Mazurland Blog

Willing To Trade?

Here I make a bit of frustrated light of the California Supreme Court's ruling that, in effect, gay marriage must be allowed.  For social conservatives such as myself, it's very frustrating to watch gay "marriage" get railroaded into acceptability.  In fact, apart from abortion, no other issue really stokes the ire of social-cons.

But whenever I think about the relative importance of the two issues, I always end up in the same place:  is there room for a trade?  That is, would the "gay rights movement" be willing to come on board and support a stridently pro-life agenda in exchange for concession on the "gay marriage" issue?  As much as I dislike the dilution of the importance of marriage that inevitably results from the allowance of gay marriage (see Canada, where the government has recently acknowledged that, indeed, now that it allows one form of "alternate marriage arrangements" (homosexuals), it can't logically defend against other forms (polygamy, first, but who's to say where that will lead?)), and the dissolution of the traditional family unit that follows,  the moral and ethical consequences that flow from the government's sanctioning of such a thing pale in comparison to those of legitimized and even subsidized infanticide.

Of course, opposition to the possibility of a "tradeoff" would flow from both sides.  On the gay side of things, the liberalism and progressivism that seem to follow hand-in-hand with any "Gay Rights" agenda would never allow for the clarity of thought necessary to see abortion for the evil it truly and unequivocally is (at this point I'm curious where self-proclaimed Last True Conservative and Better Catholic Than The Pope Andrew Sullivan stands on the issue, although I don't want to risk the dreaded "Christianist" label in asking).  But perhaps taking it from an angle of "all life deserves respect, whether gay or straight, born or unborn" might appeal to them (for the record, I agree with that statement, but "respect" and "affirmation" are two different things). 

And on the right side of the aisle, it's awfully difficult to convince moral crusaders to ignore one moral failure in pursuit of the eradication of another.  That's sorta some baggage that just comes with the territory, and it's certainly not without its theological justification.  After all, there's nothing in the Bible about "Go for the bigger sins and let the little ones slide" (II Rationalizations 3:16); rather, all sin is abominable to God and separates us from Him (I'll leave it to Marty to split the hair of "venal" versus "mortal" sin).  On the other hand, the government's approval of "gay marriage" only allows homosexuals to fall into their own sin more easily (not without societal cost, I argue, but at least the sin itself is inflicted only on the individual level), whereas abortion inflicts the sin of murder onto an innocent life.  After all, we are repeatedly told in Scripture to let unrepentant individuals be given over to Satan for the sake of their eventual salvation; perhaps allowing gay marriage would merely implement this at the civilizational level. 

And since I figure Mazurland is such an important venue that all the movers and shakers of the Great Issues of the Day must read it, I can only assume that at least some of the lieutenants of the "Gay Mafia" must be reading this very article.  So whattya say, Gay America?  Give us your support against the travesty of abortion, and at least we'll provide tacit consent to you guys calling yourselves "Husband and Husband" or whatever it is you like to do! 

His Golden Tongue

Mr. Hussein-Obama complains that all our Arabic interpreters are stuck in Iraq and are thus unavailable to work in Afghanistan.  You know, where they speak Pashto and Dari, not Arabic.  If this were a George W. Bush quote, it would be held up for public scorn as a typical utterance of the "village idiot".  Let's assume no one in the media or even slightly left of center will let this tarnish their Obamessiah's golden sheen, though. 

But let us at least continue to get out the word in our own little side of the blogosphere:  Barack Hussein Obama is not only dangerously naive with regard to foreign policy; he's also startlingly ignorant about basic facts too.  The Jimmy Carter comparisons are becoming more and more apt each day.  Let us only hope the comparison doesn't extend all the way to a win in the White House. 

(HT:  Instapundit)

Raising the Barr

... because the title "Barr None" was already taken.  But anywho, now-former Republican representative Bob "Uhhh...  who?" Barr has announced that he is running for president on the Libertarian ticket.  Of course, people are already thinking that he just might play spoiler to John McCain's bid for the job. Which of course is silly.  He'll play spoiler for the inevitable Ron Paul write-in campaign (for the record, I don't believe Ron Paul will run as a third-party or independent, and yes, that actually does speak to his character in a positive way.  I promise I'll never say anything nice about the man in these parts ever again, though, so put down your rifle, Hank!), to be sure, which means that instead of getting 1% of the national vote and no delegates in the national election, they'll each get 0.5 % and no delegates.

