as usual) in righting wrongs. The pathetic thing is that she assumes this is an anomaly. Obviously the "education" she got focused more on PC BS and less on the fact that the US military has been the greatest force for freedom and liberty in the history of this planet. Hundreds of millions of people live better lives due to the completely, unsurprising historical truth that the US military has fought and defeated tyranny and totalitarianism all around the world." 

Obama EPA kills power plant, 3,900 jobs in Texas

Beltway Confidential   "Freysinger made it very clear who was responsible for the projects death. “The (Las Brisas Energy Center) is a victim of EPA’s concerted effort to stifle solid-fuel energy facilities in the U.S., including EPA’s carbon-permitting requirements and EPA’s New Source Performance Standards for new power plants,” he said"

...." “These costly rules exceeded the bounds of EPA authority, incur tremendous costs, and produce no real benefits related to climate change,” Freysinger commented."

Freedom Works has this commentary: EPA's New Source Performance Standard as bad as Utility MACT?  "The EPA may have more far-reaching plans for this unnecessary rulemaking. Namely, this proposal will increase the agency’s control over electric utilities; put fossil-fuel EGUs in the EPA’s regulatory bind due to CO2 emissions, and set a precedent for creating CO2 performance standards for other sources."

Alan Caruba, who writes prolifically on these topics has this perspective on the premise behind all this:
 A Tsunami of Governmental Global Warming Lies

"The Liar-in-Chief about global warming—AKA climate change—is President Obama who, during his second inaugural speech managed to ignore any mention of the nation’s catastrophic debt in favor of warning that climate change is causing forest fires, drought, and powerful storms. Excuse me, but the climate has always included these natural events. They are not the result of a warming that is [in reality] not occurring."

From green-buzz, believe it or not. 

UPDATE: Norway Data Shows Earth’s Global Warming Less Severe Than Feared   "The findings also show the effect of reduced airborne particulates from burning coal, which may decrease the cloud cover that cools the earth, probably has less of an impact on climate through indirect cooling than originally projected."

We don't need no stinkin' guns!

Hat tip to Harley Standlee, Placerville, CA

Safe Six

http://legalinsurrection.com/tag/a-f-branco/

 

12 Whimsical Altered Street Signs

Buzzfeed   "French street artist Clet Abraham snuck out into the night and pasting removable stickers onto street signs throughout major cities in Europe, giving the signs a humorous twist."  Here's one:

 

On the Obama Administration's Foreign Policy

Obama’s Incoherent Islamic Policy; Using Drone Strikes While Embracing The Muslim Brotherhood Appears To Be Cognitive Dissonance
A good opening question would be: Islamic Sharia law decrees:

“Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada signifying warfare to establish the religion. . . I have been commanded [by Allah] to fight [all] people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah…”

"So why does President Obama maintain – “We are not at war against Islam” – when they are clearly at war with us?

Obama signals focus on foreign policy with new chief of staff  "President Obama's choice of a foreign policy expert and longtime aide to become his chief of staff is widely seen as evidence that the president plans to emulate his predecessors, who used their second terms to put their mark on the world."

Obama secretly pledges to divide Jerusalem  "The negotiator said top members of the Obama administration told the Palestinians the U.S. president will renew talks aimed at creating a Palestinian state in the so-called 1967 borders – meaning in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and, notably, eastern Jerusalem."

Brit Hume: Case For Hillary Clinton "Being A Great Secretary Of State Is Exceedingly Weak"
"....You look across the world, now at the major issues. Are Arabs and Israelis closer to peace? How about Iran and North Korea and their nuclear programs? Have they been halted or seriously set back? Has the reset with Russia, which she so famously introduced with the photo-op in Moscow with the reset button, has they lead to a new and more cooperative relationship? Is there a Clinton doctrine that we can identify that she has articulated and formed as secretary of state? Are there major treaties that she has undertaken and negotiated through to a successful conclusion? I think the answer to all those questions is that she has not. And those are the kinds of things that might mark her as a great secretary of state."

Hillary's strange testimony  "History will remember Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s performance before senators and House members at the congressional Benghazi hearings as a stunning indictment of her profound failures and those of Obama administration.
"In jaw-dropping testimony, Clinton defiantly defended her incompetence and her supreme lack of critical thinking, while making the stunning admission that the motive and immediate cover-up of an act of war and the resultant slaughter of an American ambassador and three attaches representing America abroad “didn’t matter.” It was, in fact, a matter of life and death. What could matter more?"

Some advice on women in combat from a female veteran

Hot Air  "Yesterday’s column on women in combat elicited a number of passionate responses from both sides. Some of them came from proponents of the move, frequently citing alternate motives on my part. These ranged from “trying to keep women pregnant in the kitchen” and “Republicans want to lock women in the 1950s” to whichever variant of the GOP’s “war on women” you’d care to name. Many others lent a more sympathetic ear. One in particular, though, caught my attention. It was from one of America’s female veterans who served in Iraq, delivered with a first hand, been there, done that background. The Marine in question – who for purposes of publication will go by the pseudonym of “Sentry” – had previously submitted this history and opinion as a comment at National Review, but her story was compelling enough that I checked into her background, contacted her and decided to republish it here in its entirety. I offer the following as a third party testimony to stand your scrutiny on its own merits."

