The Other McCain

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

Of Strange Worlds and Heroic Adventure

Posted on | March 19, 2015 | 10 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


For once, the New York Times Magazine got something right: when they profiled Jack Vance in 2009, they described him as “one of American literature’s most distinctive and undervalued voices”. This verges on understatement. Vance was equally at home in fantasy, mystery and SF, winning awards in all three genres, and his legacy also extends to role-playing games: it is no secret that the magic system employed in Gygax & Arneson’s Dungeons and Dragons is based on Vance’s The Dying Earth. Aside from his D&D connection, Vance is probably best known for his Hugo-winning novellas “The Dragon Masters” and “The Last Castle”, in which human heroes must fight and outwit not only alien invaders but opposition from their fellow humans. This is a recurring theme with Vance; another is the astonishing variety of cultures and societies created by man on the many planets they settle across the universe. For a sample, consider the many worlds traversed by the implacable Kirth Gersen in his one-man war against the criminal lords known as the Demon Princes: the poisonmongers of Sarkovy, with their complicated tribal fetishes, who practice paranoia as a way of life; the inhabitants of Thamber, whose feudal city-states war endlessly among themselves for the amusement of the immortal Kokor Hekkus; the desert-dwelling Darsh, with their equally repulsive food and mating practices…I could go on for pages, and this is just one series of five books! Vance further illuminates his tales of adventure with amusing and (sometimes) informative footnotes and chapter-heading epigraphs, which help provide context…or distraction for people with very short attention spans. Of all Vance’s longer works, I like the Demon Princes novels the best and cannot recommend them highly enough.


Equally rich are the five Planet of Adventure novels, in which astronaut Adam Reith crash-lands on the planet Tschai, where he discovers not only four alien races but their human slaves, taken in Earth’s distant past. Reith must penetrate the mystery of each race in turn while finding a way off the planet to warn Earth, and the reader’s reward is to have each race and its human slaves displayed in turn as only Vance can. Truly, the fun is mostly in the journey, though Reith’s final [SPOILER] is [SPOILER] as well.


Less well regarded, though still fascinating illustrations of Vance’s skill in showing bizarre human societies while still relating a tale of adventure of which Heinlein and Laumer would have approved, are The Anome, in which the musician Gastel Etzwane finds himself unexpectedly thrust into a position and responsibility when the ruler of Shant, the “Faceless Man”, diffidently refuses to confront the destructive invasion of the Roguskhoi; also, the Cadwal Chronicles, which begin with Araminta Station, where the aristocratic Conservancy tries to maintain the natural state of Cadwal against the humanoid Yips and their more “liberal” compatriots. Glawen Clattuc, an agent of the Conservancy’s Bureau B, must negotiate both politics on Cadwal and off-world adventures before the action reaches its climax.


For what my opinion is worth, Vance has no equals in his mastery of both description and action. His books are filled with desperate deeds and heroic acts done in strange landscapes and bizarre societies, and all of them excellently described. Probably his closest modern equivalent is Neal Stephenson, though Stephenson isn’t nearly as baroque as Vance, his cycle notwithstanding. 😉


Category: Books

Can We Make #FactsMatter Trend?

Posted on | March 19, 2015 | 50 Comments

Jonathan Capehart (@capehartj) confronts #Ferguson truth:

[T]he Justice Department released two must-read investigations connected to the killing of Brown that filled in blanks, corrected the record and brought sunlight to dark places by revealing ugly practices that institutionalized racism and hardship. They have also forced me to deal with two uncomfortable truths: Brown never surrendered with his hands up, and Wilson was justified in shooting Brown. . . .
Wilson knew about the theft of the cigarillos from the convenience store and had a description of the suspects. Brown fought with the officer and tried to take his gun. And the popular hands-up storyline, which isn’t corroborated by ballistic and DNA evidence and multiple witness statements, was perpetuated by Witness 101. In fact, just about everything said to the media by Witness 101, whom we all know as Dorian Johnson, the friend with Brown that day, was not supported by the evidence and other witness statements. . . .

You can read the whole thing, and kudos to Capehart for owning up to the bogus narrative and the hateful liars who created it — the “Mardi Gras parade of nutbag racial opportunists,” as Regular Right Guy calls them. There is a world of difference between (a) calling attention to legitimate grievances and (b) dishonestly exploiting those grievances.

