Sigh... the press is using alinsky's rules again.

The latest battle of the MSM vs Trump is that they are quoting the Pope as condemning Trump as not being a Christian.

But when I looked into what actually was said, I found this dialogue, where a reporter actually led the Pope into a verbal trap and then reported he attacked Trump by name, which was not true.

Note, the link in the UKGuardian, which is about as left as you can get without lies.

When a Reuters reporter asked Pope Francis what he thinks of Trump’s border wall plans on the Pontiff’s flight back to Rome, the Holy Father responded that he had not heard about these plans prior, so he’d “give him the benefit of the doubt”. 

But the Pope then added: “I’d just say that this man is not Christian if he said it this way.”

Pope Francis was so incredulous that such a bombastic individual could exist – or he’s so above petty repartee – that he continued speaking hypothetically rather than condemn Trump’s positions directly.

 “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis said. “This is not in the Gospel.”

In other words, an ambush for a soundbite. And not only did the Pope fall into a trap, but his "spontaneous" remarks about something he just admitted he didn't know anything about made things worse.

But Drudge is right on it, pointing out that the Vatican itself has walls and security.

as for the press insisting this will harm Trump with "catholics", uh, I don't think so.

Most Catholics are Democrats and like myself won't vote for him anyway, but the conservative Catholics who actually take religion seriously will see the sound bite as the Pope interfering with the US election on a security matter, which we Catholics usually ignore, or they will wonder why he went out of his way to criticize Trump when Christians like Hillary celebrate abortion, and it is rare for bishops to interfere with elections even when "catholics" like Biden, Pelosi, the late Teddy Kennedy, and many others are pro abortion are running for office...


The article then goes on to complain that when she drives away from the border, there are road stops, and her papers checked in the USA. She blame Bush...
Yes, but that is routine: when I lived in NewMexico, this was done all the time, and that was during the Clinton administration.

I wonder if she blames Bush that cars and trucks are routinely stopped and checked for fruit and veggies when you enter California?

in the meanwhile, here in the Philippines, a quote out of context is being used to destroy Manny Paquiao.

Nothing new there. He is a born again Christian, and he is getting the full court press similar to Chickafil or Duck dynasty (I still can't find the full quote in news reports, or if what he said was in Tagalog, where it may have been slang mistranslated, or if it was in English. Manny is not exactly fluent in English...

but Ruby said the buzz in the christian circles is that he was discussing the problem of "open marriage" in gay couples, and he was only pointing out that gay couples are not faithful to their spouses (whereas animals often are). This fact, of course, is  a problem that well documented in the US and in public health articles, but rarely discussed in the media).

So why is the press trying destroy a near has been boxer? Because like Erap he is beloved among the common folk here could be president someday, and he is now a born again Christian who is so serious about following Christ that he has given up his girlfriends and even cockfighting.

so there you have two big kerfuffles in the press this weekend, neither of which are actually true.

But it will keep you from noticing that China just put anti aircraft missiles in their fake islands in the West Philippine sea, and that they are not only slowly taking over the fishing grounds and potential oil/natural gas resources there, but are slowly extending their power to shut the air and sea lanes used for most shipments to Japan and Korea.

StrategyPage:

Meanwhile China continues to insist that it owns the South China Sea despite what anyone else in the neighborhood believes or international treaties say. The neighbors (especially Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines) continue to protest and build up their much smaller air and naval forces. Many Filipinos doubt that the United States would stand fast if China pushed hard. There are no signs that China is going to back down when it comes to its many territorial claims on neighbors. 

nor are we the only target, as this StrategyPage article points out.


Did that get headlines?

no, because if it did, maybe someone would notice that the Obama adminstration was doing poorly in national security.

---------------

FYI: Alinsky's rules are how to manipulate an issue by picking a scapegoat and making the issue about what he said or did, in a way that defending this terrible person is impossible.

he did not misspeak, he did not get quoted out of context, and he is not a man of good will who sees things differenlty than you: He is evil, and we will search for a needle in the haystack to find something to blacken his name and make him and his opinions an outcast.



the result is a polarized community, as we see in the US, where if you oppose someone, it is not because there are nuanced ways to see it differently, but because you are evil.

An example in this is the evil tweets rejoicing at the death of Scalia, who commited the sin of actually thinking the constitution meant something, instead of finding things that aren't there to essentially pass the laws desired by the elites, ignoring nuances or even the will of the majority of Americans.

The alternative is democracy: of allowing a full discussion of the issue.


the book is here at Internet Archives is you want to read the whole thing.

sheesh. Bad reporting and propaganda.

AnnAlthouse links to a WAPO article about a child with kwashiorkor who was abandoned by the family because he was accused of being a "witch". There has been a couple similar stories in the papers about children being accused of witch craft, and even being killed in exorcisms.

the story claims "thousands" of such children, but I wonder if the kids are being abandoned because they are "witches", or if the moms (maybe from pressure of not having enough food, or maybe because the new "husband" doesn't wan the kid)  just find that a convenient way to discard the unwanted kid.

(before you point fingers, remember the moms carried the kid to term and breastfed them for two years. In the US they abort inconvenient kids)

The article says the kids are abandoned due to witchcraft... but doesn't give any other information. 

Background: when I worked in Africa, unexpected deaths/illnesses often were blamed on witches. The "witchdoctor" usually would find you had sinned or mistreated someone, and were being punished so you held a ceremony to cure you. Witchdoctors diagnose being bewitched, but like all parctitioners, a few turned to the dark side to show their power. 

...One other thing: When HIV started killing people, and western medicine didn't work, a lot of people went back to traditional ways to heal, and gave these evil shamans an opportunity to expand their power...Hence the reports of raped virgins to cure HIV or that albinos were being killed for body parts.

These accusations of witchcraft might be behind some of these children being abandoned, but we have no proof in the article if this accusation caused a dozen abandoned kids or if the thousands of abandoned street kids are due to this. 

But it ironic that the article resulted in lots of comments that blame Christians for this, and/or have the implication that Africans are savages for abandoning kids this way. Uh, racism anyone? One wonders why no one blames Buddhism for the street kids of Thailand or Hinduism for the street kids of India. Here in the Philippines, the blame is on the Catholic church for not allowing these kids to be aborted. But often it is the temples/churches and other local religious outreaches that rescue these kids...


And, of course, the rescuer is a white lady from Europe. Ha. I laughed. What a nice photo op...

