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At the age of 18, Mitsuhiro Matsushita already has a good idea of his ideal future. After he graduates from university a few years of work will be followed by marriage to an industrious wage earner. When children arrive it will be Mitsuhiro who stays at home looking after them, baking cakes and biscuits and living the traditional life of the Japanese housewife. None of this would be noteworthy but for one thing. Mitsuhiro is not a conventionally minded Japanese woman, but a thoughtful, articulate and fashionably dressed young man. And far from being a marginal eccentric he is a...

Obama interview on the Today Show this morning with Meredith Viera.

If you're a sports fan, you have to feel good that one among us works in the Oval Office. -snip-- Which brings us to his ceremonial first pitch Tuesday night at the All-Star Game. How best to put this? He throws like a ... wait, I'm not going to say it. It's not worth the protests by the U.S. women's national softball team that inevitably will blossom outside Tribune Tower. Let's just say he throws like someone who hardly has played sports. If the Cardinals' Albert Pujols hadn't stepped up and made a catch, Obama's pitch would have bounced in...

Those of you who watched the beginning of the All Star game last night will have noticed that, when President Obama threw the first pitch, the camera shot was a close-up that made it impossible to see whether his pitch was on target. I found this odd, and so did Andy McCarthy. I'll make an educated guess that this was done at the insistence of the White House to prevent embarrassment in case Obama's pitch was a poor one. To be sure, the White House ultimately could not prevent everyone from seeing a bad pitch (YouTube and all of that),...

Not bad.

Yes there is political significance of a girly pitch

Video: http://butasforme.com/2009/07/16/video-jimmy-kimmel-pokes-fun-at-obamas-first-pitch-at-all-star-game-man-up-mr-president/

In which CNN totally redeems itself for the other mom-themed political video they foisted on us today. Watch closely here and you’ll see the tweet that was sent to me last night — and which I linked in our post about The One throwing out the first pitch — flash by for a second or two. Good lord: Did Hot Air launch the Obama “mom jeans” meme? Behold my proudest moment as a blogger, my friends.

I have written a great deal about the feminization of America's boys. While Feminists have become more masculine with every passing year, men and boys have become wimpy, feminized and afraid of their own shadows. About five years ago at a Boy Scout meeting for my son who had been recently promoted to Boy Scout from Weeblos, I looked around the room and shivered. I leaned over to my husband and whispered, "There's not a single male role model in this room." Shortly after that meeting, my son changed Boy Scout troops to another where men ran the troop -...

At least 13 militants were killed in a clash with security forces following arrest of five burqa-clad Arabs, one Afghan national and a local man in Mohmand Agency on Tuesday. Four of the five Arabs are Saudi nationals — Ahmed, Ali, Mohammad and Obaidullah — and one Libyan national, Abdullah. The Afghan national has been identified as Habibullah and the local man as Shad Ali. They were detained at the Khapakh checkpost. The Afghan was living in Chakdara area of Lower Dir. When troops were taking the detained men to Ghalanai, about 60 militants attacked them in an area between...

"The rankings were determined using 50 of the largest metropolitan areas as defined by the United States Census Bureau, which includes a central city and the surrounding county (or counties). Each metro area received a manliness rating between 0 and 100 based on how well it performed in each of the study's manly categories. Factors used to determine the manliest city rankings included the number of U.S.-made cars driven in the city, number of sports bars and BBQ restaurants, number of home improvement and hardware stores as well as manly salty snacks consumption. All data was adjusted by the current...

I'd say publishing a book about about bad hair is even more kooky than publishing a blog about bad hair. At least I can shut it down (or be shut down). The book lives forever in somebody's library, no doubt.

(11-20) 22:17 PST San Francisco -- Tension is growing in the African American community over Proposition 8, with the leader of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP saying he expects some black ministers to boycott the group's annual fundraiser tonight because he supports same-sex marriage.

Today is the day the California Supreme Court has asked state Attorney General Jerry Brown to have a reply filed to lawsuits that challenge Proposition 8. Prop 8 is the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriages. Brown's filing will not address the ballot measure's validity. It will instead focus on the question of whether the justices should accept the suits for review at all. It will also make a case whether the justices should suspend Prop. 8 while they consider the issue. If the justices suspend the proposition, that means same-sex marriages could resume. Legal experts say the fact that the...