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
— John Adams, 1770

“Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself . . . she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”
— Thomas Jefferson, 1786

What has happened to our respect for facts and our love for truth? How is it that a proven liar like Dorian Johnson — who was wanted on a warrant for theft charges the day Michael Brown was shot — could be hired by the City of St. Louis? How is that, after Johnson’s lie helped spark riots and the shooting of police officers, there are so few journalists who care about the facts and truth in Ferguson? How is it that MSNBC can employ a liar like Al Sharpton and nobody else in the media will speak the truth about what a dishonest monster Sharpton really is?

Of course, if liberals weren’t willing to tell lies — and fools weren’t ready to believe lies — no Democrat could ever get elected.





 

Category: Al Sharpton, Crime, Democrats, Media Bias, Missouri, Racism

Fernando To Her Majesty: “Dahling, You Look Mahvelous”

Posted on | March 18, 2015 | 21 Comments

by Smitty

Apparently, somebody missed the local Thronesniffers Anonymous meeting:

Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Party’s nominee, and she will win the 2016 election.
When you analyze the objective conditions of the Republican Party today and most likely over the next two years and compare them to Clinton’s strengths, it’s hard not to make such a prediction with confidence.
The email flap will be gone soon enough. Short of the State Department finding some grenade of an email, the release of some 55,000 Clinton emails from the government archives is more likely to reinforce Clinton’s formidable leadership and executive abilities than subtract from her decades-old image of an American Iron Lady.

I’ve got a competing narrative. People “in the know” have all of the dirt they want on Her Majesty, and will cheerfully let her soak up all the Commie chlorine (pretty sure they are not on oxygen over there) and block other competition, while soiling Her Royal Personage just enough to keep her from actually getting her cankles across the finish line ahead of the GOP.

OK, I don’t think the GOP is actually that deft, but it makes for a fine wish.

Category: Hillary Clinton, Republicans

Fake #GamerGate Victims

Posted on | March 18, 2015 | 61 Comments

If Nicholas “Sarah” Nyberg (@srhbutts) is a feminist, I’m the King of Sweden. What is he/she? Living proof that bad causes attract bad people, and the “Social Justice Warrior” (SJW) crusade against #GamerGate is a very bad cause. As soon as I mention #GamerGate, I know many of my conservative friends will ask, “What is #GamerGate?”

Perhaps the best introduction is “Feminist Bullies Tearing the Video Game Industry Apart” by Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart.com. To distill a long and complex saga into a few words, a bunch of left-leaning blogger/activist types figured out that they could parlay journalism into a lucrative slice of the billion-dollar video game business. Hurling accusations of “misogyny” and “objectification” against popular games (and the gamers who loved those games), self-declared SJW’s tried to hustle their way to fame and fortune. Because I don’t play video games, and haven’t followed the  #GamerGate saga closely, all I know is that once some shady conflicts of interest were exposed, the suspicion of pay-for-play scams outraged gamers and all hell broke loose.

Anybody who knows anything about online gamers knows many of these dudes Don’t Play Well With Others. If you thought those dudes were going to display decorum and civility when they came under attack by a bunch of “social justice” types, you’ve got another think coming. All of that is necessary preamble to this Huffington Post headline:

I Set Out To Expose A Hate Movement In Gaming
— So They Set Out To Destroy My Life

Leaving aside Nicholas/Sarah’s claim that #GamerGate is a “hate movement,” instead we may ask, what did “they” do to “destroy” his/her life? Or perhaps, what did Nicholas/Sarah do that made him/her worth destroying? Mr./Ms. Nyberg begins his/her tale:

Gamergate’s campaign to terrorize me with my personal information started, strangely enough, with them sending me my own drawings. They managed to dig up silly Microsoft Paint pictures that were a lighthearted joke between friends almost a decade ago. It was a message: They had figured out who I was. I had been doxxed.
I had been openly critical of Gamergate for quite some time. There had been harassment from the beginning. My criticism was done, intentionally, pseudonymously.

Ah, yes, a familiar story.

