Category: Blogging

The Answer Is At Least As Old As Daniel

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by Smitty

One of the supreme ironies of my lifetime — at least, from my perspective — has been the dogged adherence even the most erudite of cosmopolitan Jews have shown toward the Democratic Party, even as the Party itself has grown increasingly hostile to Israel, increasingly removed from at least basic support for free market principles, and more and more obviously the vehicle of the New Left, who back before they took over the Party deplored it as a bastion of bourgeois ineffectuality.

Whatever else you care to say of Jews (and I’m pro-Israel) they are survivors. From slavery in Egypt to captivity in Babylon (hence the Daniel reference in the title), to the Diaspora at the time of Josephus, the Jews are about finding away to keep everything intact. This should be a lesson to all but the least useful students.

You can do what you want with the other explanations for the Jewish/Democrat alliance, but I think the lens of power pulls it most sharply into focus. The Democrats/Republicans/Progressives are where the power is at.

The rest of Jeff’s post, where he rides his linguistic hobby horse is worth a read, but that’s all just implementation detail.

Update: In almost entirely unrelated news, the great Cynthia Yockey has a product review for Verizon’s SureResponse product that is worth your time if you’re in the market for a response system for that special someone.

She’s also gathering support to make it down to CPAC, so help a lady out.

Hollywood Actress Urges Hollywood to Create More Jobs for Actresses

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If any misogynist is looking for evidence of female mental inferiority, the Huffington Post’s “Women” category is a treasure trove, with dumb writers and dumber topics (e.g., “Why I Hate Wearing Bras” and “I Was On Reality TV — Here’s What It’s Like To Fake ‘Real Life‘”), suggesting that there are two basic ideas behind the category:

  1. Women are too stupid to be interested in actual news, and require their own special kind of non-news reading;
    and
  2. The only people who can write this kind of meaningless drek without embarrassment are untalented women.

Bad women writers producing stupid articles for dumb women readers — that’s the “Huffington Post Women” category in a nutshell. And as if we needed more evidence of HuffPo’s belief in female inferiority, this was a feature article in the section Monday:

Cate Blanchett Lets Hollywood Know
Women Are Not A ‘Niche’ Audience
Cate Blanchett has done it again.
As if there weren’t already enough reasons for us to love Blanchett, last night she stole our hearts all over again with a gracious yet enlightening acceptance speech for Best Actress at the Academy Awards.
Our favorite moment? When she called out Hollywood’s sexist tendencies and reminded everyone that people really do want to see films with female leads:

And thank you to… those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women at the center, are niche experiences. They are not — audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.

Far be it from my purpose to defend “the industry” from any of its critics. If Cate Blanchett wants the world to believe that Hollywood is run by a bunch of sexist swine whose misogyny is so powerful as to transcend their notorious greed, she’ll get no argument from me. But everybody who follows the movie business knows that the economic challenge in the age of instant-download video and home-theater giant screens is how to create an “event” that will get people to leave home and take the kids to the multiplex. The Top 10 U.S. box-office films of 2013 were:

1. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
2. Iron Man 3
3. Frozen
4. Despicable Me 2
5. Man of Steel
6. Gravity
7. Monsters University
8. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug –
9. Fast & Furious 6
10. Oz The Great and Powerful

I don’t pay much attention to movies, so I can’t say if any of those are “female films, with women at the center,” but most of them clearly are not. Cate Blanchett keeps working as Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings series, so she got a spot in the Top 10, but it’s hard to argue for The Hobbit as a movie “with women at the center.”

Why is it, however, that there is something inherently righteous about actresses demanding more work for actresses? Would we applaud Clint Eastwood if he gave an Oscar speech demanding that Hollywood create more roles for geriatric geezers?

But if you’re looking for thoughtful criticism of the self-serving inanities uttered by movie stars — or thoughtful discussion of anything, really — don’t look for it in HuffPo’s “Women” category.

 

In The Mailbox, 03.03.14

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— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
First Street Journal: The Feminism I Support
Proof Positive: Chicago Fireman
Michelle Malkin: When Will America End The Cash-For-Visas Racket?
Twitchy: Has Laura Ingraham Discovered Kerry’s Secret Plan For Russia?
Susannah Breslin: What The Duke Porn Star Reveals About Privacy


