The Other McCain

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

FMJRA 2.0: Vernal Equinox Late Edition

Posted on | March 20, 2014 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Rule 5 Sunday: Take It Like A Man

Ann Coulter on Illegal Immigration and Demographics: ‘No, You’re Raping Me.’

Erika Harold For Congress: A CPAC, Rule 5 & Godliness Trifecta

Get ‘Empowered,’ Duke-Style!

FMJRA 2.0: Sweeping Up After CPAC Edition

Actual GOP Leadership On Display

Chateau de Raceur

Daniel Hannan CPAC 2014

Sarah Palin CPAC 2014 Part 1

LIVE AT FIVE: 03.10.14

Yale Girls Are Sluts

Who Is @LenaDunham’s Uncle and Why Does He Keep Making Her Get Naked?

Sarah Palin CPAC 2014 Part 2 (Seuss!)

LIVE AT FIVE: 03.11.14

‘This Is a Tragedy in the Family’: @Belle_Knox’s Horrible Disgrace

Brett Kimberlin and ‘False Narratives’

LIVE AT FIVE: 03.12.14

E-Mail to a Friend: Are We Being Too Judgmental About the Duke Porn Star?

Feminist Professors Gone Wild

‘An Honest Mistake?’ Has Brett Kimberlin Ever Done Anything ‘Honest’ in His Life?

‘I’d Had Enough of the Insanity’

Death at SXSW

Why Does Ezra Klein Hate Gays?

Two Sluts Do ‘Empowering’ Podcast


Top linkers this week:

  1. Regular Right Guy (17)
  2. Batshit Crazy News (8)
  3. Lonely Conservative (7)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery, and apologies for the belated recognition! Deadline to submit links for this weekend’s FMJRA is noon on Saturday, March 22.


Category: FMJRA Award

Also, @Belle_Knox Is a Psycho

Posted on | March 20, 2014 | 55 Comments

Somebody mentioned this in the comments the other day, but I just got around to checking it out: Duke University freshman Miriam Weeks, who has recently become notorious as porn star Belle Knox, is a “cutter,” with visible scars that show her history of self-harm. “Apparently her ex-boyfriend that cheated on her told her she was fat so she carved the word into her thigh.”

The idea that the daughter of an affluent doctor began shooting porn videos because she couldn’t afford tuition always seemed a bit strange, and her claims that doing porn was “empowering,” an expression of “sexual autonomy,” were even stranger. It is becoming obvious that she has struggled with mental health issues for many years, and the liberal media’s ostentatious posture of non-judgmentalism isn’t really the kind of help she needs. Also, it’s boring.

If you want to see how to turn an article about porn into pure tedium, go read Noah Berlatsky’s Atlantic article, “Students Who Do Sex Work.” Berlatsky doesn’t even raise an eyebrow at this startling confession from one student porn performer:

I started modeling three years ago simply because I wanted to. It was a process of trying to reclaim my sexuality and sexual presentation after a series of sexual assaults. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to ameliorate a lot of the trauma I was dealing with, which exacerbated my mental health issues. I was in college full time at that point, getting by financially with a combination of loans, scholarships, and money my parents had set aside for my education. My mental illness progressed to the point that it started affecting my academics, and I was eventually hospitalized. I had to take a medical leave.

WHOA! Sexual assaults, trauma, mental health issues, psychiatric hospitalization? I’m gonna take a wild guess that getting boned on video is not particularly effective as outpatient therapy.

But isn’t this something that common sense suggests? Do we really need case studies and social-science research to know that the porn business harbors a lot of psychologically damaged people with issues relating to sexual abuse and poor self-esteem? Non-judgmentalism is utterly irresponsible when confronted with such a situation, and kudos to Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post for this fine sentence:

Letting a man ejaculate on your face is not empowering under anyone’s definition of the term.

 Belle Knox is a symptom of a culture gone mad.

 

Category: Sex

Celebrity News: ‘Flamboyant’ Skater Johnny Weir Divorces His Gay Husband

Posted on | March 20, 2014 | 28 Comments

Whenever I get bored with politics, there’s always the celebrity tabloid headlines at WeSmirch. Of course, most of these “celebrities” nowadays are reality-TV personalities you never heard of, and the stories are mostly exercises in trivial silliness.

