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Read it!  He’s a genius.

One of the common themes of male-bashing feminism is that men are the source of all violence.  A recent study has demonstrated that, in fact, men are frequent victims of domestic abuse at the hands of their spouses.  The difference, of course, is that it is socially acceptable for a woman to be the victim, but not acceptable for the man.  Thus, men are less likely to report abuse, and much less likely to be believed.

 In a recent study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine,  almost 30% of men reported abuse at the hands of their spouses (compared to approximately 44% of women).  Older men who had been abused had higher rates of depression and lower overall mental health scores.

Personally, I don’t believe either of those statistics.  I don’t believe that 30% of men have been the victim of *significant* abuse nor that 44% of women have.  My personal opinion is that most of these surveys ask such broad questions that non-abusive behavior is being classified as abuse. 

To give you an example, one of the questions is whether or not a partner has ever “hit, slapped, shoved, choked, kicked, shaken, or otherwise physically hurt you?” 

Perhaps we are just more physical than other folk, but in fact my wife has hauled off and slugged me in the arm on occasion.  Of course, I am eight inches taller and 90 pounds heavier than my wife, and she could pummel me all day long with me barely noticing.  And she knows that. She has never knowingly caused me harm.  However, if I were to strictly answer that question,  I would answer “yes.”  The idea that I am a victim of “spouse abuse” is simply silly, though.

Similarly, one of the questions is whether or not one’s spouse has ever “put you down” or “controlled your behavior.”  Well, perhaps they’ve never heard of a “honey do” list. Any wife who doesn’t modulate her spouse’s behavior at least a little isn’t doing her job. And vice versa.  In 18 years of marriage, I doubt that any couple has managed to go without at least one argument in which somebody “put” somebody “down.”  I guess I’d have to answer that one with a yes as well.

So, here we are.  Almost two decades of marriage, deeply in love, very supportive, and never hurt each other, but if we were to answer the questions literally, we’d both be “victims” of abuse.

Domestic violence is real.  And it’s bad.  But these measures are simply not realistic, and any studies of them overstate the real rates by a great amount, I suspect.  Goose and gander, though.  If these studies paint us men as such brutes, they don’t paint women much better.

McCain, as usual, is right.  It is torture.

Drudge Report recently put up a link to an AP story about the contraction of traditional large newspapers who are slashing jobs, selling real estate, and have fallen into “survival mode.”   Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit followed up with a comment from a reader stating that as an effort at “ethical consumerism,” the commenter was cancelling his subscription to the Chicago Tribune because of the Trib’s slanted coverage of Second Amendment issues.

 This made me think of something I have seen in my profession as well.  In the public eye, the medical profession is represented by the American Medical Association, which claims to be the voice of medicine to the nation.  However, the AMA has been dropping in terms of percentage of physician members for decades.  Currently, only about 22% of physicians are members of the AMA.  As noted in the article that provided that number,

Of those members, 20.5% are medical students, 9% are residents, and 36.5% are 56 or older. As one delegate put it, “we have a lot of students and a lot of old docs, but not a lot of practicing physicians.”

 It seems to me that the dinosaur media and the AMA suffer from the same disease.  Both of them have a very specific viewpoint, agenda, and bias.  Both are in a quandry.  They want to have broader appeal and be more responsive to the customers or memebers they are losing, but in order to do so, they would have to abandon the self-selected bias that makes the organizations so attractive to the few that remain.  They want the money and support of a broad base, but they don’t want to be responsive to that broad base — either in terms of policy or services.

This came home to me most recently when I found out that the AMA has declared a common practice in my subspecialty to be “unethical.”  A recent decision by the AMA has declared that it is unethical for a physican to be in attendance during a police interview.  I understand the underlying concern they had — that a physician in attendance to an interview may be put in a bad position if there was abuse during that interview.  However, consider the position of a forensic pathologist, for whom being able to observe an interview is profoundly important to the diagnosis.  For us, that data is the equivalent of the history and physical for the clinician.  It is not merely common, but it is a very *good* practice, for instance, for a forensic pathologist to work with the police and the parents in reconstructing the events in the case of a child death.  The idea that such cooperation is “unethical” is simply ludicrous.

 The disconnect between attitudes of AMA members compared to the general physician population of the US has been measured.  For instance, members of the AMA have dramatically different ideas about assisted suicide compared to US physicians in general.

 Recently, an AMA-type organization was proposed for the intelligence community.  In response, I noted:

…the authors note the importance of the AMA [American Medical Association] as an early force in the standardization and professionalization of medicine. It should be noted that the role of the AMA has evolved since that time, and may provide a cautionary note. As the AMA assumed its role in the leadership of the medical profession in the eyes of those outside of it, it became increasingly politicized. The increasing involvement of the AMA with specific political agendas at the expense of medical professionalism has resulted in a widespread disillusionment with the organization; as of 2005, less than 30 percent of physicians belong to the organization

Membership in some subspecialties is so low that their respective subspecialty organizations risk losing representation in the AMA; this has been true for the National Association of Medical Examiners as well as the American Society of Neuroradiology. Most physicians identify more strongly with their subspecialty organization than with the AMA, and competing (albeit even smaller) umbrella organizations have developed, such as the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and the National Physicians Alliance.

