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Skinny men have new reason to celebrate. Well, kind of. Beefcakes may be able to attract women by rippling their muscles, but the downside of all that brawn is a poor immune system and an increased appetite, a new study finds.Ladies: Send me an e-mail, at my Blogger profile, to have your blog added to the roundup!
Such evolutionary costs could explain why males of our species do not all look like He-Man, according to William Lassek, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who led the new study. "In some respects I was surprised at how big the costs were… something I hadn't anticipated," he says.
Many other studies have shown that women tend to prefer more toned men, and muscle-bound men tend to have more sexual partners than slender men, when other factors are controlled for.
Previous research has also suggested that musculature comes with a cost. Testosterone, a hormone that promotes secondary muscle growth, suppresses the immune system of all animals, including people.
Yet no one had examined both the positives and negatives of big muscles in a single population, says Lassek, who analysed data from more than 5000 men, aged 18 to 49, who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, between 1988 and 1994.
The beefier the man – measured by total fat-free mass, or arm and leg muscle mass – the more sexual partners he had, Lassek confirmed. The study also showed that more muscled men tended to lose their virginity at a younger age, compared to skinny men.
In calling last month for "common ground" on abortion, President Obama launched his search for an unlikely political sweet spot -- a popular stance on an issue that has long been dominated by extremes.What's really unnaturally, actually, is how pro-choice groups are welcoming Tiller's murder as the devil's kiss for their movement. The kllling gives them a darkly supernatural sense of resurgence in support of baby killings. Frankly, we could have been having this debate all year, on the merits. Instead, it's taken a diabolical gift of dread to bring the pro-choice movement back from outside the fringes of acceptable political discourse. As I noted earlier, "In truth, leftists have turned Tiller's death into a one-way superhighway to baby-killing."
But the slaying Sunday of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller has raised the level of mistrust between the very factions that the White House has been trying to bring together.
The administration had already been struggling to soothe simmering tensions. Two days before Obama delivered his call for common ground at Notre Dame, the White House hosted a meeting of activists on both sides, and a subtle but telling disagreement over semantics arose between an Obama aide and a leading abortion foe. Now some activists say they have yet to see room for compromise.
Tiller's death is a "massive setback" in the search for common ground, said Cristina Page, a New York City author and abortion rights advocate. "It's sort of like having a family member murdered and then being asked to make nice with the assassin's family. It's unnatural."
There have been murders of abortionists -- this weekend’s killing in Wichita being the most recent. There have been bombers of gay bars. Whenever such crimes have occurred, every leader of a religious conservative organization -- without exception -- has denounced the crimes. Paul Hill went to Florida’s electric chair for murdering an abortionist. There was no voice of sympathy raised for him. Nor should there have been. Eric Robert Rudolph sits in federal prison for bombing an abortion facility and a gay bar. There are no appeals for clemency for him. Nor should there be.National Review also writes on the partisan reaction, indicating why renunciation of violence on the pro-life side is essential, "Murder Most Foul":
The same cannot be said of the liberal elites. Bombers Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are lionized by liberals -- and they host future presidents in their home. They remain unrepentant for their crimes.
Almost everyone who calls himself a pro-lifer has condemned Roeder’s evil. All pro-lifers should make it clear that those who take up the gun, or tolerate it, have no place in their movement. Our only weapons should be persuasion, law, and prayer.As we can see, in contrast to the radical abortion lobby, conservatives are taking the high ground in the aftermath of Tiller's death
Gateway Pundit adds this:
Megyn Kelly and Bill Hemmer reported on the Democrat-only meeting held yesterday with President Obama on nationalized health care. Dems want to ram this trillion dollar boondoggle through Congress before the August recess.See more on the health debate at the Wall Street Journal, "Why the Health Care Rush? Democrats don't think their bill can stand public inspection."
Like the Stimulus Bill, this will be another Democratic bill. They are excluding Republicans from the process. Then later they'll blame the GOP for not offering any ideas. And, the media will continue to play right along with their liberal cohorts in Congress.
That's how things work these days.
From Vinegar and Honey, "It Will Never Make Sense To Me."There has been much discussion about the pros and cons of "water boarding" and whether or not it constitutes "torture." Also, of great concern are the "rights" of the recipients of the water boarding technique.
