The Other McCain

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

FMJRA 2.0: Automotive High School

Posted on | August 15, 2015 | 6 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Feminist Tumblr: Justifying Hatred With Radical Ideology and Also, Witchcraft
Living In Anglo-America
Dark Brightness

Why I Got Suspended
The Pirate’s Cove
Constantinople Not Istanbul

FMJRA 2.0: All My Bloggy Friends Have Settled Down
Regular Right Guy
The Pirate’s Cove
BlurBrain

Rule 5 Sunday: Good Witches
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles from Tyranny
A View from the Beach
Proof Positive

The ‘Free Stuff’ Party
A View from the Beach

#DonaldTrumpsDiary Oh: Paul the Younger. Hey, Rinse Peabody! How About We Ditch ‘Curls’ & Bring In Carly, Who At Least Has A Clue About Business
Regular Right Guy

In The Mailbox, 08.11.15
Proof Positive

Feminism’s Attack on ‘Institutionalized, Normative Heterosexuality’
Living In Anglo-America

The ‘Self-Abnegation of … Gender Identity’
Living In Anglo-America

Feminists, and How to Avoid Them
Living In Anglo-America
A View from the Beach

In The Mailbox, 08.13.15
Proof Positive

Media as Islamic Publicity Agents
First Street Journal

Nobody reached the five-link requirement for Top Linker this week. 🙁

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Remember, if your links aren’t showing up here (because WordPress hates you) you can get credit by e-mailing me your links before noon on Saturdays. Links need to be to posts published between the previous Saturday and the Friday before the FMJRA is posted. Multiple links to the same post will only be counted as one link.


Puttering About a Small Land

Miraculous You

Posted on | August 15, 2015 | 32 Comments

If you are ever discouraged by failure or the disadvantages you face in life, consider what the odds were against you ever existing:

Scientists calculated the probability of your existing as you, today, at about one in 400 trillion . . .  Some factors taken to reach this figure include the chances of your biological parents meeting and mating, probability of fertilization, and the survival rate of a fertilized egg.

Your mere existence is in some sense miraculous, and the fact that you are alive today and able to read this is testimony to your ability to overcome enormous odds. You are a survivor, and all your ancesters were survivors, too, or otherwise you wouldn’t even be alive today. Not only do you exist, but you are literate and have access to the amazing technology of the Internet, which empowers you in ways that your ancestors never could have imagined. You have enormous opportunities, and there is no reason to despair. No matter what disappointments you may experience in life, never quit. Never surrender. Never lose hope.

You’re already a winner. Science proves it.





 

Media as Islamic Publicity Agents

Posted on | August 14, 2015 | 48 Comments

One of the best books you’ll ever read is Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, and in Chapter 6 (“Crusades of the Anointed”), Sowell observes the tendency of liberals to divide the world into “targets” and “mascots.”

For example, the U.S. military and evangelical Christians are common targets of the Anointed, whereas homosexuals and criminals are among their favorite mascots. You see how this plays out especially in media coverage of different groups. During the “Occupy” movement, when college kids took part in riotous protests against big business, this made college kids mascots, because they were attacking a target of the Anointed. The media were willing to ignore reports that women were being sexually assaulted in Occupy encampments. However, once the anti-business protests ended and the kids returned to college, sexual assault was suddenly big news because, in that context, heterosexual males are targets and feminists are mascots.

The media narrative must always conform to the particular prejudices of the Anointed, which is why the media are always more concerned about “Islamophobia” than about, say, guys named Muhammad flying jets into skycrapers. Generally speaking, of course, the American media is hostile to religion, because in America, “religion” means Bible-thumpers who vote Republican. However, in terms of foreign policy, the Anointed always sees foreigners as mascots, and if the foreigners are Muslims, this means Muslims are automatically mascots, too. This was especially true after 9/11, because the U.S. military was fighting Muslims and the media hate the U.S. military almost as much as the media hate Bible-thumping evangelical Christians. You can tell when the Anointed have picked a group as mascots, because the media will always portray mascots as victims of “prejudice” and “stereotypes”:

During a segment on the recent New York Times piece detailing the systematic and ideological slavery and rape perpetuated on thousands of young girls by ISIS soldiers, CNN host Chris Cuomo wondered whether the story might feed negative stereotypes about Islam.
“Let’s finish this part of the discussion on a point that you feel often needs to be made,” Cuomo said to Muslim woman’s rights activist Qanta Ahmed. “This feeds the impression that these Muslims are animals, savages and their faith makes them that way.”
“And it feeds an impression of what Islam is,” he continued. “What is your response to that?”

