Scott Walker: “It’s About Reform”

Posted on | March 27, 2014 | 16 Comments

by Smitty

I, for one, have had enough “borrowing

it forward”:

“I think what we’ve shown in Wisconsin is that it’s not about austerity — it’s about reform,” Walker said. “And what I mean by that is if we just come in our state and cut things across the board that means you cut your priorities as much as you cut things that aren’t quite as important. We reined in collective bargaining. We put more power back in the hands of the taxpayer at the state and the local level. I think nationally we need that same sort of reform no matter who is running for president. I’d slash the marginal tax rates for everyone across the board — go to a simpler, more flat tax.”

We should hasten to add that, in stark contrast to #OccupyResoluteDesk, Walker actually has a record of, you know, reforming.

The MacKinnonite View: Power, Gender, Sexuality and Social Oppression

Posted on | March 26, 2014 | 44 Comments

From time to time, it seems necessary to remind readers that there is no such thing as “moderate feminism.” Feminism is inherently radical — indeed, revolutionary in its aims — and if you are not a radical, you are not a feminist. This is not what I say, this is what feminists themselves say. Women who think of themselves as “moderate feminists” simply have not paid attention to actual feminists.

While searching for a quote earlier today, I came across a complete PDF of Katharine MacKinnon’s 1989 book, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. MacKinnon is not a marginal fringe character. She was influential in the development of sexual harassment law, and this particular book was published by Harvard University Press. These excerpts are from page 54, and from pages 113-114:

[W]oman’s social inequality is not an inevitable attribute of her biology but biologically inherent in the heterosexual sex act. The current meaning of sexual relations between women and men is taken as biologically inevitable. The only thing that is not inevitable is woman’s social oppression through them. Woman’s biology oppresses her only when she relates to men. The basis of the inequality of the sexes here is seen as the inequality inherent in heterosexual intercourse as a result of sex-specific anatomy. To transcend or avoid this in personal life by having sexual relations only with women — lesbianism — eliminates the gender-based underpin­nings of sexual inequality in this view. [Quoting Jill Johnston, 1973:] “For if the phrase biology is destiny has any meaning for a woman right now it has to be the urgent project of woman reclaiming herself, her own biology in her image, and this is why the lesbian is the revolutionary feminist and every other feminist is a woman who wants a better deal from her old man.” Biological problems have biological solutions. . . .
Sexuality, then, is a form of power. Gender, as socially constructed, embodies it, not the reverse. Women and men are divided by gender, made into the sexes as we know them, by the social requirements of its dominant form, heterosexuality, which institutionalizes male sexual ‘dominance and female sexual submission. If this is true, sexuality is the linchpin of gender inequality.
Feminism has a theory of power: sexuality is gendered as gender is sexualized. Male and female are created through the erotization of dominance and submission. The man/woman difference and the dominance/submission dynamic define each other. This is the social meaning of sex and the distinctively feminist account of gender inequality. Sexual objectification, the central process within this dynamic, is at once epistemological and political. The feminist theory of knowledge is inextricable from the feminist critique of power because the male point of view forces itself upon the world as its way of apprehending it.

MacKinnon is not a stupid woman. Her writing is nuanced and carefully worded and, for example, you can’t say she explicitly endorses Jill Johnston’s viewpoint — she superficially maintains objectivity by use of the phrase “in this view,” so that she (or her defenders) can say she is merely describing a certain perspective, and may dismiss as unfair any critic who points out that MacKinnon does not explicitly reject Johnston’s lesbian separatism.

However, skipping forward from page 57 to page 113, we find MacKinnon saying that “heterosexuality . . . institutionalizes male sexual ‘dominance and female sexual submission,” from which arises “gender inequality” because of “the social meaning of sex.”

It is difficult to read this as anything other than a condemnation of heterosexuality, per se, and especially of the male role in heterosexual relationships. Perhaps there are men and women who could enjoy a relationship that would not offend MacKinnon’s feminist sensibility, but I have a hard time imagining it. What she seems to wish to dictate are relationships in which men have no agency, no initiative, no prerogatives, and no rights. It is not equality, but absolute female hegemony, which MacKinnon seeks.