I know what the word "torture" means, as defined by a dictionary, and I know what the word conjures up in my own mind. What I really don't understand is what the difference might be if a "terrorist" is tortured by the water boarding method, as compared to an abortion, and especially, a partial-birth abortion performed on an innocent fetus, in terms of suffering.
Maybe what I'm really trying to reconcile in my own mind, is how the opponents of water boarding, who vehemently protest the cruelty of it, and diligently pursue "justice" and "protection of civil rights" for the recipients of it, justify the pain and suffering endured by the innocents who have done nothing, but are tortured in the most inhumane way during an abortion--while at the same time loudly protesting the mistreatment of some very bad people intent on killing us, one and all.I looked up a few things about both subjects. Perhaps, you will tell me what you think, after we compare the two.
Water Boarding
Water boarding as it is currently described involves strapping a person to an inclined board, with his feet raised and his head lowered. The interrogators bind the person's arms and legs so he can't move at all, and they cover his face. In some descriptions, the person is gagged, and some sort of cloth covers his nose and mouth; in others, his face is wrapped in cellophane. The interrogator then repeatedly pours water onto the person's face. Depending on the exact setup, the water may or may not actually get into the person's mouth and nose; but the physical experience of being underneath a wave of water seems to be secondary to the psychological experience. The person's mind believes he is drowning, and his gag reflex kicks in as if he were choking on all that water falling on his face.
Pain In The Unborn
“The neural pathways are present for pain to be experienced quite early by unborn babies.”– Steven Calvin, perinatologist, University of Minnesota.
An unborn child at 20 weeks gestation “is fully capable of experiencing pain... Without question, [abortion] is a dreadfully painful experience for any infant subjected to such a surgical procedure.”– Robert J. White, MD., Ph.D. professor of neurosurgery, Case Western Reserve University.
“At 20 weeks, the fetal brain has the full complement of brain cells present in adulthood, ready and waiting to receive pain signals from the body, and their electrical activity can be be recorded by standard electroencephalography (EEG)”– Dr. Paul Ranalli, neurologist, University of Toronto.
An unborn child has less legal protection from feeling pain than commercial livestock.
In a slaughterhouse, a method of slaughter is deemed legally humane only if “all animals are rendered insensible to pain by a single blow or gunshot or an electrical,chemical, or other means that is rapid and effective, before being shackled, hoisted,thrown, cast, or cut.” (Section 2 of the Humane Slaughter Act, 7 USC 1902).
By contrast, D&E abortions, performed as late as 24 weeks (well after the child begins to feel pain), involve the dismemberment of the unborn child by a pair of sharp metal forceps.(9) Instillation methods of abortion (performed even in the third trimester) involve the replacement of up to one cup of amniotic fluid with a concentrated salt solution, which the unborn child inhales as the salt burns her skin.The child lives in this condition for up to an hour. In neither of these techniques is the unborn child provided with any form of anesthesia(1013)http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/Fetal_Pain/FetalPain091604.pdf.Robert George writes in his essay, "Obama and His Pro-Life Apologists," something rather thought-provoking: President Obama knows that an unborn baby is human. He knows that the blood shed by the abortionist’s knife is human blood, that the bones broken are human bones. He does not deny that the baby whom nurse Jill Stanek discovered gasping for breath in a soiled linen bin after a failed attempt to end her life by abortion, was a human baby. Even in opposing the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which was designed to assure that such babies were rescued if possible or at least given comfort care while they died, Barack Obama did not deny the humanity of the child. What he denied, and continues to deny, is the fundamental equality of that child—equality with those of us who are safely born and accepted into the human community."
The sad part of all of this, is that the President is not the only one who persists in defending the rights of the women who choose to abort, and the abortionists, but sadder, still, is the fact that they all put more value on the well-being, and lives of a terrorist, than they do on an innocent little child who has no one to come to his defense as a human being with the right to live.
Is water boarding worse than being burned alive, poisoned, or torn to pieces?
It turns out that yesterday's New York Times jumped on the blame-O'Reilly bandwagon, "Doctor’s Killer Is Not Alone in the Blame, Some Say." And as I've already noted, Tiller's death is having the effect of emboldening those who want to kill more babies.
With the Supreme Court expected to soon rule on a case involving job discrimination claims by white firefighters, and Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor's decision in a lower court ruling on the case drawing scrutiny, there is renewed focus on public opinion about affirmative action programs and overall efforts to improve the position of minorities in this country. The public has generally been supportive of such efforts, but is decidedly opposed to the idea of providing preferential treatment to minorities.Check the rest of the article. White Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents oppose race preferences by a margin of 66 percent! Yo, GOP cross-party outreach opportunity!