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Governor Jerry Brown Asks, “How Many People Can Get Stoned And Still Have A Great State?”
American Thinker: Dangerous Times – Putin Slaps Down Euro-American Fantasyland
Blackfive: On The Ukraine
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin – Yes, I Could See This From Alaska
Jammie Wearing Fools: Two Americas – DC Elite Have Escape Hatch From Obamacare
Joe For America: Drugged Up, Whored Out Screwups – 2014 Oscars Recap
JustOneMinute: The “Gravitas” Gap Continues To Widen
Pat Dollard: Jerusalem Post Columnist Tells Obama “You’re Not Scaring Us”
Protein Wisdom: Double Facepalm Moment From The White House
Shot In The Dark: DFL – “Peasants! Continue Rendering Tribute!”
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – The A-10 Was Designed For Use Against Columns Of Soviet Tanks And APCs
The Lonely Conservative: Russia Takes Complete Control Of Crimean Peninsula, John Kerry Asks “What Reset?”
This Ain’t Hell: 6000 Russian Troops In The Crimea
Megan McArdle: Busted State Obamacare Sites Have Silver Lining


Kimberlin Attacks @AceOfSpadesHQ’s Lawyer, Cites ‘Breitbart Unmasked’

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As a specimen of shamelessness, Brett Kimberlin has few equals in human history. The experience of being sued by Kimberlin offers a front-row seat to witness how utterly arrogant he is — as impudent as a four-year-old throwing a tantrum, lacking any regard for the rights of others, and with no sense of shame over the spectacle he creates.

In one of his most recent outbursts in the federal RICO lawsuit — dubbed Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al., by my co-defendant John Hoge — the perjuring bomber filed “Motion to Disqualify Counsel for Defendant Ace of Spades for Multiple Conflicts of Interests.”

This is noteworthy because:

A. Here you have Kimberlin, who once plotted from his jail cell to have a federal prosecutor assassinated, now presuming to appoint himself the arbiter of professional legal ethics.
B. Kimberlin actually includes among his exhibits a post at the pro-Kimberlin site “Breitbart Unmasked” attacking Ace’s lawyer, Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen.

It’s astonishing, really, and a good occasion to remind you that Kimberlin’s self-described “associate” Neal Rauhauser was trying to “dox” Ace of Spades for months before I ever heard of Brett Kimberlin. This goes back to “WeinerGate” in 2011, which was the event that brought Rauhauser into the Kimberlin orbit. Patterico and Ace of Spades did some of the most effective blogging about the “WeinerGate” scandal, which made them a focus of Rauhauser’s obsession.

Is it merely coincidence, therefore, that identifying Ace is part of Kimberlin’s strategy in this federal lawsuit? Give me a break.

So, in the process of infringing Ace’s free speech rights, now Kimberlin wants to deprive Ace even of his right to legal counsel.

Utterly shameless.

Ace has handled this lawfare harassment with remarkable sangfroid, and let me quote what Ace wrote on Feb. 19:

[Levy] has kindly agreed to represent me in fighting Brett Kimberlin’s motion to compel a third party to give him my name and address, so he can then sue me in a suit which, in my opinion, is entirely baseless, and once again an attempt to chill Free Speech rights.
Which is what this has been about since the beginning.
What makes me particularly happy that Mr. Levy is representing me is that he is, by his confession, a “lefty.” It has bothered me from the outset of this entire affair that people who I thought might take an interest — people in the left-leaning media who ought to care about attempts to chill and punish Free Expression, left-leaning bloggers whose very jobs put them in danger of having the same tactics used against them — failed to do so.
Instead, what seems to have happened is everyone just “picked teams,” based on the typical tribal impulses. If anyone on the left wrote about this — not because they agreed, politically, with any of Brett Kimberlin’s targets, but because they supported the principle that people ought to be free to comment on news and newsworthy stories without the threat of a lawsuit hanging over them. (One person did cover it, briefly, in an “Interesting Thing Going on on the Internet” sort of way, but without actually examining the issues raised.)
And as far as the media, I’m afraid, the idea seemed to be “a pox on both their houses.” One guy is using the courts to pound critics and stifle free speech; but on the other hand, these guys are conservatives, so, of course, they are Unpeople, and They Were Probably Doing Something Bad Anyway. . . .

Please read the whole thing.

