The Other McCain

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

FMJRA 2.0: Disappointed

Posted on | August 3, 2014 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Rule 5 Sunday: Mind The Gap

The Gaza War Continues

Israel/Gaza Ceasefire Collapses, Along With Joe Scarborough’s Credibility

Headline of the Day


AND NOW, A BRIEF MUSICAL INTERLUDE

Just Relax In Your ‘Fundamentally Transformed’ Country, Americans

The Amnesty Fine Print

FMJRA 2.0: An Extra Girl (Ape)

Death by Misadventure

Feminists Against ‘The Unnatural, Yet Universal Roles Patriarchy Has Assigned’

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.28.14

“Sorry, Barack: I Can’t Give The Israeli People ‘The Stevens’,” Said Bibi

Crazy People, Crazy Times

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.29.14

John Walsh Keeps Nabbing Bad Guys; Molester Killed in NYC Shootout

An Ill-Advised Apology

Woman’s Harassment Lawsuit Claims Yahoo Executive Is Lesbian Predator

Being an Atheist Is Bad. Being an Obnoxious Atheist Is Worse.

Missing Teen Found Alive; Was Kidnapped by ‘Sexual Deviant’

Head ‘Sploding Tweet Of The Day

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.30.14

Nina Burleigh: #WomenAgainstFeminism Is for ‘Pedophiles … Dirty Old Men’ UPDATE: ‘Perverted Rightwing Spite’

It’s a Man’s (Virtual) World, Baby

Stuff You Can’t Make Up

A Thank-You Note

Millionaire Transsexual Bankrolls PAC for Son’s Florida Democrat Campaign

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.31.14

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.01.14

Commies for Abortion

Atheist Creep @RichardDawkins Destroying His Own Reputation

Dear Vloggers: Please Learn to Type

Top linkers this week:

  1. Batshit Crazy News (28)
  2. That Mr. G Guy (21)
  3. Regular Right Guy (11)
  4. A View from the Beach (5)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links (and, please, the posts to which those links point) is noon Saturday, August 9.


Category: FMJRA Award

The Pro-Hamas Mob in L.A.

Posted on | August 2, 2014 | 51 Comments

Two weeks ago, Professor Donald Douglas of American Power covered a Communist anti-police rally in Anaheim. Today, Donald took his camera to the streets of downtown Los Angeles, where the same crew — the Stalinist splinter sect known as A.N.S.W.E.R. — helped organize an anti-Israel march and rally that was full of vile and hateful sentiments expressed by vile and hateful people.

The news from Israel today is good: Having destroyed most of the tunnels used by Hamas terrorists, the IDF is preparing to withdraw from Gaza. Peace through complete victory.

As soon as Professor Douglas gets home, I’m sure he’ll start posting more photos, videos and commentary at his American Power blog.

Good work, Donald!

 

Category: American Power, Israel

How to Become a Lesbian, Step One: Watch Cable TV While Depressed

Posted on | August 2, 2014 | 105 Comments

Shane and Cherie from Showtime’s The L Word.

Have you ever heard of “medical student syndrome”?

It’s a type of hypochondria, “a condition frequently reported in medical students, who perceive themselves or others to be experiencing the symptoms of the diseases they are studying.” Human beings are suggestible, so that minor itch or cough or ache you have may suddenly appear to be a symptom, if you consider the possibility you might have an actual disease. Medical students spend a lot of time thinking about diseases, and thus may become obsessed with the fear that the rash on their leg is a potentially fatal disease, when the actual cause is the poison ivy they brushed up against while hiking in the woods.

So . . . are you gay?

For the vast majority of people throughout thousands of years of human history, this wasn’t a question to consider. They grew up, got married, had kids, raised goats or whatever and hoped they didn’t die from disease or famine or attacks by hostile invaders. Merely trying to survive a life of toil and hardship — the fate of most people at most times in most places — was sufficiently difficult that people didn’t sit around wondering about their “sexuality” or “identity.”

Welcome to middle-class America in the 21st century, where sexuality and identity are all some people have to worry about:

How To Leave Your Husband (Because You’re a Lesbian)

 That’s the headline on an interesting — excuse me, I meant to say weird — column at the lesbian blog Autostraddle:

I got pregnant and married, in that order duh, while I was in high school! I stayed married, got pregnant again, and kept staying married for something like eight years — I lost count. Then we moved to Virginia, into a house I hated, in a neighborhood I hated . . . My husband was in the military and he’d be gone for months at a time. I was perpetually in a bad mood/depressed. Then there was free Showtime and a Season Three marathon. I watched Shane fuck Cherie Jaffe by the pool over and over and spent the next month googling ALL THE THINGS + FEELINGS.

