The Other McCain

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

Thought Experiment On Fixing US & ME

Posted on | November 13, 2015 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

This story about the Mizzou twits bemoaning the fact that events in The Real World had returned them to their prior media-attention-deprived state. Gives me an idea:

  1. Trump is making waves about mass-deportation of illegal aliens. Let’s stipulate that, if they were packing the gear to get themselves here, they’ve already showed more capability than the current crop of college nitwits. Bear with me.
  2. Instead of deporting illegal aliens, let’s deport all of academia! (Hollyweird: you’re on notice). Send all of these feckless administrators, Commie profs, and the minds they’ve polluted. . .to the Middle East.
  3. I figure the encounter of Radical Islam and academia with be some sort of matter/anti-matter affair. Promises to be a jolly meltdown, but hey: haven’t they all earned it?
  4. We can give American education a fresh kickstart by. . .educating the illegal aliens (who should be quite attentive to Americanization, having seen what just happened to academia.)
  5. And we all live maturely ever after.

Category: Uncategorized

PARIS JIHAD: Major Terrorist Attack UPDATE: French President Declares Emergency, Says ‘Several Dozen Dead’

Posted on | November 13, 2015 | 93 Comments

UPDATE 9:50 p.m. ET: Islamic terrorists struck the heart of France, murdering scores of civilians Friday in a bloody night of carefully coordinated violence. More than 150 people were reported killed, most of them at the Bataclan arts center where Muslim gunmen opened fired during a rock concert, then began systematically executing young people who could not escape. By the time police stormed the hall and ended the slaughter, 112 had been killed at the concert venue, according to the French interior ministry. Elsewhere, CNN reported, at least one suicide bomber struck the Stade de France, where a soccer game between France and Germany was being played.

UPDATE:

ISIS Claims Credit for Paris Slaughter;
Death Toll 127 in Islamic Terror Attack

* * * PREVIOUSLY * * *

(5:35 p.m. ET) There has been a major Islamic terrorist attack tonight in Paris. An explosion was reported at a Germany-France soccer game, and gunmen have taken hostages in a concert hall.

The death toll is already estimated at 35-40.

UPDATE 5:52 p.m. ET: CNN reports:

— At least 60 people have died in the attacks, CNN affiliate BFMTV reported.
— Counterterrorism officials around the United States have convened secure conference calls to try to gather information and to assess whether there is any indication of threats in the U.S, according to two U.S. counterterrorism officials. There is nothing to indicate any threat to U.S. cities so far. Immediate suspicion for the events in Paris falls to so-called returnees — people who have traveled to Syria and Iraq and have returned, the officials said.
— At least six shootings took place in Paris and three explosions took place at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis late Friday, CNN affiliate BFMTV said. Two or three gunmen entered the Bataclan concert hall while opening fire on law enforcement, BFMTV reported. A source earlier told CNN there were six to eight hostage takers, citing a person they were talking to inside the venue.
— CNN’s Jim Bittermann, who is based in Paris, reports a producer who is at the Bataclan tells him that police are firing at a rooftop position near the venue.
— President Francois Hollande was evacuated at halftime of the France-Germany soccer match.
— Hollande, Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve are holding a crisis meeting at the Interior Ministry to address the attacks in Paris and the explosions in Saint-Denis, according to BFMTV.
— Paris police tell CNN there were three attacks. Attackers reportedly used AK-47 automatic weapons. There were one or two explosions at the Stade de France.

UPDATE 5:59 p.m. ET: In a brief statement at the White House, President Obama said, “France is our oldest ally,” and “Paris itself represents the timeless values of human progress.” In Paris, meanwhile, President Hollande declared a state of emergency, announcing that the French military was being deployed and that France is closing its borders.

UPDATE 6:14 p.m. ET: Associated Press:

Hollande, in a televised address to his nation, said the nation would stand firm and united against the attackers.
He said security forces are assaulting one of the sites hit by Friday’s attacks, without elaborating.
“It’s a horror,” he said.

UPDATE 6:25 p.m. ET: BBC reports:

France has declared a national state of emergency and has closed its borders after at least 40 people were killed in multiple shootings in Paris.
At least 15 people have been killed near the Bataclan arts centre, where up to 60 people are reportedly being held hostage, French media say.
Three people were killed in an attack at the Stade de France, with some reports suggesting a suicide blast.
Paris authorities have asked people to stay indoors.
Military personnel are being deployed across Paris.

(Via Memeorandum.) There are reports that gunmen at the concert hall are executing hostages one by one. Meanwhile, it has just been reported that five explosions were heard near the concert hall.

