The Other McCain

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

New Ukraine President Condemns Insurgents as ‘Gangsters and Killers’

Posted on | June 7, 2014 | 13 Comments

Talking tough:

Petro Poroshenko took the oath of office as Ukraine’s president Saturday, calling on armed groups to lay down their weapons as he assumed leadership of a country mired in a violent uprising and economic troubles.
In his inaugural address to the Verkhovna Rada, the country’s parliament, Poroshenko promised amnesty “for those who do not have blood on their hands.” . . .
Poroshenko also promised dialogue with citizens in the eastern regions, but excluded the insurgents.
“Talking to gangsters and killers is not our avenue,” he said, according to a translator. . . .
Poroshenko said he will not accept Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
“Crimea is, was and will be Ukrainian. There will be no trade-off,” Poroshenko said.

“Anti-American Sentiment Growing in Russia” — kind of like the “sentiment” on our university campuses, really.

 

Category: Ukraine

‘Feminist Lezzy Heaven’

Posted on | June 7, 2014 | 102 Comments

Lea DeLaria in the Netflix series ‘Orange Is the New Black’

“It’s like I’ve died and gone to feminist lezzy heaven. I’ve been a professional lesbian for over 30 years — before that I freelanced — but my entire career has been about that, putting a human face on what a butch is.”
— Lea DeLaria, star of Orange Is the New Black

A TV series about women’s prison is “feminist lezzy heaven,” and Orange Is the New Black is a cultural phenomenon — like HBO’s Girls — primarily because of critical praise for its feminist themes. Typical is Amanda Duberman’s gushy enthusiasm at Huffington Post:

Perfectly written, hilarious and culturally relevant, the series chronicling a diverse group of women behind bars proved to be a feminist triumph. . . .
The male characters are either punchlines or morally reprehensible gatekeepers of sexism. The first season’s plot lines recognized transgender identity, sexual fluidity, race relations and the triumphant potential of sisterhood.

A show that portrays men only as “morally reprehensible gatekeepers of sexism” must be praised, you see, because this is what feminism is all about: Demonizing men as the source of all evil in society.

Never mind, of course, that  Orange Is the New Black was adapted from the memoir of Piper Kerman, a born-rich woman who graduated from Smith College and was sent to prison for money laundering for a heroin smuggler who was Kerman’s lesbian lover.

You can read Kerman’s own self-pitying account, in which she portrays herself as a victim of federal mandatory-minimum sentencing laws: “Without mandatory minimums, Piper would almost certainly have been sentenced to probation and community service.”

Well, boo hoo hoo.

Other people have suffered far worse fates than doing 13 months in prison for money laundering, but those other people don’t have rich families and elite educations (Smith College annual tuition, $44,450) and so they don’t write memoirs that become TV shows.

Feminism’s victimhood narrative requires us to ignore contradictions and paradoxes. Instead we must pretend that a simple common-sense interpretation of facts — “Hey, maybe dating a heroin smuggler is a bad idea” — is too unsophisticated to be a valid judgment. Piper Kerman is a woman, and when bad things happen to a woman, there must be a feminist morality tale in there somewhere, right? God forbid that we should interpret “sexual equality” in such a way that women are viewed as responsible for their own choices.

Of course, no fan of Orange Is the New Black cares what I think, because I’m just a morally reprehensible gatekeeper of sexism.





 

 

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Category: Crime, Culture, Feminism

‘Hold Until Relieved’

Posted on | June 6, 2014 | 47 Comments

Today is the 70th anniversary of D-Day, and Americans rightly take pride in the heroic courage of our troops who saw that historic day’s bloodiest fighting on Omaha Beach. However, one of my favorite stories of D-Day — vividly told in Cornelius Ryan’s classic The Longest Day — is of the British glider troops who captured what became known as “Pegasus Bridge” across the Caen Canal near the village of Ouistreham.

