The Other McCain

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

Feminist Logic: Shut Up, Haters

Posted on | May 15, 2015 | 104 Comments

Did you know @KateSpencer has “self-inflicted body shame”? Yeah, your first thought is probably: Kate Who? But before we answer that question, let’s talk about her body shame:

Because I am thirty-three years old [she wrote in 2013], and I am still not comfortable in my own body. I haven’t been since I was eight and I sprouted breasts before everybody else . . . I wasn’t when I was twelve and towered over boys, slouching to bring myself down in inches. Nor was I at nineteen, skinny-dipping in the waters off of Long Island with my closest college friends. Even though I was drunk and stoned the shame was still able to find a way in . . .
I was not comfortable in my body in my twenties . . . And I wasn’t after I gave birth to my daughter at thirty-one . . .
The thing about self-inflicted body shame and self-loathing is that it seeps into other aspects of your life. It makes you feel unworthy in other situations . . . It’s a cycle of worthlessness that weaves its way into social interactions, sexual relationships, and random moments of your life.

You can read the whole thing, if you have a weird voyeuristic interest in watching someone publicly wallow in useless self-pity. But now let’s answer your question, Kate Who?

Kate Spencer has been writing and performing at the UCB Theatre since 2002. She is a member of the improv team Reuben Starship and co-host of the pop culture panel show Shut Up! I Hate You! Kate is a Senior Producer/Writer and on-air correspondent for VH1, where she spends a lot of time yapping on TV and the internet about pop culture and celebrity news. She’s interviewed everyone from George Clooney to Kristen Stewart to Fleetwood Mac, and one time Connie Britton called her “adorable” and she almost cried. Writing credits include: Newsweek/Daily Beast, Vulture, Hello Giggles, College Humor and The Huffington Post, who named Kate one of their “18 Funny Women You Should Be Following On Twitter.”

Oh, right: Women full of self-loathing are so hilarious. But it was on Twitter where — har-de-har-har — she posted this:

“People who refuse to believe women are harassed online sure do love to make their point by harassing women online.”

Non sequitur much? Does anyone deny the existence of online harassment? Certainly not I, having been harassed by the deranged cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt, among others. But this “harassment” meme has been exploited by feminists as part of an attempt to paint their critics as dangerously violent haters, thus to (a) elicit sympathy for feminists; (b) discredit all opposition to feminism as inspired by misogyny; and (c) try to get their critics banned from Twitter and/or subjected to criminal prosecution. Because feminism is a totalitarian ideology, it can only succeed by silencing opposition. This is what has happened in academia, where Title IX has been weaponized and deployed to prohibit criticism of feminist dogma. (Remember that Larry Summers was forced to resign as president of Harvard University after he publicly speculated about “innate differences” between men and women.) After more than two decades of increasingly rigid feminist hegemony in higher education, most college-educated people under 40 have been so thoroughly indoctrinated in the false premises of feminist ideology that not only can they not “think outside the box,” but they’ve never met anyone who could explain to them that there is a box.

Feminists now believe that only women are targeted by online harassment, and furthermore believe that any negative attention online is “harassment,” and SHUT UP, HATER! Having spent the past 17 months researching and writing about radical feminism — Sex Trouble, $11.69 in paperback, $1.99 in Kindle ebook — I’ve long since become accustomed to this reaction. Inside the Feminist Internet Bubble, everybody tells each other how awesomely clever they are, so that all any woman needs to do is to declare herself a feminist and she can immerse herself in a digital estrogen bath of self-affirmation. However, the minute anyone from outside this bubble calls attention to the absurdity or falsehood of feminist claims — ZOMG! You’re a hateful ignorant misogynist engaged in the Internet equivalent of rape!

The fool cannot stand to have her ideological folly held up to critical scrutiny and (perhaps you have noticed) the critic need not even offer a detailed analysis or a counter-theory in order to provoke feminists to shrieking panic and fury. Merely to quote what the feminist has said and expose it to readers outside the Feminist Internet Bubble is deemed hateful “harassment.” Why? Because the errors and falsehoods of feminism are generally self-evident, they inspire caustic mockery from any sane person with ordinary common sense. Nothing is more offensive to feminists than being mocked by ordinary people with common sense.

