THE news was spread far and wide this weekend that three women had passed the Combat Endurance Test required to enter the Marine infantry. What the headlines didn’t highlight was that out of 24 women who have attempted the course, only four have passed.

Apropos of this high failure rate, here is a relevant essay, “Why Women Do Not Belong in the U.S. Infantry,” from a recent issue of the Marine Corps Gazette. Marines Weapons and Training Instructor Capt. Lauren F. Serrano (give this woman a medal!) gets to the heart of the matter in this top paragraph below:

Female Marines who want to stir the pot by joining the infantry ranks are more interested in their careers than the needs of the Corps—they are selfish. 2dLt Sage Santangelo’s recent article in The Washington Post about why women are failing Infantry Officer Course argued that “the Marine Corps needs to set women up to succeed in combat roles.” Why? How will that contribute to a better fighting force, the needs of the Marine Corps, and the success of young enlisted Marines? The time, energy, and conflict associated with setting women up for success in infantry billets will not make the Marine Corps more combat effective.

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DON VINCENZO writes:

Given my time spent overseas in six different U.S. embassies, my first reaction to Eric Duncan’s arrival in this country and subsequent hospitalization with Ebola was to raise this question: how did this man ever get a visa to travel here legally in the first place? For openers, by any and all standards, giving him a visa was a near certainty that another immigrant would remain here permanently.

There were several telltale signs that would have, at least in my years in embassies, prevented any consular officer, a role that I did not generally have unless assigned to do so over a weekend or an emergency, from issuing that visa, amongst them that Duncan was single and basically unemployed, had lived in Ghana, which demonstrated a tenuous connection to Liberia, and had family in the U.S. It should also be noted that Liberia has one of the world’s highest levels of visa overstays, another strike against him. And, of course, there is the question of the Ebola presence in that region, which should make all of the other issues moot. (more…)

    A NEW symbol of the Vatican II Church.

FRENCH police estimate 80,000 people marched in Paris yesterday — organizers say there were half a million — at the latest Manif Pour Tous pro-family march against artificial reproduction, surrogacy and same-sex “marriage.” Demonstrations were held in other cities as well; 30,000 people were estimated to be on the streets in Bordeaux. See posts here and here at Galliawatch. There is very little coverage by the American media.

These are exciting events. The shopping carts above are a symbol of the commodification of children. What a perfect and clever image! The French in large numbers grasp the psychological atmosphere of childhood. They know that a child cannot be treated like a piece of merchandise or be deliberately denied a father or mother without suffering irreparable harm.

It is ironic that these marches took place on the day the Family Synod of Bishops opened in Rome.Was there even a tweet from the “pope” in support of the march? It seems not, even though so many of the marchers were expressing a sensus Catholicus in their defense of children and the wholeness of the family. 

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  THE SUPREME COURT has refused to consider rulings by appeals courts in five states, clearing the way for same-sex "marriages" in those states and possibly in six more, which would bring the total to 30. The marriage statutes are null and void as of today in Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.

TODAY, when the New Vatican’s Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family opens in Rome, revolutionaries who reject (without coming right out and saying it) Catholic teaching on marriage and family will have their heyday at last. The theme of the two-week Synod, which will begin a two-year process, is “the pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization,” which might be rephrased as “the challenges of filling pews when the Protestant church down the road accepts the divorced and the cohabiting and those openly practicing homosexuality and never, ever preaches against contraception even though we don’t preach against it either” or “the pastoral challenges in a world so depopulated by contraception that we are scrambling for bodies.”

Over the course of the next two years, the Synod will soften the minds and consciences of the faithful with extraordinarily ambiguous propaganda and will subject the Church to extraordinary persecution from within — and do it all under extraordinary secrecy. Marco Tostati of La Stampa wrote:

For the first time in its decades-long history a Synod of Bishops will be held mainly behind closed doors. The public could not be present even at the many Synods in the past, but ALL of the reports, from those of the Archbishop of Milan to the last diocese in Patagonia, were published daily, either in detail or in a summary.

Instead at this Synod none of the presentations will be made public.

Yes, the Synod, or Nod-to-Sin, promises to be extraordinary. (more…)

JAMES N. writes:

There is so much to say about this impending catastrophe that it would take a book to say it.

One little point: The epidemic curve is nearly vertical. That is, more cases this week than last; many more next week than this week. Therefore, with a 21-day incubation period, many, many more West Africans are infected and not yet symptomatic than are sick. These are the people who are trying to get out.

Stopping those near death from boarding an aircraft is sensible, but for every one of them, there will be 100 or more who arrive in the U.S. perfectly well, but destined to become infectious while here. Our current policy is absolutely, totally insane, and every time I think it through, my view of it becomes worse.

I believe that one hospital can, with perfect execution, safely care for one patient with Ebola. But the idea that this idealized scenario is scalable to hundreds of hospitals and hundreds of cases is absurd. Any normal country, with the facts available in early August 2014, would have banned arrivals from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Any normal international organization would have closed the airports in Conakry, Monrovia, and Freetown to non-military traffic weeks ago.

What they are doing in this situation is, literally, incomprehensible.

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BUCK writes:

I have an anecdote that I have never told. I don’t know if it damaged me, but it has always bothered me. My memory of it was prompted by a video of an attractive female reporter, wearing skin-tight black stretch pants, interviewing a male on the street in France on the ongoing immigrant rape culture.

I was thinking about it while driving from my home in Maryland to take care of my 92-year-old mother, who is in a rehab facility in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, since she fell and broke her hip. We were not close. I’ve talked to her more in the last two years than in the previous sixty.

