"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
I’m going to lead off this week’s book post with a short review of a book which is itself all too short: Kathy Shaidle’s Confessions of A Failed Slut
This is definitely not a problem with Matthew Harrington’s Godspawn
Equally huge, but considerably more famous, is James Jones’ From Here to Eternity
Last night, I hit Dana Milbank’s cheap smear of a Heritage Foundation panel about the Benghazi cover-up and thought I’d done a good job. This morning, I woke up and saw Ace’s treatment of the same story and was awed by the work of the master:
Milbank’s original deception is reporting this woman’s charge — a vague claim that the panel was Muslim-bashing — without first stating if the charge was accurate or not.
He reports her charge as if the charge is, itself, a fair one.
But is it? He doesn’t say. He implies it is, without saying so.
Note, however, what this panel was about. It was not about terrorism. It was not about Islam.
It was about the American government’s response to Benghazi, including lying to the public and retaliating against internal whistleblowers.
How would Islam have even have come up, except as a brief tangent? It seems unlikely that it did — and I imagine when the full video gets released, it will demonstrate, as one panelist told this woman, that this questioner was the only person talking about Islam, while all the panelists were focused on the Obama administration.
That is, she hijacked the panel to make her own point and toss out a vague charge of Serious You Guys Racism while doing so. . . .
Milbank’s original column shows him as biased and giddily ignorant. He’s actually proud to know nothing at all about the subject he’s allegedly covering.
Read the whole thing. In one of Milbanks’ “Look at These Crazy Wingnuts” gestures, he includes this:
The accusers’ allegations grow wilder by the day. . . .
[Brigitte] Gabriel floated the notion that Stevens had been working on a weapons-swap program between Libya and Syria just before he was killed.
Does Dana Milbank really think Brigitte Gabriel just made that up? Has he not paid attention? October 25, 2012:
On the night of Sept. 11, in what would become his last known public meeting, Stevens met with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, and escorted him out of the consulate front gate one hour before the assault began at approximately 9:35 p.m. local time.
Although what was discussed at the meeting is not public, a source told Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi to negotiate a weapons transfer, an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists.
Stevens’ meeting with the Turkish consul in Benghazi is significant because it is believed — not confirmed, because the administration has been stonewalling congressional investigators — that what happened was this: The CIA and State Department were trying to negotiate a “buyback” of weapons they had (secretly) supplied to anti-Qaddafi forces in Libya, weapons which were then being (secretly) shipped via Turkey to anti-Assad forces in Syria. Of course, Milbank might dismiss this as a Fox News conspiracy theory, except that CNN reported the same thing in August 2013:
CNN has uncovered exclusive new information about what is allegedly happening at the CIA, in the wake of the deadly Benghazi terror attack. . . .
Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground that night, and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.
CNN has learned the CIA is involved in what one source calls an unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agency’s Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out. . . .
Among the many secrets still yet to be told about the Benghazi mission, is just how many Americans were there the night of the attack.
A source now tells CNN that number was 35, with as many as seven wounded, some seriously.
While it is still not known how many of them were CIA, a source tells CNN that 21 Americans were working in the building known as the annex, believed to be run by the agency. . . .
Speculation on Capitol Hill has included the possibility the U.S. agencies operating in Benghazi were secretly helping to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels.
It is clear that two U.S. agencies were operating in Benghazi, one was the State Department, and the other was the CIA.
The CIA was reportedly forcing employees with knowledge of the Benghazi operation to take polygraphs, asking if they had talked to journalists or congressional investigators. And this is significant . . . why? Because, if true, it shows that the administration had a covert policy which was neither authorized by Congress nor disclosed to the American people, that four Americans were killed because of this policy, and that the whole farcical charade of claiming that the Benghazi attack was a “spontaneous” protest against a YouTube video was part of a clumsy attempt to conceal the truth, a cover-up that continues to this day.
Dana Milbank is (or pretends to be) “giddily ignorant” of this. Why? Because the Washington Post is actively involved in the cover-up?
“The accusers’ allegations grow wilder by the day . . .”
So Eric Shinseki resigned yesterday as Veterans Affairs Secretary and is going to be replaced by Acting Secretary Sloan Gibson. And lo, all over Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of the Intertubes there was much rejoicing, for Something Had Been Done. Now there’s a lot of discussion over who’s going to be Shinseki’s successor, because of course all we need is the right guy in charge over there, right? Somebody to clean house, exorcise the eeeevil culture of sinister ineptitude, and usher in a new dawn of caring, sensitive, timely care for all those who served, right? Maybe Jim Webb can clean this Augean stable! Or Mad Dog Mattis!