Had to Google “Shane and Cherie” to realize she was describing the 2006 season of the Showtime series The L Word. Anyway . . .

Everything — every last fucking thing ever — finally made sense. I made sense.
I came out, we separated.

“For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health — unless one of you eventually decides you’re gay, and then all bets are off.”

How do stories like these happen? I mean, besides getting knocked up as a teenager, then moving to Virginia while your husband is serving his country, becoming perpetually depressed and watching Showtime? How is it that somebody can be married with two kids and then one day — cable TV gay epiphany! — chuck it all overboard?

The converted apostle has her rationalizations:

I’m often asked, not necessarily outright, how I kept up that husband thing for as long as I did. It’s not an easy question to answer, both because it involves summoning a state of mind I can no longer relate to and because I’m scared of being judged. . . .
Where I grew up, it wasn’t uncommon to be young and pregnant and married. Birth control was available but not really discussed or supported, and no one talked about homosexuality or feminism. This was the 80s and early 90s, so there wasn’t any internet or gay people on television.

Which is to say, she was a normal girl who grew up in a normal family with a normal life in a normal town. But did you notice this?

. . . no one talked about homosexuality or feminism.

Gee, why do you think these two topics are connected in her mind? I mean, she could have said “no one talked about homosexuality or vegetarianism” or “no one talked about homosexuality or Buddhism,” but instead, it’s “feminism” — why?

Anyone who has been reading my “Sex Trouble” series about radical feminism will instantly understand the connection:

According to feminist theory, this woman’s problem was (as every woman’s problem is) heteronormative patriarchy:

Heterosexuality, these authors argue, is never a woman’s own free choice, nor is female heterosexuality the result of natural instinct or biological urges. Rather, according to radical theorists whose works are commonly taught in Women’s Studies courses at universities everywhere, women who are sexually attracted to men have been indoctrinated — brainwashed by “hetero-grooming” — to believe that male companionship is desirable or necessary to their happiness.

In other words, heterosexuality is imposed on women. Once she divorced her husband and became a lesbian — thanks to cable TV — this woman revised her memory with the benefit of hindsight. She suddenly realized she never really liked men anyway:

It never occurred to me that being “in love” could feel like anything more than kindly agreeing not to be mean to each other. And attraction? Actually wanting sex? I mean, what must that be like?? Women aren’t socialized, like men are, to think they deserve sexual satisfaction. Maybe it’s different now, but at the time, I interpreted sex as a thing that made boys happy, but for which women shouldn’t set their sights too high.
That part — the sex part — is hands-down the most difficult thing for me to talk about, process or explain. Not just because of how personal sex is, for everybody, but also because of the terrible sad vacant feeling that comes with discussing a thing that I never related to and now can barely fathom ever doing. At that time, sex was how I could get someone to like me.

Again, this is rationalization, informed by feminism. She blames the way women are “socialized” for her failure to realize she was a lesbian until she was a depressed married mom watching cable TV. She now refers to her years of heterosexuality as “a thing that I never related to,” which she was only doing so she “could get someone to like” her. She insists she never wanted it or felt attraction to men, never really had the feeling of being “in love” with a man.

Let’s not mince words: This woman is a failed heterosexual.

Being successfully heterosexual is not as easy as it may seem. Sure, some of us are so good at it, we make it look easy, but this apparent ease is simply the result of years of practice. It’s not as if the problems involved have never been considered.

“In everything on this earth that is worth doing, there is a stage when no one would do it, except for necessity or honor. . . . If Americans can be divorced for ‘incompatibility of temper’ I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.”
— G.K. Chesterton, 1910

Considerations of “necessity or honor” are alien to the 21st-century mind, so that husbands and wives don’t think of the honor involved in upholding a sacred vow. If nothing is sacred, no vow can really be binding, and the sense of honor one should derive from being true to one’s word — to say, “I do,” and really mean it — can play no part in our considerations. If the grass is greener on the other side of the fence (or if the sex is sexier on cable TV), why let something as silly as a marriage vow stand in your way?