See? The problem for Chris Cuomo isn’t that Muslim terrorists are raping little girls. No, the real problem is that this “feeds the impression” that Muslims are terrorists who rape little girls. Maybe if some of these ISIS guys enrolled at Amherst or Columbia, Chris Cuomo would stop worrying about our “impression” of them.

 

‘This Unfortunate Incident’

Posted on | August 14, 2015 | 51 Comments

If Zachary Kane is a brutal rapist, whose fault is that? This is the central question at the heart of a lawsuit filed against Virginia Wesleyan College (VWC), which is either (a) a small Methodist college in Norfolk or (b) Rapeville, USA. Amid the nationwide furor over claims of a “campus rape epidemic” that allegedly claims 1-in-5 female college students as victims, the case presented in the $10 million Jane Doe lawsuit against VWC highlights the nature of the controversy.

Is there or is there not an “epidemic” of sexual assault on America’s college and university campuses? Consider this: The Jane Doe lawsuit against VWC includes a chart (Exhibit A) demonstrating that this small Methodist college had “the highest per-capita rate of sexual assault” of any campus in Virginia. VWC boys are on a notorious rampage in Norfolk — this is from federal data — and so, we might expect, these Methodist monsters would be perpetrating sexual assault at rates even higher than the 1-in-5 national statistic touted by President Obama and Vice President Biden, among others. Yet a look at Exhibit A in Jane Doe’s lawsuit shows that the reported per-capita rate of sexual assault at VWC in 2010 was less than 0.5%. Fewer than one in 200 VWC females reported being sexually assaulted, and this at the campus that led the entire state of Virginia in such reports.

It is impossible to reconcile this data with the 1-in-5 statistic. There were a total of six sexual assaults reported at VWC in 2010. According to U.S. News, VWC’s total enrollment is 1,459, of whom 61% (890) are female. In order to calculate the likelihood of any student being raped during her four-year college career, we must take the average number of annual rapes, multiply it by four, and then divide that number into the total female enrollment. So if 2010 was an average year for rape at VWC, then 6 times 4 equals 24, and 890 divided by 24 equals 37, so that the reported sexual assault rate at VWC is 1-in-37* — a frightening statistic, but far below the 1-in-5 rate claimed nationally. This number, keep in mind, is based on federal data for a school that led the state of Virginia in reported sexual assault cases in 2010, and as Elizabeth Nolan Brown of Reason magazine points out:

In 2011, zero sexual assaults were reported and in 2012, there were three. Virginia Wesleyan is a small school, with only about 1,300 students at any time, so that works out to a sexual assault rate of about 0.2 percent. Even making the fair assumption that there are more assaults than get reported, the picture is hardly one of a rape culture so widespread that school officials should treat every freshman female as one party away from being attacked.

However, the situation at VWC was bad enough that freshmen were specifically warned “students could be provided drinks spiked with drugs to facilitate rape,” according to Jane Doe’s lawsuit, and officials at the college “knew that female students faced an especially high risk of rape from lacrosse team members, as acknowledged by Dean [David] Buckingham.” This is exactly what the lawsuit says happened to Jane Doe, on her third day at Virginia Wesleyan in August 2012, immediately after the orientation where freshmen were warned about the risk of rape.

In alleging negligence by VWC, Jane Doe’s lawsuit points to the role played by a student “peer advisor” named Troy Katzer, who “invited numerous teenage freshman students to an on-campus party at his townhouse” where alcohol was served. According to the lawsuit, “Katzer had previously himself exhibited predatory behavior towards freshman teenage girls,” behavior that the lawsuit alleges “was known to agents of the school.” This upperclassman was assigned as a “peer advisor” and — surprise! — Jane Doe alleges she and her friends began feeling dizzy after having just one drink at the party. She ended up in the dorm room of Zachary Kane, a lacrosse player who “repeatedly and brutally raped, sodomized and forced Plaintiff to orally copulate him until she vomited, for approximately five hours,” according to the lawsuit.