What, no locals working with street kids? UNICEF could probably fund five locals to rescue and care for kids for the cost of funding this one "blond" European lady (and probably does, but they won't get their photos in the WAPost).

Yes, I worked in Africa, but there were not enough doctors back then, but even 40 years ago, most of the village outreaches were done by locals...we trained village health workers to do this, with a grant from Oxfam...

Headlines below the fold (plus rants)

Two reports on cyberwarfare by StrategyPage:

China's "volunteer" spammers, spies and hackers.

Iran's attacks against Israel

something to remember the next time the press ignores why Hillary's private email server is brought up: She had her own server so that the "Freedom of information act" (that lets you pry into Gov't documents) wouldn't apply, but it left her open to have secret documents hacked by spies.

Of course, given the fact that my USGov't personnel file (and a couple hundred thousand more) have been hacked, and that a UK 16 year old hacked the email of the CIA director last year, one suspects that gov't servers aren't all they are supposed to be.

--------------------

where are the killers? Canada is missing 4000 "indigenous" women...

----------------------
Either reporting is better, or here in the rural Philippines the druggies are bringing in the culture of murder and rape.

Latest NE Journal here.

it also has a report that the gov't will give us funding to build up the infrastructure, so we won't have so many floods.

Good. I hope the local politicians won't steal it.

Related item: Our present mayor is the daughter of the late mayor who ordered the hit on his rivals that killed our nephew...and a week after she became mayor, there was a hit on one of the family members of the clan that killed his bodyguard and a few bystanders.

Yet our mayor got a funeral with the KofC honoring him, and now the InC is putting up banners supporting her reelction.

Sigh I expect it from the Catholics, who in the US are known to bury Mafia members and pro abortion politicians all the time, but the InC? Say it isn't so, bro...

they also might support Duterte for Pres...

in other local news, Manny Pacquiao said something anti gay and then apologized. Being gay is not an issue here in the Philippines, as long as you do it behind closed doors it is tolerated in the same way that "second wives" and bar girls are tolerated...

but with the Obama administration is pushing poor coutnries to change their laws, including pushing gay marriage in a way that will not just change the law (so it can be used to destroy the Catholic and other strict churches) but do it so it will demand you approve of people's moral lapses or face legal penalties...For example: The "reproductive rights" law includes a section mandating that health care providers at gov't clinics can be fined if they refuse to give out contraceptives or advise against using them. Essentially meaning that gov't clinics would be Catholic free. Luckily, the law is on hold, (and besides, no one pays attention to stupid laws they don't like, since a small "gift" will let regulators look the other direction in many cases).

At the same time, there has been an increase in gay tourism and a bar scene in Makati that resembles San Francisco (one gay friend told me he avoids the area now because it is too "rough"). This, plus returning overseas workers, is probably behind our rise in HIV cases in the last few years. Ah, but this is not being addressed: instead, activists are using the HIV increase, which is mainly in gays and drug addicts, to demonize Catholic opposition to mandatory sex ed and their opposition on pushing birth control/condoms on the poor and high school students.

So "born again" folks like Pacman are becoming a target. A million articles about his "apology" saying he said gays are "worse than animals", but
what exactly did he say? No, I can't find the quote, even in Tagalog.

However, I suspect the "animal" quote was condemning promiscuity by those who are pushing Obama's gay agenda, not about local gays per se, since they tend to be integrated into society here in the provinces.

The elephant in the room in this kerfuffle is not same sex attraction, but promiscuity. I gave HIV classes thirty years ago to our NG units, so the huge number of sexual contacts in the aggressive "gay lifestyle" subgroup of gays is an open secret no one wants to talk about.

I laugh when the US papers obediently say everyone here is "shocked" at his remarks. Uh, no. This is the Philippines. The activists who tell us what to think are shocked, but the huge number of pious Catholics and born again Christians probably agree with him, and the rest are busy working for a living and trying to make ends meet.
We have more serious problems to worry about (Dengue fever, anyone?)

But this is a news story because the US paid activists are pushing gay marriage here (along with easy divorce, contraception and abortion).

The backstory: Pacman lost a fight that most folks said he should have won after he was ambushed by a reporter who asked him if he supported gay marriage and he said no... Coincidence, of course...it was probably one of the rich dudes bribed the judges to win a bet, but sometimes one wonders...

----------------------
Atlas Obscura post on an abandoned cemetary in Argentina...
note this part:

Completed in 1873, the South Cemetery (as some call it) was established to handle an exponential increase in deaths associated with successive outbreaks of yellow fever and cholera from the years 1869 and 1871

yes, the big kerfuffle about Zika virus is about changing abortion laws in South America, not about public health.

Why do I say this? Because it ignores the elephant in the room:  The same mosquito also carries Yellow Fever, Dengue,  and Chikungunya fever...

"From a global perspective, the burden of dengue is huge," said Dr. Mark Loeb, an infectious disease specialist at McMaster University in Hamilton. "It's been estimated relatively recently that there's about 400 million cases of dengue globally per year."
Up to about 500,000 of those cases are severe enough to require hospitalization, and the disease kills about 25,000 people each year, many of them children, he said..

this Rappler report from Aug last year says that there were 55 thousand cases reported (later articles say 100 thousand were expected by the end of last year)...and since most mild cases either never see a doctor/clinic or are so mild that the lab test isn't done, one suspect the actual number is higher.

Wikipedia article HERE.


And remember: If you catch it a second time, it can be much more severe.

There is a vaccine against yellow fever, but the new one against Dengue isn't very good. In the meanwhile, spraying for mosquitoes and maybe basic things like collecting garbage, supplying water (so you don't have to store water in buckets in the home) and of course decent sewers might help. (did I tell you that after several bad floods, and a dengue outbreak we are getting the open air sewers  made larger, and covered? And the garbage guys are cleaning out the smaller open ditches too...Yes, it's election year. Wonder if this will continue next year?)

Alternative: bring back DDT, which is essentially non toxic to humans?

problem: mosquitoes become resistant after awhile, but for an acute epidemic, it is safer in untrained hands than more modern, more toxic pesiticides.


--------------------
for later reading: Influenza hospitalizations are higher among the poor, and only in the elderly is this due to the difference in getting flu shots.

the higher black hospitalization might not just be racism, or even drug use: sickle cell anemia often results in the statistics on black childhood deaths being higher than poor Hispanics or poor whites.

