"Atlas could have shrugged, but instead he picked up a camera & a microphone, the new media is here !!!"

Dr. Gina Loudon has a good piece at Big Journalism on the sinking ship of old media (via Instapundit) and how the new media is jumping on board. The headline above is from a commenter there who understands that conservatives are now using that new media to control the narrative. I think that Atlas shrugging and fighting back could be a winning political strategy.

Violent French husbands 'may be tagged' (thanks to the reader who sent this):

Men seen as likely to be violent towards their wives could be forced to wear an electronic tag under a law being debated by the French parliament.

The tag would have to be worn by men who have received a court order to stay away from their partner.

The proposal is part of a draft law on conjugal violence. It has cross-party support and is expected to pass easily.

According to the government, around 160 women in France are murdered by their husbands or partners every year.

Parliament is also considering outlawing psychological violence in the home, because it is seen by many as a precursor to physical violence.

It is rare for the left and the right in France to agree on anything, says the BBC's Hugh Schofield, so the near unanimity in parliament behind this law comes as something of a novelty.

Everyone agrees that domestic violence is bad and getting worse.

Why is it that when the left and right finally agree on something, it's to take away the civil rights of men and treat them like dogs? Apparently, misandry is a bipartisan endeavor.

Rush Limbaugh is an antibody, not a toxin

I watched with disgust when Glenn interviewed a guy named John Avlon at the Nashville Tea Party Convention. No, I wasn't disgusted with Glenn, that wouldn't be possible. It was just a bad feeling I had about Avlon; he's one of those Democratic shills that pose as a centrist or "independent" with a pretense that he is "fair and balanced."

You know the guy, the one that pretends to even be a bit right-leaning at times (he was Giuliani's speech writer) or centrist while left-leaning outlets such as CNN or "The Daily Beast" get him on to badmouth Republicans and conservatives, all in the guise of "doing them a favor," but really being more of a back-stabber than anything else.

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh today playing a clip of Avlon with some guest host on Anderson Cooper's show discussing how people like Limbaugh are the saboteurs of Washington and he hopes they fail. Funny, Avlon seems fixated on saboteurs, yet he seems to be one himself. I guess it takes one to know one. A commenter at the Daily Beast put it best: "Mr. Avlon needs to separate himself from the rest of the wingnuts he writes about, but instead he sips from the same glass."

Anyway, Mr. Avlon has a new book out that he is pitching called, Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America. Though he pretends that "a wingnut is someone on the far-right or far-left wing of the political spectrum," the back cover betrays his true bias against conservatives. "From Revolutionary War-inspired 'Tea Party' protests to the health-care town hall hijackings, principled policy opposition to government spending has taken a sharp right turn into Crazytown." No mention of the kooks on the left on the back cover.

Avlon seems to think guys like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck are toxic to our democracy--making people into angry haters. I disagree. Rather than a toxin, I think Rush Limbaugh is an antibody that is neutralizing the damage done by parasitic liberals who would have us all believe that going along to get along is the right thing to do--be it on health care, global warming legislation, or higher taxes. I feel strongly that going along with these things is the surest way to destroy democracy. I guess that makes me a "wingnut" too.

Take a look at this video of a Romanian teacher who slaps a cop (thanks to John Hawkins for the link). He slaps her back:



I have a couple of thoughts on the video. First, if a man who was not a police officer slapped a woman like that in the US, he would be taken in for abuse and second, the woman thinks nothing of hitting the officer and then cries like a baby when he hits her back. Women are so used to hitting men without being hit back that she is stunned that he did so. We don't know what took place prior so it is hard to comment more but I would like reader's opinion on what they think of the video.

Update: Okay, so the cop was asking her about charges of child abuse. Slapping a cop will really help her case. The problem is, women are not taught the boundaries of violence, therefore they think it's acceptable to use with any man. But many police officers are men and hitting them is not going to fly.

Finally, a tiny bit of justice.

"I was told that by two people who run domestic crisis shelters,...."

Don't you love all the scientific evidence that politicians use when trying to ram through pet bills that they want passed? In this case, Harry Reid says that unemployment is causing men to engage in domestic violence. Rather than apologize when asked to by men's groups, he responds like someone with an agenda, rather than any facts (thanks to the reader who emailed the article):

Reid's office responded by e-mailing articles that show domestic violence is increasing with unemployment, including one published by the Atlantic Monthly. And Reid repeated the assertion Tuesday, saying that two people who run domestic crisis shelters in Las Vegas told him that the high unemployment has "created lots of additional work for them they would rather not have."