When the state legislature twice handed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill to legalize marriage equality in California, Schwarzenegger vetoed it both times, saying that it was an issue for the courts to sort out. Now, following voter approval of Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that revokes the right for gay and lesbian families to marry, Schwarzenegger is repeating that sentiment. The governor went on the news program This Week With George Stephanopoulos to say that he opposes the new amendment, but he believes that the state’s Supreme Court--which found state laws barring same-sex families from marriage to be unconstitutional last...

There is a time when it is necessary to take the gloves off and that time is right now, said Sarah Palin in Colorado. Interesting that she did not want the gloves off before her vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden. Oh, gloves on then. Headgear, too. Maybe some of those big shoulder pads that quarter-backs wear; and throw cushions for a softer landing. In fact, Palin and her minders could not have demanded a safer arena for debate when the opposition was within striking distance. Biden appeared with his hands tied, his intellect muted, his manner subdued, lest he should...

There was something jarring about GOP candidate Sarah Palin's appearance at the vice presidential debate, and it was not just her refusal to answer questions, or the mock Reagan-esque mannerisms of the "there you go again" kind. Nor was it the misrepresentations, like her campaign's mendacious insistence that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama would raise taxes on those earning $42,000 a year. It was that come hither wink. Twice. It was the lowered voice. It was the seduction of speaking directly to the camera audience, as if there was no one else in each living room of America, as if...

Male Feminist Calls Us the ‘Abuser’s Lobby’ 2008-09-19 A reader recently sent me an email exchange between a couple of feminist activists concerning the Violence Against Women Act and its critics. Irene Weiser, Executive Director of Stop Family Violence, wrote: The FR groups are frothing mad over Biden’s selection as VP candidate and have stepped up their activism – Glenn Sacks and Mike McCormick had an op-ed published in the New York Daily News warning readers about embracing Joe Biden (and by implication, not Obama) Other groups have written action alerts or press releases. Male feminist Ben Atherton-Zeman of the...

The DUmmies and KOmmies are really piling on Sarah Palin bigtime for all manner of perceived sins. However, one of the most ridiculous of the slams is attacking her for being a (gasp!) FEMALE hunter as you can see in this DUmmie THREAD titled, "I could never date or be attracted to any woman that hunts and enjoys killing animals." It wouldn't surprise me a bit if this DUmmie accuses conservatives of being sexist but feels fine with posting this thread. So let us now watch the DUmmies attack Sarah Palin in Bolshevik Red while the commentary of your...

ANN ARBOR, MI – Ignoring enormous community opposition, the Gainesville, Florida City Council earlier this year enacted an ordinance that granted special privileges to men who perceive themselves as women to use women’s bathrooms in any school, business or public facility. As a result, a coalition of citizens and businesses, in Gainesville, formed “Citizens for Good Public Policy,” for the purpose of enacting a Charter Amendment that would prevent the addition of such bizarre special categories to the City’s civil rights ordinance. The group gathered 8,800 signatures, several thousand more than the 5,581 needed to place the Charter Amendment proposal...

This morning, I read the magazine What Is Enlightenment that Glenn picked up for me from a local health food store because the cover had a number of articles about men including "Constructing the New Man," "19 Powerful Women Tell the Truth about Men," and "A Scandalous Look at Scandinavia: Where women are women and men are too." Uh, okay, I thought, this can't be good, it's a magazine from a crunchy organic healthfood store with what I assumed would be a somewhat biased picture of the male gender complete with articles describing how men should be more like women....

That's a lot of martial bling, especially for an officer who hadn't seen combat until five years ago. Unfortunately, brazen preening and "ribbon creep" among the Army's modern-day upper crust have trumped the time-honored military virtues of humility, duty and personal reserve.

