Is Scotland A Symptom?

Posted on | September 15, 2014 | 27 Comments

by Smitty

From Catalonia to Kurdistan to Quebec, nationalist and separatist movements in Europe and beyond are watching the Scottish independence referendum closely — sometimes more so than Britons themselves, who seem to have only just woken up to the possibility that Scotland might vote next Thursday to bring to an end a 307-year union. A curious collection of left and right, rich and poor, marginal and mainstream, these movements are united in the hope that their shared ambition for more self-determination will get a lift from an independent Scotland.

I think they get near the bone with the note:

National self-determination, he said, “is about bringing policies closer to the people.”

Let’s just put a few things out there, shall we?
This is the Information Age

The Information Age has underscored the banality of officeholders everywhere, as human beings.
Simultaneously, the Information Age has supported lying to more people about more things more subtly than ever, both through cable news and the internet. Does anything think the government ever puts out straight numbers on any topic anymore?
Counter-balanced by the increasing number of people looking at each other and inquiring: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Prediction:

People in bulk aren’t bright, but the lies decay at a faster rate than Progress can spew them. Progress dies a slow, ignoble death, if some conservative leadership of Reagan caliber can be identified to blow through the Progressive GOP deadwood.

Scotland herself actually balks at independence, pen comes to ballot. Their motives, as far as I can tell, are not driven by actual capitalist desire for liberty; rather, a truly Progressive desire to tax their way to prosperity. In other words, I doubt there is enough sack under the kilts to make a go of it.

In the history of the crash of global Progressivism, though, the referendum vote will be a notable milestone.

Category: Culture

LIVE AT FIVE: 09.15.14

Posted on | September 15, 2014 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

TOP NEWS
Over 184,000 Saved From Kashmir Flooding

Focus now turns to preventing waterborne diseases

150,000 still stranded a week after flooding
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah left with only two officials when floods struck
Kashmir bureaucrats resent draconian call back to duty
Fresh rain hampering rescue efforts

Hurricane Odile Slams Cabo San Lucas Resort In Baja
Damaging winds, flooding and mudslides likely

New Poll Puts “No” Ahead In Scotland
Survation poll for “Better Together” campaign finds support for staying in UK at 54%

POLITICS
Sanders Tests Presidential Waters On TV

Appears on “Meet The Depressed”

“The issue is not Hillary Clinton.”

Obama Assures Pro-Illegal Groups He’ll Do Executive Amnesty Before Holidays

“Django Unchained” Actress Claims LAPD Mistook Her For Prostitute After Interracial Kiss With Husband

Administration Presses Congress To Vote Now On Arming Syrian Rebels

Hurdles For Obamacare In Second Signup Season

Kerry Still Scrambling For Anti-ISIS Commitments In Middle East

Landrieu Releases Reports On Questionable Flights, New Safeguards After Repaying $34K

THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Falls Further After Weak Chinese Data: WTI $91.21, Brent $96.48
Global Stocks Drop With Oil, Copper On China Data
Heineken Rebuffs SABMiller Bid
Lufthansa Pilots To Strike Thursday
Commodities Brace For More Woe Ahead Of Fed Decision
Alibaba Reportedly Boosting IPO Size Due To Heavy Investor Interest
Malware Uses Twitch Chat To Target Steam Users
The iPod: Gone But Not Forgotten
Oracle To Acquire Content Storage Management Company Front Porch Digital
Google To Launch Android One Phones In India For ~$105
Microsoft’s Purchase Of Minecraft Maker Mojang Could Be Worth $2.5 Billion