So where are the telethons for sickle cell anemia?

but what is behind the black MSM epidemic of HIV? Could the reason be lack of taking retroviral therapy in that group?

again, the problem might be that many blacks distrust the medical profession (a result of the Tuskegee study) and since those that have G6PD deficiency might get sick from many medicines, including those used for HIV or it's complications. FYI: if you properly use retrovirals, your viral load goes down and you probably won't infect your partners.

Then there is the problem of insurance or just not seeing health as a priority when you have so many other bad things in your life

 risks are compounded by social determinants of health associated with increased risk and poorer health outcomes that include higher rates of unemployment and incarceration and lower incomes and educational attainment.

CDC report on the problem and how doctors are trying to analyze and prevent the spread of HIV in MSM populations HERE.

 Discrimination by health care providers (22), limited access to gay-friendly health services (23), and barriers to health insurance (23–25) also can contribute to HIV-related disparities experienced by MSM. The physical and mental health of MSM can be affected by syndemic conditions, which are conditions that individually or in combination can increase HIV risk. These syndemic conditions include, but are not limited to, substance use and abuse, mental health problems, prevalence of STDs in the community, poverty, unemployment, and experiences of emotional and physical violence and abuse (7).

In other words, a lot of docs just don't want to treat these patients.


and I suspect that many just hate going to clinics because they sense they are disliked or looked down upon. I saw this attitude when I was in medical school 50 years ago, but I haven't worked in the inner city since then, but many of my traditional Objibwe patients (and my Mexican farm worker patients) reported subtle or not so subtle prejudice in physicians who saw them outside the IHS system.

I've seen this in myself: If I have to wait in line longer than other patients in a clinic, I assume it's just because they are triaging and figure I can wait. But when I took my (Colombian born) children and the same thing happened, I assumed we were passed over and put at the end of the line due to racism.

-----------------

I'm sorry if I seem judgemental in a non PC way, but I am a physician, and certain lifestyles are injurious to health, and other (like sex tourism/casinos/gambling/drugs) are deadly to the entire family.

But in the US, it's okay to condemn obesity, sugar, and transfats, but it's not PC to notice the problems caused by having dozens of sexual partners a year or noticing the half life of Marijuana means a lot more DUI's and work accidents..

Yes, these things go on all the time, but it is simply not healthy for the government to push these things as okay, or even (as in the USA) punish those who try to live by the old rules.

Sigh. No more Bob and Ray

Bob Eliott of the comedy duo Bob and Ray has died.

thanks for all the laughs.



(headsup InFromTheCol
dBlog)

Family news and book/movie commentary

Family news

it's hot with overcast but no rain. Lousy for allergies, so I am staying inside

One of the puppies we brought here from the farm is sick: infected foot, not eating well but takes antibiotics. She's so malnourished and thin she may or may not make it. She is so thin that she can squeeze through the gate and might have either eaten garbage or got into a fight.

Ruby has an extra role in a play put on by several of the Christian schools in Manila. So she will go Friday and Saturday for practice, but due to the distance she will miss two other practices.

Here, they have increased the high school graduation from 10 to 12 years for a diploma. She might transfer to another school when she hits grade 11, but so far she is fine homeschooling.

myself, I am busy listening to the classic book The Leopard at Scribd...it is almost as boring as the movie, but I will run it as background when doing other things.

I am also reading some old Elizabeth Goudge books there...

I also read the latest Anne Hillerman mystery novel where she takes up the characters from her father's novels. Fairly good, but my only criticism is that they talk too much (her father would have them think these things, not say them out loud).

This is the same problem I have with Outlander: uh, lady, what happened to the strong silent type?
These are Scotsmen, not Irishmen...

But of course, one reads historical romance for the romance, and even though they often get the history part right, the characters tend to think like modern people...if they actually acted and thought and talked like people did back then, no one would read these things. One runs into this with autobiographies: I was startled when the polite lady Agatha Christie used the N word in her autobiography. Well, it wasn't taboo at the time...

The other problem I have with the later Outlander books is that she made the heroine a doctor. Uh, even in 1960's, getting into a US medical school as a woman was hard, but getting into one after age 25 was near impossible unless you had pull. And a nurse wouldn't have had the academic credentials to actually get admitted. Or did she go to the UK for school, where doctors got a six year course after A levels, and back then they admitted with pull?

But she was supposed to get her MD in Boston, so how did she ever get admitted in those days, when less than five percent of students were women?
Uh, they discriminated back then and it was almost impossible to get into medical school if you were Black or Jewish or a woman, or if you were old (read over 28)...

until a few years before I got in, our medical school had a black quota (one or two), a Jewish quota, and no women. Our class was better: We had 8 percent women, about 20 percent Jewish, one black and one Asian.

When my fellow classmate Carol got pregnant, and didn't drop out, you could hear the chins of the faculty drop...when they suggested she take a year off, she said why, since she had her first baby while working for a PhD and teaching part time...(she had the kid during the Thanksgiving break)...

ah the good old days...

Something to remember the next time you read about nostalgia for the past.

The movie "Woodlawn" actually goes into this...

I had to laugh: It is sort of like Rudy with Jesus: The guy who turns around the team by replacing their racial hatred by pushing the idea of brotherhood in Jesus is the guy who played Rudy...and if you are a sports fan, you know who I am talking about (Sean Astin).

Podcast of the week

Astronomy cast was off for awhile, but now they are posting stuff regularly.

This week's podcast is about seeing the universe using gravity waves.

and their older podcasts are there to learn about the science of the stars.

Uh, oh: Conspiracy theory turns out to be a "maybe"

Every time someone who is controversial dies, the conspiracy theorists pop up. So when the conspiracy theories popped up about Justice Scalia, I just shrugged.Uh, he's pretty old. Probably natural causes.

UH HO. Drudge has it: LINK

backstory: Yeah, if you want to murder someone, go to a remote rural area where CSI and even decent autopsies are not usually done routinely.

as for the "celebrity" thing, if two nights and a tour costs less than 600 dollars as this article states, then it would be in the same price range as most of the resorts where I have attended medical conferences, not for millionaires.

Insomnia download of the week

LINK

The story no one wants to discuss

The papers cry about Trump and his minions, or about Sanders and his minionettes, and blame it on those spoiled white men (hint hint who cling to their guns and god) or feminists who will go to hell because they won't support Hillary.

Both parties pay lip service to job creation while signing international treaties that export jobs, or destroy jobs in the name of protecting the environment.

and  in the meanwhile the laws (often by court fiats that echo the ideas of a small elite) are behind societal changes, as Scalia dared to point out (see previous blog posts).