The “clever” Internet user decides (a) they can use a pseudonym (“Sarah Butts”) to become a famous Online Superhero Against Evil, and (b) no one will ever figure out that Superman is actually Clark Kent.

Or that “The Gaped Crusader” is Neal Rauhauser.

Right? So if you are a man named Nicholas Edwin Nyberg who wants to be a woman named Sarah Nyberg, you have to ask yourself whether going to war with gamers as “Sarah Butts” is a smart move.

Especially when, as it turns out, you were already sort of an Internet legend, not in a good way. After Nicholas/Sarah tried to shut down funding for the group “8chan,” somebody in that group called attention to an account on another site and (“mysteriously”), Nicholas/Sarah began talking about that account on Twitter and then — poof! — information on the other account started getting deleted:

This simple act of damage control shattered Sarah’s anonymity; he’s one of those retards that uses the same username for every account that he makes, so his MySpace and Facebook were quickly found and an entire treasure trove of links was dumped on 8chan. Along with the links there were discussions from Sarah admitting to piracy, a Photobucket gallery featuring his muffin-top, and even a Hot or Not profile with a hilariously low rating.
Sarah is currently panic-deleting f–king everything, meanwhile others are coming out of the framework to dig info on srhbutt’s hilarious past at the expense of our contributors’ afternoon.

So say the crew at Encyclopedia Dramatica and, while I can’t vouch for the authenticity of everything they claim, it seems they have documented a few important facts. Nicholas/Sarah owns the site “Final Fantasy Shrine” (FFS), and had acquired a bad reputation there:

Another character was Sarah, an administrator who was allegedly a pedophile. (Don’t ask me whether “she” was really a girll; it was hard to tell.) I think Sarah had been expressing an unhealthy fixation on children from the very beginning, and I could only hope it was all some disgusting in-joke that had gone on for too long.

Oh, really? That was from 2007, and there was another item from 2006, where someone was complaining about an online chat for transsexuals in which they encountered “an admitted pedophile. Oh yes, a transsexual pedophile.” Another user responded by identifying this transsexual pedophile as “retrogradesnowcone.” And are you surprised to learn that Nicholas/Sarah’s Photobucket account name is “retrogradesnowcone”?

Ladies and gentlemen of the Internet jury, I am not here to make any accusations against Nicholas “Sarah” Nyberg. Rather, I’m merely presenting to you the case as I encountered it. You can read the whole thing at Encyclopedia Dramatica and evaluate the evidence yourself.

By the way, how do you feel about people who have sex with dogs? Because there’s a quote in that article — which I won’t duplicate here — from a chatlog in which Nicholas/Sarah (allegedly) talks about having sex with dogs in a way that suggests that he/she was doing more than just talking about it. While I don’t know if animal welfare agencies  would consider that chatlog to be “evidence,” I’ll permit you ladies and gentlemen of the Internet jury to form your own opinions.

Is Nicholas “Sarah” Nyberg a pedophile dogf–ker? That’s not for me to decide, but the point is, this information was out there on the Internet, but nobody had ever previously connected it to Nyberg until he/she attacked “8chan.” And now Nicholas/Sarah postures as a heroic victim:

The pages they wrote about me claim that I am a fraud, a felon, guilty of tax evasion, a sexual predator and dozens of other equally absurd lies . . .
This is damage is meant to be as close to permanent as possible; picture the most heinous lies anyone could tell about you, but done publicly, in a way that will never disappear. They will be seen by any job you interview for, any curious acquaintance, any date that decides to peek on Google. On top of this, it also outs me as trans and hosts pictures from before I transitioned; this is the kind of online abuse that could get trans women evicted, cause them to lose their jobs, be assaulted or even killed.
This is the first public piece of writing I have ever written under my name, but doing so was not done voluntarily. Because of the position Gamergate put me in, I have no choice but to take my name back; they have publicly outed me as trans, and littered the web with defamation. Their aim was to scare me into silence, but they have done just the opposite: They have both amplified my voice and made me more determined to be a part of fixing the culture in gaming that allows this to happen.

