The Other McCain

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

A Failed Slut, A Successful Farmer, And A Pair of Soldiers

Posted on | June 18, 2014 | 16 Comments

— Wombat-socho


I’m going to lead off this week’s book post with a short review of a book which is itself all too short: Kathy Shaidle’s Confessions of A Failed Slut. Ms. Shaidle, proprietress of the Five Feet of Fury blog and columnist at Takimag, has a lot of uncomplimentary things to say about the state of the sexual revolution in America and Canada since the unfortunate 1970s, and she says them in a very entertaining manner. As has been said about Florence King’s Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye and Mencken’s Chrestomathy, the main problem with this book is that the covers are too close together.

This is definitely not a problem with Matthew Harrington’s Godspawn, which would have been a righteous doorstop of a book if I’d bought the dead tree edition, but since I borrowed it from the Amazon Prime Lending Library it was merely a nice long read. Harrington has done a good job of writing a distinctly different sort of fantasy, set in a world where magic works very differently, magicians fall out of the sky periodically, and a farmer’s boy comes back from a mushroom gathering walk in the woods to find all the adults in his village slaughtered, all the children enslaved, and the world’s best bowman searching through the wreckage to see what, if anything, can be salvaged. From that grim beginning stems a coming-of-age novel that’s also an epic tale of revenge involving dragons, an utterly corrupt (but still brutally, effectively, oppressive) Hegemony, a less corrupt matriarchy, and a number of other folks who help our hero on his way. Also, magical oranges that wind up changing the world for the better. All things considered, this is a fun book and well worth the money I’m going to drop on it when I have to give it back at the end of the month.

Equally huge, but considerably more famous, is James Jones’ From Here to Eternity, the classic novel of the prewar Army in Hawaii. This is the restored edition with more of the original obscenities and a couple of sections that were deleted from the original print edition by squeamish editors and lawyers, along with an afterword that discusses those edits, and the whole thing is definitely worth the $3.03 (see what they did there?) Amazon wants for the Kindle edition. I originally talked a lot about this book in the long-ago 21 Books post and really don’t have anything new to add; the restored parts don’t significantly change the plot in any way. I do not, on the other hand, recommend the other two-thirds of Jones’ trilogy (The Thin Red Line and Whistle); Jones was apparently obsessed with using the same characters in all three books despite killing off Prewitt at the end of the first novel, and as a result they wind up being textbook examples of the maxim that most authors have one good book in them, their first, and spend the rest of their careers trying to rediscover the spark that made that first book so special. This is not to say that the latter two books don’t have their moments, because they do, but if I had to do it over again I would have borrowed them from the library instead of buying them.


Category: Books, Kathy Shaidle

Porn, Shame and Suicide

Posted on | June 18, 2014 | 14 Comments

Last month, I wrote about the death of Alyssa Funke, a 19-year-old who committed suicide two weeks after appearing in a porn video:

If you do porn, it’s going to be on the Internet, and if it’s on the Internet, everybody’s going to see it. There is no way you can have a “secret” porn career in the Internet age, so if you’re going to do porn, just get used to the idea that your high school friends (and your high school enemies) are going to find out about it. Your parents, your teachers, your brothers and sisters, your aunts and uncles, grandma and grandpa — everybody you know is going to see what you do, got it?
If that doesn’t bother you, OK. But if you don’t think you can handle the reaction, maybe you shouldn’t be doing porn.

This is just common sense, but feminism is profoundly hostile to common sense, and so the feminist commentary on Alyssa Funke’s suicide was focused on the “slut-shaming” and Internet “bullying” she experienced after her porn career became public knowledge.

Now, Amy Otto is directly attacking the pro-porn feminist argument:

The claim that porn is a “sex positive” activity for women does not reflect reality. Denying the internal shame and trying to re-brand it will not redeem people. . . .
Was this video an act of her “self-expression” or a sign of a girl in trouble? The suicide soon after does imply that whatever theoretical “empowerment” that was gained by allowing herself to be filmed having sex with a stranger certainly wasn’t positive enough to inspire her to continue with that career path.

