The Other McCain

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

Feminist College Girls Gone … Well, OK, Not ‘Wild,’ Exactly. But My Point Is …

Posted on | April 3, 2014 | 101 Comments

Future Cat Ladies of America, unite!

Looking at photos from the “Young Feminist Leadership Conference,” one cannot help feeling a sense of pity: Here they are, young women just starting out in life — some of them moderately attractive, even — committing themselves to a philosophy that guarantees their futures will be consumed by angry baby-killing bitterness.

Hey, I said “moderately attractive.” Your mileage may vary. Some guys like the Chubby Nerd Girl look. De gustibus non est disputandum.

So, what did the Young Feminists do last weekend during their National Conference? They heard from Old Feminists like the hate-filled fanatic Eleanor Smeal and the radical atheist man-hater Kim Gandy. There were panel discussions on “Why Prison Reform Matters to the Feminist Movement,” “Defending Your Local Women’s Health Center” and (naturally) “Rape is Rape: The Fight Against Campus Sexual Assault.”

(Remember: “No woman is heterosexual” and “PIV is always rape, OK?”)

My favorite item on the NYFLC agenda, however, was “Ecofeminism: Gendered Impact of Climate Change.” Why? Because that panel discussion was moderated by “Sara Alcid, Programs and Policy Associate, Reproductive Health Technologies Project.”

We all remember self-described “queer feminist” Sara Alcid, right?

“Heteronormativity and gender roles also rear their ugly heads on Valentine’s Day. Gifts for ‘him’ or ‘her’ are clearly divided and marked and it’s almost impossible to find cards that represent queer couples. . . .
“It’s not hard to see why Valentine’s Day is problematic for many feminists. Celebrated traditionally, Valentine’s Day magnifies many of the very systems of domination that we work to critique and dismantle.”
— Sara Alcid, “Valentine’s Day: What’s A Feminist To Do?” EverydayFeminism.com, Feb. 14, 2013

Well, the patriarchy got thoroughly smashed at the conference, I guess, but there were murmurs about lingering heteronormativity.

Beyond the complaints about insufficient “queer” representation, the National Young Feminist Leadership Conference made headlines by attacking conservative journalist Katherine Timpf:

Campus Reform’s Katherine Timpf attended the National Young Feminist Leadership Conference (NYFLC) — an event which promised to be about “inclusivity” and welcoming everyone — only to be told that “conservative” women were not welcome.
Timpf attempted to ask students’ their opinions on feminism, but conference organizers made an announcement advising participants not to talk to Campus Reform because it was a “conservative” outlet.
The organizers also followed Timpf around the conference to interrupt her conversations with students to tell them the same thing.
“They’re a group that’s conservative, so what we are fighting for is not something…” one organizer told a student who was talking with Timpf, prompting the student to walk away. . . .
“You guys aren’t wanted here,” a participant told the reporter after the warning.
“I thought this was supposed to be an inclusive thing, why am I being excluded because of where I work?” Timpf asked another organizer after another interruption.
“Because the place that you work is not inclusive,” the organizer responded.

After seeing these feminist festivities, I’m sure many young women are asking, “What can I do? I’d like to be a feminist, but I can’t afford to attend a national conference or spend years getting a Women’s Studies degree from an elite private university.”

Relax, ladies. Becoming a feminist is actually very simple:

  1. Get an abortion;
  2. Become a lesbian;
  3. Vote Democrat;
    and
  4. Cats. Lots of cats.

You’re welcome. Always glad to help.





 

Category: Abortion, Education, Feminism

Barrett Brown Cops a Plea

Posted on | April 3, 2014 | 20 Comments

September 2012: Barrett Brown vows to ‘destroy’ an FBI agent

More than a year and a half since the paranoid YouTube meltdown that got him arrested on charges of threatening an FBI agent, former Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown has signed a plea bargain agreement with federal prosecutors on hacking charges:

Barrett Brown, whose case became a cause célèbre after he was charged with crimes related to the Stratfor hack, has agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors, according to court filings.
Prosecutors filed a motion this week in a Texas court to seal the plea agreement, which the court granted.
Brown’s attorney, Ahmed Ghappour, won’t discuss the details, due to a court-ordered gag, but another document filed by the government this week (.pdf) hints at the nature of the deal. . . .
Brown is scheduled to be re-arraigned, on the charges on the superceding document, on April 29 in Texas.
Brown is also facing charges related to threats he allegedly made against an FBI agent. It’s unclear if the plea agreement will cover that indictment as well. If it does, and the two cases are combined, Brown’s maximum statutory sentence would likely be five years.