Capturing and holding the bridge was essential to establishing the left flank of the Allied invasion, and this crucial mission was assigned to a mere 181 men, a company of the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry led by Major John Howard. The glider assault by the “Ox and Bucks” was the opening attack of the invasion and took place right after midnight. It took them just 10 minutes to capture the bridge from the surprised Germans, and Major Howard’s command lost only one soldier in the fight — Lieutenant Den Brotheridge, who thus became the first Allied soldier killed on D-Day.

The order given to Major Howard was to “hold until relieved,” to defend his position until his men were reinforced by troops moving south and east from Sword Beach. The 1962 film version of The Longest Day gave a “mystic portrayal” of the Ox and Bucks’ mission, which Major Howard laughed off as “sentimental rubbish.”

True heroes seldom acknowledge the glory of their accomplishments, considering it merely the performance of duty.

 

Category: History, Military

White (Liberal) Male Privilege

Posted on | June 6, 2014 | 72 Comments

The Left is willing to suspend judgment and waive all standards when it comes to their allies. Feminists nowadays are up in arms about “rape culture,” but 15 years ago they were defending accused rapist Bill Clinton in no uncertain terms: “I would be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.”

Liberalism is simply a set of prejudices, a collection of syllogisms all of which end, “ergo, vote Democrat.” Their smug presumption of their own  moral and intellectual superiority makes liberals the most easily deceived people in the world. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is the latest example:

Now Margaret Sullivan, the public editor of The New York Times, is calling on Kristof to “give readers a full explanation” of his reporting on Somaly Mam, the celebrated Cambodian anti-sex-trafficking activist who, according to a recent Newsweek expose, fabricated parts of her story and those of some of the alleged victims she advocated for. The revelations have disillusioned many of Mam’s loyal supporters and left the press looking gullible. Just as importantly, they’ve highlighted the public’s seemingly insatiable desire for heroic narratives — and the willingness of many in the media to provide them.

As Instapundit remarks, Kristof was engaged in “white knighting” — posing as the courageous and enlightened rescuer — and was thus easily played for a chump by “the James Frey of anti–sex trafficking activism.” Liberals fall for this kind of hoax because (a) they overestimate the value of their own intelligence, (b) they naïvely underestimate the ability of cynical manipulators to wrap themselves in the mantle of victimhood, and (c) they are themselves  utterly unscrupulous in exploiting any narrative that advances the liberal cause.

Nicholas Kristoff’s status as a privileged white male, with a six-figure paycheck from the world’s most prestigious newspaper, might make him a natural target of identity-politics activists. His crusading on behalf of impoverished and exploited Third World women could thus be seen as a noblesse oblige gesture. This led to him being scammed by a hoaxer, so that he was publishing lies, but hey: It’s the New York Times.

If liberals cared about facts, they wouldn’t be liberals, would they?

 

Category: Media Bias, New York Times

In Which @AmandaMarcotte Gets Crazy About High School Dress Codes

Posted on | June 6, 2014 | 94 Comments

Maybe you missed the story about a Utah high school that Photoshopped yearbook photos of girls to make them more “appropriate.” Most people who even noticed the story just shrugged: Whatever.

Yet this story inspired Everybody’s Favorite Feminist™ Amanda Marcotte to go off on a tangent about “modesty” as a weapon of patriarchal social control of women’s bodies:

It’s a belief that because women, especially young women, have bodies that represent “sex” in a straight male-dominated society, then those bodies are eligible for more social control than the bodies of men.
While this school is extreme, anyone who went to a high school with a dress code knows that girls get policed more than boys, often in ways that are sexually humiliating. . . . Hand-wringing articles bemoaning the supposed emergence of “hook-up culture” focus mostly, or exclusively, on scolding and feigning concern in the direction of girls, with boys being left to make their own choices without much concern or judgment.
Because of all this, young women are subject to way more punishment and control from legal and other authorities for their sexuality, starting with the popularity of laws requiring minor girls to notify parents if they want an abortion. . . .

