The Other McCain

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

The Silence Is Settled!

Posted on | July 7, 2014 | 42 Comments

No more criticizing the Climate Change Consensus™! The BBC has muzzled anyone who does not agree with Official Global Warming Science™ and Salon’s Lindsay Abrams is orgasmic with pleasure:

Good news for viewers of BBC News: You’ll no longer be subjected to the unhinged ravings of climate deniers and other members of the anti-science fringe. In a report published Thursday by the BBC Trust, the network’s journalists were criticized for devoting too much airtime (as in, any airtime) to unqualified people with “marginal views” about non-contentious issues in a misguided attempt to provide editorial balance.

We haven’t seen this kind of mindless liberal enthusiasm since the days when Monica Lewinsky was wearing her Presidential Knee Pads.

(Hat-tip: Powerline.)

 

Category: Global Warming

Presidential Imperialism

Posted on | July 7, 2014 | 21 Comments

Jonathan Turley has a column by President Obama’s high-handed, irresponsible and unconstitutional exercise of unilateral power:

In our system, there is no license to go it alone. Rather, the Republic’s democratic architecture requires compromise. The process is designed to moderate legislation and create a broader consensus in support of these laws.
Nor is congressional refusal to act on a particular prescription of how to fix the economy or repair immigration laws an excuse. Sometimes the country (and by extension Congress) is divided.
When that happens, less gets done. The Framers understood such times. They lived in such a time.
While Obama did not create the uber-presidency, he has pushed it to a new level of autonomy and authority. It is a model that Democrats may soon regret. Just as Obama has unilaterally rewritten federal laws and ordered the nonenforcement of others, the next President could use the same authority to gut environmental or employment discrimination laws.

Read the whole thing.

 

Category: Barack Obama

‘Internalized Misogyny’

Posted on | July 7, 2014 | 49 Comments

That interesting phrase occurs in a long essay by a woman who “spent three years living as male, a year and a half on testosterone” as part of female-to-male “transgender” therapy before deciding to stop the hormones and “de-transition”:

When I was nineteen, I discovered the word “dysphoria” in a trans activist group on campus. Dysphoria explained my humiliation of being a female. It explained why I felt that I should be treated as my older brother had been. I wasn’t free to live the way I wanted to — unless I was a boy.

Imagine this desperately unhappy woman, at age 19, whose experience of being female was a source of “humiliation,” thinking she had found the solution to her unhappiness in “a trans activist group on campus.” Now, imagine this woman discovering that “trans” therapy didn’t solve her problem, and trying to get her head around that:

I am a product of my society, a response to your criticism and encouragement, I am a hall of mirrors reflecting your uncertainties and insecurities. I see eyes that look back with questions for answers. I see the shame of being a dyke and the elation of being a boy. My transition wasn’t a a careless decision, or a mistake — it was a reaction to my society and my experience that resulted in a better quality of life and provided me with the comfort of having answers and options. Eventually awakening to the ill-fit of living as male allowed me to examine my sex from a more holistic perspective.
What is my gender? I identify with my sex after being repulsed by it my entire life. My gender is that having a cunt has affected every facet of my existence, even when I turned the tables on others’ perception of my body. My gender is having discovered that I don’t enjoy fitting in with the guys: passing as male, becoming fluent in bro-talk, and being assumed to have a penis. By making my sex invisible, I internalized misogyny.

Well, you can read the rest of that. I’ve often said that feminism has replaced psychotherapy in the lives of mentally ill women, which is not to say that these unfortunate misfits are entirely unsympathetic. One gets the impression in this particular case that “23xx” comes from a severely dysfunctional family background, but without any access to healthy family life for purposes of comparison, she can’t analyze her own situation with any clarity. Her attitudes toward men are a weird mix of envy and hate:

Around a year on [testosterone], an alarm started going off in my head. . . . I was becoming what I hated. . . .
At this point, I would rather be able to simply acknowledge that I hate most men, with good reason, than to delude myself into thinking that I was mistaken about misogyny and that I really am lesser somehow.

