Moms complain, not dads

Samantha Rodman writes a Wash. Post op=ed:

One thing I have noticed as a clinical psychologist in private practice is that men are increasingly less able to voice negative feelings about parenting, even ones that are entirely understandable. Imagine being at a play date and hearing someone say, “God, I needed a drink all day today. The kids were behaving terribly, I couldn’t deal.” You’re picturing a mom, right?

However, what if the speaker is a dad? The question is moot because I have yet to hear a dad complain this openly and honestly about his kids, and this is not for lack of trying. Dads don’t even take the conversational bait. If asked to commiserate about parenting, the average mom breathes a sigh of relief and sits forward in her seat, but the average dad looks around like he’s on Candid Camera and gives a vague answer about having lots of fun sitting around watching dance class through a two way mirror for the 15th week in a row.

Here are some comments:

But if a woman is looking for someone to listen to her endless string of petty complaints and histrionics, she should go find another woman (or a group of women), whereupon she can emote and complain at length. Don't bother me (or any other man) with your endless issues, complaints, emotional tantrums and angst.

I'm a man. Men solve problems. Problems aren't solved by whining about them.

Men do a lot of things without whining. Most things actually. A lot of the jobs men have traditionally taken in order to support their families are really not a lot of fun, and they're tiring, and stressing, and sometimes dirty and/or dangerous. Yet men don't walk in the door after a full day of not-especially-pleasant work and commence to whining for the next hour and a half.

Men created civilization and all our modern conveniences. They did it to get the women to stop complaining. If they only knew.....

Yes, this is a difference between moms and dads. The moms are forever complaining about stupid stuff.

Speaking of parental complaints, here an Amazon official in an interview trying to give an example of why you will want drones delivering your packages:

GK: I have three kids, and once when my wife was on a business trip one of the little ones woke up in the middle of the night screaming for a pacifier, which I couldn’t find. I had a moment of panic. Do I wake up the other kids, load everyone into the car, and drive to a 24-hour pharmacy — if I can even find one? I got lucky and found the pacifier. But the better solution was for the pacifier to come to me. I imagine myself pulling out my phone, pushing a button, and 30 minutes later the pacifier shows up.

I do not think he is joking. His name is Gur Kimchi, and I have no idea what ethnicity that is, so maybe there is some weird cultural issue. Surely there is some better example for the utility of drones.

No one is going to order a drone delivery of a pacifier in the middle of the night. The kid will have screamed himself to sleep by the time the drone arrives. No one is going to wake up the kids to drive to a 24-hour pharmacy for a pacifier. Was this the first time his wife left him with the kids? Is this some kind of Uzbekistan humor?

Sometimes I hear stories like this, and I wonder how parents manage. Pacifiers are useful sometimes, but they are never necessary and are not even worth looking for in the middle of the night. Just go back to sleep and forget it. If that is a crisis, then he must have 20 crises a day.

It sounds like a comical plot line about some stupid Hollywood movie about incompetent dads, such as Moms' Night Out: Official Trailer. Or maybe Amazon is signaling
that is just some silly keep-up-with-Google research project that is never intended for commercial reality.

Here is a mom complaining about sleep, in an NPR interview:

GROSS: When somebody has a baby, they're always told you're not going to get any sleep for a long time. But you point out that some people truly can't deal with sleep deprivation, and that it is sleep deprivation. I mean, there's going to be a period of time when you're just getting a few hours of sleep a night, if you're lucky, and that for some people, that's fine. For some people, that's - you know, it's difficult, but for some people, it's just kind of impossible to handle.

SENIOR: ... I was like a banana boat. I mean, I was just terrible on no sleep. And I thought I wasn't going to be because I was a veteran insomniac. I mean, I was a very practiced insomniac. I prided myself on knowing how to conduct my affairs on two to three hours of sleep. But it turns out to be different because it's very stressful, interrupted sleep.

So she could conduct her affairs on 2-3 hours of sleep a night, but was a basket case with a kid because that was being interrupted.

Newborn babies typically sleep 15-18 hours a day. How could a new mom possibly be short on sleep? Again, I don't think that she is joking. Is she spending a lot of time looking for lost pacifiers? I don't get it.

Defining a libertarian

Law professor David Bernstein writes:

I doubt any two libertarians agree on the exact boundaries of libertarianism, but how’s this for a working definition:

“A libertarian is someone who generally opposes government interference with and regulation of civil society, even when the result of such government action would be to clamp down on things the individual in question personally dislikes, finds offensive, or morally disapproves of.”

Thus, for example, a libertarian who hates smoking opposes smoking bans in private restaurants, a libertarian who thinks homosexual sodomy is immoral nevertheless opposes sodomy laws, a libertarian who finds certain forms of “hate speech” offensive still opposes hate speech laws, a libertarian who believes in eating natural foods opposes bans or special taxes on processed foods, and a libertarian who thinks that all employers should pay a living wage nevertheless opposes living wage legislation. It doesn’t matter whether the libertarian holds these positions because he believes in natural rights, for utilitarian reasons, or because he thinks God wants us to live in a libertarian society.

I have had people tell me that they believe in parental rights, but when they disapprove of some parental behavior, then they want the govt to clamp down.

Likewise people will say that they are in favor of free speech, but when they are offended, they want a clamp down.

A right means that you can do what you want, regardless of disapproval. Of course there are some limits, as when something is objectively harmful. Your right to swing your fist ends at your neighbor's nose, for example.

It is distressing how few people today believe in parental rights. Here are some childhood vaccine law changes in the works, with most of them being Democrats trying to eliminate parental rights over the matter.

Much of the discussion is over the vaccine safety. Hardly anyone says that the vaccines are safe, but should not be required. In Europe, Japan, and other modern countries, parents voluntarily get vaccines for their kids without any legal requirement.

The current debate started when a foreign tourist spread measles at Disneyland. Most of those getting it were unvaccinated adults. Childhood vaccination of Americans has almost nothing to do with the outbreak. Nevertheless it is used as an excuse to deny parental rights.

Under California laws that allowed parents to opt-out very easily, about 97% of kids were vaccinated anyway. That is more than enuf for herd immunity, and it is not worthwhile to squeeze that last 3% into compliance. If you believe in freedom, then let people make their own decisions, even if you disagree.

Opposing opinions on shared parenting

Family psychologist John Rosemond writes a newspaper op-ed:

When considering the issue of custody, domestic court judges often regard two divorcing parents who are equally responsible as deserving of equal time with their kids. They rule, therefore, that the kids will spend 132 days a year with one parent and 133 days with the other but that custody during birthdays and holidays will alternate from year to year. That’s very nice and virtually guarantees that neither parent is going to be upset, that they are both going to feel as if the court treated them fairly. Indeed, that is consistent with what they tell me: it’s fair.

No, it’s not fair. These judges are ruling for the best interests of the parents but their best interests are not the issue. Concerning custody, the children’s best interests should rule.

This shows the parent-hating attitude of the family psychologist. The judge should only settle the dispute between the parents, and leave the parents the responsibility of the kids.

But this psychologist has the leftist hivemind mentality of giving judges and psychologists control over deciding the BIOTCh.

Part if not most of the problem is that in divorces that involve children, the kids are often regarded as prizes to be “won.” ... The norm is warfare in which the kids are both suicide bombers and disputed territories.

The proactive solution is the traditional arrangement where one parent has primary custody and the other has the kids every other weekend, a month or so during the summer, and on alternating birthdays and holidays.

If equally shared parenting were the law, then there would be no such war and prizes in the vast majority of the cases. The war is created by the idea that judges and psychologists should decide the BIOTCh.

Psychology professor Linda Nielsen replies that the research overwhelmingly favors share parenting anyway:

Last year, 110 international experts on child development, early childhood attachment and divorce reached a ground-breaking consensus -- shared parenting, including frequent overnighting with both parents for infants and toddlers, is in children’s best interests.

Too many mental health professionals and professors offer recommendations about parenting plans that are based on their personal beliefs -- not on empirical data. Indeed many of these professionals have never read the available research. Just as some poorly informed doctors offer outdated or harmful advice about medical treatments, there are professionals who offer advice to judges and mental health practitioners that is not research-based.

