BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

The quest for significant being is the heart of existence. We do not crave that quest; we find ourselves involved in it. Animals may be content when their needs are satisfied; humans insist not only on being satisfied but also on being able to satisfy, on being a need not imsply on having needs. Personal needs come and go, but one anxiety remains: Am I needed? There is no human being who has not been moved by that anxiety. Humans are not satisfied, lie is not meaningful to us, unless life is serving an end beyond itself, unless it is of value to someon else. The feeling of futility that comes with the sense of being useless, of not being needed in the world, is the comost common cause of psycho-neurosis. Happiness may be defined as he certainty of being needed. But who is in need of humans? Human existence cannot derive its ultimate meaning from society, because society itself is in need of meaning. There is not a soul on earth which, however vaguely or rarely, has not realized that li...

Misogyny Moment for the end of the year... from SHAKESVILLE: I was wondering how you feel about Dennis Prager's contentio n that men are like animals in order to advance his argument that wives should submit sexually to their husbands even when they don't want to because men can't feel loved if they're not being fucked. (If you're a gay man, of course you don't even figure into Prager's heterocentrist equations, except insomuch as he makes no distinction that he's talking only about straight men; it is simply men whose "sexual nature is far closer to that of animals" and who know that their partners love them "first and foremost by [their] willingness to give [their] bod[ies] to him.") It must be thrilling to have such a prominent figure dedicate an entire column (and this is only Part One!) to coercing a woman to submit to you, irrespective of her desire, lest she risk your (totally justifiable) emotionally withdrawing from her, chea...

by Kathy Krajco I am death on people telling the victim that it's a sin to fight back. They are pressuring the victim to do the very thing that causes victims to suffer terrible shame in the aftermath of abuse -- give themselves up to it. That shame we feel at doing so is an infallible indicator that it's wrong. No one needs a book or a preacher to tell them what's right and wrong. We KNOW that's wrong. Deep down inside we feel how wrong it is to give ourselves up to abuse. Doing so makes us feel like a worm. A doormat. We know it's lack of backbone. We sense the prostitution in it. We feel utterly degraded by it. The only excuse for it is being subjected to overwhelming force so that we haven't the power to resist. Which is rape. Which is why we feel deeply violated by it. Whether it's sexual rape or any other kind. So, we know that we must resist when we can. If only for the sake of our self respect. And anyone who tells us that we shouldn't fight the ...

Don't worry Uppity - I don't think your obsessed. Caroline's just too easy. Born nine months, to the day, after me and married 17 months after me I feel fully qualified to pass some muster on her. My narcissist/ mother (a die-hard Republican) cleaved to the Kennedy mystique and used to compare me to Caroline (or any other person my age she thought was "better" than her own daughter) quite a bit over the years. I think I know you Caroline... or what little there is to know. In 1986 a friend of mine was working at the Door Store in Manhattan, near the Citibank building on Lexington. I went in to meet him and drag him to lunch and there was Caroline and her then-fiance Mr. Schlossberg - ordering furniture and pawing at each other like two sixteen year olds at the "submarine races." Classy. Now she wants Hillary's seat -- and the ONLY thing she or her supporters can talk about is her Father, her Mother, her Uncle, her Cousins. WHAT ABOUT HER? I g...

Has ANYONE in the Diplomatic Core realized THAT TERRORISTS DON'T LISTEN? The U.S. on Saturday blamed the militant group Hamas for breaking a cease-fire and attacking Israel, which retaliated with strikes of its own during what became the single bloodiest day of fighting in years. The White House called for the cease-fire to be restored, yet there were few indications that the violence, which has left more than 200 people dead and nearly another 400 wounded, was waning. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that the operation in Gaza would widen if necessary. It was "completely unacceptable" for Hamas, which controls Gaza, to launch attacks on Israel after a truce lasting several months, said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council. "These people are nothing but thugs, so Israel is going to defend its people against terrorists like Hamas that indiscriminately kill their own people," Johndroe said in Texas as President George W. Bush w...

