Daylin Leach: Moral giant; master debater

A friend passes along a clipping from this weekend's Times Herald, in which the 'Cooler's beloved Daylin Leach tackles a recent Star Parker column called "Sodom in the Nation's Capital".

Admitedly, this is not one of Parker's more tightly constructed columns, however, her point is clear: gay marriage hurts the institution of the family, and the collapse of the American family is at the root of most of our inner city problems. Anyone who has read Parker more than twice will recognize this theme as it is a common thread that runs through most of Parker's columns.

I have transcribed Daylin's full response and it is available below the break. It's worth a read just to bask in the feigned outrage over the word "Sodom" in the title of the column and to watch him conjure up his very own morally relative God out of thin air then insist that his that his morality is the only right way to live, while complaining that Star Parker has no right to insinuate her religious beliefs on the rest of the world. Apparently, because Parker does not worship the lollipop and gumdrop God of Daylin's imagination, she is neither entitled to her first amendment rights either.

The gay marriage question is one on which that people of good conscience can disagree and though I am against it, I can certainly understand the opposition. And if Mr. Leach had bothered to address the real issues behind the defense of marriage, I would not have a problem with his response; indeed I would simply chuckle at his ridiculous make believe God and no-one-is-ever-wrong-but-bigoted-conservatives religion and go on my way.

But what Leach does here does not in any way address the concerns of those who believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman; what he does here is simply smear anyone who opposes gay marraige as a homophobe--a knuckle-dragging bigot whose arguments are not worth addressing. For someone who claims to be "very involved" with this issue, I find it hard to believe that Daylin does not fully understand the opposing point of view on this issue. Rather than address those concerns, he instead resorts to the lazy liberals weapon of last resort: shout your opponent down with charges of bigotry.

Here's Maggie Gallagher in a classic column from the Weekly Standard on why it is important to keep the institution of marriage intact:

In other words, while individuals freely choose to enter marriage, society upholds the marriage option, formalizes its definition, and surrounds it with norms and reinforcements, so we can raise boys and girls who aspire to become the kind of men and women who can make successful marriages. Without this shared, public aspect, perpetuated generation after generation, marriage becomes what its critics say it is: a mere contract, a vessel with no particular content, one of a menu of sexual lifestyles, of no fundamental importance to anyone outside a given relationship.

The marriage idea is that children need mothers and fathers, that societies need babies, and that adults have an obligation to shape their sexual behavior so as to give their children stable families in which to grow up.

Which view of marriage is true? We have seen what has happened in our communities where marriage norms have failed. What has happened is not a flowering of libertarian freedom, but a breakdown of social and civic order that can reach frightening proportions. When law and culture retreat from sustaining the marriage idea, individuals cannot create marriage on their own.

(...)

THE PROBLEM with endorsing gay marriage is not that it would allow a handful of people to choose alternative family forms, but that it would require society at large to gut marriage of its central presumptions about family in order to accommodate a few adults' desires

Just because a person believes that marriage should be between one man and one woman (a view the majority of Americans hold, by the way) it does not make them homophobes. Indeed, even some gays I know do not believe in gay marriage. If you want to argue for gay marriage, do it honestly and bravely. Don't hide behind charges of "homophobia." It is cowardly, intellectually lazy, and fundamentally dishonest.

And really no surprise at all, the "argument" coming from whence it does.

Poetry Corner

Gentle readers, never let it be said that your humble blogress does not attempt to inject a little culture into your lives now and then. Tonight, I give you Al Gore, poet:

One thin September soon

A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun

Vapors rise as

Fever settles on an acid sea

Neptune's bones dissolve

Snow glides from the mountain
Ice fathers floods for a season

A hard rain comes quickly

Then dirt is parched
Kindling is placed in the forest

For the lightning's celebration

Unknown creatures

Take their leave, unmourned

Horsemen ready their stirrups

Passion seeks heroes and friends

The bell of the city

On the hill is rung

The shepherd cries
The hour of choosing has arrived

Here are your tools

Ah yes. Nothing quite inspires angst like the impending doom of the earth, does it?

Because I can measure my childhood by enviro-crises, it is no wonder that Al Gore's poetry speaks to me. My earliest memories are of the population explosion through to high school when I worried about the next ice age and mutally assured nuclear destruction.

But by far, the enviro-crisis that made the most impact, indeed the crisis that spoke to me, as it were, was the pollution crisis of the mid- to late-seventies. Images of the AdCouncil's crying native American Indian and Woodsy the Owl's "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute" campaign dominated my elementary school years. My classmates and I were taught about landfills and how they would soon take over the world, leaving no room for us to live. Our bodies of water were being choked by sewage and our air was being soiled by factories. And worst of all, nobody cared! I was just a little kid and all of these rotten adults were ruining my earth!