Here’s the weird thing: After scanning her blog a while, I kept finding angry references to her mother, but never any mention of her father. One hesitates to engage in long-distance analysis of someone on the basis of a partial and superficial reading like this, but this seems to me highly suggestive. One might expect hatred of males from a woman who expressed resentment toward her father, but in this case, there is not even any mention of a father. And so, Herr Doktor?

The single mother dotes on the elder child, a boy, and fails to establish a healthy relationship with her younger child, a girl. The daughter experiences rejection, envies her older brother — who is loved and accepted by their mother in a way that she, the girl, is not — and as a result, the daughter grows up with a sense of alienation so profound that it overwhelms her identity as a woman.

Like I said, this kind of “remote analysis” is something we should hesitate to engage in, but you have to think that this extreme case of “internalized misogyny” must be explicable by some peculiar circumstance of her childhood. You also have to think that warning signs of her maladjustment were ignored or misinterpreted by her parents and teachers: “Oh, she’s just going through a phase.”

Uh, no.

Parents need to recognize that misfits (of whatever kind, including Creepy Little Weirdos like Elliot Rodger) don’t just “get over” their problems, and early manifestations of psychological abnormality can’t be dismissed as “going through a phase.” Most misfits eventually find some way to cope with their problems, at least well enough that they don’t commit murder or suicide (or both). But they tend to arrive at the coping point only after years of struggle, loneliness, misery and harmful “acting out” of their inner problems.

And now that I’ve invoked the misogynistic killer Elliot Rodger, let me point out something else from the “23xx” blog: One reason she quit testosterone treatment was in the hope of “getting my anger under control,” having discovered that her “intense urges to self-harm . . . had become much more extreme and violent towards myself” as a result of being on testosterone. Doesn’t this testimony about the effects of androgenic hormones — their association with anger and violence — tell us something about the fundamental root of the problem for anti-social male misfits like Elliot Rodger? And isn’t this something feminist theory tends to ignore?

Having myself long since become accustomed to the effects of testosterone — which all males experience naturally —  I think feminists could learn something useful from “23xx,” something their quasi-Marxist cultural theories are inadequate to explain.

 

Category: Feminism, Gays

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.07.14

Posted on | July 7, 2014 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Ukraine Retakes Two More Rebel-Held Cities

Troops remove boxes of ammo, weapons from a recaptured building

Sieges of Luhansk, Donetsk to follow – does Kyiv have the momentum now?


Morsi Trial Postponed
Not enough evidence or witnesses?



Netanyahu Pledges Justice In Murder Of Palestinian Teen
Jewish extremists arrested in revenge killing



POLITICS
Homeland Security Secretary Dodges Questions About Deporting Illegals

Angry citizens confront Border Patrol officers outside Murrieta, CA

Johnson suggested that America’s first duty is to incoming illegal children


Boehner Accuses Obama Of “Flippant Disregard For The Constitution”


States Look To Gun Seizure Law After Mass Killings

More Than Fifty Shot In Chicago Over Independence Day Weekend

Report Claims Most Accounts Probed By NSA Belong To Ordinary Internet Users

Texas Democrat Says President “One Step Behind” On Border Crisis



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Brent Falls To Near Three-Week Low On Libyan Supply, WTI Flat: WTI $104.00, Brent $110.80
IMF’s Lagarde Calls For More Public Investment
Bank Stocks Nudge Aussie Markets Lower In Quiet Trade
Maine’s Shrimp Fishery May Face New Restrictions
Soy Prices Plummet, Gas Prices Fall
Thousands Attend LA’s First Marijuana Farmers Market
OMG, Sorry About “Poor Comms” On Facebook’s Secret Emoto-Meddle Tests. Laters!
BlackBerry CEO Takes Swing At Android Security
How Free Will The Internet Be In 2025?
Mom Fights Facebook Over Edited Photo
Google Dumps Porn From Its Ads