 

In The Mailbox, 02.28.14

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— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Proof Positive: Gay “Jim Crow” In Waiting?
Batshit Crazy News: Barrett Brown Gets “House Of Cards” Nod?
The Looking Spoon: Imagine All The Sheeple
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Jeremy Clarkson Is Awesome
First Street Journal: The Commander In Chief And The Minimum Wage
Michelle Malkin: Alec Baldwin, Drama Queen
Doug Powers: Had a Bad Experience Because Of Obamacare? Lying Harry Reid Says You’re A Liar
Twitchy: Gasbag David Corn Claims Conservatives Don’t Understand “Reserach”, Gets Creamed


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: America And The Aggressive (Regressive) Left
American Thinker: Obama’s Minimum Wage Ruse
BLackfive: Terry Francona – From Battlefield To Major League Baseball
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Public Pension Watch – Blue Ribbon Panel Report On Funding
Conservatives4Palin: NYT Thinks The Main Victim In The IRS Scandal Is…The IRS
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, December 27
Jammie Wearing Fools: White Boy Biden Says Voter ID Laws Evidence Of Zealotry And Hatred
Joe For America: Murder Blackout In The Name Of Amnesty – The Jamiel Shaw Vigil
JustOneMinute: Fun With The Minimum Wage
Pat Dollard: Federal Appeals Court Rules California School Can Ban US Flag Shirts During Phony “Cinco De Mayo” Holiday
Protein Wisdom: I’m Just Going To Put This Out There
Shot In The Dark: Do The Right Thing
The Jawa Report: Report – Armed Man Take Airport In Crimea
The Lonely Conservative: Obama Will Veto Bill To Stop IRS Abuse; Dems Kill Amendments In Senate
This Ain’t Hell: CIA Steals FBI’s Al-Qaeda Mole, Gets Him Killed
Megan McArdle: JC Penney Does The Dead Cat Bounce


Deadline to submit links for this weekend’s FMJRA is noon on Saturday.
DO IT.
On the other hand, I think we have plenty of links for Sunday’s Rule 5 post. -_-


Ace Spanks Weigel

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Spanks him hard over his defense of Alex Sink. Here’s the question: Why is it so important to be fair to Alex Sink?

Oh, because Alex Sink is a Democrat.

The media must be fair to Democrats. The media must never assist Republicans in “swiftboating” Democrats.

Alex Sink made a gaffe — a clear, obvious gaffe — and so the media clean-up crew must explain why it’s not really a gaffe.

Weigel’s entire generation of journalists have had their perspectives warped by the experience of George W. Bush’s presidency.

Imagine you’re 30. The Lewinsky scandal happened when you were 14. The Florida Bush-vs.-Gore election deadlock happened when you were 16. You were 17 when the planes hit the towers, 19 when we invaded Iraq, 20 when Bush beat Kerry.

If you were a Democrat during all that, your entire adolescence was spent in a seeming nightmare: Republicans were raping you in broad daylight, and there was no way you could stop it. So you became a journalist — because you want to “make a difference” — and the difference that you want to make is to ensure that Democrats win, period. You have no principle beyond partisanship.

Republicans? Shove ’em through a plate glass window.

Because that’s fair. They deserve it. They’re Republicans.

Now, Weigel is actually better than most. He used to be a libertarian. But he shares the generational assumptions typical of 30-somethings in the press corps, and does not want to be seen by his peers as enabling the Fox News-talk-radio-Drudge axis.

It has always been true that the media are liberal. Studies indicate that journalists vote Democrat by a 9-to-1 margin. But the bias has gotten worse — it is now quite shamelessly deliberate — because young liberal reporters see themselves as battling to prevent the return of that nightmare era when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. This is why they consider Benghazi and the IRS “phony” scandals, because if those stories should gain traction, the nightmare might return.

It’s results-oriented journalism, really.

They don’t actually care about the facts. They care about creating a narrative that will win elections for Democrats. Period.

 

Heh: @DaveWeigel Dismantles @PiersMorgan, But Good

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 Deft, but also delightfully brutal:

Sunday night, after David Carr broke the news that Piers Morgan would be ending his CNN show, I searched Twitter to find how his fans were taking it. This was a mistake. Really, who was a Piers Morgan fan? Have you ever met one? No, reaction to CNN’s scheduling news ran the gamut from suppressed glee to running-naked-through-the-streets glee, from gun lovers declaring victory over the “Brit” to nonpartisan journalists reminiscing about Morgan’s finest ethical lapses. . . .
The live broadcast of Morgan’s show drew around half the viewers that MSNBC did, and a fifth as many as Fox News. Morgan welcomed Fox’s Megyn Kelly to 9 p.m. by telling her (on Twitter) to “bring it on.” She did.
In fact, Morgan’s humiliation was so total that he’s at risk of becoming a martyr for True Journalism. . . . Were we wrong about the guy?
We were not. Morgan was the beneficiary of a curious American habit. We assign 20 extra IQ points to anyone who speaks with a British accent, redistributing them from the people who speak with Southern accents. . . .

It goes on from there. Having known Weigel since 2006, when he worked at the libertarian magazine Reason, I understand that conservatives hate Weigel for his relentless sarcasm, which is usually aimed at Republicans. His sarcasm is much more enjoyable when aimed at somebody you hate, and everybody hates Piers Morgan.