"Memo to Petraeus: When you're making the case for more patriotic gore, go easy on the glitter." That's how Los Angeles-based writer Matthew DeBord concluded his LA Times op-ed entitled "Petraeus' 'ribbon creep.'" So DeBord apparently thinks ribbons worn on the service dress uniform are the equivalent of "flair" that Chotchkie's waiters wore in the comedy classic "Office Space"? Here's how DeBord began his screed against Petraeus being decked out in "martial bling":

In 1979 I carried a gun. I had a permit to do so. It was a 9 mm Browning automatic with 14 rounds in a clip. The reason I had a weapon was because I handled large sums of money, and my boss suggested that it might be a good idea. I carried my 9 mm every time I went out...

A British study suggests women judge men with more feminine features to be more committed in relationships and better parents. The research team, featuring psychologists from Durham University and St. Andrews University, asked more than 400 people to predict personality traits of men based on photographs that were digitally altered to appear more masculine -- square jaw, larger nose and smaller eyes -- or more feminine -- fuller lips and wider eyes -- The Telegraph reported Wednesday. The majority of test subjects found the men in the more masculine pictures to be less faithful, more detached and worse fathers, while...

ZUCK: Have gun, will tremble Sunday, August 5, 2007 10:50 PM EDT A weekend in Las Vegas! The lights, the casinos, the shows, the glitz, the noise, the - guns? "This here's the easiest to start with. It's got less kick so it's easier to control." Into my hand he plops a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver. It's only the second time in my life I've actually touched a gun (the first being during a Boy Scout trip). My hand droops under the surprising weight of the pistol. He chuckles. What am I doing here? It's Saturday afternoon,...

I don't know if this is a precipice from which there is any return for the party of Pelosi and Reid. These are turncoats in the truest form of the word. These are people who are secretly – and, now, not so secretly – praying for, hoping for and acting in the best interests of victory for Osama bin Laden and his cohorts who would chop off their heads just as fast as they would chop off yours and mine. Imagine political power meaning so much to you that you would sell out your own country – perhaps even the...

Green Dating – Are You An Ecosexual? Heather Buchanan Friday, July 13, 2007 The “green” buzzword has infiltrated our consciousness in terms of what we eat and how we recycle and when we drive to the store or walk. Now it’s even entered the equation of “Your carbon-footprint-free place or mine?” The question is: Are you an ecosexual? The concept of green dating used to be restricted to SWM seeks SWF to share life in yurt with long walks in protest rallies and vegan restaurants. But even if you don’t throw around words in personal ads like “family oriented pagan...

I just woke up from watching the Democrats' debate last Thursday, and I am rested and ready to report! Someone needs to tell the Democrats to stop talking about their families. I know they're trying to demonstrate their "family values," but using actual, live human beings to illustrate the freakish ideas of the Democratic base just makes normal people uncomfortable. When Chris Dodd was asked about gay marriage, he said he always thinks of his little daughters — aged 2 and 5 — and imagines them turning out to be lesbians, saying he would want them treated equally. To prove...

Who is Arnold Schwarzenegger, really? According to Joe Knollenberg, a Republican congressman from Michigan, he's "kind of a Republican Al Gore." That's what Knollenberg told Fox News' Neil Cavuto on Tuesday night. What's Knollenberg's beef? The congressman represents a district north of Detroit. Among his constituents are the Big 3 automakers. The Big 3 are feeling pretty nervous these days -- on Wednesday the chief executives of GM, Ford and Chrysler appeared before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality to lobby against tighter fuel economy (CAFE) standards. Knollenberg has decided to carry their water -- by attacking California....

Milan - Now I know there are many out there who will think I have lost it when I write that a key, new must-have for men this coming fall will be a pair of leggings to be worn outside, not just in, the house, but that was the big message at the debut Marni men's runway show this morning in Milan. ADVERTISEMENT Leggings made of microfiber cotton and wool, shown in violet, forest green and Milan fog gray, all of them with stirrup straps, except of course for a couple of them cut above the knee, accompanied half the...

