Have You Seen This Young Woman?

This is a photo of Cheryl Ann Magner, a niece of fellow blogger Christmas Ghost.

She has been missing since the beginning of June. She was last seen by a freind in Marin County, Ca. Christmas Ghost reports that someone thinks they saw Cheryl in the Seattle area.

If you think you have seen her or have information about her, please call the Marin County Sheriff's Department at 415-499-7365.

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What Constitution?

Ahmed Ressam is an Islamic fascist terrorist sent by Osama Bin Laden to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport.

In sentencing Ressam to a measly 22 years in prison yesterday, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said, "The tragedy of Sept. 11 shook our sense of security and made us realize that we, too, are vulnerable to acts of terrorism. Unfortunately, some believe that this threat renders our Constitution obsolete. ... If that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won."

But, where is Coughenour when the Constitutional rights of men and fathers who are citizens of the United States are violated? Passed in 1994, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) violates the written word as well as the spirit of the Constitution. VAWA has funded and been used as an excuse to deny fathers due process and a fair hearing in family courts. But, Judges do not seem to have a problem with the injustice done to these fathers.

No, Coughenour is nowhere to be found when it comes to protecting the most basic Constitutional rights of the average citizen. Nor are any of the other blowhards that worry more about what our Constitution guarantees detainees in Guantanemo than they do about the American man behind them in the line at the local grocery store.
It takes nothing more than accusation for a father to be forceably removed from his home and separated from his children, sometimes forever. Fathers are left spending thousands of dollars and suffering stigmatic but unfounded accusations in the family courts of King County just so they can have a day or two per month with the children they love.

In fact, VAWA and out-of-control judges in family courts are driven by the same sort of hysteria that Coughenour says has driven the United States to take extreme actions that are out of its historical character. Mayor Nickels' new five year plan to combat domestic violence makes the bold statement that his objective is to “end domestic violence.” Of course, when the term has been expanded to include everything from serious battering to a women simply feeling bad, this is yet another silly promise that cannot be delivered. The document is also rife with allusions and suggestions about the City’s “innovative” success in achieving this goal. In Seattle, however, “innovative” refers to the City’s successful runs around the Constitutional rights of its male citizens.

There is one difference between the hysteria of September 11, 2001 and the irrational and exaggerated concern over domestic violence, however. September 11 was real. The hysteria used by gender feminists to scare members of Congress into supporting VAWA is not based on reality.

Islamic fascist terrorists really do exist. “The patriarchy" that our government has been conducting a war on for the last ten years does not.

Robert Jamieson of the Seattle PI says that Ressams relatively light sentence considering what he planned to do sends a signal that "shows the rest of the world that the US system of justice -- at times imperfect, at time heavy-handed -- is not entirely cold or blind." There are thousands of men and fathers in King County alone that would disagree with Jamieson on that point.

So, Your Honor, when you and your colleagues begin to show some respect and concern for the Constitutional rights of the average American male, we might be up in arms about the Bush administrations tactics in the global struggle against Islamic extremism. In the meantime, you’ll just have to be content with standing on your soapbox alone.

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Sims: What Time Is It?

I’m sure you have heard the old joke about consultants: Hire them to tell you what time it is and they will ask to borrow your watch, etc.

Most people in the business world have learned this lesson. These days, consultants need to show a specific expertise at accomplishing something that directly contributes to the bottom line of a business, or they will not be hired. This is one of the reasons that the large consulting firms in the business today, such as Accenture, are so specialized. They are talented at accomplishing IT projects that most companies do not want to staff with permanent employees.

But, based on two recent examples in Seattle and King County, it is abundantly clear that government has yet to learn this lesson.

The first example comes from Seattle’s monorail project. Seattle monorail is so dead now that it is starting to stink like five day old road kill. Even Mayor Nipples is staying further away from the monorail than visitors to strip joints do from bare breasts under his silly new rules. That’s not stopping the out of control monorail agency from hiring consultants, though.

And, the insight of these consultants is profound. Profound in their stupidity, that is. Here is an actual quote of the Seattle PI paraphrasing the statements of Kevin Phelps, a new “project consultant” hire by the Seattle monorail agency:

Kevin Phelps said yesterday that reducing the monorail's cost will be the big factor because that could reduce the amount of money to be borrowed and, eventually, reduce what could be a staggering debt.

Uh .... Duh? Seattle dodo-rail needs a consultant to state the obvious?

Meanwhile, Ron Sims Independent Task Force on elections issued their report. This report essentially says two things: (1) citizens have lost faith in the King County elections department and (2) new people are needed to run the King County elections department.

I wonder if they still have Sims’ watch.

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Cantwell is a Sexist

Joel Connelly took a shot over the bow of anyone that would criticize Maria Cantwell:

Lets let Cantwell and McGavick duke it out on ideas, issues and their records, without a) clumsy interventions by ideological front groups; b) personal or sexist attacks; c) big "independent" expenditures on demeaning hit TV ads.

Note the emphasis I added above. No sexist attacks. Of course, Connelly is not talking about attacking McGavick because he is a man. Attacking men because they are men, as if that were something to loath, has been open season for a decade.

No, Connelly is referring to attacking Cantwell because of her extremist, gender feminist positions. That is interesting, because Cantwell is a co-sponsor of a bill in the Senate to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). VAWA is the most sexist legislation in the history of our country. In fact, VAWA competes with Jim Crow Laws for its discriminatory nature.

Sorry, but Cantwell will be criticized for her support of VAWA. After combining with Murray to flip the bird at all of the men and fathers of her state, Cantwell cannot expect to be able to hide behind the “little lady” moniker when she is criticized for her misandry.

And, don’t expect any precedents to be set about citizens not taking action to get the message out with the truth about candidates from our state. In other words, there will be TV ads. I can’t say whether or not Cantwell will be the target of any, but there is no doubt that her compatriot in the state’s war on fathers, David “I hate fathers” Reichert, will.

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"Intellectual Insolvency"

The corrupted Family Violence Prevention Fund (FVPF) recently boasted of its success keeping the truth out and myths alive in the Soviet-style July 19 Senate ‘hearings’ on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) hosted by Comrade Joseph Biden. Father's rights advocate Glenn Sacks remarked that such behavior is “a sure sign of weakness and intellectual insolvency, whether in the case of governments or of organizations.” You would be excused if the sassy tone of the FVPF statement also reminds you of the dismissive attitude of the "in crowd" from high school.

When criticism and debate cannot be countered, corrupted organizations avoid it. When myths are presented as facts, science is excluded, scholars are gagged, and only politically correct psuedo "experts" are allowed. When men meet injustice, hysteria is fomented to obstruct rational thinking.

Members of the US Congress put themselves into a political trap with VAWA, especially Republicans. Too many citizens now realize that their own government is waging an irrational and destructive war on them. But, having been lead into this trap by gender feminists intent on destroying their make-believe bogeyman called “the patriarchy,” Republican members of Congress are not only surprised by the uproar, but at a loss for how to escape the quagmire. They are beginning to see that the male vote they take for granted might not be so reliable in the future. Meanwhile, Democrats are faced with the obvious contradiction of arguing against the Patriot Act because it encroaches on civil liberties while gleefully stripping half the population of their most basic Constitutional rights with VAWA.

While fixing the injustices of VAWA would be relatively easy, the gender feminist orthodoxy that runs the domestic violence establishment places their sacred ideology above practicle solutions. There is one clear path out of the VAWA hole for members of Congress, however, and that is too loose in the next election. Representative David Reichert of the 8th District of the State of Washington is in a particularly vulnerable position.