Dude, you attacked them. Your foolishness in believing that your Twitter handle guaranteed you ironclad anonymity does not mean that others are responsible for your error. If what they’ve written about you is just “absurd lies,” then prove them wrong. Were those dog-sex chats a forgery? Was it just a coincidence that somebody with the moniker “retrogradesnowcone” had a reputation as a transsexual pedophile in 2006? And if you don’t owe $40,000 in unpaid taxes, couldn’t that “absurd lie” easily be proven false? Anyway, my suspicion is that heroic social justice crusaders who try to hide their identities aren’t so much afraid of harassment as they are afraid of the truth, i.e., that they aren’t really heroic, they’re just deranged narcissists.

Maybe they’re tax-evading pedophile dogf–kers, too.

Allegedly, I hasten to add.

 

Category: Feminism

Netanyahu Wins, Obama Loses

Posted on | March 18, 2015 | 45 Comments

It was profoundly weird to watch coverage of the Israeli elections Tuesday. At one point, I saw CNN’s John King doing exit poll results as if this was a U.S. presidential election and I was like, “What the hell is this?” What it was, of course, is that American Democrats (including members of President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign team) had launched an enormous effort to defeat Israel’s conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Predictably, the liberal media jumped aboard this Democrat-driven anti-Netanyahu bandwagon, and yesterday there was a palpable excitement from the media talking heads as they anticipated the imminent defeat of the Dreaded Right-Wing Jew.

Israeli voters, however, decided that Democrats and their liberal media friends must cry the tears of unfathomable sadness:

Barack Obama might have hoped for a leadership change that would reboot his poisoned relationship with Israel’s government. But he didn’t get it on Tuesday, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 00 thanks in part to a hard lurch right — appeared to make a dramatic comeback after trailing in pre-election polls.
As votes were counted Tuesday night, Netanyahu claimed a dramatic comeback victory. “Against all odds: A great victory for the Likud. A major victory for the Israeli people,” he posted on Facebook.

In the Obama Age, everything is about Obama, even the elections in Israel. Steven Kruiser at PJMedia comments:

The last few days were absolutely polluted with stories about Netanyahu’s imminent political demise, with the most popular version of the tale being that he ruined his chances by angering great and powerful thin-skinned consumer of canines currently occupying the Oval Office.
One does not hurt Barack Obama’s feelings without some backlash.
Now that Obama has once again been revealed impotent in helping candidates not named Barack Obama to victory, his media petting zoo is out of sorts. They will be expending a lot of effort to explain exactly why this victory wasn’t really a victory.

(Via Memeorandum.)

 

Category: Barack Obama, Israel, Media Bias

‘Wearing Murdoch’s Leash’

Posted on | March 18, 2015 | 75 Comments

Thus does Vox Day headline this troubling media news: Blogger Mickey Kaus has resigned as a blogger at The Daily Caller “after the conservative site’s editor-in-chief, Tucker Carlson, pulled a critical column about Fox News from the site”:

“It’s pretty simple,” Kaus said in an interview, “I wrote a piece attacking Fox for not being the opposition on immigration and amnesty — for filling up the airwaves with reports on ISIS and terrorism, and not fulfilling their responsibility of being the opposition on amnesty and immigration. … I posted it at 6:30 in the morning. When I got up, Tucker had taken it down. He said, ‘We can’t trash Fox on the site. I work there.'”
Carlson, who co-founded The Daily Caller in 2010, is a conservative contributor to Fox News and the host of its weekend edition of “Fox & Friends.”
Kaus says when he told Carlson he needed to be able to write about Fox, Carlson told him it was a hard-and-fast rule, and non-negotiable.
“He said it was a rule, and he wouldn’t be able to change that rule. So I told him I quit,” Kaus explained.

(Via Memeorandum.) On the one hand, I understand Tucker’s position: “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.”

On the other hand, there has been a perceptible drift in Fox’s coverage over the past few years — not just on immigration  — that does deserve scrutiny. For example, during the campaign for the 2012 Republican nomination, it seemed obvious to me and others that the network was playing favorites among the candidates. If you were not a Mitt Romney supporter, you had to grit your teeth during Fox’s coverage of the GOP primary campaign, especially when Karl Rove was on. So the indication that Fox is now indirectly influencing coverage in other conservative media . . . Well, it’s troubling.

 

Category: Fox News, Immigration

CASE DISMISSED!

