The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 12.10.15

Posted on | December 10, 2015 | 6 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: President Obama Is Not A Pussy About Terrorism
Louder With Crowder: Hidden Camera – Gender Pronouns
American Irony: FAQ – Answering Liberal Questions About Gun Control
Da Tech Guy: Want To Understand Why Trump Is Right On Immigration? Think Chipotle!
The Political Hat: Marx’s Revenge, Marcuse’s Revenge, And Maxentius’ Revenge
The Camp of the Saints: Leftism Unmasked – Heil, Jerry Brown!
Michelle Malkin: National Security Profiling Is A No-Brainer
Twitchy: Points For Honesty! The New Republic Says “It’s Time To Ban Guns. Yes, All Of Them.”


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: The Right To Bear Arms Isn’t Up For Debate
American Thinker: Why Does Obama Call ISIS ISIL?
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Tom Clancy’s Commander In Chief By Mark Greaney
Conservatives4Palin: Trump Bump! Poll Numbers Rise After Call For Muslim Immigration Ban
Don Surber: Triple Pulitzer Columnist Declares Trump UNAMERICAN
Jammie Wearing Fools: The Obama Youth – 10th Minnesota Suspect Arrested For Conspiring To Join ISIS
Joe For America: Philly Mayor – Trump’s Muslim Proposal “A Page From The Playbook Of Hitler…Or, Um, Jimmy Carter”
JustOneMinute: Put Your Coffee Cup Down And Swallow, Please
Pamela Geller: “Trump Is Right – We Can’t Even Wear The Uniform In Our Own Cars” – British Cops Claim Trump Is Right About No-Go Zones
Protein Wisdom: CA Guv Jerry Brownshirt Boasts “Never Underestimate The Coercive Power Of The Central State”
Shot In The Dark: The Mythical White Christian Terrorist
STUMP: English Grad Students And Adjuncts – If You Have No Options, You Have No Leverage
The Gateway Pundit: Rapper Rick Ross Calls For Assassination Of Donald Trump
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – Save Slave Leia!
The Lonely Conservative: Spare Me The Outrage
This Ain’t Hell: Tibor Ruben, RIP
Weasel Zippers: House Report – Obama Broke The Law, Misled Public About Bergdahl Swap
Megan McArdle: Paying Everyone $70,000? It Won’t Start A Revolution
Mark Steyn: Europeans And Americans On The Rampage!


Shop Amazon – Holiday Romances

Category: Linkagery

The Face of a Terrorist Mastermind?

Posted on | December 10, 2015 | 65 Comments

 

Enrique Marquez may not look like a terrorist, but he is now a focus of the FBI investigation in San Bernardino:

As federal officials scour the backgrounds of the couple who went on a terrorist rampage here last week, they are looking carefully at Enrique Marquez, a childhood friend and relation by marriage of the husband, Syed Rizwan Farook. It was Mr. Marquez, 24, who bought the two assault rifles that Mr. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, used to carry out the attack, which killed 14 people and wounded 21 others.
Mr. Marquez, who works at a Walmart store, bought the weapons legally in 2011 or 2012 and either gave or sold them to Mr. Farook, federal officials said. Investigators have spoken with Mr. Marquez and were keeping close tabs on him; although they have not named him as a suspect, they believe he has knowledge about the Farook family and its recent activities.
In November 2014, Mr. Marquez married Mariya Chernykh, whose sister, Tatiana, is married to Syed Raheel Farook, brother of Syed Rizwan Farook. Tatiana Farook is a hairstylist and makeup artist who also goes by the name Tatiana Gigliotti. She and her husband were witnesses at the wedding of Mr. Marquez and Ms. Chernykh, according to a marriage certificate released by the California Department of Public Health.
Another of Mr. Farook’s siblings, Saira, is married to Farhan Khan. For some period of time the Khans attended the same mosque as Mr. Marquez, who is a convert to Islam, according to people who know them.
Mr. Marquez could be crucial in helping the Federal Bureau of Investigation determine when the couple began their plot and understand more about their thinking.