SPORTS
Almirola Wins Rain-Shortened, Wreck-Filled Coke Zero 400

Celebrating after winning another race for #43

30th anniversary of Richard Petty’s 200th win



O’s Blow Big Lead, Edge Red Sox In Extras Anyway

Rosters Announced For All-Star Game


Samardzija Traded To A’s, Named To All-Star Game

Beckett Continues Comeback As Dodgers Pound Rockies

Pirates Scupper Phillies 6-2

Mets Hold Off Rangers, 8-4

Astros Fall To Angels 6-1

Bombers Boot Game To Twins In 11th

Cubs’ Arrieta Good, But Not Good Enough: Nats 2, Cubs 1



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Jessica Simpson Got Married

“Overwhelmed with complete happiness”

Lucky guy is former NFL player Eric Johnson


Even In A Better Economy, Hollywood’s Poor Get Poorer


Joan Rivers Cuts CNN Interview Short, Walks Out


Criminal Indictments In Sarah Jones’ Death Could Be Safety Wakeup Call For Showbiz


Former “Scandal” Star Columbus Short Busted For Public Drunkenness

“Star Wars VII” Sets Short Hiatus As Two New Actors Join

Sherri Shepherd – It’s Not My Kid And I’m Not Paying Child Support

Katy Perry Talks Turning 30 And Finding Her Voice

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie To Film New Movie In Malta

Anthony Cumia Of “Opie & Anthony” Fired By Sirius XM

Liam On Miley: “We’ll Always Be Best Friends”

Martha Stewart Celebrates “Cooking School” Wrapup

Taxi Mogul Throws Independence Day Bash In South Of France

Univision Host Snags Elvis Costume For World Cup

Fans Hoping For Labelle Reunion At Nona Hendryx Concert



FOREIGNERS
Indonesia Presidential Candidates Trade Barbs On Graft During Debate
Al-Shabaab Raids Kill 29 On Kenya Coast
Chancellor Merkel, PM Li Meet Before Official Talks
Western Powers Seek Audit Of Afghan Presidential Election
Soviet Defector’s Trove Of KGB Secrets Revealed
Iran Strongly Opposed To Iraq’s Disintegration
Australian PM Abbott Confirms Australia & Japan To Sign Free Trade Agreement
Death Sentences For 10 MoBros Upheld In Egypt; 38 More Get Life In Prison
Asylum Seekers Being Returned To Sri Lanka After Interception At Sea
Shahnawaz: Upcoming Budget To Focus On Getting India’s Economy Back On Track



BLOGS & STUFF
American Power: Feds To Deploy Riot Police Against Patriots Protesting Obama’s Illegal Alien Invasion
American Thinker: It’s Happening – Border Patrol Officers Infected By Diseased Illegals
BLACKFIVE: Congressman Asks – What’s Wrong With The Military?
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Demi Lovato Unfollows Selena Gomez On Twitter
Conservatives4Palin: Vox, Derp, And The Intellectual Stagnation Of The Left
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, July 3
Jammie Wearing Fools: Failed President Now Offering GOP Advice
Joe For America: Sheriff Joe Accuses Obama Of “Calculated Border Crisis” To Justify Executive Orders
JustOneMinute: Revising (Or Correcting!) The Declaration Of Independence
Pat Dollard: Obama Propagandist Scum Candy Crowley Slams Murrieta Mayor For Allowing Protests Against Illegals
Protein Wisdom: “If Only Thomas Jefferson Could Settle The Issue”
Shot In The Dark: Bring On The Bursting Of The Bubble
STUMP: Chicago Watch – Daley, Rahm, And A Restaurant
The Jawa Report: DOJ Documents Show Benghazi Was Planned Terrorist Attack, Not Spontaneous, And Not About Video
The Lonely Conservative: HHS Released Almost 1300 Pages Of New Regulations On The Eve Of Independence Day
This Ain’t Hell: Third Brigade, 10th Mountain Division Goes Into That Great Good Night
Weasel Zippers: Taxpayers Shelling Out $252/Day On Each Illegal Child In Custody
Megan McArdle: Jobs Report Is Happy Economic Whiplash