More troubling still, many of these speakers and writers convincingly present their opinions as if they were actually reporting empirical data – a disguise that is not only disingenuous but potentially harmful to children whose lives are affected by judges’ and mental health practitioners’ decisions regarding custody issues. In short, too many well intentioned judges and practitioners have been misled into accepting advice that is not based on empirical evidence.

Shared parenting is not about parents’ rights. It is about making the best choices for children -- decisions that are firmly grounded in research -- not on the personal opinions of parents, seminar speakers, mental health professionals or judges.

To me, the best arguments for shared parenting are those of freedom, personal autonomy, and maintaining the family as a basic unit of civilization. If you value those things, it is obvious that shared parenting is better. The alternatives involve involve a vast invasion of civil liberties and social order.

Of course the research favors shared parenting, and the judges and psychologists who say otherwise are following their prejudices.

I got this from the National Parents Organization blog, and it does a fine job, but it is not enuf.

Apparently no one accepts an argument on either side unless it is phrased in terms of child interests. This is like the inmates running the asylum. The parents should be in charge of the kids. End of story.

Our society has witnessed a vast deprivation of our civil liberties for the sake of leftoid control of the kids. The people have put up with it, without much debate.

The gun lobby has done a very good job of convincing the public, and then the political authorities, that gun possession is a matter of right. Yes, there are studies showing that guns make people safer in their homes and elsewhere, but the bigger argument is that having gun rights is an essential part of our freedom.

Why can't the dads convince anyone that parental custody and authority is a right, and an essential part of our freedom? We should not need these stupid social science studies. No man is free as long as some judge or psychologist is controlling the upbringing of his kids.

Homewrecker sues for sex discrimination

It used to be that homewreckers outcasts.

Ellen Pao is an overeducated (3 Ivy degrees) Chinese-American who is currently CEO of Reddit.

The NY Times reports:

Now, in a high-profile suit set to go to trial this week, a jury will pass judgment about whether one woman suffered discrimination. The proceedings could resonate widely: A guilty verdict will be billed as a sweeping indictment of the high-tech world, while a dismissal might supply ammunition to those who feel gender issues are being overplayed.

The accuser is Ellen Pao, who worked at one of the valley’s most prominent venture capital firms, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. At the center of the suit is John Doerr, a legendary investor who was Ms. Pao’s boss and, according to court papers, practically a father to her.

She had an affair with a married East-Indian-American, and broke it off when he refused to divorce his wife. Then she married and had a kid with one of richest African-Americans, whose hedge fund has since gone bankrupt and may have been a Ponzi scheme.

30 years ago, I think that most men and women would say that a firm ought to fire any woman who is poaching married men at work. Such women were known as homewreckers, and were especially despised by women. It would not have mattered if the man made flirtatious comments that contributed to her seducing him.

Now, I don't know. I no longer have a feel for whether a jury would consider this acceptable behavior. Yes, it is a feminist dogma that a woman has a right to be a sexual predator and seduce whomever she pleases, regardless of anyone marital or employer obligations, and if anyone objects, she has a right to sue for millions of dollars.

But will a jury of 12 buy into such nonsense? I have no idea. We will soon find out, I guess.

Even if she loses, there will be big pressure on the tech world. The LA Times reports Women are leaving the tech industry in droves. And the masculine culture is to blame, as Pao will also argue at her trial.

The Alan Turing Movie stinks

I finally watched The Imitation Game, the movie that supposedly tells the true story of mathematician Alan Turing. The true story would have been a good movie, but this was about 90% fiction. The screenwriter Moore said:

When you use the language of 'fact checking' to talk about a film, I think you're sort of fundamentally misunderstanding how art works. You don't fact check Monet's 'Water Lilies'. That's not what water lilies look like, that's what the sensation of experiencing water lilies feel like. That's the goal of the piece.

I should remember that line, and use it the next time someone catches me in a factual error.

Here are the makers describing what the movie is about:

Nora Grossman: When we were first were developing this screenplay we were very concerned with making this NOT your traditional bio-pic - not a sort of Merchant-Ivory period piece - and that was a guiding factor when we were developing the project. This was a sort of gay rights movie but also a thriller, Turing was the father of computer science and a gay man - so we wanted to draw on all the facets of this life to appeal to modern audiences - as well as World War Two enthusiasts, computer theorists, gay advocates - all kinds of people. ...

Graham Moore: This was a film about love, not a film about sex - and Alan Turing's love for Christopher is fundamental to his life. Alan fell in love with Christopher Morcom when he was a teenager and it was the great love of his life - I don't think he ever fell in love again, really, and we wanted to show how fundamental that relationship was to him. I think Christopher the person and Christopher the machine are really the sort of second character in the movie.

Turing is portrayed as a gay hero or martyr, but they sure have a funny view of that role. He never actually has sexual relations with anyone. He is portrayed as an emotional cripple as a result of some childhood bullying and tragedy. His homosexuality only comes into play as he is blackmailed by a Soviet bible-quoting spy into betraying his country and rejecting his fiancee. And in leading to his suicide 10 years later after a policeman suspects him of being a spy. Most of this is fiction.

His death was probably an accident. Supposedly he ate a cyanide apple, but no one even tested the apple for cyanide. He died a year after he completed the punishment for having sex with a teenaged boy, so it is doubtful that the events were related.

Homosexuality is secondary to being an Aspie hero and martyr. Throughout the movie, Turing is portrayed as having a mental illness that causes him to have no friends, to have no sense of humor, to not cooperate with his co-workers, to alienate his superiors, and to do silly things like separate the peas and carrots on his lunch plate. His best friend is the machine that tries German crypto keys, and he is devastated when it is destroyed at the end of the war.

Again, most of this is false. This article says humor was a big part of him. This Wash. Post article gives a glimpse of why Turing was admired, none of which is in the movie accurately.

In the movie, Turing decides to let the Germans kill the brother of one his 5 co-workers who are doing all the decoding of German messages. In reality, England had thousands on the decoding project, but none had the authority to order military attacks.

There are many scenes mocking Turing as an aspie. For example, his co-workers say that they are going for lunch, and he does not understand that they are inviting him. Of course they did not say that they were inviting him, and it makes just as much sense to interpret the scene as showing his co-workers being poor communicators. But the movie is all about Turing, so he is the one being blamed for the poor communication.

In another scene, a young Turing complains people often mean something other than what they say. This is used as a reason for him to get interested in cryptography, but it is also an Asperger stereotype. That is, Turing is the type to say what he means and mean what he says. A lot of men are like that, but in Turing it is presented as a pathology.

Some people do claim that Turing had Asperger syndrome (high-functioning autism), based on this list of symptoms:

School report described him as "antisocial"
Only one friend at school
Unable to control younger boys at school or manage co-workers
No attempt to socialise with academic superiors
Interests in science, mathematics, chemistry, codes and ciphers, nature
Always ate an apple before bed
House was cluttered with whatever he was interested in at the time
Always put the cork back in the wine bottle at the end of a meal
Often worked through the night
Wrote about his work to people with no scientific background
Stiff gaze in photographs
Lack of eye contact
Awkward appearance
Characteristic response to presentation of new ideas (stabbed fingers and said "I see, I see")
High pitched voice
Misunderstood enrolment form for Home Guard
Over-analysed colleagues' approaches
Poor handwriting
Always got ink on his collar at school

Really? How can people regard this stuff as symptomatic of a serious mental disorder? Well, not everyone does, as Asperger was removed from the DSM-5.

I know this is just a movie, but Hollywood nearly always portrays mathematicians as insane, such as in A Beautiful Mind and Good Will Hunting. No one complains about it. If you do, the common response is that mathematicians really are crazy. Or point out that Hollywood stereotypes a lot of other groups also.

