Scandinavian names

I have always liked the sound of Scandinavian names.  They seem somehow impressive and important.  There is plenty of Norse ancestry among the English so maybe it is something to do with that.  Here are four Scandinavian names you might know.  Tell me what you think of them:  Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad.

They are of course the names of the ABBA band members, now rather elderly people.  I have always rather wondered why I have never heard criticism of ABBA from feminists.  Both "Mamma Mia" and "Waterloo" recount how a woman is captivated by a man that she cannot give up  -- surely the reverse of the feminist gospel. And in "Money, Money", the female singer aspires to marry a rich man!  And "Dancing Queen" is a simple little ballad about a teenager who loves dancing.  Again not quite a feminist priority.  So at least the best known ABBA songs seem quite conservative to me.

Something to remind you below.  Don't ogle the beautiful blonde Agnetha too much.







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An Air Force of wimps?

Why don't they just fire all the men and make it an all-woman force?

The Air Force more than other military services has jumped enthusiastically on the Obama administration’s campaign to socially engineer the military through politically correct programs and policies.

A case in point comes to Inside the Ring in an email from the U.S. Transportation Command, known as Transcom, an Air Force-dominated command. The email revealed that the command is holding “self-awareness” seminars for troops aimed at boosting their “emotional intelligence quotient,” or EQ.

The effort is not sitting well with some of the more warrior-oriented Air Force members who are concerned that the service is being transformed into a military version of Federal Express or UPS. One officer joked: “This is still the armed forces of the United States, is it not? Lord help us.”

According to the email, EQ seminars are part of Transcom’s strategy “to develop customer-focused professionals.”

“Each and every one of us is vital in transforming the command for the future, supporting those who count on us to deliver whatever they need on time, every time,” it says. “In order to maintain and retain great customer relationships, the EQ workshops help establish the necessary tools to do this and more.”

For those seeking better social skills, one upcoming EQ seminar, No. 401, is set for April 18 on “social awareness,” further described as: “Look outward to learn about and appreciate others. Pay attention to your surroundings.”

“EQ 401 explores body language, timing, greeting people by name and other skills to apply to your daily interactions,” the email says.

On April 25, the command will hold EQ 201 on self-awareness.

“An emotional journey, this seminar helps uncover the true essence of you,” the email says. “Facilitators provide a gateway to the inner truth and future path of your personal road map to your own emotional intelligence.”

Those interested were urged to contact Transcom’s Change Management Team.

Transcom spokesman Maj. Matthew Gregory said the EQ program is about communication and “trying to figure out what our customer needs.”

A former Pentagon official said that if Transcom is taking its people away from mission activities for this type of politically correct training, “the command is over strength and can afford cost-saving personnel cuts at this critical time.”

Other signs of political correctness included the Air Force’s removal in 2011 of a sign at storied Nellis Air Force Base that read “Home of the Fighter Pilot.”

The banner was removed over concerns it wasn’t “inclusive” and may have harmed the feelings of nonfighter pilots.

Also, late last year, the Air Combat Command went on one of the military’s more extensive searches to seize inappropriate materials of a sexual nature. The squadron-by-squadron shakedown came after a female sergeant filed a complaint alleging rampant harassment by superiors.

By mid-January, the command reported finding 17,790 offensive items 6,700 of which were of a personal nature stored on government computers.

“Of the remaining items,” the command said, “the majority of items were potentially offensive pictures, posters, calendars, magazines or graffiti located in common areas, offices and latrines. Identified items were documented and either removed or destroyed.”

SOURCE

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Snob Rule

America’s ruling class appears to believe that its mission is to subjugate and bring to heel those outside the club – which means you and me. This motley crew – who would never be caught dead jamming to something as déclassé as Mötley Crüe – has always held the rest of the country in contempt. But now that contempt is the basis of policy, and this simply cannot continue.

Big trucks. Country music. Any music not on vinyl. These are just some of the rest of America’s failings. The people who built the country, who fought for it, who unashamedly stand when the Flag is carried past …these people, are an embarrassment and their voices must be silenced so as not to interfere in the glorious works of the ruling class.

Understand that the ruling class is not simply composed of liberal Democrats, though the values (or lack of same) of these Socialist Lite movers and shakers predominate. The NYC-DC conservanerd contingent – the fussy David Frums and David Brooks – are equally horrified by the values, beliefs and preferences of Americans outside their area codes. We even see “conservative” politicians enlist too. You stay in Washington or New York or Los Angeles long enough and the pressure grows to allow yourself to be assimilated, to start looking down on other Americans.

These are the kinds of people who think they get a say in the size of my soft drink because they know what’s good for me. They’re somehow more concerned with my health than I am. They’re smarter than me. They’re smarter than you. They’re smarter than everyone who doesn’t think, feel and believe exactly like them. And, well, we’re just too dumb to live our lives without their benevolent dictates.

This notion sprouts in the insular communities of affluent, over-educated urban dwellers. It grows in the big name universities that tell their students they are the elite – and then releases them back into the world with a degree, yet somehow dumber than when they walked in. And it is encouraged by a media that confuses having access to an electronic podium with having mental and moral virtue.

The same people who brought us Solyndra think we should heed their demands for more power to combat non-existent global warning. The same people who brought us $16 trillion in debt think we should fork over more money to them. The same people who brought us 50 million Americans on food stamps think we should defer to their better judgment about how to run society.