This is a typical feminist non sequitur — from a discussion of school dress codes, suddenly Marcotte leaps to the topic of abortion and specifically parental notification laws. But these are minors, and as parental authorization is generally required for all medical treatment of minors, the onus must be on abortion advocates to demonstrate why abortion should be an exception to the general rule.

As for Marcotte’s rantings about “social control”: Shouldn’t we assume that the community supports the school’s attempt to enforce standards of appropriate clothing? Wouldn’t parents be upset if the school permitted girls to parade through the hallways wearing miniskirts, short-shorts, halter tops, et cetera? Isn’t it likely — doesn’t common sense suggest — that provocative clothing would be a distraction from the learning process? Common sense, however, is impermissible in feminist discourse, and logic is viewed with suspicion by feminists as a weapon of “straight male-dominated society.”

Logic: Children exist because of parents. Children are dependent and are under the supervisory authority of their parents. Therefore, if the parents in a community support the school system’s dress code, it’s not a problem. On the other hand, if parents don’t like the school system’s policies — about dress code or anything else — they are free to send their kids to private school or home-school them. And thus we return to Amanda Marcotte’s mystification about the Utah school:

The school appears to be so out of step with standard American social norms that it’s hard to escape wondering if there wasn’t an attempt to impose a fundamentalist standard of modesty on the girls, regardless of their own religious beliefs.

In a community where most parents are religious, if the school system doesn’t “impose a fundamentalist standard of modesty on the girls,” guess what happens? Religious parents will pull their kids out of public school. What kind of education does Amanda Marcotte think those kids would get if they were home-schooled or sent to private religious schools? Also, who is “out of step with standard American social norms”?

“I don’t want a baby. . . . Nothing will make me want a baby. . . .
“This is why, if my birth control fails, I am totally having an abortion.”
— Amanda Marcotte, March 14

Is this fanatical hatred of babies what she means by “standard American social norms”? And how does the baby-killer Amanda Marcotte, who so deliberately substracts herself from the category of “parent,” presume to tell parents how to raise their kids?

Oh, there I go with logic again . . .

 

Category: Feminism

Gunman Targets Christian University

Posted on | June 6, 2014 | 19 Comments

Four shot, one dead, killer is in custody:

A lone gunman armed with a shotgun opened fire Thursday in a building at Seattle Pacific University, killing one person before a student subdued him with pepper spray as he tried to reload, police said.
The 26-year-old gunman, Aaron Ybarra, was obsessed with the Columbine High School shootings and had even traveled to the Colorado site where two student gunmen killed 15 and injured another 21 fellow students in April 1999, police sources told KIRO 7.
Ybarra was not a student at SPU where the shootings happened about 3:25 p.m. Thursday. . . .
The school canceled activities and classes for the remainder of Thursday and Friday. A prayer service started at 7 p.m.
“We’re a community that relies on Jesus Christ for strength and we’ll need that at this time,” said Dan Martin, president of Seattle Pacific University, which is located at the edge of a leafy Queen Anne neighborhood about 5 miles from downtown Seattle.

(Via Memeorandum.)

 

Category: Crime

LIVE AT FIVE: 06.06.14

Posted on | June 6, 2014 | 12 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Obama: “I Make Absolutely No Apologies: For Bergdahl Swap

Claims freed deserter “not political football”

White House claiming if word had leaked out, Bergdahl would have been killed

European Central Bank Posts Negative Deposit Rate
ECB now charging banks to hold money

Gunman Kills One, Wounds Three At Seattle Pacific U
Shooter mobbed by students while pausing to reload shotgun



POLITICS
Senators Announce Bipartisan Bill To Reduce VA Wait Times

Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders

More flexibility for vets and the VA as McCain & Sanders merge previous bills


Secret Documents Show Bergdahl Turned Jihadi

An End To NSA Phone Snooping In Sight?


Senate Confirms Burwell To Head HHS

Appeals Court Delays Recognition Of Gay Marriages In Utah

Federal Double Standard On Endangered Species Law?