The truth about Reichert’s transparent pandering to the gender feminist establishment of Seattle is out, and with a little luck and a lot of hard work by a new organization being formed specifically to counter his reelection, Reichert will be out of Congress and living a private life among the men and fathers he has helped to destroy.

And, there will be plenty more of these devastated men in Seattle, as Mayor Greg Nickels launches another Soviet style five year plan for domestic violence. He says the "plan was developed with the help of police, courts, public health, human services and community members." Translation: it was developed within the cocoon of gender feminist orthodoxy, with "men are bad / women are good" solipsistic thinking.

Ironically, the double-speaking Mayor says this will "make families stronger." Sorry Mr. Mayor, but what families are you talking about? Fewer and fewer men in Seattle are willing to risk their economic and physical liberty by starting a family. Men also do not want to risk the agonizing heartbreak of having one of King County's notoriously anti-male family courts rip them out of their children's lives. The few that are willing to take the considerable risks involved often move out of the area first.

Perhaps this is why Nickels supports gay marriage. The families he wants to make "strong" have to come from somewhere.

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Islamic Fascist Bombers of London

Islamic Terrorists

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Stand By Our Friends

Support the United Kingdom

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Seattle Murder Highlights Absurdity of VAWA

A mother of three killed the father of her children in Seattle this past Saturday night. In an effort to hide what the rest of us know about domestic violence having no gender boundaries, the Seattle PI is just reporting on this horrific crime today.

In a sickening story of premeditation, Nai Wang Saeteurn sharpened a large butcher knife, waited until her boyfriend and father of her children fell asleep, and then stabbed him in the abdomen.

Her three children were left to restrain her and call 911 while their father, Kao Vang Saeteurn, bled to death before their eyes.

Is this the sort scene David Reichert was talking about in his VAWA press release where he said:

In my 33 years as a cop, I walked into many volatile domestic violence situations. Domestic violence is the most dangerous call an officer can be sent into. One can never be completely prepared for the explosive and unpredictable nature of the highly personal situations.

I saw children sitting on couches crying and holding each other before police officers resolved the situation and brought quiet back to their homes.

Well, no, because Reichert is wearing the gender blinders the Seattle domestic violence establishment gave him.

Surely, the gender feminist victim cult that hijacked the topic of abuse a decade ago will concoct an elaborate and implausible story of “self defense” to excuse Nai Wang from killing the father of her children.

But, the Seattle PI provides the real story:

According to police, Nai Wang later confessed that she killed Kao Vang because he had threatened to break up with her. She has been charged with first-degree murder.

Power and control?

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Hillary "Hoodwink" Rodham

Here is an interesting column from Kathleen Parker about Hillary Rodham’s strategy in her bid to be President.

Hillary is transparently moving to the center, we all see that. This leaves one wondering what she really believes in and amazingly very few people seem to get it. Kathleen Parker gets half of it: Hillary wants to posture as the nation’s responsible mother, albeit the sort of totalitarian mother who wants to manage all aspects of her children’s lives well into adulthood. But, Parker misses a key part of Hillary’s political strategy.

You see, there is one thing that Hillary Rodham does believe in: the ideology of gender feminism. She needs to walk a line between the other liberal positions of most of her sisterhood (such as their obsession with lesbianism) and the conservative views of the voters she is trying to bamboozle.

Actually, there is surprising overlap between the victim oriented feminist ideology that Hillary subscribes to and today’s evangelical conservatives. They want to control you, limit you, and define your life for you. This is particularly true in areas of sexuality.

Gender feminists believe that heterosexual sex is an expression of patriarchal privilege. Evangelical conservatives believe simply that sex for the sake of sex is morally wrong. The two sides might arrive at their conclusion differently, but the end result is the same. Sex is bad.

Sex in the media is especially bad. Evangelical conservatives believe sex in the media corrupts our fragile souls. Hillary and the sisterhood believe sex in the media is an expression of the patriarchal objectification of women. Again, the two sides arrive at the same conclusion through different routes. Sex is bad.

These are the connections with conservatives that Hillary Rodham will make use of. It is a masterful political maneuver that will fool most of America.

There is one piece of legislation, however, that shows Hillary Rodham for what she is – the Violence Against Woman Act (VAWA). She is a co-sponsor of this Jim Crow-like legislation in the US Senate. But, even in this case, bogusly chivalrous and cowardly members of the Republican Party provide cover, so that Hillary appears as if she were just part of the crowd. Meanwhile, Senator Biden champions VAWA instead of Hillary in his continuing subservience to NOW and as part of his bid to be Hillary’s running mate.

So, guys, now that both the House and the Senate are ushering VAWA through with gusto, things can only get worse. President Rodham will see to that.

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Larry Phillips - Too Late to Lead

Looks like Larry Phillips, the go-nowhere, King County Council-person-for-life, has been reading Silly Seattle.

But, it's too late Larry. The time to step up and show leadership was two years ago. Now that events have unfolded and the monorail is dead, we all see through your effort to act as if you were responsible for getting the region on a more sensible transportation track.

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VAWA Promises Political Fall-Out

Phyllis Schlafly provides the best article to date on the problems with the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and makes a dead-on argument about why it should be scrapped. Please read it here.

Instead of the gender feminist ideology that hijacked the issue of domestic violence ten years ago, the US should look to Ireland for a model of how the topic should be treated. Please see Ireland’s pragmatic and scientific study of domestic violence here.

Ireland’s approach is vastly different from the patriarchy fighting war conducted by US local, state, and federal governments on its own male citizens. The Irish have pragmatically divided the issue into minor intimate discord and major abuse. Their study also used scientific sampling that shows clearly that both men and women are about equally guilty of instigating both domestic discord and major abuse.

Irelands proposed programs to address this issue are designed accordingly, separating domestic discord from major abuse, and focusing on the underlying problems involved in genuine abuse as opposed to treatment programs that preach feminist ideology.

The Irish approach is reasonable and will be effective. In contrast, the approach in the US is utterly ineffective, bigoted, and causes massive harm to men, fathers, families and children.

VAWA reauthorization will likely pass in the US Congress while the country is distracted by the hoopla of the Supreme Court nomination hearings of John Roberts.

But, shortly thereafter, everyone in Congress ought to start seeking political cover, especially Republicans. Men and fathers are increasingly organized and are searching for the first political target to label “The Enemy of Fathers.”

Our own David Reichert, a Republican pandering to the Seattle gender feminist establishment, is a likely target.

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VAWA Debate Not Allowed

Hiding behind the smokescreen of media attention paid to President Bush’s prospective Supreme Court nominee and military base closures, the US Senate Judiciary Committee is holding “hearings” on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) today.

This event is more of a love fest for celebrating lugubrious victimhood than a hearing. The attendees on the two panels are handpicked to ensure maximum drama centered around female victims of domestic violence. In fact, one of the panels even has an actress, Salma Hayek, on board so that emotions can hit a fever pitch during the hearing. Salma is a paid representative of Avon, with both cynically using the manufactured hysteria of domestic violence for publicity.

Having an actress on the panel is apropos since most of the information being presented is based on the fictional concoctions of the gender feminists who hijacked the topic during the Clinton administration. Responsible and scientific studies, such as one recently released in Ireland, will not be allowed. Instead, we will hear falsehoods, such as "95% of the victims of abuse are women," and "1 in 3 women will suffer from domestic violence in their lifetime."

In fact, it is truly amazing to read the Senate record where long time Senators are seen to repeat verbatum the myths perpetuated by gender feminists. These myths are carefully crafted in order to maximize their impact on people who do not have the time or inclination to research each one of them. But, Senator Kennedy rattled them off as if they were the gospel truth.

