Guilt As A Binder

Posted on | August 1, 2015 | 10 Comments

by Smitty

One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them–Tolkien

Over at Instapundit, Ed Driscoll points to Fernandez offering a power exposition on what the Center for Medical Progress has done.

I’ve always known that life begins at conception. This truth has been underscored by becoming a father. My two little guys (ages 4 and 1) that have curbed my blogging so severely underscore the preciousness of life. Legal gymnastics aside, what other defensible argument is there? The pursuit of evil, therefore, begins with a rejection both of truth and the need to pursue truth when we (inevitably) find ourselves off course.

And boy are we, culturally, off course! When an author like Fernandez juxtaposes your culture with that of Germany 80 years back, and you’re forced to admit that it’s a fair cop, that is a wrenching, sickening revelation. AND OUR TAX DOLLARS HAVE PAID FOR THIS!

REMEMBER: When police stats indicate bias against blacks, that’s racism. With #PlannedParenthood it's [euphemism du jour]. @instapundit

— IGotOverMachoGrande (@smitty_one_each) July 31, 2015

I don’t accept guilt for actions I have not done; nor do I dispense guilt to others. I do encourage others in a positive way. Thus, my prayer is that God restore souls to the Planned Parenthood staff, who are surely as blighted as the human wreckage they purvey. Then, may God have mercy on their souls.

And may we all understand that the evil of Planned Parenthood is of a piece with the rest of the falsehoods in circulation today. For example, global warming.

Let us understand that Progressives are those who would bind, via one lie or another.

Category: Abortion, Planned Parenthood

An Honest Feminist on Tumblr

Posted on | August 1, 2015 | 42 Comments

She describes herself on Tumblr as “a queer radical leftist. Feminist, anti-gun, vegan, body positive, anti-racist, etc.” She wants it to be known that she hates men:

I fucking HATE men I haTE the way they’re socialized I hate the way they talk I hate the way they take off their shirts like the world wants to see their nasty nipples I hate the way they don’t shave the fucking birds nest in their armpits but throw up a fuss if girls have leg hair I hate the way they think they’re the center of everything and how they erase women’s contribution to literally everything and make women believe that they’re worthless and sexualize women’s bodies I hATE men

She posted that five days ago and it’s got 1,200 notes already.

This is what feminism really is — raw hatred toward men. Some feminists manage to conceal the furious intensity of their hatred, but on Tumblr it comes pouring out as incoherent rage. Men “erase women’s contribution to literally everything and make women believe that they’re worthless”? It’s been a busy week. I’ve fallen behind on my erasing.

Category: Sex Trouble

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | July 31, 2015 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

The flood abated, and Korban son of Korbill surveyed the ruin by the light of a harvest moon. He and his archers had climbed high in a thick copse of trees on a flanking hill as the orc horde forded River Myzods. The arrival of the flood waters had taken out half of the invasion, as well as the engaged defenders. Father.
The confusion of the deluge had thrown the balance of the orcs into a frenzied retreat, saving the kingdom.
His kingdom.
Father would. . .be picking his way back to the rally point now.
His armor was heavier, somehow.

via Darleen. Also rocking: Jimmy Bise.

Category: Friday Fiction, Protein Wisdom

In The Mailbox: 07.31.15

Posted on | July 31, 2015 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.31.15

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Thanks to all the folks who bought stuff through my Amazon links this month, and special thanks to Loyal Commenter RS, who bought Preston & Palacios’ Franco: A Personal and Political Biography off my wish list!

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Major Bambi, Also, Mandy Nagy Needs Our Help!
Da Tech Guy: A Tale of Two Emmets
Louder With Crowder: Former Planned Parenthood Director Abby Johnson Leaks All
Michelle Malkin: Desperate Dems Recycle Planned Parenthood’s Mammogram Lie
Twitchy: Senator Boxer’s Lecture About “Legitimate” Health Care Ends With Truth Booms