SPORTS
Keselowski Wins First Chase Race At Chicagoland

Winning the opening round

Daring three-wide drive through the middle seals the deal

Ray Rice Considering Lawsuit Against NFL, Citing Double Jeopardy

A’s Stay Alive In Playoff Hunt With Back-To-Back Wins In Seattle

Sims Leads Alabama Past Southern Mississippi 52-12 #rolltide

O’s Rally Past Yankees In 9th, Magic Number Drops To Three

Cowboys Avoid 0-2 Start With 26-10 Win Over Texans

Tigers Hold On To Top Tribe 6-4

Injured RG3 Watches Redskins Crush Jags 41-10

Fish Rally Past Phillies, Score Four In Ninth To Win 5-4

Patriots Dominate Peterson-Less Vikings 30-7

Rangers Complete Sweep Of Braves With 10-3 Win

Astros End Angels’ Streak With 6-1 Thrashing

Nava’s Grand Slam Lifts Red Sox Past Royals

Jets Timeout Nullifies Tying Score, Hands Packers A Win

Twins Avert Sweep, Beat Pale Hose 6-4

Nats Blank Mets 3-0, Magic Number Now 4

FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Iggy Azalea Threatens Porn Company

Use my trademarked name? We’ll see who gets screwed

Pop star’s lawyers threatening Vivid over release of alleged sex tape

Lauren Conrad Marries William Tell

Beyonce Pregnant With Second Child?

Kanye West Has Joe Biden Moment, Demands Wheelchair-Bound Fans Stand Up & Dance

Martha Stewart Says Gwyneth Paltrow Should Shut Up And Stick To Acting

Has TMZ Put Roger Goodell’s Job In Jeopardy?

Nick Jonas Lands Modeling Gig

Jennifer Connelly’s Loft Stuck In Hurricane Sandy Damage Dispute

Padma Lakshmi Calls “Top Chef” Picketers A “Blip”

FOREIGNERS
White House Claims Arab Nations On Board With ISIS Airstrikes But Doesn’t Name Names
Queen Urges Voters To “Think Carefully” About Scottish Independence
Diplomatic Push Begins Against ISIS
Explosions, Gunfire Return To Donetsk
Norks Sentence American Tourist To Six Years Hard Labor For “Hostile Acts”
Swedish Krona Weakens After Weekend Elections Result In Hung Parliament
Chancellor Merkel Leads Berlin Rally Against Anti-Semitism
Typhoon Kalmaegi Departs Philippines, Leaving Damage But No Casualties In Its Wake
Pro-Democracy Protesters Stage “Black Cloth” March In Hong Kong
“Action Against Islamic State Should Include Syria”
With Eye On China, India To Develop Disputed Border Region

BLOGS & STUFF
American Power: British PM Cameron Declares “Islam Is A Religion Of Peace”
American Thinker: Why Did Mideast Christians Heckle Pro-Israel Ted Cruz?
BLACKFIVE: Trailer Talk – Declare The War Already
Conservatives4Palin: Scott Conroy Sets The Record Straight On The Media’s Latest Palin Gossip
Don Surber: GoFundMe Says Fund Your Own Abortion
Jammie Wearing Fool: Carpetbagging Husband Of Facebook Founder Getting Crushed In Congressional Bid
Joe For America: Wisconsin Voter ID – Dems Smacked In The Courts Again
JustOneMinute: The Uncertain Trumpeters
Protein Wisdom: Vagina Warrior Amanda Marcotte Has An Enemies List
Shot In The Dark: Trulbert! Part X – Human Nature
STUMP: Public Pensions Watch – Alternative Asset Classes, Part VIII – New Jersey Followup
The Gateway Pundit: Black Panthers Threaten To Lynch Black Conservative For Supporting Officer Wilson
The Jawa Report: Jawa Report Only A Few Months Ahead Of The Media
The Lonely Conservative: ISIS Beheaded Another Hostage
This Ain’t Hell: About That “Lack Of Diversity In Army Officers” Claim…
Weasel Zippers: Another Beheading Means…Another Day On The Golf Course
Megan McArdle: How To Stop Money From Killing Your Marriage

Category: Live at Five

Sudden Onset Lesbian Syndrome

Posted on | September 14, 2014 | 90 Comments

“Men who rule, and male leftists who seek to rule, try to depoliticize sex . . . in order to prevent us from acting to end our oppression and challenging their power. As the question of homosexuality has become public, reformists define it as a private question of who you sleep with in order to sidetrack our understanding of the politics of sex. For the Lesbian-Feminist, it is not private; it is a political matter of oppression, domination, and power. . . . The only way oppressed people end their oppression is by seizing power: People whose rule depends on the subordination of others do not voluntarily stop oppressing others. Our subordination is the basis of male power.”
— Charlotte Bunch, “Lesbians in Revolt,” 1972