The important thing, we are nowadays told, is just to be yourself. Find the real you. Get in touch with your feelings. And, amid all these gooey emotional hymns to the Happy Self, at some point the children have to hear The Talk: “Mommy and Daddy are getting a divorce, because Mommy watched a cable TV show and now she knows she never really loved Daddy, because she’s a lesbian.”

Hey, what’s that rash on your leg? Probably ebola virus . . .





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Category: Feminism, Gays, Sex Trouble

Paul Alan Levy on Brett Kimberlin, Defamation and the ‘Streisand Effect’

Posted on | August 2, 2014 | 19 Comments

“I have filed over a hundred lawsuits and another one will be no sweat for me. On the other hand, it will cost you a lot of time and money . . .”
— Brett Kimberlin, Oct. 10, 2010

“It looks to me as if Brett Kimberlin is digging himself a deeper hole with every paper he files . . . He may well be at the point that he is the one who needs to get out of the litigation as quickly as possible, lest he make matters worse for himself and his family. Whether he has the self-restraint, and the good judgment, to seek that way out remains to be seen.”
— Paul Alan Levy, Aug. 1, 2014

Everybody knows what the “Streisand Effect” is, right? In the Internet age, attempts to suppress information usually have the opposite effect, calling widespread public attention to whatever fact it was that someone tried to conceal from public view.

This is what happened to Brett Kimberlin: When bloggers began calling attention to Kimberlin’s notorious criminal history, Kimberlin first sued one of them — progressive blogger Seth Allen — and threatened to sue both Patrick “Patterico” Frey and Mandy “Liberty Chick” Nagy. That was in fall 2010, and set in motion a chain of events that led to a courtroom conflict between Kimberlin and Aaron Walker. When Walker published his 28,000-word account of that conflict in May 2012, I started reporting on the activities of Kimberlin and his associate Neal Rauhauser. Four days later, Kimberlin contacted my wife’s employer, ranting about how I was “harassing” Kimberlin. As a result, I departed Maryland for an “undisclosed location” and relocated my family.

These events raised a general alarm among conservative bloggers, which resulted in “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day” on May 25, 2012. At every step, Kimberlin’s effort to suppress reporting and commentary about him had the opposite effect of what he evidently intended. Then, in fall 2013, Kimberlin filed two lawsuits: The Maryland case Kimberlin v. Walker, et al. — against five defendants — and then a federal RICO lawsuit against two dozen defendants, which John Hoge dubbed Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al.

These cases have been proceeding through the preliminary stages for the past several months and, knowing that I have myself become bored with all the legal back-and-forth — motions, replies to motions, orders from judges, yadda yadda yadda — I’ve been remiss in keeping readers updated, not wanting to subject y’all to the tedium. Both John Hoge and Aaron Walker have been blogging regularly about the proceedings. We may be just days away from seeing the Maryland state suit either thrown out on summary judgment or going to trial. Obviously, I’d prefer the former to the latter, but having no doubt of my innocence, I have the serenity of a Christian holding four aces, either way.

The federal case has become rather interesting. Kimberlin sought Judge George Hazel’s permission to file a “sealed” motion for a preliminary injunction, and was quite briskly spanked by the judge who, among other things, referred to “Plaintiff’s checkered past with representations to the Court” — a polite and euphemistic way of saying that the Perjuring Pro Se Pipsqueak is a proven liar.

Given that Kimberlin’s July 22 letter to Judge Hazel is now a matter of public record (ECF No. 165) let’s quote some of it, eh?

Several of the unrepresented Defendants, including Walker, Hoge, McCain and Akbar, have not only failed to remove content, but they collectively use every opportunity to use this case to engage in a continuing campaign to defame and harm me and my family.  Virtually every single day, Defendant Walker and Hoge post defamatory statements on their blogs and on Twitter and use titles with defamatory adjectives calling me a terrorist, forger, perjurer, pedophile and other invectives.

Can you believe it? This lying scoundrel has the effrontery to sue us for $1 million in state court and $2 million in federal court and then — adding insult to idiocy, as it were — claims that it is “a continuing campaign to defame and harm” Kimberlin for us to inform the public of proceedings in this case! By God, the man has no shame, but even that pales in comparison to this claim by Kimberlin:

Every day, I am under siege from a barrage of false and defamatory attacks on me. Several of the Defendants, including Defendants Walker, McCain and Thomas, have attacked my teenage daughter to such a degree that she has been bullied out of two high schools. . . . Everyone knows the devastating effect of bullying on young people, especially girls. And the Defendants are directly responsible for the bullying of my daughter.