Still, it's fun to watch the Dems pretend that the Liber-freakin-tarian candidate will be as big a spoiler as Ralph Nader ever was for them.  If they're already grasping at those straws, maybe they're not as sure as they're pretending to be about their November chances. 

You Heard It Here First

Since a very long time ago, I have been a strong booster of Fred Dalton Thompson! for President.  Obviously, that time is well past.  But I just read this over at Bench Memos wherein John McCain's Judicial Advisory Committee is detailed in full.  And I must say, it is heartening indeed.  But what struck me is the following:  Fred Dalton Thompson! would make a superlative pick for the United States Supreme Court.

That's right, Fred! for SCOTUS! 

Think about it:  consider the home-spun wisdom of his occasional editorials, Paul Harvey guest-spots, YouTube bits, etc.  Consider also that Fred!'s reputation is one of being laid back rather than in-your-face, and of giving considerable thought and deliberation to his opinions.  Consider also his experience as a lawyer, and his very clear bias toward strict constructionist constitutional principles.  The man clearly didn't have the "fire in his belly" to achieve the Republican nomination, but SCOTUS jobs are appointments.  And considering that he already shepherded now-Chief-Justice John Roberts through the confirmation process, he's already intimately familiar with the ins-and-outs of that particular rite-of-passage.  Finally, as a former Senator and popular, charismatic individual, he has connections that would ease the confirmation process considerably.

Electing John McCain as president in November just got that much more important.

Fred Thompson for SCOTUS!

Dissent or Descent?

One of the local ronpaulians where I work is an interesting, and typical, I think, case study on the natural progression of the type of person who might follow Ron Paul in the first place.  To protect both the innocent and the insane, we'll just call him Dale, which works on multiple levels.

Anywho, when I first started working at my current place of employment about three years ago, I got into an argument with one of my colleagues about the obviousness of liberal media bias for the MSM.  Sadly, despite having been a Republican in the past, this individual, unbeknownst to me at the time, was already in the grip of severe, and now terminal BDS -- even to the point of having voted for Mr. Hussein-Obama in the recent primaries, and not for strategic reasons.  I'm still working to at least prevent his BDS from mutating into its McCainian sub-strain, but I digress.  In frustration and unwillingness to observe simple examples of liberal MSM bias, this individual instructed that I should talk to "Dale" to find a like-minded compatriot.

So I did.  At the time, Dale was a lot like me in outlook, if perhaps a bit more bombastic.  A supporter of George W. Bush, the war in Iraq, and the greater "war on terror" as a whole, and a long-time Republican, at least here was someone (hadn't really gotten to know Marty yet) off of whom I could bounce ideas from time to time (when I could get a word in edge-wise, as Dale can be a bit dominant in conversations). 

It was during a field exercise, which entails a small team of engineers sitting in somewhat close and confined quarters for a couple weeks, isolated from friends and families, that I began to see signs of descent in Dale.  Naturally, politics is a common topic during these outings, as there's just not much else to do besides talking during the long work days in field exercises, and men being men, we talked about things that interested us. 

Then came up the Forbidden Topic of Doom™ (so named after this field exercise, of course):  the gold standard.  I, and those with me who were not Dale, listened for hours on end about how we as a country must, must! switch back to the gold standard if we are ever to emerge from the inevitable doom of the boom-bust cycle in which we have found ourselves.  All of this from Dale, of course.  Not being economists ourselves, or graduating from I Spent Two Hours On The Internet Reading About It University like Dale did, we obviously didn't have much ammunition against him apart from pointing out his lack of credentials ("shooting the messenger", of course, never mind how the messenger's credibility can, of course, impugn the veracity of the message) and the fact that our standard of living, when taken as an entire whole, vastly outstrips that of our forebears (refuted with "But it could be so much better if only we had stayed on a gold standard!", based, presumably, on his zeros of hours of economic modeling, simulation, and forecasting).