In the most recent Pew Research Center values survey, released May 21, just 31% agreed that "we should make every effort to improve the position of blacks and minorities, even if it means giving them preferential treatment." More than twice as many (65%) disagreed with this statement. That balance of opinion has fluctuated only modestly through the 22-year history of the values survey.
The values survey revealed continuing racial differences in attitudes about this issue. Majorities of both African Americans (58%) and Hispanics (53%) favor preferential treatment to improve the position of blacks and other minorities; just 22% of whites agree.
All neocons are gay.Geez, this is almost as good as Michelle Malkin's hate mail!
They follow a gay ideology.
They are the vanguards of gayness.
"Duh troops" are fighting for the very "freedom" of homo "rights" and other degenerate "rights". It is a homosexual war to turn the musilman sheep herder into a capitalist metrosexual. Such a war is gay.
Donald Douglas is the gayest blogger ever.
Anyone who uses the words "John Galt" is a homo.
This is the empirical, objective truth. No bias.
Your wife and child are in your head. Never any mention of them on "Burkean reflections". They suddenly appeared when Sullivan-the-Gay negged your "Chosen" Israel, and the hawt jewish males who inhabit it, the neocon's world's most precious resource. Your "fambly": they're fake. They don't exist. Neocons are homosexual.
You are a dark skinned tanning bed queen Donald. You are a cuban cabana boy, a bathhouse turk. Anything but a white-racist anglo-saxon man, the heart of any true conservatism.
Scott Roeder was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder in the shooting death of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in church.This morning's Los Angeles Times featured a front-page story on Roeder, "Suspect in Kansas Abortion Doctor's Slaying Reportedly Belonged to Anti-Government Militia."
The 51-year-old Roeder appeared at a brief 4 p.m. EDT hearing in a Wichita, Kan., court via video from jail in the doctor's killing.
Roeder is accused of gunning down Tiller on Sunday as the doctor served as an usher at his Lutheran church in Wichita.
Roeder also is charged with aggravated assault for allegedly threatening two people who tried to stop him.
The Kansas City Star reported that Roeder's mental health and anti-government activities were factors in a custody battle in 2003 involving a girl in Pennsylvania.
Earlier Tuesday, Roeder's former wife said his family life began unraveling more than a decade ago when he got involved with anti-government groups, and then became "very religious in an Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye way."
"The anti-tax stuff came first, and then it grew and grew. He became very anti-abortion," said Lindsey Roeder, who was married to Scott Roeder for 10 years but "strongly disagrees with his beliefs." He moved out in 1994, and the couple divorced in 1996. They have one son, now 22.
"He started falling apart," Lindsey Roeder told The Associated Press on Monday. "I had to protect myself and my son."
While this sort of viciousness would not be surprising at a far-left site or at the sort of angry radical gay blogs that heaped abuse on Carrie Prejean, what's remarkable is that it occurred at Playboy. (Misogyny goes mainstream!)Also, don't miss Ed Driscoll, "Hefnerpalooza Update." See also Memeorandum.
I have to say, for a variety of reasons I'm surprised.
I'm also surprised that they'd include Peggy Noonan (who's seen by many conservatives as a sellout) with people far to her right. (I can't think of a better reminder of the hang-together-or-hang-separately principle.)
Moreover, the timing is a bit off. The left has power, both in the White House and Congress, while conservatives have been dispirited, disunited, and largely disillusioned. Such tactics right now are completely unnecessary. I guess the angry left just can't stop being angry.
However, there's a lot more to this than anger. Many conservatives are angry too, but there is simply no right wing counterpart to the misogynistic hatred routinely displayed towards conservative women.
Nor are conservative men subjected to anywhere near the same type of personal attacks on their hairstyles, clothing, or personal anatomy that conservative women have to endure. Over the years I have seen such abuse directed against Margaret Thatcher, Kathleen Harris (during the Florida vote count), and of course we all remember what happened to Condoleezza Rice (whose additional crime was being a black conservative). While rape advocacy is a new escalation, in many ways, this misogyny springs from identity politics. Conservative women are seen as traitors to their sex, and thus no holds are barred. Not even hate speech of the sort the left would call "eliminationist rhetoric." So, while it's certainly sick and twisted, the rape advocacy piece in Playboy is in many ways a very logical culmination.