Meanwhile, we learn more about these disciples of the Religion of Peace:

Syed Rizwan Farook, the man at the center of last week’s massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., might have plotted an attack as far back as 2012 with one of his longtime friends, senior law enforcement officials said Wednesday.
In addition, the F.B.I. revealed Wednesday that Mr. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were discussing jihad and martyrdom online in 2013 before they were married and she came to the United States.
The new timeline suggests that the couple were considering violent action before the Islamic State rose to prominence in 2014 and began trying to inspire sympathizers to carry out attacks in the West.
And the disclosures raise questions about how thoroughly American law enforcement and immigration officials vetted the wife before giving her a visa to enter the United States from Pakistan a year before the shooting, which left 14 dead and 21 wounded.
“ISIL inspiration may well have been part of this, but these two killers were starting to radicalize towards martyrdom and jihad as early as 2013,” the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, using an acronym for the Islamic State. . . .
Mr. Marquez has been cooperating extensively in recent days with federal authorities, discussing at length his relationship with Mr. Farook. . . .
The authorities are still seeking to corroborate what Mr. Marquez is telling them. Because he provided two of the four weapons used by the attackers, some investigators have questioned his credibility, thinking that he might exaggerate what he knows about the couple to win favor with the authorities.
Mr. Marquez is also said to have mental health issues. Shortly after the attacks, he checked himself into a mental health facility in California.

So, he’s crazy? I repeat: Crazy People Are Dangerous.




 

Category: Islam, Terrorism

In The Mailbox: 12.09.15

Posted on | December 9, 2015 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Pick The Biggest Racist
Proof Positive: What The 2016 Democratic Nominee Hasn’t Got
Da Tech Guy: It’s More Than Just A Narrative
Doug Powers: Can Some Reporter Ask Hillary This Question About A Benghazi-Related E-mail That Runs Counter To All The Spin?
Twitchy: Accused Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood Shooter Leaves Little Mystery To Motive
Moe Lane: Will Obamacare Put YOUR Doctor Out Of Business Next?


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Donald Trump Raises The Stakes
American Thinker: Political Correctness More Deadly Than ISIS
BLACKFIVE: Opening Combat To Females
Conservatives4Palin: Gov. Palin – If It Saves Lives, “Profile Away!”
Don Surber: Kuwait, Canada, And Others Restrict Muslim Immigration
Jammie Wearing Fools: Pantsuit Gangster – Hillary Met With Son of Mob Boss Seeking Father’s Release In Exchange For Votes
Joe For America: Germans Torch Over 200 Islamic Refugee Homes
JustOneMinute: Apocalypse Now! (Ongoing…)
Pamela Geller: California Muslim With Sword Chases Down Neighbor, Screaming “I Would Die And Kill For Allah”
Shot In The Dark: Vide The Intellectual Giants Of American Media
The Gateway Pundit: The Middle Class Overwhelmingly Votes Republican – And These Middle Class Voters Support Trump
The Jawa Report: Trump’s Exclusion of New Immigrants Not Only American But Legal
The Lonely Conservative: Email Shows Defense Department Offered Immediate Support For Benghazi
This Ain’t Hell: “Contained”, Eh? Intel Community Says, “Um, No”
Weasel Zippers: Pelosi – 150 Years Ago We “Broke The Shackles” With 13th Amendment Ratification. Reality – Only 23% of Democrats Voted For It
Megan McArdle: Trump Is Scary, But Not “Fascist” Scary
Mark Steyn: The President Graciously Speaks To His Bigoted, Racist, Islamophobic People


Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again
Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America

Category: Linkagery

Ace of Spades Goes Full-On Populist?

Posted on | December 9, 2015 | 269 Comments

Because I’ve been up to my ears in radical feminism for the past year, I haven’t monitored the day-to-day developments of the GOP presidential primary campaign the way I did during the 2012 cycle. As a result, I am unaware (and really, do not care) which of my blogger friends are supporting which candidate. My attitude for the 2016 campaign can be summarized in three words: Anybody But Clinton. After my (ultimately futile) hyper-involvement in the 2012 campaign, I simply do not want to expend mental or emotional energy worrying about who the Republicans nominate. Others do not have that attitude, however, which brings us to Ace of Spades discussing the latest Donald Trump controversy:

Laura Ingraham: GOP will rip itself apart at convention to avoid nominating Trump.
Krauthammer: Trump’s proposal is “deeply bigoted,” “indefensible.”
Josh Earnest: Trump’s proposal consigns him for the new and improved “Wrong side of history,” which is now “the dustbin of history.” . . .
Ingraham points out that Trump’s proposal comes in a particular context: When the establishments of both parties already want to take him out, and are willing to seize on whatever cudgel is at hand to do so.
They’re not going to beat him this way.
The establishment’s yelling about everything has gone from tedious to exhausting to infuriating.

