Islamic Law: Marital rape gets the green light in Afghanistan

I have sat here for ten minuets, trying to find the words to describe just how utterly ashamed and angry I am, and how news like Afghani President Hamid Karzai signing Islamic Law into effect scares the hell out of me.

Did you know that Canadian and European governments have considered allowing Sharia laws to their systems in order to be more inclusive and supportive of Muslims, and so as not to be seen as unwelcoming or prejudice?

How would you like to have laws that:

"[make] it illegal for a woman to resist her husband’s sexual advances," or "[require] a husband’s permission for a woman to work outside the home or go to school," or "[make] it illegal for a woman to refuse to 'make herself up' or 'dress up' if that is what her husband wants"?

Well, news flash: laws like that just became reality for Afghani women.

Sound of Music Train Station Dance

I came across this video while checking out yahoo!

It brought tears to my eyes. I laughed, I sang along, I wanted to move to Belgium.

Nothing like spontaneous dances to make ones day.

Texas Rep. Betty Brown: Asian-American names are too hard to say!

Wow. "There's dumb, then there's Texas dumb!" said one commenter in response to Texas Representative Betty Brown.

This woman actually let these words trip happily out of her botox enhanced mouth:

"Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?"

And yet she wants to claim it's the Democrats who are trying to make this about race when they demand an apology (which she still hasn't given).

Oh those Texas Republicans! Always reminding us that while every village has a missing idiot, some idiots make a box of rocks on a log look damn smart...

Big Oil reluctant to trip down Obama's golden road

Can you honestly tell me that anyone could be surprised by this NY Times article about oil companies:

"...many of the oil companies are staying on the sidelines, balking at investing in new technologies favored by the president, or even straying from commitments they had already made."

Or this:

"The oil companies have frequently run advertisements expressing their interest in new forms of energy, but their actual investments have belied the marketing claims....

Shell, for example, said it spent $1.7 billion since 2004 on alternative projects. That amount is dwarfed by the $87 billion it spent over the same period on its oil and gas projects around the world."

Of course they are straying from the golden path of green technologies! They are in the business of profit. Americans, despite the growing number of motorized toy skates on the road, are forever addicted to their gas guzzling cars and trucks.

But it isn't just the vehicles as the article hints at. "The world consumes about 85 million barrels of oil a day." I'm sorry, be we'd have been dead a long damn time ago if that was all going into the gas tank.

That oil is in toys, plastics, cookware, roads, building materials, lawnmowers,...nearly everything we own, buy, use, and throw away is made from oil.

Is it really any surprise that our reliance on oil isn't such an easy habit to kick?

Barack Obama: Change you can believe in (and fear)

This is a comment in response to the Op-Ed piece by Maureen Dowd titled, "The First Shrink."

"April 05, 2009 3:15 pm

I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten - fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back. Why?

We learn that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has 'loaned' two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom, or why, or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of 'we the people', who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and we no longer teach our founding documents, showing why we are exceptional and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, and school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?
We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so 'controversial' that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman!). Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago? We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then allow mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government, and our education system is worse than a joke. (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x ten. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion, an enemy who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.
Now we have elected President a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla , Alaska . All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling, if not downright scary. Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a 'mandatory civilian defense force' stronger than our military for use inside our borders. No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over, and then demand he explain it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important to the media.
Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word: change. Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now! This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning."

Tom Woods, Professor, Missouri