UPDATE 6:45 p.m. ET: Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch:

Islamic jihadis have long had France in their crosshairs. The Islamic State last year urged jihad attacks against the “spiteful and filthy French.” These attacks took place near the site of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. That massacre was an attempt to force the West to adopt Sharia blasphemy restrictions; there will be more of that.
Indeed, there will be much, much more of this bloodshed in the coming months and years. Meanwhile, watch for an avalanche of “This has nothing to do with Islam” statements from Western leaders and the mainstream media.

It is reported that French police are currently assaulting the Bataclan concert hall where gunmen were killing hostages.

UPDATE 6:56 p.m. ET: French police have just said their assault on the Bataclan concert hall has ended successfully. Police stormed the hall, killing two gunmen. The number of innocents killed and wounded remains unknown.

UPDATE 7:12 p.m. ET: New York Times:

French television and news services quoted the police as saying at least 60 people had been killed and many dozens wounded in apparently coordinated attacks, eclipsing the deaths and mayhem that roiled Paris in the Charlie Hebdo massacre and related assaults around the French capital less than a year ago.
One of the explosions, which French news services said may have been a suicide bombing, struck near the country’s main sports stadium where Germany and France were playing a soccer match, forcing a hasty evacuation of President François Hollande. As the scope of the assaults quickly became clear, he convened an emergency cabinet meeting and announced that France was closing its borders.
“As I speak, terrorist attacks of an unprecedented scale are taking place in the Paris region,” he said in a nationally televised address. “There are several dozen dead, lots more wounded, it’s horrific.”

UPDATE 7:48 p.m. ET: Fox News is citing reports that as many as 100 were killed inside the Bataclan concert hall. The total number of deaths from these attacks in Paris may exceed 140.

UPDATE 8:30 p.m. ET: The headline at Fox News:

Terrorists slaughter at least
118 in Paris music hall,
40 others in separate attacks





 

Category: France, Islam, Terrorism

In The Mailbox: 11.13.15

Posted on | November 13, 2015 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Happy Friday the 13th!


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Poop And The Social Justice Wankers
Da Tech Guy: By All Means, Let Them Burn The Liberal Colleges Down
The Political Hat: Marriage Equality – Father And Son
Doug Powers: Million Student March Brilliantly Explains Why The 1% Should Fund All Their Demands
Twitchy: Claremont McKenna Student Newspaper Applauded For Standing Up To “Campus Cry-Bullies”


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: An American Fascism
American Thinker: What The Steinle And Brown Shootings Reveal About Democratic National Strategy
Conservatives4Palin: The Slow-Motion Implosion Of ObamaCare
Don Surber: Attention, Whitey – Quit Being Racist And Stop Making Beers
Jammie Wearing Fools: We’re Going To Need A Bigger Irony Meter – Mizzou To Unveil All-White Uniforms For Saturday’s Game
Joe For America: Mizzou Student VP – My Feelings Trump The First Amendment
JustOneMinute: More Blue On Blue Madness (Non-Campus Edition)!
Pamela Geller: Democrat Senator Gillibrand Wants To Take In $1.5 Million Muslim “Migrants”
Protein Wisdom: “Nobody Has Pointed Out That Last Year Philosophers Earned A Total of $1.6 Billion, While Welders Earned $34 Billion”
Shot In The Dark: Heather Martens – Lie First, Lie Always
STUMP: A Week Of Bad Pension Ideas – Creating A Guaranty Fund For Public Plans
The Gateway Pundit: New Mizzou Interim President Was Man Behind Race Protests
The Jawa Report: Jihadi John Evaporated In Drone Strike
The Lonely Conservative: How Many Nails Does It Take To Seal A Coffin?
This Ain’t Hell: Free College
Weasel Zippers: Maoist Loonies At Amherst Issue Demands, Including President “Not Tolerate” Free Speech
Megan McArdle: The Nest Isn’t Empty, And That’s Mostly Good
Mark Steyn: Tomorrow Belongs To Them


Shop Amazon’s Holiday Toy List – Retro Toys

Category: Linkagery

What Do Student Tantrums Mean?

Posted on | November 13, 2015 | 36 Comments

Keely Mullen (@kjmspeaks) of #MillionStudentMarch.

The protests this week that forced the resignation of two top officials at the University of Missouri came on the heels of earlier protests at Yale University that forced an apology from Nicholas Christakis.