Read the whole thing at Pocket Full of Liberty.

 

Category: Feminism, Sex

Ace on @Milbank: ‘Biased and Giddily Ignorant … Proud to Know Nothing’

Posted on | June 18, 2014 | 13 Comments

Last night, I hit Dana Milbank’s cheap smear of a Heritage Foundation panel about the Benghazi cover-up and thought I’d done a good job. This morning, I woke up and saw Ace’s treatment of the same story and was awed by the work of the master:

Milbank’s original deception is reporting this woman’s charge — a vague claim that the panel was Muslim-bashing — without first stating if the charge was accurate or not.
He reports her charge as if the charge is, itself, a fair one.
But is it? He doesn’t say. He implies it is, without saying so.
Note, however, what this panel was about. It was not about terrorism. It was not about Islam.
It was about the American government’s response to Benghazi, including lying to the public and retaliating against internal whistleblowers.
How would Islam have even have come up, except as a brief tangent? It seems unlikely that it did — and I imagine when the full video gets released, it will demonstrate, as one panelist told this woman, that this questioner was the only person talking about Islam, while all the panelists were focused on the Obama administration.
That is, she hijacked the panel to make her own point and toss out a vague charge of Serious You Guys Racism while doing so. . . .
Milbank’s original column shows him as biased and giddily ignorant. He’s actually proud to know nothing at all about the subject he’s allegedly covering.

Read the whole thing. In one of Milbanks’ “Look at These Crazy Wingnuts” gestures, he includes this:

The accusers’ allegations grow wilder by the day. . . .
[Brigitte] Gabriel floated the notion that Stevens had been working on a weapons-swap program between Libya and Syria just before he was killed.

Does Dana Milbank really think Brigitte Gabriel just made that up? Has he not paid attention? October 25, 2012:

On the night of Sept. 11, in what would become his last known public meeting, Stevens met with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, and escorted him out of the consulate front gate one hour before the assault began at approximately 9:35 p.m. local time.
Although what was discussed at the meeting is not public, a source told Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi to negotiate a weapons transfer, an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists.

Stevens’ meeting with the Turkish consul in Benghazi is significant because it is believed — not confirmed, because the administration has been stonewalling congressional investigators — that what happened was this: The CIA and State Department were trying to negotiate a “buyback” of weapons they had (secretly) supplied to anti-Qaddafi forces in Libya, weapons which were then being (secretly) shipped via Turkey to anti-Assad forces in Syria. Of course, Milbank might dismiss this as a Fox News conspiracy theory, except that CNN reported the same thing in August 2013:

CNN has uncovered exclusive new information about what is allegedly happening at the CIA, in the wake of the deadly Benghazi terror attack. . . .
Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground that night, and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.
CNN has learned the CIA is involved in what one source calls an unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agency’s Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out. . . .
Among the many secrets still yet to be told about the Benghazi mission, is just how many Americans were there the night of the attack.
A source now tells CNN that number was 35, with as many as seven wounded, some seriously.
While it is still not known how many of them were CIA, a source tells CNN that 21 Americans were working in the building known as the annex, believed to be run by the agency. . . .
Speculation on Capitol Hill has included the possibility the U.S. agencies operating in Benghazi were secretly helping to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels.
It is clear that two U.S. agencies were operating in Benghazi, one was the State Department, and the other was the CIA.

The CIA was reportedly forcing employees with knowledge of the Benghazi operation to take polygraphs, asking if they had talked to journalists or congressional investigators. And this is significant . . . why? Because, if true, it shows that the administration had a covert policy which was neither authorized by Congress nor disclosed to the American people, that four Americans were killed because of this policy, and that the whole farcical charade of claiming that the Benghazi attack was a “spontaneous” protest against a YouTube video was part of a clumsy attempt to conceal the truth, a cover-up that continues to this day.

Dana Milbank is (or pretends to be) “giddily ignorant” of this. Why? Because the Washington Post is actively involved in the cover-up?