 

Bill Schmalfeldt: ‘CEASE and DESIST’!

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Bill Schmalfeldt wants you to believe he is a victim.

“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

Deranged cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt has been fired by Examiner.com and banished from Daily Kos. Bill Schmalfeldt is an adjudicated harasser according to Maryland courts; he created a “Dead Breitbart” smear site; and his cruel harassment of Lee Stranahan’s family made him notorious.

However, Bill Schmalfeldt refuses to take responsibility for his own misfortune, instead scapegoating John Hoge — who, according to law, is actually a victim of Schmalfeldt’s harassment — and insisting that Hoge and others are to blame for Schmalfeldt’s continuing record of self-inflicted embarrassments and failures.

As a public service, therefore, we reproduce here Bill Schmalfeldt’s recent “Open Letter,” in which he depicts himself as a victim of death threats, defamation and copyright infringement:

AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL WHO MAY SEE THIS
It is 8:40 am on Saturday morning, February 22, 2014. Over the past several days I have received five death threats from people who are clearly either readers of my blog, my Twitter feed, or the blog of WJJ Hoge III, 20 Ridge Road, Westminster, Md.
By virtue of a peace order Mr. Hoge won against me in June 2013, which was extended for six months in Dec. 2013, I am not permitted to directly contact Mr. Hoge. But I know that he will see this Open Letter, I know he will comment on it. I know his readers will comment on it. Therefore, I feel this is as close as I can legally come to letting him know that I am putting my foot down and demanding that he CEASE and DESIST all defamatory writing about me and CEASE and DESIST using copyrighted images of me.

CEASE AND DESIST ALL DEFAMATION
OF MY CHARACTER AND REPUTATION.
I am an educated, respected, retired professional in the community. I have spent over thirty years in my profession and in the service of my country building a positive reputation. I have furthered this positive reputation by volunteering for medical research designed to find better treatments for Parkinson’s disease, from which I have suffered 14 years.
WJJ Hoge III and others are engaged in spreading false, destructive, and defamatory rumors about me.
These are the elements necessary for a plaintiff to prove a case of defamation in Maryland:
“(1) that the defendant made a defamatory statement to a third person, (2) that the statement was false, (3) that the defendant was legally at fault in making the statement, and (4) that the plaintiff thereby suffered harm. A defamatory statement is one ‘which tends to expose a person to public scorn, hatred, contempt or ridicule, thereby discouraging others in the community from having a good opinion of, or associating with, that person.’” Offen v. Brenner, 402 Md. 191, 935 A.2d 719 (2007), quoting Smith v. Danielczyk, 400 Md. 98, 115, 928 A.2d 795, 805 (2007).
Accordingly, I demand that (A) WJJ Hoge III of 20 Ridge Road, Westminster, Md., immediately cease and desist his unlawful defamation of me and (B) provide me with prompt written assurance within ten (10) days that he will cease and desist from further defamation of my character and reputation. Hoge’s Peace Order against me notwithstanding, he is allowed to contact me.
Accordingly, I also demand that Mr. Hoge moderate the comments on his blog (Hogewash), removing defamatory statements by others. As the host of his blog, he bears the responsibility of ensuring that he maintains a libel-free blog. He has not done so.
If Mr. Hoge does not comply with this cease and desist demand within this time period, I am entitled to seek monetary damages and equitable relief for my defamation. In the event he fails to meet this demand, all reading this should be advised that I will pursue all available legal remedies, including seeking monetary damages, injunctive relief, and an order that Mr. Hoge pay court costs and attorney’s fees. His liability and exposure under such legal action could be considerable.
Mr. Hoge may continue to write about me. But whatever he writes must be provably true. He must cite how he knows his information to be true. He must be able to point to third party sources, other than his co-defendants in Brett Kimberlin’s lawsuits against him that prove the truth of his allegations. Mr. Hoge is hereby forbidden to use my image in his blog postings without my express written permission. All images of myself that are taken by a family member are my personal property for which I own the copyright.
WILLIAM M. SCHMALFELDT

Bill Schmalfeldt’s attempt to make Hoge responsible for the “death threats” allegedly received by Schmalfeldt would have to clear the high hurdle of the landmark 1969 Supreme Court decision, Brandenburg v. Ohio. Perhaps some readers can cite the relevant case law on “fair use” regarding copyright materials. As for the “character and reputation” that Schmalfeldt alleges others have defamed . . .

Well, it’s the “Butt Stuff,” isn’t it, Bill?




 

 

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