Of course, anyone who's spent any time whatsoever with a ronpaulian instantly knows that calls for a return to the gold standard are merely the mating call of the species.  I did not know this at the time, so we enjoyed a cordial conversation about the upcoming race, myself of course touting Fred Dalton Thompson (this was May 2007, back when such a thing was merely an exciting twinkle in my eye rather than a foregone conclusion (early fall 2007) or a sad reminder of things-that-could-have-been (November 2007 and on)), another being a fan of Romney, or Giuliani, or maybe McCain -- I forget precisely, and there was Dale, talking about some guy with two first names, Ron Paul.  "Isn't he a bit of a nutjob?", I sheepishly ask, based on the few snippets I had read by that time.  "I really like what he has to say," Dale responds, and then spouts a litany of policy positions -- limited government, strict constructionist Constitutional principles, fiscal responsibility, etc.  "Well, obviously I support those, but he's anti-war, right?"  "Yeah, well, I'm not so sure that's a bad thing", says Dale, ominously. 

Separate conversation a day later:  "Have you ever heard of false-flag terrorism?", Dale asks.  "Like when somebody pretends to be somebody else to start a war?"  "Yeah, I'm watching this video by Alex Jones..."  If you don't know anything about Alex Jones, well...  let's just say he's nuttier than a squirrel's turd, and leave it at that.  Of course, Dale watches this video, about the "secret history" of government-sponsored false-flag terrorism, with a completely uncritical eye, and takes much of it as gospel truth.  You know, because it "said so on the internet!"

We return back to our hometown.  In the coming weeks, Dale is sporting a "Ron Paul, America's Only Hope" shirt, drinking from one of those obnoxious "Ron Paul REVOLution" mugs, wearing Ron Paul buttons, plastering Ron Paul's face all over his office, talking him up every chance he gets, et cetera, ad nauseam.  Cue the next field exercise a short 2 or 3 months later.  Now we're on to full-blown "Ron Paul is the Only Man Who Can Save America!", spoken with that dead-behind-the-eyes look of a true cultist.  Mutterings of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and other shadowy organizations follow.  Statements of belief mistaken for and asserted as statements of fact are made implying that only Ron Paul could muster enough votes to beat Hillary or Obama (or Edwards, at the time).  "Evidence" of his rising Intrade numbers is produced (and refuted).  The Crazy has truly set in with Dale, and Ron Paul becomes another Forbidden Topic of Doom™ at the field office (an injunction repeatedly broken, at great length, by Dale). 

This whole post was inspired by the capstone event in Dale's "evolution", witnessed by me this very morning.  In Dale's workspace, a bumper sticker.  A sticker, you ask, supporting Ron Paul's now-defunct campaign?  No, while Dale still stridently supports his man, not this time.  Rather, this was the text:  "FREE PALESTINE / END THE OCCUPATION". 

Ladies and gentlemen, I think I have sympathetic ears around here when I say that this is a truly sad and disgusting spectacle to behold.  From supporting American principles of democracy, classical liberalism, and freedom, to jumping on the Ron Paul bandwagon ostensibly in support of these very principles, to agitating for a death cult whose very charter dictates the destruction of the only genuine (albeit far from perfect) liberal democracy in its region, this describes a perfect, albeit not-yet-terminal, descent into incoherence and political fringe. 

My prediction:  before a year elapses, "Dale" will begin to express sympathy for socialist/Marxist/Maoist revolutionary groups -- you know, because if they're "against the war" then they must be worth listening to.  Lying down with dogs, waking up with fleas, and all that.  Where the terminus of this descent lay, I cannot say.  But it's frightening to behold.

Vote For This Man.

I'm reposting this excerpt, which was also posted by The Indispensable Geraghty™ over at The Campaign Spot, from still another source here, because I know there are still some folks here and elsewhere who have their serious doubts about John McCain: 

[Ret. Col. Bud] Day relayed to me one of the stories Americans should hear. It involves what happened to him after escaping from a North Vietnamese prison during the war. When he was recaptured, a Vietnamese captor broke his arm and said, "I told you I would make you a cripple."