“The accusers’ allegations grow wilder by the day . . .”

 

Category: Ace of Spades, Libya, Media Bias, Terrorism

LIVE AT FIVE: 06.18.14

Posted on | June 18, 2014 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Maliki Stands With Sunni Leaders, Appealing For Unity

People gather at the site of a Sadr City car bomb

Responding to US pressure?
Obama Sending Troops To Iraq After All



Twin Tornadoes Tear Through Nebraska Town
Two dead, at least 19 injured


Israel Considering Expelling Hamas Leaders From West Bank To Gaza
Manhunt continues for kidnapped students; 150 Palestinians jugged



POLITICS
Obama Fundraises In New York While Iraq Burns

A Pittsburgh artist shows Obama his etchings

Gets raucous embrace at gay donor gala

Hillary Claims She Had Doubts About Video Explanation For Benghazi

IRS Knew For Months About Missing E-Mails From Lerner, Other Employees


Sponsors Of Medical Marijuana Bill Meet With Governor Cuomo

“Kissing Congressman” Vance McAllister Considers Run For Re-Election

Rep. Candice Miller Calls For National Guard To Boost Border Patrol

California Mayor Resigns Over Poop Flinging Incident

White House Hails Illegal From India As “Champion Of Change”



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Mixed After US Goes Back To Iraq: NYMEX $106.74, Brent $113.31
Dollar Firm, Stocks Stall As Inflation Fuels Fed Risk
Asian Shares Mostly Lower, Weak Yen Boosts Tokyo
Solar City Copies Musk’s “Gigafactory” Manufacturing Model
Adobe Rises 8% On Q2 Earnings Surprise
US Home Building Declines 6.5% In May
Facebook Takes On Snapchat With A Slingshot
YouTube To Block Indie Labels As Subscription Service Launches
OnLive And WikiPad Join Forces To Bring Big Games To Mobile Devices
FCC Could Be Blocked From Allowing Internet Companies To Sell Preferred Bandwidth To Content Companies
Oyster Subscription eBook Service Comes To Android



SPORTS
Rising Star Holt Sparks Red Sox Past Twins

Brock Holt

The only productive player in the current lineup?

Lucroy Homers Twice As Brewers Pound Snakes

Cavs Top Horned Frogs 3-2 In 15th; Tied For Longest CWS Game

Yu Can’t Win Them All: Darvish Struggles In 10-6 Loss To A’s

Red Take Series From Pirates With 6-5 Win

Chacin Feeds His Gopher, Rockies Fall To Dodgers 4-2


Davis Hits Grand Slam As O’s Beat Rays

Tanaka Leads Majors With 11th Win As Yanks Beat Jays

Wood’s Bat Helps Cubs Outlast Marlins

Ole Miss Ousts Texas Tech In The Ninth

Nude Photos Distract From Croatia’s Cup Campaign

Angels Overpower Tribe 9-3

Nats Hold Off Astros’ Rally For 6-5 Win



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Playboy’s Shannon Twins: From Bunnies To Burgers

Not opening their own place, unfortunately

Got to admire the buns on the beach.

Stanley Marsh 3, Creator Of “Cadillac Ranch”, Dies At 76

Storyboard Artists Get Screwed

“Expendables 3” Trailer


Jersey Shore’s Mike Sorrentino Arrested In Tanning Salon Fracas

Justin Bieber And Selena Gomez Back Together For Now

Jay Penske Update

WB Ready To Reboot “Scooby-Doo”

Tracy Morgan Updated To Fair Condition

Paul Simon & Edie Brickell – Domestic Violence Charges Dropped



FOREIGNERS
Pound Loses Ground After UK Inflation Data
Japan Trade Deficit Shrinks In May After Tax Hike
Sunni Jihadis Launch Attack On Major Baiji Refinery
Suicide Bomber Kills 13 In Northern Nigeria
Overloaded Boat Sinks Off Malaysia, 42 Indonesians Missing
Putin Talks Peace With Poroshenko After Gas Pipe Fire
Philippines Seeks Quick Ruling On Suit Against Red China
Top PRC Diplomat To Meet Vietnamese Leaders As Tension Rises In South China Sea
Japan Finally Bans Child Porn