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: CBS Evening News Covers Release Of Fourth Planned Parenthood Video
American Thinker: Exposed – America’s Enemies Within
Conservatives4Palin: Sarah Palin – Thanks, Senators Deb Fischer And Joni Ernst!
Don Surber: Camille Paglia, Frenemy Of Conservatives
Joe For America: Satanic Temple Raises Money For…Guess Which Party?
JustOneMinute: We Hardly Knew Ye
Pamela Geller: Kerry Claims Iran’s “Death To America” Chants Don’t Mean They Want To Kill Us
Protein Wisdom: Planned Parenthood – Even Worse Than You Thought
Shot In The Dark: Rolling In Glorious Victimhood
STUMP: Public Pension Quicktakes – All About Illinois And Chicago
The Gateway Pundit: DNC Chair Stumped, Can’t Explain Difference Between Democratic Party And Socialism
The Jawa Report: This Is Un-Freaking-American
The Lonely Conservative: US Intel Community Bracing For Security Breaches Thanks To Hillary’s E-Mails
This Ain’t Hell: Marine Corps Gazette Censors LTC Germano
Weasel Zippers: Why Is Planned Parenthood Trying To Suppress Videos? Evidence Of Buyers Getting “Fully Intact Babies”
Megan McArdle: Campus Rape Debate Needs Better Numbers
Mark Steyn: Unnatural Selection

Shop Amazon Fashion – Fall Denim

Category: Linkagery

God Bless Kentucky

Posted on | July 31, 2015 | 73 Comments

“My daughter comes in and says, ‘Dad, there’s a drone out here flying.’”

When your daughter’s sunbathing by your family’s backyard pool and she tells you there’s a drone hovering over her, what are you going to do? Well, if you’re in Bullitt County, Kentucky, you go get your shotgun and blast that dadgum thing out of the sky:

A Hillview man has been arrested after he shot down a drone flying over his property — but he’s not making any apologies for it.
It happened Sunday night at a home on Earlywood Way, just south of the intersection between Smith Lane and Mud Lane in Bullitt County, according to an arrest report.
Hillview Police say they were called to the home of 47-year-old William H. Merideth after someone complained about a firearm.
When they arrived, police say Merideth told them he had shot down a drone that was flying over his house. The drone was hit in mid-air and crashed in a field near Merideth’s home.
Police say the owner of the drone claimed he was flying it to get pictures of a friend’s house — and that the cost of the drone was over $1,800.
Merideth was arrested and charged with first degree criminal mischief and first degree wanton endangerment. He was booked into the Bullitt County Detention Center, and released on Monday.
WDRB News spoke with Merideth Tuesday afternoon, and he gave his side of the story.
“Sunday afternoon, the kids – my girls – were out on the back deck, and the neighbors were out in their yard,” Merideth said. “And they come in and said, ‘Dad, there’s a drone out here, flying over everybody’s yard.'”
Merideth’s neighbors saw it too.
“It was just hovering above our house and it stayed for a few moments and then she finally waved and it took off,” said neighbor Kim VanMeter.
VanMeter has a 16-year-old daughter who lays out at their pool. She says a drone hovering with a camera is creepy and weird.
“I just think you should have privacy in your own backyard,” she said.
Merideth agrees and said he had to go see for himself.
“Well, I came out and it was down by the neighbor’s house, about 10 feet off the ground, looking under their canopy that they’ve got under their back yard,” Merideth said. “I went and got my shotgun and I said, ‘I’m not going to do anything unless it’s directly over my property.’”
That moment soon arrived, he said.
“Within a minute or so, here it came,” he said. “It was hovering over top of my property, and I shot it out of the sky.”
“I didn’t shoot across the road, I didn’t shoot across my neighbor’s fences, I shot directly into the air,” he added.
It wasn’t long before the drone’s owners appeared.
“Four guys came over to confront me about it, and I happened to be armed, so that changed their minds,” Merideth said.
“They asked me, ‘Are you the S-O-B that shot my drone?’ and I said, ‘Yes I am,'” he said. “I had my 40[-caliber] Glock on me and they started toward me and I told them, ‘If you cross my sidewalk, there’s gonna be another shooting.'”

You tell ’em, buddy! Hell, yeah!

An armed society is a polite society, as Robert Heinlein said, and it’s certainly not polite to send your drone out snooping over other people’s property. If a man thinks you’re messing with his daughters in Bullitt County, Kentucky? You had better consider yourself lucky that your drone was the only thing he shot.

