Will She or Won't She?

Clairol’s old ad asked the tantalizing question, “Does she, or doesn’t she?” posing the Earth-shaking question of whether some woman dyed her hair or not but subliminally asking all kinds of other questions about said woman and what she does and doesn’t do.

The title question, “Will she, or won’t she?” is similarly packed with innuendo but related to significantly more profound import, namely, Will Israel attack Iran before Iran is nuclear-capable and missile-capable of reducing much of Israel to a glowing, molten puddle.

The stakes are incredibly high, not only for the State of Israel but for the United States, the Mid East, Western Europe, and much of the rest of the globe.

Should Israel stage a pre-emptive assault on Ahmadinejad’s nuclear and nuclear- delivery facilities, it would face a severely adverse reaction from a world and a United Nations which historically haven’t wildly embraced either Jews or their homeland. Should Israel not attack Iran and have one or more of its cities obliterated, its retaliation against Iran would surely be far worse than pre-emptive surgical strikes.

What to do?

To say the geopolitical situation is complex and grave would be gross oversimplification. Israel has often shown it doesn’t conduct its foreign policy with a watchful, cautious eye toward international or American opinion even though the United States is its chief benefactor, arms supplier, and possibly its lone, reliable ally. However, change is in the air and its new, feisty prime minister, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu seems well aware that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are no George Bush and Condi Rice.

The Bush administration often demonstrated a total, unflinching commitment to the State of Israel. Despite the support of the vast majority of American Jewish voters for Obama and despite the very powerful Jewish Lobby in this country, the Obama administration has been less than committed, and Bibi is well aware of that as well.

What to do?

Political considerations are never simple matters. Even Julius Caesar, backed by the indomitable Roman army, had to placate, cajole, and intimidate when necessary the various factions in Rome as well as in the provinces. Israel is no Rome and Netanyahu is no Caesar and his options are very few and very limited.

How would the United States react to such a strike? Israel has acted unilaterally before when it staged successful raids on Libya and at Entebbe . . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com/)

Earth Day 2009!

For all those waiting in patient expectation, this year’s Earth Day celebrations will be held this Wednesday, April 22nd, at various locales on Earth.

(Nostalgia buffs may want to peruse last year’s reflections on this momentous annual event, “Earth Day 2008″ at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=78.)

This will be the 39th annual Earth Day. The 2009 and 2010 observances have been subtitled, “The Green Generation,” in recognition of the advent of spring, I foolishly assumed, but that was an incorrect assumption as it turns out. I guess the package deal is meant to reduce the Earth Day carbon footprint, or something.

Old farts may recall the original Earth Day in 1970 when its proponents were warning Earthlings to button up their overcoats, assuming that by now the then-imminent New Ice Age would have spread across the continent and enveloped everything from the Statue of Liberty to the fruited plain to the Golden Gate Bridge in one huge ice cube. We all know what assumptions and assuming can lead to.

We all make mistakes, no? The Earth Day people view critical mistakes as occasions to re-group, take a temperature reading, and re-define what they’re talking about since that can vary a great deal.

The Great Freeze Scam was thereafter supplanted in favor of the Global Warming Scam, merely coincidental with age-old, cyclical and natural solar activity, until the damned planet started cooling off again. Undismayed by reality, those who truly care about the Earth as opposed to the rest of us who don’t give a damn, switched gears and tactics and adopted a new buzz term, “climate change.” That, they figured, would cover them no matter what the Earth decided to do.

Put another way, any port in a storm, as long as an atmosphere of crisis could be maintained. Crises scared people and a sense of crisis in lieu of actual science was much more effective in instilling fear. More importantly, scared people would go along with just about anything, even absurdity.

Within the infinitesimally brief period of mere decades, the Earth Day gang had gone full circle. They initially were warning humankind that we were all gradually becoming encased in a global ice cube that would be so cold that human habitation thoughout the planet would be extinguished and we would all wish we were basking in the warm fires of Hell. It progressed to terrifying the planet that it would be bubbling over from an unbearable, unending heat. Lady Liberty and the Golden Gate could be on the verge of melting into, respectively, New York harbor and San Francisco Bay and America’s fruited plain would be like toasted oats. They finally settled on the fail-safe, mid-range buzz term of climate change which would cover their crisis-centered sorry asses no matter what.

I think the 2004 blockbuster movie, “The Day after Tomorrow” was the tipping point in the thinking of the Earth Day scaremongers. It had some great special effects but the preposterous premise that the hot horrors of global warming would, virtually overnight, lead to the frigid ferocity of global freezing tested their imaginations to such a degree that an alternative had to be found to preserve the minds of Al Gore and Company, and climate change was their savior.