The break was designed to shatter Mr. Day's will. He had survived in prison on the hope that one day he would return to the United States and be able to fly again. To kill that hope, the Vietnamese left part of a bone sticking out of his arm, and put him in a misshapen cast. This was done so that the arm would heal at "a goofy angle," as Mr. Day explained. Had it done so, he never would have flown again.

But it didn't heal that way because of John McCain. Risking severe punishment, Messrs. McCain and Day collected pieces of bamboo in the prison courtyard to use as a splint. Mr. McCain put Mr. Day on the floor of their cell and, using his foot, jerked the broken bone into place. Then, using strips from the bandage on his own wounded leg and the bamboo, he put Mr. Day's splint in place.

Years later, Air Force surgeons examined Mr. Day and complemented the treatment he'd gotten from his captors. Mr. Day corrected them. It was Dr. McCain who deserved the credit. Mr. Day went on to fly again.

Maybe he's not the exemplar of Reaganite conservatism.  But consider his character, and his story, and his courage, and his struggles -- and then consider that of his opponent, be it Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Hussein Obama.  This is a man for whom you must cast your vote.

Very Telling

David Berlinski, a researcher at the Discovery Institute and advocate of Intelligent Design, has written a piece here regarding the apparently recent embrace on the part of the scientific community of atheism.  The whole article is worth a read.  The one thing that struck me the most was the following three short paragraphs:

It is curious that so many scientists should have recently embraced atheism. The great physical scientists — Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Clerk Maxwell, Albert Einstein — were either men of religious commitment or religious sensibility.

The distinguished physicist Steven Weinberg has acknowledged that this is what the great scientists believed: But we know better, he has insisted, because we know more.

This prompts the obvious question: Just what have scientists learned that might persuade the rest of us that they know better? It is not, presumably, the chemistry of Boron salts that has done the heavy lifting.

In other words, the last 200 years have not yielded any particular revelations or epiphanies regarding the nature of the universe that have so completely devastated the need for a belief in God as to have provided modern scientists with "free pass" on that account.  He goes on to speculate and refute both Darwinism and quantum cosmology as sources of this "enlightenment", and does so handily.  Perhaps, when such theories are genuinely mature and proven, they might diminish the "God of the Gaps", but my God is greater than any gap and is only made to loom larger when the light is shined on the darkness.

(HT:  Instapundit, who also links to this rather incoherent and somewhat bad-faith response by the increasingly shrill Godless Math Nerd™ John Derbyshire

The Restrainer Restrains No More?

My current daily Scriptural readings are from Revelation (those who call it "Revelations", please leave now), so the End of Days are, naturally, on my mind.  Now, I'm of two minds when it comes to eschatology.  The backwoods fundie in me (which, I confess, is no small part) is just waiting for the first signs of an impending astronomical encounter of meteoric proportions (and for the first crackpot to dub it "Wormwood"), and wouldn't be too terribly surprised to see a new and particularly nasty breed of insect in my lifetime.    Meanwhile, my rationalist side keeps insisting in a Dawkins-esque tone that the entire book was simply a coded message relevant primarily to the First Century church about the Roman Empire (note:  fortunately, my faith is strong enough that the obvious third way of "ravings of a madman in exile on a penal island" doesn't enter into it).  My rationalist side can be a real jerk sometimes.

But this post isn't about Revelation or the prophetic words therein.  Rather, it's about a somewhat uncharacteristic passage in an otherwise standard, if short, Epistle from Paul to the church in Thessaloniki.  In whole, the passage reads:

1 Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, 2  not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. 3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, 4 who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. 5 Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? 6 And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. 7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, 10 and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, 12 in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Now, there's a whole treasure-trove of theological and eschatological gold in there, but what I really want to focus on are the parts I emphasized above.  Before the coming of the "man of lawlessness" (generally viewed to be the Antichrist), some entity who restrains this lawlessness must be removed.  Generally, I've always understood this to be the Holy Spirit as applied to humanity as a whole (keeping us from engaging our basest instincts on a regular basis) rather than just to believers. 