Finally, like the properly indoctrinated enviro-weenie of 9 or 10 that the public school system had converted me into, I, along with the rest of my class, was granted the opportunity to express my feelings about the environment in poetry form. Needless to say, the poem was pretty awesome, as I managed to convey the exact sort of enviro-weenie whiny imperativism that has proven so effective by rhyming "pollution" with "We must find a solution" and concluding with the hard-hitting "For us to take action, we can't wait / We must clean up the Earth now before it's too late."

It's ok. We'll stop here for a moment. I'll wait while you get a tissue.

I'm not sure exactly what got me to thinking about 4th grade poetry, but I must say that the Al Gore poem above moved me in a way I haven't felt for some 30 years.

"Vapors rise as / Fever settles on an acid sea / Neptune's bones dissolve" evokes memories of the acid rain era of my post high school graduation years. It is at once both a celebration and mourning of our beloved Gaia; I feel helpless in the sliding snow, and carried along, against my will, on the floods the ice has fathered.

If we can unpack the fourth stanza, images of the California wildfires are brought forth, as the lightning dances through the woods thick with kindling because the environmentalists will not allow proper logging. There is a sense of urgency, tinged with a feeling of hopelessness, as if the author has already given up on his quest to save Mother Earth because the filthy deniers, those "horsemen in their stirrups" are gaining credibility and dreams of money making schemes through carbon trading are going up in so much smoke.

The poem draws to close with the image of the shepherd crying (Like that AdCouncil Indian of my youth!) and the author bids the reader to make his choice. "Here are your tools", he says.

Here are your tools, indeed. We all know who they are.

And so it begins: California ends mammogram subsidies for women under 50

Cash-strapped California ushers in the new era of health care rationing. From Gateway Pundit via Ace:

The eligibility age for state-subsidized breast cancer screening has been raised from 40 to 50 by the California Health and Human Services Agency, which will also temporarily stop enrollment in the breast cancer screening program.

Advocates for low-income women, whose health care the department helps pay for, say the cuts put a two-tier system in place that is based on money rather than medical standards.

The cuts will greatly harm the clinic’s mammogram program, said Natasha Riley, manager of Vista Community Clinic’s Breast Health Outreach and Education Program.

The clinic and others like it in San Diego County provide reduced-cost care, mostly to low-income people, with money from the state and some private donations.

“More than 50 percent of the women we give breast exams and mammograms to are in their 40s,” Riley said. “The majority of our current breast cancer survivors are women in their 40s.”

The state’s decision, announced Dec. 1 and effective Jan. 1, follows a controversial federal recommendation last month that mammograms before the age of 50 are generally not needed.

By all means, lets hand over our health care to the bureaucrats.

GOP Weekly Address: We are right to be suspicious of new breast cancer screening guidelines

Breast cancer survivor Carly Fiorina delivers the GOP weekly address, giving lie to the Democratic talking point that the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force is not going to be setting treatment standards under Obamacare. At about the 4:00 minute mark, there is this:

The health care bill now being debated in the Senate explicitly empowers this very task force to influence future coverage and preventive care. Section 4105, for example, authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to deny payment for prevention services the task for recommends against. Another section requires every health plan in America to cover task force recommended services. In fact, there are more than a dozen examples in the bill where this task force is empowered to influence care.

As Fiorina says, there is a reason that breast cancer survival rates are better in the U.S. than in Europe. If you still don't understand the link between the U.S.P.S.T.F.'s new guidelines and Obamacare, watch the whole thing. Your life just may depend on it.

H/T Hot Air

Health Care Slouches toward Washington

From my column in today's Pottstown Mercury:

But health care reform is not about helping the American people, it's about a massive expansion of the State. And keep in mind, Democrats are not looking for it to be perfect to pass it; they are just looking to pass something, anything, that can be endlessly amended, fine-tuned and expanded, ensuring the elections and re-elections of liberal nanny state advocates for decades.

Losing a majority in congress is a small, and temporary, price to pay for a permanent and unconstitutional takeover of one-sixth of our economy.

Read it all here.

Jon Stewart completely misses the point of Climategate

Yes, it's refreshing to see him poke fun at the Goracle. But if you can stand to watch this ass until the end of this clip, take note that Stewart is not pissed off that Climate Scientists lied, that they manipulated data, that the whole thing may be a vast hoax that has already cost us untold billions and could still cost us more; no what Stewart is pissed off about is that they got CAUGHT lying and manipulating data and therefore give ammunition to those mouthbreathing deniers.

Jack. Ass.

Comcast buys majority stake in NBC Universal

WSJ:

Comcast Corp. agreed to take majority ownership of NBC Universal from General Electric Corp. in a complex deal valued at more than $30 billion, ending the conglomerate's more than two-decade rule over the peacock network and satisfying the cable giant's push to own more content.

Meanwhile, the cable-television giant announced a 40% dividend increase and said it will complete its $3.6 billion stock-buyback effort during the next three years.

