Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Assorted

     Sorry, I’m fresh out of clever titles.


     1. Islam.

     Just in case you were wondering about Islam’s “official position” on female genital mutilation:

     In his lecture, a video of which appeared on the mosque’s YouTube channel, [Imam Shaker el Sayed] spoke about circumcision as the cutting of “the tip of the sexually sensitive part of the girl so that she is not hypersexually active.” He warned about the dangers of more serious forms of the procedure, but advised congregants to seek the advice of a Muslim gynecologist to see whether minimal action was necessary. He also warned that “in societies where circumcision of girls is completely prohibited, hypersexuality takes over the entire society and a woman is not satisfied with one person or two or three.”

     When this video came to light, the mosque, belatedly realizing that Imam el Sayed had committed a gaffe – i.e., he revealed his true opinion, which concurs with that of Islamic imams everywhere – immediately backed away from his statement:

     Dar al-Hijrah’s Board of Directors on Monday said that it rejected Elsayed’s opinion, and that FGM is “prohibited in Islam as well as the laws of the land.”

     “We at Dar Al-Hijrah, DO NOT condone, promote, or support any practice of FGM,” the board said in a statement. “The reference to “Hyper-sexuality” is offensive and it is unequivocally rejected. The Board of Directors is particularly disturbed by such comments.”

     Choose for yourself whether to believe the original video or the ex post facto denial and apologies.


     2. Action? Reaction.

     No, not in the Newtonian sense:

     You're not imagining it. When you decide to better yourself, you'll be immediately surrounded by people trying to stop you. Action, it seems, offends the inactive....

     It's the story of the crabs in the bucket. Put a bunch of crabs in a bucket and some will try to crawl out and avoid becoming dinner. The rest won't try to escape, but they'll reach up and pull the others down.

     It’s a short article; please read it all. While the reaction described doesn’t occur 100% of the time, it happens often enough that persons who’ve decided to turn over a new physical-activity leaf should be aware of it and braced to withstand it. There’s no need to argue against it; merely let it pass in one ear and out the other.

     However, you mustn’t imagine that someone disturbed by your self-improvement efforts will be easily put off. They can show a surprising degree of persistence...almost enough for a professional bodybuilder. The same, of course, is true for a publicly announced resolution to lose weight. But I digress.


     3. Well, well!

     I wonder how Barack Hussein Obama feels about this coming to light?

     "The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life," Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday. "That's going to be very, very powerful," Waters said. "That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it's never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They're going to go down with that database and the concerns of those people because they can't get around it. And he's [President Obama] been very smart. It's very powerful what he's leaving in place."

     Maxine Waters has been returned to office many times. It’s begun to look as if that has nothing to do with how well or poorly she “serves” her constituents.


     4. Free speech?! We can’t have that here!

     Betsy deVos has already weathered a few storms since becoming Secretary of Education. They don’t seem to have daunted her any:

     America has reached a consensus. We have a free speech problem when it comes to higher education, and there’s a growing crisis where colleges oppose inviting speakers to their campus who disagree with their political positions.

     Thankfully, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has appointed free speech advocate Adam Kissel to deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs effective June 19.

     Kissel was formerly with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, higher education’s paramount defenders of freedom of expression. The Left, to say it mildly, is not pleased:

     “I am deeply troubled this hire is another concerning sign that President Trump plans to make it more difficult for survivors of campus sexual violence to get justice,” [Senator Patty] Murray said in the statement. “Campus sexual violence is an urgent public health threat nationwide, and rolling back steps that have empowered more survivors of sexual violence to come forward will only send this problem back into the shadows. If there was ever a President who needed to take issues of sexual assault more seriously, it’s President Trump—and this is yet another indication his Administration is falling disturbingly short.”

     What’s that you say, Gentle Reader? You can’t see a connection between sexual assault and freedom of speech? Me neither. But Patty Murray is on record as having praised Osama bin Laden for building schools and day-care centers, so we already know that her elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top.