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Category: Live at Five

In Which @PatKasprik Teaches Us That Rape ‘Satire’ Is Acceptable on Twitter

Posted on | July 6, 2014 | 82 Comments

So, @HollyRFisher did this and it went viral on Facebook:

In case you didn’t notice, that’s a Chick-fil-A cup in her hand. We are now in Day Six of the Hobby Lobby hysteria, and the Democrat Party propaganda claim that this Supreme Court decision is a theocratic right-wing assault on women’s rights is so firmly embedded in liberals’ minds that responding to them with facts and logic is a waste of time. Deliberate provocation is more fun, and the liberal reaction to Holly Fisher’s provocation was memorable. A young Floridian named Patrick Ryan Kasprik sent Fisher these Twitter messages:

“Idgaf how patriotic you think you are – you’re
a sham of an American who would strip
rights from others in the name of God.“

“Hey @HollyRFisher so I was hoping you could fly on
down to Florida so we could stone you to death?
You know, religious fundamentalism…”

“But seriously @HollyRFisher come on down.
I would love to let a jackass rape you beforehand,
you know, religious fundamentalism.”

As might be imagined, Kasprik’s rhetoric inspired a lot of blowback, to which Kasprik responded: “Like most satire, the people on the receiving end really don’t get it.” This is the familiar Liberal Satire Defense: “Hahaha! Stupid wingnuts are too ignorant to comprehend the enlightened nuance of my progressive humor.”

Except (a) we understand it perfectly and (b) it’s not funny.

Of course, what Kasprik’s “jokes” were intended to invoke was another favorite liberal trope, the “American Taliban” Analogy, wherein Christian conservatives are smeared as having the same agenda as violent Islamic fundamentalists. The problem is that the two phenomena are not analogous, no matter how often or in what way liberals repeat this smear. Honor killings and other manifestations of Islamic backwardness (polygamy, child brides, burqas, etc.) have no parallel among Christian conservatives. Opposition to abortion and homosexuality, expressed through the ordinary processes of representative politics, is simply not the same thing as what the mullahs in Iran or other Islamic fanatics seek to impose through sharia law. Lumping both together under the rhetorical umbrella of “religious fundamentalism” is just dishonest.

But where would liberals be without dishonest rhetoric? And why do I have a suspicion that Patrick Ryan Kasprik will soon regret calling attention to himself and his clever “satire”?

 

Category: Supreme Court

FMJRA 2.0: Hey, Baby, It’s The 4th Of July

Posted on | July 6, 2014 | 10 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Tranarchy: Gender Theory = Insanity

Sex, Science, Nature and ‘Choice’

#Socialism2014 Marxist Gender Theory: Sexual Minorities of the World Unite!

Inmates Run the Facebook Asylum

Boom! IRS Admits Guilt

FMJRA 2.0: Stuff Like That

The Battle for Iraq

Lesbian Celebrated #LGBTPride Month by Murdering Her Wife, Police Say

Demi Lovato Keeps Dropping Hints

A Poultry Attempt At Rule 5

Crisis or Opportunity

LIVE AT FIVE: 06.30.14

Men’s Conference Succeeds

Three Scary Words

Joe Biden E-Mails Me

Gender Theory Madness: Gay Man Gets ‘Doxed’ Because of His ‘Transphobia’

The #HobbyLobby Hysteria

Virginia Democrat Indicted on Pornography, Underage Sex Charges

Taco Shout-Out To Harry ‘The Cadaver’