Before Michael Buday married his fiancée, Diana Bijon, he decided to honor her family by bucking tradition and taking her last name. But, it wasn't so easy. Under California state law, he needed to pay more than $300, go to court, file a petition, and publicly advertise his name change for four weeks in a local newspaper. If he had simply gone along with tradition, it would have cost only $50 to $80. So Buday, 29, went to court, along with the ACLU, to change the law. They recently announced their plans to sue the California Department of Health Services,...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1752464/posts?page=52 Military meets, exceeds recruiting goals AP on Yahoo ^ | 12/12/06 | Pauline Jelinek - ap Posted on 12/12/2006 4:28:38 PM CST by NormsRevenge WASHINGTON - Though Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the war in Iraq, the Pentagon said Tuesday it is having success enlisting new troops. The Navy and Air Force met their recruiting goals last month while the Army and Marine Corps exceeded theirs, the Defense Department announced. The Army, which is bearing the brunt of the work in Iraq, did the best. It signed up 6,485 new recruits in November compared with its target of 6,150...

NEW YORK: A new study has found a "substantial" drop in US men's testosterone levels since the 1980s, but the reasons for the decline remain unclear. This trend also does not appear to be related to age. The average levels of the male hormone dropped by 1% a year, Dr Thomas Travison and colleagues from the New England Research Institutes in Watertown, Massachusetts, found. This means that, for example, a 65-year-old man in 2002 would have testosterone levels 15% lower than those of a 65-year-old in 1987. This also means that a greater proportion of men in 2002 would have...

SOMETIMES you see a man with a short haircut, athletic build and a military bearing, and you think to yourself, "I bet that man is a Marine." With Major Pain, there is no question. You know he is a Marine. Which makes him an ideal wingman for me when it's time to confront Code Pink and friends about their rude and disrespectful treatment of our soldiers outside Walter Reed Army Hospital. SMASH and Major Pain survey the field of battle There are about a dozen or so protesters there on Friday night. On any given evening, one or two of...

Did the Dems Threaten ABC? The Democrats have gone nuts over the ABC miniseries, The Path to 9/11. But it's a little hard to see why. Maybe it's because Disney and ABC have been reliably pro-Democrat in the past, so the Dems feel betrayed. Looking at the big picture, though, it's a little hard to see what the Dems are complaining about. I haven't seen the miniseries, but I take it that it doesn't portray the Clinton administration as having taken very effective action against the growing threat from Islamic terrorists. What I don't understand is how the Democrats think...

Robyn E. Blumner is one of those feminist writers who specializes in reducing complex issues to lectures on Mars and Venus. Blumner bestows her wisdom in the St. Petersburg Times. The title of a recent offering ("U.S. could use more girlie men") caught my eye. Use them for what – objects of ridicule? But, no, Ms. Blumner is serious. She wants to feminize national security – to take decisions of survival out of the hands of "macho" males and substitute weeping for weapons, sentimentality for strategy and negotiations for no-nonsense. To illustrate her point, Blumner uses the HBO drama series...

As a jubilant Ned Lamont announced his improbable win over incumbent Joe Lieberman, N.O.W. president Kim Gandy stood cheering at his side. The National Organization for Women press release proclaimed, “Peace is a feminist issue and the Iraq war has been a key issue in this campaign. . . . NOW PAC will continue to support Ned Lamont through the general election in November.” Little did Gandy realize that world events would soon overtake Lamont’s “just-give-peace-a-chance” mantra. Because just two days later on August 10, the world was rocked by news of a foiled Muslim plot to blow up more...

For 10 minutes, the talk show host grilled his guests about whether "George Bush's mental weakness is damaging America's credibility at home and abroad." For 10 minutes, the caption across the bottom of the television screen read, "IS BUSH AN 'IDIOT'?" But the host was no liberal media elitist. It was Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned MSNBC political pundit. And his answer to the captioned question was hardly "no." While other presidents have been called stupid, Scarborough said: "I think George Bush is in a league by himself. I don't think he has the intellectual depth as these...

Deadwood is one of my favorite programs. Set in a South Dakota gold mining camp in the 1870s, it grittily explores the way human beings organize themselves when consigned to a lawless territory that attracts miscreants, varmints and vultures. A recent episode had an especially insightful moment when all the leaders of the camp were called to an important meeting without an invitation proffered to the female owner of the camp's only bank. Alma Garret could have all the money in the world, but because she has two X chromosomes (a distinction more graphically described in the show), she wasn't...

