Reticular Activator and Knee-Jerk Seattle

For a politician, the trick to managing the Borg of Seattle is to train and then leverage the reticular activators of people.

The reticular activator is the part of your brain that starts noticing things once you are aware of them (whether it is real or not).

Looking to buy a Porsche? Hmmm… everyone seems to be driving Porsches.

Concerned about global warming? Hmmm... the weather sure seems warm lately.

Believe that women are often victims of domestic violence? Hmmm ... seems like there are a lot of stories in the news about women getting hurt by men.

This part of your brain is on the lookout 24/7--even when you're asleep--for things that fall into any of these three categories: 1) things that are familiar or connected to you in some way; 2) things that are unusual, abnormal, shocking or strange; and 3) things that are dangerous, threatening or problematic.

Whenever your brain detects things that are familiar, unusual or problematic, it sends a message to the conscious side of the brain and says, "Hey, wake up! There's something you need to pay attention to here." We call those familiar, unusual or problematic things "activators." Your brain acts like radar on a subconscious level, constantly looking for activators. It's searching for things that are familiar, unusual, or problematic--things that require a conscious response. Whenever it finds one, it snaps your brain out of alpha sleep and into beta alert.

This is the part of your mind that marketers leverage. Same with politicians and same with "advocates" hoping to get funding for their cause. Run enough advertisements, say something enough, or claim a crisis enough, and people start to see it or notice it through the noise of everyday life. Information or evidence that contradicts the message or belief planted in their heads is not noticed. It takes a conscious, deliberate, and often painful effort to see reality once that old reticular activator has been trained.

This is why it took Norm Maleng so long to arrest Verma Ogden-Whitehead. And, this is why people in Seattle buy so easily into "global warming" without having much evidence to support it.

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Mayor Takes Action on Longer Days

In a stunning revelation, Seattle’s Mayor Nickels announced that global warming is evidenced by the sun coming up earlier and setting later.

“Per my orders, Seattle City government’s Office of Sustainability and Environment has been tracking the time of sunrise and sunset. Ever since some time in January, the sun has been coming up earlier and it has been setting later. The increased sunlight is adding to global warming. This is a major crisis!”

The Mayor said that the cause of the longer days the area has been experiencing has not been determined, but he is pretty sure it has something to do with human activity. He dismissed claims by third grade students that longer days happen every summer. He blamed increased use of cars.

Nickels announced a four part plan to combat increased sunlight:

1) By executive order, shades will be installed on all windows in city office buildings and drawn down during regular business hours;
2) A “sunlight surcharge" of 40% will be assessed on all parking fees in the City;
3) In order to reduce enjoyment of sunny days, a moratorium on sunbathing city parks will be in affect until further notice;
4) He will request the City Council for special funds to study the cost and feasibility of putting all city streets in tunnels.

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"We now see what we are reluctant to see"

A quote in the Seattle Times from prosecutor Norm Maleng as he struggles with his reticular activator to "see" the reality of a woman murdering her husband for money:

"We now see what we are reluctant to see," Maleng said during a news conference Tuesday morning to announce the charges. "A man who was set up and murdered by his own family for financial reasons."

The "reluctant" comment by Maleng is gross understatement. It's as if he is trying to find an excuse for arresting and charging a female murderer. Government agencies, courts, police forces, and even the public have been indoctrinated not to see the abussive and violent behavoir of some women. Where are the DV divas and screem queens now? Why aren't there quotes in the newspaper from the Eastside Domestic Violence Shelter aristocracy about the danger all men live under? For that matter, where is the usual domestic violence hysteria column from Nicole Brodeur? She could write this one about the damage done in our state by women with hyphenated last names.

Even Maleng must have been pretty dang "reluctant," because it took him 15 months to press charges even though the 911 call that alerted police to the slaying came from Ogden-Whitehead's own cell phone while she was supposedly at home and in bed at the time of the brutal murder.

Velma got her son and one of his friends to do the dirty deed of murdering her husband. She did it for the money from life insurance and the sale of investments Jon had accumulated prior to his ill-fated marriage to Velma. She netted more than $1 million by selling Jon Ogden's assets and collecting on his life insurance; quite an increase from the lifestyle she had before getting maried.

So-called domestic violence experts concede that over 300 men are killed by the women in their lives each year, but they are also quick to point out that roughly 1,000 women per year are killed by husbands and boyfrieds. The Ogden-Whitehead murder case demonstrates why 300 is under-estimated. Women who kill their husbands and boyfrieds often get another man to do their dirty work. Those murders do not show up in the statistics of women killing men.