BLOGS & STUFF
Valley Of The Shadow: A Modern Media Mantra With Questions For The Media
Michelle Malkin: Not Just Two Planeloads Of Illegals To Hanscom AFB & Logan – It Was Six
Twitchy: Hillary – We Can’t Let Gun Rights Advocates Terrorize “The Majority”
American Power: The Return Of Christian Anti-Semitism
American Thinker: Obama’s Last Card
BLACKFIVE: Benghazi Suspect Captured
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin To The GOPe – Attack Obama, Not Conservatives
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, June 17
Jammie Wearing Fools: Obama Honors Illegal Aliens At The White House
Joe For America: Wait Lists And Veteran Deaths = $10 Million In Bonuses For Phoenix VA
JustOneMinute: Affirmative Action Alternatives
Pat Dollard: Mexican Embassy Claims Mexicans “Illegally” Crossing US Border Not Guilty Of A Crime
Protein Wisdom: We Are The Ones We Were Waiting For
Shot In The Dark: Contempt Of Populace
STUMP: Illinois Politics – Spread The Wealth Of Corrupt Connections!
The Jawa Report: Jihadtube Becomes #1 Platform For ISIS Snuff Porn
The Lonely Conservative: Meat Prices Skyrocket, Beef And Bacon Set New Records
This Ain’t Hell: Whistleblower Retaliation At The VA
Weasel Zippers: Anti-Gun Group “Moms Demand Action” Uses Armed Security During March On Brooklyn Bridge
Megan McArdle: Missing E-Mail Is The Least Of The IRS’ Problems


Shop Amazon – Celebrate 4th of July

Category: Live at Five

BOOM! WaPo’s Dana @Milbank ‘Is Why People Loathe Journalists’

Posted on | June 17, 2014 | 36 Comments

So says Mollie Hemingway (@mzhemingway), reacting to the columnist’s deliberate distortion of a Heritage Foundation event:

This, my friends, is why people loathe journalists. They twist and turn and play gotcha games. Also, they make stuff up. A good editor in my past told me that he was always suspicious of reporters who rely on breaking up a quote multiple times and adding in their own words in between. It means they’re trying to force the speaker to say something. We can now call this the Milbank Rule.

What happened was that a Muslim student at American University attended a panel discussion about Benghazi and — in a complete non sequitur — accused the panelists of blaming “all Muslims” for the terrorist attack in Libya that killed four Americans. This was a rude provocation, but transcripts and video of the event show that the panelists responded courteously. Yet Dana Milbank wrote this:

“Are you an American?” Gabriel demanded of Ahmed, after accusing her of taking “the limelight” and before informing her that her “political correctness” belongs “in the garbage.”

The panelist quoted is Brigitte Gabriel, the Lebanese-American author of an excellent book, Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, which I have often recommended. But as Hemingway points out, Milbank’s partial quote of Gabriel completely distorts what Gabriel actually said to the student, Saba Ahmed:

And since you’re the only Muslim representative in here, you took the limelight instead of speaking about why our government — and I assume are you an American? — You’re an American citizen — So as an American citizen you set in this room and instead of standing up and saying a question or asking something about our four Americans that died and what our government is doing to correct the problem, you stood there to make a point about peaceful moderate Muslims. I wish you brought 10 with you to question about how we can hold our government responsible. It is time we took political correctness and throw it in the garbage where it belongs.

Do you see the vast difference between what Gabriel actually said and how Dana Milbank characterized it? Brigitte Gabriel isn’t just making a partisan talking point when she criticizes “political correctness” about Islamic terrorism. Our general unwillingness to recognize the nature and scope of the threat made the United States vulnerable to attack 9/11, and our ridiculous fear of offending “peaceful moderate Muslims” continues to hamper an effective response to the radical menace. This is a serious policy problem, and Milbank’s cheap partisan smear job — calculated to depict conservatives as hateful and irrational — is symptomatic of the problem.