Read the whole thing. I had noticed, occasionally, Ace’s increasing frustration with the GOP establishment the past year or so, but I guess I underestimated the intensity of his frustration, or his seriousness about the immigration problem. Knowing Ace, he’s the last guy I would expect to dive off into Pat Buchanan/Peter Brimelow/John Derbyshire paleoconservative-style populism which I’m not saying he has, but I think he definitely now understands the teeth-grinding fury the Old Right felt toward the GOP’s constant compromising with liberalism. Insofar as any conservative is serious about defeating the Left, I think, he must eventually experience that kind of reaction. The alternative is to become an unprincipled centrist hack like Steve Schmidt or Nicolle Wallace.

Honestly, I’ve got a Zen-like serenity about the Trump phenomenon. The prospect of Trump going thermonuclear and running as an independent is the worst-case scenario, and so what? He will do it or he won’t. Republicans who want to stop Trump from winning the GOP nomination have to reckon with that possibility, and let them worry about it.

Not my problem.

If Ace is saying “burn it down,” there may be no alternative. It is not Trump’s fault that the GOP establishment is impotent. It’s not Ace’s fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not your fault. That arrogant fat-faced bastard Karl Rove? Yeah, I’m willing to blame it all on him, because why not? Populism needs a scapegoat and he’ll do. So if everything goes sideways between now and November 2016, and Hillary Clinton is elected because Trump went third-party and got 34% of the vote . . . ?

Burn it down, I say, and blame it all on Karl.




 

Category: Ace of Spades, Election, Republicans

Questioning Feminist Authority: Cult Ideology and Mind Control Tactics

Posted on | December 8, 2015 | 40 Comments

“Mind control (also known as ‘brainwashing,’ ‘coercive persuasion,’ and ‘thought reform’) refers to a process in which a group or individual systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s).”
— Michael D. Langone, “Cults and Mind Control”

She is a 19-year-old “dysphoric female” who is a “gender-critical . . . sex-critical, anti-natalist” feminist and identifies as a “transman.” If you met someone in real life who described herself that way, you might wonder if she was out on an overnight pass from the psychiatric ward.

Feminist Tumblr bears little resemblance to real life, however. On her blog, the dysphoric teenage feminist presumes the expertise to deliver her diagnosis of everything that is wrong with society and the normal people who live in it:

Female critique of men and masculinity and male violence and misogyny is about liberation and safety.
Male critique of feminism is about control and domination and validation and entitlement.
See the difference?

Ideological justification of a self-serving double standard, whereby feminists relentlessly criticize men while exempting themselves from any criticism at all, is nowadays so widely accepted that it is seldom even noticed, much less subjected to skeptical scrutiny. Are the problems of “male violence and misogyny” so pervasive as to justify a “critique of men and masculinity,” per se? If a man is non-violent and pleads not guilty to the accusation of “misogyny” (i.e., woman-hating), can he be permitted to object to this categorical condemnation of masculinity?

Well, no, says our dysphoric teenage expert, because any male who criticizes feminism is exercising “control and domination and validation and entitlement.” Feminism accuses all men of oppressing women and, if a man endeavors to defend himself against this accusation, his defense is cited as proof of his guilt. The definition of “misogynist” is a male who criticizes feminism, and any man who defends himself is condemned as an opponent of women’s “liberation and safety.”

This is a rhetorical tactic called “kafkatrapping”:

[Kafkatrapping] is a form of argument that, reduced to essence, runs like this: “Your refusal to acknowledge that you are guilty of {sin, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppression…} confirms that you are guilty of {sin, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppression…}.” . . .
Real crimes — actual transgressions against flesh-and-blood individuals — are generally not specified. The aim of the kafkatrap is to produce a kind of free-floating guilt in the subject, a conviction of sinfulness that can be manipulated by the operator to make the subject say and do things that are convenient to the operator’s personal, political, or religious goals. Ideally, the subject will then internalize these demands, and then become complicit in the kafkatrapping of others.

The success of kafkatrapping relies on our natural instinct to respond to accusations of bad faith (mala fides) by denying the accusation, rather than questioning the authority of the accuser.