Meanwhile, students at California’s Claremont McKenna College have staged their own mob action:

A CMC student embarked on a hunger strike Wednesday that quickly resulted in the resignation of Dean of Students Mary Spellman. Much like those at Missouri, CMC students have complained about both specific incidents and a general climate of alleged hostility towards minority groups.
The strike was over Spellman’s response to an email from CMC student Lisette Espinosa, which according to critics showed CMC regards itself as a place for white, upper-class students who view all others as outsiders.
Espinosa had shared an article with Spellman she had written about feeling unwelcome at the school as a low-income racial minority, and Spellman had responded by saying she was working hard to assist students “who don’t fit our CMC mold.”

Tuition at Claremont McKenna is $49,045 a year. Whether or not students there “fit the mold,” none of them are underprivileged. It is an elite institution with an endowment of $700 million, and every student on campus is a beneficiary of enormous privileges that the vast majority of Americans will never have. If there are any Claremont McKenna students who are smart but poor — so that the high tuition was a problem — they could have saved more than $35,000 a year by attending the University of California-Berkeley, where in-state students pay a paltry $13,432 annual tuition. And yet a student at Claremont was willing to stage a hunger strike because the dean awkwardly phrased an email?

What the hell has gotten into these kids? A cynic might look at the recent eruption of campus activism (and by “activism,” of course I mean petulant tantrums) and suspect that these students are just young Democrats, warming up for the 2016 presidential campaign, the same way the 2011 “Occupy Wall Street” protests were a warm-up for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Learning how to manipulate media coverage to control the political narrative is the most important skill any young Democrat ever learns at college, and inciting their fellow students to think of themselves as Oppressed Victims of Society will invariably add to Hillary Clinton’s vote total in the crucial 18-24 demographic. (“Look! Those evil right-wingers are trying to silence your voices!”) So the cynic may perceive mere partisan politics as the motive of these puerile tantrums, but is it possible that there really are larger issues involved?

And by “larger issues,” of course, I mean intractable stupidity:

“Million Student March” national organizer Keely Mullen made an appearance on Fox Business Network’s “Cavuto: Coast to Coast” on Thursday and discussed her protest promoting free college, debt forgiveness and a $15 minimum wage for students.
When Mullen was pressed by host Neil Cavuto on how she finance this proposal, she stumbled with her response but eventually proposed a 90 percent tax on top income earners.
“Great question, I mean, you know, so — I’m not sure if you’re talking about a national level or per school?” Mullen said when initially asked.
“I live in a world and I see a system around me where there is a population that is doing nothing to contribute to the progression of society,” she added.

Keely Mullen attends elite Northeastern University (annual tuition $45,530) and yet watch how she stumbles in this interview:

It is apparent that the simple question — “How are you going to pay for this?” — had never crossed Keely Mullen’s mind until Neil Cavuto asked her. To say “tax the rich” is an insufficient answer because (a) it is difficult, if not impossible, to calculate the total cost of what the “Million Student March” is demanding; and (b) rich people are not just a piggy bank that can be cracked open and plundered for the benefit of whatever political movement proposes to take away their money to fund “the progression of society,” as Miss Mullen so clumsily phrased it.

Keely Mullen is majoring in political science but it would seem she doesn’t know the first damned thing about Basic Economics. Before any government can tax a dollar, you see, that dollar must first be earned by the production and exchange of goods and services in a market where consumers are the demand and producers compete to provide the supply. Wealth is the accumulation of excess income, and is deployed as capital in the marketplace as investment, where the owners of wealth — including everybody who has a 401(k) retirement plan — seek to earn dividends by owning shares in enterprises that yield profit. Whatever the rate of taxation, or whatever governments do with the revenue gained by taxation, it is the success of the market economy that produces the income and wealth that are ultimately the source of tax revenue. If taxation or other government policies hinder the growth of the market economy (for example, by disincentivizing capital investment), then government is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. It is the market economy that pays for everything, including the various government programs that already subsidize tuition for college students.

Is that too difficult for Keely Mullen to understand? I did not attend an elite college. I went to Jacksonville (Ala.) State University, where tuition even in 2015 is still only $8,790 a year. You could send five kids to JSU for the cost of sending one kid to Northeastern University, where political science majors don’t even understand Basic Economics, so how is it that a dumb redneck like me can explain this stuff? Perhaps it is because my professors were aware of how vastly ignorant the average student is. In contrast to posh private schools like Northeastern and Claremont McKenna, no professor at JSU ever takes it for granted that the teenager sitting in a classroom knows anything. Whereas the kids at elite campuses are treated like Special Snowflakes whose delicate sensibilities should never be offended — “Trigger warning!” — the student at Jax State doesn’t expect to be pampered and flattered by the adults who are paid to teach him the knowledge and skills necessary to earn his way in that frightening place called The Real World.