However strange this anti-male, anti-heterosexual view may seem to most people — including some women who might (mistakenly) think of themselves as “feminists” — it is in fact very influential within academic feminism, a view taught in all university Women’s Studies programs. And as this MacKinnonite perspective has suffused its influence throughout academia and, from there, throughout society — in culture, in politics, in law — what is the practical result? Men on Strike, as Helen Smith calls it.

If male-female relationships are merely a contest for power, as MacKinnon proclaims, then these relationships will necessarily be a source of constant conflict, and who needs that? Men therefore avoid relationships, keeping their interactions with females as casual as possible — “friends with benefits” or short-term “hook-ups” devoid of emotional content — so as to limit the risk of conflict.

Of course, women will blame men for this unsatisfactory stalemate in the War of the Sexes, but that’s what feminism is really about: Whenever a woman is unhappy, some man must be to blame. What MacKinnon calls “the feminist critique of power” means that all men are always wrong about everything, because “woman’s social oppression” deprives women of responsibility for their own problems. Ultimately, feminism teaches that every woman is a victim of patriarchy, and she can only escape by becoming a lesbian.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Of Course, It’s Florida: Teenage Boy Goes to Gay Nightclub and Gets Butt-Raped

Posted on | March 26, 2014 | 31 Comments

Look, I don’t want to get into any slut-shaming, victim-blaming or homophobia here. But some things can only happen in Florida:

For 18 minutes, Justin Hand looks into the camera and recounts how he was raped.
In two videos on YouTube titled “I Was Raped Last Sunday,” the 18-year-old Hand (he turns 19 next week)

tells the story of how he went out on a normal night in late January to Parliament House, a gay club in Orlando, Florida. There, he met a stranger and ended up going back to his hotel room, where the man assured him he wouldn’t try anything, because his sleeping roommate was around anyway. When Justin tried to leave, the man attacked and anally raped him. . . .
“I am not a virgin, I partake in casual sex, and put myself in a situation that was a mistake. And I want people to understand that it’s still rape.”

Thanks for sharing that, Justin. And let that be a warning to the rest of you teenagers: Don’t ever go to Florida. They’ll rape you.

‘Fat Justice’ Feminists Blame Reagan, Praise ‘Communism and Socialism’

Posted on | March 26, 2014 | 76 Comments

“We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one.”
— Ronald Reagan, 1964

“Feminism sees women as a group and seeks to define and pursue women’s interest. . . .
“Feminist theory sees the family as a unit of male dominance, a locale of male violence and reproductive exploitation, hence a primary locus of the oppression of women.”
— Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989)

“It is one thing to ask us to rethink body image issues; it is quite another to intersperse the terms ‘patriarchy’ and ‘white supremacy’ throughout a decidedly unscientific lecture that claimed to be about health.”
— Paige Willey, Swarthmore Independent

You might think that by now everybody understands feminism is an ideology of man-hating Marxist lesbian baby-killers.

God knows, I’ve explained this often enough, but apparently not everyone reads my blog, and so a Swarthmore University sophomore was shocked to encounter the truth at a campus event last week:

Fat Justice and Feminism
Nicole Sullivan and Cora Segal, two Boston-based feminist organizers, will lead a workshop on fat justice, which is a political stance that seeks to address the ongoing exploitation and oppression of fat people. From the war on obesity to the rise of deadly bariatric surgery, there is an unprecedented attack on fat bodies. This workshop seeks to map out the focal points of this oppression, while delving into the complex history of white supremacy and misogyny that created it. We will set forth an analysis and call to action to make fat justice a priority in women’s movements.
Refreshments provided.
Funded by the Women’s Resource Center, Dean Henry, History Department, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Interpretation Theory, and Worth Health Center.

“Refreshments provided.” (Insert punch line here.)

Any student of Marxist theory must recognize that wherever you encounter “exploitation and oppression” discussed in the context of a “complex history” in pursuit of “justice,” the “organizers” are going to be Bolshevik comrades, no matter what the ostensible topic of their “analysis” may be. Where’s Joe McCarthy now that we really need him?