What qualifies this person to stand in judgment of others as an arbiter of public morality? Why do they presume themselves authorized to act as a sort of prosecuting attorney, arraigning you on a charge of sexism, homophobia or whatever, because you said something they deemed “offensive”? If you know you are unjustly accused, then the real issue is the motive of your accuser. Who is this person? What motivates them to seek out “racism” and other species of Thought Crime? Are you dealing with an aspiring social justice warrior (SJW) who hopes to pursue a full-time career as an activist? Is it not true that the SJW gains publicity and enhanced status by pointing the accusatory finger at others?

‘The Agents of Our Oppression’

Questioning the authority of the accuser in such a situation usually throws them off-balance, because they take it for granted that you, as the accused, will be be overwhelmed by a sense of “free-floating guilt.” The finger-pointing SJW operates in an echo-chamber environment where no one questions the necessity of perpetual crusades against Thought Crime: “Rape culture”! “White privilege”! “Male entitlement”! Ridding society of such categorical evils is the raison d’être of social justice warriors, and it never occurs to them that these categories can be critically interrogated. Exactly what does the feminist mean, for example, when she denounces the “objectification” of women? Isn’t it fair to say that this is yet another bit of jargon by which feminism generally condemns the normal behaviors and attitudes of heterosexual males? Isn’t “objectification” merely a pejorative term for the normal man’s admiration of female beauty? Why is the feminist so offended by this? Perhaps she would be happy if we sought to better understand her complaints by engaging in a study of feminist theory.

“Women are an oppressed class. . . . We identify the agents of our oppression as men.”
— Redstockings Manifesto, 1969

“Heterosexuality is the institution that creates, maintains, and supports men’s power. . . . And heterosexuality has its ramifications at all levels of society; it is the source of all other oppressions.
“Heterosexuality is the pivot on which men have based the norm and created the origin and measure by which all relationships are structured. . . . Men, through heterosexuality, have devised their own concept and thereby constructed a system that generates all oppressions.”
— Ariane Brunet and Louise Turcotte, “Separatism and Radicalism,” in For Lesbians Only: A Separatist Anthology, edited by Sarah Lucia-Hoagland and Julie Penelope (1988)

“Heterosexism is maintained by the illusion that heterosexuality is the norm.”
— Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions (fifth edition, 2012)

“Only when we recognize that ‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’ are made-up categories, invented to control human beings and violently imposed, can we truly understand the nature of sexism. . . .
“Questioning gender . . . is an essential part of the feminism that has sustained me through two decades of personal and political struggle.”
— Laurie Penny, “How to Be a Genderqueer Feminist,” 2015

It is possible to trace the “genderqueer” feminism of Laurie Penny directly back to its ideological origins in the radical Women’s Liberation Movement that emerged in the late 1960s. The movement’s first public protest, in September 1968, was against the Miss America pageant. Beauty pageant contestants “epitomize the roles we are all forced to play as women,” feminists declared, denouncing the way “women in our society [are] forced daily to compete for male approval, enslaved by ludicrous ‘beauty’ standards we ourselves are conditioned to take seriously.” The very idea that women should desire “male approval” is offensive to feminists, who consider themselves “enslaved” by “beauty standards” enforced by men. Such remarkable claims are as astonishing to sane people now as they were in 1968, but no one has ever accused feminists of being sane people, and the trajectory of their radical madness is now a matter of history. Within a year, Shulamith Firestone and her comrades had formed the Redstockings collective as a sort of revolutionary vanguard, only to see themselves eclipsed by an even more radical critique of women’s status as an “oppressed class.” In January 1970, a group calling itself “Radicalesbians” disrupted a feminist conference in New York (see “The Long Shadow of the Lavender Menace”) and within a year, Charlotte Bunch had formed the D.C.-based lesbian collective known as The Furies. The radical view that women are oppressed by heterosexuality, per se, has become mainstream within the feminist movement primarily due to the influence of lesbian professors in the Feminist-Industrial Complex of academic Women’s Studies programs. The impressionable young student reading a textbook like Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions (edited by two professors at Oregon State University) probably doesn’t even blink at the editors’ claim that it is an “illusion” to believe heterosexuality is normal. When Ariane Brunet and Louise Turcotte — members of a tiny French-Canadian collective called Amazones d’Hier, Lesbiennes d’Aujourd’hui (Amazons of Yesterday, Lesbians of Today) — issued their condemnation of heterosexuality as an “institution” of male supremacy, “a system that generates all oppressions,” they were considered part of an extremist fringe. Now this extremism is part of the university curriculum, and anyone who questions it is apt to be accused of “homophobia.”