by Phil Mushnick The news media always seems to lose their nerve with the wrong people at the worst times. The news media almost always grows politely silent when it's time to be firm and inquisitive. Thus, thus the follow-up questions that audiences are eager to have answered are never even asked. The recent terrorist bombings that left 200 murdered and 300 injured in Mumbai inspired the usual shock and outrage. And the same, boilerplate responses from Muslim spokesmen here, there and everywhere: "This is not what Islam teaches" and/or "These are not real Muslims; Islam teaches respect for life." For example, an organization known as Muslim Matters, responded with: "As Muslims, we condemn such senseless carnage against innocent civilians, wherever it may occur. This goes against the fundamental spirit of Islam, which promotes a culture of life and humanity, not bloodshed and violence. And another example of why extremist ideology, whatever that ideology m...

from the always GREAT Uppity Woman : I thought we might recap exactly what Caroline Kennedy [Schlossberg] was doing before she decided “not to campaign” for the NY State Senate seat left empty by the work horse and policy wonk known as Hillary Clinton. Rather, let’s recap what she wasn’t doing — as opposed to what others are saying she was doing. Village Voice basically calls bullshit on her resume, particularly with respect to her tenure as “Chief Executive of the Office of Strategic Partnerships” in the New York City Department of Education . The truth is, Caroline didn’t do what her political pushers are saying she did. That’s not to say that none of it got done. It did. It’s just that Caroline didn’t do much of it. But she has no problem taking the credit for big-time fundraising for the NY City Department of Education. In fact, Caroline is not only assuming credit for the work of a woman named Michele Cahill, but she barely had the time to be around much after her appointmen...

by Kathy Krajco Then there is the other side of the coin, which is an even more menacing sign of bad faith — what narcissists do to the images of others. Consumed with pathological envy, they make themselves look good the bogus way, by making others look bad. Overall, individuals high in narcissism displayed amplified responses to social comparison information, experiencing greater positive affect from downward comparisons and greater hostile affect from upward comparisons. — Bogart, L.M., Benotsh, E.G. and Pavlovic, J.D. (2004), Feeling Superior but Threatened: The Relation of Narcissism to Social Comparison, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 26, Iss. 1, pp. 35-44. In other words, malignant narcissists feel that praiseworthy information about you diminishes them, and they feel that denigrating information about you elevates them. Hence, like the rapist, narcissists must tear their betters "down off that pedestal" by maligning them. Therefore "malignant"...

Oh Alex, you are so not helping efforts to validate Parental Alienation as a Syndrome ... Alex Baldwin's tirade against his minor child needs to be seen for what it is - child abuse. Not only is it child abuse but is also so typical of the mindset and the philosophy that Americans so easily resort to when it comes to taking responsibility for their actions. "It's not my fault." Here is what Baldwin said after calling his little girl a "thoughtless little pig" and threatening to come from New York to Los Angeles to "straighten her out" - a threat to the kid's safety if ever there was one. "Although I have been told by numerous people not to worry too much, as all parents lose their patience with their kids, I am most saddened that this was released to the media because of what it does to a child," he wrote. "I'm sorry, as everyone who knows me is aware, for losing my temper with my child. I have been driven to the edge ...

A must read in a series from Echidne of the Snakes' blog : ...Oh, With Gals, Too, Naturally. This is the second post in my series about the very simple and basic reasons why I became a feminist and why I still see lots of work for feminism. You can read the first post here. There will be more posts and they are not in any particular ranking by value of importance. This series differs from my usual writing style. I'm trying to let the immediate response come through and to use other parts of my mind and memory more than the analytical machine I mostly employ. I'm trying to view this planet from the outside, to ask questions about the taste of the water we drink and the color of the air we breathe. This is hard to do, because each and everyone of us is immersed in the systems in which we live and we don't see them as systems. Please remember that, especially if you start feeling that I'm accusing individual men or women of what I discuss here. Let us begin by looking ...

I am continually disgusted but not shocked by what I read about Islamofascists and their enablers. A very skewed look at reality. A psychopathic society of delusional haters. They & dhimmis like Carter are pinning their hopes on a supposedly terrorist-friendly Obama and his administration. Let us pray. Carter hopes for improvement of U.S.-Syrian ties under new U.S. administration Visiting former U.S. President Jimmy Carter here Saturday expressed hope that relations between Washington and Damascus would improve after U.S. President-elect Barack Obama takes office in January. "I don't have any doubt that the situation will improve between the United States and Syria after we have a new president," Carter told a press conference after meeting with Syrian President Basharal-Assad. Carter, who arrived here from Beirut earlier in the day, expressed his hope that the new U.S. administration would send an ambassador to Damascus soon in the new year. ...