But without jobs, and when welfare will support you (or you can mooch off parents or girlfriends) why work?

Liberals in the meanwhile ask "what is wrong with Kansas", because people there implicitly see how societal attitude backed by the idea of big daddy gov't is destroying the families, who traditionally did things like care for each other.

But Charles Murray in the WSJ has a post behind a fire wall that notes the real problem: That families have been decimated on all sides.

..These are stunning changes, and they are visible across the country. In today’s average white working-class neighborhood, about one out of five men in the prime of life isn’t even looking for work; they are living off girlfriends, siblings or parents, on disability, or else subsisting on off-the-books or criminal income. Almost half aren’t married, with all the collateral social problems that go with large numbers of unattached males.

the WSJ article is here but behind a firewall, but Bob's blog has a summary. 

yes, I should talk: I took early retirement and married a divorced man. I plead guilty.

headlines below the fold (or what's god got to do with it?)

StrategyPage: The Genocide against Christians...first Isis now Iran's minions.

The United States and most European governments had adopted the attitude that Christians in Iraq have not been singled out for attack but now the growing mountain of evidence has led a growing number of Western governments to at least admit that Christians and other non-Moslems are under heavy attack from ISIL and Iraqi Shia (usually sponsored by Iran) militias. In 2014 ISIL atrocities against religious minorities like the Yazidis and Christians was noticed by the world media but that attention was temporary and the plight of Christians in Syria and Iraq was largely ignored

the Pope has complained but that too was ignored.

Now that he met with the Patriarch of Moscow, and praised Russia for defending Christendom, maybe it will get some attention.

This goes back to the pre communist idea that Russia sees itself as the Third Rome...defending Christendom against the errors of the east (aggressive Islam) and west (decadent and anti religious secularists).

Without understanding this mythology, you will not be able to judge Putin's actions, including those that seem imperialistic to it's neighbors (that Russia will take them over for their own good).

however, one is happy that in Mexico the Pope said murdering people and the drug gangs were a bad thing. Duh.

Most of what he said was true, but the secular reports don't mention if he told them what to do about it. Did he tell them them to repent, give their lives to Jesus, and then act accordingly?

nah: Too religious to report so if he did, we won't hear about it.

Related item:

Reuters article on Zika and why it probably will not change the law on abortion. The public opposes, but also the medical problems in diagnosing:

it notes 4000 cases suspected and 400 cases confirmed, but other articles say 700 cases confirmed and 400 cases were false positive.
Now, it it's this hard to diagnose after birth, you see the problem. Of course, you could abort all women, but those 4000 cases would be 0.1% of all pregnancies, so aborting them all would be a case of overkill.

it also notes the opposition of the now large Evangelical community, the "elephant in the room" that could be part of the reason Brazil is becoming more prosperous: Evangelicals tend to stress you have to follow the ten commandments, and don't condemn capitalism per se, but see it as a way to  serve God and to make the entire community prosperous. (JPII's encyclical saying this  is usually ignored by catholic SJW's).

This is mainly a result of the "liberation theology" types that morphed Catholicism into marxism, replacing Jesus and the saints with marxist platitudes, so people walked away. Some stayed "catholic" but found the emotional satisfaction not in church but in pagan cults that are popular there.

(related item: The "saint death" who is associated with the murderous Mexican drug gangs is one such pagan cult in Mexico that has morphed from being probably harmless back into it's dark side).

I should note that Catholicism uses fiestas and saints and stories for teaching people about Jesus and our relationship to the deity,  and the post Vatican II types threw out these intuitive ways of evangelization and replaced them with marxism. Protestants replace the stories behind the fiestas etc with bible verses to teach.

But since stories reach deeper into the heart than memorizing verses, churches that push only the idea of Jesus as a personal savior, (adding implicitly "only for those in our small church") tend to be anti catholic, and will be hijacked to destroy the church (by implication: "we are better than those lousy catholics").

 Since this "we are the champions" myth is not a profound myth that encompasses all of reality (what happens when you lose?) often they will fade away when the charismatic preacher passes away, or when the enthusiasm fades in a couple hundred years, you will find us catholics plugging away quietly in the corner to pick up the pieces...

Alas, the Pope is preaching a good message, but he is only scolding, not telling them where God fits into all of this...

if all of this sounds too mushy for secularists, and nothing they need to think about, it is because they forget that the church is an independent source of authority that essentially outranks the state.

So tyranny has to destroy the power of religion if it is to make the state into the new object of worship.

One comment on Bernie Sanders: He is of course a socialist, and maybe the "modern" women supporting him do so because they see the government as guaranteeing them their rights, including social and money support for them when they require it.

In the past, the family and the churches supplied such things, and still do in much of America and in most of the world; ironically, the anti religion bias of the Democratic party sees religion as standing in the way of the "rights", while Republican  libertarianism destroys the old rules in the name of letting one pursue one's own concept of the good results in a socialist state that picks up the pieces when the solitary individual can't do it all on their own.

The ultimate result is "euthanasia" when you are old and useless, or suicide for the middle aged when the pursuit of money and self esteem has resulted in divorce and drug addiction to fill the hole in your heart and you now see no reason to live.

One only has to see the outcry of hate on twitter against Judge Scalia to see that anyone who hints that an almighty supreme court should hold back on destroying common law in the name of the latest fad of the elite is now seen as the enemy.

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Fido was first domesticated in South East Asia.


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What does the discovery of gravity waves mean? David Reneke explains

The find gave researchers a completely new tool for studying the universe and its origins, two University at Buffalo physicists say. “Being able to detect gravity waves opens an entirely new window in astronomy,” says Will Kinney, professor of physics in the UB College of Arts and Sciences. “It’s like being able to see a new kind of light. Gravity wave telescopes will allow us to observe directly entirely new phenomena that have been inaccessible to us previously.”.

yes, there is religion behind this as David Warren notes here, and in another essay notes: Lamaitre was ridiculed by calling his theory of the universe the "big bang" theory.

The expression “Big Bang” was itself coined by the atheist Fred Hoyle to make fun of it, and has stuck because it still appeals to the craving of materialists for a static Universe, infinite in scale. They can’t handle something that began; there must be something before that “just happened,” to no good end, for no good reason, in the infinite regression of a hall of mirrors. They must absolutely insist on the meaninglessness of it all; a succession of nothings. For otherwise they must face down the very God that they have been avoiding.

the big question that some are starting to dare to ask in science is actually an old one in philosophy: Why is there something instead of nothing? Why can we comprehend the universe at all? Why does the universe follow laws that we can discover?