Exit question: Which anti-American extremist organization is a greater threat to our freedom, al-Qaeda or the Washington Post?

(Hat-tips: Instapundit and Memeorandum.)

 

Category: Islam, Media Bias, Terrorism

The Pathology of the ‘Male Feminist’

Posted on | June 17, 2014 | 37 Comments

 

When last we heard from @HugoSchwyzer in March, the disgraced professor promised to take “an extended hiatus” from writing:

As a quick glance will reveal, I haven’t updated my blog in many months. I am in the midst of what will be a very long break from public writing. The promise of an extended hiatus is one I made many times last summer, but invariably failed to keep. For some time now, however, I’ve been able to stay away from doing interviews, publishing articles and blogposts, and otherwise unhelpfully inserting myself into the conversation.
The April issue of Los Angeles Magazine includes a long article about my fall from grace. Written by Mona Gable, it’s based in part on interviews she did with me in late August of last year while I was staying with my mother in Carmel. These interviews were given during a time when I was in an emotional tailspin, fresh off a psychiatric hospitalization, and heavily medicated on a cluster of psychotropic drugs.

Let’s be clear: Hugo Schwyzer is mentally ill, he has been mentally ill for a long time, and it is highly unlikely that someone suffering from such a chronic psychiatric disorder will ever be completely sane again.

John Hinckley has better prospects for recovery.

“Almost all of the worst allegations about me made by my critics turned out to be true,” Schwyzer said last fall, after confessing that he had slept with many of his students at Pasadena City College. Shortly thereafter, Schwyzer seriously injured a young woman in a felony DUI car crash and admitted: “I am a danger to myself and others.”

Despite his promise of a “hiatus,” however, Schwyzer continues to be active on Twitter, thus exemplifying his basic problem — he is dishonest, irresponsible and untrustworthy, and cannot be expected to restrain his compulsive habits, rooted in a narcissistic craving for attention. Schwyzer’s fame as a “male feminist” was one of his most shameless lies; not only was his own behavior toward women characterized by sexual exploitation and violence, but he claimed to be a professor of “gender studies” (although his college offered no such course) despite the fact that he had taken only a couple of undergraduate classes in the field, having gotten his doctorate in British history. Schwyzer was an impostor, an unethical fraud, and if any of his former students were to sue Pasadena City College, I’d imagine the college’s lawyers would advise administrators to offer a generous settlement.

Schwyzer’s indefensible behavior should alert us to the problematic nature of feminism as an ideology, especially when that ideology is embraced by men. We can understand why disgruntled women would find an anti-male worldview appealing; feminism has the therapeutic value of presenting women with a rationalization for their unhappiness, scapegoating men for everything. But what kind of man is attracted to an ideology that treats his very existence as a sort of social disease?

University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen.

“[A] young professor of journalism, Robert Jensen . . . sent me several of his articles describing his transition from heterosexual, to homosexual, to celibate man now exploring impotence as the ultimate response to the apparent inescapability of ‘patriarchal sex,’ in whichever context sex is pursued. . . .
“Jensen gave up sex ‘with other people (including the people in pornography)’ after realizing that he could not have sex of any sort without recreating ‘patriarchal sex.’ He explains, ‘I was the man, and I was in control because men “naturally” take control of sex.’ Even converting to homosexuality did not save him from these dilemmas, for he found that gay sex, too, was contaminated by patriarchal values. . . .
“All men are raised with rapist ethics, he maintains, whether or not they are all rapists in legal terms.”
— Daphne Patai, Heterophobia (1998)

Stipulate that Professor Jensen’s interpretation of feminist theory is more accurate than Hugo Schwyzer’s. Obviously, a middle-age community college professor banging his teenage students is not a “feminist” by any definition. Yet to acknowledge the authenticity of Jensen’s feminism is not to recommend either feminism or Jensen.

Professor Jensen is absolutely correct that eschewing normal masculine sexuality — becoming an impotent gay celibate — is the only way short of castration or suicide that any man can become wholly acceptable within the context of feminist theory.

