Riehl World View

It's A Boy ... Oops, Nevermind!

Well, this is just stupid. But it isn't stopping the media from proclaiming "he's" pregnant. "Thomas" Beatie is a woman who only went part way with a gender re-assignment process and Beatie is now claiming "he" is pregnant. The Advocate item here.

Oregon Man Says He's Pregnant

Transgendered Man Writes In 'The Advocate'

Thomas Beatie, who used to be a woman, appeared in the most recent issue of The Advocate, a magazine for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender readers, Portland, Ore., television station KPTV reported.

Beatie wrote the article, which includes a picture of him while he was 22 weeks pregnant. According to the story, he went through a sex change, but decided only to have chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy.

He wrote in The Advocate that their situation "sparks legal, political and social unknowns."

Speaking of unknown ... after all, the happy couple is still a package short of a full-load, if you get my drift.

In total, nine different doctors have been involved. This is why it took over one year to get access to a cryogenic sperm bank to purchase anonymous donor vials, and why Nancy and I eventually resorted to home insemination.

UN Doesn't Heart Free Expression

Big surprise ... not!

Just another day at the U.N., as in line with its general and agency-by-agency buckling under to the demands of its allied blocs of thug states, UNESCO pulled its sponsorship of Reporters Without Borders’ Online Free Expression Day.

Well, This Isn't Good

AP photo by Matt Rourke - story here. A two-mile section of I-95 in Philadelphia will be shut for days, but that picture is probably very bad news on a much larger scale. Concrete that is up to specification should not do that.

It could be due to corruption, simply laziness, or just poor work performance. But with that pillar not right, I imagine they will all need inspecting. And it happening doesn't exactly give one a warm fuzzy for our government built and regulated infrastructure. I bet you can't wait until they take over health care.

A crack in a concrete support pillar to Interstate 95 is shown in Philadelphia, Monday, March 17, 2008. Repairs to the crack will require closure of both northbound and southbound lanes of the highway north of the city, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spokesman Gene Blaum said. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Damn!

Just Damn! Check out the awesome pic with this story. It's as if the entire town is being swallowed up by a massive wave.

Britain was bracing itself for a second day of storms today as forecasters warned almost the entire country would be battered by gale-force winds tonight and into tomorrow.

Ingraham Vs. Favre And The Boys In The Blog, er um, I Mean Band!

LOL Kind of funny, I can't believe the venom I'm seeing directed at Laura Ingraham for her dissing of Brett Favre's teary-eyed goodbye.

h/t Ace to this link - but reading around I see some even worse commentary.

Laura Ingraham is dead to me. Dead. No links to her site will be put in this post.

Here’s what I have to say to Ms. Ingraham: F* you and the horse you rode in on. B****.

Gawd! In the first place, the incredible anger reminds me of the type of guy who always went nuts when someone dissed his car, as all of his macho mojo crap was wrapped up in that. Geesh! Project much?

Don't get me wrong, I think choking back a tear or two, or letting it out just a bit at a time like that is perfectly legitimate. But did you freaking watch Favre?? It was so embarrassing, I finally had to turn away. I felt ashamed for the man-boy at the mic.

I played ball when I was young - it's a fantastic game and I can only imagine how great it must be to have had a Pro career. When I finally had to turn away from Farve in disgust, it wasn't a male versus female thing about showing emotion, it was about a great athlete who was coming off looking so emotionally immature as, quite obviously, far too much of his identity as a man was tied up in throwing what in the end is just a silly freakin' ball.

Get over it, dudes. Look up some old video with Lombardi, Nitschke, Hornung and such. They played the game in everything from the mud to the tundra, few left the game even halfway whole physically. But I can't remember one who left it as some overly self-indulgent, whiny biatch! Some of you whipper-snappers better stick to Dungeon and Dragons and such if you can't take it on the chin and suck it up ... you know, like a real man would.

Save the whimpering for the quiet times with your chick when you're reduced to begging to get laid. Heh!

Wow, Very Cool

Very good copy of the image available here. This may be lost on many younger folks, as I'm not sure what place, if any, Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan occupy in today's culture. But then, I find almost any photograph this old rather fascinating.

Researchers have uncovered a rare photograph of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken on Cape Cod and tucked inside a family album.

The photograph, shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8-year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan's hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.

Experts on Keller's life believe it could be the earliest photo of the two women together and the only one showing the blind and deaf child with a doll _ the first word Sullivan spelled for Keller after they met in 1887 _ according to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which now has the photo.