One of the most blatant lies is that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women. The domestic violence industry harps about the 1,200 women who die each year at the hands of their intimate partner, which while sad, pales in comparison to the 30,000 men who commit suicide each year. Many of these men commit suicide after loosing all hope in family courts that villify them, take their kids, and turn them into criminals simply because they made the mistake of getting married and having children.

As planned by Senator Biden, there will be no dissent during this hearing. Nobody will provide an opposing view to the drama queens on these panels. Nobody will be there to point out the facts and refute the make-believe statistics dished out by the domestic violence industry that has developed around VAWA. And, rest assured, every person testifying today will have their hand extended and demanding more federal pork to feed the anti-patriarchy monster they gave birth to and have nurtured for ten miserable years. Consider a hearing in which only military contractors are allowed to express their view, and decide for themselves who the "enemy" is and the weapons to be built to attack that enemy, and you will have the picture.

But, out in the real country, there are many opponents to the worst legislation since Jim Crow. These include men that have been victims of violent women, scholars that are appalled at how the topic has been taken over by radical feminist ideology, men who have been caught in the web of VAWA for nothing more than a yelling match, and fathers who find that their ex-wives unscrupulously use VAWA inspired laws in family courts to separate children from their fathers and maximize financial gain.

Moreover, police officers are frustrated with mandatory arrest laws that leave them in the uncomfortable position of having to arrest a man, no matter the circumstances they find when answering a call. Police officers have also woken up to the fact that nothing more than an accusation of domestic violence will result in the loss of their career, since nothing more than an accusation results in the loss of a man's right to possess a firearm.

Women of many stripes are also opponents of VAWA. These include women that are appalled by the victim mantra of contemporary gender feminism, as well as women who have seen their sons and brothers vilified by vindictive ex-girlfriends and wives. And, women who are simply interested in maintaining the freedoms and liberties guaranteed by our Constitution. Some are simply concerned that our government has conducted a frontal assault on marriage through VAWA. But, you will not see any of these women in today's victim parade.

Senator Biden has planned quite a Soviet-style spectacle in which opposing views and real science are excluded. VAWA is a sad example of just how wrong our government can go as our politicians jockey to appear politically correct. Today's "correct" politician likes to think of herself as more advanced than those of Jim Crow's day, but VAWA reveals that bigotry and hate are as alive today as ever.

No doubt, VAWA will be reauthorized and likely in more evil form than it was before. Dissent is growing throughout the country, however, and there will be a price to pay.

After all, the nation's men and fathers, and the people who love them, can only tolerate so much of the hateful bile of disaffected feminists with a gender political ax to grind before they lash out at the perpetrators of the violence that has been done to their most basic civil rights.

In the Seattle area, Representative David Reichert, a co-sponsor of VAWA in the House of Representatives, will be the first to suffer the political consequences of declaring that the fathers of his district are his enemies.

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Paynter Doesn't Want Others to Do What She Can't

Kathleen Paynter of the Seattle PI steps up to give us another gender feminist perspective on why Mayor Nipples’ “four foot rule” is good.

No, it’s not about the silly hysteria that titty bars will pop up on every street corner and litter your neighborhood with used condoms, although Paynter does discuss that as if it were a certainty.

And, no, it's not because strippers do not have editors to submit their letters to prior to sending them to Paynter, although she does complain that their letters are poorly written.

Yeap, you guess it! Because women are victims.

But, at least she fesses up to the real reason for her disdain for the women that work in these place as she puts up a shield to defend the criticism she will hear:

Easier still to skewer a columnist whose mind is too narrow and hips are too wide to see the freedom and fun in unrestricted strip joints.

Standing by for her article in support of VAWA.

So, let's see. If you have a nice body, you can go make mega bucks in a strip club. If you have thick hips, you can go write for a newspaper and complain and preach about victimhood.

But, what will become of poor Paynter when the Seattle PI goes down the crapper?

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Seattle PI Wakes Up to Smell of Coffee

The Seattle PI broke down and published an editorial that states the obvious: both the monorail and the viaduct tunnel are unrealistic projects that Seattle should abandon.

This is what happens when a business finally wakes up and smells the coffee. The Seattle PI has suffered an enormous decline in readership. And, the readers that remain are not exactly the type that advertisers are generally interested in targeting.

You see, advertisers at a minimum would like to have the eyeballs of people that can afford automobiles see their advertisements. Preferably, people that can afford more than one automobile. Most people in Seattle that can afford an automobile resent the monorail MVET and especially resent the fact that this project continues, and the MVET tax continues, despite the reality that the monorail is not affordable and clearly is not a transportation solution.

Already run by a cult of lunatics, the monorail project is moving even further to the lunatic fringe. Reasonable and sober people, even in Seattle where these mindsets are in short supply, are appalled.

How many of these automobile owners want to read a newspaper that stubbornly publishes editorials supporting the monorail? I’d dare say not many. Advertisers know that. Either they told the PI to cool it, or the PI figured it out on their own because they could not fill advertising space.

Ah, the free market. It has a way of bringing discipline to even the most unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky, idealistic socialists.

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New! Reichert Watch

Previously, we provided a list of the US Senate co-sponsors of reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

Here is a list of the co-sponsors of the same bill in the US House of Representatives.

On this list you will find the usual suspects from Washington State, such as Jim McDermott, who never met an anti-Constitutional law he did not fully embrace. But, you will also find Republican Dave Reichert, Representative from Washington’s 8th District, which is in King County. With that, Reichert has declared himself an enemy of the fathers in his district.

Dave Reichert has opportunistically been selling the men of his district up the river as a way to gain popularity on the waves of manufactured hysteria and myths propagated by the domestic violence industry. He has been doing this in support of the worst legislation since Jim Crow laws. VAWA has resulted in the loss of the most basic Constitutional rights of men and fathers in his district, while doing nothing to help either men or women who are victims of abuse.

There are few things more disgusting in politics than watching an elected official screw a class of constituents for personal political gain. For that distinction, Silly Seattle is adding a new on-going series called “Reichert Watch” in which we will pick this man apart and present multiple reasons why he is not fit for the office he currently holds, or any other elected office.

Dave Reichert is no friend of men, fathers, or families. Anyone that cares about them ought not vote for Reichert when he comes up for re-election.

And, now that Dino Rossi has officially removed himself from the race against Maria Cantwell (one of the most reliably anti-male, anti-father gender feminists in the state), Reichert will obviously be salivating over the prospect of running against her. He will use his support of VAWA as a way of saying to the gender feminist crowd of Seattle, "See? I'm not so bad."

Reichert is among those Republicans – that is, most Republicans – who just assume they have the vote of men in the bag and so happily support legislation that treats them like second class citizens. The next time an election rolls around, men and fathers in King County or the entire state should not give Reichert their vote. If voting for a Democrat is unpalatable, we recommend voting for a Libertarian.

These legislative atrocities will continue until people like Dave Reichert learn that there is a price to pay.

In the meantime, go here to send an e-mail complaining to Dave Reichert about his cynical support of the bigoted and radically ideological VAWA. Ask him if he knows the ideological roots of the Duluth Model and how it is being applied to men in his district.

While you are at it, you might want to refer to this report from Ireland, which was based on sound statistical sampling and clearly demonstrates that their is no gender bias when it comes to perpetrating or suffering from domestic violence.

The ideologically centered gender feminists, and the chivalrous cowards like Reichert who support them, hate real science. That explains why Senator Biden will not allow anyone that is not from the domestic violence industry to testify in the Senate hearing on VAWA on July 19.

David Reichert has enemies in some unexpected places.

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Seattle Looking More Like Mexico Everyday

In contrast to the attempt at inducing hysteria about a “strip joint on every corner” that appeared in the Seattle Times recently, Robert Jamieson wrote a sensible column about the silliness of Seattle’s moratorium on new strip clubs.