What we are not supposed to notice is the problematic premises asserted within what I call feminism’s Patriarchal Thesis:

  1. All women are victims of oppression;
  2. All men benefit from women’s oppression;
    therefore
  3. Whatever.

In other words, when your worldview begins with the assumption that normal human life is a system of injustice in which all women (collectively) are victimized by all men (collectively), then it is possible to justify almost anything you do as part of your effort to overthrow this oppressive system. Smash Patriarchy!

 

The Patriarchal Thesis absolves feminists of any obligation to meet the ordinary requirements of intelligent discourse. Logic is unnecessary and, as for facts, they are (a) whatever feminists say they are or (b) irrelevant if they do not confirm the Patriarchal Thesis. Believing themselves oppressed, and believing that men universally participate in the oppression of women, feminists thereby justify themselves in telling blatant lies and insulting men. Anyone who dares call notice to the hateful dishonesty of feminism is presumed to be a dimwit with bad motives because, of course, feminists are the moral and intellectual superiors of anyone who disagrees with them.

So, you may ask, exactly how oppressed is Kate Spencer? The crucible of her adolescent suffering was Dana Hall School (annual tuition $43,200), and she got her bachelor of arts degree in Women’s Studies from Bates College (annual tuition $47,030). In other words, she was a rich prep school kid who attended one of those money-no-object New England liberal arts colleges at which she never had to encounter any grubby commoners from places where people drive pickup trucks, listen to hillbilly music, believe in Jesus and vote Republican.

Kate Spencer‘s yearly prep school tuition bill was more than the median household income in New Mexico, Tennessee and seven other states, but she is oppressed because of her body shame. Don’t you dare doubt her victimhood, you sexist bigot, because her suffering makes Kate Spencer your superior. If you should express any objection to Kate Spencer’s insulting nonsense, why, that’s clearly illegal harassment!

Don’t ever bother hating Kate Spencer, you stupid Republican rednecks, because you could never hate her as much as she hates herself. And, of course, her self-hatred is your fault.





 

Category: Sex Trouble

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | May 15, 2015 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Sirens now, after the gunshot. Scream captured, Munch-meets-Pollock style, on the wall.
Theirs had been a long relationship, full of pain, suffering, and degradation. They’d retained a twisted regard through all of the abuse. She certainly didn’t hate him, for all her wrist was still numb from the final recoil.
The lurid details would play out in court and the press. In the end, she’d stand exonerated. A book deal for certain; reality TV show? That would have to wait for the legal beagles to finish their barking.
Whipping up a Dominatrix-Assisted Suicide market sure was work.

via Darleen

Category: Friday Fiction, Uncategorized

King of the Blues, R.I.P.

Posted on | May 15, 2015 | 12 Comments

America has lost a national treasure:

B. B. King, whose world-weary voice and wailing guitar lifted him from the cotton fields of Mississippi to a global stage and the apex of American blues, died Thursday in Las Vegas. He was 89.
Mr. King married country blues to big-city rhythms and created a sound instantly recognizable to millions: a stinging guitar with a shimmering vibrato, notes that coiled and leapt like an animal, and a voice that groaned and bent with the weight of lust, longing and lost love.
“I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions,” Mr. King said in his autobiography, “Blues All Around Me” (1996), written with David Ritz.
In performances, his singing and his solos flowed into each other as he wrung notes from the neck of his guitar, vibrating his hand as if it were wounded, his face a mask of suffering. Many of the songs he sang — like his biggest hit, “The Thrill Is Gone” (“I’ll still live on/But so lonely I’ll be”) — were poems of pain and perseverance.