"It's really one of the best images I've seen in a long, long time," said Helen Selsdon, an archivist at the American Federation for the Blind, where Keller worked for more than 40 years. "This is just a huge visual addition to the history of Helen and Annie."

Caption:

This 1888 photo released by the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston shows Helen Keller when she was eight years old, left, holding hands with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, during a summer vacation to Brewster, Mass., on Cape Cod. A staff member at the society discovered the photograph in a large photography collection recently donated to the society. When Sullivan arrived at the Keller household to teach Helen, she gave her a doll as a present. Although Keller had many dolls throughout her childhood, this is believed to be the first known photograph of Helen Keller with one of her dolls. (AP Photo/Courtesy of the Thaxter P. Spencer Collection, R. Stanton Avery Special Collections, New England Historic Genealogical Society-Boston)

Children Say The Darnedest Things

It would seem that making any comparisons between a particular cartoon character and a politician needs to be confined to George Bush. Oh, I get it, alright - and appreciate the politically incorrect nature of it.

I certainly don't think adults should be going there, I'm not advocating that. But what do you tell a 12 year old child making this type of, presumably, innocent observation? How do you address it without violating the cardinal liberal rule of not telling a child they are "wrong?" I thought that undermined their self-esteem?

Don't take this post the wrong way. I'm not advocating a world in which, as adults, we should be comparing a black person to a monkey, free of any inhibitions brought on by addressing racism in the culture, especially given our past. But it is interesting seeing what wins whenever liberal truisms collide. I suspect being politically correct would trump individual self-esteem every time when it comes to liberal thinking. The self-esteem thing in children isn't really about individual self-esteem for liberals. It's more about leveling everyone so that no one stands out from a collective mentality that can't tolerate stand-outs, heroes, or all-stars.

ABC News' Tahman Bradley Reports: Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh issued an on-air apology to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., today after a caller said her daughter thought the Democratic presidential frontrunner looked like the cartoon character Curious George, a monkey.

That's Going To Leave a Mark

Actually, this Washington Post item has already left quite a mark. And I wouldn't look for it to disappear anytime soon. Wow! This Charlotte Allen babe better hire a body guard - a male one, I think. LOL Ed at Hot Air offers an attack on Allen and a broad defense of women, the true mark of a guy who's whipped. The smart male play is to get out of the way and let the wimmens fight it out. But the fact is, there is some truth to what Allen has written, though it is most likely the result of on going differences in how male versus female children are socialized and educated. A knee jerk attack on Allen by feminists, or men who want to show off their presumably enlightened self, aren't the most well thought out responses. And finally, lost in all this, is that some women might just prefer a lifestyle based upon a traditional view of women, as opposed to the one pushed by contemporary feminists.

So I don't understand why more women don't relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home. (Even I, who inherited my interior-decorating skills from my Bronx Irish paternal grandmother, whose idea of upgrading the living-room sofa was to throw a blanket over it, can make a house a home.) Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts' content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . . kind of dim.

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008)

The Corner has the announcement of Buckley's passing. No doubt the Left will be celebrating on some blogs.

He died while at work; if he had been given a choice on how to depart this world, I suspect that would have been exactly it. At home, still devoted to the war of ideas.

Comcast "Plants" Audience At FCC Net Neutrality Meet?

The Internet is abuzz with tales of Comcast stacking the audience / deck at an FCC hearing in Boston on Net Neutrality - see the folks with the yellow highlighters here.

And another report seems to back it up. Comcast admits to hiring "line standers." The report above indicates said "standers" never left their seats. So, Comcast employees plus the paid attendees helped to fill the room ... cheering a Comcast VP as he spoke?

Way to go Comcast. Real freaking nice. Now there are several emerging reports via Google.

Cable Operator Admits to Line-Standers but Scoffs at Impact

"Yesterday’s FCC hearing in Boston was open to the public and well-attended by many, including Comcast employees, who obviously had an interest in its content," the company said in a statement. "Comcast informed our local employees about the hearing and invited them to attend. Some employees did attend, along with many members of the general public. For the past week, Free Press has engaged in a much more extensive campaign to lobby people to attend the hearing on its behalf."

A Comcast spokeswoman conceded that the company hired line-standers but that those were only about 10% of the 300 or so people who got into the hearing. There were more Comcast employees there than the 30 or so line-standers would accommodate, she conceded, although she did not say how many.