This moratorium has been running for years and the end result, as Jamieson points out, has been a monopoly in the sex industry owned by a small number of king- and queen-pins. These people get outrageously rich as do the women strippers working in these joints.

In fact, Seattle reminds me more and more of Mexico in the sense that the government is obsessed with protecting monopolies under the guise of providing a social benefit. Mexico has long pretended to be a socialist country, but through a partnership between union bosses, fat-cat ruling families, and corrupt politicians, has used the socialist bureaucracy to protect monopolies in every industry sector. The fat-cats of the ruling oligarchy protect their wealth and provide large Swiss bank accounts for the politicians that do the dirty work. Sound like stripper-gate?

The declining middle class of Seattle provides proof that the city is heading towards a Mexico-type social structure. The city has plenty of millionaires, which the ruling party protects, by doing such things as attempting to move Casa Latina out of the Belltown. The city also has a large dependent class of poor people that look to the government for housing and employment, among other things. Meanwhile, the middle class of the city gets squeezed out with high real estate taxes and such things as the outrageous monorail MVET. This developing social structure works great for the ruling political class and it is by design, not an accident of history.

And, counter to the gender feminist perspective that runs Seattle, the women that work in these joints are not victims of anything or anybody. They are adults that choose of their own free will to use their bodies to make a load of cash from horny guys. If anything, the men and lesbian women that go to these clubs are the victims, as their primal sex instincts are being exploited by strippers.

But if these men and lesbians cannot control their primal instincts, or find a better outlet for them, such as a good relationship, that is their problem. The city of Seattle makes it everyone’s problem by allowing the operators of strip clubs to own virtual monopolies.

The best solution is for Mayor Nipples and the Silly Council to end the moratorium and let the free market take over. Sure some additional strip clubs will open, but you have to be an extreme cynic to believe that one will pop up on every street corner. Or, you have to be a gender feminist that believes in the men bad / women good mythology you find in the typical Women Studies departments in your local university.

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Call Her the Monorail Pope

What an exercise in futility. The so-called monorail board is searching for a new Director of the religious cult called the Seattle Monorail Project.

What moron is going to go run the dying monorail? Or, let’s put it another way: Only a moron would go work for the monorail. And, that spells further disaster for car owners paying the outrageous MVET.

You’d have to be a true believer and hence somewhat unstable to jump on this sinking ship. A new Director would likely be even worse than Joel Horn and do God knows what with our money. Whatever they do, it will likely dig an even deeper financial hole.

Councilman Conlin seems to be the only politician in the city willing to stand up and state the obvious. It’s time to kill this spruce goose project, sell off the assets, and kill the MVET.

But, with Mayor Nipples sending out e-mails like what follows to anyone that inquires about his plans for the monorail, you can count on throwing more money into the hole.

Thank you for taking the time to send me your thoughts on the monorail project.

This is obviously a critical time for the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) and for the city. We are facing a number of decisions that will shape transportation in Seattle for generations.

Recent developments at the SMP regarding the financing and construction of the proposed 14-mile Green Line have caused heightened emotions by both critics and supporters. Public opinion of the SMP and the board’s ability to manage the project has been severely weakened by the events of the last few weeks.

I believe we must give the SMP board the time and opportunity to get its arms around these complex issues and restore public confidence. Over the past few days I have discussed with board members how I believe they can do that.

First, they must answer a basic question: does the SMP have a project that board members and the public are confident can be built?

To that end, I have recommended the board take an approach similar to what Sound Transit did in 2001. Bring in technical experts from across the country to review the Cascadia proposal and determine whether the project is feasible.

Second, I believe board members need to acknowledge that they don’t have enough revenue to build the line as it is now proposed. They need to take a more conservative approach to their financial assumptions, which may mean asking the voters for higher revenues.

If the board decides to seek additional revenue, then the voters of Seattle, who created the monorail project, should be given the option to either increase its revenue or end the project.

I will continue to work to ensure that taxpayers are protected and that we make progress on the other critical transportation projects of our city, including light rail and the Viaduct.

Sincerely,

GREG NICKELS
Mayor of Seattle

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Finally, a Train to Somewhere

One of the criticisms Silly Seattle had about the ill-conceived monorail was that, from a transportation perspective, it went from nowhere to nowhere. West Seattle and Ballard are hardly sections of the city that have tight connections with downtown Seattle.

Unfortunately, the same could be said of light rail. Due to the ballooning costs that are typical of a bureaucratic organization like Sound Transit, light rail was cut back from going all the way to the airport in its original plan to stopping in Tukwila of all places.

Now, light rail seems to be back on track for getting to the airport. Plenty of the tax-and-spend types are trying to suggest that this extension to the airport is put in doubt by I-912, the wildly popular initiative to repeal the new gas tax imposed by Gregoire and her friends in Olympia. They say the new gas tax is the only way to fund the additional lanes needed to the airport that would be required before light rail could go in.

That is a load of hooey, of course. I-912 is a direct response to Democrats thumbing their nose at citizens of the state who said they wanted to vote on any major tax increase. If the state and particularly King County were responsible with transportation spending, they would put it where it matters the most, and they have plenty of money available already. SeaTac airport is vital to the economy of the entire region. The Port of Seattle, with it's bloated management and unionized labor force and the politicization of everything it does, has already managed to make SeaTac the most expensive airport in the country for airlines to use. At the very least, our tax-happy politicians should realize that access to SeaTac must be a top priority if they want to maintain the tax base they are so eager to siphon money from.

That is a lot to hope for, I know, but we remain optimistic that Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell will complain about having to wait in their limousines in order to get to the airport. These two are from the gender feminist generation that thinks the entire world revolves around them. So, the new access lanes will go in and light rail will get there.

And, once light rail is there, we will finally have a public transportation investment that does some good instead of blowing hot air and our grandchildren’s money.

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That Darn Patriarchy

Well, here is an interesting quote from a gender feminist web site:

What we see in al-Qaeda is a fundamentalist extremist movement with all the perqs of supreme patriarchy attacking western capitalism with its own patriarchal power structures.

Yeah, that's the ticket. Surely, protecting your ungrateful butt from people that suffer the same sort of ideological overdrive as you do has nothing to do with it. And, I guess the Constitution has nothing to do with it because it is just another tool for the patriarchal oppression of gender feminists. You will change your tune, though, when the "patriarchy" in the US decides that you and the free speech you enjoy are no longer worth protecting.

The recruiting problems the US military is experiencing indicate that perhaps this is already happening.

Oh, by the way, the quote above is from the same blog that laments the fact that feminism has become the F-word. She's not the only one lamenting that. Even the head of the University of Virginia Studies in Women and Gender program recognizes the fact that feminism now has such negative connotations that many in the sisterhood are afraid to use the word. She is finding that fathers are not happy about paying tuition for their girls to be brainwashed into hating them and thus her crop of fungible young females minds to corrupt is on the decline. One can hardly blame the fathers or their daughters.

As usual for the victim cult of contemporary gender feminism, the blog quoted above claims the F-word itself is a victim of a misinformation campaign by that vast right wing conspiracy Hillary Rodham told us about. But, in this case, the gender feminists can claim sole credit for ruining what was once a word that referred to equality. Perhaps their cult should change its name to "victimism" and drop the feminist label altogether.

With a quote like the patriarchy doozy above, they might want to make the change sooner rather than later.

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Here Come the Opinion Columns

Here is a prediction for you.

With Senate hearings on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) scheduled for July 19th (well, if you can call them hearings, since the only testimony allowed by Senator Biden will be that of victim oriented gender feminists), the Seattle area Vagina Warriors just wont be able to resist piping in.

Yes, that means columns from Joni Balter and Nicole Brodeur of the Seattle Times and Kathleen Paynter of the Seattle PI. They will provide a few anecdotal cases of abused women (remember, this crowd hates actual science and the rigorous statistical analysis that goes with it), together with the tired old myths along the lines of, So-and-So-from-some-shelter says, “1 in 3 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime.”

Then, they will allude to how abuse is practically every family’s dirty little secret, with all of Washington's husbands making their homes into their own private Idahos of violence. Of course, no hysteria inducing column would be complete without saying this is something we do not talk about enough and we have to stop sweeping under the rug. Yes, this even though a search on domestic violence in Google nets you 7.7 million hits, while a search on, say, father’s rights nets you only 57,000 hits.

There will be no mention of the Vagina Preditors chronicled on this blog, who routinely rape adolescent boys, get pregnant, and shackle these kids with the responsibility of parenthood before they even graduate from high school. And, no mention of devious women like Shannon Elizabeth Hollister of Bellingham, who attempted to have not just her ex-husband, Nicholas Martin, but his father as well, knocked off by a hit man. And, no mention of the facts that Ms. Buffington mentions on Sunday’s post to this blog. No mention, either, of the fact that children are abused by mothers at much greater rates than they are by biological fathers. And, of course, no mention of how VAWA inspired hysteria and family court GALs with a gender political ax to grind have driven the most important factor in the success of children out of their lives - their fathers.


Oh, and especially no mention of actual scholarly research, such as that of Dr. Don Dutton, which clearly demonstrates that domestic violence does not know any bounds when it comes to either gender, or sexual orientation for that matter. The gender feminist crowd utterly hates anything that smacks of science.

Nope. Damned reality should never be allowed to get in the way of ideology. They just want to keep the federal pork money flowing to their gender feminist friends who hijacked the issue a decade ago so they can continue to wage war on “the patriarchy” and especially marriage, which they see as just another patriarchal institution.

You think men in King County are reluctant to get married now? Just wait a few years. Things are only going to get worse.

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Mayor Nipples Regulates Freedom

Anti-Patriarchy Police

Could Seattle be any more humorless?

Mayor Nickels, or should we call him “Mayor Nipples,” has imposed a regulation on strip clubs in the city. Now, topless dancers in these clubs must remain four feet away from their patrons. Both of Seattle's silly newspapers have editorials applauding this new restriction on the freedom of citizens (here and here).

The Seattle Times editorial was likely written by Joni Balter, who seems to be on the public relations staff of Maria Can't. You have to admire the deliberate and blatantly absurd effort to inspire hysteria in this quote:

A federal lawsuit hangs over City Hall challenging a cozy arrangement that has given a handful of clubs an exclusive monopoly ever since Ronald Reagan was in the White House. If the artificial ban disappears, there is the prospect of new clubs popping up in every vacant restaurant and storefront. [emphasis added]

This restriction is clearly another gender-political ax grinding, and is yet more evidence that gender feminists run the city. Gender feminists want women to be treated like adults in some circumstances, and like adolescents in others. According to them, men are exerting their “patriarchal privilege” when partaking of a strip club, and thus exploiting the women that work there. Maybe the city should just go ahead and set up its anti-patriarchy police force.

Of course, one needs to keep in mind that according to the textbooks the gender feminists read in their Women Studies programs, all forms of heterosexual sexual activities are a form of rape. So, all that is left as acceptable is lesbianism.

Mayor Nipples sells this new restriction under the guise of keeping the "family atmosphere" of Seattle. But, he might want to start by creating a family friendly city in the first place, because Seattle already has one of the lowest percentages of children to overall population in the country, in large part because the city is so unfriendly to heterosexual marriage.

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Violence Against WHO Act?

Below is a letter submitted to the US Senate as testimony regarding the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). It's well past time to get the gender feminists who have hijacked this topic out of the picture and change this legislation to VIRA - The Violence in Intimate Relationships Act.

My name is Diana L. Buffington. I am the State Coordinator for the Children's Rights Council of Texas. Our chapter is affiliated with CRC, Inc. based in Washington DC. We have 852 members in our chapter. I have been affiliated with CRC for 12 years. I am CRC's longest serving State Coordinator. I have served CRC as State Coordinator for Alaska, Iowa, and Texas.

It is about time that Family Violence is put to a stop. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) only addresses one side of DV. However, DOJ statistics, and from the weekly calls I get from parents with children around the state of Texas, who spouse or significant other has committed domestic violence, clearly shows me there is a rise of DV against men. I have also seen a rise of children assaulting their parents, primarily single-head of household mothers. Moreover, single mothers are the largest group of child murderers in the US.

Just to name a few cases in Texas that CRCTX has been involved with --

We had the "infamous" Mercedes Murderer, who allegedly "accidentally" ran over her husband with her car 4 times while circling the parking lot to do so, while her step-daughter was in the front seat of the car during the murder. The wife was found guilty of murder, and is serving 25 to life for her deed. Unfortunately, the Houston courts still gave the mother JOINT custody of her two twin sons, because she wasn't serving LIFE.

There was the 9-year old son whose mother brainwashed the child into thinking his father had committed sexual molestation on him and his brother. The mother's allegations were unsubstantiated by 3 Texas police departments, and 3 CPS divisions. She provided the child HER revolver and convinced him to kill his father. The son shot his dad, a prominent Houston Trauma Center physician, from the back seat, through the driver's seat 5 times, when the son was picked up for a visitation. The son's case is pending in criminal court. Mother's accessory to murder case is also pending.

There was the Dallas mother who had a restraining order against her ex-husband, who had supervised visits, due to DV. Mom arbitrarily and against all court orders, decided to allow the 2 daughters to visit him one weekend unsupervised. Then dad called mom and shot the two girls with a shotgun, while mom was on the phone. Mom was never charged, because the Dallas DA felt mom had suffered enough.

Then we have the Andrea Yates case where the father knowingly left his 5 sons with the mother, and she drowned them all. The father knew the mother was a paranoid schizophrenic and suffered from severe post-partum depression. Andrea is now serving life without parole. Father was never charged. Harris County DA said dad too suffered enough.

Then we have the mother who calmly called 911 to report her daughter was dying. When EMTs arrived the child had surely died. She bled to death after having both her arms cut off. Again the mother showed similar signs to that of the Yates mother. The mother's case is pending...the father not charged, because he's suffering.

I had a father picking up his son for the weekend, when the mother physically attacked dad in front of the son, AND an off-duty police officer. The officer was there to act as a non-official witness to the exchange, due to previous DV encounters and custodial interference. But mom did plead not guilty...claiming entrapment by the police officer. Fortunately, the mother was convicted of assault.

I have a husband who is consistently beaten by his wife with a cast iron skillet in front of his 5 children, when she gets angry. His injuries regularly result in short a hospital stay and many stitches to close his wounds. She has never been brought to trial by the Texas Montgomery County DA, simply because she is a "mother", even though all 5 children have been willing to testify. The father and children have nowhere to go, and no family to help them. The family lives below the poverty level. Dad can't get afford a divorce nor can he get a restraining order against the "mother". So the "mother" remains in the home.

