Wow, what a wonderful blog. Bring your kleenex.
[h/t]
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Tanya adds: After trying to take in that blog, I Googled “anencephaly” to, amazingly, find this website.
You are valuable because you exist.
Not because of what you do or what you have done
but simply because you are.”
Max Lucado
This satire is bleak, but also very funny in places, as here:
Pausing momentarily to take a drink of water, Benedict went on to stress that certain religious doctrines no longer apply in today’s world, and that, perhaps, they ought to be weighed against more modern considerations, such as making a problem go away.
Other important factors outlined by Benedict included length of pregnancy, the possibility of health complications, and whether or not two people just met one crazy night, got a little carried away, and made the biggest mistake of both their lives.
“All women, particularly those by the name of Sheila, deserve the right to choose,” Benedict said. “And if they choose wrongly—if they choose to keep the child, even though that does not make any sense, and might very well ruin someone’s career—then maybe they should just leave the country and never come back.”
The Holy Father then called for a moment of silence while he tried to “figure some stuff out.”
At very least, our Anglican “minister” friend deserves this. If The Onion gets it, why doesn’t she?
(h/t)
Let’s take a moment to salute Cmdr. Josée Kurtz, Canada’s first female warship commander.
Mark Steyn writes:
There is a — drumroll, please — demographic element to the automobile question. Europeans often ask, “Why do Americans need those big cars?” The short answer is: Because Americans have kids and Europeans don’t. So Italians and Spaniards and Germans (and Japanese) can drive around in things the size of a Chevy Suburban’s cupholder because they’ve got nothing to put in them.
If you’re a soccer mom schlepping three kids plus little Jimmy from next door around, you need a vehicle of a certain size. In the old days, you could just toss ’em all in there and they’d roll around as you took the hairpin bends in fourth gear. But now you can’t stick kids in the front and you need baby seats for the youngest and booster seats for the oldest and soon nanny-state regulation will require every American under 37 to be in a rear-facing child seat, which is a pretty good metaphor for where the country’s going.
And, if you mandate small cars and child-seat regulations, don’t be surprised if the size of the American family starts heading south, too. The difference between U.S. and European vehicles isn’t an emblem of environmental irresponsibility or American corpulence but of something more basic and important.
It’s great to be pushing small cars that go about as fast and park almost as easily as a tricycle. If people want to pay extra premium for the privilege of driving around in a glorified beach buggy, it’s their affair. But it’s not for everybody. Families, people with huge karate bags (those sparring pads and shoes sure are bulky), and those who generally like to drive at decent speeds in relative comfort, deserve options, too.
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Here’s what Andrea is pushing: The Couchbike. Affordable. Comfortable. And Green. Who could ask for more? (Room for your karate equipment somewhere on the sofa, Brigitte.)
This letter is in response to a freedom of conscience article in Saturday’s Post. I think it is cute:
Based on my informed moral and religious conscience, I am a doctor who refuses to refer for abortions. I refuse to co-operate with intrinsic wrongness.
How do I explain this to my own young children? Last night, I read them Walt Disney’s Pinocchio: ” ‘No, Pinocchio,’ she answered. ‘First, you must prove yourself to be brave, truthful and unselfish. You must also learn to choose between right and wrong.’
‘But how will I know what is right and wrong?’ he asked. ‘Your conscience will tell you,’ said the Blue Fairy. ‘What’s a conscience?’ asked Pinocchio. ‘That’s the small voice that people don’t always listen to.’ ”
Dr. Rene Leiva, Ottawa
When I listened to Dr. Garson Romalis explain why he does abortions last year, I thought it was interesting. I was struck by how he has layered so many justifications on top of his conscience–but ultimately justifying is what he was doing. If he were Pinocchio his nose would be awfully long by now. Totally unwieldy, even.