Hope springs eternal with that whole crew, not hope for humanity as much as hope to accomplish the true goals of the movement which are wrapped up in U.N. schemes such as the Kyoto Protocol and re-distribution of the world’s wealth, a euphemism for stealing from Americans to give unto non-Americans . . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com/)

Sex, Morality, and the Decline of a Nation II

Pleae see “Sex, Morality, and the Decline of a Nation,” http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=958. That article discussed moral absolutes, gay views on those absolutes, and the general decline in America’s moral attitudes and behavior and what all that means for Western civilization.

This, obviously, is largely a subjective analysis and comments have clearly shown that there are differing opinions, mostly from the gay community. But that’s what makes for horse races and crap games.

As a disclaimer, I should concede that I am no moralist or social philosopher. I am commenting and reflecting simply on the basis of many years observing the social scene in America as well as on evident truths which too many of us refuse to confront.

Despite the gay reaction, this is not part of a campaign to single out homosexuals which, it has been alleged, was the purpose in numerous other articles here. Gays represent a prime example of America’s slipping into the cesspool of moral degradation and eventual oblivion but they are hardly the only examplars.

Cases in point:

AmericanThinker.com recently featured a piece entitled, “Moral Education for the New Order,” http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/04/moral_education_for_the_new_or.html, which primarily focused on on the ethical values of America’s young people. That article by Kyle-Anne Shiver cites various polls on the political, religious, and social views of our youth. All are intimately related and all indicate a downward spiralling of the quality of their lives and, as a consequence, of America’s future.

Cheating in school, lying to parents, stealing, plagiarizing, etc. all have two common denominators: Those most likely to cheat, lie, steal, and plagiarize tend toward the liberal and irreligious end of the political spectrum, and they have an outstanding sense of self esteem.

Liberal thinking leads to moral ambiguity and ambivalence at the same time it confers a false sense of self worth predicated on bad choices liberals make. Lie and cheat today, and get away with it, and it becomes an ego boost that’s carried into adulthood when the the liars and cheaters will continue those habits. No matter what they do, those youths–and their liberal elders, as seen in a related poll–believe they are “better than most people.”

As Shiver concludes, “Liberals tend to think of themselves as not only smarter than conservatives, but also as more honest, more charitable, more loving and more just in their relations with other human beings. . . [whereas] the exact opposite is actually true.” (See her article for a host of examples, details, and sources.)

To forestall misinterpretation, neither Ms. Shiver nor I suggests that conservatives are sacrosanct. Witness former Idaho Senator Larry Craig who, though never convicted, apparently tried to play footsie in a public men’s room with a non-footsie- playing law enforcement agent. Craig’s main challenge now is to convince his wife and kids that it was all a mistake.

More hurtful than Craig to conservatives is Mr. Hollywood Conservative, Mel Gibson, who seems to have let his libido overcome his common sense. . . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com/)

Sex, Morality, and the Decline of a Nation

A topic such as “Sex, Morality, and the Decline of a Nation” immediately raises suspicions that this will develop into a lecture on the evils of immorality and the need for repentance before America is destroyed from within. That is not the purpose here since it is a given. Rather this very mini-treatise is intended as a quick review of the effects of those realities, how far we have come, and how far we have to go before America–and the rest of the Western World–are forced to call it quits, call it a wrap and join the ranks of previous great empires in history’s dustbin.

Morality is something of a subjective value, although civilized people and civilized societies tend to subscribe to certain moral absolutes in order to give their lives and environments meaning and order. Thus, senseless murder is morally and practically repugnant to the vast majority of humanity; to accept it as an alternative to civilized behavior is to reduce the status of individuals to the level of the beasts in the wild and their societies to chaos.

That is a flawed comparison because most of those beasts kill to survive whereas most human murders are committed for lesser-qualty motives but the point still holds true: The consequences are the same for the victims and in human society the unrestricted taking of another’s life undermines and demeans the worth of any society.

Murder aside, other moral absolutes, such as prohibitions against casual sex and even modes of sex tend to change with the times altering an absolute into a relative value. Homosexuals, for example, try to illustrate the “rightness” of their lifestyle by hearkening back thousands of years to the ancient Greeks and Romans and pointing out that in those very olden days homosexuality was not only condoned but believed to be the norm as opposed to heterosexualty. The latter obviously was the only recourse to propagating the race, producing heirs, and having families.

Our gay brethren tend to de-emphasize the facts that homosexuality may have been the preferred route for much of the Greek and Roman nobility who gradually became more and more corrupt as their empires disintegrated. However, it was far from a universal practice and the vast majority, numbering among them commoners, tradesmen, and lowly plebeins, were more traditional by our contemporary standards with committments to wives and husbands, of the opposite gender, and to families.

