Reflections From a Murky Pond

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has returned from his meeting with Obama empty-handed. Netanyahu had striven to get the Obama Regime to work with Israel, or at least support them, in a strike upon Iran’s nuclear weapons development program but Obama refused to do so until after the 2012 elections this November.

This rejection was to be expected. Netanyahu and Obama are two very different people with insurmountable differences in outlook, priorities, and basic character.

Netanyahu and Obama In Their Youths

Birth, childhood upbringing, and one’s early years as an adult shape the character of each of us and Netanyahu and Obama had wildly divergent upbringings and youths.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently there’s been a rash of forced and false – or, at least, less than convincingly sincere apologies making the rounds of the media.

Somewhat interestingly, these false apologies seem non-partisan or bipartisan in nature. Both Liberals and Conservative have been forced by circumstances to bow to outside pressures and offer what they hope will be acceptable apologies.

Two such false apologies come quickly to mind:

• Conservative media icon and pundit, Rush Limbaugh has been forced to offer an apology for describing Liberal activist, Sandra Fluke as a slut and prostitute after various of his sponsors pulled their advertising in the wake of Liberal outrage over his comments.
• Liberal “bioethicists,” Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva have been forced to offer an apology for advocating the legitimacy of infanticide for any reason or no reason at all in the wake of a broad spectrum of people calling for their deaths.

It’s somewhat interesting that both coerced apologies differed from the normal bordering upon trite, insincere, “I’m sorry if anyone was offended by what I said,” vein.

• Limbaugh claimed he made poor word choices in his attempt to apply a humorous analogy of the situation and went on to imply that the blame, if there was any to be cast, should be laid at the doorstep of the absurdity of “discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress.”
• Giubilini’s and Minerva’s apology, if one can call it that, seemed to based upon the idea that we normal people, lacking the bioethicists’ special education and ability, should never have been granted access to such material since we couldn’t be expected to understand it or approach it clinically.

Unsurprisingly, Rush Limbaugh’s apology was not considered sincere and was not accepted, nor was that, by and large, from Giubilini and Minerva.

Leaving the question of whether either of these apologies was warranted and, as well, leaving aside the utter lack of believable sincerity in these two disparate attempts at apologizing, it had to be expected by anyone with an iota of sense that they would be rejected. It’s obvious that the vast majority of people would consider these apologies worthless.

Both apologies were given only after people were taking direct action against these people.  Hence, the apologies cannot be expected to be considered anything other than an attempt to avoid the natural consequences of their actions – even when they appear to be sincere.

Perhaps, many years ago, people were more attached to the “moral high ground” of forgiving other for the shear sake of forgiving. That was then; this is now, and people have well learned that the wages of mercy are often recidivism when such forgiveness is granted before reprisal has run it course.

If you go to where the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME) had pre-published the article by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva entitled “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” you’ll find that it’s gone. They have apparently pulled the article in response to the outrage that it caused.

I don’t know if this means that the editors of the Journal of Medical Ethics have had a rush of brains to the head and remembered that “ethics” is part of their rag’s title and that they won’t be publishing the pro-infanticide drivel by the would-be baby-killers, Giubilini and Minerva. One can certainly hope so though.

Ladies and gentlemen, this may only be small ethical victory and it may only end up being a temporary one, but it is a victory both for ethical behavior and for the power of the people in this information and near universal access age.

Savor it for what it’s worth but stay vigilant.

In America we make commercials for car insurance featuring: geckos, cavemen, squealing piglets, and strange men behaving badly. That’s certainly one way of marketing automobile insurance but I think we’re not the best at it…

How Romanians Sell Car Insurance

Geiko’s gecko may be cool and and advertising icon, but the gecko loses hands down to these Romanian babes. 😀

A simple and eloquent message from Obama to the American People. Amazingly, he didn’t even need to preface it with, “Let me be clear.” 😉

A Message To Americans From Obama

Of course, to his Liberal and Progressive constituency he strives to deliver a different message, and to the Blacks he has little of substance to say at all, being confident that they’ll, if not vote for him, at least vote against any White opposition.