This is why most people reject feminism. Normal men refuse to accept the insulting anti-male rhetoric of feminism, and normal women — i.e., the kind of women who like normal men — have no enthusiasm for the pet theories of Marxist lesbians.

All feminists are insane, but “male feminists” are a special kind of crazy.

 

Category: Education, Feminism

Call Implausible IRS Lie About ‘Lost’ Emails What It Is: Obstruction of Justice

Posted on | June 17, 2014 | 49 Comments

Democrats lie routinely and habitually, and are accustomed to having their lies accepted without question by the media. It is therefore significant that the media are openly mocking the preposterous claim that Lois Lerner’s emails have been “lost”:

Last Friday afternoon, the Internal Revenue Service claimed that Lois Lerner, a former executive tasked with overseeing tax-exemption applications, lost thousands of emails after her computer crashed. Many of those emails, the tax collection agency claimed, could not be recovered.
This convenient excuse for failing to comply with a request from House investigators is not sitting well with some in the journalistic community.
“Do you believe in the Easter Bunny?” CNN’s John King asked his panel of political reporters on Monday. “Do you believe in Santa Claus? Do you believe that Lois Lerner’s emails suddenly went ‘poof?’” . . .
In a sardonic segment on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday, hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough ruthlessly mocked the notion that a hardware crash could eliminate files stored on remote servers.
“Mika, even you have to admit this is pretty ridiculous,” Scarborough probed.
“Pretty ridiculous,” Brzezinski replied. “Those emails exist.”
Perhaps made uncomfortable by the implications surrounding this admission, Brzezinski quickly changed topics.

Of course, Democrats want to change topics, because “the implications surrounding this admission” are logically obvious: If we know the administration is lying about the “lost” emails, why are they lying?

The only logical explanation: Lois Lerner’s emails, subpoenaed by congressional investigators, must include evidence that the IRS targeting of conservative groups was approved by the White House.

This is what the “lost” email lie is intended to conceal. It can have no other purpose. For the past year, Democrats and their media allies have insisted that this is a “phony scandal,” even while evidence and testimony disproved a series of excuses offered by the administration, e.g., that the targeting was the work of a few “rogue” employees in the Cincinnati IRS office. The so-called “investigation” by the Justice Department is part of the cover-up, a whitewash designed to hide the truth of the scandal.

Ever since this scandal first became public, congressional investigators have believed (although they would never say so, on the record) that the IRS targeted Tea Party groups because of political pressure from the White House and congressional Democrats. If the IRS has deliberately destroyed (or attempted to conceal) relevant evidence, we need not wonder why. Cleta Mitchell is not deceived:

Federal courts have held, in the context of trial, that the bad faith destruction of evidence relevant to proof of an issue gives rise to an inference that production of the evidence would have been unfavorable to the party responsible for its destruction. . . . The fact that the IRS is statutorily required to preserve these records yet nevertheless publicly claimed that they have been “lost” appears to evidence bad faith.

It’s time to call this what it so obviously is: Obstruction of justice.

 

Category: Barack Obama, Scandal, Taxes

Hard Choices Is Sort Of The Literary Equivalent Of Healthcare.Gov, Then

Posted on | June 17, 2014 | 20 Comments

by Smitty

Pardon me while I munch on the schadenstrudel:

According to this source, a Simon & Schuster insider, “They sold 60,000 hard covers first week and 24,000 ebooks.” The publishing house was “hoping and praying for 150,000 print first week.”

“The 60k represents a less than 10% sell thru based on what they shipped,” says the source.

It’s been reported that one million copies of Clinton’s book were shipped weeks before the June 10 publication date. “They will be lucky to sell 150,000 total lifetime,” the source writes in the email.

Read the whole thing to find out how much Simon & Suckers paid for this steamer. Of course, you peasants will all rue the day when Her Majesty ascends the throne, and you’re taxed by law for a copy.

via Drudge

Category: Hillary Clinton
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin