The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Chris Cassone Brings You The Weather “Before The Big One Hits”

Posted on | January 22, 2016 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

Cassone got hammered (by a storm) while traveling around a year ago, as detailed here. As is so often the case, woe triggers art. Thus, he leaves us this splendid coffee house number, to which the attention of your ear is called:

Category: Uncategorized

A Hideously Overdue Collection Of Book Reviews

Posted on | January 22, 2016 | 6 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I had originally intended to do these right after Christmas, since I’d been sent a few books to review and picked up some as well, but I came down with a bad case of what fellow conservative geek blogger Moe Lane refers to as “Fallout Flu”, which lasted well into the new year. And it wasn’t even the shiny new Fallout 4! No, I picked up Fallout 3: Game of The Year Edition and Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition for cheap as part of Steam’s Christmas sale and have been playing the latter with great fervor, since it’s a wonderful game with all kinds of stuff to do besides the usual killing, pillage and burning, though there’s plenty of that as well. I am looking forward with great anticipation to finishing Fallout: New Vegas – but not just yet. 🙂

So. First out of the box, we have Karl Gallagher’s Torchship, a fun little book about the adventures of a merchant ship after the Singularity, when humanity has been split into three parts: people who have been absorbed by the AIs, people who are dead set against being absorbed by AI and have tight controls on IT, and people on the edge of human civilization who’d like to have something smarter than a pocket calculator so as to make their tough lives less so. There’s adventure, skulduggery, space war, and some discreet, non-explicit sex. This isn’t expressly a young adult novel, but you wouldn’t go wrong giving it to a pre-teenager. Recommended.

I am continuing to enjoy Vaughn Heppner’s Lost Starship series, though the third book, The Lost Destroyer, doesn’t have nearly as much space opera in it as its predecessors. Instead, the first part of the book is mainly a battle of wits between young Captain Maddox and mad scientist Professor Ludendorff, while the second is a desperate scramble to stop a planet-busting weapon that the New Men have somehow acquired, one that makes their space cruisers look like childrens’ toys by comparison.

If you haven’t read Don Surber’s Exceptional Americans: 50 People You Need To Know, either on his blog or as a book, you really owe it to yourself to do so – better yet, give it to a kid you know as a counter to the drivel being ladled out in public schools these days. The sequel, Exceptional Americans 2: The Capitalists, is also good and well worth picking up and/or gifting. They’re both on sale, so act quickly before Don comes to his senses and marks them back up to their original price!

Unfortunately, not all the reading experiences have been good. I was sent a copy of Z-Minus after warning the sender that I didn’t like zombie books in general. The exceptions to this rule being John Ringo’s Under a Graveyard Sky and its sequels; unfortunately, Perrin Briar is no John Ringo. The main thing that ruined the book for me and made me put it down after a couple of chapters was the protagonist, who was just downright unlikable. What kind of asshole tries to abandon his eight-year-old daughter in the middle of a zombie apocalypse? This one. No thanks. Maybe he got better, but after two chapters of putting up with this schmuck, I’d had enough. Not recommended.


Category: Books

In The Mailbox, 01.21.16

Posted on | January 21, 2016 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox, 01.21.16

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Bob Dole Knows About Losing
Da Tech Guy: The Real Story Out Of NYC Straw Poll? Jeb Bush At 1%
Louder With Crowder: Bernie Sanders – Fascist For Mediocrity
The Political Hat: Transgendering The Child, Transgendering The Family, Transgendering The Christian
Michelle Malkin: Mayor DiBlasio – Hypocrite Hooked On Hollywood Cash
Twitchy: John Kerry’s Iran Deal Admission Will Fill You With #SmartPower Confidence