Gays today also overlook the extant pagan culture, the existence of slavery, the cheapness of life, the popularity of pederasty in Greece, the extreme militarism, and numerous other negatives in ancient times.

Although as the old cigarette commercial went, we’ve come a long way, baby, we seem hell bent on a significant retrogression toward trivializing and rationalizing our behaviors in the last half-century or so, to our individual and to societal detriment.

Few would dispute the moral decline in Western civilization today, a decline accented by the almost total disregard for previous prevailing attitudes toward sex and sexual partners. Not to be outdone in our highly competitive world, younger and younger children are becoming participants in this latest sexual revolution.

Rather than accenting that decline, some would say that today’s widespread, looser sexual mores are precipitating the decline. Whichever came first, the chicken or the egg, the cart before the horse, accent or precipitation, will be only be definitively determined by future historians who will benefit from the advantage of hindsight.

Other societies are way ahead of the game when it comes to what’s sexually acceptable and what is not. Many live in “anything goes,” some in virtually “nothing goes” cultures. The latter would incorporate much of the Islamic world.. . .

(read the rest at http://genelalor.com/)

Abortion Prosperity

It should be good news that at least one sector of our economy is thriving but, unfortunately for pre-born human life, that fact represents very bad news.

With approximately 50,000,000 legal abortions already performed in America since Roe v. Wade, the leader in the highly lucrative business of killing the pre-born has announced its bottom line is looking just peachy keen. “The Planned Parenthood Federation of American [PPFOA] released its annual report for 2007-2008 last week, revealing record net assets of $1.014 billion and an increase of 15,560 more abortions in 2007 than the previous year:” http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=46449.

Rendering that success even peachier, that CNS report includes what may be a revelation to some, namely that “The American taxpayer also contributed more than ever before, with $349.6 million of Planned Parenthood’s funding coming from government grants and contracts.”

The PPFOA is right up there with politicians as the most deceptive and hypocritical group in our country but, whereas politicos are generally understood to be liars and cheats, the PPFOA is considered fairly reputable. Witness that $349.6 million of hard earned taxes which goes into its coffers, thanks to you, me, and everyone else, which monies would never be funneled into a disreputable organization, right?

Why is the PPFOA deceptive, hypocritical, and disreputable? Let’s start with its very name which suggests it is an altruistic association dedicated to “planning parenthood” when, in truth, it has achieved over a billion dollars in assets largely by virtue of ending not planning the prospect of parenthood, that is, by aborting human lives. Using the word, “virtue” in the same breath with the PPFOA must in itself be immoral.

Avid supporters of avid abortion supporter, Barack Obama, the PPFOA proudly reported that it had outdone itself by performing 15,560 more abortions in 2007 than it had in 2006, or 305,310 versus 289,750. That 2007 number accounts for fully 25% of all induced abortions in America. Regrettably for the PPFOA, (and for the pre-born), it has a great deal of competition in the baby murder business. Still, 25% is anything but a shabby total and reflects the truly outstanding job they’re doing for people intent on “planning parenthood.”

The PPFOA was founded in 1925 as the American Birth Control League, ABCL, by radical eugenist/racist Margaret Sanger who sought to rid the world of “inferior” species, principally although not exclusively, Black people, via sterilization and extermination. Ironically or not so ironically, Sanger is belatedly succeeding since her brainchild today caters to, again principally though not exclusively, to minorities. Some have referred to those efforts as Black genocide: http://www.blackgenocide.org/sanger.html

Numbers can be very deceiving, especially when the Abortion Lobby publicizes them. For example, . . . (Read the rest at http://genelalor.com/)

Armenia, the Forgotten Genocide

The Forgotten Armenian Genocide

It began April 24th, 1915 and continued until 1917. When it was over, a million and a half Armenians were gone, dead, murdered by Turkish forces for one simple, sick reason: They were Armenians and Christians. Approximately fifty percent of a people were all but exterminated because the Ottoman Turks wanted to purify their land by ridding it of those they considered Christian “vermin.”

To this day, Turkey is an Armenian-genocide-denier, comparable to Jewish Holocaust-deniers but absent the stigma assigned to those who refuse to concede that the atrocities committed by Hitler’s Nazis actually occurred. Almost worse, and despite voluminous evidence to the contrary, America and the rest of the world seem to have accepted the official prevarications of the Turkish government that the Armenian genocide either never happened or was the consequence of a civil war.