If the left keeps stuff like this up, the right won't have to do anything to win.
When President Obama takes the podium in Cairo this week for his much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world, he'll stand before them as an American leader born of an African Muslim father and raised partly in Indonesia, as well as a politician who cut his political teeth in an Illinois political culture that has a sizable Muslim population.That is, he'll be carrying "empathy."
And he will talk, aides say, about those roots he shares with the Muslim world.
It is a politics of biography rapidly becoming synonymous with the Obama presidency. The message he hopes to deliver to Muslims, outlined by advisors ahead of the president's departure Wednesday for the Middle East, will draw on the same storytelling instincts Obama has employed with great success at home.
Now, as Obama attempts to forge new relations with a Muslim community that is at best suspicious of American motives, he relies on a diplomacy of personality that rests on the hunch that the best way to make friends for his country is by winning them over himself.
"The fact is that the president himself experienced Islam on three continents before he's been able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world," said Denis McDonough, Obama's deputy national security advisor for strategic communications. The president sees a fundamental need, McDonough said, to change "how we engage our allies."
So when Obama arrives in the region Wednesday, advisors say, he won't be carrying detailed policy proposals, but rather an appeal focusing on common experience and mutual respect.
**********
JammieWearingFool has more, "'Obama: New Tutankhamun of the World'."
The second video shows Cheney's interview, with his daughter, on Greta Van Susteren "On the Record." Here's the transcript:
VAN SUSTEREN: You bring up sort of the social issues, and of course, today, I couldn't help but notice you were asked the question about -- of gay marriage, and you said that it wasn't -- that you weren't in favor, at least -- as I understand your answer, in favor of federal statute, but it should be state by state by state. Did that mean you're in favor of gay marriage within state by state?Leftists are giddy. See Huffington Post and Memeorandum.
D. CHENEY: Well, if that's what the people of the state want to do, that's fine by me. I mean, I don't, I ...
VAN SUSTEREN: How would you vote on it?
D. CHENEY: I made the announcement at the outset that I believe equal rights means equal rights for everybody and that people ought to be able to enter into any kind of relationship they want, but that the states ought to retain the ability to regulate and determine what's marriage and what the legal status of those unions are. It should not be a federal issue.
VAN SUSTEREN: President Obama is in favor of civil unions, not in favor of gay marriage. Are you saying you're in favor -- if you were, you know, hitting the button in the voting booth, that you would be for your state having gay marriage, or would be you be ...
D. CHENEY: Well, I look at it, obviously, in personal terms. And my daughter, Mary, is in a -- you know, I think a very commendable relationship with somebody she's known for a long time, and I'm strongly supportive of that.
... we could jump to the conclusion that this man was motivated by a hatred for the military (or something along those lines) and then blame groups like Code Pink and Media Matters and MoveOn.org for fanning anti-military, anti-Iraq war passions for years. We could, much as the left has with people like Bill O’Reilly in the George Tiller murder claim that those groups have blood on their hands.But check Snooper Report as well:
But we won’t. Because that’s stupid. This murder, whatever the motivation (it’s not clear at this point), was committed by a murderous thug who acted of his own volition. Not because he was compelled to by liberal dissent.
Murder is murder. Let’s mourn the dead, condemn the guilty and move on.
Where's the outrage from the Leftinistra? Where are the condemnations that we on the Right expressed for the murder of Tiller the Baby Killer?Well, conservatives were waiting for more information. This Ain't Hell even began with a disclaimer:
For years this kind of activity from the Leftinistra has been going on and absolutely no condemnation from them has ever been expressed that I know of. Why is that?
So far, I have only read mentions of this incident from the Right.
Notice how, unlike some bloggers on the Left jumped to conclusions over yesterday’s shooting, I’m not speculating on the motivations of this shooter or his relationship to any other group of recruiter-haters until the facts are in - I caution commenters here to do the same.Michelle Malkin adds this:
I wonder if the Justice Department will send marshals to beef up protection at recruiting centers — especially given the past targeting of military centers on campuses and elsewhere across the country.See also, "OUTRAGE!!! Left-Wing Terrorists Target Military Recruiters!!!."