There are kids at JSU waiting tables and flipping burgers to pay their way through school, and those kids may never lead any national protest movement, but they will certainly “contribute to the progression of society.” Keely Mullen, on the other hand, is a useless parasite whose “activism” is about encouraging others to become useless parasites:

Student pursuing opportunities in community organizing and anti-racism advocacy work. My specific interests lie in the intersections of racial injustice and public education.

Oh, but Keely Mullen didn’t attend public school. The snowflake is an alumna of Chicago’s prestigious Francis W. Parker School, where annual tuition is $32,830. So this privileged parasite is now spending Daddy’s money to seek “opportunities in community organizing,” as opposed to doing anything useful in terms of providing goods and services in the market economy. If vicious brats like Keely Mullen are the future of America, we are totally and hopelessly doomed.

Read SJWs Always Lie by Vox Day. Don’t let your kids become SJWs. Make your kids read Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.





 

Category: Economics, Education

Editorial Assist For Mizzou Prostesters

Posted on | November 13, 2015 | 20 Comments

by Smitty

In an ironic development, to say the least, protesters at the University of Missouri (MU) segregated themselves by race Wednesday night, having white students leave a gathering in order to create a “black-only healing space.”

If you re-arrange it to “Only Healing Black Space” the resulting acronym is “OH BS“. Someday, after the detox, they’ll thank me.

Category: Uncategorized

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | November 13, 2015 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

The motor had once been electric, mounted on the beam atop two poles. It still drove the fan blade that kept Her Majesty and the People Who Mattered comfortable in the sultry summer.
The drive belt that went through the center of the wooden poles was the same old rubber friction affair, only instead of alternating current, it was motivated by a set of stationary bicycles manned discreetly by lean, gnarly men who pedaled aimlessly, as though stuck in a Sisyphean Tour de Hades.
This story lacks dialogue, for all regrets over losing the 2016 election had long since been uttered.

via Darleen

Update: “You were always on my mind, Animal.”

Category: Friday Fiction

Queer Vegan Witch Accuses Radical Feminists of ‘Anti-Trans Violence’

Posted on | November 12, 2015 | 201 Comments

David Salisbury (@davidsalisbury) describes himself as “a queer, vegan, Witch . . . chief of the DC Bureau of the Pagan Newswire Collective . . . High Priest of Coven of the Spiral Moon . . . involved with street activism with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and . . . a full time employee with the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights organization.” Salisbury’s employment by HRC means that his various forms of “activism” necessarily reflect on the “civil rights organization” that pays him a full time salary.

HRC supported the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) which voters in Houston overwhelmingly rejected at the ballot box earlier this month, in large part because of concerns that the measure would have endangered girls and women by compelling “transgender” access to public restrooms and locker rooms. William Bigelow reported:

On October 5, campaign finance reports showed that the group supporting the measure, Houston Unites, had raised $1.2 million, while the group opposing it, Campaign for Houston, had raised only $275,000.
The Washington Times reported, “The ordinance, which included fines of up to $5,000 for preventing someone from using public accommodations, such as business-owned bathrooms open to the public, based on gender identity.” . .
HERO was openly supported by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton . . .

Despite a 4-to-1 money advantage, and despite the fact that Houston is a Democrat Party stronghold with a lesbian mayor, voters rejected HERO by a 61%-39% margin — a decisive defeat for the effort to “mainstream” transgenderism. The defeat of HERO was widely seen as a conservative victory. Hillary Clinton blamed “the far right” which she said created “a lot of fear, and a lot of anxiety” about “the bathroom issue . . . that was totally without merit, that there was no basis for it.”

The problem with such a claim, however, is that it is rejected by radical feminists, who believe that “the bathroom issue,” as Mrs. Clinton calls it, does have “merit.” There is a petition to “Drop the T” from LGBT:

We are a group of gay/bisexual men and women who have come to the conclusion that the transgender community needs to be disassociated from the larger LGB community; in essence, we ask that organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, Lambda Legal and media outlets such as The Advocate, Out, Huff Post Gay Voices, etc., stop representing the transgender community as we feel their ideology is not only completely different from that promoted by the LGB community (LGB is about sexual orientation, trans is about gender identity), but is ultimately regressive and actually hostile to the goals of women and gay men. . . .
The vilification and harassment of women and gay/lesbian individuals who openly express disagreement with the trans ideology; a simple disagreement over an issue can result in responses that range from insults (“transphobic bigot”) to threats of physical harm (often, in the case of women, rape) and even death . . .
The infringement of the rights of individuals, particularly women, to perform normal everyday activities in traditional safe spaces based on sex; this is most pernicious in the case of men claiming to be transgender demanding access to bathrooms, locker rooms, women’s shelters and other such spaces reserved for women. . . .