Highlights of Paige Willey’s account of the “Fat Justice” seminar:

• Body Mass Index (BMI) is an entirely erroneous and useless metric, as it was invented by a “white, male, French astronomer,” Adolphe Quetelet. Thus BMI has “direct links to a white supremacist, patriarchal, colonizing, exploitative force.” . . .
• For Segal and Sullivan, the 1960s and 1970s were notable because they welcomed “communism and socialism as viable alternatives to capitalism and exploitation.” . . .
• Ronald Reagan is partially responsible for all suffering of fat people, as he “f*cked everything up.” . . .
• “There is no scientific consensus whatsoever that fat people need to exercise more, or that fat is unhealthy. There is no evidence that [being] fat causes diabetes. Medical professionals are informed of this so-called knowledge by lobbying groups.”

Which comes first: the Marxism, the lesbianism or the fatness?

Willey was too polite to mention it, but a Vice.com writer who attended a previous “Fat Justice” seminar in Boston last fall noted that both Segal and Sullivan admit they are “what American doctors would consider to be overweight.” And there’s this from Willey: “Sullivan self-identified as an ‘angry, man-hating lesbian’.”

No surprise there, nor are we surprised by Willey’s report that “Segal and Sullivan . . . made clear they were involved in other movements against police brutality, oil pipelines, and abortion regulations.” That is to say, feminism is a radical egalitarian ideology that arose within the 1960s New Left and, as such, feminists reflexively align themselves with all similar movements that are anti-capitalist, anti-religious and anti-American.

‘Fat Justice!’ http://t.co/R0pJbLwesx @campusreform Obviously, this woman is a BMI victim. Blame Ronald Reagan! pic.twitter.com/6332Bd79Da

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) March 26, 2014

It is easy to make jokes about fat feminists, just like it was easy to make jokes about smelly hippies in the 1960s, but as absurd as they may seem, these lunatics are in deadly earnest about their ideologies. The hippies and feminists and other anti-American radicals have taken over our education system and have spent decades indoctrinating young people into their Marxist worldview. How else to explain why 60% of voters ages 18-29 voted to re-elect Barack Obama?

Paige Willey’s article about the “Fat Justice” seminar has been blogged at conservative sites everywhere: The Washington Free Beacon, Campus Reform, the Daily Caller, Gateway Pundit, and so forth. But how many conservatives have bothered to explain the Marxist ideology and New Left origins of the feminist movement? How many conservatives are taking feminism seriously? People need to wake the hell up.

Republicans lost the 2012 election in part because the “War on Women” meme resonated with those who have been indoctrinated in the feminist worldview. If Democrats run Hillary Clinton in 2016, do you think we will be able to ignore feminism as a major political issue?

FLASHBACK: “Roses are red, Violets are blue. The heteronormative patriarchy Is raping you.” http://t.co/RkOvnaagRj #tcot

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) March 26, 2014

In The Mailbox, 03.26.14

Posted on | March 26, 2014 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Proof Positive: To Crush Your Enemies, To See Them Driven Before You, and To Hear the Lamentations of Their Women
First Street Journal: Jonathan Pollard Should Never Be Released
Michelle

Malkin: My Trip To The Pot Shop
Twitchy: White House Tries To Spin Latest Obamacare Non-Delay

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: “I’m Joni Ernst. I Grew Up Castrating Hogs On An Iowa Farm…”
American Thinker: Michelle’s Hard-Knock Life Story Comes To China
Blackfive: Cybersecurity Employment
Conservatives4Palin: Palin – Mama Grizzlies Roaring Again!
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, March 25
Jammie Wearing Fools: Paul Krugman Calls The Koch Brothers “Perfect Villains” And “Serious Evildoers”
Joe For America: Walking Dead Spoiler For Rush Limbaugh
JustOneMinute: The Eternal Genius Of The Spotless Mind
Pat Dollard: White Heterosexual Students Banned From Public University’s Diversity Classes
Protein Wisdom: Jeb Bush Praises Illegals As “Risk Takers”, Finds A Common Core Ally In Hillary Clinton
Shot In The Dark: Open Letter To Every Single News Reporter In Minnesota
The Jawa Report: This Is What You Get For Thinking Outside The Box In Today’s Military
The Lonely Conservative: How The EPA Makes Bad News About Its Regulations Disappear
This Ain’t Hell: More “Help” For Members Of The Military
Megan McArdle: Silicon Valley’s Age Problem

Justices Impersonating Accountants

Posted on | March 26, 2014 | 53 Comments

by Smitty

Kagan went on to say that other U.S. businesses are “voluntarily” dropping their health insurance coverage for employees.
“You know Hobby Lobby is paying something right now for the — for the coverage,” Kagan said. “It’s less than what Hobby Lobby is paying for the coverage. There are employers all over the United States that are doing this voluntarily.”
Chief Justice Roberts interjected that this was in opposition to what Hobby Lobby presented in its lawsuit.
“I thought — I thought that part of the religious commitment of the owners was to provide health care for its employees,” Roberts said and Clements agreed.
“Well, if they want to do that, they can just pay a greater salary and let the employees go in on the exchange,” Sotomayor said.