(Via Memeorandum.)

Category: Crime, Kentucky

Sex Scandal Hits Foreign Billionaire Who Gave $5 Million to Clinton Foundation

Posted on | July 31, 2015 | 16 Comments

Hansjorg Wyss is a 79-year-old Swiss business mogul who is “a generous donor to major liberal groups like the Center for American Progress and longtime financial patron of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta.” In December, Wyss made a $5 million commitment to Hillary Clinton’s “No Ceilings” women’s empowerment project at the Clinton Foundation. However, Wyss has been accused of sexually abusing a Colorado woman, according to a report by Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller:

At issue in the federal district court case was a $1.5 million settlement of a suit brought by Jacqueline Long, a Colorado woman who charged that Wyss brutally and sexually abused her for years while serving as his employee.
Long, a former development officer at the HJW Foundation, said she had to have sex with him in return for his grants to non-profits that focused on at-risk youth and sex trafficking, causes to which she was passionately devoted.
“He was not interested in these programs,” Long told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an exclusive interview. “He was only doing it in reward for my having sex with him. It was a tool for leverage.”

Pollock published that article last month. Now, lawyers for Wyss are trying to intimidate the woman (and the Daily Caller) into silence:

Hansjorg Wyss — a foreign billionaire with intimate ties to the United States’ top Democrats — wants authorities to imprison an American woman for speaking publicly about allegations of sexual abuse at his hands. . . .
Jacqueline Long of Aspen, Colorado alleges that Wyss would demand sex, and then later shower her with expensive gifts and contributions to causes she, as a development officer, advised the foundation to support.
Shortly after The Daily Caller News Foundation published a June 8 article that quoted Long, a lawyer for Wyss (pronounced “Vees”) filed an “emergency motion” asking Philadelphia County’s Court of Common Pleas to impose sanctions, including imprisonment, to prevent further violations of the non-disclosure provision of a May 2013 settlement agreement.
The court has yet to decide on the Wyss motion, which was filed June 17.
Lawyers for Wyss, a Swiss businessman who in December 2014 contributed $5 million to The Clinton Foundation’s feminist “No Ceilings” project — a favorite of Hillary Clinton — also threatened TheDCNF.
In a June 9 letter to The Daily Caller News Foundation, Wyss attorney Carolyn P. Short demanded an “immediate retraction” of the earlier report because, she charged, the article contained many “blatant falsehoods.” Failure to retract would result in litigation, Short warned.
In response, TheDCNF asked Short to cite specific errors in the story. In a June 10 email to Short, TheDCNF’s counsel replied, “you refer to ‘many blatant falsehoods’ in the reporting. If you can identify what specifically is false, we will review it immediately. If any thing is incorrect, we want to fix it.”
Short declined to identify any errors. Instead, she made a sweeping assertion, claiming the article contained “reckless, damaging and false allegations from a former disgruntled employee who is solely seeking to leverage those false statements for financial gain.” . . .
The original June 8 story highlighted Long’s case. She was a former employee at a Wyss foundation and at a California vineyard he owns. She described a lengthy intimate relationship with Wyss that allegedly turned violent and abusive.
The 2013 settlement agreement provided a $1.5 million payment to Long and a provision in which both parties agreed to keep details of the agreement secret.
Long’s supporters vigorously defend her and denounce Wyss, arguing that threatening her with jail for going public about his conduct toward her amounts to another round of abuse.
“I think he’s taking a bullying tactic,” Long friend Katie Beckley told TheDCNF. It’s another form of abuse.” Beckley specializes in grief therapy and operates a counseling practice in Aspen.
“He decided to be so vengeful toward her. It was pure vengeance. I was encouraged to see her speaking out. I think it showed a lot of courage,” Beckley said.

Here’s the thing: Non-disclosure agreements are there for a reason. When rich men pay hush money to their former mistresses, they expect to get what they pay for, namely, silence. It would seem that Jacqueline Long got her money, but she didn’t shut up.

For $1.5 million, you can buy a whole lot of silence, but that’s chump change to a guy like Wyss, and once the details of the lawsuit leaked to the media, he had a whole new problem. You see, it’s not the Daily Caller’s fault Jacqueline Long can’t keep her mouth shut, and it’s certainly not my fault. By trying to make Jacqueline Long shut up — and by trying to intimidate the Daily Caller — Wyss’s lawyers are calling attention to a story that we might otherwise have ignored.