“Lesbianism is the greatest threat that exists to male supremacy.”
— Rita Mae Brown, A Plain Brown Rapper, 1976

“Central to radical feminism is the belief that the patriarchy (not capitalism or sex roles or socialization or individual sexist men) is the root of all forms of oppression; that all men benefit from and maintain it and are, therefore, our political enemies. Within this framework, heterosexuality, far from existing as a ‘natural state,’ ‘personal choice’ or ‘sexual orientation,’ is described as a socially constructed and institutionalized structure which is instrumental in the perpetuation of male supremacy.”
— Celia Kitzinger, The Social Construction of Lesbianism, 1987

When feminists say “the personal is political” and declare that women are oppressed by “patriarchy” and “male supremacy,” they mean what they say and — because Ideas Have Consequences, as Richard Weaver warned — the impact of these radical ideas on the lives of individuals is never really coincidental. Steve Basilone‘s personal tragedy is not really a comedy, nor is it actually personal, according to feminist theory. He is the patriarchal oppressor, and his ex-wife is therefore now liberated:

One of the head writers for “Orange is the New Black” has filed for divorce … the logical step since she’s now realized she’s a lesbian and is dating one of the female stars.
Lauren Morelli just filed divorce docs — obtained by TMZ — from her husband of 2 years, Steve Basilone. It’s actually a joint petition … probably because Steve realizes that ship has sailed.
The story is amazing. Lauren began writing for OITNB 5 months after she got hitched. Lauren says as she started writing for the main character — who had once been in a lesbian relationship — she saw herself in the character. Lauren says she began to feel like a fraud … married to a man but clearly gay.
According to Lauren … as she began writing about Piper’s blossoming relationship with the very hot Alex … “I found a mouthpiece for my own desires and a glimmer of what my future could look like.”

Ms. Morelli’s future looks like sex with OITNB actress Samira Wiley:

We are asked to believe that before Ms. Morelli had this revelation at age 30 — having never previously imagined she was gay — her life was an inauthentic charade, a phony pretense of heterosexuality.

This phenomenon of Sudden Onset Lesbian Syndrome has become more common in recent years, and we have examined it before: “How to Become a Lesbian, Step One: Watch Cable TV While Depressed,” wherein a married mother of two discovered her gayness by watching The L Word on Showtime. We imagine her ex-husband telling his buddies, “Yeah, I should have known better than to subscribe to those premium channels. Whatever you do, guys, stick to the basic cable package or your wife will turn into a dyke and then you’ll have to fix your own sandwiches.”

Sarcasm comes easy to those of us who can’t afford premium cable, and who imagine that our families could never become victims of the Cultural Revolution. Yet the revolutionaries have limitless ambitions, and there is nothing funny about Steve Basilone’s discovery that his wife’s wedding vows included a hidden clause:

“Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love him, comfort him, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live? Unless, of course, you subsequently figure out you’re actually a lesbian?”

What we are supposed to believe is that the Meaning of Life is the pursuit of your True Self. Any promise can broken, any prior commitment discarded, any vow is automatically invalidated, the moment you realize your True Self is gay. And if you are a woman, those hateful homophobes who would stand between you and your gay True Self are also oppressive agents of male supremacy. Read more

Category: Feminism, Gays, Marriage, Sex Trouble

Rule 5 Sunday: The Man Who Saved Britain

Posted on | September 14, 2014 | 16 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Diana Rigg as Tracy Bond

While Stacy is busy cataloging the many derangements and insanities of feminism through the years, it seems only appropriate to turn the spotlight this week on the literary icon feminists love to hate, James Bond. As chronicled in Simon Winder’s The Man Who Saved Britain, Bond was a reaction to the loss of Empire and the drastically narrowed horizons of postwar Britain; his glamorous life of derring-do and hot dames was a sorely-needed antidote to the misery and rationing of not-so-Merrie Olde England. Of course, Ian Fleming’s hero became even more (in)famous in America thanks to Alfred “Cubby” Broccoli’s film adaptations, initially starring Sean Connery, which further stoked interest in the books lauded by John F. Kennedy. Our interest, of course, is in the Bond Girls, the women who were never just arm candy in the films and usually came with a name guaranteed to make the feminists gnash their teeth, e.g. Pussy Galore.