Kimberlin’s claim that I have “attacked” his teenage daughter is simply false. Somebody on Twitter once sent me a message about her singing career (which Kimberlin has promoted with tax-exempt funds from his non-profit Justice Through Music Project) and I replied that she can’t carry a tune, or words to that effect.

Once. End of story.

But can it be possible that Brett Kimberlin really wants to discuss what is harmful to “young people, especially girls”? A dead grandmother can have a “devastating effect” on a girl, I guess.

You see that the infamous liar Brett Kimberlin is making these false claims against me in court documents, in an effort to convince the judge that where there is so much “smoke” of allegations, surely there must be some “fire” of actual tortious damage. The judge’s reaction would seem to indicate that he is not deceived by Kimberlin’s mendacious game, but excuse me for burning with indignation that Kimberlin is permitted to engage in such heinous abuse of the justice system. He is a convicted felon who was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison in 1981 and yet he thinks the court must protect him from “defamatory adjectives”?

Maybe you understand why I’ve tried to ignore this case to the greatest extent possible. Every time I think about it, I get angry.

It is helpful, therefore, to read Paul Alan Levy’s thoughts on the case. Levy has volunteered pro bono, to represent Ace of Spades in a limited manner, to defeat Kimberlin’s effort to deprive Ace of his anonymity (trying to “dox” Ace, incidentally, was a project that Neal Rauhauser ineptly pursued for many months). Levy talks about Kimberlin’s motion for an injunction in the federal case:

Moreover, it does not seem to me likely that submitting affidavits about claimed harm are going to be enough — the defendants he seeks to restrain are entitled to be confronted by their accusers face-to-face, and to have the chance to cross-examine; and given the intense hostility between the parties that the courts have previously noted, there is no reason to think these pro se defendants might not want to take their pound of flesh. Indeed, considering that the judge has indicated that Kimberlin needs to make specific showings about the harm caused by the specific statements against which he wants relief, the defendants might well start asking questions about exactly why parents won’t let their daughters have sleepovers at the Kimberlin household. Is it because they learned that he used to be a major drug dealer, importing large quantities of drugs from Mexico? Or because he was convicted of a series of bombings that left some people severely injured? Or is it because they learned that a newspaper article in Indiana reported on the murder of the grandmother of a pre-teen girl who was worried that Kimberlin was going out with a daughter she considered irresponsible so that he could get access to the grand-daughter? Or maybe because, after he got out of jail, and already in his forties, Kimberlin was allegedly singing rock and roll songs about the joys of sex with teenage girls, and because a DC-area publication that interviewed him about the songs praised him for his honesty about how older men feel about attractive teenagers.  Or, was it some more recent, post-Second Amended Complaint statement that is depriving his daughter of sleepovers?
If Kimberlin seeks relief, he is going to have to show through the testimony of some person with personal knowledge just what the reasons are that his daughter’s friends parents are giving for getting in the way of his daughter’s social life. Presumably, that would be the daughter herself. The pro se defendants against whom relief is sought might choose to cross-examine her.

You really should read the whole thing, because Levy points out how Kimberlin’s lawsuit — his attempt to use the federal courts to silence his critics — is exposing to public scrutiny the very aspects of Kimberlin’s sordid past that he most wishes to conceal.

Even while I was writing this article, John Hoge noticed that the Washington Post‘s Eugene Volokh is now covering the case:

In this instance, it’s very hard for me to feel sympathy for Kimberlin. He has repeatedly demanded unconstitutional restrictions on his critics’ speech (see, e.g., the posts discussed here; I consulted with Aaron Walker’s lawyer on the case). His past crimes make it hard to know when he is telling the truth today. And beyond this, his litigation behavior in this very case has apparently been less than candid at times . . .

Yeah, Brett: So now you can sue the Washington Post and claim you were defamed by a constitutional law professor, OK?

Meanwhile, you just keep on telling lies about me, and I’ll keep telling the truth about you, and we’ll see who wins in the long run. I’ve got good people praying for me, and I have no fear.