Catholics always say God reveals in two books: in the bible and in nature. So for Christians, being a scientist who finds things out about the universe is a way to serve God.

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Sermon of the day

Movement is not necessarily progress. More important than your obligation to follow your conscience, or at least prior to it, is your obligation to form your conscience correctly. Nobody — remember this — neither Hitler, nor Lenin, nor any despot you could name, ever came forward with a proposal that read, ‘Now, let’s create a really oppressive and evil society.’ Hitler said, ‘Let’s take the means necessary to restore our national pride and civic order.’ And Lenin said, ‘Let’s take the means necessary to assure a fair distribution of the goods of the world.’
“In short, it is your responsibility, men and women of the class of 2010, not just to be zealous in the pursuit of your ideals, but to be sure that your ideals are the right ones. That is perhaps the hardest part of being a good human being: Good intentions are not enough. Being a good person begins with being a wise person. Then, when you follow your conscience, will you be headed in the right direction.”

Excerpted from Justice Antonin Scalia’s commencement address at Langley High School, in Virginia, where his granddaughter was graduating in June of 2010. http://nypost.com/2010/06/20/advice-for-a-new-grad/


headsup Instapundit 

two comments:
One, this is consistent with natural law theory. Too often people just say "it's my conscience" but forget that some people don't have a conscience, or are influenced by society and those around them to be blind to what is right and wrong. (Slavery was an example, as were the Jim Crow laws).

Two: Comment by GHReynolds in USATODAY
 on how Scalia opposed the courts making laws.

The virtue of a democratic system with a First Amendment is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly. That system is destroyed if the smug assurances of each age are removed from the democratic process and written into the Constitution. So to counterbalance the Court's criticism of our ancestors, let me say a word in their praise: they left us free to change. The same cannot be said of this most illiberal Court, which has embarked on a course of inscribing one after another of the current preferences of the society (and in some cases only the counter-majoritarian preferences of the society's law-trained elite) into our Basic Law."

Family News

It's my step son's birthday. Yesterday he had his workers over and they made spahghetti and fishballs for "merienda" and we had the left over for supper.

Joy and Ruby were caught in traffic so didn't get home until 11 pm.

Today we will buy a pizza for lunch: The restaurants will be crowded for Valentine's day.

Me, I hope I can eat: We got late to mass and I left after ten minutes of standing because it was already hot and I tend to faint in hot churches. Sigh. I'll try again next week.

Essays for later reading

I'm a bit fuzzy minded today so linking for slow reading later:

David Warren has two essays about gravity waves and the theory of everything. LINK LINK2
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The Diplomad2.0 writes about his Moroccan grandmother.

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there was another junk article on Neanderthal DNA associated disease that I linked on my medical blog but for later reading: John Hawks discusses neanderthals and humans.

StrategyPage has an article about the Philippines.
Also lots about up coming election. The main issue is corruption.

I was discussing the problem of Chinese corruption (including the riots there that never get publicized) and he asked if the Chinese were as corrupt as the Philippines, and I said not quite.
SP has the numbers:The Philippines is number 95, down from being 85 (i.e. getting worse)
China is now 83rd, moving up 24 places.

Not good news for PNoy's legacy, and not good news for his pal running for president.

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SP article on tatoos and the military.
in the 1950's tatoos were for vets. In the 1970s they were a way for docs to identify druggies. Now they are mainstream.

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Reid's reader essay on the "feral child" Kasper Hauser ...he might have been a fake, but that didn't stop people from writing (and projecting their ideas about children and society using him as a template.
Headsup TeaAtTrianon

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Sermon of the day

At Sense of Events blog: An angry Jesus who wudda thot?

a link to an essay about an art work of angry Jesus cleaning out the temple.


I had a rant here, but moved it to my bitch blog...

Cat item of the day

Climate change causes cats

headsup DaveBarry

and if you want a full list of stuff caused by Climate change, you can find it here.

Headlines below the fold

BBC article on using Carbon 14 to date the earliest copy of the Koran...

handwriting experts dispute the early date.

But the article goes on to explore more problems with the technique, and the controversies (imaginary or real, from Atlantis to the shroud to the Dead sea scrolls) that are associated with these problems.

the problem? The amount of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere varies from year to year...

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PJO'Rourke's bbc essay on the US election.
Heh. I'm old enough to remember when he wrote for the Rolling Stone.
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Mexico has a huge problem with obesity (no pun intended) and the BBC blames cocacola and other sugar laden drinks.

Myself, I would point out that most Mexicans are Metziso, and that Native Americans also have a high rate of obesity and diabetes. So is it the sugary drinks, or that they no longer risk starvation?

The Pima study, comparing the traditional lifestyles vs the modern diet, shows yes, modern food and having enough of it to eat, does make one obese...but the Mexican tribe living the traditional lifestyle also is shorter and I suspect are poorly nourished.

Ravussin also points out the Pima predisposition to store fat efficiently due to survival mechanisms evolved in the harsh southwestern desert. Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/article/mexico-vs.-arizona-pima-indians-3258

except this doesn't explain the similarly high rate of diabetes in the Chippewa of northern Minnesota, who are traditional farmers and fishermen in a non desert environment.

The clue indeed might be genetic: That the gene for metabolic syndrome predisposes one to live through famines. But famines occur everywhere, but until modern times, the ability of the poorer classes to get enough to eat was not present in all the world. Now they can, so the ones with the gene for metabolic syndrome get fat.

My mom tells the story of one of our aunts, who lived through the post WWI famines of Austria by eating tree bark and wild foods. When the aunt visited home in the 1930's, she came back and said there was going to be another war...you see, the peasants sensed the war was coming, and were deliberately getting fat so they could survive.

and, of course, not doing heavy physical work of walking long distances is part of the problem.

Wikipedia list of severe famines...

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strategypage has another backstory on the Sunni Shitte problem of the middle east...
Of course, the problem predates Islam: It goes back to the good old days of Darius the Great.

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Flash floods in Saudi Arabia.

38mm of rain doesn't sound like much but when the hard desert soil doesn't absorb water, disaster can follow (as those of us who lived in the deserts of NM and Arizona are well aware).

wikipedia article on the 2009 floods there gives some geological background on the area.

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Few soldiers were killed in Gulf War I, but the toll of that war continue, made worse by the inabilty to find a cause of many of the vagues symptoms of "Gulf War Syndrome".

blaming it on PTSS and other pschological reasons let the experts refuse to admit it was probably related to Sarin and other WMD.
pdf
:http://www.bu.edu/sph/files/2014/04/RAC2014.pdf

or possibly an autoimmue problem after exposure.. the syndrome of toxin induced autoimmune disease is similar to GWS, and this article goes into the physiology:
pdf LINK

Attention conspiracy theorists: it mentions the Garasil problems in the article...

friends of mine who went to that war remember hearing the nerve gas alarms going off during SCUD attacks, but then being told they were false alarms.  The suspicion is that the dose wasn't enough to kill them, but the small doses induced long term autoimmune probblems.

luckily fr r me, female problems requiring surgery and obesity causing hormones made me overweight so I resigned the year before the war...

they were epecting 40 thousand casualties from that war, because of the nerve gas. What probably stopped major use of Sarin was that Dan Quale "made a mistake" and mentioned in public that there were plans to Nuke Baghdad if nerve gas was used.

But of course, small amounts of sarin in the scuds also should have caused similar syndrome in Israelis...and the Kurds, who got major nerve gas attacks, also had evidence of neurological sequella.
------------------------
well, DUHHHH...

Higher nurse to patient ratios result in fewer deaths.

or you could just cut the amount of paper work they do to please the bureaucrats.

----------------
and the most important research article of the day, from Improbable research:

the history of of trained dancing chickens.

In 1941, Skinner, the highly-influential behavioral scientist and father of operant conditioning, began working on Project Pigeon, a classified effort to train pigeons to help guide glide bombs for the Navy, with funding from General Mills, Inc. ...While the Pigeon Project never took off, the Brelands saw the money-making potential of using positive reinforcement to train animals. They bought a small farm in Mound, Minnesota, and began training various animals in their barn. Their company, Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE), launched in 1943 and among their clients was General Mills. The couple put together a trained chicken show for the company’s farm-feed division, Larro Feed, and trained Larro salespeople on their techniques. The shows were seen at feed stores across the country and were a hit.

science headline of the day

Gravitational waves have been observed.

BBC report.

He said the detection was one of the most important developments in science since the discovery of the Higgs particle, and on a par with the determination of the structure of DNA.
"There is a Nobel Prize in it - there is no doubt," he told the BBC.
"It is the first ever direct detection of gravitational waves; it's the first ever direct detection of black holes and it is a confirmation of General Relativity because the property of these black holes agrees exactly with what Einstein predicted almost exactly 100 years ago."

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for later reading: LINK

LINK2

Miniseries of the week

did volcanic cool spell predate Justinian plague?

In China, the county pulled itself together after it fell, but the attempt of Justinian to regroup the western part of the Roman empire was stopped by the plague.

Could a volcanic cold spell from Volcanoes have partly caused this?

Archeology magazine notes the cold spell, which is noted in history, has been confirmed from tree rings.

Good bye and thanks for all the puppies

Sigh, Cute Overload has shut down their website.

Evil still exists: it thrives on killing the innocent

GetReligion blog links to a local Pakistan news reports on the victims of Islamic terrorists: The children who are killed or wounded when they attack schools.

Story link:

In December, Dawn.com, the online version of the Pakistani newspaper, launched a groundbreaking project that addresses that very concern.

The project, titled 144 Stories, serves as a virtual memorial to the lives lost on Dec. 16, 2014, when Taliban gunmen attacked a public school in Peshawar. When the rampage ended, 144 were dead – most of them schoolchildren. News reports called it the deadliest Taliban attack in Pakistan’s history....

The reporting for 144 Stories is stellar and, at times, heartbreaking. Readers learn about eighth-grader Uzair Ali, who saw the attackers and leapt to shield his friends by lying on top of them. He was shot 13 times and killed, but he managed to save his companions.

14-year-old Fahad Hussain opened a door so his friends could run out. He stayed behind to make sure everyone was evacuated. The killers gunned him down.

First-grader Khaula Bibi was the youngest victim and the only female. The 6-year-old was killed on her very first day of school. Relatives noted that even at her young age, Khaula championed the right of girls to be educated.

Read it and cry.

and say a prayer for the reporters: their lives are in danger for reporting such things

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BBC report (2010) about such murders, not just in Muslim countries but also in southern Thailand...
and how they have widespread and lasting effects on the ability of the locals to educate their children.

this is evil. Killing the innocent is forbidden, but when killing is said to be good by Religious leaders, then it is up to other religious leaders to stop them.

Ah, but the dirty little secret is that the Saudis fund these type to start schools and mosques all over the world. They do this so these leaders don't overthrow the princes who run the place.

and the Saudi funded Madrasses are often the only place for poor kids to get an education: Alas too many of them don't teach useful subjects, only the hateful type religion that makes the poor kids vulnerable to be recruited by terrorists.

However, part of the reason for killing children and burning down schools is not just because they might learn to read and write and learn western ideas: It is because they are soft targets.

kids don't shoot back.

This is why, when I worked in Africa, hospitals and schools and their employees were targets by the communist insurgents funded by the World Council of (christian left wing) Churches.
I should add: usually they didn't kill kids. They merely kidnapped them for recruits.(as the Boko Harum and the "christian" cult LPA do today).

and those enamoured of liberation theology and who correctly lament the US atrocities in VietNam conveniently don't remember the VietCong death squads who killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

nor do the liberation theology types remember those killed by Narcoterrorist funded leftists in Colombia and now in Mexico.

and of course, the massacre of college aged students in Mexico is one of the major ignored stories in the US news.

But today the terrorists dejour are Islamicists, and the winner of the worst terrorist group is the Boko Harum...They also have killed many students, and burnt down many schools. But are ignored because hey, who reads news about Africa?

of course, benign Americans would never celebrate killing innocent children...

Movie of the week

LINK

Headlines below the fold

StrategyPage has a long article on Iran. For later reading.

unlike the US and Europe, who have pretty well ignored the slaughter of their co religionists, Iran sees ISIS and others who slaughter Shiites as a reason to intervene.

HMMM...given that a Saudi Cleric in Mecca is preaching it's good to kill Shiites, there might be a small problem.

the backstory on this is that the Iranian backed Shia militia filled the power vacuum when the Iraqi gov't pushed President Obama to remove US troops.

