The Weekend Web

A Texas-sized hurricane slammed into the Texas Gulf Coast this weekend. Hurricane Ike flooded Galveston, left at least 4.5 million people in the Houston area without power, and shut down almost 20 percent of America’s oil refining capacity. This prompted the Department of Energy to release 309,000 barrels from its strategic reserves. Bloomberg reports:

At least 13 refineries in Texas … shut 3.64 million barrels a day of refining capacity as Ike approached Texas. … Gulf refineries and ports are the source of about 50 percent of the fuel and crude used in the eastern half of the U.S. Analysts predict gasoline prices may again reach $4 a gallon.

Surrendering Ground in the Culture Wars

As we noted here, most conservative commentators have enthusiastically applauded Sarah Palin’s flag-waving, gun-toting, lipstick-wearing, career-aspiring, baby-making, Superwoman credentials. But as Ellen Goodman points out in a recent column, the right’s widespread acceptance of Palin as the next vice president actually signals defeat on the “working mom” battleground of the culture wars.

Goodman compares statements made by influential conservatives before and after Palin was added to the McCain ticket. They are quite revealing. James Dobson, for example, at one time attributed one cause of society’s breakdown in the family to “working mothers.” He now says, “I believe Sarah Palin is God’s answer.”

Phyllis Schlafly once said the “flight from home is a flight from yourself, from responsibility, from the nature of woman.” As Goodman notes, Schlafly now says, “I think a hardworking, well-organized ceo type can handle it very well.”

Another telling comparison: At the 1992 Republican convention, Vice President Dan Quayle’s wife Marilyn said during her televised speech, “Most women do not wish to be liberated from their essential natures as women. Most of us love being mothers or wives, which gives our lives a richness that few men or women get from professional accomplishments alone.” Stopping just short of calling “women’s liberation” a complete flop, Mrs. Quayle added, “Not everyone believed that the family was so oppressive that women could only thrive apart from it.”

Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton called Quayle’s comments “an insult to today’s modern women.”

Sarah Palin is no Marilyn Quayle. “To any critics who say a woman can’t think and work and carry a baby at the same time, I’d just like to escort that Neanderthal back to the cave,” Palin told the Anchorage Daily News back in March when she revealed that she was seven months pregnant while still clocking in at the governor’s mansion every day.

It’s no wonder the Democrats have found it so difficult to counterpunch John McCain’s appointment of Palin.

But as for Palin’s pit-bull-like reaction to those who would question her priorities, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman make some important observations at the Opinion Journal:

[T]he question we’re all asking isn’t can she do it, but why is she doing it? Mrs. Palin, you see, happens to be bucking a new national trend. Even as most mothers across America chuckle appreciatively about pit bulls and lipstick and applaud her bravado, they are making choices that look very un-Palinesque.

Kay and Shipman support their argument with these key statistics:

In 1992, 57 percent of women with degrees wanted more responsibility at work, but by 2002 that figure had plummeted to 36 percent, according to the Family and Work Institute. Four out of five women want more flexibility at work and call it a top priority; 60 percent of us want to work part-time.

They conclude with this point:

So what you are hearing is less condemnation than a collective gasp of amazement—and exhaustion—at the thought of juggling five children, one of them an infant, and the most extreme example of a job with little or no flexibility. It would make supermom feel feeble. And we should celebrate the fact that all of this can now be discussed openly.It is not sexist to have this conversation. It is sexist not to.

“Warrior Girls” Breaking Down

Female athletes who train as rigorously as their male counterparts are at greater risk of injuring themselves, according to an article in the Washington Times. Though it might be politically incorrect to address the subject, it is a fact that non-gender-specific training can have dire consequences for women. “Despite their physical differences,” the Times writes, “training regimens often are the same for boys and girls, which takes a heavy toll on girls’ bodies. The consequence of the unisex training regimen can be—and often is—catastrophic for girls.”

Even less politically correct than addressing the subject is to consider what God says about gender differences. Compared to men, women are the “weaker vessel,” it says in 1 Peter 3:7. But the same verse also highlights the fact that both men and women have the same spiritual potential—“heirs together of the grace of life.”