It is worth noting that B.B. King’s biggest hit, recorded in 1969, was a cover version of a 1951 song by Roy Hawkins and Rick Darnell, but King made it his own. The elements of King’s trademark style — playing guitar “fills” between vocal lines, bending notes and adding vibrato — were not original to him, but he combined them in an unique way with sophisticated arrangements. Aware of his own lack of musical education, King at the outset of his career was shrewd enough to hire the classically trained Onzie Horne to write arrangements for his band, and hit the road with a vengeance. When it came to “paying dues” as a performer, nobody could dispute that King’s dues were fully paid:

He began in juke joints, country dance halls and ghetto nightclubs, playing 342 one-night stands in 1956 and 200 to 300 shows a year for a half-century thereafter, rising to concert halls, casino main stages and international acclaim.

Anyone enthralled by the popular misconception that a working musician’s life is glamorous should contemplate what it was like for King and his band in the 1950s when, in addition to the ordinary hassles of life on the road, they also had to cope with the difficulties that Jim Crow-era segregation imposed. King’s hard-earned status as the most commercially successful blues performer in history, however, required him to endure the ups and downs of a career affected by shifts in popular music tastes. In the early 1960s, he was actually booed in Baltimore by a young audience that was there to see the soul crooner Sam Cooke. King kept working — playing more than 40 weeks on the road year after year — until a new generation rediscovered the blues. British rockers like the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, who had traced rock-and-roll back to its R&B roots, inspired a blues revival in the late 1960s:

Mr. King considered a 1968 performance at the Fillmore West, the San Francisco rock palace, to have been the moment of his commercial breakthrough . . .
When he saw “long-haired white people” lining up outside the Fillmore, he said, he told his road manager, “I think they booked us in the wrong place.” Then the promoter Bill Graham introduced him to the sold-out crowd: “Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the chairman of the board, B. B. King.”
“Everybody stood up, and I cried,” Mr. King said. “That was the beginning of it.”

King was 43 years old and had already played more than 4,000 gigs before his “commercial breakthrough” in 1968.

Think about that the next time you see a spoiled rich white girl at an elite university whining about how she’s oppressed.

“Trigger alert,” my ass.

B.B. King was born the son of sharecroppers in Mississippi and bought his first guitar for $15 when he was 12 years old. Imagine how he must have felt in December 2006 when he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush. Real achievement, earned through hard work and persistence, is the only kind of success any honest man should ever desire. I don’t care who you are or how much “talent” you’ve got, you damned sure ain’t better than the King of the Blues.

“Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings . . .”
— Proverbs 22:29 (KJV)





 

Category: Culture, History, Music

Stephanopoulos Wishes He Could Get Over Macho Grande Like Brian Williams

Posted on | May 15, 2015 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

via Treacher & Paco

Category: humor

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.15.15

Posted on | May 15, 2015 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Blues Legend BB King Dead At 89

Laying down the hot licks with Lucille

Felled by complications of diabetes at Las Vegas home


The defining blues man for generations


Images: BB King and Lucille



Amtrak CEO: Railroad Takes Full Responsibility For Crash
NTSB says train accelerated from 70 to 100 in last minutes before crash

Wreckage Of Marine Helicopter Found In Nepal
Nepal’s military has no other details; team being sent to recon wreckage



POLITICS
Boehner Wangs Reporter: Blaming GOP For Amtrak Accident “Stupid”

The Speaker is not amused by your partisan shenanigans

“It’s hard for me to imagine that people take the bait on some of the nonsense that gets spewed around here.”


Stephanopoulos Out As GOP Debate Moderator

House Scraps Illegals’ Path To Military Service


FL Gov. Scott Aids Craft Brewers, Ends “Growler War”

Gowdy Blames State Dept. For Holding Up Hillary’s Benghazi Testimony

Russ Feingold Looking For 2016 Rematch With Ron Johnson

House Passes Defense Bill, Obama Threatens Veto



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Sinks As Production Spree Continues: WTI $59.73, Brent $66.64
The Avon Bid That Isn’t
Eurozone Bonds Rebound
Netflix In Talks To Take Content To China
Dairy Queen Taking Sodas Off Kids’ Menu
Digital First Media, Gannett May Swap Venture Properties
Reddit Would Appreciate It If You All Stopped Being Horrible To Each Other
Bing Follows Google With “Mobile-Friendly” Algorithm Change
GTA 5 Mods Angry Planes And No Clip Contain Malware
Gears Of War Leaks For XBox One
Zuckerberg Deletes Facebook Post With Incorrect Map Of India