I have a father who has primary conservatorship of his daughter. His ex-girlfriend falsely accused him of sexual molestation and DV. Her allegations were presented a falsified affidavit to the DA and in three other civil court appearances. Her affidavit alleged hospital visits that did not occur, police reports that did not occur, an alleged a marriage that never occurred, DV & molestation/abuse whose dates occurred when she had the visitation with child and the father was over 200 miles away. To top it off...she falsely reported the child's primary residence as being with her. She made no mention that the father had primary conservatorship. The mother also failed to return the child after her Thanksgiving access period. Her affidavit was prepared by a Diebold County battered women's shelter, while mom lived at her home. The father resides 200 miles from the mom. The shelter attorney who drafted the prejurious affidavit, advised mom to not return the child due to the attorney's falsified affidavit. The attorney assisted and encouraged the mother in her custodial interference & kidnapping. The DA dropped the DV charges, when the affidavit was proven false. The DA refuses to file perjury charges against the mother in Diebold, because the mother states she just signed the document, and didn't read it before filing it with the DA. Perjury charges in Dallas County are pending against the mother, after she knowingly produced the same affidavit in two different Dallas courts in three different hearings, after losing the criminal case in Diebold. The father is pressing for criminal custodial interference, kidnapping and perjury charges against the attorney and the women's shelter. To date no charges have been filed against the attorney or the shelter. A civil suit for malicious persecution & misconduct is pending in Diebold County is soon to be filed by the father.

I could state numerous other statistics and cases I been involved with just within the last 3 years. Over the last 12 years as a State Coordinator for CRC in 3 different states, I could testify to 100s of these types of family DV cases.

The VAWA Act should also be amended to include that states to begin to better define & isolate the DV cases in more diversified categories. This will gather better statistics so federal, state and local communities can better allocate their resources. For example -- DV statistics should include if the violence occurred, adult on adult; adult on child; child on adult; child on child. The stats should also show the relationship of the parties (i.e. married, separated, divorced, living together, parent, sibling...etc.). Many families and relationships are no longer the traditional dads & moms. DV in the gay and lesbian communities are also on the rise. So there should be indications in the police and medical reports if the DV was male v. female; female v. male; female v. female; male v. male.

When I was State Coordinator in Alaska, we did a non-binding, 6-month study just like this in Kodiak. We were amazed that the majority of the DV calls in this time frame were teenage males & females (involved with local gangs) attacking their single parent mothers and siblings. Domestic violence against men by women clearly proved that more men were DV victims in this same time period.

Most men have difficulty claiming women in their lives have assaulted them. Parents fear if they report DV by their children that CPS will get involved. We need to change these perceptions. VAWA clearly prevents this from occurring because the Act itself provides neither encouragement nor assistance to men with or without children or families with abusive children. Amended this Act would greatly remove the imbalance in DV for men and families.

Due to the rise of single parent homes, and children raised in homes due to out-of-wed-lock births, divorces, separations, and remarriages, plus the violence our children are subjected to in TV, movies, videos games I believe that we are only going to see a rise in children and women committing DV. Gang activity is also a major factor in the rise of children and women becoming the aggressors in their familial relationships.

We recently celebrated our country’s 229th anniversary. The founding fathers based our Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights on EQUALITY for all it citizens. All of our nation and state’s laws are based on one simple premise – justice and equality.

VAWA does not offer justice or equality to ALL American citizens. VAWA should be amended and renamed Violence Against Family Act (VAFA) to cover violence against men committed by the women they have a relationship with and DV violence by children. Funding should also be made available to organizations that will provide shelters and assistance to men & their children who need to leave a violent home. Funding for shelters where parents can place their children without CPS intervention & counseling programs should also be diverted to families whose children commit DV within their families.

Thank you for taking my written testimony. If you need me to verbally testify, and can do so, but by telephonic means.

Thank you for you consideration and cooperation in this matter.

Diana L. Buffington, State Coordinator

Children's Rights Council of Texas

Diana L. Buffington, State Coordinator
Children's Rights Council of Texas
(817) 589-8395
dbuffington@crctx.ws
http://www.info4parents.com or http://www.info4padres.com

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Columnist Cheats Logic

Danny Westnut, a columnist for the Seattle Times, exposes once again why it is hard to take Seattle newspapers seriously.

A few weeks ago, Westnut wrote a column chastising Seattle parents who jockey to get their children into one of the better Seattle public schools. He was angry that parents take action to get their children out of low performing public schools and into the better managed public schools. He called this “cheating” and said that parents who game the system are setting a bad example for their children. (And, yes, Westnut also defended Gregoire and the Democrats who gamed the King County elections system during the recounts in the election for Governor of the state).

Not surprisingly, Westnut says now that he received a barrage of e-mails and telephone calls from parents who took offense from his column. Westnut wrote that, “The resounding answer from readers has floored me.” Apparently, he is shocked that parents want something better for their children than the Washington Education Association (WEA) and the city and state education bureaucracies are willing to deliver.

But, all of these messages to Westnut fell on deaf ears. Through some unknown mechanism, he believes that parents who do not accept being forced to send their children to sub-standard public schools somehow, “robs others while making things better only for yourself.” In response to readers who said he was missing the point, he said:

In fact, as much as I respect you readers, I find your point this time to be so cynical, and ultimately so destructive, that I intend to go right on missing it.

This exemplifies how the Seattle media and body politic hold to their sanctimonious views with religious conviction. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they will persist with a view or a plan that simply is not part of the reality that we live in.

In Westnut’s case, he simply takes as a given that public schools must be defined by geographic area and that the WEA monopoly control of the money taxpayers give government to pay for public education is the only way to go. He is completely unable to entertain the possibility that parents in Seattle have already been gamed by the WEA and the public education bureaucracy and so the parents are just gaming back. From the parent’s perspective, desperate circumstances require desperate measures.

Of course, one must keep in mind that Westnut does not yet have children in Seattle’s public school system. But, he says his daughter will start in a Seattle public school in the fall that is known for underperforming.

Parents who once began the odyssey of public education with optimism know all too well that Westnut’s stubborn inability to see their plight will soon change. After a few occasions when his daughter comes home complaining that she has been beat up and then noticing that her enthusiasm for learning has turned to a dread of school and a rejection of the importance of learning, he will be in the same boat as the parents he self-righteously chastises. And, his plight will be minor compared to that of the parents of boys, who must contend with an education system that teaches boys to loath themselves and pushes Ritalin on any boy that behaves in the naturally rambunctious way that healthy little boys do.

He will realize quickly that hoping to improve conditions in a system designed for the benefit of a bureaucracy rather than children is as futile as resisting assimilation by the Borg. He will learn that attempting to reform an individual school in the system, as he is advocating, is like Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika program to reform the Soviet system from within the Communist party – a contradiction in terms.

Instead of accusing parents of being cynical for putting their child into a better school, he will think school officials are cynical to ask for parents to raise private money even though the school system is already well funded by our tax dollars. Soon, he will finally become aware that political correctness, which seems to be the only education prescription available from the state’s legislature, is no substitute for learning English, math, history, and science.

Then, he will either jockey to get his daughter into a better run public school, or will put her into a private school. Or, he might join the flight of middle-class families from Seattle, which has left the city with one of the lowest percentages of school aged children in the country.

And, like his turn-around on the monorail, Westnut will likely write a column wondering how the Seattle public education system can be so implacable in its resistance to changing what does not work.

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Jihad in the US Senate

The rush is on in the US Senate to jump on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) bandwagon. Currently, there are thirty two senators on the list of VAWA co-sponsors. Twenty-six are Democrats and six are Republicans.

The list of Democrats sponsoring this hateful legislation includes all the usual suspects, with gender feminist victim cult members such as Hillary Rodham and Barbara Boxer. Not to be left behind, Washington’s two senators, Patty Murray and Maria Can’t, are betraying the state’s men and fathers with vigor.

Proving that men in the US should not simply give away their votes to Republicans, the list also includes:

Lincoln Chaffee, R-RI
Mike Crapo, R-ID
Mike DeWine, R-OH
Chuck Grassley, R-IA
Orrin Hatch, R-UT
Arlen Specter, R-PA

These men congratulate themselves for doing their part in propogating the myths of the gender feminist cult, under the guise of “helping the little ladies.”