Radical feminist Cathy Brennan says David Salisbury is “harassing lesbians who signed the Drop the T petition,” showing a message in which Salisbury wrote:

And while we’re doing the work of calling out horrible transphobic “elders”, I present you with this, posted just a few days ago. Trying to take the “T” out of LGBT, and claiming that transwomen are actually men who are lying to get into spaces … that too is anti-trans violence that mustn’t be condoned. I ask us all to end this silence. If you support spaces where people like [name redacted] teach, ask yourself, is this really in line with your values?
I am proud to work for the organization that has authored the Equality Act. Because we will NEVER be equal unless we bring everyone along with us.

David Salisbury accuses “horrible transphobic ‘elders'” of engaging in “anti-trans violence” just because they don’t want men in dresses and wigs invading the women’s restroom. Meanwhile, David Marcus at The Federalist interviewed the gay man who authored the Change.org “Drop the T” petition:

Any attempt to rationally discuss issues that gays/lesbians/bisexuals are concerned about regarding the trans movement is met with unparalleled vitriol, harassment, death threats, and silencing—demanding that the person commenting contrary to the trans narrative be banned from forums, for example.
I know that lesbians have for several years been the object of attack from trans activists for their (rightful) desire to enjoy exclusively lesbian and women-only events such as the now shuttered Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, in the wake of the Stonewall brouhaha as well as the recent proliferation of stories about effeminate boys and masculine girls being directed by their parents and health professionals into the trans identity. So many gays and lesbians were “sissies” and “tomboys” as kids, I think they see themselves in these children and are concerned about them being directed down an inaccurate path.

Read the whole thing. This is a serious issue involving real human beings and, as with so many issues today, certain “progressives” (evidently including Hillary Clinton) want to exercise a totalitarian authority to tell us what to think and control what we are allowed to say. It’s like the climate change “consensus” — a clique of influential insiders have anointed themselves Official Experts, decided what the Correct Opinion is, and the rest of us are just supposed to nod our heads in mute assent. How dare we question the Official Experts?

When I first became aware of this conflict in January 2014, I had a lot of laughs about the absurdity of this conflict:

The Competitive Victimhood Derby is ultimately a zero-sum game, you see. There can only be one winner, and the transgender claim to equal victimhood is rejected by radical feminists, who view this as an attempt to usurp their own categorical claim.
It’s like a traffic jam on the Crazyville Road, where two politicized groups of wackjobs are compelled by the implicit logic of their arguments to fight each other for supremacy.

Over the past 22 months, however, I have come to appreciate the seriousness of this issue in the post-Obergefell era. The “vitriol, harassment [and] death threats” directed against Cathy Brennan and other radical feminists who refuse to back away from a scientific fact — i.e., female is a matter of biology, involving XX chromosomes — should alarm everyone who cares about truth. The ideology behind the transgender movement demands that we pretend that Bruce Jenner deserves recognition as “Woman of the Year.” Lunatics want to compel us to cooperate with their delusions, and we are condemned as hateful bigots if we refuse to play along with their make-believe game. So the “Woman of the Year” is 66 years old and has a penis, and you’re not even allowed to call him “Bruce” or mention that he is a grandfather.

Having examined this issue in depth (see “The Queering of Feminism: Why Does ‘Equality’ Require Promoting Perversion?”), I cannot be accused of ignorance in regard to these arguments, and I am indifferent to accusations of “hate.” One can scarcely have any opinion at all nowadays without being accused of “hate,” and the fact that these accusations are flung around so haphazardly should tell us that the Official Experts are afraid of honest debate. The question we should be asking is this: Who authorized these people to tell us what to think?

Are we going to listen to common sense, or are we going to listen to the High Priest of the Coven of the Spiral Moon?

David was first introduced to the Craft at the age of 11 by his stepmother, and then on a deeper more intentional level by a childhood friend at the age of 12. That same year, he began training with a friend’s family coven and initiated a year later.

That’s how you become a “human rights” advocate, I guess.

+ + + + +

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Category: Gays, Sex Trouble

A Fine Thumbnail 1984

Posted on | November 12, 2015 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

I’m old enough to remember a time that something like this would not have been uncomfortably plausible:

via Gerard

Category: Uncategorized
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