SPORTS
LeBron Scores 38 As Cavs Put Down Bulls In Game 6

Wink’s as good as a nod to a suffering Scottie P

Cleveland moves on after 106-101 win

Astros Rally, Upset Blue Jays 6-4

Rockets Stun Clippers, Force Game 7

Rockies Snap Skid, Edge Dodgers 5-4

Newgarden Flips Car In Indy 500 Practice

Tigers Maul Twins 13-1

Pods Pound Nats 8-3 After Long Rain Delay



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Natalie Portman To Play Jackie Kennedy In New Biopic

From frumpy Justice Ginsburg to fashionable First Lady Jackie

Movie to cover four days of Jackie’s life after JFK’s assassination


George Clooney Quits Tom Ford’s New Movie


Sony Conjuring Remake Of The Craft


Sean Penn On The Sidelines As Charlize Shines At Cannes

Simpsons Stalwart Harry Shearer Hasn’t Left The Show…Yet

Victoria’s Secret Models Take Over Turks & Caicos

How Tinder Influenced Hilary Duff’s New Music Video

OITNB Star Reveals The Biggest Perk Of Prison

Blythe Danner Defends Daughter Gwyneth Paltrow

Spike Lee Defends “Chiraq” Title For Chicago Film



FOREIGNERS
Draghi Says EU Won’t Stop Short With QE
Burundi Coup Fails, Leaders Arrested
Cameron To Meet SNP Leader Sturgeon
China, India Pledge To Cool Border Dispute
Malaysia Says Illegals Will Be Turned Back
Al-Nusra Re-Emerging As Key Rebel Faction In Syria
US Navy Patrols May Force China To Clarify Claims To South China Sea Islands
ISIS Closing In On Ancient City Of Palmyra
60 Killed (Mostly Jihadis) As Nigerian Troops, Boko Haram Clash
World Vision Halts Relief Missions In South Sudan



BLOGS & STUFF
EBL: Stephanopoulos’ Conflict Of Interest
Michelle Malkin: The Return Of Obama’s Hoax-Spreading Bitter Half
Twitchy: No, Fox News Didn’t Censor Picasso’s “Women Of Algiers”
Shark Tank: The Failed Republican Hispanic Outreach In Florida
American Power: Hard Rain Hits Southern California
American Thinker: Forks, Washington And The Spotted Owl
Conservatives4Palin: Marco Rubio Reveals His Foreign Policy Doctrine
Don Surber: Name That Party – Child Porn Edition
Jammie Wearing Fools: “Hide Hillary” Strategy Backfiring
Joe For America: Female ISIS Recruiter Is A Journalism Student Living In Seattle
JustOneMinute: Obama Straw Men Are Like Sausages
Pamela Geller: BBC Compares Jihadi Imam Anjem Chaudhury to Gandhi, Mandela
Protein Wisdom: Friday Fiction – 100 Word Challenge
Shot In The Dark: Self-Defense
STUMP: Public Pensions Primer – Places to Start – The Public Plans Database
The Gateway Pundit: Record Antarctic Sea Ice May Force Scientists To Abandon Permanent Station
The Jawa Report: Ministry Of Boobies, Slacker Edition
The Lonely Conservative: CFPB Warns Lenders Not To Discriminate Against Welfare Recipients
This Ain’t Hell: Veterans Trading Company Fires Exec For Military Service
Weasel Zippers: James Taylor Slobbers Over Obama As Greatest President Ever
Megan McArdle: Save The Pensions – No Sudden Moves, Please
Mark Steyn: “Problem Populations”, Here And There


For a limited time, the International Lord of Hate’s debut novel, Monster Hunter International, is free for the Kindle!
Shop Amazon – 15% Off SOG Knives and Tools

Category: Live at Five

The Hired Liars of Liberal Media

Posted on | May 14, 2015 | 29 Comments

Andrew Breitbart used the phrase “Democrat-Media Complex” to describe the dishonest and hypocritical frauds who consider their partisan opinions to be synonymous with Truth and Virtue.