In an earlier era, this biblical precept received widespread acceptance in society. In his treatise on the nature and character of democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville lauded early America’s view of equality. He said that while 19th-century Europe tried to make men and women not only equal, but actually similar, America viewed equality through a different lens. Americans, he wrote,

think that nature, which created such great differences between the physical and moral constitution of men and women, clearly intended to give their diverse faculties a diverse employment; and they consider that progress consists not in making dissimilar creatures do roughly the same things but in giving both a chance to do their job as well as possible. … They have carefully separated the functions of man and of woman so that the great work of society may be better performed.

America’s earliest settlers based such practical ideology on the Bible. From the beginning, God intended for a woman’s special abilities and talents to complement the man’s, and vice versa. Each enables the other to accomplish much more than either could alone.

Today, many women and men have become quite dissatisfied with the way God organized His creation and have rejected their God-ordained role in the home and in society. The result of that experiment, as we have often noted at theTrumpet.com, has been devastating.

Who Is Frank-Walter Steinmeier?

The biggest news out of Germany this week was the nomination of Frank-Walter Steinmeier as the Social Democratic Party’s candidate to run for chancellor in next year’s national election. “The world of German politics has changed overnight,” saidSpiegel.

But while many recognize that German politics changed with the nomination of Steinmeier, very few seem to know what those changes might entail. Frank-Walter Steinmeier is as much an enigma to Germans as he is to the rest of the world. Spiegel continued:

There are more questions than answers when it comes to Frank Walter Steinmeier. The Germans like him, according to recent opinion polls showing he is more popular even than Merkel.But the Germans hardly know this man. To them, Steinmeier has until now just been the man who talks about the problems of the world on the tv news. He’s usually seen standing in crisis regions, in Damascus, Beirut or Ramallah, staring into the cameras with a serious look on his face, urging caution and “diplomatic efforts.” His underlying message is always: keep a cool head, don’t rush into anything. It’s also the motto of his life.

But behind his staid countenance lays a crafty veteran politician. He’s been a mover and shaker in German politics for years and has operated, until recently, effectively and slyly from the sidelines, rather than under the bright lights.

Steinmeier has spent most of his political career standing alongside former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and is steeped in Schröder’s pro-Russian, anti-American world views. Spiegel continued:

Steinmeier was an efficient bureaucrat, managing to keep Schröder’s at times chaotic coalition of Social Democrats and Greens workable. But he also revealed a different, darker side during his time as Schröder’s chief of staff in Berlin, when he was chief supervisor of Germany’s intelligence agencies.A parliamentary committee that has spent the last two years exploring the role of the agencies in the fight against terrorism has pieced together a picture of Steinmeier as a technocrat who stuck to the letter of the law when human compassion would have been appropriate. As a man so caught up in rules and regulations that he lost sight of a human’s fate.

Because of his demure personality, many German politicians question Steinmeier’s ability to woo and coddle voters in the coming election campaign. He’s not a people person, many say. He might be good at pushing papers and chairing political roundtables, but it’s just not in him to don a fake smile, kiss babies and deliver flashy political speeches.

Perhaps that’s true. But have you looked at Germany closely lately? A pall of discontent has settled over that nation; the economy is fragile, Muslim immigrants have gained a staunch foothold, social programs are a mess and, most notably, their eastern neighbor—the one that supplies Germany with most of its energy—has reemerged as an influential world power.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier is definitely one to watch in the year ahead.

The Big “What If”

Randall Kennedy asks an important question this morning in his opinion piece. What if Barack Obama loses?

If that happens, then what? How will I feel? How will other black Americans feel? How should people like me feel? … Whether black onlookers believe that this election was decided “on the real issues” and that Obama was “judged fairly” will be shaped in part by future developments, including the nature of the campaign in its closing weeks (will race-baiting intensify?). … I anticipate that most black Americans will believe that an Obama defeat will have stemmed in substantial part from a prejudice that robbed 40 million Americans of the chance to become president on the day they were born black. They will of course understand that race wasn’t the only significant variable—that party affiliation, ideological proclivities, strategic choices and dumb luck also mattered. But deep in their bones, they will believe—and probably rightly—that race was a key element, that had the racial shoe been on the other foot—had John McCain been black and Obama white—the result would have been different.This conclusion will be accompanied by bitter disappointment, and in some quarters, stark rage.

The Trumpet has forecasted for over a decade that open racial conflict will break loose in the United States. The 2008 election, and the power and intense emotions at play within, may be the catalyst that will bring these simmering tensions to the point of boiling over.