Why does this come to my mind?  Well, I frequently read stories in the news like this, in which an Austrian man kept his own daughter secretly imprisoned in his basement for 24 years, repeatedly subjecting her to the worst forms of sick abuse,  or this, one of many sad stories of late in which a teacher treats the students under her care as her sexual playthings, and they keep appearing with increasing frequency. And like most sane people, I begin to wonder "why on earth would people do something like that?  Why would they think it's okay to do it?  Where would they even get that idea?".  And then that passage pops into my mind.

What if this cycle of sick perversion is a manifestation of The Restrainer being removed?  What if that safeguard instilled by God to keep us from complete moral,  cultural, and societal destruction is being "phased out"?  It would certainly go a long way in explaining why these genuine atrocities keep cropping up.

On the other hand, perhaps these sorts of things have been happening throughout human history.  Perhaps the recent prevalence of them is merely a byproduct of the 24-hour news cycle.  Cable News has got to fill every hour, so suddenly what was once relegated to the local police as a domestic situation, and heard about only through the local gossip-mills, now makes national and international headlines in an otherwise slow news day.  After all, the last century featured some of the worst and unrestrained degradation ever seen by mankind, and we're still here.

Whatever the answer is, my backwoods fundie is keeping his eyes peeled for a man of lawlessness.   

This post was cross-posted at The Only Red Shirt in the Landing Party

Terror In The Skies

Over at Fox News, they're currently headlining the development of a personal combat glider.  Take the time to click that link and check out the picture of the most badass flyboy to ever hit the skies.  And then come back here, and imagine that weapons package implemented on a wider scale.  Then imagine this guy strapped into a pair of those wings, screaming toward you at 135 mph,  sidearm in one hand, can of whoopass in the other.  And be much afraid. 

p.s. To the powers-that-be:  there's a typo in the banner above.  You misspelled "Hank and Ben's Alternating Blog-o-Rama" as M-A-Z-U-R-L-A-N-D, whatever that's supposed to mean. 

More Unintended Consequences From Your Friend, The Nanny State

The NYT chronicles the interesting side-effect of a state-wide ban on indoor smoking in Minnesota:  participation (and revenue) in charity gambling events such as Bingo have precipitously fallen immediately after the passage of the ban law. 

Now, I hate smoking.  Both my parents were smokers for a very long time, and I resented them for it because they did it around me.  My uncle died from smoking.  I detest even the faintest aroma of cigarette smoke, which makes me nauseous.  So a part of me roots for smoking bans, within reason (sorry, Marty).

And then the free market, libertarian, small-government part of me slaps some sense back into me.  Some restaurant allows smoking?  Don't go there!  All the bars have smoking?  Seriously, if you have that hangup, what are you doing in bars?  If enough people "vote with their pocketbook", the market will decide behavior -- as indicated by a large number of restaurants already jettisoning their smoking sections and not feeling the slightest pinch financially because of it. 

Another example of unintended consequences:  back in 2006, my former home state, Arkansas, passed a statewide smoking ban with the exception of restricted-access venues (bars/clubs/etc., who card at the door).  Result?  A popular pizza joint in Little Rock, in protest, changed itself to a 21-and-over "club", thereby cutting off a sizable portion of its clientèle.  How do I know this?  Because back in 2006, when I was home for my grandmother's funeral, "the kids" all decided to go to this locale for some comfort food.  My wife, at the time 27 years old, did not bring her purse with her -- after all, she was not driving, she was not paying, and we weren't planning on doing any drinking.  No purse, no ID.  So we all sat down to enjoy some classically good pizza, when the waitress was forced to "card" the whole table.  My wife being unable to produce any ID, we were promptly told to leave.  So thanks a whole effing lot, Nanny State.

But this is only the smallest link in the chain of unintended consequences when The Government tries to decide for us how best to live our lives.  If only someone had written a book about the potential consequences of ostensibly well-intended modern liberalism in this country...