Notice that the column in the Seattle Times was quick to find anecdotal and hearsay evidence that, of course, Jon Ogden was abusing Ogden-Whitehead in some way, such as not allowing her to run up credit cards. These totally ubsubstantiated rumors (which never should have been reported by the Seattle Times, by the way) were based on Ogden-Whitehead's supposed statements to freinds. Yes, complaints by the same woman that was doing dramatic appearances with press coverage at the scene of HER crime, which the press was lapping up, asking the murderer (which was actually HER) to turn himself in. How much credibility does she have?

So, it's time to ask all of the politicians who have used domestic violence hysteria for political gain: What of Ogden-Whitehead?

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Check out Unity '08

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Time for a third party, or at least a viable way of telling Democrats and Republicans that we are tired of their extreme ideologies and the impact it has on our lives and our basic freedoms.

The two parties have duopoly power over politics in this country. This bi-modal arrangement naturally causes the 2 parties to go out the far left and right extremes. That leaves the majority of Americans unrepresented in politics. Worse, when they do agree on something, such as VAWA, it usually screws average Americans.

Check out Unity 08. While the name is corny and sounds like just more political PR crap, Unity 08 has an interesting mission. Joining Unity 08 is a way to make yourself heard and perhaps help affect change. Click on Unity 08 button above and check them out!

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Misandrist Medicine

Confessions of misandrist medicine in the New York Times, postured to further the social reconstructionist cause by protraying men as weak as opposed to simply just not the same as women. Even while admitting the harm done, a medical researcher cannot resist taking a slap at her mis-placed idea of male ego by titling her piece "The Weaker Sex":

In 2004, the National Institutes of Health spent twice as much on studies done only on women as only on men.

(If you are not already registered for the New York Times, you will need to register to access this article. Doesn't take long.)

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Whitehead Murdered by Wife Whitehead-Ogden

"He loved his wife. He was always talking about Velma," Delaney said. "It's unbelievable."

Believe it.

Just ask Katherine Knight of Australia, who sliced and diced her husband, Mr. Price, into little bitty pieces, hung his skin to dry, had his head boiling in a pot, and was about to serve up his roasted buttocks together with vegetables to his children, when police stopped the macabre scene complete with name cards on the dinner table for each of Mr. Price's kids.

Katherine Knight, likes to wear feminine Laura Ashley clothes and is known in jail for her demure behaviour. She is appealing her life sentence on the grounds that, well, she is a woman.

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Where is Maria Cantwell?

As the US Senate debates a bill that would allow last mile broadband access providers (such as Qwest and Comcast in the Seattle area) to charge content providers for “preferential treatment,” the Seattle times quotes Art Brodksy, communications director of Public Knowledge, asking a striking question:

"Where is Maria Cantwell?"

This horrible bill, with the falsely innocuous name of Communications, Consumers' Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 and sponsored by Washington’s nemesis from Alaska, Republican Senator Ted Stevens, would ruin the Internet as we know it. It would be horrible for Seattle area power-houses, such as Microsoft and Amazon. Worse, it would require web start-ups, an important entrepreneurial economic driver in the Seattle area, to work their way through a confusing maze of broadband access providers and pay them scarce resources just so their web site will be accessible to end-users.

Even blogs like Sound Politics should be mightily pissed off at the idea of this horrible bill. If this bill is passed in its current form, Sound Politics would need to make extortion payments to the likes of Qwest and Comcast if they want their blog to load faster than dial-up speed over the broadband connections of its readers.

So, where is Maria Cantwell when something so devastating to Washington State and especially the Seattle area is about to happen in the US Senate? Isn’t she supposed to be in there fighting for us?

Well, she’s too busy trying to get attention on things that do nothing for employment, business, transportation, or any of the other bottom-line issues that affect us.

Cantwell wants the rest of the country to raise its minimum wage to Washington State’s levels. As if that helps Washington.

Cantwell wants to raise the national average gas mileage of cars. A lot of good that's gonna do for Washington.

Cantwell is busy saving the oceans.

She's saving the whales.

Cantwell worries about oil drilling in the Arctic refuge. But, then, of course, complains about high gas prices.

Cantwell claims to be Seattle's technology representative in Congress. But, no mention by Cantwell of a Senate bill that is poised to demolish a primary economic driver of the region of the state from which she gains her primary political support. I would say that the list of political distractions above reminds one of the old saying about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, except that Cantwell's political weight is more like a dingy than large ship. So, let’s just say she is busy whale watching from her dingy while the Titanic is about to steam over not just her and her dingy, but a large portion of her constituents.

Mike McGavick should be all over this. Cantwell has been loosing credibility with Washington voters with every non-issue she invests in, and now she is in a statistical tie with McGavick. Standing up for the technology and internet interests of Washington State could put McGavick solidly in the lead.

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"People Helping People"?

A column in the Seattle Times about Karla Nelson’s struggle to get help from DSHS to deal with the severe psychiatric problems of her 13 year old son highlights yet again the confused and corrupted mission of DSHS.