Even the most basic distinctions between men and women are now considered oppressive. Laurie Penny urges us to “recognize that ‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’ are made-up categories,” an illegitimate and “violent” imposition of “control,” and where is the feminist who dares to dispute these assertions? Not every feminist is “genderqueer,” but no feminist in 2015 would defend the male/female distinction as a valid scientific understanding of biology for fear of being accused of giving aid and comfort to the sexists who “invented” and “imposed” these categories. The totalitarian nature of feminism is most apparent in its ability to silence criticism, enforcing ideological conformity by prohibiting dissent. In a 2001 book, Tammy Bruce dubbed the enforcers of this conformity The New Thought Police. A former president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women, Tammy Bruce was purged from her leadership position and denounced by NOW’s national office because she led a protest against O.J. Simpson. NOW leaders were allied with the NAACP in viewing Simpson as a victim of racism, and were evidently willing to ignore evidence (including 911 recordings) of his violent abuse of Nicole Brown Simpson. One might think that feminists would care about a woman being nearly decapitated by a knife-wielding murderer, but Patricia Ireland, the national president of NOW, made clear the organization’s position in December 1995:

“I deeply regret,” Ms. Ireland said at a Washington news conference, that Ms. Bruce “has made public statements that clearly violate NOW’s commitment to stopping racism.”

By such methods do The New Thought Police shield themselves from criticism. Ideological conformity within the feminist movement attracts a certain type of disgruntled fanatic that Eric Hoffer described as The True Believer, and technology has provided an easy means for these fanatics to promote their radical views. It costs nothing for a young feminist to create a Tumblr blog and reach many thousands of like-minded activists around the world. The jargon of feminist gender theory — the concept that male/female differences are socially constructed by the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix — was once known only to a comparative handful of Women’s Studies professors and their students. Now anyone with a laptop and wifi hookup can access page after page devoted to these bizarre ideas.

It is tempting to laugh at weirdos like Miriam Mogilevsky, who identifies herself as a “queer, gay, femme, homoflexible lesbian with exceptions,” and is a columnist for the Everyday Feminism site, where she offers heterosexual feminists pointers on how to “Be Better Allies to Queer Women.” However, many unhappy young people are vulnerable to the kind of ideology-as-therapy solution that feminism offers them.

‘Girls Who Suddenly Decide They Are Boys’

Where does the “dysphoric female” on Tumblr learn to speak her “gender-critical” jargon? The Internet, of course. As a result, many parents are being confronted by teenage children who “come out” as transgender. This has become such a fad among some young people that even feminists have begun criticizing it. One woman whose daughter got caught up in the transgender craze started a blog called 4th Wave Now, and makes an entirely common-sense surmise about how and why this is happening to so many teenagers now:

Are teens influenced by what they imbibe, what’s in fashion, what celebrities (like Jazz Jennings and “Caitlyn” Jenner and Laverne Cox) are doing, what their peers are saying and doing? Might socially isolated teens be even more swayed by what they see on social media, while they sit for hours, alone in their rooms? . . .
My daughter, like so many others I’ve now heard about, emerged from months of self-imposed social isolation and YouTube/Reddit binges, to announce, out of the blue, that she was transgender.

A few excerpts from the commenters on her blog’s “About” page:

My precious 17 year old daughter has been sinking into the FTM cult for the past 18 months. I know of 7 other girls locally too, all of similar age. Many of them are on Tumblr, enjoying Facebook notoriety, anime loving, asexual, and claiming BPD or aspergers traits. . . .

I have been fearful and alert to my daughters’ trending towards FTM. . . . I am a hetero mom who has balked at stereotypes, most often alone, and fear that my inability to cope with my own marital constraints has affected my daughter’s understanding of how to be a female. . . . I fear my daughter doesn’t have good role models and turns to friends for answers. . . .

And still more comments:

My daughter, who is 17, told me last year on Mother’s Day that she was now my son. Since I suspected that she might be a lesbian, it wasn’t too much of a shock. However, when I began researching this subject I was extremely concerned with the medical intervention that takes place with these children. Then when I went to a meeting for parents with transgender children, I was shocked about how all of these parents were jumping on the bandwagon of drugs and surgery without questioning. . . .

Tears stream down my face as I read the entries. Until now I have felt so alone and helpless. I was beginning to think I was a crazy, terrible parent, as the loud and clear (and virtually the only) advice available when confronted with this parenting nightmare is to immediately and absolutely — without question — accept what the child is saying and get them started transitioning.

Add myself and my daughter to the growing (exploding?) list of concerned parents with girls who suddenly decide they are boys after puberty. Some day I might take the time to add my story to your blog, but honestly, it reads so much like the others already here: quirky, socially awkward girl who had always identified as a girl (although never a pink sparkly princess) suddenly decides that because she loves science, pokemon and video games rather than makeup, hairstyles and clothes she MUST actually be a boy. She says she is a gay boy, as she is attracted to boys.
She is a beautiful girl with lovely figure — my gut feeling is that my daughter wanted the attention she was getting from boys to stop. In addition to her rejection of the princess culture, she hated being objectified, ogled, pawed at and cat-called to. She has made herself as covered up and unattractive as possible, lost a good deal of weight (the curves are mostly gone) and declared herself a boy. Of course, the Tumblr culture and current Caitlyn Jenner worshiping by the uber-PC entertainment media have urged her along in her pursuit to disappear and cease existing as a female. . . .
[M]y smart, feminist, skeptical, open-minded daughter has fallen hook, line and sinker for the trans-cult scam.

Has “gender theory” become feminism’s Frankenstein monster? The “quirky, socially awkward girl” hits puberty and is horrified by the result — her “lovely figure” attracts unwanted attention from boys who, it seems, are poorly parented and inadequately supervised in schools. A mother’s tale of her adolescent daughter “being objectified, ogled, pawed at and cat-called to” raises a rather obvious question: Where are the mothers of these boys? Or for that matter, where are their fathers?

The same laissez-faire parenting attitude that permits a teenage girl to engage in “self-imposed social isolation and YouTube/Reddit binges” is mirrored by the abdication of adult authority that permits teenage boys to behave crudely toward girls at school. Yet progressives have spent decades lecturing parents against the “authoritarian” family (an incubator of fascism, according to Adorno, et al.) and one might be accused of child abuse for giving unruly teenagers a bit of old-fashioned discipline. Grown-ups have ceased to require respect from young people and, having no fear of parental authority, the insolent brats now expect grown-ups to give them whatever their adolescent appetites demand. (Recommended reading: The Assault on Parenthood: How Our Culture Undermines the Family by Dana Mack.) Any adult who asserts the legitimacy of parental authority risks being branded an oppressive ogre, but what are the alternatives? If Mom and Dad are unwilling to set limits to their child’s behavior, it is entirely predictable that the child will be swayed by peers, and by whatever trends emerge from the popular culture, whether the trend is hip-hop, heroin or homosexuality.

Am I the only adult who objects to being lectured by teenage weirdos like the dysphoric gender-critical feminist who expects us to silently accept her “critique of men and masculinity and male violence and misogyny”? Who appointed her to lecture us? What is the basis of her authority?

We are not supposed to ask these questions, you see, and there is something strangely suspicious about the silent acceptance of feminist claims to moral authority. One suspects many men have fallen prey to the “free-floating guilt” produced by feminism’s kafkatrapping rhetoric and that many women are quite eager to exploit male guilt for their own benefit. The man who perceives the nature of this game recognizes that he cannot object too strongly to feminist rhetoric without being accused of “misogyny” and, as Tammy Bruce discovered, feminist leaders are viciously hateful toward any woman who openly criticizes them. Because so few people do speak out against feminism, it is easy for the few vocal critics to be demonized, marginalized and effectively silenced.

Once you understand feminism as a totalitarian ideology, the less likely you are to be surprised by the movement’s tactics, and the more you will recognize the importance of refusing to be silent about feminism’s lies.




 

Category: Sex Trouble

Operation Ivy Bells: Sea Story Of The Year

Posted on | December 8, 2015 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

I finished reading Operation Ivy Bells a month or so back. The author is a friend, and I owe him a review. But even if I didn’t know RGW personally, I’d still feel privileged to write this.

Is anybody old enough to remember a pre-Obama era when we knew who the Bad Guys were, and we took the fight to them? OIB is a straightforward sea story of the Good Old Days by a guy who was there. An intrepid special operations submarine goes up against the Soviet Union at the peak of its Commie might, and performs page-turning feats of derring-do. Spoiler alert: we win; they lose. But let me say a little more.
The author is a retired diver who participated actively in the source events. However, RGW is also a fine storyteller, keeping the action going and making the reader feel the sway of boat as she sneaks right under Ivan’s nose and acquires valuable information.

We follow Lieutenant J. R. “Mac” McDowell, a master of both submarining and saturation diving, through training and deployment aboard USS Halibut and a mission that is legendary. Anybody with any sea time in the Navy is going to be hard pressed to find a misplaced detail, making this an entertaining yarn suitable for even the most meticulous reader. I have no idea if RGW is working on a movie script. RGW’s prose does a fine job off explaining the action, but some well-done CGI could produce a thriller as good as The Hunt for Red October here.

Overally, Ivy Bells is an excellent yarn and holds together splendidly as such. Where I’d fall short of five stars for the story has to do with the character development. McDowell is something of a Naval superhero; I’ve met few in my experience who could be such consumate masters of their primary job (saturation diving) and another equally daunting (if related) skill, e.g. submarining. Even given that, I’ve rarely seen a skipper as cool as that of the USS Halibut, so casually letting a mere Lieutenant not of his own wardroom have that much driving time. And we really don’t get to learn anything of the other characters. No one in the book is burdened by relating the Cold War to life in general. In summary, we don’t get much deeper than the typical Clancy novel, and that’s OK.

All of that literary mumbo-jumbo sounds peevish, though. Pick up a copy of Operation Ivy Bells for that special veteran in your life. They’ll thank you!

Category: Books

Fact Checking The Ralph Peters Allegation Concerning The Totality Of Our President

Posted on | December 7, 2015 | 19 Comments

More at HotAir

Category: Barack Obama, Hot Air

In The Mailbox: 12.07.15

Posted on | December 7, 2015 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


“Today, December 7, 1941…a date that shall live in infamy…”


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Conservative, Outspoken Jews Had It Coming
A View from the Beach: Maryland Attorney General Succumbs To Honey Trap
American Irony: The Reason Democrats Look Stupid Blaming The NRA For Mass Shootings
Politically Incorrect Conservative: Oops…
Da Tech Guy: The Elite Kill Me Last Caucus Explained
Michelle Malkin: The CAIR Effect – See Something, Do Nothing
Twitchy: White House Issues Embarrassing Correction To Obama’s Speech


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Marine Le Pen’s National Front Leads In First Round Of French Regional Elections
American Thinker: Rebuking Obama’s Folly
BLACKFIVE: San Bernardino – Did We Dodge A Bullet?
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin – Remember Pearl Harbor
Don Surber: I’ll Take “Things Easy To Say When Ten SUVs Full of Secret Service Agents Protect You” For $200, Alex
Jammie Wearing Fools: LTC Ralph Peters Calls Obama “A Total Pussy” On Live TV
Joe For America: Court Rules That “In God We Trust” Belongs On Cop Cars
JustOneMinute: Bloviation At The Times
Pamela Geller: Over 72 Homeland Security Employees On Terror Watch List
Protein Wisdom: Loretta Lynch On San Bernardino Shooting – “A Wonderful Opportunity”
Shot In The Dark: Lie First, Lie Always – Crowd Source Edition
STUMP: 80 Percent Funding Myth Recent Roundup
The Gateway Pundit: MSNBC Crank Whines NYT Was Wrong To Show Tashfeen Malik’s Face In Terrorism Article
The Jawa Report: In London, Yet Another Random Muslim Attacks Random Infidels For No Apparent Reason
The Lonely Conservative: Hillary Wants To Allow Illegals To Buy Insurance Through Obamacare
This Ain’t Hell: Venezuela’s Anti-Communists Win Midterm Elections In A Landslide
Weasel Zippers: Trump Calls For “Total And Complete Shutdown Of Muslims Entering The United States”
Megan McArdle: Give Thanks To Williams-Sonoma And The Garlic Press
Mark Steyn: Mister Know-Nothing Denier Goes To Washington


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