Listen Sotomayor and Kagan, you brace of bimbos: you can slap a “Constitutional” label on the homesick abortion that is ObamaCare, but you can’t stop it from making you look like clueless idiots. How Hobby Lobby does its accounting is irrelevant to the truth that the law you found Constitutional is a steaming crock.

Maybe you think that you can wear down the resolve of the American people.

Train them to dig life on your Progressive Plantation. But will “elections have consequences” in November? Over time, are we allowed to repent of the abject foolishness that has allowed DC to accrue too much power over every aspect of life?

Or are you just going to ignore what happens, should the GOP retake Congress? Are we going to see more attacks on the Koch brothers and the Tea Parties, as our the Godless Commies who are our purported betters undertake “shaping operations” in order to train us to love Progress?

With the Hobby Lobby case, it's hard for Progressives to advance their cause AND maintain the fiction that they care about the Constitution.

— Keystone Keynesian (@smitty_one_each) March 26, 2014

And do read the ObamaCare blog comment of the day. This thing is a virulent cancer. The GOP had better not harbor hope of making peace with it.

Related, via Hot Air Quotes of the Day:

“One religious group could opt out of this and one religious group could opt out of that, and everything would be piecemeal and nothing would be uniform,” Kagan warned. “Religious objectors would come out of the woodwork.”

In other words, kind of like the Amish, or Congress:

Along with eschewing cars and many other modern technologies, the descendants of 18th-Century German immigrants who practice the Amish and Old Order Mennonite religions, have effectively opted out of Obamacare, along with most federal safety net programs.
A little-known provision of the law with its roots in a 1950s battle over Social Security exempts these communities from the individual mandate, an element of the Affordable Care Act that requires most Americans to purchase health insurance in some form.

I guess Kagan’s point is to warn that our Balkanized system could get kinda fragmented, or something. WHY ARE WE PAYING THIS IDIOT?

This Is Not A Bolo Combat Unit. This Is Not The Concordiat.

Posted on | March 25, 2014 | 8 Comments

— by Wombat-socho

Just about everybody familiar with the combat SF subgenre knows about Keith Laumer’s Bolos, which evolved over a number of short stories from moderately advanced main battle tanks into cybernetic war machines utterly loyal to their human commanders and their comrades of the Dinochrome Brigade. Whether in the era of the Concordiat or Jame Retief’s Corps Diplmatique Terrestrienne, Bolos could be found on the front line against any alien menace, cybernetic knights sans peur et sans reproche.

What if the Bolos had been created by a less worthy humanity, one that cared little for their AI-driven mercenaries and used them to commit atrocities not only against aliens, but also against humans of the wrong religion or political stripe? What if the commanders of these war machines had been unworthy of their charges, throwing them away in stupid and pointless actions, and treating them with the same lack of respect you or I might show the malfunctioning Mr. Coffee in our kitchen? Tom Kratman explores those questions in Big Boys Don’t Cry, a novella that sometimes seems nightmarish in its inversion of all the honorable and glorious tropes that made the Bolo stories what they were. Let Colonel Kratman introduce you to Maggie, a Ratha reviewing her long career shortly before its end…or a new beginning.

Big Boys Don’t Cry is on sale at $0.99 for the next twelve hours. It’s an outstanding deal. Go buy it and read it.