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Palin Blames PTSD, Obama For Son Track’s Domestic Violence Arrest
American Thinker: Is Trump A McConnell-Rove Establishment Tool?
Conservatives4Palin: GOP Operatives Trying To Help Bernie Sanders Win The Nomination
Don Surber: About Your Chart That Shows Donald Trump Cannot Win
Jammie Wearing Fools: “Sinking Clinton Calls In All-Star Team of Surrogates”
Joe For America: Only A Moron Or Obama Supporter Would Believe This, But I Repeat Myself
JustOneMinute: Toll A Doleful Bell
Pamela Geller: Violent Antifa Pro-Migration Protesters Being Paid $50 An Hour By Germany’s Socialist Party #dankeantifa #Hitlerian
Protein Wisdom: Trump 2016 – Deja Vu Nixon vs. Reagan 1968
Shot In The Dark: “Nobody Wants To Take Your Guns!”
The Gateway Pundit: Unvaccinated Migrants Bringing Diptheria, Malaria, And Tuberculosis To Denmark
The Jawa Report: At Last! Terror Victim Files Suit Against Twitter
The Lonely Conservative: Sorry, Trump Fans, But You Can’t Change His Record
This Ain’t Hell: “El Chapo”‘s Rifle Traced To “Fast & Furious” Operation
Weasel Zippers: White Liberal Guy Declares Stacey Dash No Longer Black
Megan McArdle: Sanders’ Health Care Plan Is Missing Its Price Tag
Mark Steyn: Hillary’s Saps


H&R Block 2015 Deluxe + State Tax Software + Refund Bonus Offer – Windows Download

Category: Linkagery

‘The Weaker Goes to the Wall’

Posted on | January 21, 2016 | 95 Comments

Just ordered from Amazon another $98 worth of feminist books, including Rape: The Power of Consciousness by Susan Griffin (1979) and Undoing Gender by Judith Butler (2004). As I continued my research for the second edition of Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the War Against Human Nature this morning, I was reminded of something an early critic of feminism said:

“The fantastical project of yesterday, which was mentioned only to be ridiculed, is today the audacious reform, and will be tomorrow the accomplished fact.”

That was Robert Lewis Dabney, in an 1871 essay called “Women’s Rights Women.” Dabney was a Presbyterian theologian who, during the Civil War, served as chief of staff to Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. His theology and politics were firmly conservative and will strike most modern readers as shockingly “right-wing,” as Dabney condemned what he called “ultra democracy” and “infidel Radicalism.” Yet I think at this late date, after some 140 years of continued militance by the advocates of Progress and Equality, we may read what Dabney wrote and ask whether he was indeed a prophet:

God’s ordinance, the only effective human ordinance for checking and curbing the first tendencies to evil, is domestic, parental government. When the family shall no longer have a head, and the great foundation for the subordination of children in the mother’s example is gone; when the mother shall have found another sphere than her home for her energies; when she shall have exchanged the sweet charities of domestic love and sympathy for the fierce passions of the hustings; when families shall be disrupted at the caprice of either party, and the children scattered as foundlings from their hearthstone requires no wisdom to see that a race of sons will be reared nearer akin to devils than to men. In the hands ,of such a bastard progeny, without discipline, without homes, without a God, the last remains of social order will speedily perish, and society will be overwhelmed in savage anarchy.
Last: it would not be hard to show, did space permit, that this movement on the part of these women is as suicidal as it is mischievous. Its certain result will be the re-enslavement of women, not under the Scriptural bonds of marriage, but under the yoke of literal corporeal force. The woman who will calmly review the condition of her sex in other ages and countries will feel that her wisdom is to “let well enough alone.” Physically, the female is the “weaker vessel.” This world is a hard and selfish scene where the weaker goes to the wall. Under all other civilizations and all other religions than ours woman has experienced this fate to the full; her condition has been that of a slave to the male — sometimes a petted slave, but yet a slave. In Christian and European society alone has she ever attained the place of man’s social equal, and received the homage and honor due from magnanimity to her sex and her feebleness. And her enviable lot among us has resulted from two causes: the Christian religion and the legislation founded upon it by feudal chivalry. How insane then is it for her to spurn these two bulwarks of defense, to defy and repudiate the divine authority of that Bible which has been her redemption, and to revolutionize the whole spirit of the English common law touching woman’s sphere and rights. She is thus spurning the only protectors her sex has ever found, and provoking a contest in which she must inevitably be overwhelmed. Casting away that dependence and femininity which are her true strength, the “strong-minded woman” persists in thrusting herself into competition with man as his equal. But for contest she is not his equal; the male is the stronger animal. As man’s rival, she is a pitiful inferior, a sorry she-mannikin. It is when she brings her wealth of affection, her self-devotion, her sympathy, her tact, her grace, her subtle intuition, her attractions, her appealing weakness, and places them in the scale with man’s rugged strength and plodding endurance, with his steady logic, his hardihood and muscle. and his exemption from the disabling infirmities of her sex, that he delights to admit her full equality and to do glad homage to her as the crown of his kind. All this vantage-ground the “Women’s Rights women” madly throw away, and provoke that collision for which nature itself has disqualified them. They insist upon taking precisely a man’s chances: well, they will meet precisely the fate of a weak man among strong ones.