The TV and movie aspie traits seem to be based on Hollywood stereotypes, as opposed to diagnosable symptoms. The TV show The Big Bang Theory has a character Sheldon Cooper who is widely regarded as an aspie, even tho the producers deny that they had any such intent and he does not match the textbook symptoms. The movie Turing is like the TV Sheldon in that he arrogantly picks fights by claiming that he is smarter than everyone else, and is a pain to everyone around him. Real-life aspies are not nearly so confrontational.

These stereotypes are apparently firmly held. I once talked to a woman who confidently asserted that Sheldon would lose custody of any child in family court, and would deserve to lose it. When I asked her why, she got all emotional and said she could not explain it, but it is obvious.

Maybe she is right, as some deep prejudices are at work here. If nerds and scientists are really such bad parents, then it should be fairly easy for statistics to prove it. But there is no such evidence. Sheldon's obnoxious traits probably would irritate the judge, but that should not change a decision, if the system worked properly. If you want to see the emotional and illogical thinking of a non-scientist mom, check out this Free Range Kids post.

The average dopey woman or psychologist would probably say that Penny would be a better parent than Sheldon. If Penny marries Leonard and he takes charge of the relationship, then maybe she would be a good mom. Otherwise, she would be a nightmare.

This movie has been widely praised as deserving of Oscars, and as promoting the LGBTQIA cause. I do not think that it helps their cause. The movie took the story of a great man, and rewrote it as a story of a man ruined by homosexuality. Homosexuality leads him to betray his country, his fiancee, and himself. He would have been much happier if he married his fiancee.

The movie's real hatred is for mathematicians. Yes, it needed fact checking. Besides all the gross factual misrepresentations, this movie does not give the feel of Turing, his work, his personality, code-breaking, or any of that. His biggest idea of the movie is to use guesses about the messages to cut down on the key search. That is the most obvious idea of all. What were they doing for their first year of work, if not that?

The real Turing was a computer pioneer who had some brilliant ideas that are easily explained. The movie would have been much better if it explained what he really did, as opposed to inventing all these crazy stories about things that never happened.

The movie is expected to get the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. That means that the critics approve of turning a factual book into nonsense. I do not accept the argument that movies necessitate such fabrications. It also got nominations in the other big categories: best picture, best director, best actor, and best supporting actress.

I get judged by judges, psychologists, and social workers who probably get their prejudices from movies like this. Thanks, Hollywood. I wish you never made this rotten movie.

Update: This movie did indeed win Best Adapted Screenplay, as expected. Here is another rant about how bad it is:

The most disappointing thing about the Oscar-nominated film The Imitation Game can be summed up in the way that Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician played by Benedict Cumberbatch, answers his boss, Commander Denniston, when Denniston asks him why he needs to build a machine to crack the Germans’ unbreakable code.

“It’s highly technical,” Turing says, dismissive. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Turing may as well have been speaking to the audience, not just his sneering commander, because for a movie about a technological pioneer making a technological breakthrough, The Imitation Game barely deals with technology at all.

Instead of an inventor, it shows a stereotype. Instead of a machine, it shows an obsession. And instead of inspiring us to follow in the footsteps of a person who shaped technology, the film inspires us only to get out of the way of the next genius who can.

That drew this comment:

The movie got four things right!

1. Alan Turing was gay.
2. He was briefly engaged to his coworker lady friend.
3. He worked on Enigma.
4. He died after the war.

Besides that it was a complete fiction. "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" was more historically accurate. ...
Sadly, the real story is way more interesting and moved much faster than the movie.

The true story would have been a much better movie.

Update: I did not watch the Oscars. Did it really have some gay guy prancing around in his underwear? And Moore, the Turing scriptwriter, whining about how he tried to commit suicide so he was like Turing? I am glad I did not watch it.

Update: Moore's Turing acceptance speech was so gay that he had to publicly deny that he was gay. Seems to me that he could have shown his liberal cred by saying that he was bisexual or a cross-dresser or something.

Update: Moore also has White House connections:

Moore’s mother is Susan Sher, who was Michelle Obama’s chief of staff and is now coordinating the push to have Obama’s presidential library located in Chicago. But their relationship is beyond professional – they’ve been friends for years.

Update: The gays and lesbians praised Moore, until he announced that he was not gay. They were offended that he would compare gays to bullied non-gays:

But it’s also important to note that being gay simply isn’t the same as being a “geek.” Moore may see them as comparable (and, though he has identified himself as straight, his affect may have opened him up to homophobic bullying), but the truth of the matter is that the social force behind anti-gay prejudice is far stronger and more pernicious than the animus against social outcasts.

So Moore looks and acts gay, but unless he is taking it in the rear end, his concerns do not count. These people are sick.

Likewise Patricia Arquette got heat for complaining about treatment of straight white women, while ignoring all the other groups.

Halfway to the Misandry Bubble

I cited The Misandry Bubble, a 2010 Futurist essay about what might happen by 2020. We are now halfway there.

If you want a contrary view, this feminist fact-check complains about a statement that women married at age 20, not too long ago. The feminist says that the median age was 20.3 in the 1960s and has not been below 20 since 1845.

Tell her that 20.3 rounds off to 20.

She also claims that no-fault divorce laws have not contributed to the divorce rate. I think that the point is that the states made divorce easy before going all the way with a no-fault law. Or maybe social acceptance of no-fault divorce preceded legal acceptance. I am too lazy to figure it out. Regardless, today it is socially and legally acceptable for anyone to unilaterally walk out of a marriage for any reason, and that was not true in the 1950s.

So, to review, the differences between Marriage 1.0 and Marriage 2.0 are:

a) No fault asset division and alimony, where the abandoned spouse has to pay if he earns more, even if he did not want a divorce, and even if he is a victim of abuse, cuckolding, or adultery. There are rare instances of high-earning women getting caught in this trap as well.
b) Women marrying after having 5 or more sexual partners, compared to just 0-1 previously. This makes it harder for the woman to form a pair bond with her husband.
c) Women marrying at an age when very few years of their peak beauty are remaining, compared to a decade or more remaining under Marriage 1.0.
d) Child custody is almost never granted to the man, so he loses his children on a 'no fault' basis. ...

A complex sexual past works against women even if the same works in favor of men, due to the natural sexual attraction triggers of each gender. A wise man once said, "A key that can open many locks is a valuable key, but a lock that can be opened by many keys is a useless lock." ...

For this reason, after lunatic 'feminists', these pedestalizing White Knights are the next most responsible party for the misandry in Western society today. ...

Instead, all that exists are Men's Rights Authors (MRAs) that run a few websites and exchange information on their blogs. ... Hence, there will be no real Men's Rights Movement in the near future. ...

The destruction of the two-parent family by incentivizing immoral behavior in women is at least as much of a threat to American safety and prosperity as anything that ever could have come out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, or Saudi Arabia. ...

A single man does not require much in order to survive. Most single men could eke out a comfortable existence by working for two months out of the year. ...

'feminists' are leading average women into the abyss.

He calls it a bubble, so presumably this aspect of our society will become unsustainable and crash.

Feminists often complain of the "double standard" where women are held to higher moral standards than men. That analogy to keys and locks is particularly effective.

Five years ago, I might have disagreed with him about the prospect for a men's rights movement, and about his blame for White Knights. Now I think he is right.

Separately, Matt Forney writes 20 Signs That We’re Not Living In A Patriarchy.

World’s Worst Mom on TV

I have praised Skenazy many times, as far back as 6 years ago. I am glad to see her get some favorable attention, such as this New Yorker article:

Free-Range Kids, a movement committed to rolling back the excesses of the helicopter-parent era. (From the group’s Web site: “Fighting the belief that our children are in constant danger from creeps, kidnapping, germs, grades, flashers, frustration, failure, baby snatchers, bugs, bullies, men, sleepovers and/or the perils of a non-organic grape.”) The movement was founded by Lenore Skenazy, a former columnist for the News and for the New York Sun, who achieved mommy-blog infamy when, seven years ago, she wrote a column about letting her nine-year-old son, armed with a map and a MetroCard, find his way home from Bloomingdale’s. Skenazy published a book and now has a reality show, “World’s Worst Mom,” on the Discovery Life Channel. In it, she swoops into the homes of overprotective parents and persuades them to let their offspring perform such retro tasks as riding city buses alone and setting up a lemonade stand. “The kids are thrilled,” she said the other day at her family’s apartment, in Jackson Heights, Queens. “And the parents are happy you’ve replaced their dystopian horror story with reality.” ...

“If you actually wanted your child to be kidnapped, how long would you have to keep him outside for him to be abducted by a stranger?” A week? She shook her head. “Seven hundred and fifty thousand years.”

She is just saying what should be obvious to anyone with any common sense or to anyone who looks at actual risk figures.

Most women would respond to her "750,000 years" with a dopey answer like "but what if it were your child?" Yes, my child should get the benefit of the facts also.

Either she is the only mom with common sense, or the only one with the guts to say the obvious, I'm not sure.

Here is from a leftist site:

There’s no sugar coating this folks, we need to stop being parenting wusses. Everyone (or every sane person) wants their children to grow up to be happy, successful, and able to care for themselves. But the efforts undertaken by parents’ to promote their children’s own welfare too often crosses the line into overprotecting and isolating their children. There’s also a severe risk that parent’s could end up instilling an unshakable sense of fear and paranoia in their children.

It’s gotten so bad that some parents are even promoting what they call “Free Range” children. Yes, granting your children what used to be “taken for granted” freedoms now has a chic label. ...

Worse yet, the American government is increasingly adopting the mantra of “nanny-state” in the most literal way. It has almost become criminal for parents to parent their kids, at least without adopting the approved over-parenting position pushed by social welfare services. ...

We’ll be raising kids that are terrified of the world and terrified of living independently. It’s time parent’s take back what’s theirs (their kids) and stand up for their own rights (basic parenting choices, in this case). I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be laws that protect children, but these laws need to be put in a rational and restrained context.

NPR Radio addressed free-range kids this morning:

A 10-year-old may be perfectly fine walking alone in one neighborhood, he says, but might not be safe in another with drug dealers on the corner.

"Parents who live in poverty are more likely to be helicopter parents." - John Myers, family law professor

"We hate to say that the people that live in those two communities ought to be treated differently because we would probably get into uncomfortable issues of socioeconomic status and ethnicity," he says. "But that's the reality in our country."

So I guess that they have to arrest whites to cover up the fact that they prefer to arrest blacks.

Is this tomorrow?

Here is a glimpse of the past:

In 1947, the Catechetical Guild Educational published Is This Tomorrow: America Under Communism, a propaganda comic classic about the impending Sovietification of America. ...

An estimated 4 million copies of Is This Tomorrow were distributed in the late 1940s. The book tells the story of a Red sleeper cell that takes over America after a nation-crippling drought. The saboteurs place agents in the media, foment racial unrest, take over Congress, brainwash schoolchildren, and rig elections.

You can now view the cover or read the comic book free.

Wikipedia says that this was a piece of early ultra-right-wing paranoid McCarthyist theocratic propaganda. Here is more such criticism. The full text is here and here, with a more neutral description here. It seems prophetic to me. Hard leftists, bleeding heart liberals, and useful idiots have been played just like in the comic book.

I remember being warned that a commie takeover would turn kids into rats on their parents, and indoctrinate kids that their allegiance is to the state, not the family. We did not have a commie takeover, but their lackeys have done a lot of damage.

Here is the local Santa Cruz cartoonist depiction (from Feb. 7) of Black Panther Lesbian Commie Fugitive Angela Davis speaking on M.L. King day to attack Israel and the Jews.

Dad served 19 years for a crime that never happened

Here is another horrible story from Buffalo NY of men falsely accused of a terrible crime, convicted, and imprisoned:

A week before Christmas in 1992, Buffalo police rounded up three suspects. They handcuffed a machine operator at Rich Products on Niagara Street, a chemist working his second job at a downtown hotel, and later a federal employee living near City Hall. ¶ The three were named in an appalling crime. Two 8-year-old girls, twin daughters of the machine operator, said their father raped them on three occasions during the previous year – when they were 6 and 7 – and the other defendants joined in the assaults. ¶ The girls said they had been tied to mattresses or chairs, then violated as their mouths were sealed with duct tape. Afterward, life would go on as normal. ¶ Prosecutors could offer no scientific proof and only dubious physical evidence of rape and molestation. But they had the girls’ statements. As the suspects fought the charges and rejected plea deals, prosecutors placed the sympathetic victims in front of the jury. The verdict: guilty on all counts. ¶ The years passed, and the three convicted sex offenders refused to back down. From prison cells they filed appeal after appeal. All were long shots. But the three insisted they were innocent. ¶ As it turns out, they were.

That’s not simply because appellate judges eventually agreed that the three had been poorly represented and deserved new trials. Nor is it because prosecutors never tried them again, nor because their indictments were sealed forever as the former inmates started new lives.

It’s because, as the twins now say, no crime occurred.

They are now 30 years old and working in Buffalo’s health care field. In legal papers, both say the allegations were never true.

The women state that when they were compliant children, the officials leaped to the wrong conclusions, and county prosecutors coached them through false testimony. Through numerous pretrial rehearsals, they were rewarded when they did well and admonished when they didn’t.

“The prosecutors would tell us what to say,” the women say in one of their affidavits. When they tried to retract the claims, either no one would listen or they were told bad things would happen, they said.

As children in an adult world, they could not stop the train rumbling toward convictions.

Why would anyone believe a story like this in the first place?

I have never heard of a father teaming up with two others to rape his own 7-year-old daughters. As far as I know, this never happens. Even invoking all of my worst prejudices against Nigerian immigrants, this goes against human nature, and it is bizarre that anyone would believe a story like this without physical evidence.

And yet cops, prosecutors, judge, jury, and appeals court all accepted the story. 19 years in prison. Our society really wants to believe these awful things, I guess. I think that this is the modern equivalent of Salem witch trials.

First bisexual governor

The NY Times reports:

Gov. John Kitzhaber, long regarded as a wily survivor of Oregon politics, resigned Friday amid a spiraling crisis that included a criminal investigation of the role that his fiancée played in his administration and crumbling support from his Democratic Party colleagues.

Since when does a twice-married 68yo governor have a fiancee?

It was a steep and rapid fall for Mr. Kitzhaber, 67, a former emergency room doctor who won an unprecedented fourth term as governor in November. His resignation means that Kate Brown, the Oregon secretary of state and a fellow Democrat, will become governor, in accordance with the succession plan in the state Constitution.

She is a weirdo lesbian; see below.

Even during the recent election, Mr. Kitzhaber had been plagued by questions about his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes, with whom he lives in the governor’s mansion, and whether she had violated ethics rules or criminal laws in advising him about clean energy issues while serving as a consultant on the topic. ...

So he was living in sin at the state governor's mansion. But that is not the scandal of course. The scandal is clean energy advice, whatever that is.

Ms. Brown, who practiced juvenile and family law before entering politics and then served in the state House and Senate, is regarded as a liberal — though that covers a wide range of positions in Oregon.

She is married to a man, but will be the nation’s first openly bisexual governor, according to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. She described her experience coming out as a bisexual in a survey on Outhistory.org, saying, “I believe it was during my early 30s that I figured out who, or what, I am.”

What could be worse -- a Democrat bisexual family court lawyer. How is she bisexual and married to a man? Is she doing women on the side? Is she going to have girlfriends giving her clean energy advice while covering a wide range of positions in the governors mansion?

Mr. Kitzhaber ... becoming a signature presence for a generation of Oregonians — with an urban cowboy style of jeans, boots and a sport jacket with no tie that became a kind of personal brand.

The controversy surrounding Ms. Hayes began last fall when she confirmed a newspaper report that said she had married her third husband, an Ethiopian immigrant, for money in a sham marriage in 1997.

So his fiancee was married to an Ethiopian illegal immigrant!

I have not idea whether anyone is guilty of anything. My point here is only to note how much public marriage has disintegrated. It used to be that a governor would have to have a long-term stable marriage. The nepotism and ethics rules were probably written assuming a clear idea about who is a spouse or relative. They may not have anticipated that a governor would be banging a clean energy consultant in the governor's mansion.

Then there is the sham immigration marriage, and the woman claiming to be a bisexual married to a man. If she is just having sexual relations with her husband, I would call her a hetersexual, but no one wants to be normal anymore. What all these people have in common is a wholesale rejection of traditional marriage.

Here is the twisted view of the new governor, in her own words:

Essay by Kate Brown for Out and Elected in the USA

I believe it was during my early 30’s that I figured out who, or what, I am. But it wasn’t until it was written in the Oregonian newspaper that I was bisexual that I had to face the inevitable and let those around me know. Thus began my very public coming out as a bisexual:

Coming out to my parents – who flew in from Minnesota “to have a talk.” Their response – “It would be much easier for us if you were a lesbian.”  

Coming out to my gay friends – who called me half-queer. 

Coming out to my straight friends – who never thought I could make up my mind about anything anyway.

And, most frighteningly to me:

Coming out to my legislative colleagues. At the beginning of the next legislative session sitting in the House lounge, representative Bill Markham, who is over 70 years old, extremely conservative, and a legislator for more than 20 years comes to join me. Over lunch he looks up to say, “Read in the Oregonian a few months ago you were bisexual. Guess that means I still have a chance?!”

Some days I feel like I have a foot in both worlds, yet never really belonging to either.

This would be too weird for most states, I think. I don't know that last remark was so frightening. If she tells the world she is bisexual, then it should not be surprising that she prompted a wise-crack flirtatious comment.

The LGBTQIA folks like to use this line: "I figured out who, or what, I am." I haven't heard anyone say it about Bruce Jenner yet. Did he suddenly figure out who he has always been? I doubt it.

SPLC apologizes for attacking black guy

I have attacked the SPLC as a leftist hate group before, but I did not know that they ever apologize for their name-calling:

The Southern Poverty Law Center removed Dr. Ben Carson from its “extremist watch list” and apologized to the potential GOP 2016 presidential candidate.

Carson was originally placed on the list because of what the SPLC called his “anti-LGBT” views. The list includes notorious neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

I assume that they attacked Ben Carson because he is Republican, and then chickened out because he is black.

Here is the original SPLC attack, and the apology.

I am not sure what the difference is. The SPLC is still calling Carson a hater based on a list of political opinions, starting with marriage being between a man and a woman, and ending with him claiming that Hitler disarmed the populace while the SPLC says he only disarmed the Jews.

I did not see Carson expressing any extremist views.

I have given up on the Men's Rights Movement. The movement is attacked relentlessly by leftist name-calling, and you can only survive the attacks if you are a politically connected black.

A Forbes video game reporter writes:

There’s little that can be said about last night’s episode of Law & Order: SVU with a straight face.

“Intimidation Game” is quite possibly the worst hour of cop drama I’ve ever watched. I’d say “worst hour of television ever” but that’s too bold a claim.

As far as TV about video games go, however, this takes the cake. I’ve never felt so insulted after watching TV before, and not just me: the show manages to insult everybody, from the gamers it takes on to the police to women in video games and, perhaps worst of all, victims of actual sexual assault.

The TV show portrays white male video games as sadistic women-haters who kidnap and torture women, just like their video games.

This is supposedly loosely based on GamerGate, where there is some pushback from video games against feminists social justice warriors who want to reform the games. No one has been injured in real life, as far as I know.

Update: Here is a big-shot law professor arguing that college leftist professors should be able to censor students:

Critics complain that universities are treating adults like children. The problem is that universities have been treating children like adults. ...

If students want to learn biology and art history in an environment where they needn’t worry about being offended or raped, why shouldn’t they?

There is the leftoid mind at work. Just compare everything you don't like to rape, including political opinions expressed in a classroom.

Mattress girl is disturbed

Another high-profile rape allegation falls apart:

Uh-oh: Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia senior who’s been lugging a mattress around campus for months to protest her supposed rape by a classmate during their freshman year, is fast turning into another “Jackie,” the University of Virginia student whose claimed gang rape in a fraternity-house basement turned out to be a tall tale concocted by Jackie to get the romantic attention of a young man she had a crush on.

Paul Nungesser, now a Columbia senior like Sulkowicz, she says conducted a brutal anal assault on her in her dorm room following a session of consensual sex—and whom she made a public campus pariah despite the fact that he had been cleared by a Columbia tribunal—finally told his side of the story, to libertarian journalist Cathy Young, writing for the Daily Beast.

In Nungesser’s telling, not only was the entire sexual episode between him and Sulkowicz on Aug. 27, 2012 entirely consensual—the two had an off-and-on “friends with benefits” relationship that grew out of their joint participation in a freshmen-orientation program at Columbia—but Nungesser had the Facebook messages between the two to prove it. For two full months after the supposed assault, Sulkowicz was sending Nungesser friendly texts and Facebook postings expressing hope that the two of them could get together again.

Sulkowicz is the rich preppie daughter of a Jewish psychiatrist dad and Chinese psychiatrist mom. That is even worse than the Tiger Mom couple (Jewish law professor dad, Chinese law professor mom).

One lesson here is that if a boy dates three girls in college, he needs to make sure that they they never talk to each other. Nothing good will come of that.

And save those texts and Facebook messages. Altho London police are being warned that "rapists are increasingly exploiting social media to cover their tracks". I think that they mean that innocent men are using social media evidence to prove their innocence.

Another leftist attack on men's rights

I mentioned that Mother Jones has a hit piece on Warren Farrell and now the leftist BuzzFeed has one on Paul Elam, of A Voice For Men. He responds. BuzzFeed found an ex-wife or two with some nasty things to say about him.

It was too long, and I didn't read much of it. What I read was minor and unverifiable. While AVFM is a leading men's rights site, the arguments were never based on the details of some marriage between 20yo kids decades ago. Who cares?

The men's rights movement rarely gets any attention at all. Why this? When leftist sites like Mother Jones and BuzzFeed really hate a movement, they launch personal attacks, and make them as nasty as possible.

Their readers do not function on reason and logic. They form political stances from emotional responses. If they can somehow trigger a negative emotional reaction to Farrell and Elam, then their typical liberal reader can dismiss whatever they have to say.

Alabama judge is right to defy federal judge

I posted yesterday about the same-sex marriage case, and now the US Supreme Court is showing its hand:

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to step in and stop gay marriages from taking place in Alabama. The move sent the strongest signal to date that the justices are on the verge of legalizing gay marriage nationwide. Within hours of the high-court ruling, same-sex marriages began taking place in Alabama, despite an eleventh-hour show of defiance by the state's chief justice. ...

The decision upholding the order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Alabama came just hours after the state's chief justice, Roy Moore — knowing that the nation's highest court was about to rule on the state's request for a stay — issued his own decree ordering state probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

So it is pretty obvious that the US Supreme Court will force same-sex marriage.

Moore's position is not so ridiculous. I don't know about Alabama law, but here is Here is California law:

CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE 3 STATE OF CALIFORNIA

SEC. 3.5. An administrative agency, including an administrative agency created by the Constitution or an initiative statute, has no power:

(a) To declare a statute unenforceable, or refuse to enforce a statute, on the basis of it being unconstitutional unless an appellate court has made a determination that such statute is unconstitutional;

(b) To declare a statute unconstitutional;

(c) To declare a statute unenforceable, or to refuse to enforce a statute on the basis that federal law or federal regulations prohibit the enforcement of such statute unless an appellate court has made a determination that the enforcement of such statute is prohibited by federal law or federal regulations.

So California (and probably Alabama) should be refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses unless and until some appellate court rules that the opposite-sex marriage law is unconstitutional. That has not happened in California or Alabama.

But as I say, the fix is in. The USA does not believe in Rule of Law when it comes to marriage and family law.

The Third World is at the other extreme:

A Malaysian court on Tuesday upheld a sodomy conviction and a five-year prison sentence for Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the country’s opposition, in the culmination of a protracted legal battle entwined with a high-stakes struggle for political supremacy. ...