In Which Brett Kimberlin Presumes to Lecture U.S. Judge Paul Grimm

Posted on | March 25, 2014 | 22 Comments

The Pro Se Pipsqueak’s astonishing arrogance:

ECF 113–BK Letter Insulting Judge Grimm

Now, there is a fairly complicated story behind all this — you can read my post last night to catch up on the latest in the perjuring bomber’s bizarre RICO lawsuit, which John Hoge has dubbed Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al. — but there was a lot of confusion after Judge Grimm issued his Feb. 21 letter order in the case. The judge clarified the situation in another letter order last week, and how does Brett Kimberlin react? He insults the judge, as Aaron Walker explains:

In any case, it was a trivial typo given that both dates had passed and it was dishonest of Brett to pretend that this was like a fabricated quote, or something.
And it was more than dishonest. It gave the judge a first-hand taste of how Brett twists facts. Often Brett will take something with a kernel of legitimacy and twist it into something it was not. For instance, Seth Allen really did write in an email “maybe I should murder him” (meaning Brett). That was legitimately wrong and Mandy Nagy was right to report him to the police. But Brett just twisted it first into a threat (it’s not a threat if you don’t communicate to the target) and then complaining that Patrick and I didn’t report it to the police even though Mandy told us she was going to do that, and then told us after she did it. Why would we need to call the police when we know someone else was doing it? So there is a kernel of legitimacy there, but it is all twisted around.
And now Judge Grimm is seeing first-hand how Brett does that.

Thanks to Stephen Sheiko for pointing out that Judge Grimm’s March 5 Case Management Order made the situation clear:

Case mgmt order (ECF 97) states BK was permitted to MOVE TO amend, not permitted to amend. http://t.co/cwspUPHhsZ pic.twitter.com/7RY7QoyMt0

— Stephen Sheiko (@stephensheiko) March 25, 2014

What Judge Grimm has witnessed is what we have been dealing with for months, namely Brett Kimberlin’s sociopathic dishonesty:

[A] plaintiff who was described in 1999 by Slate as “the convicted bomber, habitual liar, and all-around sociopath who claimed to have sold drugs to Dan Quayle.” . . .
Brett Kimberlin . . . was notorious as a liar before I ever wrote one word about him.

“. . . a world-class liar . . .”
— Amazon.com

“. . . a top-flight con man . . .”
— Publisher’s Weekly

“. . . a man whose idea of the truth is utterly malleable
. . . a dangerous smooth talker . . .”
— Kirkus Reviews

Kimberlin’s habitual dishonesty is arguably his most notable personality trait, as abundantly demonstrated in this case. Here are two paragraphs from his Second Amended Complaint:

What Brett Kimberlin is actually arguing here is that once he sues somebody, they’re supposed to shut up and not even mention that they have been sued by him. You cannot even publicly proclaim your innocence or offer evidence in your defense. As for the March 1 post cited by Kimberlin in Paragraph 138, go read it yourself: “Kevin Zeese, Neal Rauhauser and the ‘Occupy Infiltrator’ Frame-Up.” Is this a defamatory “attack” on Brett Kimberlin? Have I falsely “imputed” anything that is not reasonably construed from available evidence?

Of course I haven’t, and even if Judge Grimm doesn’t dismiss Kimberlin’s suit in its preliminary stages, there is zero chance that Kimberlin could prove I have “defamed” him, because I haven’t. This explains why I haven’t been bothering Judge Grimm with any filings in this case, other than a brief Motion to Dismiss. First, and most obviously, I believe that my co-defendants and their lawyers have already pointed out fatal flaws in Kimberlin’s suit, so that it is likely to be dismissed anyway. Second, I know I’m innocent — truth is the ultimate defense. And third, as a pro se defendant, I have hesitated to file anything for fear I’d make some rookie error that would cause Judge Grimm to strike my filing or deny my motion, and thus inadvertently provide Kimberlin’s admirers like Bill Schmalfeldt cause to gloat. Ultimately, of course, I know how this story ends: I win, and Kimberlin loses. But I won’t give Schmalfeldt & Co. even a moment of transitory satisfaction in the meantime.

@embryriddlealum @AaronWorthing @stephensheiko @canuckamuk @wjjhoge @rsmccain @BomberSues I hear judges LOVE to be corrected by pro se folks

— army_vet (@antvq16) March 25, 2014

John Hoge has filed his motion in opposition to Kimberlin’s Second Amended Complaint, pointing out a few of Kimberlin’s egregious violations of Local Rule 103.6.

UPDATE: Aaron Walker’s opposition to the motion to amend:

Opposition to Leave to Amend (SAC)02 Redacted

He cites more than two dozen violations of Local Rule 103.6, which Judge Grimm specifically admonished Kimberlin to observe.

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