Radar Online uses the stereotypical adjective “flamboyant” to describe former Olympic skater (and NBC Sports commentator) Johnny Weir, 29, who announced a divorce from Victor Voronov. Evidently, there were domestic violence issues in their relationship, including an incident when Voronov accused Weir of biting him:

About a month before the games in Russia, Weir’s husband filed a police report in which he alleged the three-time U.S. national champion of biting him.
Despite the allegations, the couple had appeared to have worked out their differences when they appeared in a Lyndhurst, New Jersey, courtroom, requesting a judge dismiss the case.
>Weir married Voronov in December 2011 and recently spoke about their dynamic relationship.
“A marriage between two guys is different than what I imagine a marriage between a man and a woman [to be],” he told Access Hollywood in February. “I mean, we’re both constantly trying to fight to wear the pants in the relationship.
“It’s constant fireworks,” Weir added. “It’s very boom, boom, boom.”

Uh, yeah. But if I said that — obviously, gay marriage is different — they’d call me a homophobic bigot. And “flamboyant”? Why don’t you just call him a mincing sissy and get it over with, Radar?

In other urgent celebrity news, Lindsay Lohan fired her $1,500-a-day “sobriety coach” as soon as she finished shooting her reality show for Opray Winfrey’s network, so expect her to start racking up DUI arrests and a trip back to rehab in the near future.

Also, Kim Kardashian got into some drama with her ex, Charlize Theron in a bikini, and Mick Jagger’s dead girlfriend.

Meh. It’s only slightly less boring than politics.

 

Category: Celebrities

At War With God and Nature: @AmandaMarcotte’s Darwinian Fate

Posted on | March 20, 2014 | 53 Comments

“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
— Genesis 1:28 (KJV)

“I don’t want a baby. . . . Nothing will make me want a baby. . . .
“I like not having a giant growth protruding out of my stomach. I hate hospitals and like not having stretch marks. . . .
“This is why, if my birth control fails, I am totally having an abortion.”
— Amanda Marcotte, March 14

Every girl should have a sister, every boy should have a brother, and an ideal family might be two boys and two girls, but things don’t always work out so neatly, which is how my wife and I ended up with six kids: In our quest to provide our eldest daughter Kennedy with a baby sister, we had four boys before Reagan came along.

Despite my joking about the Victory Through Breeding™ program, there wasn’t really an ideology behind our large family. However, by the time our youngest children were born, I was familiar with concerns about demographic decline — the problem of long-term below-replacement fertility rates which had attracted the attention of researchers like Ben Wattenberg (The Birth Dearth, 1989) and others. Low birth rates lead to economic stagnation and other social and political problems, which pro-life activists have been warning about for years.

“In order to turn things around . . . young people getting married have to be thinking of having four or more children.”
— Jim Sedlak, American Life League, 1999

Jonathan V. Last’s recent book, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster, is the latest attempt to call attention to this crisis, but because of liberal hegemony in the media and academia, most people don’t even realize there is a crisis. For the past half-century, our elite culture has been dominated by the neo-Malthusian “overpopulation” myth popularized by Paul Ehrlich, a myth fostered by a eugenics cabal led by David Rockefeller (see Donald Critchlow, Intended Consequences: Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Government in Modern America, 2001). Progressive feminists like Amanda Marcotte refuse to acknowledge that their “pro-choice” ideology wasn’t developed with an eye toward the rights of women, but instead originated with a racist billionaire who was worried that poor brown people were having too many babies.

A diminished sense of irony is one of the consequences of progressive ideology. If they had any concern for intellectual integrity and philosophical coherence, they wouldn’t be progressives in the first place, which is why a fanatical commitment to radical egalitarianism requires a remarkable ability to tune out the cognitive dissonance inherent to such counterfactual beliefs. This was evident in the controversy that inspired Amanda Marcotte’s weird anti-baby rant last week, namely that “the atheist/skeptic community is in an uproar on the subject of abortion” even though “nearly all non-believers are pro-choice.” The proximate cause of Marcotte’s anger — although she’s so perpetually angry she does not really need a reason to begin ranting like a lunatic — was a post by “pro-life humanist” Kristine Kruszelnicki offering non-religious reasons for protecting the innocent unborn. Among other things, Kruszelnicki pointed to opinion polls showing that 1-in-5 atheists are pro-life, a percentage that doesn’t quite square with Marcotte’s “nearly all” claims about the pro-abortion views of “non-believers.”