Posted on | March 17, 2015 | 56 Comments

Just got the news that Brett Kimberlin’s federal lawsuit against myself and 20 other defendants has been dismissed with prejudice.

UPDATE: For reasons I don’t understand, the court has ruled that one count of Kimberlin’s case against Patrick “Patterico” Frey can proceed to discovery. Troubling.

UPDATE II: From Judge Hazel’s ruling:

For the reasons stated above, the Court will GRANT all of Defendants’ motions to dismiss, except that it will DENY Defendant Frey’s motion to dismiss as to Count II, which will proceed into discovery. Thus, Count I (RICO) and Count III (§ 1985) are dismissed, with prejudice, as to all Defendants. The remaining state law claims (Counts IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X) are also dismissed as to all Defendants, without prejudice to Kimberlin’s right to re-file in state court, should he so choose.

So, no RICO, and all defendants except Patterico dismissed, he still at jeopardy on one count. As for the rest of us, Kimberlin could still sue everybody in state court. The problem there that Kimberlin has already sued four of us in state court and lost. Without the conspiracy claim to tie us all into a bundle of racketeers (absurd, I know, but such was the theory of Kimberlin’s RICO claim), we would all be individual plaintiffs. I doubt very seriously state court action will follow, but who knows what the Perjuring Pro Se Pipsqueak might do next?

UPDATE III: One of John Hoge’s commenters scanned through the judge’s ruling and culled out the following highlights:

he has failed

Kimberlin has failed

his § 1962(c) claim would still fail

Kimberlin has failed

Kimberlin has failed

his § 1962(c) would still fail

Kimberlin has failed

Finally, Kimberlin has failed

Kimberlin has therefore failed

and, as a result, has failed

he has failed

As discussed, Kimberlin has failed

Kimberlin has not been prejudiced in any meaningful way by his failure

Because Kimberlin has failed

Yeah. I think you get the point.




 

Category: The Kimberlin Files

In The Mailbox, 03.17.15

Posted on | March 17, 2015 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Louder With Crowder: Allen West Goes Nuclear On Obama In Transgender Debate
First Street Journal: Oh, I So Hope This Is True!
Proof Positive: The Blue Stained Helmet
Doug Powers: John Kerry Expresses “Great Respect” For Iran’s Anti-Nuke Fatwa
Twitchy: #HandsUpDontShoot Mob Turns On WaPo’s Jonathan Capehart For Admitting “Wilson Was Justified In Shooting Brown”


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Family Of Jeffrey Williams Confirms Cop-Shooting Suspect “Had Taken Part” In Ferguson Protests
American Thinker: Jew-Bashing 101
BLACKFIVE: Airborne Girl’s Guide To Iran And Nuclear Weapons
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Advice For Prospective English Majors
Conservatives4Palin: Sarah Palin Tells Kathy Griffin “It’s Called Karma, Dear”
Don Surber: The Hollowness Of Dowd’s Rant
Jammie Wearing Fools: Afraid Of Merciless Booing, Loathsome Mayor DiBlasio To Skip St. Patrick’s Day Parade
Joe For America: Islamists In Toledo Caught Laundering Money For Jihad
JustOneMinute: Holy Shit.
Pamela Geller: Obama Removes Iran, Hezbollah From List of Terror Threats
Protein Wisdom: Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Takes Effect April 1. Restaurants Closing. UNEXPECTEDLY!
Shot In The Dark: Trulbert! Part XXXI – Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Apocalypse?
STUMP: How Not To Look Like A Complete Ass When Doing Your Job…AS A REPORTER
The Gateway Pundit: Missouri Lt. Gov Says There’s More Racism In The DOJ Than Anywhere In St. Louis
The Jawa Report: Oklahoma Democrat Wants Christian Businesses To Identify Themselves With Signs In Windows
The Lonely Conservative: Clintons Cashed In On Former Presidents Act To The Tune Of $16 Million
This Ain’t Hell: Fort Hood Pimp Sentenced
Weasel Zippers: ISIS-Like Body Count – Twenty People Shot In Chicago Over Last 24 Hours
Megan McArdle: The Smart Way To Keep People Out Of Prison
Mark Steyn: Phonewall Stonewall


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