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Crude Oil Mixed In Asian Trade: NYMEX $102.47, Brent $108.89
GM Top Execs Spared In Report On Ignition Failure
Stocks Head Higher After ECB Action
Bank Of America In Talks On $12 Billion Mortgage Settlement
US Household Wealth Increases As Home Values Appreciate
Payday Lenders Sue US Bank Regulators Over “Operation Choke Point”
OpenSSL Bug Allows Hackers To Read Private Communications
Verizon Threatens To Sue Netflix In War Of Words Over Video Quality
Google Unveils 3D-Sensing Tablet
Aereo TV Streaming Comes To Chromecast
Canon Serves Up Its Own Cloud-Based Image Repository



SPORTS
“Tonight, We Are All From Cleveland”* – Spurs Beat Broken A/C, Heat In Game 1

Tim Duncan: 21 points, ten rebounds

LeBron falls to cramps, Heat fall with him 110-95


Yanks’ Tanaka Tames A’s For 9th Win

Timbermutts President Flip Saunders Goes Back To Coaching

Rays Drop 10th Straight, This Time To Marlins

Astros Take Series From Angels With 8-5 Win



Royals Rookie Fireballer Ventura Returns, KC Edges Cardinals 3-2

Verlander Struggles Again As Jays Sweep Slumping Tigers

Wood Homers, Pitches Cubs Past Mets To Complete Sweep

NASCAR’s Midseason Sprint Cup Studs & Duds

NFL Scrapping Roman Numerals For Super Bowl 50

Rays To Honor Don Zimmer Before Saturday’s Game

The Ugly Truth: MLB’s Draft Can’t Match NBA, Much Less NFL

Who’ #1 In The Draft Of Fictional Baseball Players?

Calipari Gets Hefty Extension From Kentucky

Fister, Nats Beat Phillies 4-2, Finish Sweep



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Evan Rachel Wood Getting Sued For $30 Million

Ten things she’s hating about life right now

Lawsuit stems from her bailing on “10 Things I Hate About You” sequel

Leonardo DiCaprio Refused To Be Filmed For Unspeakable Armenians’ Reality Show


Whoopi Goldberg Is Wrong (Again)

Bethenny Frankel “Thrilled” Custody Fight Is Over

Adam Richman Poses Naked, Showing Off 70-Pound Weight Loss

Rosamund Pike Expecting Second Child

Transsexual Sofie Vissa Breaks Her Silence

Jessica Biel Tells Justin Timberlake “No Babies”



FOREIGNERS
Suspect In Mounties’ Slaying Captured
Veterans Honor D-Day’s Fallen, 70 Years On
Thai Junta Detains Anti-Coup Protest Leader
Irish Authorities Under Pressure Over Mass Graves Of Children
Witnesses Say Boko Harma Jihadis Killed Over 200 Nigerians
Red China Frees Acclaimed Tibetan Filmmaker
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister: Action Will Be Taken Against Criminals, Lax Officials
Australian Al Jazeera Reporter Could Get 15 Years From Egyptian Court
Norks Detain Another American
Tories Top UKIP To Win Significant By-Election



BLOGS & STUFF
Valley of The Shadow: Drop Your Linen And Start Your Grinnin’
Doug Powers: Chuck Schumer Says 1st Amendment Needs To Be Redefined – Starts By Giving It Different Author
Twitchy: Obama Admin Official Scrubs Twitter Bio After Suggesting Bergdahl’s Platoon Was Full Of Psychopaths
American Power: The Left Is Terrified Right Now About The Bergdahl Story
BLACKFIVE: Someone In The Administration Should Read This (Out Loud) To The Cabinet
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Sandra Fluke Is On The Ballot In LA
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin Takes Down Team Obama
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, June 5
Jammie Wearing Fools: Taliban Commander Says More Kidnapping To Come After Bergdahl Deal
Joe For America: Remembering And Missing Ronald Reagan
JustOneMinute: A Recap
Pat Dollard: Acting VA Secretary Admits 18 Vets On Phoenix Waiting List Died
Protein Wisdom: Good News!
Shot In The Dark: If We Had…
The Jawa Report: Liberals Begin Smear Campaign Against Bergdahl’s Platoon
The Lonely Conservative: Pics Of Warehouses Holding Illegal Minors Leaked
This Ain’t Hell: Armed Forces Color Guard To March In DC Gay Pride Parade
Weasel Zippers: Poll – 55% Of Americans Think Obama Has Made US Weaker
Megan McArdle: Inequality’s A Loser For Democrats