Based on my own experience — as an ex-Democrat who has been in the news business since 1986 — I long ago concluded that most journalists don’t notice liberal bias for the same reason fish don’t notice water. It’s everywhere, all around them, and it’s all they’ve ever known. Because liberalism is the default mindset of nearly everyone in the media, it becomes a sort of self-confirming prejudice, where those who don’t buy into the liberal mythology are systematically excluded from the industry and the few dissenters are ostracized within the industry.

ABC News Anchor George Stephanopoulos
Donated $50,000 to Clinton Foundation
ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos donated $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation in recent years, records show. The contribution is publicly available information, but the host had not previously disclosed it to ABC viewers, despite taking part in on-air discussions about the Clinton Foundation and its controversial relationship with foreign donors.
Stephanopoulos, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, confirmed the donation to POLITICO’s Dylan Byers after the Free Beacon contacted ABC News for comment. The host, who acknowledged making two donations of $25,000 between 2013 and 2014, issued a statement of apology for failing to disclose his contributions. . . .
Stephanopoulos’s recent coverage of the topic has been challenged by critics who question his objectivity as a longtime Clinton aide. The host’s April 26 interview with Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer, for example, elicited partisan reactions after Stephanopoulos repeatedly pressed the Schweizer to acknowledge the lack of a “smoking gun” among the allegations in his book. . . .
Conservative commentators, meanwhile, complained about Stephanopoulos’s “aggressively” dismissive questioning, and took issue with a former Clinton operative asking Schweizer, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, about his “partisan interest” in writing Clinton Cash. . . .

The vile dishonesty of the Democrat-Media Complex is exceeded only by the vile hypocrisy of the Democrat-Media Complex.





 

Category: ABC, Bill Clinton, Corruption, Democrats, Election, Hillary Clinton, Media Bias

Kentucky Fugitive Charged With Sex Crimes Arrested in Identity Theft Case

Posted on | May 14, 2015 | 43 Comments

Michael Mease, 40, was wanted on felony charges including first-degree rape in Hardin County, Kentucky, where authorities say his four victims were ages 9 to 15:

Someone came to Knoxville police headquarters on Tuesday complaining that his wife’s ex-boyfriend may have stolen his identity. The ex-boyfriend was working at an area restaurant, and the man told police he’d been notified that his government assistance had been stopped because he worked at a local restaurant, according to KPD.
The man, however, didn’t work at the business.
Knoxville police learned the ex-boyfriend was wanted in Kentucky. Members of KPD’s Repeat Offender Squad kept watch on the restaurant until the suspect left at closing Tuesday.
“At approximately 11:30 p.m., the suspect was observed leaving the business,” according to KPD. “As officers approached the suspect he fled on foot. K-9 Officer Nate Skellenger utilized his (K-9) partner, Ammo, to detain the fleeing suspect. The suspect tried to fight off Ammo but was unsuccessful.”
Mease was treated at University of Tennessee Medical Center for several dog bites.
According to police, he had a valid driver’s license from North Carolina with his picture on it, but the license was in the name of man who had reported the identity theft.
Once Mease’s real name was determined, authorities linked him to the sex crimes in Kentucky.
In Knoxville, he also faces charges of identity theft, criminal impersonation, resisting arrest and being a fugitive from justice.

This case illustrates something about crime that liberals can’t seem to understand: Most crime is committed by career criminals. Habitual lawbreakers who commit serious crimes also commit petty crimes. By the time a criminal gets busted for a serious offense like murder or rape, chances are he has already gotten away with numerous other offenses, such as burglary, drug possession, petty theft and assault. The classic illustration of this was when Bill Bratton was hired to head New York City’s transit police. Bratton cracked down on fare-beaters — people who jump the turnstiles or otherwise enter the subway system without paying — and insisted that each of them be booked and fingerprinted. The results: About 1 in 7 of the arrested fare-beaters were wanted on criminal warrants, including aggravated assault, murder and rape, and many of them were found to be carrying weapons.

The success of Bratton’s efforts, which were subsequently expanded when Rudy Giuliani became mayor, have been credited as validating the so-called “Broken Windows” theory of law enforcement, but it’s really just common sense. Criminal behavior is not randomly distributed within the population. Habitual criminality arises from an anti-social disposition, among individuals with an arrogant disregard for law and a resentment of authority. The habitual criminal thinks he’s smarter than the cops. He harbors disdain for honest law-abiding citizens — decent people are just “chumps” in the eyes of an outlaw — and his crimes against others are justified in his mind by a defiant sense that he deserves whatever he desires, and that society is wrong to forbid him from getting what he wants. By the time a career criminal is caught for a serious crime, he has usually already gotten away with many other crimes, and attributes his apprehension to “bad luck.”

Instead of recognizing the wrongfulness of his crime (and the justice of the law), he sits in jail thinking about how he can be a more successful criminal when he gets back on the streets. Most of his fellow inmates have the same attitude and so, whenever he is released from custody, he continues his criminal career with the benefit of a jailhouse education, having picked up ideas from fellow criminals on how to get away with his next crime. This was the basic story of Truman Capote’s classic In Cold Blood, where two petty criminals met in jail and formed a team, subsequently committing a notorious mass murder in Kansas.

So, police in Knoxville investigating a report of identity theft discover that the suspect is wanted for heinous sex crimes in Kentucky. Does anyone believe that Michael Mease had otherwise lived an honest law-abiding life? Were the crimes with which he is now charged the only crimes he ever committed? Or is it more likely that these charges against Mease are merely the tip of a large iceberg of lifelong criminality?

While you ponder that question, consider another recent story in Tennessee: Corey Huddleston, 52, was charged with aggravated burglary and sexual battery after police say he pushed his way into a home in Dickson and began asking about the family’s 14-year-old daughter. Police say Huddleston later climbed into a bedroom window, hoping to find the girl, and instead found the girl’s father. The kicker:

He has more than 100 prior charges on his criminal history, including theft, assault, aggravated rape, and many more.

Why was this one-man crime wave free on the streets of Dickson, Tennessee, population 15,000 and 45 minutes west of Nashville?

Only certain rapes, committed against a certain kind of victim by a certain kind of rapist, get attention from feminists, who became hysterical about a fictional rape by the imaginary “Haven Monahan” but ignore real rapists whose crimes don’t fit the feminist narrative.

 

Category: Crime

Political Consultant for S.F. Democrat Mayor Likes Little Boys, Allegedly

Posted on | May 14, 2015 | 23 Comments

Enrique Pearce’s consulting firm, Left Coast Communications, was working for San Francisco Democrat Mayor Ed Lee’s re-election campaign, until he was arrested last week on child pornography charges. Peace had previously run a Super PAC supporting Mayor Lee, and had also worked for San Francisco politicians Matt Gonzalez and Jane Kim, both affiliated with the Green Party. The details of Pearce’s alleged crimes were revealed in a court hearing Wednesday:

Prosecutors say Pearce was in possession of nearly 5,000 images of child pornography, including video. Some photos depicted children and infants being sexually assaulted. In some, the children are tied up.
The district attorney argues Pearce is a threat to public safety, because in addition to the pornography, investigators say they found more than 100 images on his cell phone showing boys ages 7 to 12, who do not appear to know they’re being photographed.
One boy was on a man’s shoulders at a Giants’ celebration at City Hall. The district attorney is also concerned that police say Pearce has told another man he’d like to share a boy with a man.
The judge raised Pearce’s bail from $250,000 to $400,000. . . .
Investigators say a man they’re calling a witness got an online message from Pearce and the two started communicating about their mutual, sexual interest in boys. Pearce ultimately sent the witness pornographic pictures.
Authorities searched Pearce’s home [May 7] and arrested him.

The difference between Enrique Pearce and other San Francisco Democrats is very simple to explain: Enrique Pearce got caught.

(Hat-tip: Luke Mullen on Twitter.)

 

Category: Crime, Democrats, Gays
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