Some will surely find Dabney’s attitude toward women insulting, and will argue that he underestimated women’s fitness for “competition with man as his equal.” This may be so, but it is irrelevant to the more important point, namely that the subversion of parental authority and the destruction of the family — divorce “at the caprice of either party” — have produced exactly what Dabney predicted: A generation of young men “without discipline, without homes, without a God,” with the result that many communities are “overwhelmed in savage anarchy.”

Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago — this kind of savagery is now so common in America’s cities that we take it for granted, just as we take for granted that there are more than 2 million inmates in our nation’s prisons, and that local, state and federal law enforcement agencies have a combined total of more than 1 million full-time employees on their payrolls. America is over-policed because American families are falling apart, and our society’s descent into “savage anarchy” is being hastened by the sort of Equality and Progress that have produced “a bastard progeny” of young men “nearer akin to devils than to men.”

When we hear feminists today lamenting “street harassment” and “rape culture” — a world in which all women “live in a state of continual vigilance about sexual safety,” according to Lindsay Beyerstein — we must not forget that the society in which we live today has been created in large part by the measures of “audacious reform” that earlier generations of “Women’s Rights women” demanded. Like an Old Testament prophet, Dabney tried to warn them, but they would not listen, and “the weaker goes to the wall.”




 

Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 01.20.16

Posted on | January 20, 2016 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Only one year left until Obama leaves the White House.


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Democrats Poison Flint
Da Tech Guy: Three Things To Take Away From The Palin Endorsement
The Political Hat: Sex And Gender Are NOT Social Constructs
Michelle Malkin: History Lesson – How Open Borders Republicans Sabotaged Visa Tracking Systems
Twitchy: Brian Fallon Still Trying (And Failing) To Explain Away Intel IG’s Report


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Holy Cow! Sanders Surges To 60-33 Lead Over Hillary In New Hampshire
American Thinker: Returning Power To The People
Conservatives4Palin: Alleged Tea Party Senators Betray On Radical Judge Vote
Don Surber: If The Confederate Flag Has Meaning, Why Doesn’t The U.S. Flag?
Jammie Wearing Fools: Daesh Savages Toss Another Gay Man Off A Rooftop, Human Rights Campaign Unavailable For Comment
Joe For America: Obama Appointee Strikes Down “Fast And Furious” Executive Privilege Claim
JustOneMinute: A Great Question, Rephrased
Pamela Geller: NYPD To Purge Documents On Islamic Terrorism In The U.S.
Protein Wisdom: Palin Endorses Trump
Shot In The Dark: Halpert The Headless Thompson Gunner
STUMP: Puerto Rico – Dawning Reality Update, And A Touch Of Chicago
The Gateway Pundit: Migration Explosion – 21 Times More Migrants Arrive In Greece This Year
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – You Have Already Won!
The Lonely Conservative: Iowa Governor Needs To Protect Ethanol, Says Don’t Vote For Cruz
This Ain’t Hell: Japhet Rivera, VA Director, Paid To Resign
Weasel Zippers: Kent State Professor Investigated By FBI For ISIS Recruiting
Megan McArdle: Hope And Change Again, If Only For A Moment
Mark Steyn: It’s Still The Demography, Stupid