The big question on my mind: does this effectively put an end to the GE guerrila advertising campaign called "Green is Universal"?

It has long been known that it is in GE's best interests to push the green agenda. Does Comcast continue this campaign? Will we still see lame "Green Week" programming, wherein the few remaining scripted shows beat us over the head with unsubtle storylines showing the characters' heretofore uncharacteristic "greenness" and shoehorning in awkward appearances by green scold extraordinaire Algore?

I am not hopeful.

On the plus side, it can only be good for the Delaware Valley that the largest media conglomeration in history is headquartered right here in Philadelphia.

Tiger Woods and White House Gate-Crashers; Sorry, no time to report on Climategate

As I continue to contemplate the collapse of America’s institutions (our government, our education system, our financial system, our scientific system, et al) perhaps the most egregious, and most notable, has been the collapse of our free press, which has been, for the most part, a willing accomplice to the collapse of these institutions in order to pursue their own partisan agenda of a utopian society run by a few select elites. And the speed with which the fourth estate is losing credibility is increasing exponentially with each passing moment that the Democrats are in power.

I can witness the birth of a true grassroots movement in the Summer of Tea Parties and I can fume at the MSM for ignoring it, while they breathlessly report on the recipe for Michael Jackson’s nightly sleepytime narcotics cocktail during a tour of Neverland Ranch. But I am not surprised.

I can witness two amateur journalists single-handedly take down one of the most corrupt and powerful left wing organizations in the country with little more than a video camera and a mini skirt, and I can fume at the MSM for ignoring it while Kate Gosselin is granted her seventh tear-streaked interview of the week. But I am not surprised.

Liberal bias in the media is nothing new, it’s almost a banal fact of life and conservative whining about is not going to change anything. It is helpful to point it out, but frankly, any story, whether it be Van Jones or Anita Dunn or Sarah Palin, the narrative is always going to be the same: Liberals good. Conservatives bad. Unless or until incontrovertible facts come to light and the media can no longer ignore it or spin it in such a way that the great unwashed will continue to believe it, such as in the cases of Van Jones, the Tea Parties and ACORN.

But I cannot sit still and watch exclusive interviews with the insipid gate-crashing couple from the White House State dinner, or listen to 9-11 tapes of Tiger Woods fire hydrant decapitation while the biggest story in the century is going down and the media continue to try to ignore it.

With each passing day, Warmergate gains steam and credibility and the press loses theirs. Global warming, environmentalism and going green have been ingrained into our culture not as some sort of policy, but as a full blown religion with commandments you must obey either by law or by social stigma. It is not enough to just recycle, use energy responsibly and generally be a good steward to the environment. Like our cave dwelling, knuckle dragging ancestors, we now believe Gaia demands sacrifice or she will become angry and unleash her hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis as punishment. The seas will rise and the polar bears will die unless we sacrifice our modern lifestyleand our filthy, ill-gotten money on Gaia’s altar. We are given a daily catechism in green living with scolds from our green high priests in the media and Hollywood who tell us how to live, what to buy, and where to shop for a greener lifestyle. And they tell us that Environmentalists are the enlightened ones because this isn’t like worshipping some sky-God who offers no proof of his existence; this is science. And the science is settled.

And while no-one can offer definitive proof that there is a God, neither can anyone offer definitive proof that there is NO God. And that is what the global warmists trumpet as their secular superiority: They are guided only by provable SCIENCE.

EXCEPT THERE NOW IS PROOF THAT THERE IS NO PROOF OF GLOBAL WARMING.

Because the global warming “scientists” who came up with and studied global warming and produced that ominous hockey stick graph that turned us all into weather worshipping pagans again conveniently THREW ALL THEIR DATA AWAY. Man-made global warming can now be categorized with any other snake-handling, comet-following, Tom-Cruise-loving cult out there. If the “science” is not “settled” then your unquestioning belief in it can only be classified as a religion. And now you must, by virtue of the proof that has come to light and the Constitution of the United States of America, GET IT OUT OF MY FACE.

And yet, the media, the “watchdog” media, upon whose relentless pursuit of the truth we are supposed to rely, is ignoring it. Think of how much of society is entwined, invested and created around the idea that the earth is warming and man is causing it. Think of how much money has been thrown at this belief.

Now consider if there was definitive proof that the “science” is not quite so “settled” and not only can it not be verified, but it is very likely, based on the evidence that is out there, that the whole idea of man-caused global warming is a big fat lie.

I think that might warrant a headline or two on one of the network news channels, wouldn’t you? A teensy headline in the New York Times?

Charts, and a great roundup of Warmergate here at The Devil's Kitchen.

Some films just beg for a remake...

In the age of CGI and state of the art special effects, what could be a better choice than Clash of the Titans?

Greek mythology meets geek technology. What's not to love?


And while some films need an updated treatment, still others are best left alone....



H/T to Jack P. I've been dying to find a reason to post this.

Flu

Sucks.