Facts and logic can never persuade the ideologue, and Marcotte’s beliefs are clearly rooted in emotions that are deeply irrational and intensely personal. No one who does not already share her radical feminist ideology could be persuaded by Marcotte’s arguments. She is losing, and she knows it: 50% of Americans are pro-life, compared to 41% who are pro-abortion, and the trend toward a pro-life majority is one of those facts which are incompatible with Marcotte’s worldview. This explains the wrathful vehemence with which Marcotte denounced Kruszelnicki:

[I]f wasting time typing that shit out amuses you, knock yourself out. But don’t pretend that you’re advancing the cause of free thought while doing so. That’s because rational, free discourse is predicated on the understanding that everyone involved in the debate is arguing in good faith, and I can assure you, after years of dealing with this issue, that anti-choicers are not arguing in good faith.

Marcotte describes Kruszelnicki’s arguments as “infamous,” and calls Kruszelnicki a “forced-birther.” The disproportion between Kruszelnicki’s stimulus and Marcotte’s over-the-top response is remarkable, signifying the desperate importance of abortion as the philosophical sine qua non of Marcotte’s feminist sensibility.

If killing babies is wrong, Amanda Marcotte doesn’t want to be right.

Christians may perceive in Marcotte’s wicked depravity confirmation of the Bible’s prophetic truth, for she is “full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity . . . without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.” But when the mask slips and her ghastly hatefulness is revealed, Marcotte goes off an another deranged rant about “compulsory child-bearing” and “traditional gender roles,” in a transparent effort to distract attention from her own problems.

Ah, “the personal is political,” as the ancient feminist maxim declares, and the psychiatric root of Marcotte’s animosity toward “traditional gender roles” is obviously a sour-grapes rationalization: No man has ever wanted her to become the mother of his children, and the reject pretends to be the one doing the rejection. Her boyfriend/roommate is IT director at the Center for Reproductive Choice. No one is trying to impose “compulsory child-bearing” and “traditional gender roles” on her.

Bitter much, Amanda?

Thus the unacknowledged irony of Marcotte addressing her rant to the Darwinians of “the atheist/skeptic community.” If evolution is about the “survival of the fittest,” Marcotte is manifestly unfit, a reproductive reject, a Darwinian dead end approaching her own extinction. And as Pete Da Tech Guy points out, “By choosing not to have children, she is conceding the future to people like the Dugger family.”

It’s completely irrational, but of course, she’s a feminist.

 

Category: Abortion, Contraceptive Culture, Feminism

Premature Obituary?

Posted on | March 20, 2014 | 20 Comments

Josh Kraushaar at National Journal argues that the Tea Party is dead, while at The Federalist, Ben Domenech says that what Kraushaar interprets as rigor mortis is actually evidence of the Tea Party’s success. My own opinion on the subject is nuanced. Having been immersed in the Tea Party movement from its inception, I considered it effectively “dead” the moment in early 2012 when it became apparent that Mitt Romney would be the 2012 GOP nominee. Exactly why and how that happened has been much discussed, and nobody’s paying me to explain it all over again, so I won’t bore you.

 

Category: Tea Party

In The Mailbox: 03.20.14

Posted on | March 20, 2014 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Lena Dunham and the Hipster Golf Clap; also, Worldwide Heavy Metal.
Proof Positive: Able To Leap Tall Conclusions In A Single Bound! Also, Bait And Switch, and Others May Have Reservations.
First Street Journal: We Told You So! and A Canary In The Coal Mine – York County Pennsylvania
Michelle Malkin: Revolt Against The Testing Tyrants
Doug Powers: Donate To Abortion Fund, Get Coast Hanger Pendant “Token Of Appreciation”
Twitchy: Dana Loesch Schooling Meghan McCain Is A Thing Of Beauty