Unlike Bond movies, not all of the following links are PG-13, so readers should exercise discretion as to where and when they click.

Ninety Miles from Tyranny leads off this week with Hot Pick of the Late Night, Morning Mistress thonging, and Girls with Guns; Goodstuff’s focus this week is on Angelina Jolie and her torpedo-like ta-tas. Animal Magnetism chips in with Rule 5 Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon; Blackmailers Don’t Shoot has a Rule 5 Linkfest with Taylor Swift. This week, First Street Journal turns its attention to the women of the Bundeswehr, as the German Army is called these days.

EBL’s contributions to Rule 5 this week include fighting feminism one piece of sushi at a time, Gamergate, Cora Pearl, Alyssa Milano, and NFL Week Two.

A View from the Beach offers The Girls of Graceland, “Turn the Tide”, Catfight!, Miss Kate in Antarctica, If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Eat Em!, “Wax on, Wax Off”, $#!* You Should Read, Go Redskins!, Dweeb Crushes Comical Feminist Complaint and Newest! Oldest! Biggest! (has cavegirl content).

At Soylent Siberia, it’s Morning Melons, Tis The Season, Monday Motivationer Mia, Tuesday Titillation Buttons & Bows, The 6000th Comment Award Goes To…, Humpday Hawtness Chain Lightning, A Point Of Order, Falconsword Fursday Femme Fatale, Fursday Overnighty Jelena, Corset Friday Fantasm, T-GIF Friday Channel Changer, Weekender Valentina, and Bath Night Tech Rehearsal.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Paula Patton, his vintage Babe is Karen Randle, and Sex In Advertising is covered this week by Victoria’s Secret. Also, not only the obligatory 49er cheerleader, but a bonus cheerleader as well! At Dustbury, it’s Nance Coolen and Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Links for next week’s Rule 5 Sunday should be submitted to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox no later than midnight on Saturday, September 20.

Bond 50: Celebrating 5 Decades of Bond

Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop

Category: Rule 5

Steyn Distills Obama To < 10 Characters

Posted on | September 14, 2014 | 45 Comments

by Smitty

Emphasis original:

The Obama Doctrine – “Don’t do stupid sh*t” – has been rendered in non-PG version as “Don’t do stupid stuff”. But it should be more pithily streamlined yet: Don’t do.

I guess one major value added by the Obama Administration is that we’ve more or less seen an operational test of what a Non-Interventionist/Isolationist/Unplugged foreign policy would look like. While I’m not offering the Full Neo-Con, here’s some truth: if you’re not doing warheads on foreheads, you’d better be offering some kind of leadership, at least. Offering neither is a recipe for the dirty diaper on display.

In defense of Obama, this is the paradox of our 1787 Constitution: it’s relatively silent on the matter. Chiefly because the Atlantic was the Mother of All Moats back then, and neither of the people living in Canada at the time were worrisome.

This might be a cogent criticism of the idea of a Convention of States. If it’s not delivering a framework to provide some kind of foreign policy guidance, some super-National Security Strategy against which candidates can be tested (assuming we ever repent of letting the media pass off no-talent rodeo clowns as competent) then why bother?

Category: Barack Obama

Feminism: The Final Solution?

Posted on | September 13, 2014 | 89 Comments

Sally Miller Gearhart is a feminist and a lesbian (but I repeat myself) who as a professor at San Francisco State University in the 1970s helped develop one of the first Women’s Studies programs in the nation. For quite some time, I’ve seen a quote from Professor Gearhart posted in various places around the Internet:

“The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race.”

This ne plus ultra expression of feminism’s genocidal hostility to men was sufficiently intriguing to me that I tracked down the source. Gearhart’s quote is from her essay, “The Future — If There Is One — Is Female,” which was included in the 1982 anthology Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence, edited by Pam McAllister.