If you have more energy than I do, go fight this. Apparently, if we dislike polygamy it must mean we’re racist. Whatever. I’ve got things to do – Andrea gave me this recipe for chewy molasses cookies and I must try it.
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Andrea adds: The key to getting the cookies right is to not bake them too long. I’ll be darned if I know the key to fighting off “support for traditional marriage=racist/xenophobic/loser” allegations. Oh those crazy chattering classes. Always on about something progressive, aren’t they?
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Tanya thinks: she’ll try that cookie recipe, but sub out the refined sugar for organic cane sugar, and the all-purpose flower for whole wheat. I’ll let you know how it turns out. It may turn out to be one heck of a confusing mess (the whole ‘legalization of polygamy’ thing, I mean…I’m pretty confident the cookies will be alright).
Some people are so keen on preventing animal cruelty they prefer killing them rather than look after them.
Wonder what Sir Paul McCartney will think of this. After years of scolding everyone from seal hunters to ice cream makers, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has taken a public shellacking for its own euthanasia policies. It turns out the organization put down more than nine out of 10 of the animals brought to U.S. headquarters. Of 2,216 animals taken to its premises in Norfolk, Va., last year, 2,124 were put to sleep‹almost six per day. Homes were found for just seven. “Peta has a perverse definition of euthanasia,” says a former worker. “One that apparently demands that any animal with the slightest discomfort ought to be killed.”
Why, of course. Indiscriminate killing is sooo ethical…
[Did I remind you to buy a shirt today?]
…Those words from this pro-abortion discussion about the Chatelaine piece. (Funny thing is that many a pro-lifer said the same thing.) But at Rabble, their concern is not over abortion but rather about how there should be no debate over abortion. We all agree. And if not, well, your views should be illegal.
Just when you think Canada has a slight chance of becoming progressive, they allow people to publish this sort of hatred encouraging the slavery of women. This should be illegal and the author of the article, as well as the editors of Chatelaine should be brought up on charges of hate crimes.
Wow. Talk about “too too predictable”–I don’t like your views–so Just Ban Them–that should take care of that. They’ve had some success, by the way, starting with telling pro-lifers where they are allowed to walk and what they can say within a certain distance of an abortion clinic. The positive side of this is that if pro-life arguments weren’t persuasive and powerful, our opponents wouldn’t have to limit free speech.
Go crazy, I say–bring out the Human Rights Tribunals and the hate speech charges and I as an ardent pro-lifer will defend Chatelaine‘s right to publish what was a pretty solidly pro-abortion piece.
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Tanya says:
This should be illegal and the author of the article, as well as the editors of Chatelaine should be brought up on charges of hate crimes.”
This quote automatically ran through my head in a Nazi-German accent. (The word ‘Chatelaine’ sounds pretty inaudible in that accent, by the way.) You try it. It’s fun!
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq6b9bMBXpg]
[h/t]
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Patricia adds: Okay – Brigid and I LOVE-LOVE-LOVED that!!
In Britain:
Many charities have been told that they must extend their counselling and outreach services to men because of new equality laws which require local authorities to ensure that services do not discriminate on grounds of sex.
Fiona Mactaggart, the former Home Office minister, said an “unintended consequence” of the law has meant some domestic violence services have lost grants or contracts for refusing to do so.
She said: “There are some local authorities who interpret equalities to mean that a refuge has to provide for men, not only for women.
“There are some stupidnesses developing in the system that nobody intended.”
Indeed. There are excellent reasons why women’s shelters are women-only. Some women are so badly abused that the mere presence of any male around them sends them into a panic. That’s not to say male victims of domestic violence and abuse – don’t laugh; this is a real problem – don’t deserve help. They do. Just not in the same shelters. It’s not rocket science. Why can’t governments grasp such simple commonsensical concepts?
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Rebecca asks: Why not file a complaint with a human rights council against the abuse victims, who are clearly discriminating against men in this case? That’s only marginally stupider than all kinds of cases that actually appear before HRCs.