But, more and more men and fathers, and the women that care about them, are seeing through the hateful ideology that drives VAWA. They are also seeing that this money goes to support radical feminists in Women Studies departments in universities around the country, who are obsessed with the patriarchy bogeyman and determined to attack it even if they must destroy society in the process.

As we have said here before, young men should question whether they want to serve in the military to protect a Constitution that no longer seems to apply to them. Apparently, many of them are doing just that.

This time around, though, there are many groups that have organized to fight this legislation. It will not be the cakewalk for gender feminists that it was last time around, when all 95 senators displayed their cowardness through seeking safety in numbers while herding to vote for the most insidious legislation since Jim Crow Laws.

These groups include RADAR, the Independent Women’s Forum, iFeminists, Fathers 4 Justice, and several organizations of men and fathers.

Sitting in their ivory tower of self-congratulation, Congress will likely pass VAWA once again. But the atrocities it inspires, and the general marriage strike by millions of eligible bachelors, will continue to coalesce resistance to the closest thing to Soviet-style rule, silencing of scholars, and misinformation the US has ever known.

Eventually, freedom will prevail over this gender feminist jihad.

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Support the United Kingdom

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VAWA Con Dios, Part 2

Here is a sad case of just how low politics in Washington DC has stooped.

Forget about the upcoming ideological fight for a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner. That is a truly political fight in which the debate will be over contrasting political views. This, in fact, is exactly what the Congress is supposed to do.

Instead, take a look at what Senator Joe Biden is doing with the process for reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on VAWA reauthorization on July 19. One would think that in this hearing we would hear contrasting opinions from experts about whether VAWA has improved anything and, more importantly, whether this legislation has a sound basis and should exist at all.

That is not what is happening though. Senator Biden says "VAWA Con Dios" to anyone that does not follow the gender feminist ideology behind this misandrist legislation. Senator Biden is refusing to allow testimony from anyone that is not part of the existing domestic violence industry. Ironically, Senator Biden is behaving in a patriarchal manner, strong arming a piece of legislation so that only one view is heard.

This means that there will be no testimony from male victims of domestic violence. It means that there will be no scholars allowed to testify, except those that substitute scholarship with gender feminist ideology.

There will be nobody present who questions the myths spread by the gender feminist owned and controlled domestic violence industry, such as “95% of the victims of domestic violence are women” and “1 in 3 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime.” There will be no testimony from scholars who question the patriarchy model of domestic violence, which assumes that it results from patriarchal control and oppression of women. No testimony will be available to contradict the Duluth Model of domestic violence, which is entirely based on the gender feminist patriarch model.

Domestic violence is a favorite topic of the gender feminist scream queens. They know that nobody is “for” violence against women. And, they know that whenever the topic comes up, politicians are afraid to debate, because they are easily painted into somehow being for violence.

All of the major supporters of VAWA, of course, generally support Democrats. But, Republicans, lead by Senator Arlen Specter, jump on the bandwagon too, because they fear being painted as old-fashioned antagonists to women's rights. Republicans also relish this once per administration opportunity to point at something on which they cooperate with their opponents. Never mind the civil rights of men and fathers. They are easy to just toss out the window.

They will be surprised to find, however, that many men and fathers groups have spawned to push back. They have caught on to what VAWA is all about and debunked most, if not all, of the myths that inspire it, while providing real facts that show an entirely different picture.

Indeed, with so many men learning about the effects of VAWA when they are treated unfairly in family court and torn out of the lives of their children, this topic will become a major voting issue.

Right now, the Supreme Court Justice nomination and related abortion rights are the media topics du jour. But, as Americans seem to do, we are brewing a much more important topic away from the ivory tower of Congress that will surprise its members the next time elections roll around. Even if we do too often get bamboozled by hysteria and fake science, Americans like fairness above all else.

VAWA is simply unfair, and so are the Senators and Representatives in Congress who support it.

If you would like to complain to Senators on the Judiciary Committee, here are links to their e-mails as well as telephone numbers.

Arlen Specter, Chairman 202/224-4254 202/228-1229 Pennsylvania R
Orrin G. Hatch 202/224-5251 202/224-6331 Utah R
Charles E. Grassley 202/224-3744 202/224-6020 Iowa R
Jon Kyl 202/224-4521 202/224-2207 Arizona R
Mike DeWine 202/224-2315 202/224-6519 Ohio R
Jeff Sessions 202/224-4124 202/224-3149 Alabama R
Lindsey Graham 202/224-5972 202/224-3807 South Carolina R
John Cornyn 202/224-2934 202/228-2856 Texas R
Sam Brownback 202/224-6521 202/228-1265 Kansas R
Tom Coburn 202/224-5754 202/224-6008 Oklahoma R
Joseph R. Biden, Jr. 202/224-5042 202/224-0139 Delaware D
Patrick J. Leahy, 202/224-4242
Edward M. Kennedy 202/224-4543 202/224-2417 Massachusetts D
Herbert Kohl 202/224-5653 202/224-9787 Wisconsin D
Dianne Feinstein 202/224-3841 202/228-3954 California D
Russell D. Feingold 202/224-5323 202/224-2725 Wisconsin D
Charles E. Schumer 202/224-6542 202/228-3027 New York D
Richard J. Durbin 202/224-2152 202/228-0400 Illinois

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Monorail: Still Feeding a Dead Dog

Kristina Hill, the new virtually self-appointed head of the Seattle Monorail board, thinks that the city should still find a way to build the monorail. Of course, she is a professor in the University of Washington department of architecture, and probably has never seen a big project at the expense of the public that she did not like.

She has an amazing, and very typical of Seattle, quote in the Seattle Times:

"The monorail is within reach for the city of Seattle," vice chairwoman Kristina Hill told reporters at a news conference.

Yes, the monorail is within reach. It can be purchased much like VISA advertises on TV that I can make a trip around the world, remodel my house, and purchase an entirely new wardrobe – all on my VISA card, of course. Many things are within my reach if I am just willing to not have other essential things.

There is an opportunity cost with the monorail. This is something that nobody in a position of responsibility in Seattle seems to want to discuss, except Councilman Conlin. If you buy it, you can not buy other things. That is just a fact of life that the monorail freaks as well as Seattle politicians need to get used to. Even Joel Connelly of the Seattle PI seems to get it.

Instead, this out-of-control “board” is now talking about hiring someone to replace Horn. Bad idea. It is time to shut this project down, sell the assets already purchased, and eliminate the MVET.

Light rail is pushing forward and with a good funding mix. It’s not an ideal solution, but it is what we are doing and what we can afford. Let the dead dog monorail lie dead and let’s “move on.”

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Gee Thanks Goldberg

Bernard Goldberg, author of the recently published book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken Is # 37), is not doing Seattle any favors by exposing the fact that it is full of loonies.

It’s not the insult that is concerning. It is the free advertising.

With its silly socialist and radical environmentalist bent, the city has already attracted a populace of people determined to bring the city down. The last thing Seattle needs is to get the message out even more and attract more of these loosers.

So, if you are one of those “progressive loonies” out there in other parts of the country, think twice before you look for your utopia in Seattle. In addition to the endless rain, the social life in Seattle sucks. Just check out the Seattle Shmeng web site if you have any doubts.

Stay where you are and see if you can get Seattle’s loonies to move to your city.

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Hypocrisy in City Hall

Ever wonder why Seattle needed such a swank new City Hall?

It definitely was not in order to save energy. The new City Hall sucks up electricity like Mayor Nickels consumes deserts. It is one big, fat energy hog.

Mayor Nickels’ spokeswoman engaged in some doublespeak on the topic (from the PI):

Marianne Bichsel, a spokeswoman for Nickels, noted that plans for the new City Hall began during the administration of former Mayor Paul Schell.
"It was designed to be a building that is much more inviting to the public ... beyond what the old municipal building ever was," she said. "This is an energy-efficient building."

Translation: We created a big, fancy building so that the Mayor and Silly Council members can have big offices and feel like they are big shots.

Even though the new City Hall consumes more energy than the old building, it houses far fewer people. Now, that ought to put a feather in Mayor Nickels’ Kyoto hat.

I liked the old City Hall. Mayors and Silly Council members should not get too comfortable. There should be no reason for them to feel like they have lifetime employment at our expense and, in fact, they should be eager to get out of their cloistered life and out into private sector.

Let’s move them back into the old building and put a school in the new one. Then, all that energy would go towards a good cause.

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Dr. Dutton on VAWA

Glenn Sacks had a great radio show last night featuring a guest named Dr. Don Dutton, a professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

Unlike the Women Studies graduates that falsely represent themselves as experts on domestic violence, Dr. Dutton is a long time researcher and a genuine expert on violence in intimate relationships. His scholarly research demolishes the gender feminist ideology behind current domestic violence policy and the manufactured hysteria used to justify the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

Dr. Dutton’s intensive research completely contradicts the myths propagated by such domestic violence programs as the Eastside Domestic Violence Program (EDVP), whose “experts” claim that 95% of the victims of domestic violence are women. Dr. Dutton’s research, as well as that of many other serious scholars, shows clearly that men and women commit domestic violence at equal rates, including the most serious types of abuse. And, importantly, unlike the hysteria inspiring statistic that "Nearly 1 in 3 women experience at least one physical assault by an intimate partner during adulthood," actual domestic violence occurs at a much, much lower rate.

Dr. Dutton also disputes the prevailing “patriarchy” model of domestic violence, which forms the basis of “treatment” programs for perpetrators of everything from a yelling incident to serious abuse. The widely used Duluth Model falls in this "patriarchal control" category. These programs make the amazing assumption that men abuse women because they are part of a nebulous conspiracy called the patriarchy and so treatment should be based on beating and shaming the patriarchal socialization out of them. Moreover, he says that lumping minor incidents together with the rare cases of genuine "intimate terrorism" is a very bad mistake.

It truly is amazing that a billion dollar per year federal program would be based on such nonsense, even while serious researchers on the topic show that it is completely without basis. In fact, Dr. Dutton’s research, as well as five other huge research studies by other researchers, shows that most domestic violence relates to personality disorders that both men and women have in equal proportions. In other words, domestic violence has nothing to do with gender.

But, when you see that Senator Biden is sponsoring VAWA's reauthorization, it is not surprising that it would be based on the deeply flawed theories of gender feminists. Biden lives by lies, including plagerizing John F. Kennedy's speeches and claiming he finished at the top of his law school class when in reality he finished at the bottom. VAWA is just another of Biden's lies.

Dr. Dutton proposes that VAWA should be changed to VIRA, the Violence in Intimate Relationships Act. He says that arrest policies in which everything is focused on blaming the man should be changed and couples should be evaluated not by “someone with a gender political axe to grind” but by real professionals. In fact, he says that statistically most instances of domestic violence involve bilateral violence within the relationship. Thus, the problem cannot be solved by simply tossing the man in jail and forcing him to go to "treatment" based on the Duluth Model. This usually ends in divorce, which is clearly a goal of the gender feminists, but probably is not a healthy thing for society.

Anyone interested in the topic should go to www.hisside.com and listen to the July 3rd show. (The web site is easy to follow and you simply go to the July 3rd show and download the MP3 file in order to listen).

I also strongly recommend that those groups fighting for justice on this topic should consider Dr. Dutton both for speaking engagements as well as expert testimony. He is an exception researcher, very knowledgable about all of the research on the topic, and extremely articulate. In other words, he is exactly the person that someone "with a gender political axe to grind" would hate to have in the room during a genuine debate based on facts and science as opposed to feminist ideology.

Why does Dr. Dutton care about this topic? It has been his field of study for many years and he wants the topic taken seriously and dealt with in a manner that will solve problems as opposed to being a manifestation of gender feminist ideology.

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Sen. Patty Murray is Full of Crap

Senator Patty Murray does not really care about our militar. She is taking advantage of the easily solved funding issue for the Veterans Administration, while ignoring the fact that military men are getting scammed by family courts while they are in Iraq.

The divorce rate for military men has almost doubled in a few short years. These men have no protections that prevent their former spouses from moving away with their children.

If Patty Murray really cared about the men in our military, she would talk about how her party has failed them by creating a system that allows them to loose the most important people in their lives.

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Without Leadership, No Monorail

That’s right, Seattle is not a city-state.

Seattle seems to think that it operates according to principles that are different from the rest of the country. So, it too often thumbs its nose at everyone “on the outside” and goes ahead with idealistic and unrealistic plans that would never meet the smell test in any other city.

The monorail was a perfect example. It was a massive project. Massive projects cannot be supported by a tax base as small as Seattle even with 1.4% MVET tax that and goes way beyond what any car owner pays in even the most highly taxed city elsewhere in the country. As high as the MVET is, it still is not enough to support the project.

Now we hear idle talk about increasing MVET or adding new taxes, but this city already has high taxes and too many taxes. What other source can we go to? Our two sports stadiums are financed with taxes designed to hit visitors to the city, and we can not add much more to that tax without making Seattle about as attractive to visit as Oslo, Norway in terms of cost. Property taxes have been levied to the hilt. There just are no other tax sources to go to.

Meanwhile, I know this is hard for some to believe, but the laws of physics and economics actually do apply to Seattle. If you make something more expensive, people will buy less. This was the fundamental flaw in the high MVET tax.

In fact, the philosophy behind the monorail was a contradiction in terms. This pathologically environmental town said it wanted people out of their cars and onto the monorail. Advocates applauded the MVET tax because it would make cars more expensive and discourage people, supposedly, from driving. But, and this is where the contradiction arises - the monorail was dependent on people buying more cars and more expensive cars. In this case, you really can only have it one way or the other way, but not both at the same time.

Another big problem was that the monorail organization was run by novices. Even in Seattle, experience and knowledge matters. We can see that an experienced politician went about all of this quite differently. Ron Sims crafted a plan that draws on at least four different sources for his light rail – MVET, regional, state, and federal. Sims may be a lousy manager (as witnessed by the election mess), but he knows how to get things started.

If Seattle really wants its monorail, it needs to be part of a larger vision. It needs regional, state, and federal funding. In fact, what the monorail needs is to replace light rail. Nobody in leadership has talked about this, principally because Sims, Nickels, and the Seattle Silly Council are all from the same political party and do not want to step on each other’s toes.

But, a real leader in Seattle would come out and say that light rail should be replace with monorail. Here is why: If the monorail team proved one thing, it was that it can get an infrastructure provider to build 14 miles of monorail for $2 billion. The same distance for light rail will be $4 billion. The costs for these projects are always higher than original estimates in the end, but when one starts at half the estimate, it is likely to finish at half the final cost. So, if you really want a monorail, pushing for Sims to substitute it for his slow and ugly light rail is the way to get it.

And, the person you should be able to count on to get the deal done is Mayor Nickels. If he does not jump on this, you should be voting for someone else in the fall. Leadership is what Danny Westneat and others in the Seattle media are calling for. Will we ever have any in this town?

Nickels yes-to-everything and political caution relative to Sims creates the perfect opportunity for a challenger to step in and grab the Mayor's office. It would not be all that hard to place the blame for the failed monorail project on Nickels' shoulders. So, who is going to step up to the plate?

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