Nelson got her son into inpatient treatment several years ago, after he spent about nine months on a waiting list. He spent about a year in the facility before being released. Last summer, his [Nelson’s son] illness grew so severe and his outbursts were escalating — in addition to the speaker wire [which he ate], he had eaten coins and erasers, and he had tried to strangle and hang himself — that she began trying to get him admitted again. In addition, he weighed more than his mother, so there was no way she could stop him.

In October, he went after Nelson, scratching and pinching her. Although the assault was minor, it was enough to get him arrested.

After the boy was released, and Nelson pleaded with a judge not to send him home, the judge ordered DSHS to take custody of him and provide treatment. But, DSHS fought the judge’s decision, saying that DSHS only provides care for "abused or neglected" children. An appeals court agreed with DSHS.

Isn't it funny that DSHS uses the slogan "People Helping People" on its web site?

If only DSHS and Washington State courts were as diligent about returning children to fathers who want them, especially after a mother has been proven unfit, as they were in Nelson’s case. Washington State family courts are notorious for removing fathers from the lives of children based on flimsy allegations used as a tactic in divorce proceedings.

DSHS and similar state agencies across the country are not even inclined to return children to their father even when the mother has been proven unfit to parent. Too often, these agencies prefer to keep children in the foster care system in order to continue collecting child support from the real father. In his most recent newsletter, Glenn Sacks highlighted a case in Massachusetts:

After the Boston Globe published Giving fathers a chance (6/8/06) I received an interesting letter from a father who said he is "living the nightmare described in the column."

I can't give out many details, but basically he got divorced, mom got custody of his daughter, the mother was abusive and the state (properly) took the girl away from the mother. After that, however, the state has refused to let this man's daughter come home to him. The girl adores her dad and there's been no finding of unfitness against the dad. However, the girl's caseworker keeps coming up with vague reasons why it's somehow not in the best interests of this child to be reunited with her father. These include gems like "she isn't ready for overnight visits yet." And dad has fought a long, hard battle to convince the state that's it's in his daughter's best interests to come live with him. Meanwhile his little girl's childhood is slipping away.

The story is incredibly infuriating. As I listened to the father refute the various reasons the caseworker threw up to prevent his daughter from coming home, I kept thinking who cares what this social worker thinks? Unless there's been a finding of unfitness, this girl belongs with her father.

It's amazing the way these petty demi-gods in social services think they have the right to dictate terms to fit parents as to what's best for their kids. The fate of this girl and her father is in the hands of an inexperienced, 20-something crusader to whom the system gives way too much power. What an outrage.

CPS, a division of DSHS, often provides admirable help for children in horrible circumstances. But, a more important and profitable objective of DSHS is to earn federal matching funds for the collection of child support. In fact, this appears to be their primary mission. This mission is ideologically charged instead of inspired by the welfare of children.

To give you an idea of their mission, DSHS and the feminist ideologists that run it are also active in campaigning against new shared parenting legislation in Washington State. Shared parenting legislation, sponsored by Senator Jim Kastama, simply requires a presumption by family courts of joint custody of children. The wording of the bill is innocuous and in reading it, one has a hard time believing shared parenting is not already a presumption in family courts.

From the digest of SB 5350 on the Washington State legislature’s web site:

Declares that there shall be a presumption that shared parental responsibility is in the beset interests of minor children unless: (1) The parents have agreed to an award of residential placement or decision-making authority to only one parent; or (2) The court finds that shared parental responsibility would be detrimental to the child or children.

So, why would anyone, especially a state agency like DSHS and a state Senator like Kohler-Wells, who boldly assert that they are protectors of children, have a problem with Kastama’s bill? They prefer the current hidden standard, which for all intents and purposes assumes that a father is unfit to parent.

Here-in lays the confused mission of DSHS. The anti-father ideology, egged on by people like Kohler-Wells and the current Secretary of DSHS, Robin Arnold-Williams, is a large part of the problem. But, DSHS also advocates against shared parenting because it threatens the flow of federal money. They fear that shared parenting plans would result in a reduction in court mandated child support payments, which would in turn reduce the federal take by DSHS.

As we can see in the successful fight that DSHS put up against helping an obviously mentally ill child and his mother, DSHS is clear on the nature of its ideologically and financially inspired mission. It’s time everyone else in Washington State connected the dots and realized the true nature of that corrupted mission.

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Gregoire's Plan to Raise Property Taxes

Gregoire declared that she will work with the Legislature to provide “some sort” of tax relief if the all-too-predictable anti-taxpayer ruling of a King County judge nullifying I-747 is allowed to stand on appeal.

Tax relief is more than overdue for Washington State taxpayers, even with I-747 intact. Washington State residents suffer from the fourth highest per capita tax burden of all the 50 states.

But, here is the catch, according to the Seattle Times:

Gregoire, a Democrat, said Monday that if the appeal falls short, she would work with the Legislature to come up with some type of tax relief, especially for elderly and low-income homeowners.