"There is no question that people being out of work causes more people to be involved in domestic violence. I mean, I didn't make that up. I was told that by two people who run domestic crisis shelters," he said.

Wow, two whole people and an article published in The Atlantic Monthly-well, that just proves it then. Thanks to RADAR for standing up to this misandrist:

Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting (RADAR) took Reid to task for his comments, arguing that the $787 billion stimulus package that he supported last year funneled close to half of the spending to programs that women while 80 percent of those who lost jobs in the recession were men.

"Grant for the moment that, in spite of all the scientific research to the contrary, maybe Sen. Reid is naïve enough to believe that only men, and not women, turn violence to their partners when unemployed," the group said in a press release. "What kind of misogynist promotes a bill as unjust as last year's massive stimulus package while sincerely believing that doing so will cause more women to be beaten?"

It's hard to say if Reid is a misogynist or a misandrist but I guess it depends on what bill he needs passed.

Girls May Learn Math Anxiety From Female Teachers ( thanks to the reader who sent this in).

Men don't exist/ Women do

I just watched a good video about why men don't exist and women do in our society. Watch it (thanks to Say Uncle).

Would you dump a woman for using a coupon?

I was reading dating advice for women from men at Cosmo and came across a rather amusing letter to "the guy guru who answers your most pressing sex and love questions." The letter is from a woman who is upset that a guy used a coupon to buy her dinner:

I went out for dinner with this guy, and it was great — we got along well, and there was a definite spark. But when it came time to pay, he pulled out a coupon. I'm hardly a princess, but that totally killed it for me. Am I being too hard on him?

The guy guru gives okay advice back, not great, but not bad:

It was unquestionably a boneheaded maneuver on his part, but yes, cutting him loose on that one faux pas sounds extreme. There are factors to weigh. For one, how old is the dude? If he's still in school or graduated recently, it could just be that he hasn't dated a lot and was short on funds — the economy isn't exactly booming right now. And to be fair, he didn't ask you to go dutch, so he did still take you out to dinner.

If he's older and financially stable, then you have more reason to be turned off. Any guy with a little experience should know that you don't flash coupons on a first date — you bide your time till the chick is in the bathroom, then feverishly shove it into the waiter's hand! In all seriousness, it could be a sign that he'd turn out to be a cheapskate.

Well, I thought it was nice that the guy bought her dinner. I would think a coupon was a little quirky and endearing, but that's me. If it was reversed and a woman pulled out a coupon to pay on a first date, would you dump her or just be glad she paid?

On the other hand, the equivalent for women might be something different than paying for a meal with a coupon--it might be something appearance oriented or behavioral that a guy would find just as questionable. What would that be?

Youth, self-esteem and the recession

Over at The Atlantic, there is an interesting article entitled, "How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America" (via Instapundit). In a section on the recession and American youth, the author makes some really good points about young people, self-esteem and the recession:

Many of today’s young adults seem temperamentally unprepared for the circumstances in which they now find themselves. Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University, has carefully compared the attitudes of today’s young adults to those of previous generations when they were the same age. Using national survey data, she’s found that to an unprecedented degree, people who graduated from high school in the 2000s dislike the idea of work for work’s sake, and expect jobs and career to be tailored to their interests and lifestyle. Yet they also have much higher material expectations than previous generations, and believe financial success is extremely important. “There’s this idea that, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to work, but I’m still going to get all the stuff I want,’” Twenge told me. “It’s a generation in which every kid has been told, ‘You can be anything you want. You’re special.’”

In her 2006 book, Generation Me, Twenge notes that self-esteem in children began rising sharply around 1980, and hasn’t stopped since. By 1999, according to one survey, 91 percent of teens described themselves as responsible, 74 percent as physically attractive, and 79 percent as very intelligent. (More than 40 percent of teens also expected that they would be earning $75,000 a year or more by age 30; the median salary made by a 30-year-old was $27,000 that year.) Twenge attributes the shift to broad changes in parenting styles and teaching methods, in response to the growing belief that children should always feel good about themselves, no matter what. As the years have passed, efforts to boost self-esteem—and to decouple it from performance—have become widespread.

The article points out that fewer young people know how to be entrepreneurs these days. Hence, they may not do as well as previous generations who knew more about how to make their way in the world. Sure, as the article points out, some are moving back home with Mom and Dad, but what happens when they are gone? And should parents really be using their income to pay for their kids when they need to pay for their own retirement?

This is what happens when you have useless social programs that promote PC feel good ideas as opposed to useful practical ones. People suffer from some of these idiotic ideas but at least they feel good about themselves while they do.

Andrew Breitbart: Practicing offensive conservatism (via Instapundit).