I Stand Corrected

Okay, fine, maybe I won't stop posting.  But that doesn't mean I have to say anything meaningful!  For those of you feeling a bit less than enamored with the Republican nominee, read this article over at the Weekly Standard by P.J. O'Rourke.  It's largely about the time he spent on the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, and what that aircraft carrier says about the character of John McCain, who launched from such a vessel back in his Navy days.  Key point:

Some say John McCain's character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison. I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do--voluntarily. Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer's or a half gallon of Dewar's. I look from John McCain to what the opposition has to offer. There's Ms. Smarty-Pantsuit, the Bosnia-Under-Sniper-Fire poster gal, former prominent Washington hostess, and now the JV senator from the state that brought you Eliot Spitzer and Bear Stearns. And there's the happy-talk boy wonder, the plaster Balthazar in the Cook County political crèche, whose policy pronouncements sound like a walk through Greenwich Village in 1968: "Change, man? Got any spare change? Change?"

But read the whole thing. 

Bigger Holiday Tomorrow

Tomorrow, as it turns out, is "Tax Freedom Day", the day when the average American has earned enough money to pay his tax obligations.  I was actually going to post this... err... elsewhere, but I wanted to shame the powers-that-be into posting a bit more.  New policy for me:  three uninterrupted posts and I'm done!  You'll hear from me again when there's some buffer between spots.

(HT:  John J. Miller)
 

Obama and the Press

I hope I don't get in trouble with the powers-that-be for linking a lefty blog, but here's an interesting comment about Mr. Hussein-Obama and the fact that he apparently hasn't talked to the press in 10 days -- right before what may be the most pivotal primary of the Dem campaign season.  Now I don't care much about waffles, and I can't hold it against any candidate who snaps at obnoxious reporters, but the blogger rhetorically quotes Kevin Drum, who asks

Obama just doesn't give the press much access, sometimes shutting them down for weeks at a time. Why? Does this make sense to anyone else as a campaign strategy? I'm baffled by it.

Of course, when the rhetorical phone rings, I answer it!  And the answer is painfully obvious to non-cult-members neutral outside observers:  Whenever Obama opens his mouth extemporaneously (as one might in a press conference, having been asked unplanned and unprompted questions), he apparently just digs his bitter little hole that much deeper.  Thus, it's in his best interest to stay away from such situations.  And since The Press is so beholden to him, so completely and unabashedly in his camp, they're not going to complain in large enough or loud enough numbers to make a difference. 

(HT: Glenn Reynolds)

Juno What I Think?

As the readers of my other blog know, I occasionally like to review movies, typically through the lens of my own conservative bent (e.g., The Goonies, V For Vendetta, Knocked Up, Something New).  So I think I'll continue that tradition today, with a two-for-one special (spread out over two posts so I can up my post count, of course)!

First:  Juno.  Many of you probably know that this got lots of rave reviews, and it even won the Oscar for best original screenplay.  Being the iconoclast that I am, of course, I could give a one-word review:  Feh.  But being the bombast that I am, I'll expound upon that one word at considerable length. 

It would be unfair to say that I didn't enjoy watching it (at $1 for a redbox rental, it's hard to go wrong).  It had its funny moments, and the acting itself, irrespective of the dialog, was excellent.  Michael Cera is a comic genius with impeccable deadpan timing (see this YouTube video, which is a spoof of a sadly sincere video resume that has since been removed from YouTube out of embarrassment).  The dialog itself was too heavily laden with hipsterisms to take seriously, which in turn prevented many of the characters, particularly the titular Juno, from being believable or relatable.

The meager plot was simple and straightforward:  Sixteen-year-old Juno gets pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption to a picture-perfect couple of her choosing.  What made the film interesting was the buzz that I got about it from the circles in which I travel:  Juno, despite being a mainstream "indie" flick written by a former stripper self-named "Diablo Cody" (real name Brooke Busey), and despite receiving so many Hollywood accolades, supposedly had a decidedly pro-life message. 