Thanks to the generous support of readers — “Hit the Freaking Tip Jar!” — I obtained a copy of this book from Amazon. Here is an excerpt that provides the context of Gearhart’s infamous quote:

Enslaved by male-identification and years of practice within the system as we all still are to one degree or another, the assumption must be that the present system of monopoly capitalism and patriarchy must be replaced and that non-male-identified women must be the responsible ones. . . .
At least three further requirements supplement the strategies of environmentalists if we are to create and preserve a less violent world. I) Every culture must begin to affirm a female future. II) Species responsibility must be returned to women in every culture. III) The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race. . . .
To return species responsibility to women means in very practical terms that erotic and reproductive initiative must be restored to women all over the globe. . . . Make the decision entirely that of the woman as to how she will be impregnated and how often, if indeed she chooses to be so at all, and whether by heterosexual intercourse, artificial insemination or a form of ovular merging. Restore to each woman the inalienable right to say what shall become of any fertilized egg and to control absolutely the number of children she wishes to emerge from her body. . . . Make nonexistent any male’s say-so in the process of reproduction. Create and protect alternative structures of economic and psychological support for independent women — women not attached to men — who are child-bearers and child-raisers. . . .
Women will bear the number of children they know can be sustained not just by their own social group but by the wide ecological system. They will not bear the children that some man wants only to perpetuate his name or the family possession of his property; they will not bear the children they presently convince themselves they must have because their only role is obedient wife and mother; women will not have the children men think are necessary to perpetuate the tribe or the religion or the specific culture. Instead they will bear the children that they want, that they can care for, and that they assess are needed by the specific group and the entire species. . . .
In every culture it must be women in charge of the changes: women-identified women, no women who are pawns of men, not women who out of their fear of losing their lives or those of their children, still hold to the securities of that dangerous patriarchal culture, but women utterly free of coercion, free of male influence and committed to the principle that the right of species regulation is their own, and not the prerogative of any man. I suggest that lesbians and other independent women are already moving in this direction. . . .
To secure a world of female values and female freedom we must, I believe, add one more element to the structure of the future: the ratio of men to women must be radically reduced so that men approximate only ten percent of the total population. . . .
We now come to a critical point: how is such a reduction in the male population to take place? One option is of course male infanticide. It differs very little from the female infanticide that has apparently been carried out even into the twentieth century by some cultures. Such an alternative is clearly distasteful and would not constitute creative social change. . . .
[I]f women are given the freedom of their bodies then they may well choose [experimental “ovular merging” technology that produces only female embryos] in great enough numbers to make a significant difference in the sex ratio of women to men. A 75% female to 25% male ratio could be achieved in one generation if one-half of a population reproduced heterosexually and one-half by ovular merging.
Such a prospect is attractive to women who feel that if they bear sons no amount of love and care and nonsexist training will save those sons from a culture where male violence is institutionalized and revered. These are women saying, “No more sons. We will not spend twenty years of our lives raising a potential rapist, a potential batterer, a potential Big Man.”

What more needs to be said? Well, first, let us notice Professor Gearhart’s contrast between “male-identified” women and “woman-identified” women. These phrases recall the title of the 1970 Radicalesbians manifesto, “The Woman Identified Woman.” That is to say, “male-identified” women — “pawns of men,” as Professor Gearhart describes them — are simply heterosexual women, and “women-identified women” are lesbians. Professor Gearhart could assume that a feminist readership in 1982 would understand the meaning of the phrase. The book in which her essay appears also includes selections by such famed lesbian feminists as Barbara Deming and Karla Jay.

As for Professor Gearhart’s enthusiasm for “ovular merging,” her knowledge of science is about what you’d expect for a Women’s Studies professor. Such methods are still merely experiments with lab mice and, although there are methods of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) by which sex-selection is possible, the vast majority of human beings are still conceived the old-fashioned heterosexual way.

Her fantasy of achieving a 90% female population through advanced reproductive technology is therefore still a fantasy, more than 30 years after she wrote “The Future — If There Is One — Is Female.” By the way, Professor Gearhart never had children, while “patriarchal culture” has produced more than 2.5 billion children since 1982.

Oops.