This is called “The Streisand Effect.”

They chose poorly.

Pro Tip for Swiss Billionaires: The "Let's-Threaten-the-Press-into-Silence" trick usually doesn't work. http://t.co/NFYT13TQE3 #tcot

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) July 31, 2015

Category: Hillary Clinton, Scandal, Sex

More UVA Rape Hoax Fallout

Posted on | July 30, 2015 | 33 Comments

Ashe Schow reports:

Three members of the fraternity accused in a now-retracted Rolling Stone article of facilitating a brutal gang rape are suing the magazine, its publisher and the author.
George Elias IV, Ross Fowler and Stephen Hadford allege in their lawsuit that they were easily identified as members of Phi Kappa Psi who could have participated in the gang-rape, which was proved false shortly after the article was published. The three men have since graduated but allege in their lawsuit that they were subjected to harassment following the article’s publication.
Elias’ bedroom was at the top of the first flight of stairs in the fraternity house, and was “the mostly likely scene of the alleged crime,” the former students say. Elias says in the lawsuit that after “family friends, acquaintances, co-workers and reporters” identified him as one of the potential attackers, they “interrogated him, humiliated him, and scolded him.” Fowler and Hadford say they “suffered similar attacks.”
The lawsuit alleges that the students’ names and hometowns were listed online by anonymous Internet commenters, ensuring their “names will forever be associated with the alleged gang rape.” . . .
Once Elias was identified, he was “solicited daily for three consecutive days at his own home” by T. Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post, whose own investigation into the Rolling Stone claims brought about the article’s demise. Elias claims in the lawsuit that he “became nervous and distraught that reporters were easily able to find him and solicit him at his home.” . . .
The men are suing for two counts of defamation and “negligent infliction of emotional distress,” requesting $75,000 for each of the three counts.
The Rolling Stone story at the center of the lawsuit, “A Rape on Campus,” claimed that a University of Virginia college freshman named “Jackie” was gang-raped by seven fraternity members at a Phi Psi party. One of her alleged attackers was her date for the evening, “Drew,” who allegedly worked as a lifeguard at the school aquatics facility. . . .
As the story fell apart, different names were given for “Drew,” including “Haven Monahan.”
The fraternity members note in their lawsuit that no such party or gathering took place the night Jackie claimed — there was no pledging in the fall semester, no one named “Drew” or “Haven Monahan” was a member at the time, no member worked as a lifeguard at the time and no member matched the physical description given in the article.
In fact, neither “Drew” nor “Haven Monahan” ever existed.
Further, Charlottesville police investigated the claims made in the article and acknowledged in a press conference that the department was “not able to conclude to any substantive degree” that such claims were accurate.
The false article led to Phi Psi’s fraternity house being vandalized, and the fraternity was suspended by U.Va. President Teresa Sullivan, who, even after admitting the story was false, imposed numerous restrictions on Phi Psi and other fraternities.
The fraternity members’ lawsuit is the second filed against Rolling Stone due to the retracted story. U.Va. Dean Nicole Eramo, who was the only named villain in the article, filed a lawsuit in May against the magazine for its portrayal of her.
Amid the lawsuits, Rolling Stone announced that Managing Editor Will Dana is set to leave the magazine on Aug. 7. Dana issued an apology for the discredited article on Dec. 5, 2014, and received a backlash for suggesting that the problem with the story was the magazine’s “misplaced” trust in Jackie. . . .
Dana told the Columbia Journalism Review, which did a deep dive into the journalistic failures of the article, that he didn’t know Erdely hadn’t found the rapist named by Jackie, and when the source stopped responding to messages, Dana allowed Erdely to stop looking for the accused rapist and use a pseudonym in the article.
Rolling Stone’s publisher, Jann S. Wenner, whose media company is also being sued by the fraternity members, didn’t answer questions about whether Dana was leaving due to the gang-rape article. Instead, through a spokesman, he told the New York Times that “many factors go into a decision like this.”
Dana does not have another job lined up, and no successor has been named.

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