Article here. Looks like the boys are getting the message in Britain. The McCartney settlement sure didn't much help those girls that would like to marry.

Marriage is not a good proposition in England or the USA right now - and is likely not to be for some time to come.

Article here. Excerpt:

"A man who used to be a woman is five months pregnant, according to an article he has written for an American magazine that features a picture of him at 22 weeks, with facial hair and a man’s flat chest above his swollen stomach.

Thomas Beatie, who was born a woman, describes himself as a “transgender male” in the piece which says his decision to have a child “has been met with discrimination and outright derision by health care professionals”.

...According to the piece, Mr Beatie went through a sex change but decided to have only chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy, stopping short of making any changes to the reproductive organs he was born with.

Mr Beatie is legally male and lives with his wife, Nancy, in Bend, Oregon.

...“How does it feel to be a pregnant man?” he writes in the article.

Article here. Excerpt:

"Many men believe the world is now dominated by women and that they have lost their role in society, fuelling feelings of depression and being undervalued...

But the hunter-gatherer role is still a strong male instinct. Once fatherhood arrives, men say they would prefer a more traditional role of either being the sole breadwinner with their partner a full-time mother and homemaker (34 per cent), or the main breadwinner with their partner working part-time (24 per cent)...

...What they apparently want is what some American academics have dubbed a "menaissance" - a return to manliness, where figures such as Sir Winston Churchill were models of manhood...

...Harvey Mansfield, a Harvard professor and America's best known political philosopher, who tackles the topic in his book Manliness, says the issue is ignored.

"A man has to be embarrassed about being a man. I am trying to bring back the word manliness. It's not respected," he said.

Driving in today, I heard a radio "interview" with the author of this book. It was done in the style of a late-night infomercial where the interviewer seems to be skeptical and take up Devil's Advocate but of course is quickly won over. (The interviewer worked for the radio station, too.)

I found little surprising in what was said simply because I have heard it so much before. Still, somehow, the glaring foolishness and sheer mercenary thinking espoused (no pun intended) by such people still shocks me. The author is very direct and specific about the importance of doing certain things to make sure the wife "gets the house" (note: 'the house', not 'his house', which is the case most times, as he is paying for it). And she also of course had to declare women still get the 'short end of the stick' in divorces.

Title? "He Had It Coming: How to Outsmart your Husband and Win Your Divorce". Not content to make a fortune doing divorces, the author also had to make money on it by writing a strategy book (geared to women only, of course) on the topic.

Read about it here. Excerpt:

'British Airways' first female pilot has been selected to fly the first plane to land at Heathrow's new Terminal 5.

Capt Lynn Barton, 51, became BA's first woman pilot in 1987. She will be the flight commander on BA026 from Hong Kong, landing at 0450 GMT on Thursday.

"I was incredibly proud to have been British Airways' first ever woman pilot and now I have another first to my name," Capt Barton said.'

I wonder how BA's 3,000 male pilots felt about having this opportunity. Ms Barton is one of 176 female pilots.

Story here. Excerpt:

"Largo police say 52-year-old Celeste Minardi tried to kill her own son over the weekend. He's only fifteen years old. And, the way she allegedly did it, even has police officers shaking their heads in disbelief.

It happened during a Saturday afternoon court-appointed visit at a Largo psychiatrist's office. This is where Minardi and her son have been going for the past 3 years. Visits under supervision. It is still a mystery as to why this mother is under guard with her child on these occasions.

Police say, when a nurse who was present turned her head, Minardi took a 15-inch decorative dagger and a drywall knife out of her purse, and began slashing her son."

Article here. Excerpt:

"Male children are showing deterioration in achievement, lowered acceptance into colleges, increasing diagnosis of various “hyperactivity” or “attention deficit” disorders (with concomitant medication of such alleged “disorders”); and decreasing attendance at school. Furthermore, reports indicate boys between the ages of 5 and 14 are 200% more likely to commit suicide than are girls, and that, within that age range, boys are 36% more likely to die (of all causes) than their female counterparts.
...
Despite the current wisdom, males are at distinct disadvantages in our cultural milieu. Boys are “feminized” in the early years of their education and socialization, and by the time that they reach adolescence, many are conflicted as to their roles in society, and especially as to their interaction with the opposite gender. The shockingly high incidence of suicide among adolescent males is a reflection of this conflict.