The candidate, immersed in one of the most competitive Senate races in the country, said down for lunch with reporters yesterday and had this to say on the Iraq war: "It didn't work. . . . We didn't prepare for the peace." On the response to Hurricane Katrina: "A monumental failure of government." On the national mood: "There's a palpable frustration right now in the country." It's all fairly standard Democratic boilerplate -- except the candidate is a Republican . "For me to pretend I'm not a Republican would be a lie," he reasoned. But to run as a proud...

A question of manlinesshttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=395271 http://tinyurl.com/zmrh5 By MARTIN NEWLAND, Daily Mail 07/12/06 - News section There is, apparently, a resurgence of manliness in America. Superman has returned to the big screen and unshaven, testosterone-charged film stars such as Colin Farrell no longer look socially marginalised. The A To Z Of Manliness, a compendium of tips on such matters as how to punch properly, is number two on the New York Times bestseller list, while a rash of academic books on the importance of real men have added fuel to the fire. The Boston Globe recently summed up the phenomenon: "We're in...

Nation cringes as the worst president ever continues long, painful slog to the end - It is like some sort of virus. It is like some sort of weird and painful rash on your face that makes you embarrassed to walk out the door and so you sit there day after day, waiting for it to go away, slathering on ointment and Bactine and scotch. And yet still it lingers. Some days the pain is so searing and hot you want to cut off your own head with a nail file. Other days it is numb and pain-free and seemingly...

"Writing," observed the French playwright Moliere, "is like prostitution. First you do it for love, then for a few close friends, and then for money." This aphorism is brought forcefully to mind by the cover of Ann Coulter's latest book, leering at customers from the windows of America's biggest bookstores. As always, the cover features a portrait of the artist as a young tart, blond locks flowing, her size zero little black dress catering to a combination of ideological and erotic perversion that's disturbing to contemplate. In The New York Times, David Carr doesn't hesitate to label Coulter a literary...

 There have been many political candidates who were willing to say or do just about anything to get elected. It’s one of the reasons why politicians are so often rated below used car salesmen in public opinion surveys. On Sunday’s This Week program, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos interviewed John Edwards, the Democrat’s nominee for vice-president in 2004. During the program, the one-term Senator from North Carolina, made a publicity-provoking comment (video here) about the man who vanquished him and his erstwhile running mate John Kerry during the tumultuous campaign. “George W. Bush is the worst president of our lifetime,” he said....

Iran's hardline Islamic regime has had enough of footballers with long hair and plucked eyebrows. "I will ban athletes with an effeminate look," the head of the country's Physical Education Organisation, Mohammad Ali-Abadi said, told the Etemad-Melli newspaper. "It is really disgraceful for Iran that young people step onto fields wearing make-up," the top official fumed. "When a man enters the field with dyed hair and groomed eyebrows he is disrespecting society." The paper said Ali-Abadi appeared to be particularly worried about footballers, and warned that "even though they get away with it now, they will be disqualified in future".

RUSH: The president had a fabulous press conference today. We've got audio sound bites. In fact, just to tease you, grab sound bite number one. Bob Schieffer, well-known member of the drive-by media, anchors the little-seen, very little-watched Face the Nation on CBS on Sunday mornings, even Bob Schieffer had to say this. SCHIEFFER: I must say, this is about as close to the George Bush that one sees off camera as I have ever seen. I mean, if we named presidents the way we do historical figures like Richard the Lionhearted or Ivan the Terrible, certainly today what you...

SPOKANE, Wash. -- Fans of No. 5 Gonzaga have been asked to stop yelling "Brokeback Mountain" at opposing players. The reference to the recent movie about homosexual cowboys was chanted by some fans during Monday's game against Saint Mary's, and is apparently intended to suggest an opposing player is gay. The chants were the subject of several classroom discussions over the past week, and the faculty advisers for the Kennel Club booster group urged students this week to avoid "inappropriate chants" during the Bulldogs' Saturday game against Stanford, which was nationally televised on ESPN. "We implore the students of the...