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: UCSB Police Department Releases Report On Professor Mirielle Miller-Young
American Thinker: The Devious Secret Of Obamacare
Blackfive: You Are Invited!
Conservatives4Palin: “Surrendering Control Of The Internet Is A Colossal Foreign Policy Error”
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, March 19; also, Aborting Fatherhood
Jammie Wearing Fools: The Neo-Porn Feminists
Joe For America: Crack Smoking Mayor Has Higher Approval Rating Than Obama
JustOneMinute: The Mandate Lives, Subject Only To Its Demise
Pat Dollard: Texas Principal Fired For Telling Kids To Speak English
Protein Wisdom: Obama Wants People To Quit Bashing His Jeans
Shot In The Dark: The Star Chamber
Stump: Obamacare Watch – Individual Mandate Gone, Sub Rosa
The Jawa Report: Democratic AG Says Corruption Investigation Racist Because Only Black Democrats Accepted Bribes
The Lonely Conservative: We Get To Pay For Another Michelle Obama Vacation (Updated)
This Ain’t Hell: Starbucks Gives $30 Million For TBI/PTS Research
Megan McArdle: Young Invincibles Are Killing Obamacare


Category: Linkagery

Australia Says Debris in Ocean May Be Missing Malaysian Airliner

Posted on | March 20, 2014 | 13 Comments

Fox News:

Military planes from Australia, the U.S. and New Zealand are searching for two objects spotted by satellite in the southern Indian Ocean that could be related to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Thursday.
Abott told Parliament in Canberra that an Orion and three additional aircraft, including a U.S. P-8 are involved in the search. Abbott cautioned, however, that the task of locating these objects will be difficult and “it may turn out that they are not related to the search for flight MH370.”
An Australian search and rescue official said the planes have been sent to check on two objects that could be debris from the Boeing 777 jetliner that were spotted on satellite imagery in the Indian Ocean about 1,550 miles southwest of Perth.

CNN:

Authorities have spotted two objects in the Indian Ocean that are possibly related to the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Thursday.
“New and credible information has come to light in relation to the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean,” Abbott said in the the Australian House of Representatives in Canberra. “The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has received information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search.
“Following specialist analysis of this satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified,” he said. “I can inform the House that a Royal Australian Air Force Orion has been diverted to attempt to locate the objects.”
Three other planes will carry out a “more intensive follow-up search,” he said.

It’s been 12 days now. We may be near the end of unsubstantiated cable-TV news speculation about the missing plane. Thank God.

 

Category: Uncategorized

Picking Up The Signal

Posted on | March 19, 2014 | 11 Comments

— by Wombat-socho


A pox on Verizon for taking nearly a week to repair/replace the stone knives and bearskins that deliver the Intertubes to my humble burrow in the Virginia suburbs, after said high-tech devices were blown down during the windstorms last week. (As an aside, what kind of crappy 21st century infrastructure gets blown out of service by a wind storm that isn’t a tornado?) The normal cure for this problem – lugging my netbook to the nearest McDonald’s and getting my blog on – was unavailable since the netbook is currently hooked up to a Plugable Universal Laptop Docking Station until I can replace the hard drive in my desktop computer, which died the real death a couple of weeks ago. Also, since we’re into the early stages of the Death March to April 15 at the tax mines, I haven’t had the energy to do much when I get home but poke listlessly at Facebook and the e-mail on my phone.


All that kvetching aside, apologies to those of you who sent links last week, and I’m going to have one heck of an In The Mailbox post tomorrow morning to use all of them. The FMJRA will be hitting the ‘tubes tomorrow as well (better late than never, nyet?), but Rule 5 Sunday is going to have to wait for the weekend; to compensate, I’ll be serving up a double-scoop in a variety of B, C, D and double-D cups.


Also worth mentioning is Chris Nuttall’s Ark Royal. Nuttall is an expat Brit living in Malaysia who’s got eighteen novels up on Amazon, and if the rest of them are anything like this, he’s going to be living pretty comfortably for a while down there. Ark Royal is a space opera about an obsolescent carrier used as a dumping ground for the sick, lame, lazy and alcoholic members of the Royal (Space) Navy which suddenly finds itself Earth’s last hope after aliens trash the more modern ships of the several starfaring nations in a series of one-sided battles. Staffed with stock characters last seen in a number of 1950s WW2 movies, Ark Royal leaves on what may be her last cruise, and delivers the goods in terms of action. Nobody would ever confuse this with John Ringo’s Live Free or Die or the classic The Mote in God’s Eye, but it’s decent enough brain candy, especially if you pick it up for free through the Amazon Prime Lending Library. I’ll be forking out the $3 to keep my copy around, I think, and keeping an eye out for the sequel (The Nelson Touch) when it comes out as well.


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