In other words, the Democrat gangsters that run the state (and steal elections), will pick and choose who pays reasonable taxes vs. those that pay among the highest taxes in the nation. The goal is to protect their voter base, not the tax base. Middle class taxpayers, as always in Washington State, will get screwed if Gregoire and her ganstar pals in the Legislature are allowed to decide.

In reality, Gregoire is attempting to steal the thunder of Rob McKenna, who is in charge of appealing the wacky “ruling” of Judge King County Superior Court Judge Mary Roberts. If McKenna fails, the D-gangsta plan is to fight the inevitable initiative by Tim Eyman by pealing off voting segments with special tax relief.

Of course, none of this much matters if North Korea hits Washington State with a nuclear tipped missile. Not to worry, though, since Gregoire has a plan for that too: Cut and run from Iraq in order to show the North Korean dictator that we really mean business.

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Celebrating Diversity?

Larry King and CNN celebrate pedophilia tonight with Mary K. Letourneau and her husband-victim Vili Fualaau.

In other news, Vili is sentenced for drunk driving.

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Old Rule Never Fails: Follow the Money

As a follow up to the bogus so-called "study" by Group Health that only surveyed women, and then found rampant domestic abuse against them, check out this article in the Washington Times about an actual scientific study.

.... the study, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, may also reopen a long-festering ideological argument about whether men or women are the most violent in the home.

The study found that, contrary to public perception, women committed more acts of violence than their male partners in 11 overall categories of violence. Specifically, women were more likely than men to throw something, push, grab, shove, slap, kick, bite, hit or threaten a partner with a knife or gun.

However, men were more likely than women to commit "severe" acts of violence, such as beating, choking, burning, forcing sex or actually using a knife or gun on their partners.

When minor and major acts of violence were tallied, female-to-male violence accounted for 18.2 percent of overall violence and 7.5 percent of severe violence. Male-to-female violence accounted for 13.7 percent of overall violence and 8.6 percent of severe violence.

The study, which is based on an interviews with 1,615 married or cohabiting couples and extrapolated nationally using census data, found that 21 percent of couples reported domestic violence.

When woman's shelter director Sandra Horley was asked why nobody in the domestic violence industry wants to talk about these findings, she responded, “If we put across this idea that the abuse of men is as great as the abuse of women, then it could seriously affect our funding."

A rare moment of honesty.

Perhaps it's time politicians listened to someone like the Dean of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania instead of scream-queen victimhood ideologs:

Richard Gelles, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania, said male-to-female violence is far more common at the most severe levels of violence, he said. Intimate-partner homicide data, for instance, show that in 2004, there were 1,200 females killed by their male partners, compared with 388 males killed by their female partner.

But domestic violence is not a "gender crime" against women, he said.

"The science is just overwhelming" that, in most kinds of violence, female-to-male rates of violence are equal to or exceed male-to-female violence, Mr. Gelles said.

Instead, he categorizes it as a "family violence" crime, in which both men and women can be culpable, he said. "I am hoping to see people stand up and say, 'Enough of the ideology. Enough of the advocacy.' "

Or, perhaps they will listen to another trained scientist from Canada, Don Dutton, Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia:

Indeed, it is fair to say that no other area of established social welfare, criminal justice or public health depends on such weak and biased evidence in support of mandated practice as does IPV. The model of "treatment" for IPV [intimate partner violence] that flows from this false understanding is not the kind of therapy that could benefit both male and female perpetrators. Instead, our system prefers "intervention" -- against men, never women --and a "psychoeducational" model of behaviour modification that essentially amounts to inculcating the radical feminist political viewpoint.

Where does the gender bias come from? Ideology. Radical feminism insists that men -- all men -- by their nature pursue power and control for its own sake. As a result, we become complicit in the myths of gender politics. So when a crazed individual male with a bizarre personal back story shoots women, we hold candlelight vigils. But when a vengeful woman cuts off a man's penis, he becomes fodder for standup comedians, while she is hailed as a symbol of female empowerment.

More from Wendy McElroy here.

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At Least Find Something Real to Complain About

The crap that gets into newspapers never ceases to astound. One would think that there would be a basic screening of opinion articles from paid columnists for accuracy. There apparently is not.

E.J. Dionne is in the Seattle Times saying:

The decline of good auto-industry jobs is a particularly dramatic example of a larger problem. In the June 10 issue of National Journal, staff correspondent Bruce Stokes argues that "the global economy's job machine may be breaking down, again."

Citing data from the Economic Policy Institute, Stokes notes that employment growth in the current recovery is much slower than in earlier upturns — "the slowest in any recovery since the Kennedy administration," he writes.

Not much evidence of an understanding of basic economics or the power of innovation on display here.