Readers: This is still a Shameless Capitalist Blog. Please keep in mind The Five Most Important Words in the English Language . . .

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

 

 

Category: The Kimberlin Files

Commies for Abortion

Posted on | August 1, 2014 | 26 Comments

PHOTO: Aaron Reiss, Houston Press

“Stop Patriarchy” (@StopPatriarchy) is a front group for the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a Maoist cult led by Bob Avakian, a septuagenarian leftover of 1960s Berkeley radicalism. (For background on these deranged freaks, read the entries “Robert Avakian” and “Revolutionary Communist Party” at Discover the Networks.) So when RCP activist Sunsara Taylor organized “the movement to End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women,” you think maybe somebody would have noticed that these feminists are, by their own declaration, revolutionary communists.

The commies held a protest Thursday in Houston, Texas:

If the War Against Women is a national battle, Texas is ground zero.
That’s according to Sunsara Taylor, a leader of Stop Patriarchy, a movement that is attempting end to the enslavement and degradation of women — notably when it comes to the right to an abortion and the production of pornography.
“Roe v. Wade began in Texas, and the (pro-life constituency) plan(s) on ending it in Texas,” Taylor said. “We came here to stand up against that.”
Thursday, Stop Patriarchy held the first protest of its 2014 abortion rights freedom ride, outside the Harris County Republican Party Offices. Protesters chanted, “fetuses are not babies,” “abortion is not murder” and “women are not incubators.” They also held up faux-bloodied coat hangers and held photos of women who died from illegal abortions, an homage to the commonality of the practice during the early 20th century.
Taylor said that, under the guidance of Texas’s Republican Party, women could be forced back to the practices of those dangerous days to deal with unwanted pregnancies. On Sept. 1, as part of legislation under Texas House Bill 2, there are projected to be six abortion clinics in the state.
Stop Patriarchy will make other stops in Austin, San Antonio and Rio Grande Valley as part of its crowdfunded trip until Aug. 21.

Not a word — not a single fucking word — about the fact that these people are Maoist revolutionaries, members of a radical cult that in 1984 advocated the assassination of Ronald Reagan. Neither was the connection between the RCP and Stop Patriarchy mentioned in a New York magazine article that included these quotes from Sunsara Taylor:

“[W]omen have not achieved equality. That’s a myth in this country. . . . They’re reducing women to objects, either sexually or as breeders. . . .
“Abortion is perfectly moral. Fetuses are not babies, and women are not incubators.”

You might think that a self-described revolutionary communist like Taylor, if interviewed by the mainstream media, would at least use that as an opportunity to mention, y’know, communism and revolution. But no, there seems to be some kind of tacit agreement that these subjects won’t be mentioned in the mainstream press.

Texas Right for Life does mention the RCP, pointing out that some pro-abortion activists in Texas are angry because Stop Patriarchy managed to raise more than $30,000 for their Texas tour:

By the way, those bloody coat hangers? A lie.

“The wire hanger is indeed a powerful symbol — the
symbol of a lie engineered with malice aforethought. . . .
“The wire hanger . . . is not an accurate symbol of a bloody and regrettable past, but is rather . . . a fund-raising tool.
“[I]t is a grotesque fund-raising tool, but then abortion is a grotesque business. The wire hanger is a way to change the subject from the reality of abortion in these United States, which is that it exists mainly as a tool for enabling
sexual convenience at the cost of a human life.”

You know who is really good at lying? Commies, that’s who.

 

Category: Abortion, Feminism

Dear Vloggers: Please Learn to Type

Posted on | August 1, 2014 | 44 Comments

Jaclyn Glenn (@JaclynGlenn) is an atheist video performer — vlogger, as they say — whose online presence seems to consist entirely of a YouTube channel and a Twitter account. This presents difficulties for those of us whose preferred medium is the written word.

To explain: I’m a super-fast reader. If you were to provide me with a transcript of your 11-minute video rant, I could skim over it in less than a minute and locate the “money quote,” which I could then copy-and-paste into a block-quote on my blog and discuss it. Alternatively, I might decide that your 11-minute video rant is a silly piece of nonsense that should be ignored. Either way, the difference between (a) the 11-minute video rant and (b) a transcript of your rant is that (b) saves me 10 minutes of time over (a), not to mention the time savings between (c) doing a quick copy-and-paste of a quote and (d) having to transcribe your lunatic gibberish.