The Mississippi Scandal

Rule 5 Monday: Air-Cooled

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.01.14

Celebrities in the Culture War

Ace, Hayek, Hoffer, Sowell

What @AdamRichman Learned

PSA: Words Can Hurt You

Department of Useless Advice

LIVE AT FIVESIX: 07.02.14

Fertilizer Hitting Air Circulator In Mississippi Senate Runoff Controversy

If You Want Blood…

Their Agenda, and Hers

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.03.14

Max Blumenthal Claims That Netanyahu ‘Stage-Managed’ Kidnapped Teens Crisis

Progressivism Won’t Be Our Death

Robert Redford Uses Independence Day To Ride Climate Hobby-Horse

Gender Theory: Beyond Parody

Top linkers this week:

  1. Batshit Crazy News (33)
  2. Regular Right Guy (14)

…and the usual assortment of near-misses. Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!


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Category: FMJRA Award

Feminist Attacked by Feminists After Telling the Truth About Birth Control

Posted on | July 6, 2014 | 59 Comments

Holly Grigg-Spall (@hollygriggspall) is a British feminist who last year published a book called Sweetening the Pill: or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control. The term “hormonal birth control” includes not only The Pill, but also Depo-Provera and Yasmin/Yaz, the latter of which is the target of lawsuits that blame side effects of the drug for causing nearly two dozen deaths.

It would seem to be just common sense that the long-term use of artificial hormones — for birth control or for anything else — could have harmful side effects. When I was in college, a guy who was into weight-lifting called me over to his dorm room one afternoon and asked me to read the very detailed warning included with the steroids (Dynabol, as I recall) he had somehow obtained on the black market.

These warnings were written in a lot of scientific jargon that my buddy didn’t understand, and he asked me to translate them into plain English. So I was reading along through this lengthy list of potential side effects and reached the phrase “testicular atrophy.”

Oh, hell, no.

Do you see what I mean about common sense? You don’t have to be a research scientist to figure out that if “testicular atrophy” is a potential side effect of a guy injecting himself with synthetic male hormones, maybe it’s not such a good idea for women to be gobbling down a daily dose of synthetic female hormones. Even if it weren’t for my other concerns about the Contraceptive Culture (see “Sex, Science, Nature and ‘Choice’“), I would still be dubious about hormonal contraceptives on the basis of common-sense health issues.

But don’t take my word for it. Let a radical feminist explain:

My own experiences with HBC began in my teens when I began taking it for acne. I remember that once I started taking it, it took me about a month for my over-the-top emotional hormone swings to lessen. . . .
Once my emotions leveled out, I was very good at taking the pill once per day at the same time every day. . . .
I stayed on the pill for a decade at least.
I discovered radical feminism in 2011 and, like so many of us, it changed my life. . . . About that same time I decided to go off the pill. The last straw came when doctors thought I had had a pulmonary embolism, which is a condition made more likely by HBC. A CT scan indicated that it was actually pneumonia, but that was a very scary experience for me. I decided to finish my pack and be done with the pill.
Over the next year as my body detoxed from the pill I developed acne all along my jaw/chinline that hadn’t been there before. Large bumps protruded on my face, which was embarrassing as I was well past adolescence. I also experienced weight gain, which I was told wasn’t a *real* side effect of going off the pill. It was frustrating not to [be] believed when I reported my symptoms.

Think about it: If the Pill is powerful enough to prevent pregnancy and relieve adolescent acne — i.e., to make a woman’s body stop doing what it normally does — what kind of less noticeable changes does it also cause? What are the potentially harmful side effects of using these synthetic hormones on a daily basis for 10 years or more? Holly Grigg-Spall started asking questions about this and guess what the reaction was from the feminist establishment?

Liberal feminists have called her book “dangerous” and use name-calling techniques in attempts to push Griggs-Spall to the margins of feminist discourse. As many of us know, being insulted and told to keep quiet are tools used to keep us away from discovering truths and maintain the status quo. Grigg-Spall is referred to as a “crank” (how feminist!), and potential readers of her book are warned that discussing female biology and women’s experiences is inherently “essentialist”. . . . There are several critiques of this book that have similar tones and I found the pro-pill apologism quite transparent.