At about age eleven, like any normal boy, I was not the least bit aware of my own mother’s sexuality. It didn’t exist.

My parents had recently begun to fight, and constantly. I was bewildered by it and I had no idea what was going on, why or what was going to happen. I still don’t know much for sure. Neither of them ever explained or have ever even mentioned it. I mean the divorce. Not sure that they could. I never talked about it with my older sister or my older brother, then or ever. (more…)

E. MICHAEL JONES in the latest issue of his magazine Culture Wars has a fascinating article on John Updike, whom he sees as the personification of what Christopher Lasch called “the Culture of Narcissism.” Updike reinforces one of Jones’s enduring themes, which is cultural revolution as the rationalization of sexual transgression by Western elites. Jones has argued his thesis over the years by focusing on some of the West’s most famous intellectuals and theorizing about how their sexual transgressions influenced their thinking. Here he delves into the life and work of Updike. The novelist was well known for his adulteries and, according to Jones, these led to the growing perversion of his art and his increasing identification with cultural subversion. As an example of Updike’s cynicism when he was firmly established as one of America’s leading literary stars, Jones offers this quote from Updike’s autobiography:

I read and talked into a microphone and was gracious to the local rich, the English faculty and college president and the students with their clear skins and shining eyes and inviting innocence, like a blank surface one wishes to scribble obscenities on.

According to Jones,

DR. MARIAN HORVAT recently reported on the “Nuns on the Bus,” who have begun another national tour:

Now, top on the list of issues for these sisters are immigration reform, health care, and economic justice, certainly not pro-life or anti-“gay marriage” issues. “Vote people first” – is the motto. That is to say, vote Socialism first, vote Catholic second or not at all. The agenda is pure and simply social justice.

The sisters are all aging with typical short hair cuts, many in the Nuns on the Bus signature blue t-shirts, all in secular dress, in short, the modern “sister.” “Vote people first! Vote people first!” shouted these sisters and folks all gathered together on Day One of Nuns on the Bus. This translates quite simply to “Vote Democratic,” which explains Joe Biden’s presence for the grand kick off.

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  WHILE Americans sit by and watch the perfectly legal baby-selling industry grow bigger and stronger by the day, in France there are many thousands of people willing to hit the streets and protest the commodification of children through surrogacy and other gestational services. In September, a French appeals court approved the adoption by a lesbian of the child of another woman conceived through artificial insemination. This is a significant development in a country where surrogacy and donor fatherhood is banned. On Sunday, protests are planned throughout France by the Manif Pour Tous forces. Galliawatch has the story.

ANN BARNHARDT has a good column about Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian who entered the United States after coming in close contact with Ebola. Also see the commentary at DailyKenn. Barnhadt writes:

So there is tremendous chatter about this guy from Liberia, and we now have enough of the backstory to see just how maliciously negligent the so-called protection agencies really are.  But what I want to focus on is Thomas Eric Duncan – the Liberian who after hauling his sister’s still living yet rapidly disintegrating body to and from the hospital thought it would be a great idea to take a three-legged flight to Dallas, and then just casually forget to mention at the Dallas emergency room the whole “I hauled my sister, dying of Ebola, to and from the hospital a couple of weeks ago.” (more…)

  B.E. writes: Our beloved Lawrence Auster catalogued Non-Islamic Theories of Islamic Extremism, which included such absurd "causes" for jihad as desire for fame, humiliation, sexual frustration, and the like. Well, a new theory has popped up: Islamic extremism, specifically ISIS, is caused by― global warming -- climate change! So if you want to stop Islamic "extremism" (i.e., Moslems acting as Moslems always have), drive a hybrid car, don't use plastic shopping bags, and use CFLs (compact fluorescent lightbulb).

WILL writes:

This came across my feed today, and it seems right up your alley. Of course, the headline buried the lede. The couple in question rejecting their artificially inseminated baby is a lesbian couple, not “white parents.”

From NBC News:

A white Ohio mom is suing a sperm bank for sending her vials from a black donor, saying her biracial 2-year-old will be stigmatized by her family and the “intolerant” town where they live and has to travel to get her hair done.

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AS more and more information comes in about Jesse Matthew, the 32-year-old black former football player accused of abducting University of Virginia student, Hannah Graham, who is still missing, some compelling details have been revealed. Matthew has also been linked through DNA evidence with the murder of Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington in 2009 and the rape and assault of a third woman, police say. Two other Virginia women have disappeared in that area.

Judging from the headline of The Washington Post’s story yesterday, these allegations are completely out of character for Matthew. The Post’s headline was, “Suspect in Hannah Graham disappearance described as popular athlete, ‘gentle giant.’”

This is a grotesquely misleading headline, as is the article itself.

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EDWARD BARTLETT writes:

More evidence that the campus radicals care more about having an “issue” to promote … than addressing the problem of hyper-sexualized campus environments.

Of note, the Sex Week is co-sponsored by the University of New Mexico Women’s Resource Center.

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  "It is a smaller sin to follow evil which you think is good, than not to venture to defend what you know for certain is good. If we cannot endure threats, injustice, poverty, how shall we overcome the flames of Babylon? Let us not lose by hollow peace what we have preserved by war. I should be sorry to allow my fears to teach me faithlessness, when Christ has put the true faith in the power of my choice." --- Saint Jerome, Prologue to the Treatise Against the Pelagians

SEE the report at the DailyKenn blog.

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