Now the Iraq government sees the American troops as saviors. At the end of 2015 there were several thousand American troops already in Iraq and more (most of them Special Forces) on the way. The government has apparently made it clear to Iran (which is very hostile to U.S. forces in Iraq) that some American troops are essential. The presence of American troops also makes it less likely that Iran will attempt anything too ambitious (like invading or backing a takeover by Shia militias) and everyone knows that. Most Iraqis are more concerned with Iranian meddling than anything the Americans might do...

has any of this been discussed in the US election "debates" or are they ignoring it, reporting Trump's feud with Fox Bimbo Kelley and telling women to vote for Hillary (or go to hell) because she has two X chromosones? Just wondering...

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the old Pertussis vaccine did cause brain damage in a tiny number of kids, so they replaced it was an a less toxic version. The problem? the immune response is weaker, so you need booster shots.

a pretty nasty disease, and mild cases of the illness are probably still around, since two kids in my practice who didn't get their shots (due to other illnesses) got cases, meaning someone gave it to them.

I suspect this is behind a lot of the terrible bronchitis in adults was from this, where you just kept coughing and coughing for weeks.

----------------

Just what we need: Robot Cockroaches .

they plan to use it to crawl into debris to save victims after disasters...and presumably could use them to spy on you too.

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it's Mardi Gras time!

AH, but the carnival type fiestas are just a way to remember tomorrow is Ash Wednesday.

 it's not big in our town. I mean, we just had the fiesta of Christmas, the Three Kings, the Santo Nino, the AtiAtihan and the Black Nazarene.

A time to celebrate, and a time to repent...


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It's election time in the Philippines, and that old leftie Bishop Cruz is asking hard questions...
someone needs to ask this of those running for office at local and federal levels in the USA also.

And not take platitudes for an answer: Real answers that outline real plans.

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the WAPO editorial wants to abolish marriage.

what could go wrong?

When Catholics warned against "no fault" divorce in the 1970's, they were ridiculed for being hard hearted, yet the decimation of US society and the destruction of the family can be blamed on these laws.

now marriage is meaningless legally, so maybe we should just get gov't out of the marriage business says Foley at Instapundit.

but of course, this only increase the destruction of family and the chaos of society.
when Confucius saw the chaos of China, the first thing he did was reestablish the sacredness of marriage. Reform the person, reform the family, and the reform of gov't will result.

 "He who thinks the old embankments useless and destroys them, is sure to suffer from the desolation caused by overflowing water; and he who should consider the old rules of propriety useless and abolish them, would be sure to suffer from the calamities of disorder. Thus if the ceremonies of marriage were discontinued, the path of husband and wife would be embittered and there would be many offences of licentiousness and depravity." (Bk. xxiii., 7, 8.)

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word of the day: Murmuration

Murmuration:

1 : the act of murmuring : the utterance of low continuous sounds or complaining noises

hmmm...as in "a murmuration of reporters..."

ah but there is another definition:

 2 of starlings : flock

.

.... headsup (and check videos on) BBC site.

Audiobook of the week

--


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Link

anyone who has worked in a gov't bureaucracy knows what happened: On paper, the "rescue" was supposed to be by a local group, so outsiders were told to stand down and let the locals take care of the problem...

Similarly, on "Paper", there were no local terrorists, so that the attack had to be spontaneous, and they looked around and found a movie to blame it on.


Why do I think this? Well, because when I worked for the IHS, often we had volunteer docs helping us out, and I would be called by the nurses for backup when they got over their head (e.g. a difficult delivery, or thinking they could care for a critical patient when we didn't have lab or x ray except on call after 5PM).

Why did they call me? Because I would come. Ah, but it was against the rules: I was NOT authorized to help.

The doc in charge of these hospitals were typical bureaucrats: the nurses would call him and he's say: They are doctors. Let them handle it.

Don't dare to admit some docs were not experts in some areas of medicine such as Obstetrics or acute trauma, or that they might not be aware of which hospital was best for certain transfers (e.g. neurosurgery), or if you needed a helicopter for longer transfers. Don't dare let them call for help when you have five critical patients in the ER needing transfer, because you can take care of them just fine.(long story).

But I didn't care if I embarrassed the visiting docs: The patient came first.

needless to say, I sort of got encouraged to leave the two problem hospitals I am talking about.

I should add: not all IHS places were like this, but two of them where I worked were a problem, and a problem made worse because I lived on site, when most of the other docs lived off the res and had to drive in which took time...yet when I came to fill in, often I was reprimanded.

(in contrast, our IHS hospital in Minnesota called everyone on the list when we had a problem: Often I wouldn't wait for the phone call, I would just go when I heard screaming in the parking lot, or a helicopter coming in, knowing it was probably something bad..often they were happy to see me, and that I was at home and could help).

Bureaucrats tend to follow the rules...alas, sometimes following the rules will result in a dead patient (or in Benghazi, a dead Ambassador and a couple more dead heroes).

to paraphrase the old saying:

Stuff around the web

This might explain a lot of UFO sightings:



========

Author Brian Sibley has a lot of lovely wall posters on his blog today.

when we were kids, we used to buy or steal posters and post on our wals. Do kids still do that?

----------------------

Freakonomics podcast: How to mend a broken school.

I'm not sure I agree, but it's a start.

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no, I didn't watch the superbowl, but I am a Lady Gaga fan...and I do know she is able to sing.



she is beloved here, and there is even graffiti on a nearby wall that says Vote Gaga... ==============

the "WAGD" post of the day: Mayon Volcano due to explode soon.

no, not near us: It's south of Manila and has been popping off and on for the last few years. But it means evacuation of locals and getting hikers off the side of the mountain.

By Tomas Tam, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8832333

more at Wikipedia


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via Presurfer: Who's who on a movie crew

Behold the power of squirrels

©2010-2016 Drack99

Squirrel gangs attack terrified Mums in Dorset.

Squirrel causes power outage in Tulsa.


headsup Dave Barry

how to watch TV when you have 100 channels all crap

The BBC had an article on how Russians are seeing their latest BBC version of War and Peace.

includes this:

Quite apart from the legal issues of pirating the show, Russians have been logging on to social media sites and giving their views. One special group has been set up on Russia's big social media site, VKontakte. The reviews are mainly positive and many are clearly in awe of the British take on one of the most famous works of Russian literature

well, duh.

I can watch The Walking Dead season 6 and other US shows the same day as the US but the BBC? Hey, Downton Abbey is two seasons behind, not to mention the latest Sherlock hasn't hit here yet.
Why don't you arrange them to be on stations overseas (with commercials) so the rest of the world can enjoy your stuff?

