In memory of dear Barnaby Jones Pickles

As my regular gentle readers know, I adore Jennifer Lawson, The Bloggess. When the video of the pug who sang, “Batman,” first came out, I was shy to link it in honor of her pug, Barnaby Jones Pickles, because I didn’t want to look like I was doing it for the traffic instead of the fact that I can’t see a pug now without smiling and thinking of him. I am doing it now because I just learned on Twitter that Barnaby Jones died a couple of hours ago of an allergic reaction. He was still a young dog and is gone much too soon. My heart goes out to Jenny and Victor and their daughter, Hailey. All dogs go to heaven, and I imagine Barnaby Jones is there now, grinning from ear-to-ear.

No other dog will be like Barnaby Jones, but there are more dogs in our animal shelters than homes to receive them, so Jenny, I hope you get another dog very soon and save its life in honor of the dear departed. Saving the life of another dog who would die without you will help you more than you may imagine.

Wolverines, Barnaby Jones! Wolverines! And, um, Batman!

P.S.

If you are unfamiliar with Jenny’s work, a good place to start is this new post in which she deftly sums up the blogging gestalt at her advice column, Ask The Bloggess. At her primary blog, The Bloggess, meet Barnaby Jones, ninja pug, and see the hidden picture of the furious rabbit in his forehead.

The REAL reason lesbians and gays on the Left support amnesty

Dear Mark Koenig drew my attention to a post at Newsreal aimed at smearing gays and lesbians as supporting amnesty for illegal aliens as their contribution to the Left’s conspiracy to destroy the U.S. as a capitalistic, Constitutional democratic republic and make it a totalitarian Communistic state — which is, of course, MUCH worse than the conspiracy of social conservatives on the Right to destroy the U.S. as a capitalistic, Constitutional democratic republic and make it a totalitarian theocratic state.

One of the reasons I became a fiscal conservative and Republican in the fall of 2008 was to fight amnesty, open borders and illegal immigration. I lived many years in the part of Silver Spring, Maryland, most overwhelmed by illegal immigration from Latin, Asian, African and Muslim countries and I learned first-hand that illegals are a boiling cauldron of hatreds and that the majority come from cultures and religions that regard women as property and tell them it is their duty to kill lesbians and gays. Practically every other conservative in the U.S. is a lily-livered squish on illegal immigration in comparison to me.

However, I want to explain the real reason that lesbians and gays on the Left support amnesty — it is a noble one and not the one posited at Newsreal. It has to do with the Left’s Rainbow Coalition, which lesbians and gays don’t realize was a con to get their money, labor and power.

Gays, Jews and women were thrown out of the Right by social conservatives for being uppity and demanding anti-Biblical equality. Blacks and Latins/illegal immigrants were seduced to the Left by promises of easy money and easy power: welfare, affirmative action and amnesty. That’s the Left’s Rainbow Coalition.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s, the Rainbow Coalition was sold to gays, Jews, women, black and Latins/illegals as a one-for-all, all-for-one deal where we were all supposed to support each group’s civil rights equality, although blacks, being more equal, became the priority and demanded control of when the other groups would be allowed reciprocity from blacks in support of their own civil rights. Sometime in the 1990’s, black race hustlers stopped talking about the Rainbow Coalition and stopped acknowledging the claims of any other group to equality.

However, because the lesbian and gay communities actually ARE a Rainbow Coalition, since our community really IS a mix of races, ethnicities, nationalities, sexes, disabilities, sexual orientations and religions, this betrayal of the ideal of reciprocity for the equality and civil rights of other groups by blacks and their secession from the Rainbow Coalition is something that the lesbian and gay communities on the Left just can’t comprehend and don’t accept. THAT is why the lesbian and gay communities support amnesty — because the Latin/Asian/African/illegal immigrants groups all are clamoring for it and calling it hateful and discriminatory to demand that every single immigrant obey our immigration laws — so the lesbian and gay communities are honoring their Rainbow Coalition ideal of reciprocity. It IS bizarre that gays and lesbians do this the most for the groups that hate us proudly and openly — blacks, the Latin/Asian/African/illegal immigrants groups, and Muslims — nevertheless, gays and lesbians really do believe that their support will some day be reciprocated. So — supporting amnesty is a matter of honor and badly misplaced faith in the honor and intentions of their erstwhile fellows in the Rainbow Coalition.

However, in a weird way, the toxic, deranged and deceitful conflation of advocates for gay equality and the open borders/amnesty movement at Newsreal represents a heartening watershed in the efforts of social conservatives to demonize gay people since it is quite the promotion from being damned — just on the basis of being, without ever having committed any act of wrong-doing — as worse than murderers, child molesters, people who have sex with animals, and so on. The fact that those deranged accusations aren’t selling as well any more so that social conservatives must scramble for new deceptions to demonize lesbians and gays is most encouraging.

‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ and lesbian servicemembers

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” results in discharges of lesbians in numbers far above the proportion of women serving in each of the U.S. armed forces, according to statistics for 2009 from the Pentagon released by the Palm Center, a gay-advocacy group at the University of California, Santa Barbara:

Army: Lesbians accounted for 48 percent of 195 discharges under the don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy, even though women make up only 14 percent of the force. That’s up from 2008, when women represented 36 percent of Army discharges under the policy.

Air Force: More than half, 51 percent, of those discharged were women, who make up 20 percent of the service.

Marines: Nearly one in four, or 23 percent, of discharges under the policy were women, who make up just 6 percent of the Marines. That’s up from 18 percent the year before.

Navy: The sea service discharged 22 women, or 27 percent of the total ousted for being gay. Women comprise 14 percent of naval personnel.

‘Barcarolle’ from ‘The Tales of Hoffman’

Lyrics to ‘Barcarolle,’ sung by mezzo Elina Garanca and soprano Anna Netrebko, from the third act of The Tales of Hoffman by Offenbach (full libretto in French with English translation here):

Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour
Souris à nos ivresses
Nuit plus douce que le jour
Ô belle nuit d’amour!
Le temps fuit et sans retour
Emporte nos tendresses
Loin de cet heureux séjour
Le temps fuit sans retour
Zéphyrs embrasés
Versez-nous vos caresses
Zéphyrs embrasés
Donnez-nous vos baisers!
Vos baisers! vos baisers! ah!
Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour
Souris à nos ivresses
Nuit plus douce que le jour
Ô belle nuit d’amour!
Ah! souris à nos ivresses!
Nuit d’amour, ô nuit d’amour!
Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!

Translation:

Lovely night, oh night of love
Smile upon our joys!
Night much sweeter than the day
Oh beautiful night of love!
Time flies by, and carries away
Our tender caresses for ever!
Time flies far from this happy oasis
And does not return
Burning zephyrs
Embrace us with your caresses!
Burning zephyrs
Give us your kisses!
Your kisses! your kisses! ah!
Lovely night, oh night of love
Smile upon our joys!
Night much sweeter than the day
Oh beautiful night of love!
Ah! smile upon our joys!
Night of love, oh night of love!

Update, 8/16/2010, Mon.:

I’m including this bonus video to establish the context for the duet — opera definitely brings the heat:

Cracked.com on why being denied marriage is deadly for gays

I was just browsing Cracked.com for a story on a post I’m planning when I came across one that may help my dear gentle readers understand why being denied marriage equality is deadly for lesbians and gays and goes a long way toward creating the social instability for which our communities are attacked.

I’ve mentioned in past posts that the dream of marriage has great socializing power because it allows children and teens to imagine building a life with their spouse, which motivates them to make better choices in their education, activities, dates and career.

As murky and dicey as straight people may feel it is to look into the future and believe they will find the love of the life, it is infinitely murkier and dicier for lesbians and gays because we are second-class citizens federally and in most states and we can marry only in a handful of states (and other states and the federal government don’t have to recognize these marriages). In addition, the religions that are anti-gay are zealous about encouraging families to estrange themselves from gay family members.

So, as high as the rates of break-ups and divorces are for straight people, I think it’s a safe bet to say that they are higher for lesbians and gays. I call it the death of a thousand cuts — not every lesbian or gay person dies from it, but it does indeed diminish for each and every one of us our well-being and what we can be and achieve.

So the Cracked.com article gives some substance to my speculation by explaining “6 Scientific Reasons Break-ups Suck Worse Than You Think.” Read the whole thing, but the following are the reasons, plus the parts that jumped out at me as applying especially to explaining a high rate of break-ups and suffering in the lesbian and gay communities due to being second-class citizens and having no federally-recognized right to marry (boldfacing mine):

6. You Might Be Ruining Your Friends’ Lives, Too. (Short version: because when you break up with your partner, your friends are more likely to break up with their partners, too, if they were unhappy — it’s like you gave them permission and showed them how. Break-ups lead to even more break-ups.)

5. You Go Into Withdrawal. “It’s science. When shown a picture of someone you are in love with, the centers of your brain responsible for motivation and reward (the same that are stimulated by other addictive substances like drugs and alcohol) become more active.”