     5. Inmates running the asylum, day ???

     This is what the arbitrary-identity crusade has come to:

     Florentin Felix Morin, a French PhD student who studied at the University of Arizona in the spring 2017 semester, published a paper discovered Saturday entitled “EGO HIPPO: The subject as metaphor,” in which he explained “how his metaphorical hippo-self is collectively produced and performed.”

     “For a while, if someone was asking me how I ‘identified,’ I would joke about being a hippopotamus trapped in a human’s body,” says Morin, a transgender man, “later, a human trapped in a hippopotamus’ body, until my humorous ‘truth’ solidified and I began announcing myself as an old butch hippo dyke trapped in a young human faggy transboy’s body.”

     Morin was born female. He “identifies” as a male...when he’s not wallowing in the African mud. And no, the arbitrary-identity madness isn’t strictly Old World:

     TORONTO, June 1, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne Liberals have passed what critics describe as “totalitarian” Bill 89 by a vote of 63 to 23 on the last day before Queen’s Park adjourns for the summer....

     Bill 89, or the Supporting Children, Youth and Families Act, 2017, repeals and replaces the former Child and Family Services Act that governs child protection services, and adoption and foster care services.

     It adds “gender identity” and “gender expression” as factors to be considered “in the best interests of the child.”

     At the same time, it deletes the religious faith in which the parents are raising the child as a factor to be considered, and mandates child protection services consider only the child’s own “creed” or “religion” when assessing the best interests of the child.

     Farewell, Canada. It was nice while you lasted.


     6. Noticing beauty is prejudicial against the ugly, or something.

     This sort of thing is enough to make me wonder whether it’s safe ever to speak to a stranger:

     The only grace note in the generally clunky Wonder Woman is its star, the five-foot-ten-inch Israeli actress and model Gal Gadot, who is somehow the perfect blend of superbabe-in-the-woods innocence and mouthiness.

     Fairly innocuous wording from a movie review, right? And there’s no harm in noticing that Gal Gadot is quite beautiful...or is there?

     Continuing to dig a grave for himself with New York‘s woker-than-woke readers, [Reviewer David] Edelstein observed: “Fans might be disappointed that there’s no trace of the comic’s well-documented S&M kinkiness. With a female director, Patty Jenkins, at the helm, Diana isn’t even photographed to elicit slobbers.” His conclusion? “I didn’t miss Lynda Carter’s buxom, apple-cheeked pinup, though. It was worth waiting for Gadot.”

     Edelstein getting carried away elicited a predictably furious response from New York readers, who slammed him for being sexist, called for him to be fired for his “masturbatory crime” and threatened boycotts. The Mary Sue and Jezebel websites are predictably freaking out.

     It’s time for all of us to resolve to reject the thunderings of the Left with extreme prejudice. This is especially important as regards the feminist Left. With every venom-scented word that drips from their mouths or their pens, they make it obvious that their dominant emotion is hatred: of men, and also of women who strive to appeal to men, especially with their appearances.


     That’s all for now, Gentle Reader. If you noticed that this is appearing a bit later than my usual emissions, that's because I’m recovering slowly from a painful, idiotically self-inflicted hand-and-wrist injury. Anyway, it’s time to kick back with some decaf, a good book, and a cat or two. I’ll see you again tomorrow.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I like the way you just listed these things by number, as if just something to get out of the way, to discuss more important stuff. Back in the day, the events wouldn't even get printed anywhere, being thought irrational and useless. But I understand the cat, the decaf and the book, since I had a serious bout with lost appetite and lost 'weigh' too many pounds of muscle mass before getting it back. Added some iron and whey to my diet, and am on the mend now. We lost one cat, died in its sleep Sunday, but there are three other young scampers hanging around the front door; a life passes, and other lives start anew, out here on the high plains. God bless you, Frank ...stay healthy for us...