First, the American auto industry is dying not because of macroeconomic policy, but because foriegn auto-makers simply make better cars and innovate faster. Period. Detriot is hampered by the double whammy of bad management that is exacerbated by labor contracts that limit flexibility to respond to the market or to innovate.

There is a third factor as well. What the American auto industry needs is to open up to what Clayton M. Christensen of the Harvard Business School calls "The Innovator's Dilemma." The heart of what Christensen discovered is a continuing cycle of technological innovations taken from one industry and applied in another. These innovations are initially less than perfect but less expensive than traditional technology used in an industry. They improve, however, and eventually (sometimes quickly) overtake the traditional technology driving an industry. The old firms die as new firms apply these technologies and take over markets.

From some reason, politicians and misguided labor unions believe that GM and Ford should never die. They trade away future innovations in the American auto industry so that they can buy a few more years for these companies. (Note: the auto industry is not the same thing as companies in the auto industry). Much of this is done through regulations, under the rubric of "safety," that are tailored so that only the old-line auto makers can meet them.

Countries such as Japan do much of their innovation within existing companies. That's just the way things work there. In America, our best innovation comes from entreprenuerial activity. That's just the way things work here.

For the sake of the American automobile industry (e.g., not the current auto companies), GM should be allowed to die. Perhaps Ford too. The vacated space will be filled with innovators producing cars powered in innovative ways and nobody can predict where these innovators will come from. But, some will come from American soil as long as artificial barriers are not constructed and maintained. And, they will drive employment.

So, the remorse expressed by Dionne is actually just an example of ignorance. Further ignorance is shown by suggesting that employment growth in the current recovery is slow. The fact is, we endured the last recession with unusually low unemployment. All previous recessions have seen much larger spikes in unemployment. When employment hardly declined in the first place, and we start a recovery with relatively high levels of employment, it's ridiculous to complain about slow employment growth.

It just comes across as whinning. Yet another false problem from the professional whinners, naysayers, and defeatests that seem to be the only voices of the Democratic Party. It's a shame that the only other viable option is to vote for Republicans.

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Go to Botswana, Stay

Kathleen Paynter of the Seattle Times appears to be going on a safari to Botswana. She has self-righteously left a list of to-dos for Seattle. Not many people read Paynter’s emotionally baiting and loose-with-the-facts columns these days. But, this one is worth it, if only as a concise summary of the key social re-constructionist themes coming out of Seattle chattering class. These are all things worth working on, almost a rallying cry, except when Paynter says “go left” on these issues, most of us are better served by turning hard to the right.

Here is a sampling.

Paynter wants us to stop supporting Tim Eyman. His efforts to cut taxes get in the way of the insatiable appetite of politicians. One of Eyman’s best initiatives limited property tax increases to 1% per year. This one got shot down this week by an activist King County judge under false pretenses. They’ll do anything to knock down obstacles to grabbing more of your hard earned money, it seems.

With a mayor like Greg Nickels, who states that he likes every tax and spend proposal on this year’s ballot, we can expect massive property tax increases pushed through as quickly as possible. Eyman is the energizer bunny of initiatives, however, so he’ll be back with a new one protecting middle-class families from further property tax rape. Task number one is to support him.

Regarding the Viaduct, Paynter wants us to pretend that Seattle politicians have the credibility, even the sanity, to make sound decisions. And, then let them act on those decisions. On the Viaduct, however, I say “do nothing” is the best option. Credibility and sanity are in short supply in Seattle politics these days. Let’s leave the problem for another generation. Hopefully, they will vote more sensible and responsible people into government. In the meantime, if you are afraid the Viaduct will fall during an earthquake, don’t drive on or below it. It's that simple.

If you live outside Seattle, you should love the do nothing option. Really, there’s not much reason to go into Seattle these days anyway. You are only extremely unlucky if your job is in Seattle, since most businesses realize that offices in Seattle are more trouble and expense and inconvenience than they are worth. Nickels per-employee tax on employers aint gonna help. Meanwhile, the atmosphere is turning toward the geriatric, with the only housing going up in the form of condos designed and over-priced for retired baby boomers.

Paynter doesn’t want you to support changing the Constitution while she risks her broad backside becoming crocodile bait. She prefers changing the Constitution – such as eliminating equal protection and due process – without actually telling anyone or bringing it to a vote. This is what has happened with all of the punitive anti-male and anti-father laws spearheaded by Hillary Rodham while she was bitch-slapping Bill around the Whitehouse, and supported by gender feminists such as Sen. Patty Murray.

I agree, let’s not open the Constitution to the whims of today’s pitiful political class. Instead, let’s enforce what we already have. The writers of the Constitution were a miracle and a better Constitution will never be had. VAWA III would go, as would rape shield laws, and Sims' CAO would be tossed, along with government sponsored bigotry, like SPS's Office of Racism and Equity.