Shop Amazon Fashion – Women’s Running Shoes

Category: Linkagery

More Feminist Fear and Loathing

Posted on | January 19, 2016 | 101 Comments

Do you remember @RebeccaWatson? In case you’ve forgotten, she was the total smokin’ hotness of atheist chickdom whose encounter with a nerd in an elevator became a feminist cause cĂ©lèbre in 2011: “Stop sexualizing me!”

I’d forgotten all about her until today, while mining for insanity on Feminist Tumblr, I saw a quote (tagged #rape culture”) that began, “Men who want to flirt with women have to realize: Women live in a state of continual vigilance about sexual safety.” And when I clicked on the source, I discovered that this was a commentary (by Lindsay Beyerstein) about Watson’s 2011 “ElevatorGate” encounter. The claim that women — all women — “live in a state of continual vigilance about sexual safety” is a typical expression of the feminist paranoia I’ve called “Fear and Loathing of the Penis.” Men are required to compensate for this irrational attitude, Ms. Beyerstein insisted:

If a female stranger is wary around you, it is not because she suspects you are a rapist, or that all men are rapists. It’s because a general level of circumspection is what vigilance requires. Don’t take it personally. . . .
Vigilance isn’t just a game or an arbitrary set of social conventions. It’s imperfect insurance against being raped with impunity. . . .
So, guys, if you want to flirt with a woman, your job is put her at ease, not to ratchet up her anxiety level.

Ms. Beyerstein, and feminists generally, lack empathy. A guy with harmless intentions is aware of his own innocence. It is insulting to accuse an innocent man of bad motives when he has done nothing wrong, and when there is no reason to suspect that he would do something wrong, other than the fact that he is male. Feminists are constantly lecturing about pervasive male evil in this insulting way, as in the case of Liat Kaplan ranting about “street harassment” in New York City:

There’s no point to a guy yelling, “Hey sexy baby” at me out of the passenger window of a car as it speeds past. Even if I was into creepy misogynists and wanted to give him my number, I couldn’t. The car didn’t even slow down. But that’s okay, because he wasn’t actually hitting on me. The point wasn’t to proposition me or chat me up. The only point was to remind me, and all women, that our bodies are his to stare at, assess, comment on, even touch. “Hey sexy baby” is the first part of a sentence that finishes, “this is your daily message from the patriarchy, reminding you that your body is public property”. This so-called “minor” sexual harassment is the tax you pay for daring to exist as a woman in public. . . .

(Guys yelling rude things out of car windows are “the patriarchy.”)

Even the most “minor” street harassment is a tile in your mental mosaic of fear and distrust and vulnerability. Piece by piece, it builds into a picture of some larger violence always lingering on the edge of your thoughts. I’m by no means comparing a guy yelling, “hey, sexy baby” to sexual assault, but the culture that makes this man feel entitled to comment on your body, on your existing in public as a woman, is the same one that makes men feel entitled to sex, and makes some feel entitled to take it by force. “Hey baby” is a symptom of the disease of rape culture.

Let me give you a hint, Ms. Kaplan: Guys who yell rude things out of car windows don’t read feminist blogs. You are directing your lecture toward the wrong audience, don’t you see? But certainly you must realize that guys in New York City yelling out of car windows are not “the patriarchy” — these are lower-class men, not beneficiaries of “privilege.” And what are the chances your lecture about “the disease of rape culture” is going to be read by any actual rapists? Very close to zero, I’d guess.

However, there are no feminists crazier than Canadian feminists, and Canada’s leading feminist is Meghan Murphy:

Female students are under constant threat on college campuses — afraid to walk home at night, raped at parties, after the bar, and in their dorms.

