I’m just sitting here, watching the pre-Oscar festivities. Den is flipping between Catwoman and the pre-Oscars.

I actually enjoyed Catwoman. Few people who aren’t classic comics geeks know that there were actually 2 Catwomen – one in the Batman series, and one (like the Halle Berry character) who was a thief and general semi-bad girl. The movie gets the conflict right.

I’m watching the promos for Immortalized – the Taxidermy Competition. I truly can’t believe that these freak shows get the audience they do.

I should get busy grading – I have a lot of stuff to catch up on.

I’ve worked hard today, even without getting to the schoolwork. I finished the coursework for the Oceanography class this week (couldn’t have done it without my husband), worked in the yard, helped prepare dinner, and caught up on preparation for my next week’s lessons.

Well, I’ve been in colder – in the North. But, for the Charlotte, NC area, this is bad. We’ve got freezing rain, sleet, and some small snow accumulation.

NOT our typical weather. My husband and I got sprung from school early on Friday. We used it to take care of some business with V—–n – we are NOT happy with the changes in our contract, and it looks like, at this point, it’s going to the lawyers.

Today, I woke up to snow – yes, SNOW – on the ground. I expect that many people will stay home. The few on the road will either be transplants from the North, or timid souls with no clue about how to drive in the snow.

I got up early to start cleaning the house – I really do try to keep it up, but it’s low on my list of priorities, at times. The kitchen is about 1/2-way done; I’ll be putting on laundry in a little shile.

I’m not only cleaning up; I’m also tackling the lesson plans. I’ve been interspersing school-housework for the last 2 hours. I’ve found that to be the best way to handle it – moving around, sitting down for a quick blitz, then getting up again.

Somehow, I’m not sure how I did it – I lost a post that I’d been working on since early morning. I’m going to take that as a sign from above that I need to blog on different topics.

The controversy about the President using children as “props” for his agenda continues. Yes, it was a cynical exploitation of the young. No, I don’t expect any Liberal to agree. But, if you doubt that it was intended to convey that Democrats were the “child-lovers”, while bad, nasty Republicans, who favored 2nd Amendment rights, were “child-h8ers”, consider this:

By putting those children out front, the President essentially co-opted them to his cause. He sent a message to the country that people who support his measures are gentle folks who love children. Those who oppose his approach do not care about the welfare of our youth.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Gun owners as a class do not have fewer children than gun control types. They do not invest less time and money and energy in their children. In fact, I would love to see someone do an experiment. Take the NRA mailing list and send them a solicitation to donate to Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, then do the same for a list of equal size populated with gun control activists. The results might be instructive.

Leon Panetta has done American women – and men – a real disservice with his latest directive. Putting women into combat positions will weaken, not strengthen, the military. To point out just one, very obvious, objection – we are fighting an enemy that believes the appropriate way to deal with women who are “uppity” is to gang-rape them.

This is a real concern. Women who work forward have a real risk of falling into enemy hands – quite barbarous hands. Yes, Israel did have women in direct combat in the early days. They stopped that when it became obvious that such a practice had directly exposed women to unspeakable horrors, before their deaths.

Military history is ignored. The Soviet Union sent women into battle in World War II. Israel used women combatants in its 1948 War of Independence. Stalin’s experiment was shrouded in propaganda, and the results are unclear, but Israel said never again. Male soldiers lost control when they saw women being blown apart, and women, when taken captive, were brutalized sexually. Women reduced the combat effectiveness of Haganah units, Moshe Dayan said later, because men moved to protect them from capture. The thought of pregnant women in danger would have been insupportable. Responding to both military necessity and moral imperative, Israel barred women from combat.

That’s EXPERIENCE talking.

Read some of the arguments here.

Further, more specific, arguments against the change are:

Pentagon figures show that during the hostilities in the Persian Gulf, naval women were 3.7 times more likely to be “nondeployable,” or out of action, than naval men. Moreover, the berthing spaces assigned to women on shipboard can only be filled by other women. Thus the Navy must find a female radar technician, say, to replace the pregnant or otherwise nondeployable radar technician who has departed. If one is not available, the warship must do without.

Look, women in the military have done some wonderful things. Nurses are, in fact, often exposed to danger – some have been captured, wounded, or died in combat. However, we make extraordinary efforts to minimize those risks, for just those reasons mentioned above.

Every woman in a non-combatant position frees up a man to fight. Should we put women into combat, only to use those men in the back offices?

Women who argue for changes in tradition need to be consistent. If women are “just like men” in combat, should we then negate the Violence Against Women Act? What purpose does it serve, if we all are alike? Surely, pro-women-warriors wouldn’t want to suggest that women are WEAKER, or need protection?