The “threats he allegedly made”? Are you freaking kidding me? Go watch that video again. There is no “allegedly” about it.

Of course, as I said at the time, that video was also “13 minutes of absolute 100% bugfucking nuts.” The problem for a narcissist like Barrett is that his pose as an “investigative reporter” and a First Amendment martyr prevents him from admitting the fundamental truth: He was an amateur chasing a hero fantasy, as if it were all a video game or an action-adventure spy thriller movie.

He got in over his head, couldn’t cope with the stress, flipped out and became “The Kook Who Knew Too Much.”
Striking a heroic pose for his (equally deranged) anarchist admirers, however, Barrett can never admit this. All you have to do is read the Twitter reactions to the news of the plea deal to see this: The Radical Hero of the People’s Glorious Revolution cannot be seen as cooperating with the government. He must always Fight the Power, and some members of the anarchist kook mob simply can’t understand why a guy who was potentially facing 50 years in federal prison would cop a plea to reduced charges.

Barrett Brown did the smart thing by taking the plea deal, and so now maybe he’ll be out  on the street before he’s 40.

 

Category: Barrett Brown, Crime

FORT HOOD SHOOTING

Posted on | April 2, 2014 | 58 Comments

UPDATE 10:10 p.m. ET: Some four hours since gunfire erupted at Fort Hood, Texas, we now have confirmed details about the atrocity:

Four people including a gunman are dead and 14 others are injured after a shooting late Wednesday afternoon at Fort Hood, according to several sources including U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, chairman the House Homeland Security Committee.
The shooting led to a lockdown on post that was lifted just before 9 p.m. Wednesday.
Traffic was heavy Wednesday night as personnel streamed off post.
CBS News identified the shooter as Ivan Lopez, 34.
Lopez, an Army truck driver, was reportedly in uniform at the time of the shooting.

We don’t much about motives, but the shooter is dead, the crisis is over, and now the survivors grieve.

* * * PREVIOUSLY * * *

Details are sketchy at this point, and I don’t want to encourage speculation. TV and online reports indicate that there is an “active shooter” situation at Fort Hood, Texas, and that there are at least two people wounded so far.

UPDATE: Fox News has just reported that, according to a law enforcement source, the shooter has been “neutralized.” Some online reports suggest that this may be a domestic dispute, possibly a murder-suicide. However, I hasten to add that early reports in situations like this are often unreliable. Be patient, and wait for confirmation.

UPDATE II: KWTX-TV reports:

At least one person is dead after a shooting late Wednesday afternoon on Fort Hood, a post spokesman confirmed. Others were injured in the shooting, but the spokesman didn’t say how many.

Again, remember: Early reports are often unreliable.

UPDATE III:

UPDATE IV: Fox News now reports that the gunman is dead, perhaps of a self-inflicted gunshot, and there are three dead and at least 10 wounded. But I emphasize, again, that early reports of an incident like this are often unreliable, and very few facts so far are publicly and officially confirmed.

UPDATE V: Details are now firming up:

 

Category: Crime

Internet Douchebag Patrol

Posted on | April 2, 2014 | 113 Comments

Look, it’s not as if there were a shortage of actual news for me to blog about today. For example, my friend Shaun McCutcheon won a landmark Supreme Court decision today, and there’s all kinds of commentary about McCutcheon v. FEC.

Here is a guy from Alabama who has bought me beers whose name is forever destined to be cited as a legal precedent and yet, I feel myself constrained merely to make brief notice of the decision, because the Internet is swarming with douchebags today.

I’m talking about you, Gregory Bernstein of Vanderbilt University.