This was the second prosecution of Mr. Anwar, 67, on charges of sodomy. He spent six years in prison after a conviction in a separate sodomy trial by a different accuser but was acquitted on appeal in 2004. ...

Mr. Anwar’s defense team portrayed the current case as blatantly political. The accuser testified that two days before the sex allegedly occurred, he met with Mr. Anwar’s political rival, Najib Razak, who was deputy prime minister at the time and who has since become prime minister. It was not made clear in court how a clerk working for the opposition obtained a meeting with Mr. Najib, one of the country’s most powerful men.

Occasionally I get comments saying parents should be arrested for stupidity. If so, Anwar should also be jailed for stupidity because it appears that he was set up, and could not resist the sodomy.

But what about the children?

The US Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, and the case the Sixth Circuit case where a 2-1 majority said that the issue is up to the legislature, and a woman dissenting judge wrote:

The author of the majority opinion has drafted what would make an engrossing TED Talk or, possibly, an introductory lecture in Political Philosophy. But as an appellate court decision, it wholly fails to grapple with the relevant constitutional question in this appeal: whether a state’s constitutional prohibition of same-sex marriage violates equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead, the majority sets up a false premise — that the question before us is “who should decide?” — and leads us through a largely irrelevant discourse on democracy and federalism. ...

Readers ... must have said to themselves at various points in the majority opinion, “But what about the children?” I did, and I could not find the answer in the opinion. ...

Although Michigan statutes allow married couples and single persons to adopt, those laws preclude unmarried couples from adopting each other’s children. ...

Such findings led Brodzinsky to conclude that the gender of a parent is far less important than the quality of the parenting offered and that family processes and resources are far better predictors of child adjustment than the family structure. ...

If we in the judiciary do not have the authority, and indeed the responsibility, to right fundamental wrongs left excused by a majority of the electorate, our whole intricate, constitutional system of checks and balances, as well as the oaths to which we swore, prove to be nothing but shams.

That's right, the dissenter accuses the majority of being too philosophical, too democratic, and ignoring the children!

The kids are not really the kids of these Michigan lesbians, pictured below. They are kids that CPS took away from single moms, and paid the lesbians to raise as foster kids. The dissenting argument is mainly to say that the lesbians have improved the lives of the foster kids, and so should be rewarded with a marriage license and some tax benefits. The CPS files were withheld from the record, and we have no idea whether the mom would have done a better job, or whether the dad was available.

The US Supreme Court will surely side with the gays and lesbians, but there is some doubt about the reasoning. If marriage law can be dismantled because some whiny feminist judge asks “But what about the children?”, then just about anything could be justified by some wacky appeal to the welfare of kids.

Meanwhile, check out what happens to lesbian kids. TMZ reports:

Rosie O'Donnell is making a clean break -- leaving her wife AND quitting "The View" ... all in one fell swoop.

Rosie's rep confirmed she and Michelle Rounds are splitting after 2 and a half years of marriage. The couple adopted a baby girl together in 2013. ...

ABC says it fully supports Rosie's decision to spend more time with her family, and adds she'll be coming back to "The 'View" from time to time.

So she is leaving her second so-called wife to spend more time with her so-called family? She had a heart attack in 2012, and banned her first so-called wife from breastfeeding because she was jealous of their bonding sessions.

The courts are going to mandate a drastic change to marriage law so that it will be easier for some wacko like Rosie O'Donnell to adopt a baby. No word on her life expectancy after that heart-attack, or how they terminated the fathers rights for that baby.

These celebrity hamsters will say that just about anything is good for the kids:

Divorce can be good for children because it helps teach them how to “struggle”, actress Kate Winslet has said in an interview.

Winslet, 39, who has three children, told this week’s edition of Harper’s Bazaar UK magazine that she tried to turn negative experiences into positive ones and would not want to change anything in her personal life, such as her two divorces.

“I think it’s very important to teach your children to struggle on some level,” she said.

“I would honestly say that I wouldn’t change a thing. Even all the bad bits.

“It doesn’t matter how ***** times have been, they all matter, because those things shape who you are. And if you don’t like who you are, well, then you’re ****** really, aren’t you?” ...

Instead Winslet said she wanted to “keep my health and my sanity and be well fed and happy”. ...

The Oscar-winning actress has a 14-year-old daughter from her first marriage, an 11-year-old son from her second and another young son from her current marriage to Ned RocknRoll, nephew of Sir Richard Branson.

3 kids from 3 marriages, and now she is Mrs. RocknRoll.

The reality TV shows have moved on to the celebrity trans-gendered Kardashian groupies. A liberal NY Times columnist writes:

So, in my book, Bruce Jenner is now a gold medalist again. Come on, Wheaties. It’s time to put Jenner back on the box!

He is now a liberal hero for having Gender identity disorder. He also just killed someone in a traffic accident. See pictures, and he appears to be growing breasts. The female hormones have already made him a bad driver. He has been married 3 times, with 2 kids from each, not counting Kim Kardashian who is busy showing off her naked butt again. If you do not know who these people are, you are lucky not to know. The world is going nuts.

Anthrolpologists attack the American neontocracy

Michael Erard writes a NY Times op-ed:

“The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings,” by David F. Lancy, is an academic title — but it’s possibly the only book that new parents will ever need. ...

Yet through factoids and analysis, he demonstrates something that American parents desperately need to hear: Children are raised in all sorts of ways, and they all turn out just fine.

Children in Fiji, for example, are not allowed to address adults, or even make eye contact with them. In Gapun, an isolated village in Papua New Guinea, children are encouraged to hit dogs and chickens, and to raise knives at siblings. ...

In the “pick when ripe” culture, babies and toddlers are largely ignored by adults, and may not be named until they’re weaned. They undergo what he calls a “village curriculum”: running errands, delivering messages and doing small-scale versions of adult tasks. Only later are they “picked,” or fully recognized as individuals. In contrast, in “pick when green” cultures, including our own, it’s never too early to socialize babies or recognize their personhood.

Professor Lancy calls the American way of doing pick when green a “neontocracy,” in which adults provide services to relatively few children who are considered priceless, even though they’re useless. One senses him rolling his eyes at modern American parents, impelled to get down on the floor to play Legos with their kids.

Anthropologist Jared Diamond also praises primitive tribal child-rearing in his recent book, The World Until Yesterday.

I would not take this advice too seriously. Maybe those tribes live in such primitive conditions because they never teach their kids civilized behavior. But it does show that different child-rearing philosophies are possible.

Ten years for leaving toddlers in car

The Wash. Post reports:

A couple who left their two toddlers alone in a car on a Northwest Washington street while they attended a wine-tasting at an upscale restaurant was monitoring them with a cellphone left in the vehicle, law enforcement officials said Monday.

Police said the children — a 22-month-old boy and a slightly older girl — were strapped in car seats and wearing coats when they were found Saturday afternoon near the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, in the 1100 block of 23rd Street NW. Neither child had gloves or a hat, police said, and the younger one did not have shoes or socks. The girl was “hysterically crying,” according to a police report.

The temperature was 35 degrees, and police said the doors were locked and the windows were rolled up. Police said the father and mother were at the restaurant Ris, about 400 feet around the corner, in the 2200 block of L Street. The father, Christopher Daniel Lucas, who also goes by Christophe, told police that he left an iPhone in the car with an open connection to the children’s mother, Jennie Teresa Chang. The restaurant’s manager told police that the couple was at a wine tasting for about an hour, according to a police report.

“I left to go inside the restaurant,” Lucas said, according to the report, “but I’m watching them.” Police said the phone line had been open 58 minutes when officers arrived and got the children out of the gray Volvo station wagon and into a warm police car.

Lucas, 41, and Chang, 46, who live in a $1 million rowhouse near Dupont Circle, about a 10-minute walk from the restaurant, were arrested and charged with two counts of attempted second-degree cruelty to children, which carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence.

This was also mentioned by the Free Range Mom.