Finally, let’s NOT emulate Canada’s absurd attempts to pretend that it’s somehow surprising that all of the members of a recently uncovered terrorist plot were Muslim. Let's go after these fascists, blow them up at every opportunity, and be open about their hateful, violent, and radical interpretation Islam. Doing otherwise is just fooling ourselves.

Oh, and lastly, let’s remember not to read Paynter’s silly column upon her return. She will pretend to have gained earth moving insight from Botswana. She’ll miss the important stuff about dysfunctional and perpetually aid dependent Africa.

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Seattle Journalist Turns to Blogs for Ideas

Is Danny Westneat of the Seattle Times stealing the ideas of Silly Seattle?

Looks that way when comparing Westneat's recent column to one on this blog. I was the first to compare the case of Watada refusing orders based on his conscience to pharmacists refusing to fill perspriptions for the morning after pill.

Oh well, that's OK Danny. You can steal my ideas from time to time, since I know there is not much original thinking over at the Times.

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DSHS Systematically Inclined to Make Bad Choices

Jim Miller of Sound Politics questions why CPS would place children in the home of a foster parent with a criminal history. It seems pretty obvious that CPS failed and it is hard to believe, given the history of the foster parent discussed. Look at the DSHS system that CPS exists within (DSHS is the disfunctional "parent" of CPS), and you start to see some answers.

DSHS is primarily focused on getting federal matching funds for collecting child support. DSHS actually has a financial incentive to see divorces, broken families, and children living in homes without biological fathers. Without divorce and subsequent child support, DSHS would not receive millions of dollars of federal matching funds, which is basically just profit and helps pay the paychecks of the bureaucracy.

It's very easy for them to justify this as being all about the kids. But, look at the ideology driving people such as the head of DSHS, who has a hyphonated last name, and you start to see that the larger policy objective is social re-constructionism. It has little to do with helping children. Evident is an underlying ambigious attitude, bordering on outright hostility, about the benefit of fathers in the lives of their children.

When an agency makes the removal of biological fathers from the lives of their children a policy objective and only sees those fathers as paychecks (for the mother and for the DSHS bureaucracy), it leads to a confused mission.

Check out this article by Glen Sacks, that just came out today. Around the entire country, these agencies are so ideologically confused and anti-father that they seek to place kids with biological fathers in only 8% of cases when they are removed from their mother's home for neglect or abuse. Yes, some of these fathers are as screwed up as the mothers. But, a lot of them are not - a lot more than 8% are not. Amazingly, for DSHS and many other similar agencies in states across the country, placement with the father of a child removed from the mother's home is not even considered as a first option.

Now, who wants to argue with this statement: Since DSHS receives profit from federal matching funds for every dollar of child support they receive, they have an incentive to place children with foster parents (like the scum-bag Miller is talking about) instead of with their real fathers. After all, placement with the real father would result in child support payments ending, and a reduction in child support payments results in a reduction in federal matching funds. In other words, it's more profitable for DSHS to place kids with foster parents than with biological fathers.

My guess is that most people working in CPS are dedicated and trying their best. Some are bad, of course. But, they operate within an anti-father organization and climate. They are systematically inclined to make bad choices as a result.

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Watada, Pharmacists, and Civilian Rule over the Military

Lt. Ehren Watada says he will not go to Iraq because in his own assessment the war is illegal. In his view, it just wouldn’t be right to follow orders.

Curiously, many of those that support Watada also believe that Washington State pharmacists should be forced to fill prescriptions for the “morning after pill” even if they morally object.

Predictably, Governor Gregoire came out against the state’s Pharmacy Board ruling allowing pharmacists to deny filling morning-after pill prescriptions. She pledged to “help them get the right answer.”

Watada, it seems, is using the same sort of argument as pharmacists for refusing to fulfill the duty he signed up for. Will Gregoire also pledge to help Watada get to the “right answer”?

Probably not. But, hopefully, people less ideologically constrained will be able to see Watada’s decision to disobey orders in a larger context. He, of course, signed an oath when he joined the Army which includes obeying the commands of a civilian leader, the President of the United States, without question or hesitation.

Now, some small minded people with limited perspective on the world argue that Watada should be able to simply walk away from his responsibilities to the military. They seem to be saying that he can disobey his commander in chief whenever he disagrees with him.

But, let’s look at the flip side of this and we will be able see why it is so important that Watada be held accountable for breaking his contract and oath with the US military.

The United States military was one of the first to be completely under civilian command. This arrangement is all too rare. In many other countries, the military uses its might to actually take over and run the country. The military and a country’s government are often the same thing.

Inviting Watada and other army officers to disobey their civilian leaders when they reject to a war invites them to disobey when they object to civilian leadership on any matter. It would mean that civilian leadership no longer commands the military. In fact, it would invite the military to disregard its civilian command altogether and simply take over the government.