*Don Surber on Facebook


Deadline to submit links for tomorrow’s FMJRA is noon Saturday.
DO IT.
Deadline to submit links for Rule 5 Sunday is midnight tomorrow.
DO THAT TOO.


Category: Live at Five

A Tale Of Two Burgers

Posted on | June 5, 2014 | 52 Comments

— Wombat-socho


As I mentioned in the previous burger post, one of my objectives in visiting Las Vegas this week was to check out a couple of hamburger joints not found in my Washington DC stomping grounds: the infamous Heart Attack Grill, and the wildly popular In-N-Out Burger. There were also some other suggestions, but in the heat (sic) of the moment I completely forgot what they were. Anyway…I went forth in the noonday sun today to find a suitable location for the burrow I’ll be occupying next June, and having completed that task, headed out Sahara Boulevard on the bus to find the nearest In-N-Out.

Micah 1:7? How appropriate.


A lot of pixels have been lavished by a lot of fanboys and fangirls on how great In-N-Out Burger is; how it uses only fresh ingredients prepared to your order; how its “secret menu” is so awesome. At the risk of enraging said fanboys, I frankly didn’t think it was all that. I ordered a double-double protein style (no bun) and sampled the fries (for SCIENCE!), and to be honest, neither the burger nor the fries impressed me. It’s not that there was anything bad about either one, but they just didn’t live up to the hype. Comparing them to Five Guys, I give the advantage to the latter: In-N-Out does not have bacon, their fries are inferior to Five Guys’ peanut-fried version, and Five Guys has more variety in the available Coke product.


In fact, I was so underwhelmed by In-N-Out that the minute I stepped off the Deuce at Fremont Street, I returned to the Heart Attack Grill, where I’d had dinner on Tuesday after arriving from Dulles.

They’re not kidding, you guys.


One of the reasons I like Carl’s Jr./Hardees is their in-your-face response to the food Puritans who think we all ought to be eating local-source organically-grown artisanal tofu, and the Heart Attack Grill turns that attitude up to 11. Nothing, absolutely nothing on the menu is good for you in the traditional sense*, and the staff takes great relish in dishing up the Bypass Burgers -available up to Octuple Bypass Size with eight half-pound patties, cheese, chili, onions, tomatoes, and an optional 40 slices of bacon- Flatliner Fries cooked in lard, milkshakes with the world’s highest butterfat content, beer, booze, unfiltered cigarettes, wine served in intravenous bags…it just goes on and on, set against a backdrop of hilarious movie parody posters and a “Last Supper” style mural in which Dr. Jon serves a quadruple bypass burger and flatliner fries to his fast food mascot apostles. Diners are provided with hospital gowns on entry, which is helpful if you’re a messy eater; patients who fail to respond to treatment (i.e., not finishing their burger) are spanked by the “nurses” or “doctors” on duty as appropriate. And those nurses have some quality arms, let me tell you – not from personal experience, mind you; I finished my burgers. Oh yes – diners who weigh in at 350 or more pounds get their Bypass Burger for free with purchase of beverage, and since I am a wombat of bulk, if not definition, I took full advantage of this – but tipped as if I had paid for the burgers, because I’m not a schmuck.


So I don’t think I’ll be going back to In-N-Out, but I think after I move to Vegas next year, I’m going to be spending a few meals with Dr. Jon, Chief Nurse Tracy, and the rest of the crew.

*They do have bottled water, which may be the one thing on the menu that nutritionists would agree is good for you.


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Category: Bacon, Culture, Nevada
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