In February 2013, there was a campus hearing at which Kane was found responsible for sexual assault and expelled from VWC, although subsequently the record was changed to allow Kane to “voluntarily withdraw.” Now, as part of the discovery process in Jane Doe’s lawsuit, “VWC is seeking to compel Doe to identify ‘any individuals with whom (she has) had sexual intercourse at any time and… any individuals with whom (she has) had a romantic relationship’ since the alleged assault,” Brown writes at Reason:

The school says this is necessary to determine Doe’s credibility in regard to the trauma she says she’s suffered and whether she was, as claimed in the school hearing, a virgin before the attack.
Why should Doe’s virginity matter to the case? It doesn’t per se. But Doe testified (of her own accord) during a school adjudication hearing that she had been a virgin before the rape. The college claims to now have “a good faith basis for believing” that this was not true. While her virginity or lack thereof has no bearing on whether she was raped, lying about her virginity unprovoked might not bode well for her broader credibility. The school states that “if they knew (Doe) had provided false testimony” during the hearing, campus officials may have come to a different conclusion in the original case. . . .
“Virginia Wesleyan College has carefully reviewed the facts of this unfortunate incident and the allegations in Jane Doe’s Complaint,” it said in a statement last fall. “While the College sympathizes with Jane Doe, Virginia Wesleyan denies any allegation of improper conduct and will vigorously defend this lawsuit.” . . .
“VWC acknowledges that Plaintiff’s sexual history is a sensitive subject,” the school states in its motion to compel the info. “However… Plaintiff has put her sexual history at issue by arguing she is unable to have sex, does not have any interest in sex, and has experienced difficulties in romantic relationships due to her inability to have sex and lack of interest in sex. Given the significance of these claims in a case where $10 million is at issue, VWC feels compelled to explore Plaintiff’s sexual history.”

For the record, Zachary Kane “claims the two participated in consensual sexual activity, including intercourse, for about 45 minutes. He apologized for any pain he might have caused Doe, but insisted that he was neither aware she had been drugged nor that she didn’t want to have sex with him.” Whether we believe Kane is irrelevant to the problem that concerns Elizabeth Nolan Brown, namely that college officials are not qualified to investigate rape cases:

Regardless of how this all turns out, the story already embodies everything that’s wrong with colleges handling violent assault cases. First, we have a student who feels her rape allegations were diminished by the school, causing her even more distress. Second, we have someone accused of assault whom, if innocent, was wrongly kicked out of school and branded a rapist without ever having the chance to mount a real defense and, if guilty, was merely kicked out of school and not subject to punishment, a criminal record, or any measures that may limit his ability to commit future assaults. And finally, we have a college now forced to spend time and money defending its lack of crime precognition while also dragging a former student’s sexual history into the public record. Why do so many people find this preferable to leaving rape cases to the criminal justice system?

This is the problem: Federal law (Title IX) has forced college administrators into this situation of setting up campus hearings to adjudicate sexual assault accusations in cases where no criminal charges are filed and no police investigation occurs, and where the due process of law is effectively null and void. Feminists who supported these policies in the name of “equality” now denounce the consequences of these policies, using exaggerated statistics to depict all male college students as a menace to all female students, while denouncing as “rape apologists” anyone and everyone who dares to question feminist propaganda.

ADDENDUM:

* In the comments below, John Bradley explains how I’ve miscalculated the rate. According to his math, the likelihood of a female VWC student being sexually assaulted is no more than 1-in-65, not 1-in-37.

 

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | August 14, 2015 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

They finished as a study in contrast. He held out an impossibly long B♭ through circular breathing. Her fluid, gravity-mocking ballet ended with a mime’s frozen pose. He was darkness against her light; sound to her silence; a relaxed, seated posture verses her precisely posed angles.
Their magical father/daughter routine was performed weekly. Concise, at less than 20 minutes, by the same park. The audience had grown over the months, as it crystallized with increasing precision and confidence. The bucket burst with bills and coinage.
Of course, none of the onlookers knew, but momma would get her medication again.

via Darleen

In The Mailbox, 08.13.15

Posted on | August 13, 2015 | 9 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Why Is Richard Beck Blaming Child Abuse On The Patriarchal Nuclear Family?
Thinking Man’s Zombie: Bill Schmalfeldt’s Stolen Valor
Michelle Malkin: No Means No – Keep Gitmo Jihadis Out Of America!
Twitchy: CLOWN SHOW! Was This Marie Harf’s Reason For The Most Embarrassing White House Iran Deal Tweet Ever?
Shark Tank: Obama To Skip Memorial For U.S. Soldiers Murdered In Chattanooga