These seemingly small matters usually have much larger and potentially much more frightening consequences. As much as anti-war activists hate the war in Iraq, and generally have a disdain for the military, how would they feel about our democracy being usurped and the US military taking over command of the country? The simple doctrine that puts our military under the clear and unambiguous absolute command of our civilian leadership is the only thing standing between our democracy and marshal law. As evidenced in countries around the world and throughout history, civilian command over the military is a precarious and fragile arrangement indeed.

It’s rare for our media to point out the larger implications of an act by someone like Watada. They focus on the emotional aspect of his defiance and make him out to be a brave hero for taking a stand. Someone should take this to its logical conclusion, because civilian rule over the military really is at stake.

For this reason, for the sake of our democracy, Watada must be punished with the full weight of military law. Doing so would not be about protecting the military from disobedience, or protecting the government's Iraq policy, but about protecting all of us from a military that could one day answer only to itself.

This is something our state should understand, because Gregoire will surely do the same to pharmacists.

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Can Mayor Nickels Save Energy By Self-Propelling?

Many of my readers may think I was just joking when suggesting Mayor Nickels should run his car on his own prodigious methane output. Not so. Read this from the Bellingham Herald.

Students at Western Washington University's Vehicle Research Institute have always been on the cutting edge - making solar cars, new engines that run better and hybrids using different fuels.

Their latest innovation, if it can be duplicated in the real world, may be among the best ever.

The students, led by the institute's director, are developing a scrubber that could remove corrosive chemicals from the gases released by cow manure. If it works, the remaining gas could be used to fuel automobiles.

That's right: Some day you may be able to drive your car on gas created from cow [or mayoral] manure.

…..

The students are taking the "scrubbed" gas they are creating and pumping it into a car they have made that runs on natural gas. Students say waste produced by 15 cows in one day is enough to power their car for 250 to 300 miles.

Nickels has shoveled so much of his own crap lately that using the technology of Western Washington University students he surely can self-propel hundreds of miles per day. His new hybrid vehicle should be replaced with a simple internal combustion engine equipped to run on natural gas.

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Will Ideology Trump Science?

Scientific researchers (e.g., not campus activists wearing ideological blinders) from Harvard and the University of Chicago have found that 5% of humans have what researchers call "intermittent explosive disorder" (IED). People with IED are susceptible to uncontrollable anger attacks.

But new brain-imaging studies show that people with IED have abnormal brain signaling in areas that control anger responses, Coccaro said. When people with rage disorder are shown pictures of people with angry faces, their amygdala lights up far more than is seen in healthy subjects. The amygdala, deep in the center of the brain, governs emotional responses to threats.

At the same time, the front portion of their brain, which serves as an executive control over emotional urges, is less active than in normal people, Coccaro said, indicating that people with IED quickly lose control.

"People with this problem have a low threshold for exploding and that's probably genetically and biologically mediated," he said.

IED and a few other likely candidate personality disorders, usually combined with drugs and/or alcohol, are likely the cause of most domestic violence, not "patriarchal control and oppression." Domestic violence is much less prevalent than the old "1 in 3" myth propagated by graduates of Women Studies departments around the country and females are not the only victims.

While the onset of IED seems to start younger for boys than girls (13 vs. 19), there is no indication that one sex is more prone to have this problem than another. For both sexes, IED seems to fade with age.

Scientific evidence that debunks DV mythology continues to pile up. That doesn't matter much to Rebecca Cohn of the California General Assembly, who is pushing AB 2051 to ensure that ony women receive victim services for domestic violence. That goes against the language of VAWA III, which specifically states that VAWA funding must be neutral of sex.

When ideology trumps science as it does with gender feminist pork, one has to wonder what really drives global warming hysteria.

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Shut Up Honky!

Note from Caprice Hollins replacing the definition of racism she originally posted to the Seattle Public School system's web site:

In response to the numerous concerns voiced regarding definitions posted on the Equity & Race website, we have decided to revise our website in a way that will hopefully provide more context to readers around the work that Seattle Public Schools is doing to address institutional racism. The intended purpose of our work in the area of race and social justice is to bring communities together through open dialogue and honest reflection around what is meant by racism and the impact is has on our society and more specifically, our students. Our intention is not to put up additional barriers or develop an “us against them” mindset, nor is it to continue to hold onto unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot or colorblind mentality. It is our hope that we can explore the work of leading scholars in the areas of race and social justice issues to help us understand the dynamics and realities of how racism permeate throughout our society and use their knowledge to help us create meaningful change. This difficult work is vital to the success of our students and families. Thank you for sharing your concerns.

Warm regards,

Caprice D. Hollins, Psy.D.
Director of Equity & Race Relations
Seattle Public Schools

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Mossback Digs Beneath Moss To Expose Hollins

Knute Berger, a.k.a. Mossback of the Seattle Weekly, calls bullshit on the Seattle Public School System’s definition of racism. Old Knute is to be commended for digging deep into the ideological oppression, distraction, and utter nonsense hidden behind the fancy language of SPS’s Office of Race Relations and Equity.