Do I need some overprivileged college freshman to lecture me about “rape culture”? No, I most certainly do not. I’ll quote your ridiculous Huffington Post sermonette only briefly:

Rape culture is a culture in which we allow responsibility for sexual violence to be shifted from the rapist to the victim. Rape culture is a culture in which our first reaction upon learning about an alleged assault is to doubt victims, to ask what they were wearing, or what they were drinking. Rape culture is a culture in which myths and misconceptions about rape are allowed to be taught as truth.

Two words for you, Greg: Individual responsibility.

Cultures don’t rape people. Rapists rape people. What is objectionable about these endless “rape culture” lectures is that they represent an effort to demonize all men, to create a collective responsibility for crimes committed by individuals. Or, allegedly committed, as the circumstances in some cases are strongly disputed.

“Reasonable doubt” was all the rage after O.J. Simpson’s wife and her boyfriend got their throats cut, but let two drunk college kids get into an argument about whether she was sober enough to consent to sex last night, and anyone who mentions “reasonable doubt” is condemned as a slut-shaming, victim-blaming misogynist.

Stop preaching, Greg, as if we were ignorant fools in need of your enlightenment. Everybody is against rape, except rapists.

The problem, which is rampant on university campuses, is that there is a Hook-Up Culture, a Friends With Benefits Culture, and a Let’s Chug Vodka Until We’re Nearly Comatose Culture, all of which lead to situations in which “consent” is a he-said/she-said dispute, where evidence is ambiguous or non-existent, and where some people want us to disregard all due process protections for the accused.

But here, Greg, let me quote you briefly once more:

It’s time for individuals as well as colleges and universities to re-teach what it means to have consent. Consent is active, continuous, and given freely. Consent requires sobriety. Consent can be withdrawn. Consent to one sexual act is not consent to all sexual acts. “No” doesn’t mean “convince me.”

Restraining my urge to offer a sarcastic reply I’m sure I would regret, let me say this: You’re attempting to repeal human nature.

Such is the feminist “rape culture” project in its pure essence. As I’ve said before, the argument boils down to, “Shut up, because rape.”

All men must submit to feminist re-education, so angry lesbians can teach them to be as meek and harmless as geriatric eunuchs.

“Do I have your permission to get an erection, Amanda?”

Here’s some advice for college girls: If you are reasonably attractive and in the proximity of vigorous, manly, robust young fellows, be aware that such fellows are all savage sex-crazed animals who dream of passionately thrusting their rigid manhood deep inside you.

On the other hand, if the guys around you are pathetic Vanderbilt wimps like Greg Bernstein, you’re safe from all that.

Now, run along like a nice boy, Greg. We certainly wouldn’t want you to miss your next Women and Gender Studies class.

 

Category: Crime, Education, Sex

‘She Keeps Score’

Posted on | April 2, 2014 | 68 Comments

“Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining,” Colonel Fletcher says in The Outlaw Josey Wales. For the benefit of those readers not fluent in Redneck, permit me to translate: “Don’t screw me over and pretend like you’re not screwing me over.”

Washington, D.C., is a town crawling with thousands of selfish, cowardly, dishonest, backstabbing piss-ants and — reflecting on my decision in hindsight — I often wish I’d never left Georgia in 1997. Where I come from, a man who does good work is respected for his abilities. In D.C., the only abilities that matters are skillful deceit and treachery.

“The Red Wedding” in Game of Thrones is a daily ritual in D.C.

When you’re in a fight — and I’ve survived a few — you find out pretty quick who your friends are, because they will rush in to defend you and won’t stop punching until the fight is over.

Every man is custodian of his own honor. If an honest man says he has been injured, who will tell him that he is mistaken? Nothing infuriates me more than when someone directly insults me, and then pretends that I am wrong to take notice of their insult.

“Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining.”

Being a peaceful man by nature, there are many insults I choose to ignore, but when I deign to take notice of an insult, I don’t expect my friends to question my judgment. If I am wrong — if the person who dissed me is not a lowdown worthless polecat — time will tell, and the responsibility for the dispute is mine alone. Selah.