Fear! Fear! Fear! Ms. Murphy calls for a “feminist revolution . . . a cultural shift that addresses male entitlement, porn culture, and the objectifying male gaze; an end to masculinity and, more broadly, gendered socialization that says men are actors whereas women are passive recipients of men’s ‘action’ — that is, the idea that men are to ‘get’ sex from women, which positions coercion as a normal and expected part of heterosexual relations.” After more than four decades of radical feminism, this “revolution” hasn’t materialized, however, and Ms. Murphy is not optimistic:

In the meantime, women live in fear. . . .
And who is it we fear? Is it other women? . . . Is it a genderless, faceless, bodiless being? No. It is a male. A male with a penis that he may or may not use as a weapon.

She proposes a curfew for men. Yes, Canadian men, your nation’s leading feminist wants you kept off the streets at night.

David Thompson comments:

Why, it almost sounds like a gratuitous power fantasy, the product of an unwell mind. . . .
Clearly, Ms Murphy is determined to upend idle stereotypes of feminists as batty misandrists unmoored from reality.

Feminism is totalitarian. On Tumblr, a feminist argues that “women’s studies classes should be sex-segregated” to provide “women an invaluable opportunity to speak freely about their oppression . . . With men in the room, no healing can take place.” This prompted others to say that men talk too much in class, an experience that one woman said made her want “to tell them to shut the f–k up, and then throw myself in the sun.” Feminists cannot stand to hear men talk, you see.




 

Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox, 01.19.16

Posted on | January 19, 2016 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox, 01.19.16

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Vivian James alerts us to another front in the Culture War.
(h/t The Political Hat)


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Transgenders Stoned
Da Tech Guy: The MSM’s “I’m Not Defending Bill Clinton” Caucus
The Political Hat: Metal Misogyny Isn’t
Michelle Malkin: Marco Rubio’s Second Worst Immigration Bill
Twitchy: Bristol Palin Slams Ted Cruz – “Makes Me Hope My Mom Does Endorse Trump”


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Family Of Robert Levinson “Betrayed And Devastated” By Obama Administration
American Thinker: Why The Media Don’t Want You To See The Must-See 13 Hours
Conservatives4Palin: Portland Community College To Devote An Entire Month To Whiteness Shaming
Don Surber: What Trump Really Is Like
Jammie Wearing Fools: Mexican Cartel Expert – Clown Sean Penn Worse Than Entry-Level Journalist
Joe For America: Nutso Nancy Pelosi Chases Congressman Across House Floor
JustOneMinute: Now What?
Pamela Geller: German Refugee Aid Worker – “I Can’t Take It Any More”
Protein Wisdom: RIP Glenn Frey
Shot In The Dark: Why We Fight, Part IV – The Underdog
STUMP: RIP, Boomers – Death Comes For Us All
The Gateway Pundit: Trump – Obama Has Done A “Terrible Job” For African-Americans
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – World Still Going To Shit
The Lonely Conservative: Socialist French President Declares State Of Economic Emergency
This Ain’t Hell: Petraeus’ Stars On Chopping Block?
Weasel Zippers: Duke Student Claims Free Speech, Murder Separated “Only By A Matter of Degree”
Megan McArdle: Self-Driving Cars Will Thrive With More Regulation
Mark Steyn: The Man Who Sold The World


Introducing Amazon Handmade

Category: Linkagery

Drunk Sex Is Rape? Barnard College Promotes Alcohol-Related Accusations

Posted on | January 19, 2016 | 41 Comments

 

“Alcohol [does not equal] Consent” — flyers bearing this bold headline have been posted in dormitories at Barnard College, according to Toni Airaksinen, a student at the elite all-women’s sister school of Columbia University. The flyers paraphrase a policy issued last year by Barnard’s Department of Public Safety, which states (p. 35):

The use of alcohol and other drugs can have unintended consequences. Alcohol and other drugs can lower inhibitions and create an atmosphere of confusion over whether consent is freely and affirmatively given. The perspective of a reasonable person will be the basis for determining whether one should have known about the impact of alcohol and other drugs on another person’s ability to give consent. Providing alcohol or other substances to another person without their knowledge or for the purpose of incapacitation to coerce sexual activity is a violation of the Policy. Consent is required regardless of whether the person initiating the act is under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs. The personal use of alcohol and other drugs never makes someone at fault for being sexually assaulted.