If you were to walk up to a typical New York executive in the 1960s -- think Don Draper in AMC's "Mad Men" -- and tell him that General Motors Corp. would be in bankruptcy by 2009, he would have thought you were delusional, or perhaps a Communist. GM was more than just the world's largest and most admired corporation; it was the final vindication of the American Way, the perfected and even divinely inspired example of democratic capitalism that stood opposed to the airless atheism and nullity of the Soviet system.Read the full article, here. See the Times' photo gallery, here.
Or imagine that you were somehow able to drag Nikita Khrushchev from the United Nations podium into the street to confront -- no, behold -- a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. Nearly 19 feet long from its Jayne Mansfield-like bumpers to its rocket-like tail lamps, a lyric in steel and mirrored chrome, as bright and beautiful as a ripe plum is sweet, and yet just ever so slightly obscene. Khrushchev would have dropped his shoe.
Surely a company, a country, that could produce such an object would last forever.
Actually, Ms. Sidman has posted at Right Truth, "News Brief: Salute to Israel Day Parade in New York City":The sign about re-opening Auschwitz was held by a perpetually smiling, bearded man. He seemed as smug and happy with himself as did the well-fed, well-groomed members of Neturi Karta who take money from Amadinejad to protest the state of Israel.
My friend and colleague, Fern Sidman, covered the march for me. The photos, below, were taken by her. She reminds me that the March was also a tribute to the 100th anniversary of the city of Tel Aviv ....Although the protestors were very few in number, (and the police plentiful), some of the protest signs were exceptionally vicious. I suggest that we take such signs seriously. They signify a coarsening of the atmosphere, a more brazen posture that not only means to intimidate but which actually intends to carry out the acts their signs depict.
Yes, racism exists, both among white folk and among peoples of color but Islamist martyrs of all colors do not plan to stop coming our way anytime soon. And, “color” has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism and other death cults. As I’ve written many times: Appeasement will not work. We don’t have enough money to keep bribing the villains. The Pakistani government has finally understood that the Taliban cannot be appeased, that they must be fought house to house, in tunnels, in hand to hand combat, and only by sacrificing many Pakistani soliders’ lives.
Thousands of supporters of Israel, both young and old gathered today in Manhattan to celebrate Israel's 61st birthday. A sea of blue and white filled fashionable 5th Avenue, as scores of synagogues, Jewish community centers and schools representing New York, New Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut, etc proudly carried thousands of Israeli flags while paying tribute to the eternal Jewish state. Shouts of "Am Yisroel Chai" (the people of Israel live) echoed through the East Side of Manhattan as marchers paid tribute to the 100th anniversary of the city of Tel Aviv ....Related: In case you missed it, check out some of the articles from Commentary's recent symposium, "Israel at Risk: A Commentary Special Report":
Also on hand were a small contingent of anti-Israel protesters whose signs and chants reflected their thinly veiled attempt to promulgate their essential message of rabid Jew hatred. Labeling Israel as an "apartheid state" and calling on the US to end all economic and military aid to the Jewish state, they also called for the total "liberation of Palestine" while excoriating Israelis as "Judeo Nazis". Other anti-Semitic signs conjured up images of the libelous propaganda once espoused by Adolf Hitler during the Nazi era. "Close Guantanamo Bay and Re-Open Auschwitz" read one sign, while another read, "Lock Up Your Kids: Pedophile Rabbis Are Everywhere." Members of the Revolution Muslim web site were on hand as well, carrying a banner that read, "Every Supporter of Israel is an Enemy Combatant".
* Norman Podhoretz, "How Obama's America Might Threaten Israel."
* Mark Steyn, "Israel Today, the West Tomorrow."
* Jonathan Tobin, "An Ominous Turn in Elite Opinion."
CNN has the story, "Romney: President putting country in jeopardy," via Memeorandum.
Romney speaks quite movingly on the GM bankruptcy as well.
More on that news at the Wall Street Journal, "President Says U.S. a 'Reluctant Shareholder' As GM Seeks Fresh Start Through Chapter 11." See also, "New Era in Autos as GM Set for Bankruptcy."
Swooping in as Alter Ego No. 3, aka Bruno, in a pair of faux, oversized Angel wings, Cohen tumbles into the audience when the wire work goes wonky. The not so amused people who got a lap full of Bruno? Eminem and his entourage, who promptly got up and left the auditorium. Another fake feud?