“Honor culture” is not something you need an anthropology class to learn if you’re from the South. The first warning you’ll get if you insult a man — or his girlfriend — is likely to be a punch in the nose, and it’s rather difficult to protest that you intended no offense while the man is kicking you in the head. (Being a natural-born smart-ass, I share this useful wisdom learned from direct experience.) The reasons for this redneck tendency to fight over perceived insults are deeply rooted in culture, and often lamented by critics of the South, but the alternative to an “honor culture” is the kind of dishonorable backstabbing that typifies life among the cosmopolitan elite, such as the cowardly scum of Washington, D.C.

If you volunteer to be a doormat, you can’t complaint about the footprints on your back. Ignore too many snubs and insults, and pretty soon you’ll be snubbed and insulted routinely. You will notice, then, that Michelle Malkin calls attention to how Frank Luntz and Kellyann Conway sucked up to Stephen Colbert after his stupidly insulting “Ching-Chong Ding-Dong” episode.

Really? I mean, really? In a fight between Malkin and Colbert, you’re gonna side with Colbert? Unfortunately, Luntz and Conway weren’t the only conservative to make that foolish mistake:

Last week, American Spectator contributor Bill Zeiser wrote a blog item with the unfortunate headline, “Michelle Malkin Is Wrong.” The topic of the dispute — Stephen Colbert’s tasteless use of anti-Asian slurs — is interesting, but ultimately irrelevant to the point I wish to make, for the sake of Mr. Zeiser and anyone else who may read this now or in the future: Michelle Malkin keeps score.
On your short list of “People You Never Want to Go to War Against,” be sure to include her name at or near the top, because Michelle Malkin will win that war.
Bill Zeiser is a young fellow, and perhaps did not consider the foolish impropriety of his gesture when he decided to draw attention to himself with such a headline as “Michelle Malkin Is Wrong.” It would be most unfortunate if The American Spectator were to become collateral damage as a result.
The topic of the dispute is, as I say, ultimately irrelevant to the nature of the insult. One may disagree without being disrespectful, and if Mr. Zeiser does not think Michelle Malkin deserves respect, then (a) he needs to do some research, and (b) he needs to consult a psychiatrist, because he’s crazy. . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator. Zeiser expressed remorse on Twitter this morning, and perhaps The Boss will consent to let him live, but I hope the lesson is clear.

 

Category: Michelle Malkin

In The Mailbox: 04.02.14

Posted on | April 2, 2014 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Trigger Warning – Is That You, Liz Warren?
Michelle Malkin: Dear Mr. Colbert – Me So Stupid. You So Funny!
Twitchy: Thousands Of Gun Rights Supporters Rally In Albany Against SAFE Act


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: The Big Picture On Obamacare’s Politics
American Thinker: Democrats’ Sixty-Year War Against Conservative Voices
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin’s Own Final Four Bracket For America’s Future
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, April 1
Jammie Wearing Fools: LA Times Pulitzer Prize Winner – Leland Yee Might Be A Bad Guy, But KOCH BROTHERS!
Joe For America: Reverend Graham – Obama And Holder “Have Turned Their Backs On God”
JustOneMinute: We Shoulda Hired The Smart Regulators
Pat Dollard: Group Tied To Democrat Senator Attacks Triple Amputee Vet – “You Should Have Lost More Than Your Limbs”
Protein Wisdom: DNC Chair Can’t Think Of A Single Obamacare Fix
Shot In The Dark: An Idea Whose Time Is At Least Three Years Away
STUMP: Obamacare Watch – Obamacare’s Fools
The Jawa Report: One Shot, Six Kills
The Lonely Conservative: GOP Candidate For NY Governor Has Kids Opt Out Of Common Core Testing
This Ain’t Hell: Marines Take Flag From Hippie
Megan McArdle: Venezuela Wants To Spread The Suffering


In The Mailbox will be on hiatus until April 9 while I am Minnesota with family and friends and the animes and the mangas.
The FMJRA will also be delayed until then, and Rule 5 Sunday will get a double helping on April 13.
Y’all behave yourselves, now.


Category: Linkagery

‘Unintentionally Heteronormative’!