The AMA now represents a self-selected subpopulation of physicians with specific political views, and is caught in the paradox of both wanting to increase its membership yet not wanting to change that agenda. This may be pertinent to the Intelligence Community in light of recurring complaints that intelligence agencies advance a political agenda at odds to that of the Administration by means of leaks, background interviews, etc. A professional organization that views itself in terms of ultimate professional and policy authority stands a great risk of evolving away from its professional anchor point.

The same thing is true of traditional newspapers.  They have the choice of publishing an insular product in line with their narrow but comfortable biases, or of publishing a product with a broader appeal but at the cost of the protection of those biases.  They have chosen the former, as has the AMA.  However, like the AMA, they pretend that they are doing the latter.

via persecution.com

On May 12, Iranian police arrested 12 known Muslim converts to Christianity and confiscated their books, computers and printers in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz.

According to Compass Direct News, “The arrests began at 5 a.m. on May 11, when two couples were taken into custody before boarding their flights at the Shiraz International Airport and sent directly to jail. All four were subjected to hours of interrogation, questioning them solely ‘just about their faith and house church activities.’”

Compass Direct News added that the detained Christians had been identified as: Homayon Shokohie Gholamzadeh, 48; his wife, Fariba Nazemiyan Pur, 40; Amir Hussein Bab Anari, 25; and his wife, Fatemeh Shenasa, 25. Although the two wives were released the same day, Anari was detained until May 14, and Gholamzadeh remains in jail.

“Two hours after the early arrests of May 11, police authorities invaded the home of Hamid Allaedin Hussein, 58, arresting him and his three adult children: Fatemah, 28; Muhammed Ali, 27; and Mojtaba, 21. All the family’s books, CDs and computers were hauled off as well. Hussein, his daughter and one son were released later the same day, but son Mojtaba remains in prison,” Compass Direct added.

Pray for our brethren in Iran.

via persecution.com

On April 29, a court in Djilfa, south of Algiers, charged a 33-year-old Muslim convert to Christianity with “printing, storing and distributing” illegal religious material. According to Compass Direct News, “An Algerian Christian detained five days for carrying a Bible and personal Bible study books was handed a 300-Euro (US $460) fine and a one-year suspended prison sentence.”

Compass reported this conviction was the latest in numerous detentions and court cases against Algerian Christians. “Since January, police and provincial officials have ordered the closure of up to half of the country’s estimated 50 Protestant congregations,” Compass Direct said.

Pray for our brethren in Algeria

 via persecution.com

On June 21, 16 Christians were abducted by Muslim extremists when they gathered to pray in Academy Town, Peshawar, Pakistan.

According to The Voice of the Martyrs contacts in Pakistan, “Salamat Masih and 30 of his family and close friends were gathered to pray and celebrate the birth of his daughter, when 12 Taliban [members] of the Lashka-e-Islam group broke into his house yelling and shouting. They held the believers at gunpoint. The Muslim house-owner, Haji Muhammad Saraj, was also present at the time to collect rent.”

VOM contacts added, “With machine and automatic guns, they forcibly separated the men from the women and children. Slapping the Christian men, they commanded all 16men, including Pastor Zulifqar and Haji Muhammad Saraj, to get into the five waiting vehicles.”

The 16 Christian men were held captive for an hour. “They were beaten and abused, and had all their money and mobile phones stolen from them. During this time, the Taliban attempted to persuade Pastor Zulifqar to convert to Islam, which he unquestionably refused. After sunset the Taliban took them to another place where they were kept in a cave until their release 10 hours later,” VOM contacts reported.

Pray for our bretheren in Pakistan

via persecution.com

Recently, Muslims closed a church in Jatimula, Bekasi, West Java, Indonesia and blocked Christians from entering and holding services.

According to The Voice of the Martyrs contacts in Indonesia, “Muslims blocked the alley leading to the church building. Pastor Anna and Huta Julu had to lead worship outside their church building and believers had to sit in the dirty alley to pray outside their church.”

VOM contacts added, “The sign outside the church building stated, ‘This church building is sealed,’ and it was written on a letterhead belonging to the Tambun Selatan district of Bekasi local government.”

This is the second time Muslims have closed the church in Bekasi. The church was first closed on September 10, 2005 when a mob of 100 Muslims nailed boards over doors and windows and prohibited believers from entering the building.

Pray for our brethren in Indonesia.

The slow slide of Canada into socialist authoritarianism with respect to free speech has been a sad spectacle to watch.  But it seems that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  According to the Sydney, Australia Herald, a *12-year-old* was grounded by her father for posting inappropriate pictures of herself on the internet.  She appealed her gounding to the Canadian courts which, having solved all the other important social issues facing the world, decided to overturn the father’s discipline and order that she have her access to the internet restored. be allowed to go on a field trip.

Good God.  What *is* in the water up there?  But, of course, it’s easy to laugh at the Canadian slide into nanny-statism but that’s exactly what Obama wants to give us.  Or, as Hillary says “It takes a village.”  The Dems don’t say what to do when the village is run by idiots.  Is this really the “change” we want?

via Fark

Indeed.  It’s funny to watch the global warming religionists scramble now that their predictions are failing.  The mark of real science is if you propose a theory and make predictions, and those don’t pan out, you have disproved the theory.  Turns out that the religious global warmers have based their theories on false measurements, inaccurate models, and hyperbole.  If the current lack of sun activity continues and temperatures continue to fall, you have to wonder if they will continue with “falling temperatures are a sign of warming” mantra or flip and say that we have to have state control of every aspect of our lives to avoid “global cooling.”  Via Drudge