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Germany’s Violent Backlash Against Third-World Asylum Seekers
American Thinker: The Shrinking Of The GOP Tent
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – In The Dark Places By Peter Robinson
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Movie Review – Preservation
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin Warns RedState “Don’t Take On A Palin Kid”
Don Surber: Will The EPA Fine Gina McCarthy $3 Million?
Jammie Wearing Fools: JV Team Slaughters Dozens With Baghdad Truck Bombing As Obama Plays Golf With Former NBA Players
Joe For America: Planned Parenthood Didn’t Bother With Consent Forms For “Mothers” To “Donate” Body Parts
JustOneMinute: Liar’s Server
Pamela Geller: Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals Upholds Sharia, Bans Seattle Counter-Terror Ad
Protein Wisdom: Indians Say EPA Trying To Swindle Them In Mine Spill
Shot In The Dark: Usability
STUMP: Labor Force Participation – First In A Series Of Numbers Without Context
The Gateway Pundit: LESBIANS GONE WILD – Ferguson Couple Attacks Driver, Slugs Her In The Face, Damages Vehicle During Protest
The Jawa Report: Behind The Scenes At The Clinton Campaign Headquarters
The Lonely Conservative: Did The EPA Contaminate The River On Purpose?
This Ain’t Hell: Article Claiming POW-MIA Flag Is Racist Easy Favorite For Dumbest Thing Ever Written
Weasel Zippers: Poll – Majority Of Americans View Ferguson Protesters As “Mostly Criminals”
Megan McArdle: Free Contraception Can’t End The Abortion Debate
Mark Steyn: “A Disgrace To The Profession”


Moscow Rules – Free On Amazon Prime!

Feminists, and How to Avoid Them

Posted on | August 12, 2015 | 115 Comments

 

Miriam Mogilevsky (@sondosia on Twitter) doesn’t like men, but evidently those sexist oppressors won’t leave her alone:

I started to understand my frustrations with my male friends, roommates, and partners much better, because these imbalances have touched every single relationship I’ve ever had with a man. Male partners have consistently ignored glaring issues in the relationship so that I had to be the one to start the difficult conversation every single time, even though they supposedly had as much of a stake in the relationship as I did. Male roommates have made me beg and plead and send reminder texts to do even the most basic household management tasks. Male friends have tried to use me as a therapist, or drawn me into worrying about their physical health with them while refusing to see a doctor even though they had insurance.
Well-meaning men of varying roles in my life have consistently ignored my nonverbal cues, even very visible ones, forcing me to constantly have to articulate boundaries that ought to be obvious, over and over. . . .
This is why being in relationship with men, even platonically, is often so exhausting for me. As much as I love them and care for them, it feels like work.

You can read the rest. Miriam Mogilevsky is a feminist because she doesn’t like men, and yet men won’t take the hint. This is a persistent problem. Some males actually believe that feminism is about equality. They think, “Well, I believe in equality, so I’m a feminist, too,” and then intrude themselves into the lives of feminists like Miriam Mogilevsky, who don’t want to be anywhere near a man, ever. Merely being in the presence of a male is “exhausting” to feminists. They have made abundantly clear what feminism requires of men:

A. Shut up;
and
B. Go away.

As soon as a woman indicates that she is a feminist, this should be a cue to any man to avoid her as much as possible. No male should ever speak to a feminist. In fact, the feminist expects males to be completely silent in her presence. How much more clearly can Miriam Mogilevsky make her point? Everything that men do is annoying to her. Attempts by males to befriend Ms. Mogilevsky are unwelcome. She is a feminist, and therefore dislikes having to share the planet with males, because of “the fear and anger with which some men respond to women’s emotional unavailability.” Ms. Mogilevsky is a feminist, and therefore has no emotion toward men except disgust and contempt. Why can’t these men understand what Miriam Mogilevsky is trying to tell them?

Emotional labor is reassuring my partner over and over that yes, I love him, yes, I find him attractive, yes, I truly want to be with him, because he will not do the work of developing his self-esteem and relies on me to bandage those constantly-reopening wounds. Emotional labor is letting my partner know that I didn’t like what he did sexually last night, because he never asked me first if I wanted to do that. Emotional labor is reassuring him that, no, it’s okay, I’m not mad, I just wanted him to know for next time, yes, of course I love him, no, this doesn’t mean I’m not attracted to him, I’m just not interested in that sort of sex. Emotional labor is not being able to rely on him to reassure me that it’s not my fault that I didn’t like the sex, because this conversation has turned into my reassuring him, again. . . .
Emotional labor is managing my male partners’ feelings around how often we have sex, and soothing their disappointment when they expected to have sex (even though I never said we would) and then didn’t, and explaining why I didn’t want to have sex this time, and making sure we “at least cuddle a little before bed” even though after all of this, to be quite honest, the last thing I f–king want is to touch him.

Miriam Mogilevsky does not like sex with men, because she does not like men, and she is tired of doing the “emotional labor” of pretending otherwise. She is tired of men with low self-esteem who expect her to pretend she is capable of “love” for a male and being “attracted” to a male, although no male “partner” ever does anything right.

Guys, what part of shut up and go away don’t you understand?

Emotional labor is when my partners decide they don’t want to be in a relationship with me anymore, but rather than directly communicating this to me, they start ignoring me or being mean for weeks until I have to ask what’s going on, hear that “I guess I’m just not into you anymore,” and then have to be the one to suggest breaking up. For extra points, then I have to comfort them about the breakup.

This is “because most men have been intentionally deprived of the language and tools to even think about these sorts of issues,” Ms. Mogilevsky complains of her ex-boyfriends. Even when the guy takes the hint — shut up and go away — he does it wrong.

Miriam Mogilevsky is 24 years old. She got her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Northwestern University in 2013 and recently completed a master’s degree in social work at Columbia University. She takes a sadistic pleasure in inspiring fear in men, and evidently believes that what the world needs most is more feminist lectures from Miriam Mogilevsky. She is a walking stereotype of the self-important narcissistic Millennial who expects us to be impressed that she is “passionate about social justice, feminism, sexuality [and] atheism,” as if there weren’t at least 10,000 young feminists exactly like her on Tumblr.

They are a dime a dozen, these fervent young progressives, providing an endless supply of “social justice” that far exceeds anyone’s actual demand. One wonders why they bother to go to college at all, as no special training is necessary to whine and complain, which is all they ever do. When they get out into the real world and discover how hard it is to make a living, they’ll whine and complain about that. Miriam Mogilevsky whines and complains that men are craving her companionship, compelling her to engage in “relationships” in which she is expected to perform “emotional labor.” And this a social injustice.

Guys: Learn to take a hint. Learn to walk away.

If a woman tells you she is a feminist, say nothing and walk away.

No feminist wants to hear what a man has to say, and life is too short to waste your time talking to feminists. Just walk away.

Leave feminists alone, and then they can complain about that.




 

Why Aren’t The Granola Heads Freaking Out About Her Majesty’s Thumb Drive?

Posted on | August 12, 2015 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

After so many tedious decades of hearing the Church of Environmental Guano Snorting go on and on (and on an on) about the environment, global warming, carbon footprint, and other variations on the theme of pettifoggery, I should like to know where these creeps are concerning the email given to the FBI on a thumb drive, emphasis mine:

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s attorney has agreed to provide the FBI with the private server that housed her e-mail during her four years as secretary of state, Clinton’s presidential campaign said Tuesday.
Her attorney also has agreed to give agents a thumb drive containing copies of thousands of e-mails that Clinton had previously turned over to the State Department.
The FBI has been looking into the security of Clinton’s unusual private system, which has emerged as an issue in her campaign amid growing questions from Republicans and some U.S. intelligence officials about whether government secrets might have been put at risk.

Her Majesty had previously turned in the material (presumably) as part of her deforestation effort, as Taranto reported in March:

If you were following the revelations about Hillary Clinton’s private State Department IT operation last week, you probably heard that, as the initial New York Times story put it, “55,000 pages of emails were given to the department” in December after being selected by a private aide to the former secretary. You might have wondered: What does that mean, 55,000 “pages”? Or maybe you just read it, as the crack fact-check team over at PolitiFact did just last night, as 55,000 emails.
It turns out the reference is to literal physical pages. From Friday’s Times: “Finally, in December, dozens of boxes filled with 50,000 pages of printed emails from Mrs. Clinton’s personal account were delivered to the State Department.”

Why does Her Majesty hate Earth First?

This blog calls for an end to the madness, specifically, by having all of the annoying Lefty twits (who’d be all on about this story if a conservative had been so callous toward Gaia) hope in their Priuses, drive to Chappaqua, and #Occupy Her Majesty’s front lawn. It’s the least tedious thing those clowns can do.

« go backkeep looking »