The extensive documentation of the atrocity committed by Turks against the Armenians, the continuing Turkish denial, and the fact that the Armenian genocide of almost a century ago was a prototype for subsequent genocidal events, all were subjects of a 2005 Danish conference: http://www.diis.dk/sw11640.asp

Apparently, President Obama’s advisors failed to provide him with a briefing on those events prior to his recent visit to Turkey where he never deigned to raise the issue, never asked, never demanded, that the Turks finally admit their horrendous history. That disgraceful, politically-correct omission was motivated by Turkey’s strategic importance, its predominantly Muslim population which Obama dared not offend, and a craven lack of moral will to exert pressure on a nominal ally.

If those who are blissfully ignorant of the past are destined to repeat it, American presidents who intentionally disregard history’s atrocities are destined to encourage more of the same.

Adolph Hitler knew very well what the Turks had done twenty years earlier, and gotten away with. He adopted as his templates many of their rationales and actions to effect his Great Solution for the “Jewish problem.”

To Hitler, the Jews also were vermin and he too wanted to cleanse the Motherland, as well as the rest of the planet, of all traces of their influence and presence through his infamous policy of “Judenrein.” Based on world inaction and lack of reaction to how Turkey handled their “Armenian problem,” he seems to have believed that no one would give much of a damn.

Hitler is reputed to have said in 1939, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-479143/The-forgotten-Holocaust-The-Armenian-massacre-inspired-Hitler.html) And he was correct. . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com/.)

President Critiques Our Christianity--in Islamic Turkey!

I suggest President Barrack Hussein Obama speaks only for himself when he outlandishly declared on April 6th that, “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.” Ironically or intentionally dropping that bombshell at the start of the Christian Holy Week, Obama chose his audience well, Turkish Muslims.

If he wanted to re-kindle the widespread rumors that circulated during the campaign that he was a closet Muslim, he couldn’t have picked a better venue than Turkey which has a long-established history of discriminating against Christians and even, in the instance of Armenian Christians, attempting to obliterate them from the face of the Earth.
The Turks must have found great consolation in an American president visiting their country and effectively renouncing America’s Christian heritage following his obsequious bowing to the Muslim King Abdullah.

Had the circumstances been reversed and a professed Muslim-American president renounced Islam in the bowels of the Islamic world, Secret Service or no, Obama could have met the fate of other apostates and been beheaded.

That rumor of his Muslim allegiance had sufficient substance last summer and fall to force Obama-ites to devote much valuable time to refute and condemn it as an absurdity. Whether he and they protesteth too much still remains to be determined.

What is irrefutable is that his heritage and background were distinctly Islamic. His late mother is reputed to have been an atheist, an atheist who happened to marry not one but two Muslim men. Other influences in his life, his African relatives in Kenya as well as his father’s Islamic roots, his years spent in Muslim Indonesia, his Muslim roomies in college, point to the possibility that America’s new leader had more than a smidgen of the Q’uran in his blood.

(Please see “Election 2008: Muslim Smoke and Fire,” http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=605.)

Personally, despite all that and despite his middle name which he insisted on using at his inauguration, I don’t believe Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim. More likely, he is an atheist like his mother and, as such, is an ungodly man by definition. Professed atheists and “ungodly” candidates don’t usually sit very well with the American electorate, however, so Barack needed a base which he found with the radical minister, Jeremiah Wright.

So he sat, religiously, in his pew for 20 years at the Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ–NOT of Allah–and was married by and had his two girls christened by that good reverend. Those facts were offered as proof that Obama was a good, practicing Christian. All they really proved was that he could sit in that pew and swallow Wright’s anti-American rants for two decades and he reinforced his agreement with Wright’s philosophy by allowing him to officiate at his wedding and at the christenings of his kids.

It also didn’t hurt a profoundly ambitious man to create the illusion in the minds of his future constituents that, one, he was not a Muslim and, two, that he was a devoted Christian. As fallen-away as many Americans are today, they still like to think our leaders go to church, a Christian church, in our (approximately) 77% Christian and (approximately) 0.5% Islamic nation.

I would refer the reader to Warner Todd Huston’s article, “What Are We If Not a Christian Nation?” at http://www.americanconservativedaily.com/2009/04/what-are-we-if-not-a-christian-nation/, which elucidates the American-Christian “connection” far better than I ever could. I’m tired of beating the dead horse proffered by those who deny America’s, and our Founding Fathers’ essential Christianity.

What I firmly believe happened at Obama’s Turkey stop was that, with or without his trusty teleprompter, our president voiced a seminal belief, or wish, that America is no longer a Christian nation, if it ever was. That belief, or wish, affords him the intellectual license to continue on his amoral, irreligious path, to change us into an atheistic society which he can mold according to his preferences.

May God forgive him and may God forgive all of us if we let him get away with it.

(http://genelalor.com/)