4. You Get Poorer or Lonelier … For Years.

3. You Go a Little Bit Crazy. “Any loving relationship, no matter how short, completely messes with your sense of self. There’s a reason why ending it feels like waking up in a bathtub full of ice and finding one of your kidneys has been stolen.

“Three different studies have found that after a relationship ends people tend to go through a serious identity crisis. No matter how strong or independent you think you are or you were before the relationship, your ability to know who you are gets thrown totally out of whack after a breakup. Whether you realize it or not, in your brain your significant other’s personality started to merge with yours. Despite the terrible cliche, they really are ‘your other half.’

“So why does this even matter? ‘Self-concept clarity,’ while not something you’ve probably ever thought about before, actually affects your life in massive ways. People who don’t really know who they are tend to be more depressed, think less of themselves and are more likely to make rash decisions or changes that might not be good for them.

“Sometimes this can lead to good things after a breakup, like a decision to lose weight. Other times it leads to rushing into rebound relationships, career or school changes, or drastic image changes.”

2. You Can Actually Die of a Broken Heart.

1. It Can Give You Freaking Cancer.

Heavier weights, fewer reps, to burn more fat

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway links stories from his other blogs, and one about how to burn more fat caught my eye. I’ve been eating fewer calories than my target every day except for two over the last two months, but I’m only doing aerobic exercise so I’m hitting plateaus. It looks like I’m going to have to add resistance training and that it will be the most effective if I use heavier weights with fewer repetitions.

Update, 8/14/2010, Sat.: Yesterday Instapundit linked an article advocating the opposite point-of-view, to wit, that less weight with more repetitions performed to the point of muscle fatigue is the safer way to go and produces weight loss and improved strength as well or better than heavier weights with fewer reps. Apparently it’s the muscle fatigue that burns fat and builds muscle. The good news is that this approach can be used by people who are not in the best of health — the frail elderly, people recovering from strokes, and so on.

Glenn Beck is OK with same-sex marriage? Who’s next? Ann Coulter?

OK, so I was browsing at Little Miss Attila, who linked Instapundit, who linked Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway, who reports Glenn Beck is OK with same-sex marriage.

I did NOT see that one coming.

Doug has the video clip — Beck was talking with Bill O’Reilly — and convenient transcription. He also notes:

I never thought I’d actually say that I agree with Glenn Beck, but I agree with Glenn Beck. It may be the only time, and it’s not going to cause me to start watching his show but, it’s somewhat refreshing to see that conservatives like him aren’t jumping on this issue like they did back in 2004.

On a related note, Nate Silver notes this morning that public opinion on same-sex marriage seems to be changing far faster than anyone anticipated, and in support provides this chart showing polling trends on the same-sex marriage question going back to 1988 (click the link above to see the chart).

The change over the past twenty-two years is rather dramatic and, if it’s true, it seems to indicate that we’ve reached a point where opposition to same-sex marriage will, before long, become the minority opinion. The lack of a sustained public reaction against Judge Walker’s opinion in the Prop 8 case seems to indicate that we’re almost there.

I made comments at Outside the Beltway, but my regular gentle readers will be familiar with my points, so I won’t repeat them here.

Jon Stewart: The race card is maxed out

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Race Card Is Maxed Out
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

I came across this clip thanks to Hollywoodland at Big Journalism. It mentions the Congressional ethics investigations on House members Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters and shows Maxine Waters denouncing the investigation into her corrupt activities as racially motivated. Setting aside the improbable notion that Nancy Pelosi really wants to drain the House swamp instead of declaring it a federally-preserved wetland, I think the investigations are about self-preservation. In the run-up to the elections, the Democrats need to make an appearance of cleaning house. There will be show trials, which will whitewash the defendants.

What? Too soon?

More importantly, Democrats want to prevent those pesky Republicans from conducting real investigations, real hearings and meting out real penalties if they re-take the House. Goodness only knows what — or, more importantly, whom — they would find if they started pulling on threads as they unraveled the tangled web Rangel and Waters have woven as they practiced to deceive.

By the way, the expiration of the race card is a true turning point toward prosperity and health for blacks and for America. The Alinskyite tactic of keeping black resentments rubbed raw, the race card and the Great Society welfare state together have resulted in a holocaust of human potential. So the maxing out of the race card is NOT going to result in social injustice. It is the beginning of a new era of individuals and communities taking responsibility and working to make the most of themselves.