What I especially miss is the nature shows. Lolo as his hearing got worse, tended to watch movies with captions or nature shows. But now, the History channel et al tend to stupid programs: various versions of get out alive, Pawnshop type stuff, or clones of the duck dynasty/fishing is dangerous.

Yes, we have animal planet, but that tends to be: Oh LOOK another bloody predator making another bloody kill.

We do get HBO etc. so I do tend to find recent movies,  or for action films, no problem: They are pirated and sold by vendors in the palenke for 50 pesos, often before they open in Manila.

but for BBC I have to download, either from Youtube for older stuff (e.g. nature) or illegally (for DA or W&P).

I'm not sure if we are getting netflix in the Philippines: A lot of "pay for stuff" movies are not shown here "because of copyright issues". Right.

Ruby often watches stuff streaming video, but I am downstream from the modem and tend to get interrupted streams. I even download music and other stuff from soundcloud and youtube, and then erase them after I watch or listen to them.

so I am waiting for war and peace. Probably will see it next year.

Headlines below the fold

In France "youths" burn cars for the heck of it (and don't dare identify who are the "Youths" or why they do it). Ah, but in Berlin, they are leftists who hate rich people and only burn BMW's or Mercedes.

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China's currancy reserve is in trouble.

At $3.23 trillion, China still has the world's biggest reserve of foreign currency holdings.
But that has declined by $420bn over six months and stands at the lowest level since May 2012.
"While the remaining reserves still represent a substantial war chest, the mathematics around this rapid pace of depletion in recent months is simply unsustainable for any length of time," said Rajiv Biswas, Asia Pacific Chief Economist, IHS Global Insig

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BAFTA top award went to Brooklyn, an Irish film, for their top movie.

They also have a "blockbuster of the year" award, which went to StarWars. Wonder why the Oscars don't have such a category.

however, the Director's guild gave the evil bear's director the highest award.

has anyone noticed he is a Mexican American and won last year too?

ah, but in the US race baiter's world, he is a "white Hispanic" like Rubio or Cruz so don't tell Spike Lee...
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BBC bias in plain site: Republican debate is a "horror story" but the Democratic one was called "five key battles" and a love fest for Hillary.


----------------

the bomber who blew himself out of a Somali plane was actually scheduled on another flight on Turkish Airlines, and boarded in Turkey.

I wonder what his seat number was on the original flight...the PAL flight that was bombed in the 1990's didn't crash partly because he put the bomb in the wrong seat (because the plane was an extended version, that seat wasn't over the fuel tank). And it makes me think if the center fuel tank of TWA 800 that exploded "spontaneously"......

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UAE may send troops to Syria.

Gargash added that "US leadership on this" would also be a prerequisite for the UAE....
Saudi Arabia, which has targeted ISIL with air strikes since the campaign began in Syria in September 2014, said on Thursday it was ready to provide ground forces to defeat the armed group.

yes, but they will fight Isil while all their money is funding terrorist recruitment Madrasses all over the world.

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Philippine peace project goes kaput, because the bad guys massacred policemen trying to arrest some terrorists and pissed off ordinary Pinoys.

Why policemen? Because the military were forbidden to go in the area, and the MILF who was supposed to get them just shrugged.

yes, democracy is a bitch.

and no, it doesn't mention the terrorists who terrorized the majority Christian city of Zamboanga. Terrorizing Christians doesn't count.

A lot of this is about which clan leader controls all the lovely development money.

and the Moros have a long history of fighting everyone who tries to control them...and are not above killing each other, as the Manguindanao massacre proves.

----------------------------

women sign up for selective service? Fake question

the question dejour is if women, like their brothers, should sign up for the "selective service" so they could be drafted like their brothers.

IF they reinstitute the draft.

AS IF all boys sign up. (Does anyone really check this when you get a job or go to college etc as they did in the past:?)

The real question is: Do you want everyone in the USA to be signed up by the government and on a list?

The whole thing is, of course, a fake question. Drafting huge numbers of people for cannon fodder is not the way one fights a modern war. Indeed, it is not the way one fights a war in most of history (I just was reading about the Tang dynasty that decided that professional soldiers should guard the borders, because the draftees were too inefficient...later the rebels proved them right as the rebels cut through the local less professional types who were supposed to guard the city).

In the past, they could grab you for war, but it was the elites who made the war...during the French revolution, and later with Napoleon, things changed, so you had to fight for YOUR country. Hence everyone signed up, or were faced with locals who frowned on your cowardice or turned you in as a traitor.

But today's wars are more mechanized: D Day won't happen again.

The question being asked is: Will putting women into combat increase the efficiency of the military? Ah, but President Obama never served, so he sees the military as something he can make PC on his way to do a fundamental transformation of America. Oppose him and you are forced to leave...(which is why you can ignore all those military leaders who testified in congress. Oppose him and you get shafted and silenced).


 feminists are using this to prove they are equal, yet how many of them signed up to fight? Dirty little secret: In VietNam, it was the rich who got the draft deferments, and in the Civil War, the rich also bought their way out of service, letting the immigrants be drafted. Draft riots of 1863 anyone?

But of course, this is not about the military. This is about President Obama's transformation of the military to a pc army that will not kill people. So we will have token women in combat even if it kills them. Never mind that women's skills could be used elsewhere.

Ironically, some pious types worry their daughters would be corrupted in the military. Well, how do you keep them out of the farm after they've see Paree? as the song goes.

But I was amused.

The poster child for women in the military is not the US feminist who wouldn't be able to shoot a gun if you gave it to them, or even Mrs Palin, who could shoot but never joined up.

This is the poster child for women in the military,at a time when women were on the Front line and dying. (The front line being London, which was bombed constantly).

She was merely a truck driver. But she is the last major head of state in the world who served in WWII... and I wonder how many who are running for president ever had first hand experience. (answer: Two who dropped out: Rick Perry and Lindsey Graham).

FYI: StrategyPage has a long article on how women's skills always have been used in the military and they discuss the pros and cons of the issue.
summary:

 Carrying a heavy load was not required. In convoy operations women have also done well, especially when it comes to spotting, and dealing with, IEDs (roadside bombs and ambushes). Going into the 21st century, warfare is becoming more automated and less dependent on muscle and testosterone. That gives women an edge, and they exploit it, just as they have done in so many other fields. What women continue to avoid is traditional infantry jobs, which are less needed but not going away.

The dirty little secret is that combat troops per se are few, and non combat and support jobs are most of the jobs, so in effect you are arguing about the wrong thing.

As for me: I was only NG in the peacetime army, so never was full time military.