Yeah, right. In case you missed my previous post about the VA, I suggest you go back and read it. The problems with the VA don’t start with Obama -although he’s done precious little about the problem except hector Congress for more money and pissed it away when he got it- or with Bush, as some on the left are trying to claim*, or even with Bill Clinton, Bush The Elder, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon or LBJ, to name just the presidents whose administrations I personally remember. You think it’s actually going to make a difference who replaces Shinseki? The Rock has some advice for you.
The only things that will change the VA are an aggressive expansion of the program to take Medicare-eligible vets out of the VA system and hand them off to civilian healthcare providers, and giving the new Secretary the power to utterly purge the Veterans Health Administration of everyone connected with the current scheduling debacle. Both of these will be fought tooth and nail by the existing bureaucrats and their union, along with the Democrats in Congress who are their allies – and the Establishment RINOs who just want to go along to get along. Of the two, I think the former is more likely, since it doesn’t do much to imperil the bureaucracy in the short term and is the simplest way for the current Administration to look like it’s “doing something for veterans”. Ideally, we’d terminate the Veterans Health Administration with extreme prejudice** and give veterans who can’t afford medical care Tricare without co-pays, but in that world we wouldn’t have the Departments of Education, Energy, Homeland Security and other exrescences either. Small steps. Reduce the load on the existing system now, and make reform of the VHA the opening wedge for destroying the civil service – or at least ridding the Federal government of its employee unions. One thing’s for sure, changing the man at the top won’t make any more difference to the Department of Veterans Affairs than changing the figurehead on a sailing ship made to the way it handled.
*h/t Charlie Martin on Facebook.
**There are other parts of the VA that aren’t nearly so screwed up.
While this could be a descriptor of many offices, bureaux, agencies and possibly even entire departments of the Federal Government, I’m addressing the problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is still referred to by many as the Veterans Administration or simply VA. As CNN points out in this excellent article (apparently they do still have good reporters, they just don’t let them on the air) the VA has been a disastrous pile of fail ever since 1921, when Congress formed the Veterans Bureau only to see it collapse into a slough of corruption so bad that it had to be abolished in 1930 and replaced with the Veterans Administration, which also took over pensions from the Interior Department and the National Home For Disabled Veterans, this last actually comprising a number of Federally operated homes for destitute and disabled veterans.
Trouble could have been foreseen from the beginning at the VA, since its first head was retired Brigadier General Frank Hines, who had headed the scandal-plagued Veterans Bureau for seven years; he would be sacked by President Truman in 1945 after a series of news reports on shoddy care in VA hospitals*. He was replaced by General Omar Bradley, but even Bradley could make little headway with the over-centralized VA bureaucracy, and by 1946 the American Legion was calling for his head. Two years later, a government reform commission found massive waste, fraud and inefficiency in the VA, some of which was cured by decentralizing the bureaucracy; another reform commission in 1955 noted that waste and poor care persisted. The problems continued on through the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and continue to persist today.
Part of the problem is that while theoretically the VA is supposed to provide care for all veterans, in practice, it triages veterans based on whether their injuries/illnesses are combat-related (this was at the root of the Agent Orange brouhaha) and whether they can afford to pay for their own care. Another part of the problem is that the VA has arguably never had the assets to properly do its job, and while the VA budget has increased since 2008, it hasn’t kept up with the surge of elderly veterans from the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boom who now comprise most of the patient load. This is also the reason why you’re seeing most of the “dying in line” cases coming out of the VA medical centers in Arizona and Florida – those states are very attractive to retirees, and so retired vets tend to flock there. You don’t hear about problems like this in Minneapolis, Washington DC and Boston, for example, because most retired vets either aren’t interested in living in climatic hellholes or simply can’t afford to live in the latter two areas due to their high costs of living. The number of Iraq/Afghanistan vets trying to fight their way through the paperwork to get their benefits is relatively small by comparison.