Of course, as soon as Juno finds out she is pregnant, she decides to "nip it in the bud", as if procuring an abortion were just, you know, the thing you did, kinda like running out and buying some Day-Quil when you have a nasty cold.  Unperturbed as she encounters an Asian classmate (because, you know, having a normal white person think abortion is wrong would just be silly -- it's gotta be someone not like us, someone who doesn't understand our culture, someone naive) as the lone protester at the local abortion mill, Juno proceeds apace, filling out her name and complete sexual history for the pierced-and-tattooed counter girl inside (point in favor:  the pro-lifer is at least portrayed as kind and not a raving lunatic, whereas the abortion counter girl is portrayed as rude and somewhat slutty).  It's only when Asian-protest-girl's comments about the baby having fingernails begin to sink in as Juno is in the lobby awaiting her infanticide-on-demand that she changes her mind and decides to go through with the pregnancy. 

And that, dear readers, is the extent of the "pro-life" message of the movie.  The rest of the film deals with Juno as she copes with the pregnancy and reprobation of her classmates, finds a host family, breaks up their sham marriage, reconciles with the father of her child, and ultimately does indeed give the child up for adoption.  So my major complaint is this:  it seems like, these days, for any Hollywood film to deal with the subject of pregnancy, there needs to be some agonizing and handwringing and justification for not procuring an abortion before the pregnancy itself can proceed.  It's never "Oh, I'm pregnant.  I guess I just don't have any other choice but to have this baby!"  It's almost as if abortion is presented as the default choice, and only through rationalization and a confluence of events can any other path be taken.

This has already gone a bit overlong, so I won't dwell much on my second point:  While arguably pro-life, however briefly, Juno is decidedly anti-family throughout.  Rather than getting married and keeping the child, Juno gives the kid up for adoption.  Rather than doing the right thing and making an honest woman out of her, Juno's babydaddy stares blankly, gives up any responsibility or active role, and makes an ass of himself.  The adoptive-family-to-be seems more focused in their respective careers despite wanting a child oh-so-badly, and *spoiler alert* ultimately divorces when the husband (Jason Bateman) decides he'd rather be a rock star rather than start a real family.  Even then, Juno decides to give the baby to the newly-single wife (played by Jennifer Garner), since she was the driving force behind the adoption anyways (nevermind that she was always at work whenever Juno popped in -- how sincerely did she want to be a mother?). 

So conservatives, my point is this:  Hollywood hates you, and while they throw you a bone with one hand, they're shoving you under the bus with the other. 

A Fine Welcome Indeed

Thanks for the fine intro, Marty.  I greatly appreciate this chance to have my senseless rantings reach a wider audience ("literally TENS of readers!").  As he indicated below, this doesn't mean the end of my former incarnation, but rather an expansion of my soapbox, if you will.  Since the spirit of the increasingly misnamed "Mazurland Blog" is focused on social and political commentary, with some wacky hijinks thrown in for good measure, my usual posting ought to fit in nicely.  I figure I'll keep the personal stuff and the nerdy geek-type stuff back there, though.  Don't wanna make this place too highbrow, after all.

So for those who've never read my comments, or my rantings elsewhere, here's a little bit about myself:  I'm actually a co-worker of Marty, so any current geographical information about him that you may know also applies to me.  I'm actually a transplant to this Yankee state, being born and raised in Arkansas, where cow-tipping and noodling are considered perfectly legitimate forms of recreation.  While not much of an "outdoor sportsman" myself, I grew up around lots of firearms, which gave me a healthy respect for pointing the barrel the other way the Second Amendment.  I had the privilege of attending various forms of Christian schooling from second grade through college, including both the Bible-thumping fundamentalist and Roman Catholic varieties, both of which helped to shape my own beliefs into a strange-but-still-orthodox mishmash of theology.  So I guess Obama would accuse me of a lot of clinging (see?  Insightful political zingers, only a week stale!  Stay tuned for more of this!).  As it turns out, I'm not to keen on the gayness or illegal immigrants either, although I'm pretty hot for free trade.  Oh well, 4/5 ain't too shabby. 

So I hope to fill these shoes as best I can.  And I promise to keep the shameless plugging of my other blog in a pathetic effort to drive up my own readership to a bare minimum.