Posted on | April 1, 2014 | 110 Comments

Readers will please pardon my long silence this evening, but I was doing deep research on (yet another) long post about feminism, the completion of which will have to wait because . . . this:

Emily Nagoski is a Ph.D. “college health educator in Massachusetts.” Both an atheist and a progressive, Nagoski has “worked for well over a decade in the field of sexuality education and has grown into an impassioned advocate for social justice through sexual fulfillment.”

All of which is to say, no one could accuse Professor Nagoski of being a homophobic right-wing Christofascist. (Like us.)

So, in the fall semester of 2010, Professor Nagoski was eight weeks into teaching an entry-level course in Women’s Sexuality when she gave her lecture on the subject of “gender”:

After it, I received an email that, among a great deal else, described my curriculum — the entire curriculum, mark you — as “unintentionally heteronormative.”
Which made me stare, with one eyelid twitching, at my computer, because it means that for the last 8 weeks I have been failing, for two hours each week, over and over again, to make the most fundamental point of the class.
Because my class is neither unintentional nor heteronormative.

What’s the problem? In a word, science:

I’m, like, SO active in not assuming that anyone has any particular sexual orientation or gender identity and in teaching students not to make assumptions, to think critically about the science and the politics that live in the science. And of course I have an entire lecture on gender variation and another entire lecture on sexual orientation and identity (that’s next week).
But I AM teaching that humans are a sexually reproducing species wherein some have sperm (males) and some have eggs (females).

(Oops. Is it still legal to say that in Massachusetts?)

I suppose I’ve been relying on students to find their own way to embracing biology as a valuable way to think about sex. But this point of view is so foreign to many of them, many of them Sociology or Women’s Studies majors who have never thought about sex in terms of biology or reproduction, many politically active around these issues without ever having studied them academically. And I suppose it was too much to ask that they get there on their own.
I wanted them to find their way to the notion that it’s not “heteronormative” to recognize that sex is an evolutionarily adaptive reproduction strategy that, in humans, involves males and females; it’s just our biology, and there’s a complex, mutually interacting relationship between the biological and the social. I’ve been working toward that all semester. But they have not gotten there.

You see where the advocates of Progress and Equality have led us: The basic biology of sex is now politically incorrect, so that even an avowed progressive cannot escape condemnation for the unforgivable Thought Crime of preferring facts to theory.

Professor Nagoski might want to invite me up as a Women’s Sexuality guest lecturer. My daughters have been instructed in the subjects of “Boys Have Cooties” and “Keep Your Britches On,” which I would argue are the most valuable lessons of all.

“Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”
— Matthew 19:4-6 (KJV)

 

Category: Education, Feminism, Gays, Science, Sex

Voodoo and Welfare: $2 Million Methamphetamine Bust in Florida

Posted on | April 1, 2014 | 20 Comments

Florida: The Crazy State!™

LAKELAND — Nearly $2 million worth of methamphetamine was seized and 13 people arrested in what Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd is calling one of the biggest meth busts they’ve had in recent years.
In a press conference Wednesday, Judd laid out the details of the bust, known as Operation Hoodoo Voodoo, which involved 25 suspects distributing drugs across county and state lines, a stockpile of military-grade weaponry and a Voodoo priest. . . .
“We seized about 44 pounds,” said Judd. “That’s 20 kilos of pure methamphetamine.”
Investigators said drug lord Javier Flores, also known as “El Don,” managed large scale methamphetamine shipments to Lakeland, Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, and Las Vegas, Nevada through southern California from Mexico. The organization included a network of couriers, managers and distributors.
Flores would consult a Voodoo priest who would provide predictions, prophecies and readings regarding the organization’s decisions and welfare, officials said.
“This is Polk County vernacular, how we hoodoo the Voodoo man,” said Judd. “The day we served all the search warrants and made all the arrests, he told them, ‘Don’t worry about it, everything is fine.’
“Well, I agree with the Voodoo man, everything is fine. Polk County is safe and there’s a lot of drugs not in central Florida.”

Tucked down at the very end of the story:

Officials said that of the 25 suspects involved in the organization, 11 of them are currently receiving federal/public assistance.

 

Category: Crime, Florida
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