Megan McArdle posted a pessimistic essay yesterday which I linked to this morning, whose basic thrust is that the Obama Administration thought they could solve the VA’s ongoing problems by just throwing more money at the problem and hiring some more people, only to find that the solution just wasn’t that simple – people need to be fired and processes need to be changed, and both of these are a hell of a lot harder in the Federal government than they are on Wall Street or Silicon Valley. Instead, thanks to the executive decision to make it easier for vets to get help for PTSD and Agent Orange, the claims ratcheted up faster than the agency could deal with them (McArdle quotes a National Journal article that says Agent Orange claims ate up 37% of the VA’s claims processing resources from 2010 to 2012), so things wound up even worse off than they were before. The obvious solution, which is allowing the private sector to take some of the load off, has been fought by the American Federation of Government Employees, which has been fighting a new $9.3 billion program that encourages Medicare-eligible vets (about half the patient population) to seek care from civilian hospitals.**
Stacy’s Crazy Cousin John is often wrong, but as far as the VA is concerned, he’s right – the Veterans Health Administration needs to be stripped down to the things it does best, and hand off other medical care to private physicians. Given the current administration’s sinister ineptitude, though, I think we’ll continue seeing more veterans die in line while waiting for the VA bureaucracy to get them what they need.
*In an ironic tribute to the VA’s ongoing problems, the Chicago VA Medical Center is named for General Hines and is equally mired in scandal.
** Hat tip to The Lonely Conservative.
Bill Schmalfeldt insists he is not a deranged cyberstalker.
“Delusions of persecution and grandiose revenge fantasies are typical of certain personality disorders and, although I have no specialized training in psychology, I know crazy when I see it.
“One of Bill Schmalfeldt’s most noticeable traits is his love of making threats — The Dire Warning of Terrible Consequences — which seems closely related to his sadistic tendency. Schmalfeldt evidently enjoys trying to frighten people and relishes the thought of harming or humiliating others . . .”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Jan. 7
Fail, fail, fail. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Bill Schmalfeldt‘s habits become tedious after a while, and I’ve only bothered to mention him twice in the past month, once because he announced that he had named me as a defendant in a federal lawsuit — a lawsuit that nobody ever actually saw, of course, but now he has sent an e-mail announcing that he is withdrawing the suit:
Then, on May 22, I had an appointment with my neurologist. We discussed the lawsuit. He told me, quite frankly, that it was his opinion that if being harassed and hassled by you fools was enough to make my condition as bad as it is, a protracted lawsuit would kill me. He asked me if getting a measure of revenge against the people who tormented me this last 18 months was worth my life.
You know what? You’re not worth the time I took to write this comment.
When I got home from the appointment (Dr. Stephen Grill, Elkridge, MD), I wrote a letter to the Clerk of Courts telling them to forget about filing the suit. My wife mailed it minutes later. $0.49 postage. $3.30 certified fee. $2.70 return receipt requested. And a shitload of paper wasted.
So. I am not going to sue anybody. You don’t deserve a moment’s more of my time and effort.
En route to that anticlimax, however, Bill Schmalfeldt nevertheless had to exhibit his symptomatic Last Word Syndrome:
Hoge professes Christianity. He is the sort of person Christ warned about, a blind guide, a liar, a hypocrite. He should be despised instead of lauded. But nobody is accusing his followers of being particularly bright.
And on the subject of R. Stacy McCain. Does he have a degree in psychology? Psychiatry? Have I been adjudged to be “deranged” by competent authority? No? Then who the f*ck is R. Stacy McCain to call ANYBODY ELSE “deranged”? Cyberstalking? Have I been convicted of the crime of cyberstalking? No. One judge who admitted he had no idea what Twitter does decided that blocking me on Twitter was the same thing as Hoge having to change his telephone number. One judge, who completely ignored the settled law and the opinion of the state Attorney General, who he called “just another lawyer.”
For some reason, Bill Schmalfeldt resents being called a “deranged cyberstalker,” which is merely a description, rather than a psychiatric diagnosis or a criminal accusation. Regular readers know how, over Thanksgiving weekend 2012, Schmalfeldt sent me more than 200 hostile Twitter messages in the span of 48 hours, including a threat to contact my wife at her workplace.
Was it inaccurate or unfair to describe such behavior as “cyberstalking”? And was this behavior rational, or was it deranged?
Schmalfeldt’s behavior was self-evidently intended to cause me harm, and was also self-evidently motivated by Schmalfeldt’s own irrational impulses — a bizarre and inexplicable obsession. Everyone who witnessed Schmalfeldt’s conduct toward me that weekend in November 2012 was horrified, and agreed that Schmalfeldt must be in the grip of some weird psychiatric disorder.