Story here. Excerpt:

'How should we describe the false, male-vilifying statistics that are ubiquitous on the modern college campus? Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism? calls them "Hate Statistics." That seems apt.

To follow the recent controversy over the feminist "1 in 4 college women are raped" myth, see my recent blog post "It's a lonely job, working the phones at a college rape crisis center...you wait for the casualties to show up but no one calls".'

Article here. Excerpt:

"What’s the latest outrage from The New York Times? Perhaps it’s Kate Zernike, a reporter there (from what I can gather I found no google reference to a specific title) who wrote an opinion column entitled "Post-feminism and Other Fairy Tales” which appeared in their “Week in Review” section.
...
In fact, there is so much wrong with her perspective that I am not sure where to begin …but begin I must. Zernike’s basic theme is that feminism should not be dead because women still have it bad in America and that more statist feminism is the method by which to redress their needs. Why would she posit such an absurd claim? For five reasons and I’ll go through now. First, some hecklers told Hillary Clinton to “iron their shirt” at a rally. Second, Hillary had to defend her likeability to critics. Third, the actress portraying her on Saturday Night Live was “shut out” of a fictional debate…on a television program. Fourth, that Governor Spitzer cheated on his wife, and fifth, some Americans deem prostitution to be a victimless crime."

Video report here. Apparently this woman gave him a pair of her underwear and was caught with incriminating text messages.

Story here. More on this 'Barbie' story. It seems the judicial system has identified a man as the mastermind. Though he didn't commit the robberies his sentence was more harsh than the two women. Excerpt:

'A man convicted of being the mastermind behind the so-called "Barbie Bandits" bank theft was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison.

Michael Chastang's term was added to the 15 years he already is serving on drug charges.

"For the theft, you used the others," Superior Court Judge Mary Staley told him. "You orchestrated it. You sat in the back and put the pawns out to do it."'

Story here. Excerpt:

"Modeled on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, a county program officially unveiled today will use wanted posters in an effort to find the 10 "most egregious" child-support-payment evaders, officials said.

The posters will be put up countywide."

Article here. What, not going to take even six months or so to really try it out?

I recall reading someplace, years ago as a teenager, that some sociologist predicted this kind of thing would happen if things kept going the way they were going. I sort of laughed at the idea and thought he must be wrong if a group of people want something so badly. Wouldn't they be happy once they got it? Well, maybe not. It's right up there with that old Chinese curse: "May you get what you want." A lot of wisdom behind that. Anyway, excerpt:

'It wasn't so long ago that my heart would race with pride and excitement when I heard upbeat statistics about women's earning prowess:
...
I'm over that now. As the mother of a nearly two-month-old son whose husband is leaving his job to take on most of the child care and prep for graduate school, the title "breadwinner" has come to feel an awful lot like "albatross."'

And of course, whose fault is it? Hubby's. He doesn't cook and clean enough, apparently. But further on, read:

Story here. Excerpt:

'Thousands of women entrepreneurs in developing countries have started their own businesses in the past few years, many with help from local microfinance banks and nonprofits that issued them small loans and financial support. The concept has taken off, but there has been one key flaw in the model: Most of the women have little, if any, formal education and lack the management skills and financial savvy to take their business to the next level. On Mar. 5, investment bank Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS - News) announced it would change the equation by pumping $100 million into educational projects for these women over the next five years.

This video speaks for itself.

Remember the Bush/Quayle ticket and the jokes associated with it? "A Vietnam era movie was made with Dan Quayle as the central character; it's called 'Full Dinner Jacket'". Same thing here. Only at least with Quayle, he didn't lie about his experience. He just tended to look dumb when answering questions. So while you could accuse him of being not-too-bright, you couldn't accuse him of lying bold-facedly to the camera.