I’m a female veteran. I deployed to Anbar Province, Iraq. When I was active duty, I was 5’6, 130 pounds, and scored nearly perfect on my PFTs. I naturally have a lot more upper body strength than the average woman: not only can I do pull-ups, I can meet the male standard. I would love to have been in the infantry. And I still think it will be an unmitigated disaster to incorporate women into combat roles. I am not interested in risking men’s lives so I can live my selfish dream.  Read more here.

 The writer has much more to say, but her key point is here:

....Everyone wants to point to the IDF as a model for gender integration in the military. No, the IDF does not put women on the front lines. They ran into the same wall the US is about to smack into: very few women can meet the standards required to serve there. The few integrated units in the IDF suffered three times the casualties of the all-male units because the Israeli men, just like almost every other group of men on the planet, try to protect the women even at the expense of the mission. Political correctness doesn’t trump thousands of years of evolution and societal norms. Do we really WANT to deprogram that instinct from men?

Greta Van Susteren Strikes Back At Obama's Attack On Fox News

Noel Sheppard  "As NewsBusters reported, President Obama, in an interview published Sunday by The New Republic, said, "If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you'll see more of them doing it."
Within a few hours, Fox News's Greta Van Susteren struck back:"

Apparently President Obama wants his usual media pass and Fox challenges his policies – which happens to be the media’s job.
Frankly, I think a far bigger part of the problem is the disintegration of relationships between politicians. It is also worth noting that President Obama has not developed relationships on Capitol Hill – note that he had to dispatch VP Biden to Capitol Hill for the recent tax debate because he does not have the relationships. [...]
And do you know what else? Brace yourself for this one! Some Democrats have told me that they want to come on Fox to discuss issues but they get heat from their Leadership for appearing on Fox. Does President Obama know that? So which Party is intimidating its members? And to say Senator Harry Reid is willing to compromise is just wrong. He has not allowed a budget to get to the Senate Floor for years to even begin a discussion. The budget process is where all compromise begins and ends and ended it before it even got started.
 

David Mamet Is Fighting for Our Dying Liberty As We Succumb to Marxism

Independent Sentinel   "Defiant ex-liberal and famed Pulitzer Prize winner, David Mamet, is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director. He has made a full conversion from liberalism since it has come to represent collectivism."

 

" Mamet’s latest column in The Daily Beast calls for a look at the Marxism infiltrating our society and its growing control over the individual through bureaucracy:"

Read his article here. 

 

"Mamet recognizes the condescension of this movement which views blacks as so inferior they need to be given special consideration by the government:"

The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.

"One point that should not go unnoticed is Obama’s overreaching into our personal lives:"

President Obama, in his reelection campaign, referred frequently to the “needs” of himself and his opponent, alleging that each has more money than he “needs.”

But where in the Constitution is it written that the Government is in charge of determining “needs”? And note that the president did not say “I have more money than I need,” but “You and I have more than we need.” Who elected him to speak for another citizen?

Finally, a liberal who doesn't complain about Obama because he is not far enough left to suit him. 

This should sum things up for the week

http://www.worldmag.com/editorialcartoons/

Mallard Fillmore's latest

Jewish World Review

Keynote Speaker for Atlanta Association of Teacher Educators: Bill Ayers

Moonbattery  "Another reminder that the most radical excesses of the acid-crazed flower child era are now effectively mainstream:"

Left-wing ’60s radical and onetime domestic terrorist Bill Ayers will be a keynote speaker at the Association of Teacher Educators annual conference in Atlanta next month.

Ayers gained notoriety alongside his wife Bernardine Dohrn as a member of the Weather Underground during the Vietnam War. He was involved in Chicago’s “Days of Rage” riot in 1969 and went underground as a fugitive from justice after an accidental Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in 1970 killed three Weather Underground members who were preparing a bomb that prematurely detonated.
Ayers admitted in a 2001 book that he participated in bombings of the New York City Police Department headquarters, the U.S. Capitol Building and the Pentagon in the early 1970s.
He subsequently became a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a “family friend” to Barack Obama before the president became a national political figure.

"The avowed communist revolutionary Ayers is best known for grooming Barack Hussein Obama for high office, as part of the same strategy of destroying America from within its own institutions that led him to abandon bombs for a career in education. Obama’s political career was literally launched from the apartment Ayers shared with fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, inventor of the Fork Salute honoring the Manson Family’s senseless murders."

And here is the Ayres philosophy of education that makes him attractive to todays' teachers unions:

“When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.’

Presenting Our Keynote Speaker for the Evening

More on the ATE here
"The Association of Teacher Educators has a long-standing commitment to equity and to advocacy. The actions taken by the Georgia legislators to focus on undocumented aliens in a punitive and negative manner are actions that we do not support."
Diversity
"ATE supports diversity in education.  This commitment to diversity originates with ATE’s understanding of the concept of pluralism and the importance of creating a teaching force representative of the broader pluralistic society. ATE advocates affirmative action and multicultural education as programs supportive of diversity in education.  ATE’s commitment to diversity also influences its position on a number of critical issues where diversity may not be maintained."

 

We're getting off into another stream-of-consciousness tangent here, so it's time to quit. TD