These people have no right to lecture anyone on anything. They have an unbroken track record of failure.

Yet they do lecture, and worse, they legislate with the same smarmy condescension. Just about every issue today is best examined through the prism of pompous jerks trying to tell the rest of us how to live. At the center of all of them is the same vindictive drive to dominate regular Americans, to attack and mock our values, to break our spirit and will to resist.

Didn’t we have a revolution about this kind of nonsense a couple of hundred years ago? Thank God the patriots of the Revolution bitterly clung to their guns and their religion or we’d be as far down the sewer pipe as Britain.

They are less interested in effective policy than in effective persecution. These clowns know their gun-banning campaign won’t stop either the rare psycho shooting spree or the tragic, everyday nightmare of the inner cities’ gang-fueled bloodbath. But these policies aren’t intended for criminals; they are intended for us, to show us who is boss, to acclimate us to the concept that our fundamental rights are up for review, and that we better behave or they will be totally withdrawn.

It’s couched in a sort of Bizarro World morality where up is down, right is wrong. They tell us that if you want to keep your guns, you want children to die. This includes those of us who wore the uniform of this country or of a first responder agency and put our lives on the line to protect children while the ruling class posers sipped lattes, giggled at Jon Stewart’s mugging, and experimented with metrosexuality.

Why won’t the liberals talk about mental health, guarding schools or, heaven forbid, the carnage in the inner cities that their cronies have controlled for decades? Because resolving those issues won’t hurt us. Their goal isn’t to stop the violence – if they cared about violence you would be as able to walk down the streets of Detroit or Washington or any other big liberal city as you are the heavily guarded enclaves of the ruling class. Their goal is to beat us down, to break us, to leave us disarmed, docile and disheartened.

It’s more than just contempt. They hate us.

They hate our bourgeois values, like faith, family and patriotism. They hate how we don’t acknowledge their mental and moral superiority. Most of all, they hate our unwillingness to yield to their commands.

That’s why the policies we support are never merely unwise but are always portrayed as evidence of our unrepentant evil. Unhappy about illegal aliens flowing over the border? No, that couldn’t possibly be because of the social chaos illegals cause – not that the establishment would know anything about that. No, their only experience with illegal immigration is cheap labor cleaning their mansions and watching their kids. They aren’t ranchers in Arizona who get murdered by the guys bringing the liberals’ drugs north. They aren’t priced out of the manual labor market by folks who will work for under minimum wage under the table. They aren’t getting rear-ended by some illegal without car insurance.

No, it’s gotta be that we’re horrible racists. That’s the only possible answer.

The new liberal love affair with militant atheism is another manifestation of the same phenomenon. Just a few years ago, it would be considered unbelievably rude to disrespect someone’s religion in public – and it still is, at least to those of us who weren’t figuratively raised by wolves. But now trashing religion, particularly that of devout Christians and Jews, is a cottage industry. Of course, religions that respond to criticism with beheadings are mysteriously exempt.

You see this manifest in policies like the Obamacare mandates where the liberals seem to be going out of their way to ensure that believers are forced to pay homage to the great god Government and violate their consciences. What reasonable, rational motive exists to force people who do not share the liberals’ views of contraception to subsidize policies that they consider evil?

None, of course. Even Sandra Fluke could afford the few bucks a month to get her pills at her local Wal-Mart. Maybe that’s the rub – maybe the idea that a special snowflake like Ms. Fluke might be forced to mingle with the unclean masses is the real problem.

Now Washington state is suing some flower shop whose owner has religious objections to decorating a gay wedding. Apparently, Seattle is so bereft of orchid peddlers that it must force its citizens to violate their most sacred spiritual beliefs by privileging flower arrangements over faith.

Such floral fascism isn’t wise policy. It’s vindictiveness written into the law.

This is wrong and un-American. It’s also leading to divisions within the nation that we have not seen in generations. Liberals used to talk about “tolerance,” but as with “civil rights” their enthusiasm for it faded when their power grew. Tolerance means not messing with others who choose to live their lives differently. But now tolerance has given way to persecution.

The growing stridency of the liberal establishment keeps pushing and pushing, forcing regular Americans back. But eventually, they will force the rest of us back against the wall, and that’s when things will get ugly. They have a choice for our society – do we splinter or do we come together? If they want the latter, the first step is to stop being snobs.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

How much “civilization” does your tax money buy?: "Tax Day, April 15, is traditionally the time of year when liberals trot out that old Oliver Wendell Holmes chestnut: 'Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.' But what kind of 'civilization' are we paying for?" [And how much do we need to pay?]

Who’s afraid of natural rights?:  "Among philosophers the idea of natural rights is not very popular. And that is putting it mildly. But the grounds for this resistance are not clear to me. Sometimes people object to natural rights for reasons reminiscent of Bentham and Burke. Rights, they say, must be precise. They must be specified concretely. But we cannot rationally determine what natural rights we have or what they entitle us to. Therefore, there are no natural rights. I find the objection puzzling."

Privatize the TVA:  "Perhaps President Obama has been reading about Margaret Thatcher’s policy successes. He is apparently considering selling off the federal government’s Tennessee Valley Authority. This is a great idea. As this story notes, it would allow the struggling electric utility more flexibility in dealing with the many challenges it faces. While Democrats are often more socialistic on economic policy than Republicans ... This time around, Democratic President Obama may run into opposition from socialistic Republicans."

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

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