This general impression of Schmalfeldt as a madman had actually existed for many months before I ever heard of him, due to such of his insane misadventures as the “butt stuff” rant that got him banned from Daily Kos and his hateful “Dead Breitbart” stunt. Yet what finally cemented Schmalfeldt’s bad reputation was his cruel and obscene harassment of Lee Stranahan’s family. Even now, more than a year after Stranahan sought a court order to put an end to Schmalfeldt’s harassment, Schmalfeldt attempts to justify his actions:
People think I harassed Stranahan. F*ck Stranahan. Every problem the man ever had, he brought on himself.
Schmalfeldt then repeats all the wretched evil he perpetrated against Stranahan’s family, without ever bothering to explain why.
This is the problem that Schmalfeldt cannot escape: He has never been able to offer any logical explanation for why he spent months attempting to destroy Lee Stranahan’s family, and we must therefore conclude that Bill Schmalfeldt is a sadistic monster prone to obsessive fixations on scapegoated enemies, dehumanized targets onto whom he pours out the poisonous hatred that fills his perverse mind.
“Bill Schmalfeldt doesn’t have principles. Bill Schmalfeldt doesn’t have values. Bill Schmalfeldt doesn’t have beliefs. Bill Schmalfeldt has enemies, and then nothing, a black and dank and empty void of sullenness.”
— Ken White, Aug. 6, 2013
So, no, I don’t have any credentials or certification in psychology.
But I damned sure know crazy when I see it.
— compiled by Wombat-socho
OVER THE TRANSOM
Dead Republican Party: The Role Of Clergy In Conflict
First Street Journal: Economics 101 – The Left Loves Them Some Failed Policies
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Jennifer Lawrence Targeted By Left Wing Speech Warriors
Michelle Malkin: How America Treats Illegal Aliens Vs. Veterans
Twitchy: Pressure Mounts To Free Andrew Tahmooressi, US #MarineHeldIn Mexico
RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Everybody Beat Up On Ezra Klein Day
American Thinker: How Conservatives Can Defeat The Media
BLACKFIVE: Tom Kratman Strikes Again
Conservatives4Palin: AGUGrizzlies – The Many Hats Of Kevin Scholla!
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, May 22
Jammie Wearing Fools: Not Unexpected – Restaurant With “No Concealed Weapons” Sign Robbed At Gunpoint
Joe For America: FBI Chief – Fort Hood Shooting Was An Act Of Terrorism
JustOneMinute: Compare And Contrast
Pat Dollard: “I Don’t Think Kerry Gives A Damn” – Obama Regime Hammered For Silence On Marine Held In Mexico
Protein Wisdom: Rand Paul Drops Me A Note
Shot In The Dark: Trulbert! Part I – State Of Affairs
The Jawa Report: 31 Killed, 90+ Wounded As Lutherans Massacre Civilians In China
The Lonely Conservative: Senate Dems Kick Off Memorial Day Weekend By Blocking VA Accountability Bill
This Ain’t Hell: Shinseki Won’t Leave, Democrats Won’t Vote
Weasel Zippers: Al-Shabaab Leader Vows To Bring “Holy War” To America, Says Islam’s Flag Will Fly Over Washington
Megan McArdle: “Flash Deals” Won’t Save Retail
Deadline to submit links for the FMJRA is noon tomorrow.
DO IT.
Deadline to submit links for Rule 5 Sunday is midnight tomorrow.
DO THAT TOO.