Excuse my prejudice, but whenever I encounter a vlogger who does not also have a blog — where they discuss topics in the format of written words — my suspicions run in one of three directions:

  1. This person is lazy. It’s easier for them to stare into their webcam and ramble aloud about their feelings than it is for them to bother writing down whatever it is they want to say.
  2. This person is mentally deficient. They’re so impenetrably stupid they were unable to learn basic spelling and grammar. They express themselves in video performances because if they tried to write what they think, it would be so full of obvious grammatical errors that nobody would take them seriously.
  3. This person really wants to be a TV star. That is to say, their videos aren’t really arguments so much as they are auditions. They hope a TV producer will spot their telegenic qualities and invite them on a cable-news discussion panel as a guest, or maybe cast them in a reality-TV series.

Maybe other people aren’t prejudiced this way like I am, but as a devotee of the written word, this is how I feel about vloggers.

So, all that is a long preamble to Jaclyn Glenn’s video “Atheists- Beware of the Extreme Feminist!” The title intrigues me, but I’ll be damned if I have the patience to watch the whole thing:

Fortunately, four minutes into this 11-minute rant, Jaclyn includes a screencap of a post by atheist blogger PZ Myers, so that I could Google that and find this description of the ridiculous “drama” among atheists that inspired the whole crazy thing:

Here’s the pocket summary: Glenn sets it up as an attempt to, in a comedic way, compare the bickering in the atheist community to arguments about vegetarians. To do this, she acts as two vloggers: for one, she puts on a blonde wig and glasses and makes a bunch of extremist, stupid arguments and demands absolute agreement; for the other, she just plays Jaclyn Glenn, reasonable, compromising, sensitive, egalitarian defender of reason who just wants to get along. In other words, she pretends to be the rational one pleading for unity while characterizing her critics as total idiots.
Really, it’s disgraceful and stupid and dishonest.

Thank you, Professor Myers. As to the question of whether it is Jaclyn Glenn or her atheist-feminist critics who are causing the “drama,” let me just point out this: Jaclyn Glenn has crazy eyes.

Beware of crazy-eyed atheist vloggers. Just sayin’ . . .

 

Category: Blogging, Feminism, How This Here Internet Thingy Works, Video

Atheist Creep @RichardDawkins Destroying His Own Reputation

Posted on | August 1, 2014 | 28 Comments

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.”
— Romans 1: 18-19 (KJV)

Three days ago, I took notice of how notorious atheist Richard Dawkins had grossly offended many liberals with his Twitter rants about rape and pedophilia. One is reminded of last year’s atheist sex scandals which involved, among other things, Professor Lawrence Krauss’s defense of the billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Such is his appetite for self-destruction that Richard Dawkins is now being denounced by a feminist columnist in the Guardian:

Another day, another tweet from Richard Dawkins proving that if non-conscious material is given enough time, it is capable of evolving into an obstreperous crackpot who should have retired from public speech when he had the chance to bow out before embarrassing himself. . . .
This is Dawkins in 2014: a figure of mockery, a man so convinced that he possesses God-like powers of omniscience that he can’t understand why everyone’s getting angry at him for pointing out the obvious. Why won’t we all just learn how to think, damn it! . . .
Remember when Dawkins was widely respected? . . . I don’t. Having grown up after Dawkins made the transition from lauded science communicator to old man who shouts at clouds, it’s hard for me to understand why anyone continues to listen to him about anything.

Dawkins made his reputation as a “lauded science communicator” on the basis of his selfish arrogance, and is now destroying himself because of that same trait. Dawkins was embraced by liberals, so long as he limited his attacks to Christians. Now that he’s offending Muslims and feminists, however, Dawkins gets no love:

It’s hard to deny that Dawkins’s ‘secular fundamentalism’ — as liberal commentators now describe it — makes for an embarrassing spectacle. When enraged pensioners pick fights with total strangers, one’s natural reaction is to go and sit somewhere else on the bus.
But Dawkins was just as offensive when his target was Christianity; it’s just that the Left didn’t have a problem with his description of Pope Benedict XVI as a ‘leering old villain in the frock’ who ran ‘a profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution … amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, about his ears.’
As I said at the time, that article — in the Washington Post, no less — ‘conjures up the image of a nasty old man who’s losing his marbles. It’s not very nice about the Pope, either.’ But Dawkins has not become any crazier in the intervening four years; he’s simply widened his attack on blind faith, as he sees it, to include Muslims and feminists.

