Totalitarian hell, et cetera

Clutching at a few items as they flow past:

Thomas Sowell: Dismantling America

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Charles Krauthammer: Obama is Average

SPIEGEL: Do you really believe that Obama deliberately wants to weaken the US?

Krauthammer: The liberal vision of America is that it should be less arrogant, less unilateral, more internationalist. In Obama's view, America would subsume itself under a fuzzy internationalism in which the international community, which I think is a fiction, governs itself through the UN.

SPIEGEL: A nightmare?

Krauthammer: Worse than that: an absurdity. I can't even imagine serious people would believe it, but I think Obama does. There is a way America will decline -- if we choose first to wreck our economy and then to constrain our freedom of action through subordinating ourselves to international institutions which are 90 percent worthless and 10 percent harmful.

SPIEGEL: And there is not even 1 percent that is constructive?

Krauthammer: No. The UN is worse than disaster. The UN creates conflicts. Look at the disgraceful UN Human Rights Council: It transmits norms which are harmful, anti-liberty, and anti-Semitic among other things. The world would be better off in its absence.

SPIEGEL: And Obama is, in your eyes, …

Krauthammer: He's becoming ordinary.

RTR.

Kathleen Parker: Obama vs. the full-PC press

Smack dab on center court is the elephant no one wants to acknowledge: that men and women are different; that sometimes even heterosexuals prefer same-sex company; and that, as a rule, women and men are unequal in matters physical. With rare exceptions, the gender-neutrality trope that drives much of the Democratic Party agenda is, was and ever shall be -- false.

Sad. Depressing. Frustrating. Maddening. Call it what you wish, but it is still true.

[. . .]

That's not because women don't like men (and vice versa) but because when relaxing, women mostly want to drink wine together. And talk about men. I don't know what men do on the basketball court that is so compelling, but they apparently need it, and I don't.

That skittering sound you hear is the scurrying of a thousand stilettos as women scramble to blog their protest. Wait, wait, I feel another yawn coming on. Is there anything more exhausting than trying to explain the obvious?

Caveat: When I get together with other women we drink more tea than wine and talk more about children than men. That's the demographic I'm in, I guess. But I take Ms. Parker's point entirely and find it laughably pathetic that a) anyone would complain about Obama playing sports with men only, and b) that his response was to rush out and invite a woman to play with him. What a wuss. RTR.

Gateway Pundit on devouring our children: Sick. Skincare Company Now Using Aborted Fetal Tissue in Anti-Aging Cream

Neocutis’ key ingredient known as “Processed Skin Proteins” was developed at the University of Luasanne from the skin tissue of a 14-week gestation electively-aborted male baby donated by the University Hospital in Switzerland. Subsequently, a working cell bank was established, containing several billion cultured skin cells to produce the human growth factor needed to restore aging skin. The list of products using the cell line include: Bio-Gel, Journee, Bio-Serum, Prevedem, Bio Restorative Skin Cream and Lumiere. But Vinnedge is calling for a full boycott of all Neocutis products, regardless of their source.

The Daily Mail on usurping parental rights: Parents banned from watching their children in playgrounds... in case they are paedophiles

Parents are being banned from playing with their children in council recreation areas because they have not been vetted by police.

Mothers and fathers are being forced to watch their children from outside perimeter fences because of fears they could be paedophiles.

Laura in the Green Room writes a beautifully pithy post on this. And here's what Mark says:

I keep getting e-mails saying, "People will reach a tipping point and they'll no longer put up with this stuff." I doubt it. Right now the way to bet is that once free societies will retreat incrementally, one trivial step after another, into a totalitarian hell.

Well that's a bit depressing. Maybe this will cheer you up: Yankees lose Game One. :)

Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

Most recent posts here.