Obama Warns of GOP Attacks

The front page of the Washington Times, a conservative news outlet, keeps the heat on, criticizing Barack Obama as Obama criticized conservatives for criticizing him:

Sen. Barack Obama told voters not to fall for Republican attempts to “distort my record,” keeping up his attacks on Sen. John McCain, whose campaign criticized the Democrat for talking politics during a hurricane.

The American presidential campaign is hot. Expect it to get much hotter.

Detailed Study on Spread of HIV in U.S.

A detailed study about the spread of hiv in the U.S. was released by the Centers for Disease Control and prevention on Thursday. Like previous studies have shown, the majority of new cases developed among homosexual and bisexual communities. The New York Times reported, “Among newly infected males, 81 percent of white men and 63 percent of black men were gay or bisexual.”

Last month, the cdc also reported that the disease is spreading more rapidly in the United States than previously thought. The study revealed that 56,300 people were newly infected with hiv in 2006—40 percent more than the agency’s previous estimate.

The cdc’s Dr. Kevin Fenton said the study served “as a powerful reminder that the U.S. epidemic of hiv disease is far from over.”

Sharia Courts Open for Business in Britain

“Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain,” proclaimed London’s Times this weekend. In a shocking article, the Times wrote,

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

According to the article, some of Britain’s biggest cities already have sharia courts, including London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester. Courts are currently being planned for Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, set up the courts by taking advantage of the 1996 Arbitration Act. “We realized that under the Arbitration Act we can make rulings which can be enforced by county and high courts. The act allows disputes to be resolved using alternatives like tribunals. This method is called alternative dispute resolution, which for Muslims is what the sharia courts are,” he said.

Under this act, citizens cannot be forced to come before sharia court, but if they do, they are required by law to obey its dictates. Melanie Phillips explained the significance of the measure a few months ago:

One law for all is the very basis of legal and social justice and is the glue that binds a society together. Law is the expression of a society’s cultural identity. If there is no one law, there is no one national identity and therefore no society but instead a set of warring fiefdoms with their own separate jurisdictions.

Those within the sharia “fiefdom” are indeed warring against Britain’s national identity. “Have more babies and Muslims can take over the UK,” Anjem Choudary, right-hand man of exiled preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed, told fanatics on the anniversary of 9/11, according to the Daily Mail. “It may be by pure conversion that Britain will become an Islamic state. We may never need to conquer it from the outside. We do not integrate into Christianity. We will ensure that one day you will integrate into the Sharia Islamic law.” Saiful Islam, speaking at the same meeting, stated that the next 9/11 would happen inside the UK.

With an alternative legal system growing inside Britain, and a significant minority of citizens who aim to destroy the country, the UK has a problem. For more information on this issue, and where it is leading, read our article “The Sickness in Britain’s Heart.”

Elsewhere on the Web

Disturbing news if you view Germany as a close and growing ally for the U.S.: According to The Local, an English-language German news website, a new poll found that almost a quarter of Germans believe the American government was involved in a conspiracy to perpetrate the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on America.

As the world still digests the news that the U.S. government—once so staunchly proud of ardent, independent, private capitalism—has absorbed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, information surfaces that leaders throughout Washington were well aware of the firms’ peril. But sound business principles—and honesty—failed to win the day. Read “Our Economy’s Boiler Room” for more on how morals are connected to your checkbook.

The U.S. government is now scrambling for a way to bail out Lehman Brothers, writes the International Herald Tribune: “As Lehman Brothers raced to find a buyer on Saturday, U.S. government officials and Wall Street chieftains mapped out options to prevent an abrupt collapse of the crippled bank and arrest the downward spiral threatening other financial companies.” In another worrying sign, the Tribune reports that finding buyers for U.S. financial assets has become increasingly difficult as foreigners have gotten burned in earlier investments aimed at providing capital to troubled U.S. firms.

Here is an interesting read about corruption on Wall Street.

Britain’s ailing housing market has further aggravated its already slumping economy, the Washington Post reported on Friday. House sales in Britain are at their lowest level in 30 years. According to Nationwide, housing prices have fallen an average of 10.5 percent in the last year. Standard and Poor predicts that housing prices will continue to fall another 17 percent before leveling out in 2009. “Much of Britain’s problem has been imported from the United States through its subprime mortgage crisis,” the Washington Post stated.

And Finally …

Tomorrow, the Church of England will officially apologize to Charles Darwin for misunderstanding his theory of evolution.

Very courageous.