Da Tech Guy points out that atheism is not random in its hostility to religion. Atheism has a teleology — a purpose, an inherent goal — having developed in the West as a means of undermining the social and legal authority of Christian morality. Atheism is therefore not equally hostile to all religious beliefs, nor is it objective in its selection of targets.

People who hate Christianity nowadays declare themselves “atheists” in much the same way as people who hate America once declared themselves “Communists.” For that matter, it’s the same way women who hate men call themselves “feminists.” The claimed label is a means of rationalizing one’s hatred in a self-flattering way, by distinguishing one’s own enlightened sophistication in contrast to those whom one ridicules as ignorant simpletons for their traditional beliefs.

“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”

Nearly 2,000 years later, this verdict still condemns them.





 

Category: Feminism, Intellectuals, Religion, Science

Israel/Gaza Ceasefire Collapses, Along With Joe Scarborough’s Credibility

Posted on | August 1, 2014 | 123 Comments

The 72-hour ceasefire fell short by about 70 hours:

A 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire agreed upon by Israel and Hamas collapsed shortly after it took effect Friday morning.
Mortar shells fired from within the Gaza Strip landed near a border-regioning town some two hours after the truce deal brokered by the United States and the EU kicked in, and shortly thearafter Palestinian medical sources reported that at least 25 Gaza residents were killed and dozens of others wounded by IDF artillery fire directed at the southern Strip. . . .
Gaza militants opened fire at IDF troops operating in the southern Gaza Strip at 9:30 A.M., and it is feared an Israeli soldier has been taken captive by Gaza militants, the IDF Spokesman says. . . .
UN Special Coordinator Robert Serry says he has received word from Israel regarding a “serious incident” that occurred after the cease-fire deal took effect, “involving a tunnel behind IDF lines in the Rafah area of the Gaza Strip.”
“The United Nations is not in a position to independently confirm these reports,” said Serry. “However, if corroborated, this would constitute a serious violation of the humanitarian ceasefire in place since 8 A.M. this morning by Gazan militant factions, which should be condemned in the strongest terms.”

So it’s war to the knife, knife to the hilt or — to borrow a phrase from the Beastie Boys — “no sleep ’til Brooklyn.” Israel will continue Operation Protective Edge until the fanatical death-mongers in Gaza are smashed into tiny jihadi smithereens. Selah.

Being old enough to remember watching the Six Day War on the nightly news, I’ve long since given up hope on Middle East peace. To the Palestinian leadership, peace is a synonym for “kill Jews.” It is impossible to negotiate with such hateful thugs.

Meanwhile, on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough accused Israel of “indiscriminate” killing of civilian women and children in Gaza:

“This continued killing of women and children in a way that appears to be indiscriminate is asinine. . . .
“And women and children are being seen because you know what? As much as we all hate Hamas, what is going to replace Hamas is going to be much worse. It is going to be a radical Islamist group instead of just power-hungry, corrupt people that despise Israel. . . .  The United States of America — we cannot be associated with this if this continues. This is so bad, not only for the Israeli people, but for us.”

Today on Morning Joe, Scarborough delivered a non-apology of the most offensive kind, a lecture in which he insisted that his critics are ignorant and simple-minded. Meanwhile, Allahpundit dismantles the “logic” of Scarborough’s argument:

If you take the “whatever comes next will be worse” logic to its ultimate conclusion, though, you’re forever left defending whichever bunch of degenerates is in charge at the time. Israel can’t oust Hamas because then Al Qaeda might take over; if Al Qaeda takes over, Israel can’t oust them or else ISIS might move in. If ISIS moves in, Israel can’t oust them or else a portal to hell will open in the ground and Hitler and Bin Laden will emerge from the earth to rule Gaza together. And so on. Essentially, so long as Eliminationist Group A remains a bit less savage than Eliminationist Group B, they can be as savage as they like and the west’s commentariat will defend leaving them in power.

By the way, if a portal to hell open in Gaza, the IDF will kill whatever comes out of hell. No sleep ’til Brooklyn.

 

Category: Islam, Israel, Military, MSNBC, Terrorism
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