The Barnard policy states that accusers “will not be subject to the College’s Code of Conduct action for violations of alcohol and/or drug use policies” related to the alleged sexual assault. This preemptive amnesty for sexual assault accusers involved in incidents of underage drinking was required under a New York state law past last year, the Columbia Spectator reported in September:

As mandated by “Enough is Enough”—the state law passed in July—Columbia changed its language around the definition of affirmative consent, added a statewide student’s bill of rights, and changed its policy regarding drug and alcohol amnesty so that those who report sexual assault under the influence of alcohol and drugs will not be penalized. . . .
Though the policy now fully complies with Enough is Enough, Goldberg said that changes in the policy were not exclusively the result of the New York state law. “Most of the changes required by the New York law were also reflective of suggestions from students or other participants in the process,” she said.
In drafting the new policy, Goldberg said that she met with both students and lawyers who have participated in the process, in addition to some activist groups like No Red Tape and CASV.
“The updates reflect extensive comments from students throughout the University — including students who participated in the process, either as parties or as witnesses, but many students beyond that,” Goldberg said.
“Everyone’s interest is to have the policy work well and to have students feel comfortable accessing all of the resources on- and off-campus that provide support for experiences of gender-based misconduct,” Goldberg said.

The Spectator article was accompanied by a photo of two feminist protesters at Columbia, one of whom displayed a poster with the slogan: “If they aren’t sober they can’t consent.”

 

Research indicates that alcohol use is involved in at least 47% of all reported sexual assault incidents at colleges and universities.

Columbia was the scene of a high-profile protest by Emma Sulkowicz, who carried a mattress around campus to publicize her claim that she was raped by fellow student Paul Nungesser. Cleared of the charge in multiple investigations, Nungesser filed a lawsuit against Columbia. His lawsuit accuses the university of violating his rights by giving Sulkowicz academic credit for her protest, and quotes text messages from Sulkowicz that indicate she consented to sex with Nungesser.

While the administration at Columbia has vastly increased its efforts to deal with sexual assault, student activists are demanding more, the Columbia Spectator reported Monday:

A year has passed since Columbia expanded the size, staffing, and hours of the Sexual Violence Response offices after continued student activism.
But No Red Tape is pushing the Rape Crisis/Anti-Sexual Violence Center to expand the resources it offers again, demanding that the center’s three locations remain open 24 hours and employ professional staff trained in trauma response and cultural sensitivity.
The RC/ASVC is a confidential on-campus emergency resource center that immediately connects survivors to trained advocates who provide them with crisis relief and information about medical resources and reporting, and who will connect students to other trauma-related resources. SVR recently expanded the center to include three locations: Lerner Hall, Barnard Hall, and Columbia University Medical Center. . . .
The activist group [No Red Tape] is directing its request at the Office of University Life as part of an ongoing Demand a SAAFE Columbia campaign, which advocates for increased support, accessibility, accountability, funding, and enforcement of sexual violence policies by the University. Members of No Red Tape met with Executive Vice President for University Life Suzanne Goldberg as well as Interim Executive Director of Sexual Violence Response Suraiya Baluch in December to discuss their demands. . . .
While all Ivy League institutions, including Columbia, provide students with a 24/7 emergency hotline, Columbia would be the first to offer a 24-hour confidential on-campus sexual violence support center. . . .
Currently, Columbia’s RC/ASVC is the only university rape crisis center certified by the New York State Department of Health. In order for SVR to maintain its certification, all advocates must repeat 40 hours of trauma response training and be recertified every year. Representatives from SVR said that the training curriculum is informed by a social justice perspective, and that it recognizes the intersections of identity, oppression, and violence against women.




 

Category: Crime, Education, Feminism, Sex Trouble
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