A topic that started in the blog-o-sphere, finally made its way to printed media, albeit not touched by Seattle’s two large newspapers. Better late than never, Knute. (The Seattle PI was late to the story; The Seattle Times is still mum). And the positive result has been astounding. Caprice Hollins, Director of said office, has removed her bizarre definition of so-called “racism” from the SPS web site! She includes a note in its place, in large bold print, hoping to explain herself and her agenda, while doing a little sniping at her critics (more on that later).

Back to Mossback, who indeed found and thoroughly examined the source of Hollins’ ideology: Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook, edited by Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin.

These definitions are presented by the district but not authored by them. The source is Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook, edited by Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin, and published by Routledge in 1997. It's described as the "first reader to cover the scope of oppression in America." It's an instructional text for teaching classes designed to stamp out all the "isms," from racism to sexism, from heterosexism to classism and ablism. All isms are equal, equally real and equally bad.

Now if you thought this was some neutral manual aimed at making room for a diversity of thought and opinion, you'd be wrong. Teaching Diversity is no measured academic study. It's the kind of re-education manual Chairman Mao would have loved. It doesn't only address the challenges of living in a pluralistic society, it promotes "a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable." It regards individualism as a "luxury" of white people. It calls for collectivism and political action. "We believe that eradicating oppression ultimately requires struggle against all its forms."

Underlying Hollins’ borrowed and bizarre definitions of racism is a simple fact of present day American culture. When we find life to be a struggle, we look around for someone to blame. Charges of racism in a bureaucracy as self-censured and “sensitive” as SPS are just a distraction from the reality that SPS as an institution is a miserable failure and a massive overhaul is needed. And, perhaps more importantly, it is a distraction from the failure of parents.

Struggles, set-backs, and obstacles are not the same thing as racism. Hollins and SPS are encouraging students, parents, and the community at large to blame life’s challenges on the abstract notion of the supposedly subtle oppression of subconscious “racism.” By all means, anyone in SPS, students included, who suggests that one race is superior, or another is not capable, should be punished and told to shut the fuck up or get out. The problem with Hollins is that she wants to do the exact opposite. She wants to apply stereotypes, under the rubric of “celebrating diversity.” And, all the while, blame poor scholastic performance on silly paranoid notions of white people conspiring through a parallel universe to get into the minds of everyone else and trick them into failure.

In trying to explain herself on the web site in place of her definition of racism, Hollins claims to just want to create a dialog. Yet, as Knute Berger points out:

The book [Teaching Diversity] details how to conduct diversity courses and encourages discussion and confession, but it also voices suspicion of real debate. "Hegemony," we are reminded, "is also maintained through 'discourse.'" So much so, apparently, that real discourse is tossed out the window. Teaching Diversity isn't really about encouraging the exploration of ideas and identities. Its purpose is to steer everyone to a single answer: an America that Noam Chomsky could love.

I suspect that behind the hiring of Caprice Hollins and her insidiously hateful agenda is the same problem that underlies the poor performance of so many students enrolled in SPS - somebody didn’t do their homework. The hiring of Caprice Hollins reflects a typical reflex of the Seattle political class. Create bureaucracies and populate them with people that toss about politically correct lingo from as far left of mainstream as possible. The problem with that is that you sometimes get what you ask for. Caprice Hollins is the real - Women Studies indoctrinated - deal.

SPS will not improve in its very simple agenda – to educate young people – until it stops blaming phantoms for its problems and simply admits, “we suck.” Parents might improve some too if the SPS sponsors of mediocrity and failure were not giving them excuses. Learning is a function of applied effort and hope for the future, despite the obstacles and difficulties of life. And, no matter what you do, it will be harder for some than others; because of circumstance, because of the innate abilities of the individual, because of environment. A black student can no more blame a white kid from across town for his struggles in school (if he is struggling - there are plenty of exceptional black students) than that same white kid can blame blacks for his lack of success in basketball (well, ok, if the kid is white, chances are he struggles on a basketball court). At least not if either really wants to improve their performance.

A future time orientation and belief in yourself and desire to improve yourself as an “individual” are indispensable. Nobody is going to get very far blaming the intangible “-isms.” The sooner all involved in SPS own up to this fact, from Mayor Nickels down to the parents of a child in kindergarten, the better.

That’s a lot to hope for, in know. But, in the meantime, there is a more immediate task. Caprice Hollins is plenty smart, but she is in the wrong job. The misguided definition she borrowed from a Women's Studies textbook may be off the SPS website (gone, but not forgotten by Google), but we now know of her real agenda and ideology. It has no place in a taxpayer supported public school system. SPS should find a graceful way to show her the door.

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