The comments on this story are alarming. A lot of people believe that parents should always put their child's interests ahead of their own, and they deserve hard jail time if they went wine-tasting without hiring a babysitter.

Others had to admit that the kids would almost certainly be much worse off in foster care, but thought that the parents should be taught a lesson somehow.

Based on the reporting, it does appear that the parents used substandard judgment. But I don't agree with a lot of legal parental judgments. The legal question should be: Were the kids harmed? Were the kids in grave danger? Is there some objective violation of the law?

The cop said that a kid was “hysterically crying”. This sounds bad, but it is something that cops and other outsiders almost always get wrong. Kids cry all the time. Sometimes for pain or other severe distress, and sometimes just to get attention. The parents can tell the difference. The cops cannot.

It appears that the answer to these questions is a clear no. The kids were being watched and did not require any medical attention. Therefore this is none of anyone's business.

Here is another case criminalizing unusual parenting:

A Florida woman faces child abuse charges for the way she tried to get her kids to stop fighting.

Police say Lorena Simpson slammed on the brakes to get her children, who were in the backseat, to stop arguing. Her 12-year-old daughter in the front seat wasn't buckled in when her mom hit the brakes. The sudden stopping caused her to slam her head into the windshield.

Sullivan says she had no idea anything was wrong until police showed up three days later.

"I didn't (do it) on purpose or intentionally harm my daughter, you understand," Simpson told ABC affiliate WPBF-TV. "If she ever once complained to me and said, 'hey mom I think I have a headache,' (but) she didn't. I'm heartbroken. My kids are gone."

The 12-year-old told investigators that she did complain of dizziness and a headache. Police also point out that the girl's head cracked the vehicle's windshield.

"There was no bump, so I'm sorry but I guess I did the wrong thing," Simpson said.

Simpson was arrested on a felony charge of child abuse. All three kids are now in their father's custody.

The root cause here was probably giving the mom custody of the kids, instead of the dad. The kids were probably fighting because the mom cannot discipline them, and there is no limit on her dopey ideas without a man in her life.

I don't know how you slam the brakes so hard that a kid in the backseat cracks the front windshield with her head. I would have thought that the air bags would deploy before that happened. (A reader points out that I misread the story. The 12yo in front hit the windshield. I guess the 12yo did not get a bump on the head.)

Dumb as this is, I still do not see it as felony child abuse. The mom was using her judgment to teach the kid a lesson, not to deliberately harm the kid. It was an isolated accident.

Pentagon claims Putin has Asperger

USA Today reports:

A study from a Pentagon think tank theorizes that Russian President Vladimir Putin has Asperger's syndrome, "an autistic disorder which affects all of his decisions," according to the 2008 report obtained by USA TODAY.

Putin's "neurological development was significantly interrupted in infancy," wrote Brenda Connors, an expert in movement pattern analysis at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. Studies of his movement, Connors wrote, reveal "that the Russian President carries a neurological abnormality." ...

Researchers can't prove their theory about Putin and Asperger's, the report said, because they were not able to perform a brain scan on the Russian president. The report cites work by autism specialists as backing their findings. It is not known whether the research has been acted on by Pentagon or administration officials.

The 2008 report cites Dr. Stephen Porges, who is now a University of North Carolina psychiatry professor, as concluding that "Putin carries a form of autism."

There is no brain scan test to determine if a man has Asperger Syndrome. There is not even any such thing anymore, as it has been dropped from the DSM-5.

Both reports, the 2008 study of Putin and a 2011 analysis of Putin and then-President Dimitry Medvedev, cite Putin's physical difficulties as shaping his decision making and behavior. "His primary form of compensation is extreme control," which "is reflected in his decision style and how he governs," the report said.

Military analysts first noticed Putin's movement patterns on Jan. 1, 2000, "in the first television footage ever seen of the then, newly appointed president of Russia," wrote Connors, who has been studying movement patterns for the Pentagon since 1996.

"Today, project neurologists confirm this research project's earlier hypothesis that very early in life perhaps, even in utero, Putin suffered a huge hemispheric event to the left temporal lobe of the prefrontal cortex, which involves both central and peripheral nervous systems, gross motor functioning on his right side (head, rib cage, arm and leg) and his micro facial expression, eye gaze, hearing and voice and general affect," the report said.

It this sort of crap were in a child custody evaluation, I would say that the court was being misled with psycho voodoo. I hate to think that our foreign policy is driven by this sort of nonsense.

The typical woman freezing eggs

I posted some Attacks on artificially assisted reproduction, and here is who is doing it. New York writer Jillian Dunham writes a personal essay on The Real Reason Women Freeze Their Eggs. She tells of many romantic boyfriends, and how she always wanted to have a kid, but somehow marriage never quite worked out.

That morning, I was single and 37 years old, almost precisely the average age at which women freeze their eggs, although I didn’t know that then. Of my close friends in New York, most did not have children, but a handful did. ...

There were no men. We all appeared to be in our 30s or early 40s. Most of us were white, but not all. I noticed that every woman in the room was attractive, dressed for work in the way that successful, self-possessed New York women dress for work: appropriately, but with some signal to the world about who we were — a worn leather jacket, an unusual ring. ...

“There’s something wrong with the men in your generation,” he said. I was stunned. Here was a doctor who had just been talking about the importance of considering statistical significance, and now he was chalking my dating problems up to the broadest of generalizations. But he was articulating two forms of truth: the mathematical and the personal.

“It isn’t you,” he said. “All day long, I see patients like you. You’re smart, beautiful, accomplished, nice. It makes no sense. I go home to my wife and I say, ‘There’s something wrong with the men in this generation. They won’t grow up.’”

The egg-freezing can prolong her fertility by 5 or 10 years. She has that much time to find a father for her child. Or she can just give up, get a sperm donor, and go it alone.

Is there something wrong with the men? I do not think so. Her story is a byproduct of changes to our society that have been brought about by women, not men. 50 years ago, she would have married a beta man in her 20s and been happy. Women have gotten the freedom to date a long series of alpha men (aka jerk boys) who are not interested in marriage, and the freedom to walk out of marriage. Now she wants a kid but those beta men are not good enuf for her. The feminism that was so liberating to her 10 years ago does not look so good anymore. She is not likely to admit it.

Attacks on artificially assisted reproduction

A National Catholic Register newspaper commentary writes:

Feiler found the work of Marshall Duke, a psychologist at Emory University. Duke came up with a questionnaire for children called the “Do You Know?” scale, which contained 20 questions about the child’s family history. Children were asked, among other things, if they knew where their mom and dad went to high school, where their grandparents grew up and which person they looked most like in their family.

What Duke found was surprising. The single best predictor of emotional health and happiness in children was how well they performed on the “Do You Know?” scale. Feiler wrote, “The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned.”

This finding may not be so surprising, considering the popularity of websites like Ancestry.com, where the creators invite visitors, “Join us on a journey through the story of how you became, well, you.” Even TLC has a genealogy show called Who Do You Think You Are? — which implies that our very identity is rooted in those people who not only begot us, but those who begot our parents and grandparents, as well.

And yet society has embraced, without question, creating children who will intentionally be denied part, or all, of their family history.

So is this about the millions of kids who are cut off from their parents by government action? No, it is a complaint sperm donation and other such technologies.

These technologies have stabilized as a very small percentage of births, and it is strange for anyone to be concerned about them when other ways kids get alienated are many orders of magnitude bigger.

This article, and another by the Center for Bioethics and Culture make a big deal out of a London Dail Mail article 7 months ago:

Gracie Crane was one of the first children conceived from donor embryo
Born before the 1998 Embryology Act, she has no right to know who her biological parents are
Despite her parents unconditional love, Gracie says she can't truly feel part of a family that doesn't share her genetics
Not knowing who she is makes Gracie wish she'd never been born
Gracie wants to be a mother one day, but says her experiences mean she would never have a child through donor conception
Every year 2,000 people opt for egg, sperm or embryo donation in Britain

It is wrong to say that society has embraced this without question. As the Mail article explains, Britain abolished the anonymity in 1998. German courts are abolishing it now. In the USA, regulations vary from state to state, but IVF is expensive and usually not covered by insurance.