Why is this?

My belief is that the pharmaceutical industry is threatened by Griggs-Spall’s book and that discrediting her is a way to maintain the status quo. I also contend that rejecting the pill goes against sex-positive/mainstream feminism, which is why there’s push-back as well from its representatives.

Hmmm. So the radical feminist believes that the arguments of “sex-positive/mainstream feminism” are just coincidentally aligned with the interests of the pharmaceutical industry that promotes hormonal birth control. I’d bet that if a diligent researcher looked closely at the financing behind institutional feminism, they would discover that this alignment is not entirely coincidental, like how “mainstream feminism” sold out to the porn industry in the 1980s. People need to be more skeptical. Not everybody who says they’re your friend is actually your friend.

 

Category: Contraceptive Culture, Feminism

The Dorchester Doofus

Posted on | July 6, 2014 | 65 Comments

The Boston Globe last week published an op-ed column about “rape culture” by libertarian author Cathy Young. Her column prompted several letters to the editor, including this piece of spectacular idiocy:

As a man in my 20s, I find absurd Cathy Young’s assertion that “the overwhelming majority of men need no teaching that rape is a repugnant crime” (“Rape in the real world,” Op-ed, June 29). The flurry of catcalls that women encounter as they walk to work or school and the constant objectification of the female body should be evidence enough that our culture of harm exists apart from the most extreme acts of violation by a small set of psychologically sick offenders.
How many males have heard and truly understood stories of terror from women who have been followed blocks from the subway, waitresses who have been forced to accept harassment to make tips, and girls who have been complimented in ways that make them feel sick?
The status quo is derogatory not only to women but to men who are cued to choose power over love, stoic silence over honesty.
We should hold individual perpetrators accountable for their actions, but we cannot expect to solve a crisis of rape culture until we shift from the stigmatization of the mentally ill to the stigmatization of patriarchy and our complicity in it.
I am willing to risk anxiety to see that change come about.
Joel Wool
Dorchester

What you see here is the deliberate conflation of offensive behaviors — catcalls on the street, “harassment” of waitresses, unwelcome compliments — with the felony crime of rape.

There are many things which are widely recognized as offensive which are not crimes, yet the aggregation of feminist pet peeves into a collective category called “rape culture” permits a sort of rhetorical abracadabra where everything leads to a discussion of rape. Why? So that feminists can expand the Victimhood Zone. The woman targeted by wolf-whistling construction workers and the waitress dealing with a lecherous customer are thus included as victims of sexism (“the constant objectification of the female body”) and everyday hassles — offensive, but not criminal — are made analogous to rape.

So “rape culture” (a large and amorphous cluster of feminist grievances) is a “crisis,” and the solution offered is a “shift . . . to the stigmatization of patriarchy and our complicity in it.”

Would this proposed “shift” actually reduce the incidence of rape? I doubt it. Rapists probably don’t spend much time reading op-ed columns — or letters to the editors, either. As a matter of fact, I doubt that men who hassle waitresses or shout crudities at women on the street are habitual readers of op-ed columns.

It is within the cohort of Men Who Don’t Read the Boston Globe that one will find not only a vast majority of rapists, but also most men who engage in Offensive Non-Criminal Sexist Behavior. So the discussion of “rape culture” among the intelligentsia is just a lot of empty rhetorical posturing that won’t do anything to improve women’s lives.

Speaking of The Constant Objectification of Women’s Bodies . . .

On this Sunday’s episode of Botched we meet Renee, who after six months of silicone butt injections began to have health issues.
She explains, “I wanted the volume and the fullness back at the top of my butt.”
However, the silicone spread throughout her body which caused major health problems.
Although her doctor wanted to go a different route, Renee got butt implants to replace the fullness that the injections were providing.

There’s video at the link. I, for one, denounce this abhorrent practice.

 

Category: Feminism
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