— compiled by Wombat-socho
OVER THE TRANSOM
Dead Republican Party: Moneychangers In The Temple
Michelle Malkin: Michelle Obama’s Control-Freak Lunch Program
Doug Powers: Bang For Taxpayers’ Buck – GM Has Recalled More Cars This Year Than They Sold In The Last Five
Twitchy: White Leftist To Black Conservative – “My Pleasure, House Nigger”
RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Veterans Administration Scandal Explodes
American Thinker: Unions Minus Coercion Equal Nothing
BLACKFIVE: Counterproductive 2nd Amendment Exercise
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Towson Debate Team Earns Its Participation Trophy
Conservatives4Palin: The Media Continue To Ignore Obama’s IRS Scandals
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, May 20
Jammie Wearing Fools: What Obama Will Read About Between Fundraisers – More VA Whistleblowers Coming Forward
Joe For America: Earwax-Eating Dem – “We’ve Proved That Communism Works”
JustOneMinute: When You’ve Lost The Times…
Pat Dollard: Aspiring Congressman Clay Aiken On The VA Scandal – “I Haven’t Paid Attention”
Protein Wisdom: The Narcissistic Creed
Shot In The Dark: Of Convenience, Part II
The Jawa Report: Everyone Wave Buh-Bye To Abu Hamza El-Masri
The Lonely Conservative: Remington Arms Moving Two Production Lines Out Of New York
This Ain’t Hell: Operation American Spring – Epic Fail
Weasel Zippers: Notre Dame Refuses Recognition To Pro-Traditional Marriage Student Group
Megan McArdle: Green Cars Won’t Save The Planet
Last night I linked A.J. Delgado’s item about the suspicious nature of the rape “epidemic” on college campuses. This phenomenon contradicts common sense: Overall, rates of violent crime (including rape) in the United States are on a downward trajectory, and universities have undertaken extraordinary programs to raise awareness (for both men and women) to prevent rape. However, the reported incidence of rape has actually increased on campuses, and Delgado asks: “Did all the bad guys suddenly decide to enroll in universities?”
This trend makes no sense, you see, and this strange trend calls for scrutiny of the individual cases that comprise the trend. Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection notes a case at Columbia University, where a male student-athlete has filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that his due-process rights were violated when the university punished him for alleged “sexual misconduct” that was never reported as a crime. The lawsuit describes a one-night hook-up between the student-athlete and a female student in her Columbia dorm room on May 12, 2013, and alleges:
Several weeks into the Fall 2013 semester and nearly five (5) months after the one night of sexual activity, Jane Doe decided to report the Evening of May 12 as “non-consensual” sexual activity. No contemporaneous report was ever made nor was any police report was ever filed by Jane Doe in connection with her sexual activity with Plaintiff John Doe; no visit to a medical care facility was ever made by Jane Doe in connection with such sexual activity either; and indeed, no allegation of improper sexual behavior was made by Jane Doe for nearly five (5) months after the one night of sexual activity with John Doe. Notwithstanding the foregoing, and further notwithstanding a paucity of direct evidence, including an unforgiveable lack of administrative continuity and simple, practical good sense during the investigatory process, Defendant Columbia found John Doe guilty of sexual misconduct in having non-consensual sex with Jane Doe and has issued Plaintiff John Doe an order of suspension from Columbia University until Fall 2015.
Here’s the important thing: We don’t know, and in fact cannot know, what actually happened on May 12, 2013, because the only witnesses to the sexual activity were the two people involved.
As usual in such cases, it’s “he-said/she-said,” with no evidence or testimony beyond the competing claims of a woman who says it was rape and a man who says it was consensual. We can, perhaps, deduce a belief one way or the other based on circumstances, but we can never really know — and yet the student-athlete was suspended on the basis of this university disciplinary procedure, where the rights of the accused and standards of evidence are not the same as in a criminal court. He was, in effect, found guilty without trial.
This is simply wrong. If the guy committed rape, he should be prosecuted as a criminal, and if the accuser was unwilling to pursue criminal prosecution, then the university cannot let its disciplinary process function as a pseudo-court where students are judged “guilty” of heinous crimes for which they never actually stood trial.
If incidents like this Columbia University case are typical of what is driving the campus rape “epidemic” trend — and I don’t claim to have done enough analysis to say that it is so — then we have a very serious problem: Colleges have become Darkness at Noon, like the Moscow “show trials” of the 1930s, where a political agenda incites a prosecutorial zeal that tramples the innocent under foot.
There is an old (and extremely cynical) phrase that was used by Soviet apologists to defend the inhumanities perpetrated by the Communists: “You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.” That is to say, the murderous nature of the Bolshevik regime was excusable to admirers of the Soviets, because the victims (eggs) were killed (broken) to create a socialist order (the omelette).
Knowing what we know about feminists and their agenda — which demonizes men and stigmatizes heterosexuality — what political purpose is served by the proliferation of “sexual misconduct” accusations on campus, especially when the statistics are inflated by the inclusion of cases where no criminal charge was ever made?
The accused are just “eggs,” broken in the process of making this feminist “omelette,” which has a suspiciously totalitarian flavor.