I previously mentioned the bioethics center, and a movie they made to convince you that these things are bad.

The Mail story is about a mixed-race girl who was a test-tube baby for genetically unrelated older white parents. They adopted two more mixed-race siblings, had the girl diagnosed with dyslexia, and shipped the girl off to a Hogwarts-style boarding school.

Do you really want to make public policy based on the rants of one bratty teenager?

The Mail has a knack for finding some troubled girl and sensationalizing her story. Here is their latest:

Growing up in a happy middle-class home in Surrey, Emily Hunter Gordon, now 25, had every advantage and everything to look forward to.

Her parents, although divorced, were loving and sent her to the best private schools they could afford, all while ensuring she never wanted for anything.

Yet by the age of 12, Hunter Gordon was a regular cannabis user and swiftly descended into drug addiction, first attending rehab at the age of 16.

Later, she became addicted to dangerous meow meow, a drug that has been linked to more than 200 British deaths, and stole from her mother in a bid to pay for drugs.

Now clean and mother to a two-year-old son, the 25-year-old says that while getting off drugs was hard, rebuilding her relationship with her mother has been even tougher.

So does someone want to pass a law against whatever these parents did?

The Catholic Church is not opposed to the anonymity, as it has run agencies for anonymous adoptions for many years. The Church does oppose divorce, illegitimacy, and the main causes of alienated kids.

In most cases, I would say that a kid has a right to know his genetic parents. But there are good arguments for anonymous adoption, as well as anonymous donation of genetic material. So there can be a conflict between what the kid wants, and what the genetic parent wants.

The German Supreme Court (BGH) decided on Wednesday that the children of sperm donors have a right to know who their biological father is at any time. Because most men are only willing to donate anonymously, German women may have to do like British women and go to a foreign clinic to get anonymous sperm. In the USA, courts do not interfere with contracts so easily, and contracts for anonymity have been consistently upheld.

But in the USA today, millions of kids are denied access to parents because of some judge's opinion of the BIOTCh. It is very strange that some "center for bioethics" would be created just to whine about a handful of cases where a kid wants to meet the sperm donor dad, and ignored the millions of kids who are separated by the courts from their real dads.

Mother Jones on Warren Farrell

The left-wing magazine Mother Jones has a long article on men's rights:

Mad Men: Inside the Men's Rights Movement—and the Army of Misogynists and Trolls It Spawned

How did an ex-feminist once hailed by Gloria Steinem become a hero of the haters?

The article is mostly about Warren Farrell, a popular author of some gender-role books. The woman author mixed straight-forward reporting with weird innuendo:

But such rhetoric could lead to violence, warns Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups. "When you have a movement pumping out nasty propaganda, it invariably finds fertile ground in the mind of someone like Elliot Rodger or the man behind the 1989 Montreal massacre," she says, referring to 25-year-old Marc Lépine, a misogynist who shot 14 women to death at a university.

Beirich cited a third example: mass murderer Anders Breivik, who carried out attacks on a government building and summer camp in Norway in 2011, killing 77 children and adults. Breivik wrote a manifesto that seized on men's rights ideology—he declared that fathers had become "disposable," that women use their "erotic capital" to "manipulate" men, and that the media turns men into a "touchy-feely subspecies who bows to the radical feminist agenda." Men's rights activist Peter Andrew Nolan, who runs a site called Crimes Against Fathers, praised Breivik, suggesting he was "a hero." (Some men's rights activists, including Elam, disavow Nolan as a dangerous radical.) ...

Following Elliot Rodger's murder rampage last May, Farrell and the men's rights movement drew attention like never before. There is no evidence that Rodger (or other killers) had any ties to Farrell, Elam, or men's rights organizations. But commentators highlighted Rodger's focus on the Pickup Artist scene and his ideas about women and their sexual dominion over men. "They think like beasts," he wrote.

So if these killers have no connection to Farrell or the men's rights movement, what are they doing in this story?

The article has over 2k comments, including many calling the article a hatchet job.

This is what you get from left-wingers. If you tell some truth that they don't like, they call you a racist or a sexist or play some weird guilt-by-association game.

Left-wing groups like the SPLC really do incite hatred and violence:

The man who shot a security guard at the Family Research Council (FRC) on Wednesday was “given a license” to do so because of groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that have labeled the FRC a “hate group,” said FRC President Tony Perkins.

The SPLC has posted what it calls a "Hate Map" on its website that points to the FRC as a "hate" group located in Washington, D.C..

The map and SPLC listing of "hate organizations" equates groups such as the Family Research Council, which promotes the traditional Christian view of marriage and sexuality, with racist groups that violate Christian teaching on human dignity.

On Wednesday, 28-year-old Floyd Lee Corkins of Herndon, Va., allegedly entered the lobby of the Family Research Council and shot the security guard. According to the FBI, Corkins had a 9mm handgun, two magazines of ammunition, 50 rounds of additional ammo and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his backpack. According to the FBI, he “stated words to the effect of ‘I don’t like your politics.’”

The SPLC defends its slander because an FRC official once said, “The reality is, homosexuals have entered the Scouts in the past for predatory purposes.”

Elliot Rodger was just some lone crazy kid. I don't know what set him off, but it could have been feminism for all I know. I do not see how anything Farrell said could have encouraged him to kill his mom.

Mother Jones is just a left-wing hate rag. That's all.

Choosing mom's sex on birth cert

The NY Post reports:

A city Health Department form for new parents requesting birth certificates asks the “woman giving birth” if she’s male or female.

Along with routine questions — mother’s maiden name, mother’s legal name, mother’s Social Security number — is a gender question that has raised a few eyebrows.

And just in case the inquiry is not clear, the birth-certificate request provides a convenient check box and asks the question in capital letters. “What is your DATE OF BIRTH, current AGE and SEX?” the form asks in the section clearly marked “Mother/Parent (Woman Giving Birth).”

“To be clear, it is possible for a person who has given birth to a child to identify as male,” said Susan Sommer, a lawyer for Lambda Legal, an advocacy group for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people.

Sommer said that given various transgender stages, there is room for the person who gives birth to check the male box.

Not to leave the father out, the form asks dads the same question and gives them the same check-box options. Only there’s no “giving birth” notation in that section.

While the “sex” question might baffle some new parents, experts said the birth certificate form was created several years ago and was born out of the marriage equality movement.

This sounds crazy, but it is sure to get worse. In California, two gay men can have a baby, and the two men will be put on the birth certificate as the parents at the time of birth. The standard California form has been changed from having lines for "mother" and "father" to having "mother/parent" and "father/parent". The gays are probably unhappy that one has to be the "mother/parent". Or maybe they like it, I don't know, but the forces of anti-sexism will likely eliminate the term "mother".

They are probably working overtime trying to design a form that has accurate info for the typical cis-gendered parents and not offensive to the LGBTQIA crowd.

California kids can also have 3 or more legal parents, so it seems likely that people will demand all 3 parents on the birth cert. Or 5 or 6 parents, as the case may be. And all those legal parents could have fluid gender and orientation identifications also.

Some people now claim to change genders on a daily or hourly basis. Others deny any gender identification.

It is even possible for a baby to have 4 biological parents: the dad, the nuclear DNA mom, the mitochrondial DNA mom, and the gestational mom. And in California, 2 other gays or lesbians, unrelated to those biological parents, could be the legal parents at time of birth. The woman who gives birth does not necessarily go on the birth cert.

You might think that the birth cert should just factually list who gave birth, and ignore the legal fictions. But that ended long ago, when adoptive parents were allowed to retroactively change the birth cert in order to pretend that they gave birth to the adopted child. That is why some people complained that the birth cert released by President Barack Obama was not the original one. That law also protects anonymous adoptions, so that the child can look at his own birth cert and not even know that he was adopted. Some people think that a child should have the right to know who his natural parents are, as British and German law has indicated, but American public opinion has gone the other way.

Update: Britain has just approved creating babies with 3 DNA parents.